Dale Amon has written a fascinating article in response to the question I posted a couple of days ago regarding the morality of Asimov's Three Laws. Go check it out!

Assuming that the technology exists to make it possible, is it a good idea for humans to become immortal?

"Never trust anybody who says 'trust me.' Except just this once, of course."
-- John Varley

And now, some enlightened thinking from our deputy Undersecretary of Defense, thinking not at all stuck in Medieval Europe mode.

But that new assignment may be complicated by controversial views Boykin — an evangelical Christian — has expressed in dozens of speeches at churches and prayer breakfasts around the country. In a half-dozen video and audiotapes obtained by NBC News, Boykin says America’s true enemy is not bin Laden.

In June 2003, Boykin spoke to a church group over a slide show:

"Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan."

Why are terrorists out to destroy the United States? Boykin said: "They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation."

Oh no, wait, never mind--his thinking is stuck in the mindset of Medieval Europe.

(via Oliver Willis)

It looks like Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has been taking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion seriously.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday told a summit of Islamic leaders that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using nonviolent means for a "final victory."

His speech at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit, which he was hosting, drew criticism from Jewish leaders, who warned it could spark more violence against Jews.

Mahathir — known for his outspoken, anti-Western rhetoric — criticized what he described as Jewish domination of the world and Muslim nations' inability to adequately respond to it.

"The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy," Mahathir said, opening the meeting of Islamic leaders from 57 nations. "They get others to fight and die for them."

Is there any intelligent comment possible here? What can you say when the leader of a significant power like Malaysia is spouting racist bullshit like this? Can't we get past this garbage as a species? It's the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY for Christ's sake! We have more and better access to human history than ever before! Why can't we learn from it?!?!?

Do you have a moral obligation to help a person in need if it is possible for you to do so?

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity."
-- Harlan Ellison

Senator Lautenberg is still after Cheney and his defferred payments from Halliburton. I had thought that the general consensus on this issue was that Cheney's setup did indeed officially constitute "financial ties and interest" to his former company, but that it wasn't anything illegal. It basically just opened up doors to critics of Cheney that he was still linked financially to Halliburton. He could have done a better job of moving the money directly to charities instead of personally acting as an intermediary.

However, is this sort of thing legal/moral? :

Senate Democrats plan to introduce legislation Thursday to strip Vice President Dick Cheney of his financial interests in Halliburton Co., the oilfield services company with a $7 billion government contract to repair Iraq's oilfields.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., plans to introduce an amendment to the pending $87 billion spending bill that would require Cheney to give up stock options and deferred compensation he receives from Halliburton, the company Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000.

If there was something illegal about these ties as opposed to them being badly channeled to charities, I could see legal intervention. But a federal bill to force a citizen of the US to give up his money? That seems like a pretty big stretch, but then I'm not an expert in the reach of Congress' lawmaking powers. Anyone care to chime in?

Remember a while back when I made fun of Thomas Jane getting the role of The Punisher? Umm... I think I may stand corrected. The guy looks pretty damn good in this picture:

You can click the image for a bigger pic, which is courtesy of Comic Book Resources.

While NASA flounders, there are private groups who are actually trying to do something about humanity's role in space. This group is a prime example:

In the grand cosmic scheme of things, it's only a matter of time. Our planet is bound to tangle with an Earth-crossing asteroid, an event sure to make a mess. Some of these space rocks could demolish a city. Other monster boulders, the really big bruisers, could snuff out our civilization.

But why be at the mercy of a menacing asteroid that has Earth in its cross hairs? Now an expert team of astronauts and space scientists has blueprinted a safety strategy for Earth: an asteroid tugboat. The group says NASA is already working on the right recipe of technologies to make the tug a reality. It would be the greatest public safety project in history. Furthermore, they propose a mission to demonstrate the asteroid-tug concept by 2015.

And best of luck to them!

Awhile back, I talked about how political pressure groups were dumbing down the textbooks. Well, looks like some teachers have noticed, too--so they just aren't using the damned things.

You won't find textbooks in eighth-grade history teacher Brent Heath's classroom.

Heath, who teaches at De Anza Middle School in Ontario, California, uses historical fiction, the Internet, the Library of Congress and even music to teach students.

"It's the exact same content. It's being taught in a different way," he said.

Good for them! And good for their students, too!

After reading Alex's roundup of the Democratic candidates, I felt like I should do a little digging on Clark to see what he is really about. I mean, given my views on national security, who better to lead the country than someone with a long military career and the know-how to use it to his advantage? After hitting his main campaign site, I was still in the dark, as it didn't elaborate on any of his positions (which I've touched upon before). The "blog" is just as bad, because other than an occasional speech transcript it basically just gives headlines and campaign stop stories. Nothing meaty.

