You base your final judgement on what the person is now and what they were.

Execution leaves no room for what they might become. Diamonds, after all started out as coal.

To paraphrase a well-known Catholic writer, "If you can't bring them back to life, don't be so hasty to put them to death". Even Gollum served a higher purpose in the end.

Another word for prison is Penitentary. As in penitence.

The idea - and this long predates the Political Correctness of the 20th/21st Centuries is that it's a place for people to reflect upon their crimes. And ideally, repent. Something that doesn't happen often, granted, but it does happen.

A religious person (Judaeo/Christian/Muslim) who promotes executions is doing exactly what religious people condemn in suicides - usurping God's right to determine how long a person has to repent or otherwise be useful before they're called to account. And the Bible indicates in no uncertain terms that a person doesn't have to be a model citizen to be useful for God.

A non-religious person is on firmer ground, but in practical terms, a lot of people would have been glad to see Hirohito executed for the atrocities committed in his name during WWII. As an emperor, he may not have provided the best moral compass, but he did provide noted contributions to the field of Marine Biology after the war. Nelson Mandela was up for the death penalty, but having been spared, he and Botha later did what was almost inconceivable - converting South Africa to black majority rule without major bloodshed or revenge-seeking.

It's all well to summarily declare that convicted felons are a "waste of oxygen". In many cases they are, but that's hardly justification to dispose of the manure before picking out the diamonds.

Plus, even if we don't want to harvest such slim pickings, there's the final practical bean-counter consideration. In the USA, the appeals process is extensive and expensive. More so than merely warehousing "oxygen-wasters" for a few decades. We could, of course, reduce or eliminate appeals. Hell, we could simply tear them apart in the streets Pakistani-style. But once upon a time, we had concepts like "assumed innocent until proven guilty" and "better 1000 guilty go free than 1 innocent be punished" and despite vigorous efforts over the last 20 years or so, there are still shreds of this attitude in the US justice system. And it costts money and we still end up executing a few innocent people every year.

There are countries that the USA likes to consider itself morally superior to that do not support a death penalty. Conversely, most of the countries that still do are not on the whole a crowd to brag about hanging around with.

The difference is that with accelerating technology, things become of historical interest at a faster and faster rate.

Or a thousand years from now, an archaeologist might suddenly discover what those famous lines from Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" actually meant. Ouch!

In Florida, it's 350 miles from Jacksonville to Miami. Follow the road down to Key West, and that's another 150. And you've never even left the state, much less the country. Key West, incidentally, is closer to Havanna than to Miami, speaking of inter-country distances.

A friend once told me of a college reunion where they gave a prize for whoever traveled the farthest to get there. The guy from Philadelphia lost to a Floridian who not only did the full North-South route, but the East-West route. Over 1000 miles totally within Florida.

A trial is not a punishment. A trial is a determination of guilt and hence, the need for punishment.

The nature of punishment is another matter.

For the case in point, you can execute the offender, thereby instantly making him a 72-virgin martyr.

Or you can put him in stir for the rest of his natural life. He becomes, at best, a poster boy, at worst, yet another forgotten prisoner. But in the mean time, he might also recant, thereby negating the alleged justification of the crime. And if his crime wasn't justified, it makes it that much harder for the next would-be terrorist to justify himself. But dead people can't recant.

The reason that we don't still do public executions is that they don't provide deterrent value.

Why not just drown them like kittens?

Quite a few great works of literature were penned in prison.

Prison - by definition - limits what you can do, but whether you waste your life or not is up to you.

Yeah. These electrons belong to Duke Power, those electrons belong to Con Edison, the ones over there belong to...

The idea that the Free Market makes any sense in the simultaneous transmission of commodity objects (or forces) over a common medium is one of the most insane artifices that anyone ever invented. All you are really selling is the right to bill something that you probably didn't produce going over lines you probably don't own. Capitalism at it's finest!

And now we have the tablet market.

I've been using the Google handwriting recognition installable "keyboard" for 2-3 days now.

Unlike the Newton, which was famous for its inability to accurately recognize what you input, the Google handwriting actually works pretty well. Although it's occasionally slow. I think it's doing a lot of its magic by talking back to a Google server.

Unfortunately, I've gotten into the habit of writing Grafitti-style, so using "real" letters and writing them across the input area instead of within a limited box doesn't come naturally to me any more. I could do Grafitti faster than I can type.

Also, the "forward-space gesture" just enters a dash. There's an actual "space bar" at the bottom of the input area that you have to tap.

That smells too much of the zero-tolerance, total-fear climate that typifies the USA these days.

If you have enough unstable employees that you need to be that worried, you were doing something major wrong long before "firing" time.

In any event, laid-off people aren't known for running amok in the parking lots. They come back later, heavily-armed and lay waste to the remaining employees (and customers).

Well, that's what makes America such a great country!

You don't need a massive conspiracy. You don't even really need a conspiracy.

All that's needed is for people - politicians and the populace - to accept just a little more incursion every time the investigation and enforcement people claim that their job is being made "too hard".

Inch by inch, until one day, it's no longer "We're free to do travel about and do things", but "Your papers, please!"

Well, it wouldn't be the first time McAfee crashed something.