Capital Punishment. And other lesser stuff.

I saw "Monster's Ball" sometime this week. Interesting movie, if nothing else. It's the movie that won Halle Berry an Oscar. I am a big Halle Berry fan (not of her award-winning speech at the Oscar ceremony though!). And there's no denying the fact that she is great in this movie. It is not an entertainer type movie. More the heavy serious-undertone type. To me, it brought up a lot of questions about capital punishment. There has been a lot ot talk about this, Dhananjoy Chatterjee and blah. I agree that his crime was hideous. And I agree that the victim's family want to avenge the crime. Avenge - a harsh but true word. I cannot even begin to think of how we can prevent such things from happening. So there are two aspects to this:

1. Avenging the crime: I have 2 points against capital punishments as a means of avenging a crime. One: What right have we to take a life away? Abolsutely none. Two: Is death a "bad enough" punishment? Isn't it just an easy release of all the torture and guilt (if any)?

2. Future prevention: One way of looking at it is that the fear of death is so overwhelming that it will frighten people into being good. Maybe. Maybe not. In keeping with point Two made above, we can probably come up with a lot worse than just ending a life.

I have been delinquent in keeping my blog updated. But then, I haven't been upto anything too exciting. Got quite some good news this past week, one friend is off to India for her engagement, another one landed herself her job in (guess where?) California!! And a couple of my Michigan friends plan to come out here in October. My sister and bro-in-law come out here for Thanksgiving! Come to think of it, that is exciting! Actually more exciting stuff happened too...