I did find one link to an article about his military career that struck me as odd, and somewhat unsettling. The first half covers the usual glowing comments that you can find in any performance report (stratification and sainthood are usually the basis for these), so there were no surprises. However, some comments made in the end of the article probably sum up the biggest misgivings I have with him:

In one incident in 1994, General Clark posed with Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian-Serb general accused of slaughtering hundreds of civilians. General Clark had been advised by the State Department not to meet with him, but he did anyway, swapping caps and posing for pictures.

At a forum last month in California, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and who is retired, spoke of a decision by William S. Cohen, then defense secretary, to end General Clark's command of the NATO alliance early, replacing him in 2000.

"I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart," General Shelton said, adding that he would not vote for General Clark.

Military officers take integrity and character extremely seriously. To have someone publicly state that he feels there are issues there isn't something to be taken lightly. And to be removed from duty early...well that's an even larger issue. We'll probably never know why General Shelton said that, but for now it just adds to the mysterious and nebulous picture that Clark has painted of himself in the race to be President.

A long, long time ago, in the short story "Runaround," Isaac Asimov developed the famous "Laws of Robotics." They are:

First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

This concept of the Three Laws is enormously influential, and in a lot of robotics literature, it is almost assumed that some variant of these laws will be implemented when robots become complex enough to require them.

So here's the question: if artificial intelligence advances to the point where robots are roughly equal to humans in intelligence, would the imposition of the Three Laws in the manufacture of robots be moral or immoral?

Kevin Drum has a link-filled post about Haley Barbour's recent appearance with a bunch of kooks from the Council of Conservative Christians. (Who are the CCC? Well, let me put it this way--pronouce the "C"'s in "CCC" as though they were "K"'s.) As Kevin rightly says:

I am well aware that most Republicans aren't racist and are sick and tired of hearing from Democrats about the Southern Strategy and "codewords" and how their party panders to racists. I don't blame them. But here's the deal: if you want us to stop accusing the GOP of pandering to racists then stop pandering to racists, dammit. Send a loud message that a guy who represented your entire party for four years has no business hanging around with the human effluvia who make up organizations like the CCC and then pretending he has no idea what they were all about.

It won't wash, and it's time to knock it off.

And I'm sorry, my Republican friends, but this is hardly an isolated incident. Especially in the South. (Not to say that racism is limited to the Republican party. Some of the most obnoxiously racist people I've ever met were yellow dog Democrats.)

The Senate just passed an interesting bill:

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved a landmark bill to bar health insurers and employers from discriminating against people who have a genetic predisposition to disease.

Bill sponsors said that as the mysteries of the human genetic code were unraveled, people needed protection so that breakthroughs were used to treat and heal, not to isolate and discriminate.

I'm not so sure this law is actually a good idea. Look, the whole point of insurance is risk. If you're more at risk for something, you pay a higher premium. Thus, bad drivers have higher car insurance premiums, and smokers have higher life insurance premiums. So when it comes to health and life insurance, why shouldn't those people with genetic defects have to pay higher premiums? And why should those without defects be forced to pay a higher premium de facto when their risk is actually lower? It doesn't seem fair to me.

Julian Sanchez makes the argument that libertarians should vote for a Democrat next year, and it's not a bad one.

As Cato Institute economist William Niskanen observes, government tends to grow more slowly during periods when the executive and legislative branches are controlled by different parties. The mono-party regime of George W. Bush, who delivered a touching encomium to Milton Friedman mere weeks before signing new steel tariffs and a bloated farm bill into law, has increased domestic spending faster than conservative bete noire Bill Clinton. Bush has even beaten the "big government" Clinton's record when it comes to the growth of the regulatory state.

At present, the alliance (such as it is) between libertarians and the GOP seems to consist of the following compromise: we hold our noses and vote for Republican presidential candidates in close elections, while they agree to pay lip service to our cherished ideals of limited government. This seems like a fair enough trade on its face, but as "no new taxes" taught us, the lips of Republican elected officials are typically disconnected from their arms when it comes time to sign legislation. Perhaps it's time for libertarians to stop getting starry-eyed over the candidates who write us the prettiest love poems and begin comparing policy outcomes.

When we look at those outcomes, we find that, as Harvard's Jeffrey Frankel wrote in late 2002, there is a dramatic disconnect between rhetoric and reality: "The pattern is so well established that the generalisation can no longer be denied: The Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government and bad microeconomics. Surprisingly, Democrat presidents have, relatively speaking, become the proponents of fiscal responsibility, free trade, competitive markets and neoclassical microeconomics."

