gamer47

First, love the to-the-point title. Rants. haha Awesome!

As for your rant on money… you dont know how many times Ive thought about this! I HATE money.. and yet its deemed necessary in developed societies not only to survive (which is the most important thing) but to be able to afford all the unnecessary comforts we have grown accustomed to. I am pretty much a hypocrite on the matter.. because I cant technically hate money or say I dont need money but.. gahh! (Yes, gahh. lol)

The only area I cant wholeheartedly agree on is the part about education. I recognize now, especially with post secondary institutions in Canada, its become more about them chewing us up, taking as much $ as they can and then spitting us out. I know schools are more focused on being good businesses while maintaining the facade that they are ONLY focusing on bettering society… BUT I  would have to say money isnt the only reason people may go to school. The law has a lot to do with it. You cant drop out in Canada until you are at least 16, kids! haha. But seriously, I value my education because as much as the tuition prices disgust me, I am still enhancing my foundation of knowledge. If money didnt exist but school existed for its intended purpose.. EDUCATION.. that would be better

And getting back to the money again… theres a huge focal point I could discuss on the relevance of money equating to power. But if I got started on that you would have a bigger novel to read from me than you already do lol

KILLER369 said:

true enough. but your 1 side of a pollygon and im 1 of the others.

but would you agree that if a person was going to be born without limbs and mentally retarded. is there any point in that person living.

or another example:

don’t take this personal but if you had a stroke and lost the ability of self awareness, would you want to continue your life? or if your child was diagnosed with a mental issue that he/she couldn’t support him/herself, and needed extreme care throughout his/her life would you want it to be born?

because i think that its not only unfair on the baby but if it was born imagine the amount of recourses needed to sustain it. in my opinion, its just cruel on everyone.

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I think there is always a point to a person living. If an individual feels that their life situations are too much too cope with, then they should be the ones to make their own choices. I do not feel it is right to take away anyone else's chance at life.

With the stroke example you gave to me, I can't answer 100% knowingly seeing as I'm not in that predicament… but judging who I am as a person now.. my answer would be yes. I would still want to live. Simply because I love life and I love seeing other people love life. Would I be bitter about the situation, of course. Would I figure out a way to take what's negative and make myself a stronger person because of it? Most likely.

Also I do not have any children but if I did make the decision to bring a child into this world, I would do everything in my power to keep him/her safe even if s/he was more dependent on me throughout their life. Obviously my concern for the child would be heightened when I became of old age but hopefully I would have helped my child establish a future for him/herself and make sure there is someone else there to help them when I am no longer able to.

Also if you look at people who society deems 'disabled' 'handcapped' etc. They manage to do things I cannot even fathom. Theres a guy who played rugby in opposition to my high school team and he had one arm. Hes an amazing athlete. Another example.. theres a blind man who gets on and off the bus everyday at the same stop as me. He is able to get to and from where ever he needs be with seemingly no difficulty. Im honestly baffled at how he knows when to cross the street.. sighted people sometimes struggle with that!  I saw a documentary once on a boy who was born with no arms. He taught himself to write and play the drums using his feet. Also I dont know if this name is known in the UK but Terry Fox is well known in Canada. He was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of 18 and was forced to have his right leg amputated 6 inches above the knee. As a result of his hardships and the hardships he saw from other patients while in the hospital he decided to do something remarkable. He trained for 18 months in preparation and then embarked on a journey to run across Canada raising money for cancer research. Unfortunately he died before he could complete what he set out to do.. but it doesnt really matter. He left behind a legacy. We now associate him with the Marathon of Hope which is celebrated annually.

Most able bodied individuals wouldnt even be bothered to do what he did. Its a true inspiration and just goes to show how much is taken for granted everyday.

I guess the bottom line to all these stories is that there are some things in life you cant control, but for the rest… life is what you make of it. You can let your illness,  disability or ability define you. Or you can turn around and define it instead, live life to the fullest and inspire others to do the same.

In talking about this, I want to point out how I hate the limitations of language.  Looking at the word itself; 'Disabled' .. um what? Most 'disabled' people are actually more enabled than the rest. But that's a rant on language I can save for a different time lol.

Pokenny said:

lol, no, noone offened me. I just can’t contain it when I see things that are in your face wrong lol. I know about the waste of space fact isn’t a fact… but it is in the same light… does that make sence?

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Yes definitely. I didn't lol because I thought it was ridiculous. I lol'd because the way you wrote it was funny and because I agree!

Killer

I see what you're saying but we no longer use the “eye for an eye” method. The term eye for an eye was literally based off of previous societies when.. literally.. if someone poked out your eye (for example) you were given every right to personally go and poke out their eye. Similarly if they stabbed you in the arm you were to stab them back in the arm. They were societies based off of personal retaliation.

