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Obligatory Three in One Thread
- Happy belated Saint Patrick's Day.
- I'm up at 1:19 AM.
- Mom, stop nagging me to go to bed. I can sleep further if I need to after dropping you off at work. It takes five minutes to get there and five minutes to get back. Nothing can happen in that time frame. I wouldn't be stupid enough to let myself fall asleep while driving.
Thread by: Amaury, Mar 18, 2013, 4 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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No Staff Online XXV

Guys, let's have the greatest party of all time!

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 18, 2013, 5 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Steubenville High School Football Players Found Guilty of Raping 16-Year-Old Girl
I'm not saying that what they did is right, because it wasn't. It was 100% wrong. However, I personally believe that the kid's apology was sincere and it took a lot of courage to be able to apologize.
- Source: Yahoo! News
- Published: 3/17/2013
Inside a small Steubenville, Ohio, courtroom filled with sobbing and exhausting emotion, Judge Thomas Lipps found Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond guilty Sunday of raping an intoxicated 16-year-old girl. Lipps sentenced both defendants to a minimum of one year in a youth correctional institute with the determination for a longer sentence coming from child-service experts.

Mays received an additional year for transmission of nude photos, to be served after his rape sentence is completed. Mays and Richmond also will have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

"It provides a great incentive to do well," said Lipps, who could have ordered Mays and Richmond to remain behind bars until they turned 21.

Mays, 17, and Richmond, 16, both wept, at times uncontrollably, as the verdict was announced. Mays buried his head in a handkerchief as defense attorneys rubbed his back. He later hugged his parents goodbye.

Richmond was able to stand and approach the victim's family and deliver a tearful apology before breaking down into the arms of court manager Fred Adballa Jr.

"I'm sorry," Richmond said through gasps and cries, "for putting you guys through this. I'm sorry."

[Related: Steubenville rape trial divides Ohio town]

Later, Richmond's biological father, Nathaniel, also addressed the court and the victim's family, placing some of the blame for his son's actions on his own life troubles and being an absentee father.

"Everyone knows I wasn't there for my son," Nathaniel Richmond said. "I feel responsible for his actions. I feel highly responsible for his actions."

The five-day trial of Mays and Richmond for the August 2012 rape of the West Virginia girl, who had come across the Ohio River for a night of partying, engulfed this old mill town in the eastern part of the state. Both boys are members of the high-profile and historically successful Big Red football team at Steubenville High School, which serves as a point of pride for the city dealing with economic hardship after the collapse of the steel industry.

Trent Mays, left, gets a hug from his father after Trent was found guilty of rape. (AP)Put in the spotlight was the local football team, which, critics said, allowed players to brazenly operate seemingly above the law for years. Social-media accounts, self-made videos, photos and classless text messages exposed an entire world that seemed like a Hollywood script of a high school team out of control.

It also exposed a teenage culture of weak ethics, rampant alcohol abuse and poor family structures that wound up dooming Mays and Richmond, both of whom had promising futures and no criminal past.

After the verdict, Nathaniel Richmond approached the defense table and held his son for a prolonged period. According to defense attorney Walter Madison – who was overcome with tears for what he said was the first time in his legal career – the elder Richmond told his son he loved him.

"I knew he realized he loved him, but he never told him [before]," Madison said. "So it took this."

It took this for a lot of things to come to light.

Rape, experts say, is a crime of power and control more than sex. Underlying all of that is arrogance, and in Steubenville it was taken to the extreme.

Throughout this trial, the two defendants and a parade of friends who wound up mostly testifying against the defendants, expressed little understanding of rape – let alone common decency or respect for women. Despite the conviction, the defendants likely don't view themselves as rapists, at least not the classic sense of a man hiding in the shadows.

[Related: Opening day of Steubenville rape trial focuses on key photo of girl]

"It wasn't violent," explained teammate Evan Westlake when asked why he didn't stop the two defendants as they abused a non-moving girl that Westlake knew to be highly intoxicated. "I always pictured it as forcing yourself on someone."

