From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #341 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, September 17 2007 Volume 16 : Number 341 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! [Capuchin ] Re: so lovely to be wanted [Capuchin ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #339 [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #336 [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] NEW on DIME: Robyn Hitchcock and John Paul Jones 2007-09-14 End Of The Road Festival, Dorset [gaseou] Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! [Michael Sweeney ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:41:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! If this is too long, at least try to read the last sentence. That's the summation and it's dead on my point. On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, 2fs wrote: > Traditionally, there are three aspects to dealing with someone who's > committed a crime: punishment of the criminal, protection of the public, > and rehabilitation of the criminal. (Some would add a fourth - vengeance > for the victim or those who knew the victim - but I think we can agree > this should be disregarded as, essentially, aiding another crime in > itself.) We've tilted so far in favoring the first of those criteria > that it seems as if it's the only way to deal with the second one - > while the third one is generally just laughed out of consideration. Um, I think you'll find that your "other two" are still "the first one". Punishment is evil inflicted upon a person by public authority upon a person judged by that same authority to have transgressed the law. (This is Hobbes definition, but it's got all the essential elements of every other definition in moral philosophy -- inflicted evil, authority, and transgression.) Locking someone away because they did something that the institutions of power didn't like is punishment. It fits the definition perfectly. Involuntary "rehabilitation" is punishment. In fact, it's about the worst thing you can do to a person. However, living in such a way as to provide a positive model for people to voluntarily change their behavior is entirely different. You can talk about the moral justification of that punishment, but there are essentially only two arguments that anyone actually believes: The deontological argument (that two wrongs do, in fact, make an ethical right) and the utilitarian (that the greater good for the greatest number is served by committing this evil and that it serves as deterrent for future crime). I believe the first is rank nonsense (sorry Mr. Kant) and the second is just not good enough. First, there's no support for the claim that punishment is effective deterrent. Second, there is no way to measure the real evil of locking someone away against the mere potential evil of supposed future criminal activity. > Who said anything about killing? (You did - I certainly didn't.) It's the same argument whether you're killing the person or locking them away. Your argument is that hurting this one person makes the world a better place than not hurting them. I don't think you can actually support this argument, however. You make some kind of statistical argument about recidivism, but ultimately, you're making each person suffer for the actions of some sample population. Just because MOST people who fit a certain profile continue to do bad things doesn't mean all of them will. So what of the people that you've locked away who would have, otherwise, done no harm at all? In punishing them, were you not increasing the amount of evil in the world rather than preventing it? And are you not, then, claiming that it's OK to do punish the innocent (since, as non-recivists, they were, in fact, no threat to the public safety)? > There are any number of ways to prevent, say, a serial killer from > killing again other than killing him. Serial killers are made. A world that does not praise violence and loves all people would, I contend, make far fewer than this world of joyful punishment and righteous killing. I would also contend that the very few people who still insist upon doing harm even when shown love are doing so little harm in the big picture that not turning around and committing evil back upon them is a better way to let evil serve the greater good than punishment. How many serial killers are there, anyway? Damned few. Of the number of killings by violence, how many of them are killed by serial killers? Really damned few. To restate what I just wrote in the previous sentence, I think tolerating the evil of those serial killers is way preferable to tolerating the evil of mass incarceration and torture that is state punishment. > Prison isn't the only kind of restraint, either - in 99% of cases, some > sort of treatment in a secure facility would be better. That's in 99% of > the cases where someone needs to be kept away from the public for the > public's protection - probably 