I am, intellectually, against torture. Its downsides are too great compared to its possible upsides. For different reasons, I approve of the death penalty, but only in cases where the individual is clearly guilty and a danger to others.

Viscerally, there are times where I do not feel either the death penalty or torture is enough.

This is one of those times. Before you click the link below, please understand, its content is not safe for anyone with children or the tattered vestiges of anything resembling a soul.

If I knew, 100%, there was an afterlife, and my actions could lead me to some varied Hell, I would still have to think long and hard on my course of action.

If you still feel like you need to read the story, scroll down and click it. Once you do, ask yourself what we, as a society, should do in response to the existence of this person.

Link here.

The sad part is, the guy probably won't really get much in the way of punishment and the kid will grow up to be completely fucked up and probably continue the cycle along.

My first thought when reading the article was that perhaps the man was mentally ill, which surprised me as I know Syuni pretty well...and I would have assumed he would make exception for this. I continued on and read that the man was under the influence of drugs (specifically PCP), and am in agreement with Syuni (unless of course the man was dosed without his knowledge which is in this specific case about as likely as 'a unicorn did it' defense).

I would go one step further than Syuni however, and also damn the mother who left this child in his care as she HAD to have been aware of his PCP use, given that they were both charged with it back in 2006.

And sadly Syuni, you're correct, he won't face too harsh a sentence because the child wasn't killed. I'd be surprised if he did more than 10 years. Frankly...I'd be surprised if he served more than five years, unless they can find a gazillion other chickenshit things to throw at him to beef it.

And I'll bet you Mom doesn't get convicted at all.

/sigh

If I were Queen of the World, that man would be locked away forever, and forced to labor, and every penny of his labor would benefit that child he harmed. As for the mother...I'd want to know more, but perhaps if we brought back public shaming punishments people might start giving a shit about such things. The only reason I want to know more though is she was away on a work related errand. She may be sole support to her family, and in these economic times could not risk her job, and simply had no one to leave the child with and believed he would be safe (else she could have left him home alone, where clearly he could not have been in MORE danger). So in her case, I'd want to know a lot more.

Not that it matters since I'm not Queen of the World (which let's face it...is probably a good thing especially for me).

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1) Is PCP addictive? I honestly don't know.

2) He's obviously fucked up in his head somewhere, whether drugs or just naturally, given that he was sitting in the backyard chopping his own legs up...

PCP was originally designed as a horse tranquilizer. In humans, it causes three reactions: Hallucinations, Blocking of pain receptors, Paranoia. There are other "lesser" effects.

Basically, you take it, and you're convinced that everything you hallucinate is 1) real, 2) out to get you, and 3) you're Superman and can take it all on by yourself.

Why would someone willingly dose themselves on this stuff? Beats the fuck out of me. But he did. And that led to the child issue, and the legs, and likely him trying to chew his way through a wall or the like.

I've seen the body of a gangbanger on angeldust come through the morgue. Four cops emptied their clips into him. He still managed to hospitalize one of them with his bare hands. The only thing that stopped him was that his brain ran out of O2 - because his heart was turned to confetti by the rounds.

That's why I asked if it is addictive.

It has no physical addiction. One can argue that anything pleasurable can have 'psychological' addiction. But no, it doesn't meet the standards for physical addiction or dependancy the way opiates and other substances do. PCP is also rarely the main drug being abused, I've never seen a rehab case where someone's main drug was PCP. Generally they're smoking cigarettes dipped in PCP because they can't get their main drug, which is often meth or cocaine.



PCP will do that to you. My family was once attacked by a man on PCP, at Disneyland. We were in line for the ride with the little cars. He was a huge black guy (I was like ...10, everyone was huge to me) and he started saying shit like "I'm stronger than Muhammad Ali". My mother turned to me and said, "Run, protect your brothers". She then grabbed my middle brother and THREW him under the bars, dropped the stroller top on my youngest brother and flung the stroller as hard as she could also under the bars. I turned to see if she was coming and he grabbed at us. I went under the bars after my sibs, and looked back at my mom. My mom is 5'3", and thin. The guy had grabbed the girl my age in the family next to us, and wouldn't let go. My mother was holding on to him preventing him from pulling her across the bars to his side (the zig zag bars for the ride). The little girls mom bit him, and then I saw her spit out something and bite again.

She spat out the man's flesh, she was literally taking chunks out of his arm. All of his friends were dogpiling him and he tossed them off like rag dolls.

