26 Nov

Just stare at my back

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, The Running Ape.

At our low-key family gathering today, I was encouraged by my mother to send the ten-year-old essay below to a couple of siblings of my brother-in-law, emerging runners both. She says that among every running-related thing I have ever written, this is the best (and she faithfully reads a lot of them despite having little actual interest in running herself). It’s not on the Web anywhere (it was once posted on the old Cool Running site), so I thought I would post it here.

“Just stare at my back!”

That phrase, tossed in mid-race over the knobby shoulder of a sixteen-year-old kid, stands as the greatest piece of racing advice I have heard, outlasting fifteen years of tactical hand-me-downs and carefully crafted stratagems and spanning hundreds of races and thousands of training miles. I have lived through scores of ups and downs since that 3200-meter contest unfolded in the New Hampshire twilight over a dozen years ago, but I’ll never forget Jeremy’s command, because it transcends this silly sport that I am – sometimes to my own amazement – still entwined in as my twenties draw unpretentiously toward a close. Continue reading

26 Nov

The elusive end of the dotted line

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, The Running Ape.

Four years ago today, I ran a four-mile road race (the Run 4 The Pies) in Tequesta Trace, Florida. Coming off limited training in the wake of a summer and fall marred by a sports hernia, booze, and the effects of Hurricane Wilma, I ran a ramshackle 21:32 for fourth place. Three days later I won the Space Coast Half-Marathon in Titusville, and a week after that I finished fourth in the Half-Marathon of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach. I was rounding into form faster than anticipated, but little did I know at the time that this triad of races would serve as the final spate of serious racing in my so-called running career. Continue reading

26 Nov

More lies and hilarity from Granite Grok

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics, Troglodytes at Play.

After former NH Republican Party chairman Fergus Cullen, whom I happened to run against in high school and who was later a Central Mass Striders teammate for several years, wrote an editorial deriding GraniteGrok.com in the wake of the Doug Lambert debacle, sole remaining Grokster Skip Murphy came out with guns blazing, or more accurately, popguns popping and squirt-guns dribbling.

This crew has had a hard-on for Fergus for years because he, like everyone not named Attila the Hun, is not nearly conservative enough and also has the temerity to criticize fellow Republicans where appropriate. Fergus’ column redoubled their hatred for him, which is funny because I’m sure he anticipated every last first-waving insult and impotent rebuttal Murphy has produced since the editorial as published. And, of course, it brought out the best of the typical Grok blogger and commenter’s prevarication skills and incompetence in various areas. Continue reading

20 Nov

How’re they hangin’, guys?

Posted by docbushwell in Catablogic Blathering, Nostalgic Reverie, Self-Indulgent Wankery.

While in the throes of working on my first investigational new drug (IND) application with its sketchy preclinical studies (and under a tight deadline), I happily distracted myself this evening with Jesse Bering’s Why do human testicles hang like that?

Continue reading

19 Nov

Crazy like a Foxx

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

I’m thinking that it’s official. Virginia Foxx, a member of the U.S. House representing North Carolina, is in the uppermost echelon of well-known distaff nutjobs, joining Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Carrie Prejean, and Victoria Jackson. If they were drugs, they’d be Schedule I controlled substances: absolutely no rationale for ever taking these people seriously.

Foxx is claiming that Republicans were the driving force behind the passage of civil-rights bills in the 1960’s and that Democrats were of little help. Her comments: Continue reading

19 Nov

“Shit My Dad Says”

Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy.

Note the quotes, as this isn’t about shit my own dad says (although I wish I’d compiled his greatest hits over the years; I once heard him swear for about ten minutes without repeating himself after coming inside after being ravaged by black flies during gardening work). It’s the name of a Twitter feed a 29-year-old named Justin Halpern started three and a half months ago. Already, his feed is followed by well over 800,000 people. Halpern moved in with his 73-year-old father earlier this year and, resuming a childhood habit, began keeping track of, as you might guess, the shit his dad said. A few examples: Continue reading

18 Nov

“Drunk history”

Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy.

