Scooter's Blog

Two minor things, as a preamble, and then onto the real subject.

1. I'm beginning to believe that this winter will never fucking end.
2. I enjoy living in a place where, on a sunny March 24th afternoon, I can take a walk and get frostbit. NOT!!!


It's about 20 degrees out (with windchill, around negative 4000), and April is in a week. Fuck.


Sort of a rant follows, but logically presented

With the Boston Marathon on the horizon, after watching a bit of the details of the hunt for last April's Boston terrorists (and also thinking about the poor passengers and their loved ones from the Malaysian aircraft disaster): I am very comfortable with my feeling that all terrorists should be tortured and mangled and otherwise reduced to pieces. I consider myself fairly liberal on most topics. And here is how I come to terms with this feeling.

First, all human beings -- no matter their ethnicity, religion, age, or any other characteristic -- deserve to be treated with decency and fairness. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," if you will.

Second, once you study or commit your life to Jihad, then you forfeit these rights -- that is, as far as the civilized world is concerned, you are no longer a human being. If I were to draw a Venn diagram of human beings and terrorists, they would not overlap -- they would be two separate circles. Once you can accept this, then the moral imperative on how to treat terrorists becomes clear.

I understand that at different periods in history, some people considered other people "not people". For example, Americans at one point considered black people as property, rather than people. At other periods, some people would sell other people, and consider them as property. The Nazis didn't consider Jews people, or they would not have been able to kill so many of us without an uprising from the Germans. At certain times (even now in some places), homosexuals are considered less-than-human.

But in this case, when dealing with terrorists, it is their behavior towards innocent human beings that classifies them as terrorists. It is not through an accident of birth by with they are classified, but rather through their specific actions. By choosing to behave barbarically, all civilized people have the right to treat them as such. They cede their right to coexist with the rest of humanity.

Specifically, if you answer "No" to any of the following questions, then you are no longer a civilized human being:

• Do you believe that all people have a right to live?
• If you had a child, would you mind if that child were to die by an act of terrorism?
• Would you mind if any of the people you love were to be killed by an act of terrorism?


Once you turn yourself into a terrorist or terrorist wannabe, then you no longer share the rights of civilized people across the globe. I support any measures -- ANY MEASURES -- to eliminate terrorists from the planet. But let me be clear: while I would support an attack on a terrorist training camp, or torturing individual, confirmed terrorists, I do not support wholesale attacks against places where terrorists live and train. I would not want any human beings injured during the hunting and killing of terrorists.

Apropos of nothing, does anyone on the planet have a job that is more fun than Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman? These guys are the co-hosts of MythBusters. They constantly get to blow stuff up, burn stuff, and generally cause wanton destruction and mayhem. All in the name of entertainment and science, and without (usually) seriously injuring anyone! Holy Shit -- I literally cannot imagine a more fun way to spend my time and get paid for it.