90% of people in prison do *not* fit that > category at all. Uh... that's prison. If you've got someone in a "secure facility" where they cannot come and go of their own volition, that's prison. Just so you know. > How are we defining "violence" here? I suppose (and I'm using this > because it's the clearest example) that it's "violent" to prevent a > serial killer from freely moving about in public. Well, usually it's enough to threaten violence in that case. How do you think the cops retain their power? They coerce through violence or threat of violence. [As a side note, the USA Patriot Act defines "terrorism" as "use of violence or threat of violence used to coerce a population". That is exactly what our "justice system" is. Oh, I left one word out. The USA Patriot Act prefaces my quoted definition with the word "illegal". Basically, they defined terrorism to be anybody who does what the cops do that isn't a cop.] > What should be done instead, if not preventing him from freely moving > about in public, given the very strong likelihood that (a) he'll kill > again or (b) he'll be killed *by* the public if they know what he's > done? If killing is not OK, if the public truly thinks that it's wrong to kill, then why would they kill this guy? And after they kill this guy, do they turn on each other and kill each other for killing this guy? And after that, do they... >>> But in context, I think the question really is, "how many people are >>> happy that OJ's finally going to get some sort of punishment more >>> appropriate than having a few less million dollars to play golf with?" >> >> What kind of people do you think we are? Those who relish the >> suffering of others? That's insane... or at least sociopathic. > > So, uh, it's okay that O.J. Simpson killed two people (stipulating for > the moment that as fact) and, due to his fame and wealth, is free to > play golf and sell books about his killings (even if any profits do go > to the victims' families)? It's not OK that he killed them (granting the stipulation). But his actions to not make it any more or less wrong for us to lock him up. > I mean, okay: Simpson probably isn't quite an imminent threat to others > in the way a repeat murderer arguably is. Nearly all murders and assaults are crimes of passion. Typically, the only people to whom a murderer is a threat are already dead. > And acknowledging the necessity for some form of punishment is hardly > the same as "relishing" it. Um... look at what you wrote. "how many people are happy..." Happy about a person's suffering. That's not "acknowledging the necessity", that's "relishing". And "necessity" is totally not justified here. You might WANT it, but it's not necessary... not by a long shot. > I think it's highly unlikely that humans will ever be so forgiving as to > allow someone who killed two people to just wander freely about - even > if for whatever reason it was known h'ed never kill again. Are you really implying that no person is capable of forgiving a killer? Because that's crazytalk. It's done all the time. Hell, one doesn't have to look too hard to find examples of people who have forgiven those who killed even their own loved ones. I'm going to go ahead and call you wrong by counterexample. Not to put words in your mouth (as it were), I think you might have meant to write that you don't think it's likely that, as a society, we will be able to forgive. Well, I believe that if any person is capable of it, a culture is capable of it. And I also think that we see those acts of forgiveness as morally superior in most cases and that indicates to me that it is not too much of a stretch to say that it is a goal of our culture to be more forgiving. Hell, look at the martyr of our most prominent religion. That guy forgave his own murderers while they were murdering him. (There are tens of thousands of killers wandering freely around called "veterans". Hell, we elect a ton of them to high office... many who've killed way more than two. And if you want to make a special exemption for people who are doing killing in the name of the state (or ostensibly in the name of the state, for all those folks who committed atrocities not tolerated even by war-makers), you still have lots of examples.) > If there are to be any such things as values held generally in a > society, those values need to be positively held up - but if no harm > whatsoever comes to those who clearly violate those values, how are they > values at all? Wow. So what you're arguing here is that in order to believe something is evil, we have to do evil to those who do it; otherwise, it's an empty belief. If we meet those who do wrong with forgiveness, respect, and kindness, we are undermining our own values? I can't even get my head around that. I would argue the exact opposite (and did above). If we believe that doing harm is wrong, then we undermine our values by supporting a system that requires doing harm. > Doesn't a belief that people