Recent Reno tragedy -- two kids and a baseball bat.

Few days ago I read Pakcik Bill’s thread about a baseball bat attack and robbery by 2 teenagers.

Today I read about El Cajon Campus Shooting and Hisperia High Hit List.

When I was in LA and Vegas few years back, the travelling agent always reminded me not to go out alone at any time ... avoid backlane ... etc. etc.

I guess being a small size foreigner one might be an easy target for this naughty kids! They might not need any guns or baseball bats --- they just need their knuckles!

IMHO all this happened everywhere --- anyhow living in Malaysia which is only a small country and with less population compared to US is considered a bit lucky (in this sense) --- less serious juvenile crimes --- there were cases but lesser incidents!

wa-(A)llaahu-aa’lam!


[This message has been edited by mohd (edited 03-24-2001).]
 
Ruel,
Am I condeming "Every" young person? I think not!You are out of line! What I'm saying is the PROBLEMS are many! When I was a "YOUNG PERSON"we carried knives, got in fights, sure ,it was rough! However, WE never had "Any" SCHOOL SHOOTINGS!I help at the Gym, taught M/A,deal with young people in the 9 thru 12 grade level! You would be surprised what they "Believe & Say"! Example: Do you know what "The Cure" for Steroid deadly side effects is?Eat certain foods an they will negate the side effects!It makes you want to cry!I can go on! Are there "Fantastic young people" yes there are!As I stated, you don't hear about the well adj. ones "ALL" you hear about are the ones caught is how "BAD" THEY HAD IT,NO BREAKS, ETC.Look at their Rap Sheet! Talk to some Leos, "THAT CAN BE AN EYE OPENER!"
jim
 
Ruel,
Are you "SURE" you want to do this "DISCOUNT BIT"??Uncle is grinning!Once you start on the K journey, it's hard to stop! Go on! I dare you "Get just one"!
jim
 
Ruel,Doc,Nov,Bill,Mohd,
Guys, I think "My" position on this topic "Finally"is! I just get & feel sooooo frustrated! If I can help one I feel better for a while! Then I see my niece & nephew & I feel better! Got their heads on,& a pure joy to be with teenagers)!"Frustrated with my hands tied"!
Nothing "PERSONAL"Ruel!
jim
 
We are generalizing and I'll make a note of this. There are some good kids and good folks out there. Just take a look at the people on this forum for example. I have several young newphews who visit the forum and buy khukuris and they are tops. And the old timers who visit here I'd throw in with any time any place.

My only problem is I think there are sometimes more bad than need be and these are the ones I'm concerned about and who need our help.

------------------
Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
Khukuri FAQ
Himalayan Imports Archives (33,000 + posts)
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1. Wow, Uncle Bill, I was just kidding about that, but heck -- email's on the way!
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2. Jim,

I agree with you about the rotten apples among the young. Before my present job I was teacher at Dallas Co.'s juvenile justice detention center, and some years before that I worked at adolescent inpatient psychiatry. (And people wonder why I don't want any kids of my own...!) Kids that are given opportunities and still make bad choices deserve much more punishment than they are currently getting. I just wanted to make the point that such kids have been around since the beginning of mankind, and are not just a product of modern times. That, and that certain social and cultural factors make certain kids more likely to be that way, factors which are more prevalent now.

It all starts at home, I think. Kids who have strong family support and guidance tend to turn out all right. But in today's America, when so many families are single-parent or teenage-dropout-parent etc., it's morally incumbent upon the community to step in and provide that support and guidance, while at the same time making sure those parents are either working or going to school (instead of loafing and collecting welfare checks like many do).

*Gasp* That was a rare fit of social conservatism from me! But I'll stick with it.
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Howdy, all.

Sometimes I find it funny how often people think they're on opposite sides of the fence when they're not. Some of the arguments that come up are funny or tragic, depending.

There are lots of folks who look top down and think large community efforts are involved to reverse widespread problems. They're right.

There are people who think that our culture has lost touch with what makes a virtuous life, and that a lot of people are coming up undirected; missing an understanding of responsibility and honor. They're right, too.

But it seems like they're always fussin'!

One of my teachers, a psychiatrist who's been in the business half of forever and is one of the best to play the game, used to say psychiatrists and managers are two points of ridicule in modern America. And they're ridiculed because they're full of means but have no sense of the ends. By which he meant "managers" can manage a business, a homeless shelter, or a house of ill repute and do it efficiently; and it doesn't matter much which. This is where all Dilbert's material comes from. Psychiatrists have all sorts of techniques to get you to feel better, quit drugs, etc., but never seem to be able to tell you what life's about or what to do with yourself.

