Reading Dostoevsky in Omsk

Yes, man is a pliable animal- he must be so defined: a being who grows accustomed to everything!

Is it possible that men so differently situated can feel in an equal degree the punishment inflicted? But why think about questions that are insoluble? The drum beats, and we must return to barracks.

Is it not rather the feeling that overwhelms you directly you enter the prison that in spite of all efforts, all precautions, it is impossible to turn a living man into a corpse, to stifle his feelings, his thirst for vengeance and for life, his passions, and his imperious desire to satisfy them? (Why people working with convicts fear them)

Reading House of the Dead, and this incredible article I read in Petersburg

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer

means I'm musing on crime and punishment lately. 

Ok and one more from the TV show Mr. Robot. 

We got back from the beach and I emptied my shoes out onto the floor.  My mom yelled at me, but my dad didn't get mad.  He told me about the millions of years it took for the sand to be made and put on the beach that then I brought home in my shoes.  Every day we change the world, and that made me feel good, until I considered how many days and years it would take me to move all the sand off the beach.  Every day we change the world, but to change it enough to matter takes more time than most of us have.