Zierro

Haha so true. Especially on those 50-year-old Harley-Davidson bikers. :smile:

Firefox all the way. IE freezes on me far too often.

I'm debating whether to get this or not. I want a fun RPG for the 360 and Oblivion isn't really cutting it. I'm still gonna get FF13, but I really need to add more to my collection other than shooters and sandboxes.

I'm better than you because I'm not mean!

I am pathetic for posting in this thread. :(

I'm better than you because I'm more argumentative!

5801

I think people just don't like the amount of money put into it when the money could be better invested with a problem that we're sure of. I don't know whether global warming is real or not, but you raise a good point about developing greener methods regardless.

Sounds perfect for me then. I could care less about the story and characters. When it comes to Final Fantasy, I'm in it purely for the battling and item collecting. :-D

The black version of William Hung? Pretty cool.

Wow, some of them are pretty funny. And I think most webcomics suck.

Suffer? Let's not throw that word around so lightly. If a poor man and a rich man both pay $100 for taxes, who do you think will be suffering more when they have to put bread on the table for their families? The fairest standard to go by would be proportions. $100 can be a quarter of the poor man's paycheck, while $100 to the rich can be less than 1% of his income. It's not completely fair (that would be impossible), but it's much fairer than having everybody pay the same.

Good point.

I finally got 100% on Bully, so I'm working on The Simpsons Game now. I like it. It reminds me of Lego Batman with all the puzzles but much better. And the cut scenes are pretty entertaining to watch.

That's questionable. I suppose it's possible to try to go gay, but I doubt those girls actually tricked their minds into having libidos for the female anatomy. Or maybe by "going gay" they just decided that guys were jerks and they'd rather have a an emotionally driven relationship as opposed to a sexual one. I don't know, that just sounds really strange.

Haha, this is the source of my "shyness". I'm not really afraid to talk to other people. They're just not interesting enough for me.

If you went on a killing spree and then took some pills, forgetting the entire night, yes. If somebody drugged you and planted a knife and a body next to you, no. That's a very bad example. I'm pretty sure the bus guy remembers what he did.

Ironic nonetheless. Uh oh, not another of these "scientists never make mistakes" people. You seem to be implying that just because you are a mastermind, that means that your top priority is not getting caught. There are plenty of insane people (who were also fairly intelligent) that committed crimes in front of everyone. You can't expect me to answer why though. My guess would be publicity, proving a point to society, I don't know. He seemed to get kicks off of doing it in front of everyone though, judging by the story. He couldn't show off the decapitated head in an empty room. Also, I never called him a mastermind. I was just making a point of how easily you could get off the hook, so long as you blamed the crime on your condition. It doesn't take a mastermind to do that. Yes, and you can tell me what apples and oranges have in common all day, but they're still two separate things. It's a pretty stupid thing to argue about though because whether you like prison or mental institutes better is just a preference, and I don't think either of us have been to them so we're not the best judges of that. That's nice that you pointed out the flaw in the law, but how exactly does that refute my claim on how things should be? It was not impossible for Li to go against his thoughts. He was responsible. Was his responsibility diminished? Yes, in the same way that your responsibility is "diminished" when you see a hot girl and want her. There is a reason the word "diminished" is used, as in the responsibility is still there, but it's just not as strong. If you had the ability to make the right choice, then you are to blame. There are these things called urges, and then there are these things called actions. You are what dictates your actions. If you disagree with that, then you're telling me it was an involuntary action or an accident. When you come up with excuses for mutilating innocent people who showed off the fact that they did it to the crowd and police with the decapitated head (Oh yeah, no guilty mind there!), you're spitting in the face of humanity. [cabbage] like that should NEVER happen. How you people can even defend something like that makes me sick. He did it because he was in an irrational state of mind. So what? Since when has being irrational been a justification for being irrational? That's circular logic. Shouldn't we, um, be against irrational thinking? Whether the excuse is brain chemicals, a bad environment, whatever, nothing changes the fact that he still shouldn't have done it.

They'd have to prove that they can handle my money properly before I'd be willing to spend any more. Right now they're not doing that. It's just a money pit. I have no incentive to put money in the hands of people who don't know how to prioritize. Football is fine but it shouldn't be more important than education when it comes to school.

