Amazing Soccer Skills

Check it out . . .

What keeps a train on the tracks? How sure are you?

What keeps a train on the tracks? Yeah, right, that flange on the inside of the wheels. Obvious right?

Wrong.

What I like about this information is not just how the truth of the matter, despite it having seemed obvious to me since I was a kid, is incorrect, but how the truth of the matter is so subtle and elegant and beautiful.

And isn't this always the pattern of discovery?  And how many other much more complicated truths do I hold that might be debunked by subtle, elegant, and beautiful re-understanding?  Lots, I hope.

First seen at www.boingboing.net

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Wow, some kind of time dilation . . .

Capital Punishment

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for James Holmes, the protagonist in the Aurora movie theater shootings last summer.  This raises in my mind the issue of capital punishment, and since I have a blog and a few minutes to kill...

If murder is wrong, then murdering a murderer is wrong.  If murder is illegal for citizens, murder should be illegal for the state.  The state has a right to defend itself, but incarceration is a sufficient self-defense, and I don't believe there should be state sanctioned vengeance for families and loved ones of victims. 

We don't assault those found guilty of assault.  We don't steal from those caught stealing.  We don't sexually offend sex offenders.  There is no sense to me in employing a punitive act which is itself the crime we are punishing.

To me, these things are self evident.