Two guys, I think they were military on vacation, went on the guy and blitzed him. They clearly knew how to fight and these guys were built. They couldn't keep him down but they got the girl free. He tore off a chunk of her plastic jacket (that shit was hard to rip) and a bunch of her hair. She came screaming out (I think my mom and her mom threw her the way my mom tossed my brothers). I was standing there in shell shock figuring if they came near us I'd just run to where we were supposed to meet if we got seperated.

All this took place in like under 3 minutes, though it seemed like forever. Disney security seemed to come literally out of the bushes. Disney cops were EVERYWHERE and like 20 of them descended down and managed to get the guy cuffed and removed. He was removed in probably under 5 minutes. They had it all on tape (cameras everywhere in the park) and my mom gave her info in case they needed it tho they said they wouldn't. They also cuffed the 2 guys who had jumped him, and my mom wanted to be sure they were let go, and was told they would be, they just wanted EVERYONE involved to be secured and removed safely and since those guys were still fighting it was also for their safety blah blah blah.

I've seen people on PCP since then, but that incident is foremost on my mind probably because of my age. I've never seen anyone display that type of strength or insanity. His friends were shocked. Several of them knew it was PCP though they said he hadn't done any 'dust' that day. (At the time I had no idea wtf they were talking about, my mom explained it later as I was old enough to be told given what I had seen). The guy didn't respond to pain and had appeared to break one of his arms or wrist or some shit at one point...and kept going.

His friends were horrified. They were all black too but seemed nice and reasonable and were just fucking horrified he had grabbed a kid like that. They immediately tried to stop their friend and help the kid, and one of them was screaming to security that he was on angel dust, I guess to warn them against the danger.

I have no problems believing someone on PCP could sit there and chop at their legs all day long. One of the girls I went to school with, her dad and his partner were almost killed by a guy on PCP. They shot the guy numerous times and he kept coming, picked up his partner like a rag doll by one arm and slammed her into a wall.

There's plenty of verifiable stories about them jumping off high things, high enough to break their legs or their back, and they get up and keep running on a broken leg, or broken foot. Many have broken their arms while cuffed, or broken a wrist and pulled out their hand.

The first time I saw Terminator, I thought of that guy on PCP, I shit you not.

Not everyone who does PCP will go fucking Batshit McCrazy, or there would be no market for the drug. But like meth, it CAN induce psychosis. People on meth. can have experiences similar to someone who is a paranoid schizophrenic. PCP can cause extreme violence and the appearance of excessive strength. Going purely off memory, I believe it's a heavy adreline rush coupled with feeling no pain, so that's why they're able to do such extraordinary things. It's like a mother who lifts the car off her kid...except these guys are just going batshit.

So, now we can get to 'well clearly they're CRAZY then?'. And the answer is 'Yes'. The cavaet is, they made the choice.


No different from someone drinking and driving and killing an entire family while doing so. They made the choice to pick up that first drink without making arrangements. Sure their judgement was impaired when they killed that family...but they made choices when their judgement wasn't impaired that lead to it. No difference at all.

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what... the fuck

I'm not in favor of the death penalty, ever.

Tarot reminds me of Coach from this season of Survivor. <3

Does it matter? It's not as if he didn't make the choice in the first place to use the shit. It could be the most addictive substance on the planet, and he's still responsible for every damned thing he does under the influence.

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Alcohol is addictive, and many bad things can result in someone being drunk.

I understand why a lot of people feel that way. I think one of the best situations for it was Ted Bundy. Ann Rule wrote a book about Bundy called 'Stranger Beside Me', she had apparently worked with him at a suicide hotline center in Washington, and then cooresponded with him for a number of years. I like Ann Rule's books, and she's a former police officer, but I don't always agree with her way of thinking (especially involving 'psychics' etc.)

But she had an interesting portion near the end of the book about her feelings on the death penalty, which at one time she was completely against no matter what. Bundy escaped more than once. His escape resulted in additional deaths. Here was a guy who would *NEVER* be safe in society, as was demonstrated. Worse, apparently Bundy tried to stop killing the last time he was released, to avoid capture. And he wasn't stupid, he was highly intelligent as well as street saavy. But he couldn't stop himself.

Ann Rule's position, summed up, was essentially here's a guy who was what he was, and what he was made him unsafe to human beings period. The ONLY way to ensure he never killed another human being again, was to put him to death.

