>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.

I once used Civilization (3, perhaps?) as a supplement to teach sixth graders about the rise of civilizations. After talking a bit about how geography affected human development, just as tile placement affects what path you might take in the game, we came across an unprotected worker from another civilization in a square adjacent to our exploring warrior. To the question "Should be attack that worker or not? They're defenseless, and we have big clubs", several of the more vocal boys shouted "kill them!" All it took was a moment for me as the teacher to say, "Are you really willing to slaughter a person so easily? You're taking a human life. Are you really prepared to kill somebody's mother, father, or child?" Just thinking about what it represented for a second was enough to get a unanimous decision from the class to spare the worker's life, and several kids even offered help him with the farm he was building. I thought it was awesome.

Teachable moments are everywhere, and all it takes is somebody paying attention to make an "empathy-hindering" moment an empathy-teaching moment.

Forget half-joking/half-serious... I outright tell people that I will only provide tech support if they're using a Mac. Getting paid to fix PCs is one thing, but dealing with that frustration and idiocy of design for free is simply not going to happen.

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

From the time I bought my TiVo until two years or so ago, I didn't hesitate to tell people how much I loved my TiVo and the service that comes with it. The company really seems to be intent on alienating me as a customer now, though, and I'm getting fed up with it. I am sick of all the bloat. I'm sick of software updates which make my box less user friendly and more sluggish. I am pissed that every time I pause a show or go to the TiVo Central screen I'm forced to look at an advertisement. The whole frigging point of this service was to get away from that. As a stockholder too, I appreciate their desire to find other sources of income from their product, but pissing off your user base does not seem like a wise move, in my mind.

I could care less about Blockbuster streaming. Netflix too. I just want my TiVo service to work as well, and as unobtrusively, as it did when I first bought the damn thing.