Here’s another YouTube video I find unaccountably amusing. Note that Ben Franklin is portrayed by Jack Black.

18 Nov

Slate’s unauthorized index of Palin’s book

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics, Hootworthy.

This is some great stuff. I don’t know how many people were in on the job or how long it took, but I’m glad some clever editor conceived of the idea.

18 Nov

She’s baaaaaack

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

Sort of. Rabid (maybe even paranoid) anti-gay crusader and war-mongerer Judy Paris is no longer blogging for Granite Grok, but she’s been active in the comments section there lately and has only become more of a spectacle since I last saw any output from her.

I’ve been harassing Skip Murphy, the remaining Granite Grok blogger in the wake of Doug Lambert taking a break (and don’t ask me why the Monitor has found any of this newsworthy), because Skip, if anything, is even less able to string a sentence together or display any sense of awareness about the world than Doug is. If you enjoy Schadenfreude with your Wednesdays, have a look at some of these links: Continue reading

18 Nov

I have a T-shirt just like this

Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy.

Except that on mine, I’ve managed to not bastardize the ampersand beyond comprehension.

Then there’s this one. The subject must be grateful that her court-ordered electronic monitor lets her range as far as the nearest Wal-Mart.

Much more cheap hilarity at People of Wal-Mart.

17 Nov

Granite Grok dude loses show, column thanks to anti-gay comments

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

This is just too funny. For a couple of years now, I’ve written off and on about the antics of the clowns behind the right-wing blog Granite Grok. Not only are they imperceptive and functionally illiterate, but they also lie. There’s no crime in posting ridiculous opinions on a weblog, however couched (if I couldn’t be a merry asshole myself I wouldn’t even bother with this enterprise). After all, there are those God-fearing souls who find my opinions about religious belief to be just as ridiculous as I find theirs (pretend for a moment that they are not brainwashed) and would call for an end to this blog if they could. But when you spread misinformation either because you’re a liar or because you’re too fucking lazy to do even a superficial amount of research, you deserve to be nailed for it, and refusing to admit error–the chief hallmark of wingnuts everywhere–marks you as not only stupid but weak in every way that counts.

I recently wrote a post that derided Doug Lambert (one of two bloggers at Granite Grok, the other being the equally addled Skip Murphy) for his support for serial harpy and nutcase Michele Bachmann. As you can see, Doug in his one comment had absolutely nothing to say about my examples of Bachmann’s lunacy and incompetence, choosing instead to babble angrily about my supposed efforts to de-convert kids at a Catholic school: Continue reading

16 Nov

Histiocytic disease in dogs

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, The Medical Tent.

I saw Nubble again yesterday. She is doing fine for now. The blood in her right eye seems to have subsided a little, although the iris is still ruddish. The vet apparently claimed that she’s still blind in that eye, but this can’t be entirely true because when I waggled a thumb a couple of inches away from that eye, she blinked in response. The reaction was not quite as strong as that in her left eye–I could have my thumb about twice as far away on that side and still induce a blink reaction–but she’s definitely seeing shadows and movements out of her bad eye, at least. Anyway, I doubt she’s concerned with her own depth perception at this point. I’ve been functionally blind since the day I was born in my own right eye and it doesn’t limit me, as I have no aspirations of being in the military anymore and don’t plan to fly any jetliners or bat clean-up for A-Rod. Continue reading

16 Nov

Greeting foreign leaders in culturally appropriate ways = ANTI-AMERICANISM!

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

I really can’t get enough of superfluously bashing the useless Internet presence that less-than-flatteringly labels himself Gribbit, who in his real “life” is a functionally illiterate blowhard who likes spending his monthly SSDI disability check on bashing all things associated with liberalism.

The beetle-browed Gribbit is compelled by his reptilian sub-cerebral core to bash President Obama for the most trivial of “offenses,” and he’s done so now in a post brilliantly titled “Obama Bows To Yet ANOTHER Foreign Monarch” by bitching about the manner in which Obama recently greeted Emperor Akihito of Japan: with a traditional bow. I didn’t realize that Japan was an enemy of the state, but more to the point, I didn’t know that it was critical to avoid performing the symbolic equivalent of a handshake in order to preserve U.S. sovereignty. Continue reading

15 Nov

A post exactly like one I would write out of boredom

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, Uncategorized.