I know the counter arguments to that regarding locking people up, making sure it's super duper secure. But you can't defeat the logic that death IS the only sure way. People have escaped from death row even.

Now, that still may not convince you, or anyone else against the death penalty, but I think it's a point of consideration.

I'm personally NOT for the death penalty as it's currently adjudicated. I think if we're going to take the life of a human being, which I personally think is their ONLY shot at existence, you must

a) Be fucking 100% positive they did what they did
b) Demonstrate that they're a such a danger to human beings that we're all better off and safer if they're dead.
c) And be able to demonstrate that they're a substantial escape risk and/or a risk to the people responsible for imprisoning them (due to violence against guards/etc)

I don't know that many people would fall under those guidelines. At least, I'd hope not. But some do.

I'm fine with a better solution. If it could be demonstrated that we could lock them up safely (I don't care much about the costs, the costs are not THAT big a deal compared to all the other shit we spend money on, and it costs more to put people to death ANYWAY) forever...then I'd be for that.

I do find it ironic that the way we run prisons would be considered utterly barbaric in other times. Imprisoning someone was considered a horrific torture; far better to physically punish them (whipping, scourging, branding, burning, amputation, etc.) or execute them than to imprison. I've never been quite sure why that was, perhaps a strong belief in the afterlife made it a better alternative? Or the horrific conditions of the dungeons they called prisons, I don't know.

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There are a number of super-prisons with extremely tight lockdowns such as ADX Florence in Colorado where they send really bad criminals and terrorists(McVeigh, Yousef, Nichols, Rudolph, Moussaoui to name a few) as well as criminals known for escaping. As far as I have read no one has ever escaped from ADX Florence, and there are a number of similarly tightly-guarded prisons around the world of that capacity.

I am concerned with the living conditions there, but I think after seeing it done I would not be at all surprised if one could ease up on the restrictions a bit to improve conditions while also maintaining most of the high-tech security they already have in place in those facilities. To be humane, I would give the person the option of either having a humane death(by injection or something), or living in such a facility - if they had proven themselves too much a danger to society for any other option and were prone to escaping.

And naturally I'd throw in d) No way to rehabilitate such a person by any psychological means.

I've said it before, but we're massively lacking in that area. Very few people give a flying shit about anyone who would commit such heinous crimes against human beings, and as a result I believe very few trained professionals are even willing to give it an honest try. As yet I don't believe we know enough about the human brain to completely eliminate any possibility of the rehabilitation of psychotic killers, and frankly I don't think it's an area of study that has been fully examined due in part to the aforementioned reasons.

Anyway, even without that - the death penalty is not really a point to consider for someone like me when we do have a potential way to keep someone alive(again, should they so chose). People having escaped only suggests to me that we need to work on that specific problem, not that we need to completely give up on the idea of maximum security. It's not as if we couldn't chain them up to a bed, handcuff and footcuff them and feed them through a straw if we so desired and it would be *perfectly* escape-proof. We don't need that extreme, but it demonstrates that it's very well possible. Go down from there to improve life, throw in additional layers of security where needed. Security is something that can always be improved upon and further perfected. I would rather focus my efforts on that than to throw my hands up in the air.

Yes, it does matter. The first time may have been a choice, but not necessarily afterwards. I do not think that a true drug addict acting under the influence of whatever they are addicted to has the same culpability as someone who does the same action while completely sober.

Someday culture will catch up with science, but drug addiction is a disease-- it sometimes isn't something that someone can just say, "hey I'm just going to stop now" and have it happen.

I'm not of the opinion that we can simply let people off the hook for things just because they may or may not have been high/drunk/etc.

Only Tarot would have a story about getting attacked by a dude on PCP while in line at Disneyland. Only Tarot.

I must have missed the part where I said that we should let them off the hook. If I gave that impression, I sincerely apologize for the lack of clarity in my posts.

I feel really bad.

Yeah, no shit. Worst thing that ever happened to me was being chased around the circle on Main Street by Chip and Dale when I was 6.

6' chipmunks are an abomination, I nearly shit myself.

Yeah, your post was kinda strongly suggesting that we give addicts some sort of break. Especially the line about them not having the same culpability as a sober person.

Tarot was abducted by pygmies while rafting down the Amazon.

True story.