I wonder if some of the debate comes from one group perceiving the other as being all means and no ends, and the other seeing the first as all ends and no means.

You can easily imagine a bunch of people saying "we need to get SOCIETY involved" (whatever that is). And the people in society saying, "sure we'll get involved, as soon as we know what we're trying to do." The flipside is a bunch of people who can agree on how people ought to act, but don't know how to change the whole world to get them to do it.

As if anybody does.

I think it's going to be necessary (but not enough) to abandon this "experiment" with ultra-relativism that we've engaged in in the last three decades, and try to agree on what's bad and good instead of saying that those things are different for everybody and we have to "understand," so we can't judge much of anything. Politicians are trying to sell a buzzword called "family values" to fill that gap, but it's not much more than a slogan.

How to get people to DO that . . .
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And then there will be lots of folks who think the only way we can save anybody is by nonjudgmental understanding. Hell, I dunno if they're right.

I'd love to see logic and ethics taught in public schools, but obviously it ain't gonna save everybody, or even the majority. I'd just like to see our culture get back to its Western roots, instead of discounting everything said by dead white Greek guys whether or not they were right.

This is the deep end of the pool.

Anybody know the story of Dagger John?

[This message has been edited by DocPat2511 (edited 03-25-2001).]
 
As a matter of fact, the federal government did send in a nice lady bureaucrat to manage the Mustang Ranch, Joe Conforte having decided to pursue his dreams in Rio. Least til the feds could sell it for the uncollected taxes Joe forgot to pay.

Did I mention that Nevada has a law that the stockholders in our corporations need not be named? Apparently Joe had enough money left to buy it back under the table.

This vexed the feds no amount, and after they finally managed to trace the money, they took it back once more.

Only this time they decided that the Mustang Ranch should go to the BLM's Adopt-A-Horse Program. You might say Mustang for the mustangs. But don't despair, one of the ladies has decided to run for office on a platform of cleaning house in the state government.

You ever consider that the only thing worse than a God with a sense of humor is a God without a sense of humor?

------------------
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"Ayo Ghorapani!"

[This message has been edited by Rusty (edited 03-25-2001).]
 
DocPat wrote
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Anybody know the story of Dagger John?</font>
Click to expand...
To tell the truth,I'd never heard of Dagger John, so I did some poking around until I was able to educate myself, and am right glad I did. Don't bother clicking on the link unless you have 20 minutes or so to read a long but fascinating story that has a lot of relevance to the topic at hand. Thanks, Doc.
 
Wow. Great link. Thanks for hunting that up, Berk. Dagger John's sorta been a hero of mine since I first heard his story, but never bothered to nose around on the web. Guess I'm just a paper kind of guy.

The thing that I think worked for him was that he had BOTH an idea of what people ought to act like AND a means of encouraging and enforcing it. He had means and ends; and his means included both carrots and sticks.

Thing is, whenever you're talking about morality, and you tell somebody "you should do X," he can always say "why should I?" Eventually you got three choices, "you just should" (seldom works), "because it's good for you" (sometimes works, if you can prove it, and only for as long as it is good for him), "because God says so." For the last one it doesn't have to be God, but you and the guy you're talking to have to agree on some fundamental idea of what's right and wrong.

I'm afraid we're losing that last one in our culture now. Right and wrong = "what's right and wrong for me."

And self-esteem isn't a bad thing, either; just that it's not an end in itself. If we taught people that self-esteem is a consequence of a responsible and virtuous life instead of something you went to a therapist to get tanked up on like gasoline we'd be better off. If only we used the word "honor" in place of self-esteem think how different our language would be.

I saw a movie not long ago called "The Girl Next Door" which was a zero-budget documentary about a woman who'd gone from rural housewife to a hardcore porn star. I went basically to find out what kind of trainwreck you have to be to do that. The answer was "a huge one." Definitely not for the faint of heart.

In one scene, she was discussing in detail her next set of plastic surgeries, including having her old breast implants replaced with smaller, "more natural" (ie, merely D-cup) ones and a few more nips and tucks. Then she was off to see her hypnotherapist "to work on my self-esteem and help me feel a little better about myself."

Sometimes you don't know whether to cry, laugh, or scream.

At least there was a Dagger John, and if there's one there can be more.

 
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