Coral Rhedd

Navajo. Wrote a wonderful essay about pow-wows before he went off to wherever . . .

Thanks for the kind words Pangloss When I worked in victim advocacy' date=' there was a strong movement for the death penalty among these groups. I don't know if that has since changed, but it would surprise me if it had. Anger fuels a desire for revenge. However, what victims' families seem to want most is closure. They want the pain to go away. And they want to be able to speak that pain over and over because it takes such a very long time to heal. That is why victim impact statements are so important. If you will remember in the OJ trial, the family of Ron Goldman very much wanted the world to see what they had lost. They hated the way the victims got lost in the process of the trial. They wanted people to remember Ron as a person. We are very much on the same page here. Your last sentence of this paragraph is so true. What we most want to believe is that the world that has turned upside down can be righted again. But it was never really right in the first place was it? That is the illusion that we carry that makes us hope that victimization cannot happen to us. A current trial of a very prominent pedophile puts this to the test again. I was saddened to see that the boy who is the victim in the Michael Jackson trial has had his own very natural desire to hide his victimization turned against him as a sign of unreliability. Dangerous to the person who feels it as well. Moving on is the best revenge.

How about IDG(a)S?

No fair! You don't get to direct the thread just because you are OP. These things have their own natural flow. For instance, I want to address the SSRIs vs. pot. I've done both. Pot only a little. SSRIs at the behest of those legal pushers called doctors. Given a choice again, I would prefer the pot and I don't smoke and I hate to inhale. SSRIs have serious withdrawal effects. Been there; done that. You aren't supposed to dump them all at once. You have to taper off under medical supervision. Sometimes we getter better living through chemistry. Sometimes we get hell. Believe me, if you can do without drugs that play with your brain chemistry, you will have a happier and more fortunate life. BYW, I had a student who flunked freshman comp because he was too busy consuming peyote to write his research paper.

Good quote Pangloss. Sadly' date=' I could not learn so simple a lesson when I most needed to learn it. When we [b']give power[/b] to evil by hating, we only harm ourselves.

Why do you think their effects are similar?

Why?

I am Bill Clinton? I think he is such a slut!

The new buttons are downright glamorous. And are especially useful for those of us with challenged hand/eye coordination.

Ideally, our government should represent "the better angels of our nature." If a government cannot create something rather larger than the sum of its parts, isn't it a failure?

Yes. However' date=' what form that aid takes must be well considered. If all people are really equal in principle, then the unenlightened are as important as the enlightened. Those who live under dictatorships without chaffing have blood as precious as those who do not. Most "aid" should stop well short of war. I would say yes, stipulating that "aid" should not shed blood except in the most desperate cases. Frankly, it rather helps the reputation if they haven't been crying wolf. For example, saying a dictator has weapons of mass destruction when the proof has not been gathered by the agency responsible for establishing this proof. Then, when such weapons were not found, saying the aggressive action is acceptable because of what a dictator might do in the future. I do not believe in preemptive war.

Well I will concede that I agree with you in principle. That should be a fairly exhausting task. We haven't achieved that in the U.S. yet IMHO. But certainly genocide is one of the most reprehensible human rights abuses.

We have as much responsibility for strangers in Iraq as we have for other strangers in our own countries. But how would killing still more strangers in a war, be demonstrating responsibility?

A little off topic, but here is an ugly side to certain types of "Christianity:" An acquaintance who thinks of herself as very devout said that she thought that the tsunami was God's judgment on the nations that suffered it because they were not Christian. "God was trying to send them a message. Sometimes, God just loses his temper." Sickening. I was speechless. This kind of thinking could also result in certain abuses connected with faith-based initiatives. I, for one, do not think they should be allowed to side-step antidiscrimination laws in hiring.

Prison conversions are not at all uncommon even before Charles Colson-inspired evangelical programs. I attribute it to a couple of things: 1) Prisoners are scamming because scamming is what so many of them do well. If they can convince a parole board that Jesus has turned their lives around they have a better chance of parole. 2) The conversions are "sincere." How many reading this have vowed to quit smoking or go on a diet yet failed to reach their goal? It is human nature to want to be better and it is human nature to find a belief that can be referenced in troubled times and for help with decision making. Christianity is especially useful for either of these prisoner goals because it is based upon the idea of total redemption. In other words, no matter what one does, one can be forgiven and achieve grace. It's really a very cool, appealing idea. I once tried to explain this in a forum that was peopled mostly by Asians with Buddhist reincarnation-type beliefs. Some of them were absolutely outraged. It seemed dreadful to them that a murderer could be forgiven and redeemed and go to Heaven. To them, Jesus had not done a good thing but a very bad thing by offering such a reward for even the truly contrite believers. To them the murderer should have had to come back in another life and suffer a just Karma.

I would think it's constitutional if it's entirely voluntary. That is, if there are no reprisals for not joining the group. The link you post does not provide that information. What amuses me is the continuing naivety of people who want to reduce recidivism. Sociopaths just love programs where they can pretend to be good, pretend to come to Jesus, pretend to turn their lives around. Fooling others is their chocolate, their high, their one favorite thing. The only trouble is, few of them can keep up the act for long. Too bad the study wasn't designed to have more rigor in the first place.

Don't forget the Chinese claims: http://www.maritimeasia.ws/topic/compass.html

L-tyrosine Ginkgo Salmon Berries Avoid all sugar. No OJ. There are legal amphetamines prescribed for people with ADD/ADHD. If that isn't your problem, you probably don't need them. 500mg of Acetyl L-Carnitine taken an hour before before food and other supplementation will help deliver amino acids. If you have desperate, desperate test anxiety, you might try GABA.

Okay, what about all that stuff about crystal healing? Would that be so different. The notion is (from the book I browsed in Barnes and Noble last year) that you put different crystals on different chakras of the body and that each crystal emits a particular type of healing to each chakra. Do we even have chakras? Is a rock just a rock?

LOL! I thought he had been retired for fifteen years. That will teach me to read better. I have to say that dancing does give one confidence and poise.