Lately my lack of motivation and focus has taken what should be a concerning turn. Ordinarily, when I fall behind in multiple areas at the same time, I at least become concerned about it even if my burgeoning stress levels don’t compel me to behave pragmatically and try to rectify matters. Lately I’ve been more of a Peter Gibbons (protagonist of Office Space) look-alike, preferring to remain utterly irresponsible while wearing a sleepy grin and for the most part not caring in any meaningful way about the possible consequences. It’s like I’m in a train rolling down the tracks toward a second train sitting on the same tracks, with access to the brake, and absently intent on awaiting the exact nature of the collision rather than trying to avert it.

I think I set a personal record in October in terms of the largest amount of disruption in I caused in any 28- to 31-day calendar period to the lives and well-being of of people I know. There’s plenty of competition out there, including both May and October of 2001, but I think I outdid myself last month. Every day, I deservedly field e-mails I can only respond to with grand excuses, philosophical distractions, or other forms of arrant bullshit. Over and over, I remind myself that I should override any primal instincts I might have when it comes to successfully managing any future romantic relationships (inasmuch as these are in fact “primal”) and just rely on the competency of the flexor carpi muscles and tendons of my right forelimb when it comes to assuaging all related drives.

I could have parlayed the contract work I did this year into something that would have carried me through 2010, but instead dropped the ball and am looking for something else. A couple weeks ago, I was actually offered a fairly lucrative contract job with a textbook publisher, but when I responded by e-mail to accept, the sender admitted that he’d sent the offer out to more applicants than he should have and that he did not, in fact, have anything for me to do after all. It’s good to know that others in a position to deal are as worthless and unreliable as I am.

I also withdrew from the running-book project I accepted in August. I fucking hate writing about running these days and have had my lifetime fill of it. The few proposals I have made to magazines in 2009 have been so awful that I have literally laughed when sending them along to editors. My own running is in the tank, not that I care (October is my favorite running month and I basically did nothing last month), and I hope to never again have my byline in a running-related article. I still follow the sport at the level of genuine sport and have strong connections to the half-dozen or so I continue to work with, but beyond that it’s a past chapter of my life and I’m astounded that it was ever anything I could have taken seriously myself, people to whom a have a rabid, earnest, and unyielding commitment notwithstanding. I’ve chosen these athletes carefully and am fully invested in helping them.

These days I just make sure I get in about five miles a day on foot (by some combination of jogging and walking) just to get outside. It’s funny; I had a few periods this year where I started to rally thinking I would want to race as a masters (40-and-over) runner come next year, but these never lasted more than a few weeks. But in deciding that it was acceptable to abandon the idea of racing and just be one of these people who runs to avoid getting fat or to boost general health, I understood that I was deluding myself. I’m not out to impress anyone these days and it’s never been my goal to live to be old.

So, anyway. I hope you don’t expect to get back the few minutes you spent reading this.

14 Nov

Animated video of Dock Ellis describing his LSD no-hitter

Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination.

This is an entertaining cartoon set to the audio of former Major League Baseball player Dock Ellis describing his throwing a no-hitter while in the throes of an acid trip. Ellis managed the feat in 1970 as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Part of his testimony about the no-fer:

“I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher’s) glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn’t hit hard and never reached me.”

Ellis died last year at 63.

13 Nov

Nubble’s formal medical diagnosis

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery.

I’m going to override my copy-editing instincts and reproduce this exactly as it was written.

11/10/09
Port City Veterinary Referral Hospital, Portsmouth, NH
Pateint: Nubble Beck

Final Diagnosis

Splenic Mass – Suspect Histiocytic Disease

Skin Issues – Suspect Histiocytic Disease

Joint Effusion – Suspect related to the histiocytic disease.

Anemia – Suspect related to the histiocytic disease.

