I can give you a description of the bit and my opinion.

A Tom Thumb bit is jointed in the middle and has shanks for leverage. So it has a dual action. When light pressure is used it works on the gums and corners of the mouth. When the reigns are pulled harder the jaw is squeezed while the shanks multiply the force and the center joint folds upward to apply pressure to the roof of the mouth. It's kind of like the volume going from 1 to 11.

Uses:
In theory it should act like a traditional Western bit with the added advantage of rotating the shanks independently...so you can make pressure changes on each side of the mouth independently. In actual practice, it pinches the horses lip in this situation and horses tend to react by tossing their head up or holding their head in an unnaturally high position. With a strong pull it becomes extremely severe. Using it requires a very light hand.

I have used a Tom Thumb successfully with a well trained horse that required no head control but had developed a bad habit of testing his rider by picking up his gate and then bolting. The bit allowed me to ride with no hand but when the horse stretched his neck to take control he ran into the bit. When he relaxed back to the correct position, the pressure was gone. Eventually he didn't want to cause his own discomfort and once he'd broken his bad habits the bit wasn't necessary.

In my opinion, the Tom Thumb appears to check a lot of boxes but in reality it does few of them well. It can work for the right horse, with the right rider, in the right circumstances.

Roy is clearly an inexperienced rider and his personality demands that he assert control, even when he's out of his depth. He's riding a gaited horse (I think it's a Tennessee Walker but my daughter disagrees) and he seems to be trying to make it move like a Quarter Horse. My guess is he's trying to ride in like a cowboy but the horse naturally moves like pretty princess horse. Chaos ensues.

I hope that makes sense. I tried to avoid horse-people terms. If something's unclear or if anyone feels I'm wrong, then I welcome comments.

Right. A knife is a tool. For sharpening shanks.

And that's the issue right there. I think you and I are arguing about completely different things. In terms of the person who stole the photos and posted them, yes there is no middle ground--that person 100% committed a crime and needs to be punished.

However, in terms of responsibility of people for putting themselves in the position to be victimized, there is a huge range of possibilities--but often this range of possibilities isn't examined for fear of someone shouting "Blaming the victim!" The link I posted above goes to great lengths to point out that the criminal who commits the crime is 100% responsible for the criminal act (by virtue of having made the choice to commit it) but that the victim can in fact also have contributed to the crime in a continuum of ways starting with not at all (100% innocent, as in a child who is abused) to fully responsible (as in the case of a rapist who is killed by a potential victim in self-defense during the rape attempt--in this case the rapist becomes the "victim" of a shooting that he brought completely upon himself). There is lots of middle ground between these extremes.

Let's examine a simple case:

I am walking down the street in LA during the early evening in a neighborhood that normally has very little crime. A homeless man shambling past me suddenly pulls a knife, rams it into my chest, and steals my wallet which happened to contain several hundred dollars. I think we can agree in this situation I've no responsibility for this incident occurring. I could not have predicted it would happen and there is little I could have done to anticipate or prevent it. I am 100% an innocent victim in this scenario.

Now let's change the situation. I go down to Skid Row in the early evening and start showing all the homeless people there wads of $100 bills and telling them how worthless they are and how if they only got off their asses and worked hard like me they could have money too. Again, I get shanked in the chest and my money is stolen. Am I 100% an innocent victim in this case? It seems a bit absurd to say yes, doesn't it? My actions (choosing to go to an area that is not often policed, at night, alone, and flash money while belligerently accosting random people who don't have a lot left to lose) are directly linked to the stabbing.

Note that in both cases the person committing the crime is still 100% responsible for their own actions--they chose to stab me and steal my money. But in one case I clearly could not have foreseen or prevented the attack coming whereas in the other it was reasonably foreseeable that my actions were going to lead to problems (not necessarily a stabbing but at the very least some sort of altercation, unless the most patient and forgiving homeless people on Earth happened to be gathered on Skid Row that day). Does that mean the stabber in the second case should get a lighter sentence? No. But it does mean I have some responsibility for what went down and can be justly criticized for my actions. I can't hide behind the "don't blame the victim" catchphrase. I still deserve justice, though, despite being an offensive idiot.

Back to the case at hand.

You are correct, the woman did nothing "wrong" in the moral or legal sense, and the person who violated her privacy is 100% responsible for making the photos public. But I dislike the idea that because she's a victim of a crime, her actions can't be criticized. She might not have done anything "wrong" but she did indeed make a huge error of judgement when she decided to snap naked pics of herself and post them to a social network which is known for dodgy privacy practices. Given the state of technology today, one should be able to infer that there is a pretty high risk that racy photos are going to get leaked at some point, particularly if posted online. If you are okay with that risk, go ahead and post them. And if they are leaked, by all means prosecute the offenders. But don't expect people not to criticize you for gambling that nothing is going to happen, especially when there is plenty of evidence to believe the contrary.

