Imagine you could make fuel out of poor people. The only downside is that the poor people have to be converted to a combustible liquid in the process. Imagine that although there are many alternatives to using poor people as fuel, those alternatives cost way more. In fact, the alternatives are so much more expensive, widespread use would impact your standard of living by about twenty percent.

Obviously using humans for fuel would be wrong and you wouldn’t do it. But I’m not done confusing your moral compass.

Now let’s say the people who are used as fuel are volunteers, of a sort. For every twenty people who volunteer to become SUV fuel, only one will be randomly selected. The other nineteen get a host of benefits including pensions and paid educations. Let’s say human fuel is so economical that one human converted to fuel pays for the benefits to the other nineteen. And the one poor person fuels an entire town’s energy needs for a year.

In this scenario, you’d be powering your car with liquefied poor people, but your conscience would be cleared by the knowledge they all volunteered. It’s a free country. They took the chance of being one of the nineteen lucky ones, but it didn’t work out. Some volunteered because they thought it was their best chance for upward mobility. Some thought it was their patriotic duty. But it was their decision. No one forced them.

Let’s say the politicians argue that in the long run, this policy of using poor people for fuel will save lives. The thinking is that we’ll eventually develop other fuel sources, but for now we need the strong economy to pay for health care and a strong national defense against terrorists and whatnot. All of the volunteers are hailed as heroes.

Under those conditions would you use poor people to fuel your car?

Bonus question: Are you already doing something close to that?

Be all that you can be.

Scott Adams: Fuel

I don't think I can do a better media commentary job then this image does. It's one of those picture-worth-a-thousand-words moments.

The parliamentary report featured a handful of cases of mistaken identity, the most prominent of which was the ordeal of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen suspected of terrorist ties and packed off to his native Syria in 2002.

“But the Canadians say there’s absolutely no evidence,” countered Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

“I would certainly not apologize to him, sir.”

The CIA, he added, is not “in the business of cleaning up afterwards. We’re in the business of pre-emption.”

But, Delahunt persisted, “What about those who are clearly eventually determined to be innocent?”

“Mistakes are made, sir.”

“Mistakes are made.”

“That’s right,” Scheuer said. “They’re not Americans, and I really don’t care.” He spread his arms, smiling. “It’s just a mistake.”

Maybe I can't handle the truth, but is it really necessary for you to be an asshole?

It gets even better...

Not even John O’Neill, the late, legendary FBI counterterrorism agent who died in the World Trade Center inferno, escaped one of Scheuer’s shots.

Delahunt reminded Scheuer that the CIA man had once said O’Neill “was interested only in furthering his career and disguising the rank incompetence of senior FBI leaders.”

“Yes, sir,” said Scheuer, peering back through light-reflecting glasses.

“I think I also said that the only good thing that happened to America on 11 September,” he said, “is that the building fell on him, sir.”

This entire situation is proof that you can say absolute anything, as long as you end it with "sir".

CQ Homeland Security - A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

This is troubling. Comments on Slashdot are informative. Its not really clear there is a problem here beyond the fact that Ohio (like many states) has a partisan appointee running their elections commission and they picked the same outsourcing partner. I think elections in the US should be operated by the federal government. Basically, the propriety of Ohio's elections impacts who my President is, and so I ought to have a say in how they operate their election.

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results

The godfather of modern hip-hop has decided enough is enough. Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam records and the inspiration behind bands as diverse as Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, is as sick of the lazy vulgarity of rap music as many of the rest of us.

Yesterday, he called for a voluntary ban on the three words he considers the most unacceptable, and among the most common, describing "bitch", "ho" and "nigger" as "extreme curse words" that were inconsistent with any sense of social responsibility by rap artists or their record companies.

"The words 'bitch' and 'ho' are utterly derogatory and disrespectful of the painful, hurtful, misogyny that, in particular, African American women have experienced in the United States," Simmons' organisation, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said in a statement.