Hyphema (Blood in the eye) – Suspect related to the histiocytic disease. Continue reading

13 Nov

“In praise of pets”–passing it on

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery.

Julie Threlkeld, a marathoner I work with, has posted an account of the life and 1999 death of her cat Stumpy on her blog Races Like a Girl. (You should also read her Haiku blog, as there’s some damned funny stuff in there.)

My mom lost a cat this year. This thing was basically supernatural. My mom had forgotten just how old Chloe was, but I knew, because my mom got her (not as a kitten, either) when I left for college in the fall of 1988. That meant that when I returned to New Hampshire about a year ago, she was at least 20 years old. Continue reading

13 Nov

How to become a PTSD expert

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

1. Work at a plant where an employee shoots someone.

2. Have a spouse who’s not actually in college, but is thinking about getting an advanced degree in psychology.

This is essentially how Gribbit concludes that he is well-informed when it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. By the measures he uses, I would now be valuable source of information when it comes to Lyme disease and histiocytic sarcoma in dogs. Also, one of my ex-girlfriends is planning to get a BSN before long, so I guess that means I know how to start an IV. (Actually, come to think of it, I’ve done that, but I never will again and you get the point.)

It cracks me up when people get irked when mass murderers start talking about their PTSD or their shitty childhood or whatever it is they choose to blame for their actions. It’s expected. It virtually always happens in shootings of the Fort Hood variety, at least when the shooter lives. Hasan is a fairly high-ranking officer and is lawyered up; who out there thinks that his legal team wouldn’t be deep into the apologetics game by now?

Wingnuts are always indignant over the possibility of people buying into this sort of likely bullshit, perhaps an unconscious side effect of the fact that the minds of wingnuts are themselves a veritable bullshit-plagued stew of credulity. The fact that Nidal Malik Hasan is apparently attributing his actions to PTSD doesn’t mean that people are rushing to believe or forgive him. From a legal standpoint, it may not matter whether Hasan can indeed establish, in the eyes of the court he will face, that he has post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gribbit seems to think he can magically conjure up Hasan’s entire background and conclude on the basis of what he’s read on the Internet, combined with a few pages from his handy DSM-IV, that Hasan does not qualify. He may well not. But it’s asinine for anyone to pretend that he can divine someone’s psychological profile from afar. Hasan is either fucked up in the head (I suppose it’s reasonable to consider that anyone who shoots 29 people is “fucked up in the head” by definition, but I don’t buy that) or a true terrorist functionary or maybe both, I don’t know. What I do know is that he’s not being given a pass on the basis of his own claims. President Obama is apparently alarmed and indignant when it comes to certain areas over oversight pertaining to Hasan’s involvement with Islamic clerics.

Then again, by that standard, I could be mocked, often, several times a week, for pointing out that Gribbit has said something silly. It’s not like there’s no established pattern here.

I don’t materially disagree with Gribbit here, I just laugh at his standards for having a “working knowledge” of something.

13 Nov

Runner serving doping suspension barred from San Antonio Marathon

Posted by kemibe in The Running Ape.

There are several aspects to this story. First, if the reporter who wrote this or anyone else who really believes that U.S.-based New Zealand Olympian Lisa Hunter-Galvan only had EPO in her system when she happened to be surprise-tested (the Andy Pettite “defense”), they are living in la-la land.

I don’t know Lisa Hunter-Galvan and express no contempt for her as a person, but I would bet my life that she’s been juiced for years. There was talk of this long before she was actually caught. Talk is cheap, and there’s all too much of it from halfwit anonymous pundits on sites like Letsrun.com, but in my years following running, I have learned that when there is smoke, there is very often fire.

“I feel like I’m being tortured right now because I want to be a part of it, and I can’t,” Hunter-Galvan said of this weekend’s event. “I can’t even run a holiday Jingle Bell 5K.”

Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I don’t see being banned from running events as akin to being waterboarded. If all she really wants is to run in races, then she can travel someplace she won’t be recognized and run under an anonym in some local-yokel event.

