Never read the book - I think I'll go looking for it.

I have noted that prison sucks for many reasons, and a lack of genuine punishment for crime is one of the reasons. Prison does little more than serve as a criminal college and finishing school. Petty criminals enter the system, only to become professional criminals. There is something drastically wrong with that picture.

It isn't the execution that is expensive. It's all the appeals. The courts will collectively spend a few hundred million dollars before this pig fucker is finally put to death. The execution might cost a few thousand dollars, when accounting is done with it, but the real money goes into court accounting for lawyer time, judge time, yada yada yada.

Screw that. Sometimes, you gotta do what's gotta be done. Septic systems need to be cleaned out, criminals need to be executed - stuff just has to be done. If you want to walk around feeling superior by not getting your hands dirty, go right ahead, but don't expect to win any arguments on morality.

AC hasn't exactly justified Tsarnaev - he has given food for thought. He last sentence, "Just something to think about." He makes it pretty clear that if we weren't such arrogant bastards ourselves, then we may have had more sympathy from the world at large when the terrorists hit us. And, there is some suggestion that if we were less overbearing overseas, then just MAYBE the terrorists wouldn't have hit us.

Food for thought, assuredly.

Is he right? Is he wrong? I can't say for sure. But he does offer food for thought.

Yeah, I'm aware that Muslim terrorists are waging war on three continents already, against people who ARE NOT arrogant, overbearing bastards with military bases located around the world. Maybe the terrorists would have hit the Twin Towers anyway, and maybe the Tsarnaev brothers would have bombed the Boston Marathon anyway. I can't say for sure.

Think about it though.

Regardless - it is an existential war against those radicals, and Brigitte explains exactly why that is.

You should read the prophet's words. Really, you should read his words. Jesus is a forgiving God. Jesus wept. Mohammed never forgives, never forgets, and the only weeping he ever enjoyed was the tears of the widows and orphans as he raped them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Islam is the religion of peace! Well, except for a few radicals, maybe 2 or 3 percent, which would only make about a million radicals. And, maybe except for their supporters, maybe 20 percent or so, which would make about 200 million. Other than that, it's mostly moderates, who won't actually go out and jihad, but they'll cheer the jihadists on. You've nothing to fear from Islam, there's just no way that there are more than a three or four hundred million activists and jihadists combined!

Times marches on. Technology advances.

Some people will hold to the old ways, and complain while the rest of us advance with the times.

When those people are "Horse and Buggy Makers," we ridicule them. Why should we coddle pixel artists?

I'm 45. I played Space Invaders in my local bowling alley when it came out - with my limited allowance. I was 10 (it took a while to get the midwest USA).

I hate pixel art. It reminds me of bad games. Why limit yourself to an outdated method?

Gameplay is king, but appearance is important.

Pixel art holds zero nostalgia for me. Give me something that looks good, and plays great, and I will buy it. Pixelated graphics do NOT look good.

My thoughts, almost exactly. Now and then, Anonymous allows one of their attacks to become public knowledge ahead of time. I've kinda sat in on the forums while the attack was being waged. Yeah - members of anonymous have command of botnets. Maybe not the largest, maybe not the most sophisticated, but, individuals might have ten, a hundred, a thousand bots under their control.

It takes no great leap of intuition to realize that "anonymous" might have thousand, or even tens or hundreds of thousands of shoddily secured routers to work with. Agree with them or not - they aren't stupid just because they're anonymous!

I think that we have all had an individual in our schools who just could not, or would not learn. Special ed types who are also discipline problems. The schools spend ten times as much on them, as they spend on kids who might want to learn.

At some point, you have to say enough is enough. There are hard cases that you are not going to educate, no matter how much effort, no matter how much money you throw at them.

I say, stop wasting time on them. Put them out of school, let them try to work for a living, let them learn how harsh the world is. Maybe next year, they'll come back pleading for another chance. If that happens, I'll be okay with that. If not - well, good riddance.

We don't need disruptive students in the class rooms - that much should be obvious.

Your TL;DR is off target.

The second part of your post is on target, but why wait until the BA is meaningful, before fixing the high schools?

There are a number of problems with our Common Core. The most publicized, and most criticized thing about it is, the teachers teach to the test. Recitals are nice and all - but if the student knows nothing more than what he is reciting, there's a reasonable chance that he can't use that knowledge. In effect, the teachers are helping the children to cheat to pass the tests!

Another problem is, those "common core" requirements are pretty lame, in and of themselves. They amount to the "lowest common denominator". The tests don't distinguish between high achievers, low achievers, and failures. Instead, everyone is tutored toward that LCD.

And, finally, parts of that "common core" are political goals, rather than educational goals. The "left" or "liberal" agenda is being pursued through the schools in this country. At the same time, the schools are intentionally being "dumbed down" by the global economy crowd. They don't WANT high achievers graduating, who might disrupt their global economy goals.

It's a very complicated thing - you could spend months researching it.

Bottom line, it's a mess.

Have you read Abraham Lincoln's biography? How about Thomas Edison? History is replete with examples of outstanding people who suffered hardships due to their station in life. If those two examples aren't good enough for you, then nothing will convince you.

You will please note, that I have made absolutely no justification for the banks exploiting kids who want an education. There is no justification for impoverishing college kids for life. Actually - that situation helps to justify my position. Education is overvalued, and over priced today. The economy does not support the prices being put on education. It's an insane situation.

Most of those kids can get an equivalent, and maybe a better education, if they just say screw it, and hit the books on their own. That scrap of parchment with a college seal on it is simply not worth the asking price.

How about we go back to something called "Vo-Tech"? There is a rather large percentage of students who just don't give a damn about higher education. Many of those students want hands-on experience in the trades - auto mechanics, computer repair, industrial maintenance, construction. We aren't all cut out to be brainiacs. Give those kids the education that they are INTERESTED in, give them the training that they DESIRE. And, cut them loose when they are ready to earn a living.

We also have a a percentage of people who cannot and will not EVER actually earn a high school diploma. Forget about "No Child Left Behind". Stop the nonsense with Common Core, or "Lowest Common Denominator". Flush those people out of the school system, and let them either fend for themselves, or subsist on the dole.

In effect, I want to change the structure of the education system. Stop teaching down to those who aren't interested. Reinstate the differences between vocational education, and academic education. And, when we have done so, then we begin raising the standards.

For as long as I have been alive, a high school diploma has meant little. It is merely a formality, a slip of paper with which one can open the lobby doors at a business, so that he can fill out an application.

A high school diploma should MEAN something. It should represent a considerable effort on the part of the student. It should be something he is proud of, not something that he had to get out of the way before he could begin a career - or before he could begin getting a real education.

Worse, that diploma has been further cheapened by the GED program. Employers today advertise for high school grads, or GED equivalents. Every dead beat loser in the country now gets a GED in prison, if he doesn't already have one.

Bottom line in my post was that throwing good money after bad isn't going to improve the situation.

I say that we return the school administration to the local communities, and get the feds out of the schools. The feds have usurped local authority time and time again, always through the immoral and unscrupulous use of money - and at every turn, they have screwed things up.