I take that back. I wouldn't want him in jail because I'd fear for the lives of the other inmates. However, I will say that trying to fix this man will most likely be a huge waste of time, money, and energy. Yeah about his heritage.... I thought most Chinese people didn't believe in god, let alone mythical creatures. You misunderstood me. I was asking, "How do you know he wouldn't have done the same thing is he was in a normal state of mind?" Not, "How do you know he wasn't in a normal state of mind?" As for faking it, I meant he used his schizophrenia as an excuse for his actions. (He was not hearing voices at the time of the attack, but he knew he could use it as an excuse to take the blame off himself, so he made up a fake story.) But he could have also faked his schizophrenic behavior during the professional testing. After I read the story, that seems more unlikely but you can't rule it out as a possibility. Just because I believe there are flaws in the law and I demonstrate how things would be better doesn't mean I don't understand the law. If anything, I'd say I understand it more. Laws should be fair. Allowing the clinically insane to do whatever they want and then put them in daycare isn't fair for people who have done less but yet have to suffer even more. And yes, a mental institution is daycare compared to prison. You have people trying to rehabilitate you, hands-on. They don't just lock you in with a bunch of immoral men and expect you to fend for yourself. It's common knowledge to know about the horror stories of what occurs in jails, so I don't think I have to give examples. By saying he's not responsible for it, you're saying what he did is justified/excused. Most people with outside animals still do care for them. They feed them everyday. That's not something you do to wild animals. They just don't think outside is the devil's playground like you seem to be implying. It's kind of silly to think dogs should have the right to be indoors. And before you bring up the dangers of outdoors, there are also indoor dangers that they can face such as fires, gas leaks, flooding, etc. By the way, I would consider this on topic. We're discussing morality. This is something you consider wrong, whereas purposely murdering an innocent person is something I consider wrong. Like I said before, if you go down that road then nobody is to blame for anything. Why did you bully him? Because I was bullied when I was younger. Why did you steal that? Because I was starving. Why did you hit her? Because she hit me. Now whether those excuses are right or wrong is debatable because sometimes things like that can be warranted, but my point is that they did not FORCE you to do said action, just like the bus murderer was not FORCED to kill the man. They had the ability to do otherwise, therefore they are responsible. When it comes to responsibility, we have to distinguish the difference between an inability and an excuse. If it was possible for him to prevent himself from murdering the man, then he is responsible. If it was literally impossible, then I guess he's not responsible. I wouldn't call him mentally stable either, but he did know what he was doing. He knew that carrying a pair of scissors and a knife around would be useful to him. He knew that flaunting a head would scare the crowd. (Which goes to show that he knew murdering is wrong, since he knew everyone would be intimidated by it.) He knew that attacking the people holding crowbars would only cause himself harm so he tried avoiding them. He wasn't logic-less. Another point I'd like to bring up is that you shouldn't take what psychologists say for face value. It's psychology. There are literally an infinite amount of factors to take into account. That's not to say we know nothing about why we do the things we do, but the study of psychology is in such an immature state. Psychologists find out one little thing then try to apply it to everything we do just to show off how important of a discovery they made. By this I mean how Freud believes that everything we do is because of our sex drives, and stuff like that. Then we have other professional psychologists refuting Freud's claims with another set of psychological laws. It's impossible for them to all be right, since they debate amongst themselves more than any other type of scientists. I guess my point here is that the field of psychology is far too vague to rely on as support for an argument on its own. You're going to have to find something else besides, "Professionals say..."

I believe I've said this somewhere before. You might have uncontrollable thoughts and urges running through your mind, but whether you act on them or not is on you. Unless of course, your body goes on auto-pilot, it was an accident, or you literally did not know any better. What a ridiculous example. Thinking that god told you to do something is no justification at all. 1.) Sentencing people to jail isn't even an effective means of rehabilitating normal people, hence why the same people keep coming back to jail time and time again. Sadly, jail doesn't teach a lesson as much as it should. It's only effective at separating harmful people from the rest of society. A fitting place for a man who decapitates innocent people. 2.) You're putting a hell of a lot of faith into an insane man. He claimed that he thought god spoke to him. Isn't it also possible that it was just a fabricated excuse to get him out of trouble? "I'm clinically a schizophrenic. I can do whatever I want and say that it was god talking to me!" You can't just go off of what the criminal tells you. It's not exactly that hard to lie. 3.) You said he wouldn't have committed the crime if he were in "the right state of mind". How do you know that? Let me guess, the burden of proof is conveniently on me because there's no possible way to prove that he would have done so anyways? 4.) Let's even say for argument's sake that god did tell him to decapitate the man. Does that make it right? No, it makes god wrong. I don't think I have the will to debate with someone who believes that killing someone because you're crazy and god told you to is okay, but having an outside dog is terrible. Your whole code of morality is completely backwards so arguing without some sort of grounds to work off of would be futile. But then again, it does sound interesting. It's not really about the jail and mental institution thing. Neither are very good ways of "fixing" people. As long as they're away from the rest of society, I'm fine when it comes to that. What does bother me is the fact that people believe he was not responsible for what he did. By the way, I just read the story. Apparently he was butchering the body and taunting police with the decapitated head. I thought his incentive was just to kill the man because god wanted him dead - not to have fun with it. Sounds to me like he just gets kicks off of horrifying people and used god as a ploy to take the responsibility off himself.