My scariest moment I can remember was engineered by my own family-- I remember coming home from school in 5th grade and my parents weren't home. This was unexpected and my 5th grade imagination decided the Rapture had happened and I was left behind. Images of the Tribulation went through my head and I went crazy with fear. If you are familiar with fundamentalist teachings about the end times and the tribulation, you would understand.

Wow, talk about scaring yourself to death. Parents weren't home so you went nuts with fear thinking the world was ending or something?

See, religion is evil. (Thread derail!!)

And yeah, when I was younger I lived with whatever drug dealers/addicts my mother could hook up with on any given week, so I have all kinds of weird tales of peril.

But Tarot somehow still has crazier stories, and more of them to boot!

I'd call that a life lived well. Most of my horror stories are from my childhood, and I'll be damned if I let my own kids have those experiences.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

She needs to give herself a board title of 'Dragon Slayer'.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Ah so predictable the nut riders, even though I don't have nuts.

And Neesha, I see you're learning. I mean getting completely owned every time you've implied I was a liar with pictures of gaming disks (you claimed I didn't have, etc) with me flipping you off had to be a bummer. Much better to try to pick something that would be much more difficult to prove as it was nearly 30 years ago.

I emailed my mom. I have no idea if there was anything in the paper about the incident or not, since I didn't read newspapers. If there was...I'm pretty sure she'd still have a clipping because she saved that kind of stuff for relatives back east (along with every sports notice we ever made in the paper. Ever. And our baby teeth. You know how creepy it was finding a bag of my baby teeth?!). Anyhoo if it was in the paper and she has a clipping I'll scan it in, just as yet another big fat middle finger to Neesha. And Bov at this point who seems to be fighting with Neesha for the front seat on trolling me. (Girls, girls, there's enough of me for everyone~)

As to the rest, I have no idea why you find something that like so incredible. That's of course assuming you're being honest, and not just full of shit to troll. It also has nothing to do with a 'life well lived' (or poorly thought out as the case often is with events that have happened to me). It was simply something that occurred.

It does make me laugh when I think about all the shit I never talk about online, and what a wtf you'd probably consider it. It makes me think you've been rather more sheltered than I've been exposed, but IDK. None of it (including this incident) is anything to brag about. I sure as hell didn't try to fight the guy, I ran to my siblings, and was scared fucking shitless for my mom. I was terrified that guy was going to hurt her (while also having the little kid false belief that mom is invincible) and just scared shitless at the strangeness of it all. Even a little kid can understand 2 people fighting in an argument. This guy went batshit for no discernible reason and that made it a lot more frightening to me.

And no, the guy grabbed the girl next to us, not me. I watched that fight from outside the line area, because my mom figured out what was going on faster than anyone else. I do recall asking her at some point (years later) why she grabbed on to the guy. She's a very tiny woman. She said it was just mom instinct when he grabbed that other girl, there was no thought process to it. And I would love to know how long it all lasted. It honestly seemed like forever, though I'm sure it was probably all over in under 5 minutes. I know they got the little girl away from him really quickly, though again...seemed like forever.

Point of the story, PCP is incredibly fucking scary and I have no problems believing just based on what *I* saw that someone could sit there and chop up their legs with an axe. Or eat the eyeballs out of some poor kid's head.

It does blow my mind though why anyone would ever touch the stuff knowing that it's possible shit like that can happen. Then again I suppose crack could make your dick fall off and people would still smoke it.

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What the fuck are you talking about? When did I say you were a liar? It's common knowledge that you have a fucked up story for every situation. I was just making light of it. I also didn't say you lied about owning games, I just claimed that anyone who said they didn't use torrent sites to download illegal shit was full of shit. You completely owned me because you posted a picture of a video game that you own that I never said you didn't own in the first place? Please. Now are you really going to sit there and tell us that you have never downloaded anything that you weren't entitled to download?

I'm not trolling you. You're trying a bit too hard to make it trolling, don't you think? Wishful thinking so you can perform more imaginary ownage, I suppose?

You do come across as if you're implying that Tarot is full of shit, Neesha.

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The biggest problem from my point of view with the death penalty is that it's more often used as an instrument of vengeance than of prevention.

I come to this conclusion because the first thing out of a prosecutors mouth is whether a decision has been made to pursue the death penalty before *anything* is known about the suspect. It is commonly based on the severity of the crime, not the rehabilitative capabilities of the suspect. That's one major reason why the death penalty is wrong.

