OMG people who ask for gas money for short trips that they were going to make alone anyway ****ing tilt me. We used to engineer our entire weekends around not including this one guy who would do this, and this is at military technical training where virtually no one has a car. We would just rather pay a cab driver than this ****face.

The murderer likely had a pretty big reason to do it which I can at least analyze and judge. If they didn't then they're not really part of this whole discussion since they're insane.

Assume that you agreed with whatever killing was done. Might be a stretch for some who think that it's always wrong, but self defense or being pissed that a guy just slaughtered your family seem like pretty easy agreeable reasons to kill someone.

I guess the only time I'd go back and agree that sneaking into a movie was OK would be something on the order of there being a test on it in school, you have no money, and need to see it for some greater purpose other than entertainment.

I think the part that everyone is ignoring is that if it was a huge crime, there's a huge reason for it that could potentially be a reason that I'd judge as "OK." If not, then it's the same as the serial petty theft.

Note that I've never done any of the things that I said, and there is an overwhelmingly high chance that I'd never do those things anyhow, but at least I can imagine a situation where I would. I cannot imagine sneaking into a movie for no purpose other than entertainment, since the humiliation of doing something so petty would strongly outweigh it.

I guess the only petty things that I do are things like speeding, or sometimes turning left when there's a red arrow but a green light when I'm on my bike and the sensor doesn't pick me up to ever give me a green. These are breaking traffic rules, but not violating what I see as reasonable interaction with other people.

Wow, Duke, confirming that suspicion of lunacy that's been bouncing around for a while. Strike that man off the Closet Crazies list.

Then again, you read his last post (slow pony!) and you can see what he means, at least. I mean, I, too, can think of reasons to kill people, but not to steal a tin of Altoids. That said, the big things are definitely wronger than the little things. Crimes are not defined by how big a man they make you, but rather how much harm they cause.

... so you weren't leveling?

Tom Ames,

"I was recently involved in a wedding where the groom's family threw the rehearsal dinner of hamburgers and deer sausage cooked and served in their backyard and tried to exclude ancillary members of the wedding party as well as spouses/SOs of members of the wedding party. I did my best to encourage everyone who showed up for the rehearsal to attend the rehearsal dinner."

Your actions here might be the most bull**it thing I've read in this whole thread.

In the soda scenario, what if you were diabetic and dangerously low on blood sugar and didn't have a dollar or w/e a drink costs?

1) Homicide and murder are not the same

2) You might be insane

Nope. It is conceivable that I would at least respect the motivations behind the burning down buildings (or blowing them up, or whatever). It is far less likely that I would be able to respect the thought process that goes into cheating in a home game. Violating principles and screwing over what are at least acquaintances for a couple thousand bucks is sickening.

Do people not feel sick thinking about screwing over others for pennies?

To further explain (and I won't waste a ton of time explaining this because you either get it or you don't): Let's say that screwing people over makes me feel X bad, and I profit Y by doing it. My X is really big. For me to screw over a friend we're talking a ridiculous amount of profit that I would need to outweigh it. Probably more profit than anyone on this forum ever had. Y needs to be bigger than X to do it. Now assume the drive-by. I am obviously super pissed off about something (whatever it is, that's irrelevant as this is hypothetical) that the target did. That serves to make Y get a lot bigger, and decreases X at the same time. This is pretty straightforward and should make sense to anyone.

What I'm saying is that I can imagine far fewer situations where Y gets bigger than X to tip the scales in favor of home game cheating than Y getting bigger than X in a situation where I really want someone dead.

So the point is not that if given the choice between cheating and blowing up a building I'd choose building. It's that there are basically no situations where I'd cheat and I can at least make up some situations where I'd go ape ****.

Since I can imagine situations where I'd do it, there is a far better chance that I'd sympathize with someone else who did.

A: there's a large difference between screwing over a home game and sneaking into a movie theater/shoplifting

B: while appeal to majority is hardly a good thing, i bet you'd find that the majority of people (in the US) have done stuff like this (fwiw i've never shoplifted or snuck into a movie theater so i'm not just excusing my own actions)

C: i understand what you're saying, but it's [censored]. you are failing to take into account the thrill that comes with these minor 'crimes'.

