Happy New Year! I’ve spent the day so far lazing around, eating leftover pizza and listening to music. And that’s about all I’m going to do, I think.
I’ll be back at work blogging tomorrow.
In the meantime, does anyone have any especially fond memories of Tom Martin and/or Steele from the past year?
Oh, and here’s a video from an Old School New Wave band called Polyphonic Size. It was 1983. They were from Belgium.
LOL my Latin is confined to a few common phrases and some snippets from Latin For All Occasions anyway! (Have you ever seen that? It’s really funny. Henry Beard wrote it, he of Poetry for Cats.)
“Because I got emotional and let those emotions get the better of me. If I owe anyone an apology it’s definitely you, I’m sorry.”
I’m not the one whose questions you kept avoiding, but thank you all the same.
Kitteh — I have not, I’m finding it as a book, but “have you seen that” implies a film o.O? What should I be looking for?
Sorry, I should have said “read” or “heard of it”! Definitely a book. There are some quotations from it here.
Henry Beard wrote my all-time favourite poetic work – Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy by William Shakespeare’s Cat. 🙂
There was actually a rash of women killing babies in (I think) the 15th or 16th centuries in Europe, basically because they wanted to commit suicide but didn’t want to go to hell. So they picked baptized children to kill, since then (a) the child would be assured of going to heaven, and (b) they themselves would be able to confess and repent before being executed so they thought of it as a win-win situation for all involved.
Just for your “people at different places and different times sure think about things differently” file.
Oh so that’s the source of “Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum!” Nice!
@argenti
I’ve been meaning to ask you, what does your name mean?
…and this is where treating suicide as a sin gets us… *sigh*
“Heus, modo itera omnia quae mihi nunc nuper narravisti, sed nunc Anglice?”
“Listen, would you repeat everything you just told me, only this time say it in English?”
We totally need this to throw at Steele.
Argenti is Latin for silver, Aertheri is a typo’ed version of aether, the root for ether. Roughly, silver mist. Aer // aether is actually air, sort of.
I liked the typo, it’s easier to say XD
Kitteh — Omnia mihi lingua graeca sunt — It’s all Greek to me
And because there hasn’t been a kitty derail yet, and because I cannot resist, here is Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy, by William Shakespeare’s Cat:
To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock’s bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.
To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal’s opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt.
To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there’s the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household’s petty plagues,
The cook’s well-practiced kicks, the butler’s broom,
The infant’s careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten?
Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor’s yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans’ faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.
@The Kitten’s Unpaid Help
I’d never read that before. Neat! Thanks for sharing.
Starla:Okay fair enough, but what do you think should happen then? She did kill a baby.
Even if being 14 means you can’t be tried as an adult, certainly it doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill someone if you are 14.
Straw man. You asked why she ought not be tried as an adult. No one has said nothing should happen.
Try her as a juvenile, with the lesser punishements that provides.
This is a case in which I am not an acceptable juror. I would vote to acquit, based on the age/possible sentence, since she isn’t capable of appreciating things as if she were an adult.
And the reason I think she should be tried as an adult is because I can’t imagine ever trying to hurt a baby, let alone kill one.
This is why she ought not be tried as an adult. You have this problem, because you are what she isn’t… an adult.
Well that’s my reason. I think killing children is evil.
You do know this is the justification for all sorts of evil things? It’s why we use courts, not vendetta to solve this sort of thing.
And I can’t empathize with her. I admit it, and I dont see why anyone is trying to,
Because she’s a human being, and empathy is part of how one gets justice, rather than revenge. One need not sympathise but one must empathise, if any hope of equitable resolution is to be attained in situations like this.
And to answer your comments, I don’t think all minors should be judged harshly, she didn’t rob a store, she didn’t get caught smoking marijuana, she KILLED someone.
What’s the magic line that makes this circumstance different? What if the corpse had been 55 years old? What if she were mentally disabled?
Is it the “baby”? Because you seem willing to ignore the “child”.
Page change. I’ll drop it, all things being equal.
@penuciam
If I may ask, what time zone are you in?
Some Gal – my pleasure! The whole book is a hoot, but I adore that one.
Kitteh, that is wonderful.
Isn’t it? Henry Beard’s a genius.
(Diogenes Dipshit take note.)
If I may ask, what time zone are you in?
Work.
“If I may ask, what time zone are you in?
Work.”
Lol!
“This is a case in which I am not an acceptable juror. I would vote to acquit, based on the age/possible sentence, since she isn’t capable of appreciating things as if she were an adult.”
And this is why I can’t answer how she should be punished. My best friend is a law student, I was a psych major, we have a bit of a thing about “this one’s for your field not mine” — this one’s for psych, not law.
BTW… if anyone want’s to follow my blog on twitter, I have a feed to announce posts @BetterThanSalt
I think part of the issue we’re running into with Starla may be that most of us think of prison as something that exists to keep dangerous people away from the general population, while she thinks of it mostly as punishment. That’s a fairly fundamental difference in approach to how crime is dealt with that we’re unlikely to be able to work around to come to an agreement.
Now, I do think that this child should be removed from her current situation and have to deal with the juvenile version of the criminal justice system, but part of the reason I think that is that clearly her current environment is doing a shitty job of teaching her much of anything. One of the reasons that we treat juveniles differently from adults when they commit crimes is that not only are they not really capable of adult reasoning yet, because they’re not fully formed it’s a lot easier to change the life path they’re on than it is with an adult. If this girl was to be put in an adult prison and treated in the way adult prisoners are she would be released when she was still young enough to offend again, and she probably wouldn’t get any counselling. If she goes through the juvenile system it might be possible for her to learn WHY what she did was wrong, which makes it far less likely that she’ll ever do anything similar again.
Which, given that murderers already have one of the lowest rates of recidivism (I know I am droning on about this, but it’s important I think), makes it extra important that we employ a rehabilitative approach here. Sadly, the juvenile system is only a tiny smidge better than the adult system in terms of providing education and counseling.
In cases like this I have to lean towards agreeing with the person upthread who said that maybe just getting the kid away from their parents and current community might do the trick as far as rehabilitation goes.