Lateralus

On the subject of Star Trek intros; the Enterprise theme has to be one of the cheesiest themes ever made.

Dear god. I can't do high school maths anymore.

If that's the case; have you read Lolita? Really it's just Nabokov making sweet and beautiful love to the English language.

Many of my character traits are seen as flaws by other people, but they're things that I enjoy very much and consider a large part of who I am. I'm extremely hedonistic and argumentative, I drink and smoke far more than is good for me, but these are things I'm fine with and the people who I care about don't seem to mind either. There's one flaw I recognise in myself that ties everything together and is the root of all other flaws: I just don't care about day to day life that much. I don't have any drive to make money, to have a successful career, or to live within the constraints that I've been born into.

When I was at university I used to go to bed at around 5-6am and get up for lectures at 9, then have a 2 or 3 hour nap when I got back from my last lecture. I don't know what it is, but I've always liked staying up late.

I live in the suburbs with my mother just now, and I absolutely hate it. Where I live is just a huge splat of housing which surrounds a massive area of retail parks and shopping centres. There's no decent bars, restaurants, cinemas or anywhere to enjoy yourself. I just don't feel as if there's any culture or anything happening. Living by myself in the city for two years has only made me despise the suburbs even more. Cities feel alive; suburbs are dead.

Nausea by Sartre and Hunger by Knut Hamsen spring to mind.

I dislike your ethical and political stance (as judged from previous posts), and I think your jokes are in bad taste. I like your posting on the forums because you're somewhat controversial and that's always interesting. Beyond that, please don't direct jokes like that at me.

A few problems I see here. Calling something naturally human is not something I see as complimentary. Aside from that, capital punishment is unique in the sense of 'an eye for an eye'. If we're killing killers are we to start raping rapists? Mugging muggers? If it's just a case of someone getting what they deserve then 'an eye for an eye' is not applicable at all, since we have to decide what people deserve rather than just replying in kind. Also, if you're adamant that people get what they deserve, every wrongful execution undermines your system entirely. Wrongful imprisonment is also a terrible thing, I agree, but at least steps can be taken to rectify and compensate in that case, however lacking they may be. Capital punishment as it is now is not applied uniformly. This means that some (many, in fact) murderers do not recieve the death penalty, which also undermines the deterrent argument. If you want to execute every murderer then this argument is applicable, but it's got a strong case in the U.S. right now.

I also think the conditioning argument is misplaced. If things were that simple it would make criminology completely redundant as a field of study.

When did I ever say I don't have arguments for my side? :? There are your statistics, which make no logical sense. And then there is the argument and statistics that show the validity of operant conditioning - you are more likely to do things if they offer a good reward, and less likely to do things if they offer a harsh consequence - which makes a lot of logical sense. It's about perception. As much as I love logic, when you're dealing with something as irrational as human fear of consequence it gets thrown out the window almost entirely. If people don't expect to be caught, then there's nothing for them to fear. It's the same reason why people will happily get in their car and drive tens of thousands of miles per year but are afraid to get on a plane. In terms of mileage and in terms of hours spent travelling, being in a car is much, much more dangerous and more likely to end in fatality.

I think Zierro just keeps in mind the underlying issues with statistics. One, they don't always reveal what they should and two, they can be skewed by someone to make something appear other than the way it actually is. I don't doubt his intellectual honesty or scrutiny - I've debated with him enough to know that generally if he has a point he has a reason, I just don't think he's done anything to make it clear.

If you dislike statistics so much, what exactly are you basing your argument on, Zierro? I think a few pages back you said you were just going with the reasoning that "I don't want to get executed, so I won't kill anyone". In isolated cases, this is fine, but it seems foolish that you will blow entire studies out of the water on the back of an opinion (fallible though they may be). Of course correlation doesn't imply causation, but it can certainly give hints. But, as I'm sure has already been pointed out, studies that show that the death penalty is a deterrent are out there, and might even be as numerous as the arguments that it's not a deterrent. If the jury is still out on whether or not capital punishment actually works, I don't see what ground we have to stand on when we decide to execute someone.

Space Dye Vest is depressing, but it's not an enjoyable song. I'd go for... (Ignore the video, it's some user-made thing) The Cure - Untitled The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want Those are just the songs that I love to pieces. There are sadder songs out there. A few more that aren't as fantastic (but still are) The Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me (What a title) The Smiths - I Know It's Over Willie Nelson - Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees The Pogues - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen) Sun Kil Moon - Carry Me Ohio I think I went more towards moving than sad.

The humaneness of the method does very little to console me. I don't think there's any way you can morally justify killing another person, and no economic argument can defeat the moral case against executing prisoners either.

Keep things on topic please guys.

Yeah, because we all know how you can predict the future/read everyone's minds. I find claims like that laughable. There's no possible way to prove that someone wouldn't have done something if there was a different punishment involved. However, simple logic tells us that people are less likely to do something if they don't want to suffer the consequences for it. So what should I believe? Commonsense or statistics, which have the uncanny ability of distorting the truth ever so often? Saying that capital punishment is not a deterrent is not just conjecture. I'd quote some studies but it's late and if you're interested you'll find them yourself. Generally the findings show that it's likelihood of punishment and not severity of punishment that is the deterrent.

Have you studied the historical context yet, or will that be done after you finish the novel?

It's not [bleep]ens' best (if you ask me), but it's still a fantastic book. It's interesting that Lent said [bleep]ens is difficult. I've always found that my eyes flow over his prose almost unbelievably easily. A Tale of Two Cities isn't typical [bleep]ens though and I would call it one of his more difficult novels, after Hard Times. Even if you don't enjoy A Tale of Two Cities all that much, you have to read David Copperfield. One of the finest English novels ever written.

What book?

Words that are used to insult or offend are adopted by the groups they're used against all the time. 'Suffragette' and 'Tory' are both examples of this. The 'n-word' still offends people because we're still in a transitional period. Black people might have more or less equal rights now, but that doesn't mean they're treated the same - some people still genuinely see them as inferior. The fact that governments have taken steps like Affirmative Action show quite plainly that things have not settled down yet. People say 'African American' because they think 'black' might be offensive. You think this society is ready for any useful discussion about the 'n-word'? By all means, if you need to say the word then do it. The only time I'd ever find myself reaching for it would be in a discussion on this very topic, or segregation, or maybe even a general discussion of language. There is no reason for you to call a black person a [racist term].

I think every sentence should have a degree of flexibility. Obviously the example you gave is an example of too much of it.

While we're on the subject of Sean Connery... [yt]3FgMLROTqJ0[/yt] What a man.

Connery first, Brosnan second.

Look at government housing schemes. I know quite a few people who left home at 16-17, and they got in touch with government housing to get houses. You might end up staying with someone else though.