When identifying criminals, it makes a difference whether witnesses view photos including the suspect's one at a time or all at once, according to new research.

An Iowa State University professor who led the study says sequential presentation is better than simultaneous, with about a 10 percentage-point difference in accuracy. [...]

A witness or victim of a crime often will be shown photographs of a potential suspect. The trick is to pick out the photograph of the guilty party from among other pictures of innocent people.

It's important because eyewitness identifications are notorious for being wrong.

Gary Wells, an ISU psychology professor, and others have spent years studying the issue. Why does the manner of presentation make a difference?

When seeing several photos at once, witnesses may compare one picture against another, Wells said, and try to pick out the one that looks most like the perpetrator -- rather than the one they know was responsible.

With the sequential method, the witness has to make a decision based only on one photograph. What the detective says to a witness during the presentation also is important, Wells said.

* That $41 million includes nearly $11 million from securities and investment donors and $4.3 million from commercial banking interests.

• Sen. Max Baucus (D-­‐Mont.), chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, is the biggest recipient of financial sector cash since 1989 ($6.2 million).

• Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-­‐Texas), first elected in 2002, is the top House recipient of industry money on the committee ($3.9 million).

[snip]

Donations from the PACs and executives of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo -- banks that received $95 billion in federal bailout funds--make up one-­‐fifth of all contributions from commercial bank interests.

Read this article at the Seattle Times site:

It clearly outlines the reasons for abolishing it.

To the best of my knowledge, all the leading Republican candidates support capital punishment.

And, the likely Democratic nominee, Mr. Obama, supports capital punishment.

This is simply the logical outcome of the system we seem incapable of changing.  We can't even DISCUSS the establishment of a humane and generous national floor that provides work when it cannot be offered by the private sector.  You are called a socialist or worse to suggest it.  I guess we'd much rather have all those people unemployed, desperate and angry.  No jobs program is perfect, no program private or public is, but what is much more imperfect is mobs of disaffected folks who feel ignored, neglected, abused.

The private sector is not going to solve this problem.  They have no interest.  Unless they can profit wildly in the process, which is why they are sitting on record amounts of cash -- some illegally, it should be added, since they are required to pay dividends on many of those piles.  Has Apple paid one yet on their giant mountain of cash?  Nope.

Needless to say, as you can imagine from my POV, I really wish Obama would get down to Wall Street with those brave souls getting maced and arrested.  They are people engaged in the ONLY thing freedom means -- the right to say no to the powers that be.  And what does NYC's finest have for them?  The tactics of a totalitarian state.  Stand with them, Mr. President, stand for genuine  reform right there in the belly of the beast.  

I seriously doubt, ABG, that you think he should do that, which is fine.

The World Will Be More Crowded -- With Old People  

Younger women across all race and ethnic groups had fewer children compared with 2008. Births declined 6 percent among 20-34 year-olds over the two-year period even though the number of women in this group increased by more than 1 million...

MANCHESTER, Conn. -- When Keith Wearne goes grocery shopping, checking out with a cashier is worth the few extra moments, rather than risking that a self-serve machine might go awry and delay him even more.

Most shoppers side with Wearne, studies show. And with that in mind, some grocery store chains nationwide are bagging the do-it-yourself option, once considered the wave of the future, in the name of customer service.
...
Big Y Foods, which has 61 locations in Connecticut and Massachusetts, recently became one of the latest to announce it was phasing out the self-serve lanes. Some other regional chains and major players, including some Albertsons locations, have also reduced their unstaffed lanes and added more clerks to traditional lanes.
...
Overall, people reported being much more satisfied with their supermarket experience when they used traditional cashier-staffed lanes. link

"I'm shocked that the political debate in the U.S. is so far away from the scientific facts," she said, according to The Copenhagen Post.

"When more than 90 percent of researchers in the field are saying that we have to take [climate change] seriously, it is incredibly irresponsible to ignore it. It's hard for a European to understand how it has become so fashionable to be anti-science in the U.S.," Hedegaard said in the Post account, which reprints comments she made to the Danish paper Politiken.

"And when you hear American presidential candidates denying climate change, it's difficult to take," she said.

Link

Here are some links outside of the WSJ from various folks in the know:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/09/the-luck-of-the-irish.html

Link