It takes a hippie to name a daughter after Lucifer

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

You get used to it around here. I've got a friend whose legal middle name is "Cricket." They were going to give it to her as a first name, but someone talked them out of it. My best friend knows a Lava. I was in a class with a Cedar, but given it was Evergreen, I don't know if it was the name the parents gave her. Either way, I live in a place where someone might realistically start calling herself "Cedar."

And Henrik, I do get the joke, but to head things off at the pass, I'm pretty sure they were both named after, you know, Aphrodite. (Or Venus; most people don't think Greek names first.) Hippies around here don't do Christian mythos.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Doodleriffic Productions Presents: Facepalm Friday

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/13/....ap/index.html

When the heck did that start to sound like a good idea?

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

And the kids live with the grandparents? hmm ; looks like there might be a history here. (of course there's no digging for that related piece of information )

Of course, every article needs to end with statement of the obvious.
Isn't that the whole point of the article?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Not really. The man is charged with cruelty to animals. He would be in trouble even if he hadn't involved the kids.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Yes; but the story is about the things he did involving the children.

It would be like a story about someone who skidded on the ice off the edge of a cliff with a burned out brake bulb. That story would not be about the lack of signals.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

If the children hadn't been involved he probably wouldn't have been charged with that either.
That one's more of a "we don't like what he did to his kids but aren't certain of a conviction for that, so let's throw everything we can think of at him and see what sticks."

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

That depends a lot on the area. Where I live torturing an animal is currently a misdemeanor. There are a number of billboards up around town urging voters to make it a felony this year. At the very least, here, he could get up to 1 year in jail for intentionally killing a cat.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

1 year for intentionally killing a cat?
Does that include contract killing, ie. paying a vet to do it?

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

You know, realing all this stuff about people abusing people make me wonder if we shouldn't either a) kill children who show signs of being abusive before they turn into adults, or b) genetically engineer humanity to be less abusive and more empathetic. That way, the genes that make some of us abusive will get purged out of the genepool, and the result will be (hopefully) a better species.

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Won't work, every child is a sociopath until they learn to be human.

The problems we see are the ones that don't learn, mostly by being brought up by abusers.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Well, at least partly. I'd like to see statistics before I go to "mostly." Then again, this is in no small part because my sister, whom I can safely say was not abused, is a sociopath.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Up to 1 year, yes. Any animal. If it becomes a felony, it will be a minimum of 1 year in prison. The thinking there is that a person who is likely to be a threat to humans will first be a threat to animals.

As for where the distinction come in is the main part of the debate. For example, it's wrong to go to the duck pond with a golf club and beat the birsts to death, but schools here get a three day weekend for the fit weekend of the deer hunt. It's not the killing of the animal, it's the how.

If you take your old dog out to the desert and shoot him once in the head, it's not a crime. If you do it in the back yard with a croquet mallet, it is.

I was brought up in a shooting family. By the time I was that girl's age, I'd killed scores of ground squirrels, but if I'd have gone after the cat with a knife, I'd hate to think of what my dad would have done.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

Serious question:
Is it possible for a person to be concerned that they might be a sociopath?

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

We could apply Jonathan Swift's modest proposal. If we killed and ate the children, they'd never grow up to be abusers. Plus we'd get tasty, tasty steaks for dinner... with fava beans and a nice chianti.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Yes, if they aren't one.

That sounds flippant, I know, but it's as close to the truth as you can get. These things come in degrees, of course--sociopathology isn't automatically of the kind that makes you a serial killer--but by and large, once you've crossed the psychological dividing line into sociopathology, even if you know, you're not concerned about it. You can wonder, but how much you care is all by itself an indicator of how sick you are.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes, it is.

Sorry. The question was not as clear at it should have been. You still answered the one I meant though. A person that is concerned they might be a sociopath can't be one, basically by definition. Is that about it?

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.