Saturday, September 15, 2012

Duncan MacDougall. About the soul.


In 1901, MacDougall weighed six patients while they were in the process of dying from tuberculosis in an old age home. It was relatively easy to determine when death was only a few hours away, and at this point the entire bed was placed on an industrial sized scale which was apparently sensitive to the gram. He took his results (a varying amount of perceived mass loss in most of the six cases) to support his hypothesis that the soul had mass, and when the soul departed the body, so did this mass. The determination of the soul weighing 21 grams was based on the average loss of mass in the six patients within moments after death. Experiments on mice and other animals took place. Most notably the weighing upon death of sheep seemed to create mass for a few minutes which later disappeared. The hypothesis was made that a soul portal formed upon death which then whisked the soul away.
MacDougall also measured fifteen dogs in similar circumstances and reported the results as "uniformly negative," with no perceived change in mass. He took these results as confirmation that the soul had weight, and that dogs did not have souls. MacDougall's complaints about not being able to find dogs dying of the natural causes that would have been ideal led one author to conjecture that he was in fact poisoning dogs to conduct these experiments.[1] In March 1907, accounts of MacDougall's experiments were published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and the medical journal American Medicine, while the news was spread to the general public by New York Times.
His results have never been attempted to be reproduced, and are generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit. [1][2] Nonetheless, MacDougall's finding that the human soul weighed 21 grams has become a meme in the public consciousness, mostly due to its claiming the titular thesis in the 2003 film 21 Grams.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Monday, September 3, 2012

Reglamento Penitenciario. Artículo 104.


Artículo 104. Casos especiales.

1. Cuando un penado tuviese además pendiente una o varias causas en situación de preventivo, no se formulará propuesta de clasificación inicial mientras dure esta situación procesal.

2. Si un penado estuviese ya clasificado y le fuera decretada prisión preventiva por otra u otras causas, quedará sin efecto dicha clasificación, dando cuenta al Centro Directivo.

3. Para que un interno que no tenga extinguida la cuarta parte de la condena o condenas pueda ser propuesto para tercer grado, deberá transcurrir el tiempo de estudio suficiente para obtener un adecuado conocimiento del mismo y concurrir, favorablemente calificadas, las variables intervinientes en el proceso de clasificación penitenciaria enumeradas en el artículo 102.2, valorándose, especialmente, el historial delictivo y la integración social del penado.

4. Los penados enfermos muy graves con padecimientos incurables, según informe médico, con independencia de las variables intervinientes en el proceso de clasificación, podrán ser clasificados en tercer grado por razones humanitarias y de dignidad personal, atendiendo a la dificultad para delinquir y a su escasa peligrosidad.