>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.

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.

This is why my motto (and fundamental rule for life) is Don't be a dick: it's simple to understand, and reasonable people can agree on what it means.

I was thinking along the lines of Abstract Algebra too, but I considered that it might just be too upper-division for the average high-school student.

But I do feel that any high school student motivated enough can at least tackle some of the basics. The right book is important too. The 900-page textbook I am using for my graduate level course is probably not the best idea.

A text book that isn't too dense should be fine. I think problems might arise with constructing new groups, though, like modding out by the kernel of some homomorphism, Field of Fractions, etc... Students will need a grasp on Set Theory for that.

Last March, I introduced Dihedral groups to my brother's 3 older kids, 11 to 13 at the time, and they were perfectly capable of filling out a Cayley table for the groups of symmetries of the equilateral triangle and square and had some fun with it. It wasn't difficult for them to notice that each element appeared in any given row or column exactly once, aside from the headings.

But perhaps the book I might recommend is my textbook for Sets and Logic:

Mathematical Reasoning: Writing and Proof by Ted Sundstrom
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Reasoning-Writing-Proof-2nd/dp/0131877186/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234136896&sr=8-1

It would be great for teaching students that writing and mathematics are not necessarily two different animals.

Perhaps Google should do something like this: http://xkcd.com/481/

Are you speaking of the creationists or the scientists with that statement? Because last I heard, giving thought to anything besides evolution means you are no longer a scientist. Am I to understand that this is the definition of being objective and lacking bias? Generally the creationists are the ones lacking bias. While the evolutonists demand only evolution be taught in schools, (most of) the creationists say teach both and let the students decide.

We are way beyond severerly handicaping American students. On a scientific viewpoint, we're teaching them to take and believe the information they're fed without testing it themselves.