"The word 'nigger' is a racially derogatory term that disrespects the pain, suffering, history of racial oppression and multiple forms of racism against African Americans and other people of colour," it added.

CNN is focusing on this today.

Russell Simmons: Stop using all this bad language

A jet flying in formation with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels precision flying team crashed into a Beaufort, South Carolina, neighborhood, causing an "enormous fireball" during an air show, authorities said.

The Navy aviator was killed, Beaufort County Coroner Curt Copeland said. The F/A-18's pilot is the only known fatality. The aviator's name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

My condolences go out to the family of the dead aviator and the other members of the team. I am a huge fan of the Blue Angels. I have seen them preform at least 4 times now, and every time I'm always in awe.

In particular, when I've seen them preform over San Francisco. It's an amazing thing to behold. The people who make that team are unbelievably skilled..

Blue Angels jet crashes during air show, killing aviator - CNN.com

What we have here is an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education by the author of a book about Charles Whitman.

Indeed, it is our mission in higher education to investigate and determine, as best we can, if there are "dots" to be connected. But during our inquiry we should not delude ourselves or ignore the obvious.

The Whitman case taught me that sometimes our zeal to champion causes important to us or to explain the unexplainable and be "enlightened" blinds us to the obvious.

... sensational questions from irresponsible reporters ...

As long as we value living in a free society, we will be vulnerable to those who do harm -- because they want to and know how to do it.

How quickly people forget the message of Tom Friedman, just because the context is domestic instead of foreign.

A collection from the archives, for your consideration:

AQ Khan has signed a detailed confession ...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... your super-empowered man.

One day you wake up... and chaotic evil just doesn't seem like the right alignment for you any more.

Peking Duct Tape, and Web Logs as Weapons:

There has always been a World of Disorder, but what makes it more dangerous today is that in a networked universe, with widely diffused technologies, open borders and a highly integrated global financial and Internet system, very small groups of people can amass huge amounts of power to disrupt the World of Order. Individuals can become super-empowered.

In the long run, the "swarming" that really counts is the wide-scale mobilization of the global public.

To win, we must all become super-empowered individuals. Get happy, get angry, whatever; just get going.

The bloggers with agendas are, in fact, copycats, just with a different weapon.

Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly, unmediated by a state.

So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but also what I call "super-empowered individuals." Some of these super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful -- but all of them are now able to act much more directly and much more powerfully on the world stage.

A rant from Decius:

... we've got a problem, and probably an intractable one.

TIA is a solution to the "problem" of super-empowered individuals that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for much the same reason that I don't ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

The Legacy of the Texas Tower Sniper

Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I've about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

Ted Nugent chimes in...

Ted Nugent: Gun-free zones are recipe for disaster (CNN)

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you a new low in journalism...

Quoted below is the unedited above-the-jump text from a FoxNews story about the VT Tech shootings entitled: "Did the Devil Make Him Do it?"

When unexplained violence takes center stage, we tend to turn to modern psychology to explain it.

But there is an alternative explanation, one that has been played out in film, stage and writings since the beginning of history.

Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?

Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil? Could that explain the massacre at Virginia Tech?

Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, shouts an unequivocal “Yes!”

“Based on what I’ve seen in the news," Roberts said in an interview, "there’s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin."

Just when you thought the posturing about Cho couldn't get any more stupid..

Noah's recent posts on the Airborne Laser and reflected laser beams reminded me of a spoof on a Pentagon PowerPoint briefing that was making the rounds in the Defense Department a couple fiscal years ago. Better than any article, this briefing captures everything that is wrong, funny and horrifying about outrageous Pentagon weapons that sound too good to be true. I'm posting the briefing, called Directed Energy Sea Mammals, for those who weren't on the e-mail chain when it first came out. The author of the original Air Force PowerPoint is a mystery (I've also seen a Navy variant of it).

The presentation is question is quite amusing.

Danger Room - Flipper Fires Lasers in Air Force Brief