23 December 2010

"Hello, Clarisse..."

Just picked up some lamb chops for dinner, which shall be served extra rare.

  • For real people, we have life sentences (or the death penalty, which is essentially meaningless and even pragmatically a bad idea). For unnatural persons, we don't... and rehabilitation just doesn't seem to work for them. <SARCASM> "Limited liability" really means "limited liability." Maybe we should try treating their "parents" — passive investor funds and third-generation plutocrats — as sociopaths instead. </SARCASM>
  • The uniform of business (except on tropical archipelagoes) seems unlikely to survive if we ever get off this planet... which might lead to some interesting speculation about red velour shirts and black polyester trousers with no pockets, but that's for another time.
  • Marijuana, abortion, taxation, and e-books — let's try to discuss one of them rationally. (I should add that Mr Cornell's first point fails when one considers the rising tide of paperback originals, but it's still an interesting list.)
  • Science isn't about learning facts by rote; it's about a method, which includes laboratory work — and one can never tell what eight-year-olds might discover with an experiment. What is saddening, in a way, about this article is not that it happened... but that it's so exceptional.