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Try, as a matter of interest, jotting down a simple one line description of what you understand the word torture to mean and post it here. Then see what glory a deconstructionist government lawyer can make it into: http://www.slate.com/id/2113314/fr/nl/
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Any re-classification of these kind of words is fundamentally motivated by self-interest.
The classic example is 'terrorism'. Whole books have been written about its definition, although it can easily be defined as such:
'the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.'
This classification is fine, but has been rejected in the UN on numerous occasions by certain members. Prevailing powers will always define language according to their needs, this is one topic of Macbeth, btw. Thus terrorism must exempt all home-grown violence, but include convert enemy operations.
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Carpal Tunnel
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My one-line def.: anything that causes a person to be in agony.
Okay, I've read the article; typical rationalization technique for saying, "I can make the law say what I want it to"; very akin to doing the same thing to statistical info.
Couple of asides: I tried, with only partial success, to do some sussing on Slate. I will grudgingly for now assume that it is not made up of fictional stories.
Secondly, I finally looked up deconstruction(ism), never having learned about it before. Sorry if this offends anyone, but IMHO: how stupid.
'Nother aside: I wonder if that lawyer voted/works for Bush...
That whole thing reminded me of ...someone else; it sounded very much as though a defense were being prepared for charges that haven't even been made, yet. Gave me a distinct read-between-the-lines feeling of, "Gee, I know I/we have done/are doing something wrong; I'd better prepare something that I can point back to and say, 'Well, look right here--this says I was innocent' ."
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veteran
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Ok here's mine...
[Torture] legal - the overt act of inflicting pain and/or the deprivation of stimuli necessary to the continued mental and physical health of the imprisoned or detained.
But big deal. At the present stage of our knowledge about the semantical delimitations of the meanings in our wordings, the only restraints that can be guaranteed against the misuse of any written edit is the establishment of a civilized and reasonable culture to do the constraining.
All else is fluff.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think of tortured language as language that has been spoken or written in such a way that it has suffered and been debilitated to the point that it can barely execute its function of communication.
On the other hand, I also think of such tortured language as being highly entertaining because of its very incapacitated function--kind of like laughing at things that you don't really want to happen in real life.
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> At the present stage of our knowledge about the semantical delimitations of the meanings in our wordings, the only restraints that can be guaranteed against the misuse of any written edit is the establishment of a civilized and reasonable culture to do the constraining.
LOL! Nicely worded; fat chance though, eh.
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torture:
The level of pain, intimidation, and humiliation that you would not want someone else to use on you.
When a government says that it must use torture to protect itself and its citizens it has regressed to the level of the barbaric and should not be allowed by people of good will to survive.
TEd
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actually, torture is a very specific and tangible concept that can be measured by a psychological instrument called a dolorimeter, which measures pain in units called dols.
(sorry mav, I seem to be having a hard time dealing with abstractions today.)
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I don't think a "dolormeter" measures torture, tsuwm. It only measures sad. A veximeter measures mad. And torture can be maddening. And here's something which hasn't been mentioned yet about torture. Extreme psychological torture can result in madness, for example, schizophrenia where the personality splits itself into several personalities * to protect itself from psychological abuse. This sort of madness is actually a pyschological defence mechanism. It presents any abuser with a multiple victim and more or less evens the odds for the victim when the victim feels outnumbered or otherwise overwhelmed by superior force. BTW bullying in the schoolyard has been recognized as a serious form of psychological torture in recent years. And recent research indicates that girls are as guilty of it as boys. Until quite recently, the literature on bullying focused solely on physical and verbal aggression. Since the 1990s, however, researchers have also begun to examine relational aggression. Relational aggression refers to any act that actively excludes a person from making or maintaining friendships or being integrated into the peer group--such as spreading rumors, or excluding and socially isolating a person (e.g., Bjoerkqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukianen, 1992). Studies have found that while boys tend to use overt forms of aggression (such as physical and verbal aggression) in bullying, girls' bullying behaviors often focus on damaging an individual's social connections within the peer group (e.g., Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Crick, Casas, & Ku, 1999). Researchers are beginning to broaden their definitions of aggression and bullying, and to examine the consequences of relational aggression for all parties involved (e.g., Crick, 1996; Tomada & Schneider, 1997). The topic of relational aggression has also captured the attention of the general public, through such books as Rachel Simmons' (2002) Odd Girl Out. http://snipurl.com/cpghNote: I tried Maverick's Shift + Enter solution to split this link to avoid wide screen. But it didn't work. So I tried tsuwm's snipurl.com solution. And it works like a charm! Thanks, tsuwm. [snipurl.com is very handy.] * The "3 Faces of Eve" must be a different condition **: Schizophrenia is not split personality misunderstood disease
No other psychological disorder is as widely misunderstood as schizophrenia. The public often equates schizophrenia with "multiple personality", assuming that schizophrenic patients fluctuate between a placis, conventional personality and a monstrous, violent one as in the famous story of Dr Jekyll and mr Hyde. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Only one personalityAlthough the word schizo-phrenic literally means "split mind", the term refers to the fragmentation or splitting up of normally integrated psychological functioning. A schizophrenic patient has only one personality, but his or her mental activity is often severely disorganized. http://snipurl.com/cpll** Multiple Personality Disorder (DID)Does multiple personality disorder really exist?
Multiple personality disorder, now officially known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), remains the object of bitter controversy. One thing's clear, though--it's not nearly as common as people thought just a few years ago.http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html
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http://www.kzoo.edu/psych/stop_bullying/topics_of_interest
/bullying_among_girls.htmljust in the interest of modern nescience again, take a look at what putting a [br]eak in your link does to the address when you click it (look to your browser's address box). your users can always edit the break out themselves, but why should they be arsed?
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pluto > [snipurl.com is very handy.]
uranus > why should they be arsed?
yeahbut those of us who don’t like redirects and data whorehousing may not be fond of the other approach - don't you have any concern about snip? (although I have not bothered to read their Terms of Endearment...)
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a martian writes> I have not bothered to read their Terms of Endearment good point, ma' http://snipurl.com/termsofuse
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I feel like a bit of an arse 'cause I don't understand this stuff. ["So what else is new?", says themilum. :) ]
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