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mdegges

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mdegges last won the day on June 26 2013

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  • Birthday 09/13/1993

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  1. I'm The Duke University Freshman Porn Star And For The First Time I'm Telling The Story In My Words Saw this article on my feed today, written by a (you guessed it) porn star attending duke univ. Thought I would share it here in case you haven't read it. Memorable snippets: She had me here.. but I got lost further on in the article. The author goes on to say that society doesn't care about sex workers, that no one listens to their stories about abuse and exploitation (though she personally admits she has not faced any problems in the industry), and that sex workers deserve to be treated with respect because they're human beings. What do you think?
  2. That's a good example: the mass murderer who was abused as a child and the mass murderer who was showered with love. Do you think both men should recieve the same punishment? (More generally, do you think the act/harm should be the only contributing factor when determining just punishments?) As it stands now, these men would not recieve the same punishment. Though the actus reus is the same in both cases, one is less guilty than the other.. namely, the man who was abused as a child.
  3. I agree with your reading of her statement, DA. My point is that actions are influenced, in part, by past circumstances. For example, childhood victims of abuse who later become offenders ARE responsible for their actions, but the abuse that they suffered definitely played a role in their behavior. Ignoring that role, or worse, saying that it's unimportant and separate from their personal choices, doesn't do justice to anyone involved.
  4. "That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen -- your values and choices. That which happened by accident -- what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school -- is totally unimportant." -AR Without getting too much into the nature v nurture debate, do you think it's fair to say that Rand was wrong on this issue in relation to criminal behavior? It's widely believed that environment plays a huge role in our lives and influences the choices we make. Oftentimes the events we don't have control over make the biggest impacts in our lives. Here I'm talking about abuse- childhood abuse, sexual abuse, spousal abuse, etc. Saying that these aspects of our lives are 'totally unimportant' and somehow separate from the choices that we make & values we hold seems.. entirely untrue.
  5. I saw this movie when it first came out, but had to look up the plot to remember what it was even about. All I really remember is the ending, which was the only memorable part. Imo the ending is meant to show us that there was a wide range of people who died on 9/11- lovers, friends, sons, brothers.. which were all encapsulated into one character, Pattinson. Instead of showing us just a small glimpse of each individual person who died on 9/11 (books on the Titanic often do this), the movie tried to dig deeper into the life of a single person. So for me, the intent was there, and writers did have the shock and awe thing going for them regarding the suprise ending. Still, I tend to agree with reviews that say it was an overall forgettable movie that didn't do justice to those who were lost on 9/11.
  6. I'm not very interested in the topic of traditional gender roles and the norms of heterosexual relationships, but one of my criminal justice books has an interesting section about it. I wanted to share it here (is that legal? ) since Delaney has not provided any statistics about gender roles in his posts. This snippet explains traditional gender roles in intimate hetero relationships (see "Why Gender Matters" p88-89). It also seeks to explain the cause of the US' high rate of teen pregnancy (it has the highest rate out of all the developed countries- see p91) and to show how traditional gender roles stigmatize women. If you read through the entire chapter, you'll notice that the traditional concepts of masculinity and feminity described there (and also described in Delaney's posts, Rand's fiction, etc) cause many statistically documented problems... Source: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5053-fighting-for-girls.aspx SUNY_Series_in_Women_Crime_and_Criminology_Fighting_for_Girls_New_Perspectives_on_Gender_and_Violence_94_to_109.pdf
  7. I wanted to create this thread as a means for people to share their profound experiences, especially those relating to/influenced by Objectivism. It's hard to put into words exactly what a 'profound experience' is- I think it's best described as an experience that affects you deeply and helps to reaffirm (or makes you question and reevaluate) your outlook on your own life or on life in general. Oftentimes these are personal moments and may not make sense when they're articulated to others, but it would be interesting to read about anyway.
