>Do you believe rehabilitation is impossible or do you want revenge?

I don't believe that someone who commits mass murder can be rehabilitated, no. It isn't about revenge; it's about public safety.

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

This is precisely why I lost all interest in Oculus the instant I heard that it had been acquired by Facebook.

Beautiful; thank you!

Once upon a time the gender bias was real; now it's still perception, if nothing else. I would really love to see this poll re-administered.

That poll is from many years ago (don't remember exactly when, but at more than 1500 polls ago I'm pretty sure we're talking on the order of 10 years.) The internet has changed a lot since then.

Okay, so you're not a candidate for the Mars suicide mission. And probably not for the Lewis and Clark expedition, either. But that doesn't mean that this guy isn't, and that his comment was infantile hyperbole.

Without people who would die to blaze new trails, there would be no new countries to visit, or people like Jimi Hendrix to meet.

Just because evolution has different values than you doesn't mean it's "turned upside-down." Evolution's "goal" has never been an intelligent, rich, well-educated society.

Put another way: In western medicine, we use things that work in randomized, double-blind, short-term studies. In non-western medicine, we use things that have consistently worked in practice over the course of many, many generations, rather than continuously testing to see if things work in special cases, particular forms of administration, and particular contexts.

There are good reasons why traditional remedies so consistently prove to be effective. I do not dispute that

once upon a time. But do not discount the longitudinal studies that comprise tradition.

It depends on whether my notes are likely to have any graphics-- and that depends on the context in which I'm taking notes. I like graph paper for graphics, college-ruled lined paper for text-only.

Airlines loose an average of 90,000 pieces of luggage every day... and I've often wondered how many of these were actually stolen. I'm sure it's not an insignificant figure, and that this couple is not the only example of luggage stealing taken to the level of a business.

But airlines have very little incentive to take care of your luggage once you've paid to check it. Lost luggage is just accepted by so many travelers as part of the risk of air travel.