To be whimsically and unduly generous, perhaps she should be allowed to run in the race, and simply not be eligible for prize money or even a recognized victory should she cross the line before all other women. If she really wants to forge on under those conditions, fine. But it would be a local spectacle and I’m surprised she wants to race at all, all things considered. And if race directors elect to steer clear of her, I don’t blame them.

She claims to have acknowledged that she made some poor choices and is suffering the consequences, yet seems determined to dodge those very consequences. At root she seems unrepentant.

I often tell people that I’m glad I was never fast enough to consider taking performance-enhancers. It’s easy to sit back and fire away at drug cheats, and I do think that even if I’d “cleanly” gotten to the 2:15 marathon level or so, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I broke through to 2:11 thanks to doping, even if no one else ever found out. I’ve always wanted to be able to regard my race times as a function of whatever combination of talent, training, and luck helped me achieve them. But I can’t step into the mind of, say, a 13:15 5,000-meter runner trying to make it as a professional and remaining endlessly frustrated at the assuredly doped-up 12:55 types that prevent him from making a decent living via his craft. It becomes a matter of basically giving up and getting a “real job,” or giving in and hoping you don’t submit any dirty urines.

12 Nov

Nubble visit

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery.

She seemed fine when I saw her today, as if nothing was amiss. She always yaps with joy when I come to see her, which is usually to walk her. Today was a little different.

I was over at my parents’ at about 12:30. My dad was off today. He was teary-eyed throughout the exchange (this is rare), with both of us expanding on how fucking cruel the universe is. Here’s this blameless and loving animal, destined to die within weeks. Meanwhile rat bastard murderers run rampant around the country. If there were a God, he’d be welcome to suck my cock.

Yes. I get it. There’s no cosmic justice. Shit happens. Therein lies the problem, at some philosophical level.

I gathered up a bunch of Nubble’s hair as I scratched her belly, and put it in a Ziploc bag. It will stay with me forever. She was calm and welcoming throughout the entire encounter. I have seen this dog on at least 90 percent of the days since I have been back to New Hampshire–probably more like 95 percent–and feel like I am losing one of my own.

I got my hands on Nubble’s paperwork. Formally, she has histiocytic sarcoma. This, as I remember from my own days of playing doctor, is essentially a death sentence. It implies a disseminated carcinoma that we as lowly humans are incapable of halting, for now anyway. This in all surety popped up in Nubble not only in her spleen but in her liver, and maybe elsewhere. Chemotherapy would be of no use. Palliative measures only. She’ll be gone soon, despite how solid she seemed today.

After I gathered up a good bunch of her hair (easy to do with a retriever in the fall!), I simply said goodbye. I’ll see her again, I am sure, but today was extremely poignant.

More later. I’m so tired.

12 Nov

On “Obamacare,” Xtranormal-style

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

11 Nov

Nubble update

Posted by kemibe in Uncategorized.

I ran into my mom this morning thanks to a trip to the supermarket. Turns out she’d just sent me an e-mail. This message read:

It turns out that Nubble has a couple weeks. She is taking meds that make her feel ok. She is tired because she is anemic, but she is not in pain. However, it will be in the next few weeks. Once she starts limping, or acting as if she’s in any pain at all, it will be the time.

In the meantime, she gets to eat like a pig and get all the loving she wants.

Nubble has been the luckiest dog ever to walk the Earth, so I will be taking comfort in what we’ve done for her, as well as what she’s done for me.

I get to visit with her tomorrow. The fact is, I can’t run her or even walk her anymore, and she’ll be dead within two weeks, barring a miracle. When I see her, she’ll be wagging her tail and probably doing the pseudo-crying thing she does upon greeting a few select people, which used to make me think she was kind of a ‘tard when in fact she is brilliant for a dog.

I fucking hate this.

nubble_and_mom

11 Nov

Twitter from the shitter?

Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination.

Thanks to my Facebook friend and Dublin-based running ally Gráinne, I discovered a disturbing new way in which Twitter further invades people’s lives, if they want it:

…a WiFi Body Scale has hit the market, and it’s designed to auto-tweet your every weigh-in along with the number of pounds you need to gain or lose to reach your goal.