That was part of the arrogance.

Arrogance from the defendants. Arrogance from the friends. Arrogance within the culture.

Arrogance based on the fact that this night, witnesses testified over and over, wasn't strikingly different than any other night in the life of a Big Red football player.

The boys drank. They drove around. They went to each other's houses until 2, 3, 4 in the morning. They exploited permissive parents who let the party continue. They, according to so many locals, knew there were bars that would serve them, liquor stores that would supply them and adults who would look the other way. They were football players being football players.

They slept wherever and whenever they crashed, preferably with some girl. Any girl.

They were allowed the freedoms of young adults, yet lacked the maturity to handle that freedom.

"The entitlement we heard during testimony, it didn't seem like any empathy or support for the victim," said Katie Hanna, statewide director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. "To see these things happen and to say, 'I don't recall; I didn't think it was a bad thing; I just thought this was OK.' It suggests that this was commonplace behavior."

[Related: Focus of Steubenville trial shifts to teens' text messages]

Two protesters hug after hearing the verdict in the trial of Mays and Richmond. (Reuters)It's not that these kids were pure evil. Far from it. Most were headed to college or the military. They appeared presentable. Richmond, who came from a troubled family background, had seemingly turned the corner. As a sophomore about to be a starter on the varsity, his future was bright.

"Everything he was working to get away from, he was headed in [the right] direction," said Madison, his attorney.

In some actions, this was obvious. In others, it clearly was not. It was that way for everyone, charged or not.

At one point of the night of the incident, Westlake, who was sober, determined that his friend Mark Cole was too drunk to make a 10-minute drive home. At first, Cole refused to turn over his keys, claiming he could operate his Volkswagen Jetta just fine. Westlake was undeterred, though, eventually "tricking" Cole by waiting for him to relax and then forcibly seizing the keys.

Yet maybe a half-hour later, Westlake walked in on the girl, sprawled out naked in the middle of a basement floor. To her side was Mays, exposed and slapping his penis on the girl's hip. Behind her was Richmond, who, Westlake said, was violating her with two fingers.

Westlake said goodbye to the guys and kept walking. A good friend with his eye on the safety of others just minutes before was suddenly unaware or unsure of what to do – or simply uncaring enough to do anything at all.

"Something has gotten in there that said, 'OK, we need to prevent drinking and driving,' " Hanna said. "We need to take it to that level with preventing sexual assault."

Earlier in the night, the girl sat in the middle of the street in front of one of the player's homes, leaning over slightly and puking. She was a mess, in need of significant help. One of the boys – no one recalls who exactly – took her shirt off so she wouldn't stain it, but then left her sitting there in just shorts and a bra.

Soon, a group of the teenagers were laughing at the girl and her sorry state. One kid, Patrick Pizzoferrato, pulled out $3 and said he'd give it to anyone who urinated on her.

"I made it as a joke," Pizzoferrato testified. "… I don't think anyone thought I was serious when I said that."

It stands to reason that Pizzoferrato was being truthful. No one took him up on it. After a night of partying, surrounded by friends, never assuming that whatever he said would wind up in the center of a closely followed criminal proceeding, Pizzoferrato was making a crude and immature joke. He's a high school kid. They aren't known for tact.

Yet along with the joke came nothing else. No one thought to get the girl real help, to call her friends, to take her home, to assure she was safe and watched. She was just another drunk chick to be mocked, scooped up and used.

[Related: Did conviction in Steubenville trial come at a cost?]

Within minutes, Mays was fondling her in the backseat of a crowded car while his buddy Cole filmed the act on his cell phone.

Arrogance? Arrogance is looking at a girl in desperate need of help, looking at a friend who was committing an obvious felony and deciding what the moment called for was an impromptu porn shoot.

It also was this colossal arrogance that doomed the defendants and everyone involved. The hubris of their high school good life causing a downfall that will be felt – even by those who escaped prosecution – for a lifetime.

