Thursday, December 18, 2014

gotta back date this to December 14

Dagnabitanyway...always a day or few late and two-bits short.

Anyway, recently we (should have) celebrated the 70th anniversary of the passing of Lupe Velez, the patron saint of unintended consequences:



Sunday, December 14, 2014

....Moral Dilemmas....

 

Basic Setup.

Senator Michele Bachmann is standing on a railroad track eating a hot dog and and making provocative eye contact. A runaway boxcar of illegal immigrant children is heading towards a rail switch. If you divert the boxcar it will not hit the Senator and everyone will live.

What do you do?

What if by not diverting the boxcar everyone lives?

What if not diverting the boxcar causes the children to live but Michele dies anyway?

Or vice versa?

Or not?

Or.

Instead of undocumented children, the boxcar holds cute puppies?

Then.

Rather than Senator Bachman, what if it's Senator Elizabeth Warren?

Eating a vegan hotdog in a gluten free bun?

With or with out the provocative look?

Modulo cute puppies?

Now.

What if it's actually Senator Ted Cruz on the tracks and, instead of cute puppies, it's a boxcar of frozen bull semen?

Or, rather than bull semen, it's the irreplaceable genetic material of all Google employees worldwide?


New Scenerio.

Two trains are on opposite tracks. One holds all the Democratic members of Congress and the other all the Republican members. There is a switch which will cause them to collide resulting in the death of all passengers.

What do you do?

Before or after Jan 3, 2015?

What if, rather than dead, they are all maimed for life?

Or maybe just deep psychological trauma?

To sweeten the deal, what if the Supreme Court is also asleep at the switch where the trains will collide?

Minus Justice Ginsburg who has stepped out for a cup of tea with Senator Warren?


Then....

What if....

Oh never mind.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

gratituitous 12.13.14 post

I hate to miss my last chance to log onto a sequential date (in the US and subsidiaries) this century, so here's a timelapse video of the Grand Canyon at high tide two days ago:

To my simple mind the next chance for any kind of rudimentary intelligence test dating sequence will be 5.10.15. See ya then!

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Another (very) Modest Proposal

I just read that James Watson is auctioning his Nobel medal -- 1962 Medicine (DNA) -- at Christie's on Dec 4 due to a cash flow problem resulting from some clueless past pronouncements.

It's too late to do anything about it now, but wouldn't it have been grand to do a kickstarter to fund buying it in order to award it to Rosalind Franklin's -- 1920–1958 (DNA) -- heirs?

I know, I know, the Nobel is only awarded to the living. But if she actually beat the W/C/W team to the punch then maybe they didn't really deserve those medals.

always a few dollars short of a load