The package I ordered was held back at customs because it said: "jacket, colour: burgundy wine" on paperwork and it took a while to explain that I'm not attempting to skip the import tax on alcohol. Then the week only went dumber from that point onward.

Both the steel and glassmaking projects I attempted last Friday failed in one way or another. Glass ended up all cloudy and with a slight grey tinge, either because it leeched some trace aluminium impurities from my earlier projects or because of my method of sand purification not being up to the task. Manganese alloys got contaminated with an excess of sulphur due to my own negligence. It's not what I wanted, but it's not as bad as it could be. Bit of a bummer about how flaky it got, almost like shale. Either way, it was a lot of fun. It also made me appreciate all the glass and metal that's just lying around that much more. My lab work made things like superconductors and graphene feel almost mundane, so it's nice to get some new perspective.

::Squints Angrily:: You would reduce it to a math problem, wouldn't you?

Hey, you write what you know. Stephen King's characters scarcely leave Maine, he writes about troubled authors and can't help himself from mentioning penises. I tend to frame most things as mathematics.

So let me ask you this. Do you think the action and the reaction need to be identical to have the same value? Not necessarily in the whole framing scenario, but in that often the idea of "an eye for an eye" comes to be unreasonable for a whole list of reasons.

Honestly, the Code of Hammurabi was fairly sophisticated and among the best legal formulations until Rome came around. This isn't me defending it, but it's something worth acknowledging.

And you hit the nail on the head: nowhere in my guideline have I said anything about intent or what does it mean to get equal retaliation. That's a can of worms that hinges on contemporary morality and ethics, which are neither objective nor universal. For instance, while strict, the code of Hammurabi wasn't seen as barbaric or inhuman by Babylonians. It was the rule of law. Hell, I would postulate that Babylonians were genuinely proud of it and found it as something that separates them from barbarism and disorder. Don't even get me started on Romans.

Anyway, that's only one of the holes that one can find in what I wrote about Justice.

But to (finally) answer your question explicitly: action and reaction don't have to be identical to be fair, but should be in most cases. What are those cases? That's for people who don't boil everything down to math problems to decide. ;)

I'm curious to hear what holes you're willing to poke into your definition.

If A will commit a crime against B, but frames C, then what? C frames A for committing a crime against B? It leaves B being wronged twice just to settle the score between A and C. So it should first act against A and then C.

Or to put it in other words: if the original crime was "A cuts B's leg off, but frames C", then after tallying all the retaliation moves we end up with A having 1 leg, C having 1 leg and B having no legs. Poor B!

EDIT: Alternatively, they all end up without any legs. I'm aware of it.

See, that's the fun thing! The answers I got from people were so varied, I wanted to leave the question open and slightly ambiguous.

Well, if that's the case, then you can't have it as a universal constant. Something like the absolute charge of the electron doesn't change between observers A and A' because A' believes that leptons rigged the system in their favour. Though, I'm willing to assume it's me being too literal about the words 'universal constant'. ;)

So I guess what I'd ask you is, how would you define it?

I'd say that it is reciprocity of actions, their implications and fairness of said actions in the sense they apply to anything that takes action in an equal manner. But even I can poke holes in this definition so it's more of a general guideline than a rule.

Either way, I know that I didn't answer your original question. That's just my two cents.

How do you define Justice?

Possibly related question?

juź, but that's Polish for ya. Fear my weird accents and ogonki!

Same here, seems normal. It doesn't make printable threads, just the current POST_ID without any responses. I'm not entirely sure why it shows nil, but I'd wager it's because the post itself doesn't have any text. Same happens when you remove all text from any post or comment (even drafted or deleted).

You can access the print version of any post or comment by editing its URL. Change 'pub' in hubski.com/pub/POST_ID to 'print' (hubski.com/print/POST_ID) and that's all.

1) Six, eleven if counting textbooks.

2) Tortoise, because I could really use that sweet, sweet +2 to Fortitude Save it provides.

3) No idea, but I'm willing to bet that it loses the Cool War against Kung Fury.

And I sincerely hope it's going to be your year, dude!

A friend needed a few extra hands to help around at a LARP he organised. Definitely not my scene. I've never seen so many pathetic attempts at cheating and my role as GM aide earned me no friends. Around half-point I got so bored and tired of dealing with thirty-odd people – almost all of whom had a "but I'm the star!" mentality – that I started roleplaying as an enforcer on my own. Que the Judge Fredd. It was about as original as any other character I've seen there. It helped make the event bearable, so that's a plus.

In summary: a lousy way to spend a Saturday. LARPs definitely aren't my thing.

Helped with cleaning up after the LARP, got back home and remembered that I promised to help one of my neighbours from further down the street to pack for the move. He's a cool dude, taught me how to play the piano and explained most of the music theory I ever bothered to learn. I'm going to miss him.

That's likely the last relatively free week I'll have until graduation, unfortunately. June can't come fast enough. Regardless, I'm looking forward toward Friday when I'll try to make some glass and steel-manganese alloys in the backyard. Fingers crossed that at least one of those will work.

I use 'print'. It works better with the text to speech program that I sometimes use.

Arsenic, presumably. There was a whole lot of retracted/contested hoopla about it some years ago (overview), but it's the closest element from the nitrogen group after phosphorus to play that role.