Wonderful. I reckon that the only people who would dig such a thing are either those who will eventually cut themselves up with razor blades or jump from the tops of skyscrapers, or people like this, who both validate and indict the very existence of YouTube at the same time.

Maybe someone can produce a wireless device that one can affix to the rim of a toilet bowl, so that every time a Twitter member takes a leak or a dump, all of his or her followers will know (and it wouldn’t be hard to design a device capable of differentiating between #1 and #2). Better yet, how about a vibrator add-on that auto-tweets its presence every time the thing is powered up? Easy enough to do, technologically speaking. And maybe such a device should auto-tweet on vibrator shut-down, just so that followers can gain some sense of how the session went without being told outright.

Perhaps someone will invent a wireless Twitter-happy mini-anenometer that I can stick in the crack of my ass so that every time I produce a burst of flatulence, everyone depraved enough can appreciate the eruption in Twitter. There’s a certain kind of sesame ginger sauce I like that would virtually guarantee me bringing the whole domain to a halt if I were to use such a device, at least on a few days a week.

Anyway.

10 Nov

Another Nubble update, and pull out your kleenexes

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery.

Turns out that she has cancer of the spleen, a very aggressive kind. There’s not a damned thing that can be done now other than provide Nubble with comfort measures. She’s got weeks to live, at best, and my mom is going to have to decide when to have her put down, which is fucking devastating, little different from a Sophie’s choice when you’ve had a companion as loyal as this sweetheart for nine years.

My mom is going to pick her up tonight, and wants to spend a day alone with her tomorrow. That I get. Thursday morning, I’ll head over to my parents’ and bawl my eyes out, just like I’m doing now.

10 Nov

On the death penalty

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

D.C. Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be filled with a nice intravenous cocktail of thiopental sodium, pancuronium, and potassium before 9:00 tonight. Not a bad way to die, really: the first drug will knock him out so that he has no idea what’s happening, the second will paralyze every muscle in his body (including those used in breathing), and the third will make his heart come to a complete standstill. This is all assuming that enough thiopental is given to ensure that he won’t wake up to a terrifying voodoo-style paralysis for his or last 30 or so seconds of life. I assume that medical types are on top of this.

I used to think I was solid on my views concerning capital punishment. Now I’m not.

The orchestrated execution of people who commit heinous crimes rings with the echoes of cosmic justice. The families of victims get what they want, and a manifestly worthless person is taken out of the human equation.

Beyond that, I question the scheme. Is capital punishment supposed to be a deterrent? If not, these musings are moot and it all goes back to retribution, noted above. But it doesn’t take a criminologist to understand that people who commit crimes earning them a death sentence are not exactly considering the ramifications when they do it. They are often mentally retarded, and perhaps just as often are systematic psychopaths with their faculties otherwise intact. These are not people who give a fuck about the rule of law. They would do what they do even if fully aware of the fact that they would be burned at the stake.

If I were given the choice between lethal injection and 40 years in a buttfuck prison, it would be an easy call. From the punishment standpoint, dying is an easy way out. If making people pay, making them rightfully suffer, is the name of the game, then put them in a place like Angola or San Quentin, or the supermax ADX facility in Florence, Colorado. Everyone gets his share of fun and games there.

My home state of New Hampshire has not executed anyone in 80 years, but in December, Michael Briggs, who shot a cop, got the death penalty for his trouble. Public opinion polls suggest that people, at least around here, come out far more strongly in favor of capital punishment when the victim is a law-enforcement officer. Really, that shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

With the advent of DNA technology, a surprising number of “criminals” have been found innocent. Numerous ones have been death-row inmates.

I guess all I am trying to say here is that capital punishment accomplishes none of its assumed goals. Sociopaths and the otherwise deranged will go on killing en masse regardless of what awaits them. They either don’t have the capacity to understand the consequences or they don’t give a fuck. If killing these people makes society a simpler and happier place, great. I’m just not convinced that it does, and so I waver on the fence, with a strong leaning toward the abolition of capital punishment. Rotting in prison is a worse fate than dying straightaway.

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