I certainly don't disagree with Julian that Libertarians shouldn't be beholden to Republicans. As I have said in the past, when I actually vote for someone from the two major parties (something I do very reluctantly), I am much more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican.

But the problem I have with the current Democratic candidates (and by candidates, I mean the ones that count--Lieberman, Edwards, Kerry, Dean, and Clark) is that all of them are flawed in things I think really, truly matter in a President. One by one, that would be:

Lieberman - way too much of a panderer. When he ran for VP in 2000, he repudiated positions that he'd held his whole life and made part of his Senate career. Not exactly inspiring.

Kerry - a career politician of the worst sort. No ideology, no positions, no integrity, unwilling to take a simple stand on anything. The man can't utter a sentence without it's meaning being completely ambiguous.

Dean - at one point, I was attracted to Dean. I know a lot of intelligent people that I respect a great deal who are Dean supporters. And like Julian says, I think a lot of his more troubling proposals, like increased government involvement in health care, wouldn't pass a Republican House, so those aren't an issue. But what I don't like about Dean is his civil liberties record, his apparent disdain for the legal system, and his arrogant, given-to-angry-outburst personality. A Dean Justice Department scares me, to be honest. And his personality is one that would virtually guarantee another four years of insane, polarizing partisanship.

Clark - mostly what's keeping me away from Clark right now is that I don't know enough about him. However, what little I know about him so far suggests that he's another candidate with a problem with an arrogant, know-it-all attitude that again helps to guarantee polarization. Jury's still out on him, though.

Edwards - of all the Democratic candidates, Edwards is the one I feel most comfortable with. However, the one major problem I have with him is that, as near as I can tell, he's at worst a protectionist and at best a "fair-trader"--which isn't much better. A President who doesn't support free trade is a President that I simply cannot support.

And of course, my problems with Bush and the reasons I won't vote for him are, I hope, sufficiently documented on this site. Right now, it looks like I'm going for good ol' "None of the Above."

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."
-- Arthur C. Clarke

Kevin Drum has even admitted that this whole form letter thing has been blown out of proportion.

Anyway, an army spokesman said no one was forced to sign the letters, which was a pretty dumb thing to say (if my battalion commander "suggested" I sign a letter, I'd sign pronto), but it doesn't look like it was anything other than a garden variety stupid idea. Back now to our regular programming.

Some good conspiracy theories in his comments though. Some people won't even believe actual enlisted men and officers when they say this has been done before, that it's no big deal, and that no one had been forced to sign the letters.

I think they need to bring back the "X-Files", because at least people had an outlet for their conspiracy urges then.

I wonder which undeserving news story will blow up to be huge next?

This is possibly one of the best articles I've ever read explaining a perceived difference between the two types of Democrats: the emotional and rabid kind, and the intelligent, rational kind. Granted, it's an opinion. But coming from a stalwart Democrat, he would definitely be the one to make this particular observation. I myself have made this observation time and time again in the blogosphere, but since I generally don't agree with most of the Democratic ideas, liberals just scoff and ignore me. Since I can't say it any better than this guy, go and read what he has to say.

I still consider myself a liberal. I am pro-choice, pro-union (except when it comes to grad student nonworkers), pro-gay marriage. I support progressive taxation and the estate tax, I am an environmentalist and an advocate of government funding of elections on the national, state and local levels. I even believe in single-payer (government-funded) health care. Political pollsters would consider me a pretty left-wing liberal. Yet at Yale, I am at best a centrist, but most identify me as a conservative. How is this possible?

I am considered a right-winger at Yale primarily because I was an ardent supporter of war in Iraq and because I defend the right of Israel to defend itself against annihilation. Clearly, a college campus is not an accurate representation of the political spectrum, yet this divide on campus amongst liberals is part of a national political phenomenon. In the spring 2002 issue of the left Dissent magazine, editor Michael Walzer wrote what has become one of the most important essays since Sept. 11, titled, "Can there be a decent left?" In it, he comments on the self-loathing and alienation that many leftists feel in the presence of patriotism.

He tells his fellow leftists, "We certainly need something better than the rag-tag Marxism with which so much of the left operates today -- whose chief effect is to turn world politics into a cheap melodrama." It took a lot of courage for someone like Walzer to write what he did, especially in a magazine like Dissent. Unfortunately, many on the left have yet to heed his advice. But Walzer never went so far as to bestow explicitly this type of liberalism with the appellation he clearly infers: that is, the "indecent left."

What kind of liberal are you?

Yale Law School wants to prevent military Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps recruiters from recruiting on Yale's campus. They base this on the "don't ask don't tell policy" the Department of Defense has regarding gays in the military, and how recruiters on campus basically stifle free speech. If you can find any rational link between those two things, let me know.