Mays, 17, was also found guilty of transmission of nude photos of the 16-year-old girl. (AP)The girl testified she woke up with no recollection of what happened. It wasn't until she began hearing the chatter on social media and eventually saw a picture of herself just after the incident that she believed she'd been attacked.

Had nothing been said, shot or sent, this would've been just another night, like sadly so many anywhere in America with a confused girl wondering what really happened.

Instead, this group of teens, so full of an overabundance of self worth, filmed and documented the crime, perhaps never assuming anyone would see it for what it was.

They basically told the victim about it. Their friends essentially took real-time crime-scene photos for the cops. Of course, this was only possible because Mays and Richmond were more than comfortable committing the crime right in front of witnesses in the first place.

Mays, in particular, essentially confessed to the crime via hundreds of text messages over the next few days – ranging from profound bravado in the immediate aftermath, to matter-of-fact statements the next day, to a panicked attempted cover-up and witness control as reality began to set in.

Mays all but wrote out the prosecution's closing arguments.

Yes, this was extreme arrogance. The arrogance to not just joke and brag like the teenage boys they were, but to commit those jokes to text messages, to snap a photo of the girl being carried out like she was a casualty coming off a battle field. Even guys who weren't there sat around a basement laughing about how "the dead girl" was "so raped."

[Related: Victim testifies during fourth day of Steubenville rape trial]

The arrogance to assume everyone else would think like them, to take outlandish jokes told in private and put them on YouTube for everyone to see. It's one thing to say something stupid. It's another to promote it to the world.

Only, they later found out – harshly – that the rest of the world didn't find it such a laughing matter.

Steubenville has a long and colorful history of organized crime, an Appalachian river town full of gambling, booze and bootlegging, of corrupt politicians and crooked union bosses thriving through the decades.

The Big Red players were disorganized crime. No secrets. No code words. No shame. They neither grasped the depth of the crime nor the unrelenting pressure of true authority – not their compliant parents or ball coach, but a legal system that didn't care a whit about Steubenville High football.

Steubenville's football program has long been a source of pride in the community. (Reuters)For all the rumors and speculation around town of cover-ups and favoritism being played, the authorities did their job. There is zero indication the Steubenville police did anything but aggressively and swiftly investigate the charges.

When understandable conflicts of interest – only 18,000 people live in the city and everyone knows everyone – arose in the local prosecutors office, the case was handed over to the state's attorney general out of Columbus. A judge was brought in from across the state, near Cincinnati. And it was Judge Lipps, not anyone around Steubenville, who granted immunity to the witnesses.

Meanwhile, attorney general Mike DeWine called on Sunday for a grand jury to continue an investigation into the case.

"This community desperately needs to have this behind them," DeWine said. "But this community also desperately needs to know justice was done and that no stone was left unturned."

It's still hard to say if Mays and Richmond ever grasped the trouble they were in until Sunday.

Mays knew enough to grow concerned. The girl was never sure whether to press charges, but once her parents found out, there would be no doubt. They culled social media for clues and walked into the Steubenville Police Department with a flash drive of evidence.

Just prior to that, Mays became panicked and texted the girl.

"I'm about to get kicked off my football team," Mays wrote.

"The more you bring up football, the more pissed I get," the girl wrote back. "Because that's like all you care about."

Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were soon arrested after that text exchange. Legendary coach Reno Saccoccia couldn't help them now. The power of Big Red, their families' good names, their otherwise clean pasts and strong futures, meant nothing.

A culture of arrogance created a group mindset of debauchery and disrespect, of misplaced manhood and lost morality.

Drunk on their own small-town greatness, they operated unaware of common decency until they went too far, wrote too much, bragged too many times and, finally, on a cold Sunday morning, were hauled out of a small third-floor courtroom as a couple of common criminals.