I wouldn't call it that. I've learned more on TIF than I ever have in high school. The only information I've retained was the basics of math and science. The rest of the time I was in school, I would complete a worksheet about stuff I already knew, turn it in, and stare at the wall for the next 45 minutes. We literally had four 90-minute classes per day, and the majority of the class time was free time. Not to mention most of my classes weren't even real classes. Art, typing, nutrition, etc. I had to draw pointless pictures. I had to cook oatmeal cookies. There was no educational value to most of the classes I got stuck with. And the sad thing is, they only allowed you to get schedule changes if you 1) already took that class or 2) have two of the same classes. I can say with complete certainty that if I spent 6 hours per day educating myself on the internet, I would be much more knowledgeable when it comes to academics. Or maybe it's because they don't know how to spend it efficiently. Sorry you extra curricular jocks, but football has no place in a school that is so poor that they couldn't pay for substitute teachers. The absent teachers would have to give up $100 from their salary if they wanted a substitute for the day. Otherwise, they would leave a note on their door sending all the children with absent teachers to the auditorium (they ironically changed the name to the Learning Center) for attendance and free time. Seriously, the admins would call role, and then you would sit there for the rest of the period. Bingo. We're forced to pay for a low quality service, which is actually counterproductive to my path to education - the very reason we have schools in the first place. I guess it depends on the individual because I have an easier time reading a computer screen than a book in a library. I get distracted too easily in environments like that. That's quite the stretch. Roads have caused much more unnecessary deaths than the internet has. If you want to give a friend a message via road, there is a chance of dying. If you give a friend a message via internet, the worst that could happen is a virus. Whether you like roads or the internet better really just boils down to opinion and is a whole different argument in itself. I think you might have skipped over some of my post. I said that taxing us for things we don't agree on is better than the alternative, but I still think it stinks. Simply put, it's the lesser of two evils. There's no such thing as a perfect system.

But can't that be applied to nearly anything that has an effect on your behavior? A person who has been raped, abused, bullied, etc. for a long duration will most likely have a skewed set of morals. Or perhaps they watched their entire family die in a fire and went insane. Many criminals believe they are justified because something "lead them to do it". So where would we draw the line? Personally I believe that, unless your body goes on auto-pilot, it was an accident, or you were completely unaware (referring to the mentally [developmentally delayed]ed), it was you who consciously committed the crime. PS: Brain chemicals make up who you are. If you plea innocent because your brain chemicals forced you to do the crime, then the judge can sentence you to prison time because his brain chemicals made him do it. It wouldn't be right to call the judge unfair - it's not his fault that his brain chemicals are that way. I don't see how brain chemicals should excuse behavior, otherwise nobody would be to blame for anything. It's a road that we just shouldn't go down. It basically negates the idea of human choice - something we as humans need.

The last school I've been to was a joke. Any tax money invested in that school completely went down the toilet, but no one really has a say in whether they want their money to go towards it or not. Libraries are nearly obsolete when you have a working internet. And I know this is a radical thought, but I hate roads. There are so many deaths, all in the name of convenient transportation. Honestly, I think I'd rather live in a world where I can take a walk without getting ran over. It bothers me that I'm paying money for something I don't like and I wouldn't even use if I had the opportunity. The topic starter raises a good point. We're forced to pay for things we might not even want in the first place. Then again, there are quite a few conveniences I do favor, such as how computers are a part of our everyday lives. I guess taxing us for things we don't like is better than the alternative, but it still really sucks. It's just inevitable - life will always suck and be unfair. The Florida educational system needs to be revamped entirely though. Dear god, you best be trolling.

I'm as sick as an onion. Stomach hurts. Terrible cough. It feels like fire ants are crawling around in my esophagus.