  8. Must have overlooked this post, but thanks for explaining your point. It definitely makes sense coming from the viewpoint that any type of forced taxation is immoral. As an aside: Is it possible to support the idea of 100% voluntary taxation AND be against capital punishment? I doubt anyone who had the choice would voluntarily pay to keep criminals like murderers and rapists alive. My guess is that in this type of society, the sentencing requirements for capital punishment cases would be substantially less severe than they are today.
  9. "The motivation for believing in an eternal universe was the desire to avoid invoking divine intervention to create the universe and set it going. Conversely, those who believed the universe had a beginning, used it as an argument for the existence of God as the first cause, or prime mover, of the universe... The General Theory of Relativity and the discovery of the expansion of the universe shattered the old picture of an ever existing and ever lasting universe. Instead, general relativity predicted that the universe, and time itself, would begin in the big bang" (Hawking).
  10. Can anyone recommend a book that discusses the pros/cons of voluntary taxation.. in detail? I've been reading articles about it here and there but would like to read something more comprehensive, if it exists.
  11. Aren't Republicans just grasping at straws here with these proposed 'concessions'?
  12. You're operating under the false assumption that many (ie: the majority of those) serving a life sentence will recommit serious crimes upon their release... IF they ever get released. The data available simply does not support that assumption. (See The Meaning of Life, pages 23-27, which explains that "Lifers are less than one-third as likely as all released offenders to be rearrested within three years of release from prison" and "Four of every five lifers are not rearrested.") Edit: I suppose you could bring up something like the best bet argument and say that even if 2/1000 lifers recommit a crime when (and if) they're paroled, that number is too high, and we would be better off executing them or locking them up without any possibility of parole rather than letting any innocent people get harmed. Obviously I believe this line of reasoning is wrong because it's fear-driven rather than fact-driven. Although there are some cases of lifers (namely murderers) getting paroled and going on killing sprees, that rarely happens, and we should not create policies in response to very rare parolee behaviors. When any criminal is released from prison, there's always the possbility that he'll go on to commit future crimes. (This is especially true of people who get lesser sentences than life- something like 3/4 of these guys recommit crimes). However, we don't lock up every criminal and throw away the key just because that is a possibility.
  13. That's really a stretch- comparing taxation to getting raped. I'm sure every person who has ever been raped would say that's nonsense. It's impossible to 'correct the fact that rights have been violated.' When someone's murdered, you can't bring them back from the dead; when someone's beaten, you can't erase their bruises. When rights are violated, the only things you can do are 1. remove the perpetrator's from society to prevent future damage and 2. punish them for their misdeeds. This is what justice concerns itself with. I'm leery of this being anyone's main reason for supporting the death penalty. Obviously with life imprisonment there is the possibility of parole (usually after a decade or as long as 25 years served), unless otherwise stated.
  14. You can agree with this and either support or not support the death penalty, right? I think it really all comes down to what you set as the upper limit on punishments. Also.. about the respect issue: even if you don't respect someone's rights (ie: a murderer's right to life), that doesn't mean that you must act to deprive him of his life, does it? My line of reasoning is that a criminal cannot expect all of his rights to be respected (ie: the right to liberty while incarcerated, or the right to happiness while in solitary confinement), but the right to life should be if the criminal in question is no longer a direct threat to society- if he's been disarmed, contained, and most of his rights have been taken away. Also, since the death penalty doesn't deter criminals more than life imprisonment, why wouldn't we use the less severe, less final punishment?
  15. @nelli: You have not explained why torture is at odds with the purpose of proportional punishment, and is "non-objective." If we have 2 murderers, one of whom tortured, raped, and murdererd 50 people over the course of a decade, and another who killed his brother in a rage, do both of them deserve the same punishment? You also have not explained why the death penalty "accomplishes the purpose of punishment perfectly" and "is an act of justice." As I explained earlier, execution is no more of a deterrent than life imprisonment. Further, the percentage of inmates who have actually escaped from jail is less than 2% each year.
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