Be that as it may, I'd think you guys would know by now that if I thought someone was full of shit, I'd tell em I thought they were full of shit. My apologies if that was the message sent. Crowde also said "no shit" so I guess that means he also thinks Tarot is a liar. Or he just thinks it was a fucked up story that makes any of his life experiences seem pretty silly in comparison. That type of shit doesn't happen to everyone.

Just to clear up if there is any misconception, I do believe Tarot, I was just referring to my own Disneyland experience which failed in comparison to the Angel Dust Commando.

I don't believe you have ever encountered either Chip or Dale.

I did, and I did again on my daughter's 2nd birthday, but I kept my distance!

Yah, can't blame Tarot on this one. ;P

Neesha, seriously...get laid. Please.

Worthy can hook you up.

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Good one...

dog bites a kid, dog gets put down

man takes drugs, bites out eyes of own child, people think he should continue to live

apparently orwell was correct, all animals are created equal, some are more equal than others

I fail to see the inconsistency. For one, we are unable to communicate with the dog and either psychologically fix bad behavior(some of the time you can with behavioral training, in other cases it has proven much more difficult) or find out the dog's wishes and whether or not he would rather be put in a secure dog pen the rest of his life or be mercifully killed. For another, a dog's brain lacks a signicificant amount of adaptibility in comparison to the human brain. The capability of cognitive thought has been a cornerstone of the human ability to change and adapt characteristics of themselves. Dogs and innumerable other animals show a lacking in this department.

In some ways more importantly, not everyone that believes the human being who bit the eyes out of a child should live ALSO believes that the dog who bit a human should automatically be put down without a second thought. On the contrary, I wouldn't be too surprised if there were quite a few that wouldn't want to see the dog put down when you consider that most of the people who would want the man to live(and those generally against the death penalty) are more liberal, and there are countless liberals in animal rights groups.

Examples of Rottweilers, German Shepherds, and Pitbulls that were bred to be fighting and killing machines that end up killing small children that taunt them(or, in some cases children that really didn't do anything wrong) or any other small reason that *up until that point* had been adoring and obedient pets. Take the same dog that killed the kid and put it in a house with nothing but adults and don't let it go outside(or at least make a really good pen/fence for it) and there may well never be a problem again for the rest of its life.

And of course there are other solutions as well. You don't need to necessarily put the dog in a tiny holding area. Give it to someone with a really large backyard, or an organization with good standards that takes pets in instead of killing them. There may not always be a convenient way to do this, but as a society I personally think we should have more places that people can give up unwanted or even dangerous pets. There is far too much killing of animals for the sake of pure convenience.

Apparently you misunderstood the book.

I remember the good ole days when people flamed each other. I don't like the whole trend of inverted ownage... that is, person X tries to call person Y out for their ownage. Has truly dampened the joy of the board.

And dogs are different than people.

And people still read Tarot's posts?

If I was one of the board hippies, I'd give him hugs and kisses and tell him it's not his fault...offer him drug and psychological therapy, and make him feel special.

God I hate hippies.

If I was a conservative on this board, I'd say he deserves to go to prison for at least 20 years and be made to pay a restitution for the damage he has done to his child's sight...and then be forced to find Jesus and all that stupid bullshit.

But, since I am me and I don't think like you "normal people", I say they lock him up in prison for life with no chance of parole. I'm a fan of eye for an eye so when the kid turns 18 I say they harvest the dad's eyes and implant them in the kid's so he can regain his sight after he is done growing...should they be a compatible biological match.

Regardless of what happens here, there is no good that will come of this situation. The system had ample opportunity to remove the kid from an substandard home life and, as usual, failed before something drastic happened. Their rules say the kid must suffer some form of injury like broken bones first. Well, instead of using prevention, now they are having to react to the mindboggling situation of having the poor kid's eyes bitten out. It'll just be chalked up as another case of ither, "Bummer, I guess we should have taken the kid away and put him in foster care," or "Oh well, it's not my kid...why should I care?"

Oh, and as far as torture goes...I don't think this qualifies for that. The guy should get repetitive smack downs in jail for hurting a kid, but not tortured. Torture should be reserved for those we want to get information from...or for those who we catch spying for another country...or for those who like Fox News.

As far as the death penalty...I don't think the crime was bad enough for that. Now, if the guy took an ax to the kid, yes...absolutely...death penalty away. Making a kid blind...I think death ight be a bit drastic in this case.

we need to hurry up and invent a Phantom Zone already.