have, at minimum, a right to live require > that *some* action (not sure what, for purposes of this argument) be > taken in response to those who violently prevent the exercise of that > most basic right? What do you do to people who speak out of turn? What do you do to folks who push their way to the front of a queue? Typically, you just tell them you don't approve of their behavior and that's enough. However, if a person gets nothing but reprimands and never knows affection, they will seek the reprimands as a substitute. So we must make sure that we let it be known where are boundaries for civil behavior are while still embracing those who are not quite able to perform to the highest standard. The only difference between rudeness and crime is perceived degree. In the end, both can be remedied (or at least mitigated) with firmness, tolerance, and love. > To put it another way: if we say we value life, we can't react to > murders by saying, oh, well, it would be cruel to inflict any punishment > on him. Uh, what?!? If we value life, then we must value the life even of those who take lives. If lives can be made forfeit, then we do not value life, but particular types of lives. I do not argue that it is CRUEL to inflict punishment, but that it is rank hypocrisy to do so. > What does it mean to value something if nothing is done to give it > value? We give it value by supporting and nurturing it. If life is what we value, then we shall hold life in highest regard and praise those who do life-giving things and condemn those who do life-ending things. Condemnation doesn't require retribution. I think people are wrong for driving 4x4 trucks in the city as commuter vehicles. I condemn those people's actions. I don't have to hurt those people to value less destructive behavior. I can't make any more sense of your argument. You like good music and hate bad music. Do you go around hurting people who make bad music or fail to book good music shows in your local venues? > I guess I'm saying something like: some form of moral disapproval is > necessary in order for any form of moral approval to mean anything other > than words. Those words themselves are meaningless in such absence, so > that rather than saying "We value life," people might as well be saying, > "We fretchnor vetnugit." It's meaningless. The words are NOT meaningless. We value life by doing life-affirming things and putting our collective efforts into affirming life. More to the point, we avoid suffering. We do what we can to prevent suffering in others and help those who are currently suffering. If a person comes along who increases the amount of suffering, we do not decrease the amount of suffering by making that person suffer. Quite the contrary, in fact. While forgiving someone does leave the possibility that another act of violence will be committed, punishment assures it. J. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:47:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: so lovely to be wanted On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Jill Brand wrote: > As for this Xander thing, I don't watch any of these shows, but for some > reason I've always been annoyed by the nickname Xander. It seems > pretentious to me. There is no basis for this annoyance. Oh, but I'm right there with you. Any of those "last part of the name" nicknames are awful. Of course, the worst is "Topher". I actually know a guy whose given name is Joshua who went by "Ua". And yes, he was totally pretentious. J. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:49:54 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #339 >...or when Jerry Hairston stole his best friend Rikki's dog and Rikki wrote a >song about it? (think it was called "I Lost the Mastiff") >Michael Sweeney I think you're getting confused. Jerry Hairston was in Talking Heads with David Brine (the guy who was also in Uriah Heep). You're probably thinking about his brother Jordon Hairston. James (wondering where this is all leading) - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:50:58 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #336 >On 9/17/07, Bachman, Michael > >Oh, and as for truly awful movies >that are relieved by the appearance > >> >of Jamie-Lee Curtis, may I offer "True lies"? > > > >Rex: >>Almost relieved... that there is one of the squickiest, most >discomforting films ever passed off as mass entertainment. > >It pissed of a lot of Arab Americans as well as the movie generated a >lot of controversy with it's Arab stereotypes. > > >I'd even forgotten that part. The part that creeped me the hell out >was the bit where the "hero", thinking that his wife is cheating on >him, arranges to meet his wife in a hotel posing as her "lover", and >anonymously humiliates her into stripping for him without knowing >who he is, forcing her to *be* cheating on him. Yech. And >that's my Governor. It was especially annoying coming from Jim >Cameron, who at the time seemed pretty