Today that method is outdated, illegal and impractical both economically and due to the fact that many people who commit crimes are not caught.

Punishments cannot be inhumane no matter what the crime is that is committed as the criminals are still humans. They have rights just like you and me. Also, you must take into account mental wellness and mens rea which is “the guilty mind.”  Murder is not always murder if an individual's intentions were not so. If there is no mens rea, there is usually no conviction.

I will give you real life examples. (If you don't like hearing about violence, stop reading now and continue reading after the asterics: ***).

Example 1: There was a man who had only one eye because he gouged out and ate his other eye. This man later murdered his entire family. When the police found him, he had the hearts of his family members in his pockets.  He was given the death sentence. While in prison waiting for his day of dying, he gouged out and ate his only remaining good eye. The courts decided that he was mentally ill and maybe the death penalty was not appropriate after all. They were considering alternative punishments that would maybe help this man because clearly, he's not well.

I didn't follow up on the case to see if they ended up executing him or if he is now in an asylum… but you see now how far the legal system goes. If this man had been in his right mind, there would have been no waver in his initial sentencing.

Example 2: A woman was at a party passed out on a couch. She awoke to a man having his way with her. She screamed, the man fell off of her seemingly startled. He turned himself in for rape. Upon further investigation it was found out that he suffers from a medically validated condition known as sexsomnia. He got away with raping the woman because he was asleep while it was happening and therefore there was no mens rea.

When I read the case study for this I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read… how can someone do something like that and be asleep? Low and be hold there are other situations in which someone has murdered while being asleep. These people had no intentions of committing the acts they committed. The courts recognize this and attempt to treat them rather than physically punish them back. It does leave very little closure for the victims and that is a problem that has been recognized.

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“these punishments would put extreme fear into a criminal. and immediately you would see a 50%+ drop in crime.”

Absolutely invalid comment. Based on deterrence studies there are 4 prime factors to look at when wanting to deter crime in a society.

Two relevant variables:

– Certainty of punishment: The probability you will be punished. Is it likely or not?

– Severity of punishment: I will give you an example.

 If you're writing an exam and your professor tells you “If you cheat on this exam I will KILL you but I won't be watching as you write the exam.” You probably think to yourself.. wtf, right? VS. The prof saying “If you cheat, you will fail the course. I will be watching and I will have other people watching”

For which scenario are you less likely to cheat?

Types of deterrence:

– Absolute: this refers to the very major changes to the criminal justice system.

i.e. If the police force goes on stike and does nothing. This would be scary. Chaos would no doubt arise. Thus dramatic change is significant change.

– Marginal: This involves playing with small percentages that the average criminal does not perceive.

i.e. Up the police force by 3%, or buid a new prison = no effect on the risk of getting caught.

Thus absolute deterrence coupled with certainty of punishment IS working. It's been proven. It's more effective.

Is margincal deterrence working? Likely not.

Does severity of punishment work to deter? Not really as it happens in isolated cases. People don't recognize this as something plausible. They say “yeah well it happened to him, but it won't happen to me.”

This has all been validated.

Also, publicly televising punishments is in my opinion, not necessary. Whatever happened to censorship? Based on your example… how are you any better for feeling joy from watching another man be brutally murdered the way he brutally murdered another. If murderers are sick for killing, then are we not just as sick for killing? No matter what tag of “justice” has been applied. Do you see what I mean?

 I didn't know a third Max Payne was being released! Sweet!

Atomic-G said:

ShadeBlack said:

l8scent said:

Sorry to revert back to an older subject but what's going on with the swine flu?

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Anyone have any info?

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swine flu is harmless… it's only when you don't treat it is when it becomes a problem.  or if you're already ill to behin with.

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it's similar situation with the swine flu.  The news will always over-hype it though.  you're not at risk if you keep healthy.  simple as that.

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Shades right

when i heard of swine flu i imediantly went on the internet and started to study it and the swine flus been around for agest but its been only killing 12 people a month on avarega where as the normal flu can kill over 2 thousand a month on average 

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 with conspiracys of the swine flu when you listern to them their actually quiet funny one of them was that the swine flu was a assasination attempt on barak obama

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Thanks guys! I'm personally not worried about it, I just wanted to see if the media blew it out of proportion yet. I guess not quite yet, but they're probably close.

And thanks for all the information comparing swine with the regular flu and swine with measels, etc. It really helps to put things into perspective.

As for the conspiracy theories Atomic-G mentioned..  I can't believe someone took it as far as saying it was purposefully designed to assassinate Barack Obama

Sorry to revert back to an older subject but what's going on with the swine flu? I haven't kept up to date with the news these past few days. Is it being contained… or is the media throwing the world into a panic and calling it a pandemic? Anyone have any info?

Thanks