…when your dad robs the pizza parlor where you work?
Category Archives: Weird
I’m Not Sure I Want To Know
How do you cut off your own head with a chainsaw? You’ve got to think that he bypassed some safety features…
Now This Has Potential
We can capture a powerful greenhouse gas and store energy at the same time. Just imagine pastures full of this.
It has squirrel undies beat hands down. Errr…so to speak.
And People Say That Things Aren’t Improving
It’s a wondrous age in which we live in (to paraphrase Paul McCartney), that has underpants for squirrels.
And Now For Something Completely Different
Behold: subatomic particle plush toys. Hey, it’s less than six months until Christmas.
Failed Darwin Attempt
First off, let me say that I was not previously aware of a web site called Weird Asia News. But given how many people live in Asia (and how generally weird the place is, at least to non-Asians), it’s an obvious and probably abundant source for such stuff.
Anyway, here’s a fun one–a Peeping Tom who fell ten stories while trying to video a woman in a shower with a cell phone. And survived.
And naturally, there’s an amusing Free Republic thread devoted to the incident.
More Vampire Rights
Jon Schaff, who started the subject, has what he hopes is the last word. I have to confess being a little lost in the conversation, not having been a Buffy fan.
And if it’s the end of the vampire discussion, perhaps it’s time we moved on. To zombies.
[Update mid-Friday afternoon]
Well, I should have Googled the subject; we could have saved ourselves a lot of discussion. Here’s a Rothbardian treatise on the subject from three years ago:
In The Ethics of Liberty, his great reconciliation of Austrian economics and natural law ethics, Murray Rothbard commented that a new species of beings having “the characteristics, the nature of the legendary vampire, and [that] could only exist by feeding on human blood”(1) would not be entitled to individual rights, regardless of their intelligence, because of their status as deadly enemies of humanity. I wish to discuss this issue in more detail and argue that Rothbard, who was kind of a night owl himself, was unfair to those mysterious creatures. The libertarian theory of justice would in fact easily allow for a peaceful coexistence with vampires.
But of course. Just no non-consensual neck biting.
Pressing (Non)Human Rights Issue Du Jour
Jonah wants to know if an atheist would think that vampires have rights.
I guess that they probably have some rights. I mean, I’m willing to grant them the right to be a vampire. That is, if they want to live forever, turn into a bat occasionally, not show up in mirrors, and avoid sunlight and garlic and crosses, and so on, it’s no skin off my nose (or blood out of my neck). But (like some conservatives’ view of homosexuals), I’m not willing to grant them a right to indulge in their (un)natural desire to drink blood. Particularly mine. I think that the Christian formulation would be hate the blood sucking, but love the vampire. But of course, this was about what atheists think.
Though if the blood sucking is consensual, it might be all right. But can it really be consensual? I mean, the consent can’t be very informed. You can describe what it’s like to be a vampire until the cows (and vampires) come home, but is that enough to allow someone to enter into such an arrangement
The blood sucking aside, though, I don’t see (given the limited thought I’ve given to the proposition) why vampires should have any fewer rights than the rest of us. It certainly seems discriminatory, and a hate crime of the first rank, to think that one has license to stick wooden stakes through their hearts, simply because they’re vampires. But if they’ve been engaged in non-consensual insanguination and vampire recruitment, then it seems as though it would be a preemptive act of self defense, albeit taking the law into one’s own hands.
Sorry, fascinating topic, but I think I’m starting to ramble. If I gave it more thought, I might come up with a more coherent treatise.
* Come to think of it, this has some parallels to some conservatives’ argument that gays have to “recruit” young boys, because they’re unable to procreate. This is a notion that I always thought nonsensical–no one can be “recruited” to be gay unless they’re already at least bisexual. I have never been unsure about my sexuality–was approached once when I was fourteen or so, and I wasn’t recruited–I was disgusted at the thought.
Not Familiar With The Concept
Here’s one for the stupid criminal files. We’ve all heard of putting nylons over your head to conceal your face, but here are a couple mental defectives who robbed a gas station wearing thongs on their heads.
[Via Jonah’s Odd Link Gal, who should just get her own blog]
I Hate When That Happens
It’s a pretty common occurrence for a little kid to be disappointed when he loses his grip on his balloon, but this is in a different class entirely:
The former paratrooper had hoped his “Big Jump” — starting 40 kilometers (25 miles) above the Earth’s surface — would set new records for the highest jump, fastest and longest free fall and the highest altitude reached by a man in a balloon.
But those hopes drifted away over the plains of Saskatchewan in Canada when the balloon escaped.
I think he should give up on the balloon thing, and just wait for a rocket ride.