Their ride to the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility was waiting for them out back, two floors down, out in the real world.
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Thread by: Amaury, Mar 18, 2013, 29 replies, in forum: Current Events
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Name Change for Mark

Mark, you should name yourself Loli King. Do ittttt!

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 16, 2013, 79 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Meanies

Today:

Dear AmauryGarcia,

Your video "Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories Walkthrough - Part 1: Opening", may have content that is owned or licensed by EMI_Music_Japan. As a result, the video’s audio has been muted.

Visit your Copyright Notice page for more details on the policy applied to your video.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team
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3/10/2013:

Dear AmauryGarcia,

Your video "Kingdom Hearts II Walkthrough - Part 27/27: The Final Battles", may have content that is owned or licensed by EMI_Music_Japan. As a result, the video’s audio has been muted.

Visit your Copyright Notice page for more details on the policy applied to your video.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team
Click to expand...

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 15, 2013, 6 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Call Me Yut

I'm from Little Wing, an organization located on Clad 6.

My name is Yut Jun Yunkers, but you can just call me Yut. I'm also 15. :)

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 14, 2013, 11 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
No Activity in The Spam Zone since 4:31 PM PDT and Facebook

Let's fix that.

*creates thread*

Also, Facebook seems to have added sounds for when you get notifications, such as comments being posted.

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 14, 2013, 9 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Death Sentence

Feel free to move this to the Debate Corner if it's more appropriate there, staff. c:

Anyway, what are your thoughts on execution? This is only under extreme circumstances that it's done, of course.

Personally, I'm all for punishing hardcore criminals, but I still think if you execute a human for, say, committing the highest degree of murder, you're doing to them what they did to others.

I dunno. I don't really like execution. Just jail them for life.

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 14, 2013, 44 replies, in forum: Discussion
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The Something Anything Thread II

I love you, Llave. I do, I do, I do-oo!

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 14, 2013, 1 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Welcome Back, Chevalier!

Welcome back. Please give us your soul again.

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 13, 2013, 11 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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YouTube Has a New BETA Layout

Not particularly fond of it -- not for the time being, anyway. Switched back.

View attachment 35581

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 13, 2013, 6 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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So I Have the Place All to Myself

Well, almost. Below's here with me.

View attachment 35210

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 12, 2013, 20 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Arguing about Grammar Is Fun

OP of a Thread on Another Forum said:

Just heard a sports bulletin on the radio where the female announcer said;
"Manchester City are celebrating after winning Barnsley five nil."

I despair. That's it now. All hope is lost.
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A Comment by Amaury said:

They even had the nerve to incorrectly use "are," which should be "is."
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

I don't agree that this is incorrect. It is standard practice for an organisation of many people, such as a football club, to be referred to using the plural. "Manchester City is celebrating" sounds wrong to me because Manchester City is a club, the club itself is an inanimate body and cannot celebrate. The players, officials and fans of Manchester City are the people actually celebrating.
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A Comment by Anon. User 2 said:

It's nothing to do with inanimate or animate objects. It's a simple case of singular or plural, and in this case it's singular so is is right and are is wrong.
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

Bollocks. If the manager of Man City spoke on behalf of the club, he would say "we are celebrating", not "I am celebrating".

Same with councils, companies, political parties, any bodies consisting of a group of people.
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A Comment by Anon. User 2 said:

Of course, because that would be him and the club, ie plural.
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A Comment by Anon. User 2 said:

You wouldn't say the council of elders are celebrating, would you? No, you wouldn't.

You would say the council of elders is celebrating.

Thanks.
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

No, he is speaking on behalf of the club (of which he is part). A business will put out literature using "we" and "our products", even if it is just a sole trader.

Here are some examples of words and expressions that can be considered singular or plural:

choir, class, club, committee, company, family, government, jury, school, staff, team, union, the BBC, board of directors, the Conservative Party, Manchester United, the Ministry of Health

http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/v...l-singular.htm
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

In some cases, sports clubs have a plural name.