Yes, but not the Stargate Michael Shanks if that's what you're thinking.

Michael Shanks!

I think the bigger issue is not with difference in the facility that's housing inmates, it's the inmates themselves. That and the difference in the number of inmates being housed.

Prisons in America are filled with the closest that human beings can be to wild animals where their primal instincts guide most of their actions at all times. It's a cultural problem, in that such people are also like that before going to prison, so if they were placed into a luxurious retreat as shown in this video, it wouldn't work except with a small subset of prisoners.

Wild animals don't care much about being civil or civilized because that would mean demonstrating weakness, and a man in that position cannot afford to be made to look weak (as Mr. Woltz kind of said in The Godfather).

The primary goal of most prisoners in America with relation to everyone around them is to ensure they are perceived as tough. That means 10 prisoners sharing a living area will only be peaceful as long as it takes for someone to feel someone else is looking at them in a manner they dislike or until one guy bumps into another or one guy simply wants to assert his dominance as an alpha male by beating or shanking or raping another guy.

I don't think American prisoners need to be caged and punished like animals, just that when violent American criminals are being imprisoned, what you're doing in most cases is caging animals, regardless of how well or poorly the cage is designed.

I saw a guy get stabbed with a pen at my old high school. It looked like he was just being punched a bunch of times. Knives are bad, but shanks -- fuck, you don't even know there's a weapon in their hand.

I catch public transport, usually a combination of bus, tram or train, and shanks' pony. It's a bit over an hour each way, but at least I get to read a book (which would be a bit dangerous when driving).
>> ^BoneRemake:

One upside I can see of something like this may be the fact we might be able to have more than ONE poll at a time. I want to know how far people drive to work everyday round trip, but nooOOooOo

>> ^longde:

One thing that I pointed out to a former professor, is that the threat of retaliation is never accounted for in the simple game theory model. For the prisoner's dilemna, I called it the "threat of being shanked" if one chooses to squeal.
As we see in the video, the emotional response to being played is a deep one that can lead to a Law and Order episode.
As mentioned above, repeating the game a few times would somewhat account for the consequences of uncooperative behavior.


The threat of being shanked is truly a part of more sophisticated game theory - "Reiterated Prisoner's Dilemma" is what you're referring to and it's much more biologically accurate, most notably for predicting whether organisms will cooperate or not in mutualistic or commensal associations whereby they have to interact over and over, so something like you saw here would NOT go unpunished.

One thing that I pointed out to a former professor, is that the threat of retaliation is never accounted for in the simple game theory model. For the prisoner's dilemna, I called it the "threat of being shanked" if one chooses to squeal.

As we see in the video, the emotional response to being played is a deep one that can lead to a Law and Order episode.

As mentioned above, repeating the game a few times would somewhat account for the consequences of uncooperative behavior.

Oh man... classic
http://youtu.be/XZTZB2zQdX4?t=4m15s

>> ^entr0py:

"OoOooh No! You shanked my jengaship!

"OoOooh No! You shanked my jengaship!

I'm a Chargers fan, so I need a girl that can shank and run. She's too bulky...
In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Dump your girlfriend and move to Chicago. Right now. I've found the woman of your dreams. And don't tell me you can't because your a Padres fan. The Padres are the west coast Cubs. Only worse.

whatever gets them a paycheque. I think they are a bunch of bull queers but... thats just me. (watched shaw shank redemption earlier)

It appears we are not the asshats eachother thought to be.

my name is Brent. I like to ride a mountain bike, massive earphones on and enjoy the outside.
long, or short walks on the beach.
In reply to this comment by Fantomas:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Suprisingly no mention of baldness.

How on earth did we get to this point? From trading silly insults to hair (or lack thereof) to Shakespeare. If only all life's conversations evolved in this matter.

In reply to this comment by BoneRemake:
I shave my head, I bypass the entire ordeal of hair. half the time facial hair is longer then my scalp hair. its odd. 18-27 complete hippy look, long hair cut on occasions but that was once in a blue moon soo long scraggly hair and facial hair was prevalent for damn near ten years. Then this shaving and such started. reminds me of hearing something about Shakespeare 7 life's of men. or something like that.

In reply to this comment by Fantomas:
The irony of the whole affair is that I actually have a fairly full beard myself, although I do shave my neck. I guess that makes me a neckbeard in denial. With the modus operandi of neckbeards being rage over the internet, it only serves to confirm the diagnosis.

In reply to this comment by BoneRemake:
" neckbeard "

made me *sad to admit* almost piss myself.

hydrating after work and sifting can be messy.