progressive for an action >film director. yeah - that's the bit that creeps me out the most in that movie, too. - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:08:13 -0400 From: gaseous clay Subject: NEW on DIME: Robyn Hitchcock and John Paul Jones 2007-09-14 End Of The Road Festival, Dorset http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=162860&hit=1 - -------- Original Message -------- A new torrent has been uploaded to DIME. Torrent: 162860 Title: Robyn Hitchcock and John Paul Jones 2007-09-14 End Of The Road Festival, Dorset Size: 310.71 MB Category: Acoustic Uploaded by: Pike1957 Info hash: a02b804815f9538647a5fe609ff7686b83d498d7 Description - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robyn Hitchcock and John Paul Jones 2007-09-14 End Of The Road Festival, Dorset Recorded by Pike1957 from Centre Stage, Front Row GM-Pro Mics/Battery Box -> Microtrack (48khz, 24Bit) Adobe Audition for Sound Levelling Audacity for Tracks Spilts, Fade In/Out & Downsampling to 44.1Khz, 16bit Export to Flac Level 8, Tagged Robyn Hitchcock - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar John Paul Jones - Huge Acoustic Bass, Mandolin, Slide Guitar, bg Vocals Ruby Wright - Saw (Tracks 11, 12, 13) Howe Gelb - Piano (Tracks 13, 14) Great set, great performances. Apologies for the Chattering Classes. Otherwise, nice sound. Enjoy! 01 - Intro (Howe Gelb) 02 - It Doesn't Matter What You Was 03 - Saturday Groovers 04 - Full Moon In My Soul 05 - Balloon Man 06 - Chinese Bones 07 - Solpadeine 08 - Sometimes A Blonde 09 - Glass Hotel 10 - I'm In A Hurry For The Sky 11 - Television 12 - I Often Dream Of Trains 13 - Ole Tarantula 14 - Beautiful Girl 15 - Outro (Howe Gelb) I also experimented with videoing the show with an Archos Headcam. The video is definitely not of spectacular quality, but I'll have a go at using the video together with the original 48Khz, 24bit audio from the Microtrack if I can figure out how. So look out for a DVD upload in a week or so. I also recorded Yo La Tengo who headlined the main stage on the Friday. Recording still to be sorted out. Did see Ira checking out Robyn's performance! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:15:43 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! Jeme wrote: >You're falling into the great Liberal Fallacy that all points of view >are valid and equal. ...Dammit -- I had a medium-long refutation of this 99% written, when the new "improved" Windows Live / Hotmail chewed it up and took it all away before I could even hit "Send" (plus, it's been making my posts look deconstructed or poorly spaced lately...thnx, Mr. Gates!). Anyway (in a shorter reconstruction, since I don't have the energy to fully recreate what I lost) -- I think that ("all points of view are valid and equal") refers to some sort of flavor of "political correctness," not Liberalism. I'm about as Liberal as you can get, and, when it comes to faith-based, uninformed, or just plain stooooopid points of view, mark me (and many more like me) down with St. Julian: "World shut your mouth..." While some Libs (or even Conservatives) may espouse such an approach from time to time, it seems to me it's much more likely to be some sort of Moderate who wants to weigh and value multiple points of view. Whenever I hear "Let's agree to disagree," I assume the speaker is either A) someone who avoids all conflict at any cost or B) an idiot who is really saying "I can't really debate you or defend my point of view...and / or I am not conversant with the info you have presented as fact." ...Bah, I say. There are HUGE swathes of people whose point of view has little or no value to me. Michael "Izzy Stone remembered" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ More photos; more messages; more whatever  Get MORE with Windows Live Hotmail.. NOW with 5GB storage. http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration _HM_mini_5G_0907 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:29:27 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! Jeme-- I just finished reading the rest of your post (I went screaming into response mode at the "Liberal Fallacy" line) and I do not think we could agree more! No matter what our self-identified political positions might be, we support the same approach to change and dealing with stupid people and / or wrong-headed "opinions." Some great -- and (to my mind) irrefutable -- stuff there...and, of course, in debating against the "value all points of view" argument being monlithically Liberal, I was just trying to impose my values upon others...(idiotic emoticon avoided here, because...well, I do have SOME dignity)... Carry on. Michael "If you can't beat 'em..." Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Can you find the hidden words? Take a break and play Seekadoo! http://club.live.com/seekadoo.aspx?icid=seek_wlmailtextlink ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:19:47 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Christopher Gross - please explain! Actually, on thinking further about this, I'm recanting most of my previous post. Most, not all. Details following: On 9/17/07, Capuchin wrote: > On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, 2fs wrote: > > Traditionally, there are three aspects to dealing with someone who's > > committed a crime: punishment of the criminal, protection of the public, > > and rehabilitation of the criminal. > > Um, I think you'll find that your "other two" are still "the first one". > > Punishment is evil inflicted upon a person by public authority upon a > person judged by that same authority to have transgressed the law. (This > is Hobbes definition, but it's got all the essential elements of every > other definition in moral philosophy -- inflicted evil, authority, and > transgression.) > > Involuntary "rehabilitation" is punishment. In fact, it's about the worst > thing you can do to a person. Only if the rehabilitation is "evil" (to use the term in your previous paragraph). I suppose one could argue that, in being compulsory, it's by definition "evil." However: unless you're a thoroughgoing anarchist, you'll have to acknowledge that society is full of compromises which, essentially, amount to limitations on people's freedoms. (And if you are a thoroughgoing anarchist, you'll have to acknowledge that forcibly eliminating all vectors of authority in society is its own evil by that very definiton, in that, it would appear, most people support the existence of many such authorities.) And that is because rehabilitation, even if compulsory, need not be seen as "punishment" but as an attempt to help a person. Again, if you argue that every individual has the absolute freedom to be free from such help, however kind its motivations, I'm not sure how you can do anything positive...since someone is always going to object to, say, your preaching, your charity, your doing of good deeds, your basically doing or saying anything that gets in the way of his or her being an ornery cuss. Including showing them love, approving of their positive actions and contributions, and disapproving of their negative ones. (I'm trying to paraphrase the later parts of your last post.) > > > >>> But in context, I think the question really is, "how many people are > >>> happy that OJ's finally going to get some sort of punishment more > >>> appropriate than having a few less million dollars to play golf with?" > >> > >> What kind of people do you think we are? Those who relish the > >> suffering of others? That's insane... or at least sociopathic. > > Um... look at what you wrote. "how many people are happy..." Happy about > a person's suffering. That's not "acknowledging the necessity", that's > "relishing". I "wrote" it, true - but I was paraphrasing what someone else wrote...who in turn, if I recall, was asking a question about either a common general attitude or soliciting opinion here. > > > > I think it's highly unlikely that humans will ever be so forgiving as to > > allow someone who killed two people to just wander freely about - even > > if for whatever reason it was known h'ed never kill again. > > Are you really implying that no person is capable of forgiving a killer? No... > Not to put words in your mouth (as it were), I think you might have meant > to write that you don't think it's likely that, as a society, we will be > able to forgive. Yes. Well, I believe that if any person is capable of it, a > culture is capable of it. "Capable," yes. "Highly unlikely" (as I did write), also yes. There's no contradiction there. And I also think that we see those acts of > forgiveness as morally superior in most cases and that indicates to me > that it is not too much of a stretch to say that it is a goal of our > culture to be more forgiving. Hell, look at the martyr of our most > prominent religion. That guy forgave his own murderers while they were > murdering him. You know what's amusing here is that there's an analogy between your idealism here, and the (in my view rather cynical) "idealism" expressed by certain ideologues around race: "Stop, right now: ignore race entirely, and that will end racism." As if *currently existing racial imbalances and injustice* would evaporate merely by our freezing them in place, having forbidden any examination of the issue of race. The analogy is that you want to move, right now, to a world that is, sadly, but I think truly, much more idealistic, thoughtful, and kind than our world is. I do believe that sometimes, the way to get somewhere is to walk in that direction, or even to act as if you're already there - but not always. I don't think things change instantly. There are transitions. And from this decidedly non-utopian place we're in now, I don't think enacting utopia will be sufficient to bring it into being. I don't see we *never* enact it; only that in some areas, some sort of transitional attitude would have to exist. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, I believe there is such a thing as "society." I believe society is the thing we make that basically says, ideally, we collectively agree to certain limits (i.e., we collectively *enforce* certain limits), so that the benefits might accrue collectively to us, moreso than if we each acted individually w/o consideration for anyone else. There's a reason all those love songs talk about golden chains and such: while certainly less cruel and abusive than the kind made of less metaphoric and more base metals, love nonetheless creates obligations in those who are loved. One who feels no obligations to anyone else is, in a sense, not part of society. But those obligations limit freedom. "Willingly," I suppose. But they do limit. I don't think it's possible to coexist with others without compromises, including compromises that limit others' (and our own) freedom - if "freedom" just means "doing what I want w/o regard for consequences." You mentioned that martyr who founded (whether he intended to or not) the most prominent religion in the West. In some of the more metaphysical readings of his ideals, "sin" is less a matter of doing wrong than it is of doing things which make it impossible to receive others' love - and "hell" is a metaphor for that eternal separation - eternal in the sense that no one else can undo it. Similarly, the "unforgivable sin" of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is "unforgivable" in the sense that a door is impassable if you refuse to go through it. And it's that refusal, through learned inability, to receive the Holy Spirit - by which, in this metaphysical metaphor, merely means the love of others and accepting their co-presence - that condemns a person to the prison of isolation. And so I come back to the notion of "rehabilition," by which I mean the efforts to convey to a person (a criminal, in this case) the means to reintegrate themselves into society. The hows of that are beyond me - but if that sort of rehabilition is "imprisonment," then what, exactly, is outside the prison? (Incidentally, the word "rehabilitate" itself is interesting: to return or restore; to make fit again - and the resemblance of "habilitate" (same root as "ability") and "habitat" (same root as "to have": an ability is something one *has*) is quite possibly not an etymological accident) > > > > If there are to be any such things as values held generally in a > > society, those values need to be positively held up - but if no harm > > whatsoever comes to those who clearly violate those values, how are they > > values at all? > > Wow. So what you're arguing here is that in order to believe something is > evil, we have to do evil to those who do it; otherwise, it's an empty > belief. Incidentally, this is part of the large part of what I wrote that I recant. It's interesting that I was thinking that the only sort of action that might be an apt response to a crime is some sort of punishment. Did I say I wasn't part of this world? So the right action in response to someone who commits a crime is to help them not feel compelled to commit crime again? > So we must make sure that we let it > be known where are boundaries for civil behavior are while still embracing > those who are not quite able to perform to the highest standard. The only difference between rudeness and crime is perceived degree. In > the end, both can be remedied (or at least mitigated) with firmness, > tolerance, and love. The problem here (as I alluded to above) is that many people find "firmness, tolerance, and love," dressed in telling them we disapprove of their actions, to be among the more offensive things imaginable. > > > We give it value by supporting and nurturing it. If life is what we > value, then we shall hold life in highest regard and praise those who do > life-giving things and condemn those who do life-ending things. > Condemnation doesn't require retribution. No, but most people still find being condemned rather irritating. And in fact, quite often, that condemnation makes them *determined* not to do what you're suggesting they do. That may be stupid, irrational, or even self-destructive (as in the case of my overweight brother-in-law who, when you tell him he really needs to eat less and more healthily, clouds over and resentfully orders a second helping of french fries). While forgiving someone does leave the possibility that another act of > violence will be committed, punishment assures it. In that punishment is itself violence. I can't make any more sense of your argument. You like good music and > hate bad music. Do you go around hurting people who make bad music or > fail to book good music shows in your local venues? Didn't you read my earlier post, wherein I reasserted my strong position that Kenny G. is Absolute Evil? I am the leader of the Bad Music Vigilantes. Our motto? "We fretchnor vetnugit." - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #341 ********************************