"Blackburn Rovers is celebrating" clearly sounds wrong (to me at least). Yet it is a single football club, no different to Manchester City.
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A Comment by Anon. User 2 said:

that's irrelevant. I don't say "the Church are" - bad luck. But I take your point about the words on the list.
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

Yes, I probably would, actually.
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A Comment by Anon. User 1 said:

The Church is an interesting exception. Even so, if you were referring to the congregation, I think it would be okay to say "the congregation are celebrating".

I'm not saying that the singular is wrong, these are all cases in which both singular and plural would be correct.
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A Comment by Amaury said:

What [Anon. 2] says is true. You don't go by what it contains, you go by the word itself.

For example, a group contains several people. However, you don't say, "The group are getting ready to go live." That just sounds wrong. You say, "The group is getting ready to go live."

The word "group" is singular regardless of there being several people in it; therefore, "is" is correct.

Now, if you wanted to use "are," you would need to pluralize "group" and make it "groups," and then "are" would be correct.
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Anon. User 1 said:

Amaury, as per the link I provided, the use of the plural for certain terms may be more prevalent in UK English than in American English. Nevertheless it is standard practice over here. For example "The board of directors have announced a profit", "City have won four games out of their last five", and so on.

There are inconsistencies in American English as well, for example you generally say "the United States is ...", whereas the 'correct' term would surely be "the United States are ...".
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Thread by: Amaury, Mar 11, 2013, 8 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Let's Have a Discussion about Iwantedtoexplode

He is constantly viewing the portal index and is therefore awesome.

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 10, 2013, 5 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Tomorrow Is Sunday

Remember to set all clocks that don't do it automatically ahead an hour.

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 9, 2013, 4 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
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Phone or Phone Battery?

Copy-paste from Facebook status, and I'm also including replies I got so far:

Amaury said:

So I think my cell phone's broken.

We were doing our grocery shopping at Fred Meyer this morning around 7:30 AM; I was getting us some maple bars and was putting my phone in my sweater pocket when it slipped out of my hands and fell on the ground. However, I'm not entirely sure if the phone is broken or maybe just needs a new battery. When I plugged the charger into it, nothing came up, so maybe it is the battery.

While people don't normally go, "Oh, hey! I'm going to drop my phone today," phone companies should build phones with padding of something in case they are ever dropped to protect them. Obviously, if you throw a phone really hard at the ground for whatever reason, probably nothing will protect it, but built-in padding would at least protect it from accidental drops. However, companies don't do **** and probably don't even consider the factor of people accidentally dropping their phones.
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A Facebook Friend said:

What kind of phone? If its one of those smartphones, there are protective cases like an Otterbox for them.
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Amaury said:

It's an LG smartphone from TracFone Wireless, Inc. And I do have a case that latches onto my pants for protection. However, since we have a budget when we do grocery shopping, I use (or used) the phone's calculator each time we add an item to keep track of what we're at so far.
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Same Facebook Friend said:

You can probably pick up an Otterbox for the phone, they are a touch pricey, like $50 to $60 for the higher end model, but considering the phone's retail value when you purchased it is ten times that, its a drop in the bucket. I have the Samsung Galaxy S and an Otterbox, and yes, I dropped a few times.
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Thread by: Amaury, Mar 9, 2013, 2 replies, in forum: Technology
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Some Police Are Corrupt

[DOUBLEPOST=1362786058][/DOUBLEPOST]
[DOUBLEPOST=1362786302][/DOUBLEPOST]
[DOUBLEPOST=1362787138][/DOUBLEPOST]

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 8, 2013, 2 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
This Is Incredible

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 8, 2013, 1 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Real Life Final Fantasy

I just love seeing real life Final Fantasy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yexDm3925VM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51gfigBfS7M

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 8, 2013, 4 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone
Thread
Let's Turn the Hotness Up

Thread by: Amaury, Mar 8, 2013, 3 replies, in forum: The Spam Zone

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