Apr
17
2012
Another post inspired by a mailing list post.
Today, a young lady posted, without context of any kind, an email to a semi-public email listserv, asserting:
Disclaimer: All communication sent from charityXXXXX@XXXXX.COM, or from Charity XXXXX
is privileged communication, owned exclusively by Charity XXXXX, as proprietary owner/ideas and information as copyright. No duplication, dissemination or profit from the above-mentioned material may occur without the express discretionary consent of owner, Charity XXXXX.
Copyright Charity XXXXX 1958-2012
All rights reserved
You see a lot of these kinds of things these days. Problem is, they’re completely pointless. As was pointed out by the Economist back in April of last year. And by Slate, in 2004. In fact, the only thing I can find which indicates these sort of stupid things have any merit is this guy, and then only in very limited circumstances.
Read more »
Apr
16
2012
Well friends, after 25 responses to the survey, it’s time to reveal what you all think is (and isn’t) cannibalism. It was an interesting survey, and after thinking about it a little, I might include some different questions in the next one.
So, is the crowd right? Tell me what you think in the comments!
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Utterly uncontroversial. Nobody thinks this is cannibalism.
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80% of people think this isn’t cannibalism.
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Almost the same as the last question. 79.2% of respondents don’t think this is cannibalism.
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Now this is interesting. More than half (58.3%) of respondents think that this IS cannibalism. But, how can it be cannibalism if you’re not consuming someone other than yourself?
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No question here. Every respondent thought this was cannibalism.
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Another interesting one. 75% of people said they thought this was cannibalism, even though the tissue is artificially manufactured.
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87% of people believe both you and the other survivor are both cannibals.
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This was the most controversial question. Is a zombie (a dead human) capable of cannibalism? The answers split almost evenly, with 52.2% of you saying, “no,” and 47.8% believing that it is cannibalism.
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Har har. Nearly everyone agreed that cannonballism isn’t cannibalism. Good paying attention!
Apr
04
2012
You know, life is full of tough questions.
What’s the right way to live? Should I quit my job? Am I ready to get married? What will I do if I get cancer?
Sometimes, these questions have easy answers. But sometimes, the answers aren’t so clear.
One question that I believe has a lot of ambiguity to it is, “What is cannibalism?”
Sure, you can search the web, and dictionary.com will tell you that cannibalism is “the eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind.” But what about the border cases? What about deriving nourishment from things other than muscle tissue? Is it different if you eat your own flesh?
These are the questions that plague me. So I made this friendly little survey to find out what YOU think. So now you tell me: What is cannibalism? I’ll post the results in a future update.
