Harris County, Texas.

[sandman]

Well, technically the Troubles weren't a war per se.....but try telling that to my Sgt Maj. The poor SOB was shot in the head by an IRA sniper while we were leaning against the truck. Closest I ever came to dying myself. And you know what? The movies are bullshit. You hear the gun and the ricochet after the bullet gets to you. Coombs never had the slightest clue he had been shot. Me? I needed new trousers.

[Canadian Mojo]

So is it the British sense of humor or just not thinking it a very big deal that allows you guys (collectively) to refer to it as 'The Troubles?' Honestly, it brings to mind some old English chap saying something along the lines of "we had a spot of trouble on the way in; some silly colonial tried to go the wrong way on a round-about and got hit by a lorry. Traffic was backed up half way to Gloucester so your scones are a little cold." and not a decades long terrorist campaign/insurrection that left 3500 dead.

[starseeker]

The official line was that it wasn't more than a minor disturbance and tried to keep it all hush hush.

[sandman]

More habit than anything else. And yes, I think it does have a lot to do with the British tendency to understate everything. We're talking about the people who referred to Hitler as a "bit of a rum chap," and WWII as "a spot of bother."

[ironbite]

I love the English.  they try to downplay everything.

Ironbite-would love a Fallout game set in London just to hear their description of the Great War.

[Canadian Mojo]

The British: even more laconic than the Spartans.

[sandman]

My grandfather once described the Battle of the Somme (he was there) as "a bit of a dust up."

[SimSim]

My grandfather once described the Battle of the Somme (he was there) as "a bit of a dust up."

Wow. That is the biggest understatement I've ever read. That was the single bloodiest battle of WWI.

Learned a good bit about that battle in my battlefield archaeology class. You'd have thought that the British would know a calvary charge on machinegun nests were very ill advised.

[sandman]

That's nothing. After the battle, Grandad wrote his wife that she was not to worry, he had been (and this is a direct quote) "nicked a bit by the Kaiser's lads," but was fine.

When he got home he was missing his left eye and his left arm. This is a man who would have described being killed as "inconvenient."

[Scotsgit]

[the fact that it doesn't actually deter any crime.

Which is what I see:  Britain had the death penalty when the most famous serial killer of them all, Jack the Ripper, was killing in the London.  Similarly, throughout the US, when Booth shot Lincoln, the death penalty was in force.  I seriously doubt that anyone has ever said "I better not kill anyone because I might get hung/the electric chair/whatever", or are death penalty advocates seriously saying this is what happens?  If so, what's their evidence for it?

[Scotsgit]

Learned a good bit about that battle in my battlefield archaeology class. You'd have thought that the British would know a calvary charge on machinegun nests were very ill advised.

The majority of the British did think it was a stupid idea, unfortunately, people such as Winston Churchill were trying to micromanage the war to the extent that the General commanding the British army had to put this in as Chruchill thought it would win.  After the Somme, General French was replaced by General Haig who tried, desperately, to modernise the army by getting regiments to use section attacks (instead of whole regiments or even divisions being committed to attacks) and a lot of other ideas such as having troops move towards the enemy using cover and giving covering fire.  Unfortunately, he was overruled by Churchill and Lloyd George who decided that, against all evidence to the contrary, they knew better.

[sandman]

Well, Texas, the most execution-happy state in the USA (and in the top 10 world-wide), still has the  15th highest rate of violent crime in the country, and the18th highest murder rate. In fact, if you look at the top 20 states in murder-rate, all of them except New Mexico and Michigan endorse the death penalty. (While Illinois is currently under a governor-initiated moratorium on executions, the death penalty is still in effect there.)

If the death penalty worked as a deterrent, you would expect the states without it to be high up in the list.

[Vene]

Well, Texas, the most execution-happy state in the USA (and in the top 10 world-wide), still has the  15th highest rate of violent crime in the country, and the18th highest murder rate. In fact, if you look at the top 20 states in murder-rate, all of them except New Mexico and Michigan endorse the death penalty. (While Illinois is currently under a governor-initiated moratorium on executions, the death penalty is still in effect there.)

If the death penalty worked as a deterrent, you would expect the states without it to be high up in the list.

I actually bothered to do some statistics to this. I separated the states into two groups, those with and without the death penalty in 2010. I then found the average of each group, 4.6 in states with the penalty and 2.9 in states without it. I calculated the standard deviation, 2.1 in states with and 1.4 in states without. I used this to find the range of values at the 95% confidence interval in order to perform a rule of thumb t-test. At this confidence level the murder rate with the death penalty is between 4.0 and 5.3 and without is between 2.1 and 3.6. This strongly supports the assertion that the death penalty does not deter crime.

I've attached the spreadsheet I used to do the analysis, I used LibreOffice so it may not behave properly in excel.

ETA: I said 2011 instead of 2010

[sandman]

Excellent, young Padawan.

[Yla]

Will bookmark this as soon as I'm on my own browser again.