Then I think this is fine, and wouldn't look at it as stingy behavior. That makes sense to do. I did not consider that possibility, as I do not have low blood sugar.

No, but I'm pretty sure I was at least a little misunderstood. Hopefully later posts cleared it up.

Yeah I just don't respect that as a reason and don't feel it myself. I just feel sick thinking about it.

My ex-wife's grandmother would supposedly make her husband live in the garage periodically so she could rent his room out to boarders. It sounds crazy, but the whole family swore it was true. They were both eccentrics and had a very contentious marriage.

If your X (representing the amount that you feel bad about something) when you move from cheating at a home game (and depriving 3 or 4 people of their presumably disposable income) to blowing up a building (and killing dozens or hundreds of people that have never done anything to you) because you are enraged, than you're a mental case.

Here's what people do because they are enraged: they punch a wall. They punch a person. They may even kill a person. I say this as someone who had a certain amount of sympathy for the man that raped his son's rapist overseas a few months ago. Some things should be absolutely unthinkable. Blowing up a building should be one of those things.

You must be writing idiocy like this just to see who will bite. What is the major difference between killing a person and blowing up a buidling? Are buildings more important than people? Consider me trolled.

At least we're on the same page now and agree to disagree about how wrong it is to violate trust on a personal level (which a lot of these stinginess stories are about).

As far as practical application of our discoveries: on the spectrum of "unthinkable" things, you're closer to the guy who wouldn't even kill someone in self defense than I am. The guy who would actually blow up a building is still pretty far away from either of us.

Take a guy who blows up an abortion clinic. I completely disagree with it on every level (I'm not even against abortion) and disagree with the validity of his motivation. But at least I can see how what he did was saving a bunch of lives by taking out people who were committing murder, from his point of view. Despite disagreeing with every aspect of his behavior, I can at least rationalize it.

You're very wrong about that IMO. There is far more to the story than I posted, of course. And I won't even get into the dysfuncionality of the groom's family.

The people I encouraged to attend the rehearsal "dinner" were essential to being at the rehearsal (a few SO's excepted). The dinner was immediately following the rehearsal but a few miles away. The groom was instructed to "remind" people at the rehearsal that the "dinner" was only for the bride, groom, their families, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen. No exclusions had been mentioned prior to that. The people I encouraged to attend the dinner were those people's SO's as well as a few others who were required to be at the rehearsal.

Had it been a lavish to-do somewhere and the specifics given in advance, I'd have behaved differently. But for a burger cookout in the backyard with no alcoholic beverages, I'll take my chances on having bought myself an eternity near the River Styx.

This thread really went downhill from ohhhh about post #615 hence.

Back on track:

Not paying $1k extra to have a heater installed in an outdoor pool when the pool was already costing $32k. Said pool is now only usable for half the year instead of the whole year (it's windy and water gets cold fast in vegas, despite daytime highs being more than reasonable for swimming). Good job, dad.

My dad's dad used to go get unsold christmas trees after christmas to let rot in his back yard and fertilize his garden.

Actual theft: my dad's dad had friends who would steal him truckloads of tires to sell in his gas station and obviously undercut everyone else on price.

Having himself and his family do all maintenance work on 4 apartment buildings that he owned back in the 50s.

My mom used to have to put cardboard in her shoes when a hole was worn in them since she only got a new pair every year, and they didn't make them very well then. Her half brother got several pairs a year. It was his dad who they lived with.

Yeah should have been a new thread. Sorry about that.

and yet you can't rationalize that it might be fun to sneak into a movie theater? this is like, borderline sociopathic.

anyway, trying to get this thread back on track, i also knew a guy who picked up half-used cigarette butts and smoked them, but he went to an expensive private university and his parents were millionaires.

Said building presumably has lots of randoms in it, dog.

Right, but how is one life ok but many lives "unthinkable"?

Well, the many lives have to be nearly all innocent bystanders, whereas a single person could easily be a just target ('just' if you like.) Anybody can make a case for justifiable or at least highly sympathetic homicide. Tough to feel great about demo-ing an occupied structure unless you're just the kind of 'gro who jacks off to Iraq War footage.

Go to the other thread!

Mods please move related posts to that one. It seems like it shouldn't be tarding up this thread.