On Monday, the Yale Daily News reported that nearly half of the Yale Law School's professors plan to sue the Department of Defense over its campus recruiting policies. In their haste, they ought to heed the words of of the free speech champion, and former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In the 1927 case Whitney v. California, Brandeis expressed in his concurring opinion what has emerged as an essential condition in First Amendment legal thinking: in heated disputes, "-- the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." Unfortunately, certain members of the faculty are pursuing an illiberal agenda by attempting to prevent Judge Advocate General Corps recruiters from meeting with students on campus.

The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," policy has inflamed a national controversy in which an anonymous group of law schools sued the Defense Department over the Solomon Amendment. They plan to argue that the 1995 federal statute, which requires universities receiving federal funds to allow military recruiters on campus, violates the free-speech principles of the Constitution. Liberals have embraced the issue of gays in the military as one of civil rights. With a pervasive distaste for the armed forces, it is easy for the Left to attack the military's policy on gays.

But here at Yale, liberals are guilty of a similar ideological sin to their conservative opponents, for they, too, place dogma over the national interest. And by impeding students from seeking information on joining the JAG Corps, not only do they prevent our nation's military from attracting the best and brightest minds, they are also undermining the principles of the First Amendment.

Read it all, the student writing the article presents both sides' views as well as a balanced liberal/conservative argument.

(link via Instapundit)

Imagine that in the future, it's possible to download your memories onto a computer. Then, when you die, your memories can be uploaded into a fully-grown clone of yourself.

Here's the question: if you die, and your memories are so uploaded, is that clone you? Or is it a different person entirely?

"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life."
-- Phillip K. Dick

Andrew Sullivan nails the anti-Bush crowd for ignoring the Administration's real scandal--it's post-war incompetence in securing weapons sites.

It seems to me that the anti-Bush crowd has been missing the real story, as usual. Instead of attempting to parse the administration's arguments before the war, they'd do better to focus on the Pentagon's massive incompetence after the war. Two things spring to mind: why weren't forces directed to secure all possible WMD sites immediately? And why were troops not sent to secure Saddam's conventional weapon sites immediately? The Baathist resistance is now fueled primarily by those weapons. The fate of WMDs is unsure - a critical reason for the war in the first place. Did Rumsfeld even think for a second about these post-war exigencies? Why were these objectives not included in the original war-plan as a whole? I have no idea. The pre-war and the war were executed as well as we could hope for. The immediate post-war was a disaster. Shouldn't someone take responsibility? It seems to me that since the left is so hopeless at constructing rational criticism, some of us pro-war types need to get mad and ask some tough questions.

Damn right. Not that anybody will, though. Instead, it's just the minor scandal of the week, while North Korea keeps right on building nukes and god-only-knows is toting Iraq's WMD around.

Here's the Observer's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I've read 21. Of those 21, several do not belong on the list. Conspicuously absent, at least, in my humble opinion, are: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (his best novel, and all of you who reply with Slaugherhouse Five are wrong), and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arslan by M.J. Engh.

Still, it's not a bad list, and it has a lot of books that are on my reading list but that I haven't gotten around to yet. Besides, you can't be mad a list where Don Quixote is on top and the Count of Monte Cristo is represented.

(via Tacitus)

Clark has some good ideas, but again, they are not clearly defined. *Sigh*
To all Presidential Candidates: If you have some fleshed out plans, with details and specifics, I'll come to your house and listen to you present them. Really.

Although he boasts of being new to the unseemly world of politics, it didn't take long for Democratic presidential nomination candidate Wesley Clark to latch on to three of the most popular buzzwords in the campaign lexicon: "new," "American" and "patriotism."

Although the connection between patriotism and a "state and local tax rebate fund," for instance, was never that clearly articulated, today's connection between patriotism and community service seems a much easier sell. Pride in your community breeds pride in your country. No problem.

The Civilian Reserve would work with -- but not replace -- the nation's armed forces in dealing with any number of local emergencies. The campaign did not release any more details on today's proposal, except to say that it would use technology to help identify and mobilize people so that their skills are applied most effectively.

At the risk of sounding un-American, it's hard to imagine what the obvious connection is between patriotism and, say, Clark's plan to reform Medicare Part B, but please don't tell the government we said that.

Hopefully he decides to flesh this out in the months to come.
The scary thing is that this guy was in the military. If you don't justify things a million ways to Sunday in a clear and concise manner (Generals have about 2 minutes to hear the multitude of plans, and I'm sure he was both on the giving and receiving end of those briefings), you'll never get funding or anything approved. I guess old habits are lost when you hit the political arena.

I was going to comment on China's decision to not broadcast its first manned space launch, but Stephen Green beat me to the punch on everything I was going to say--only he did a better job. So go read his post!

Kerry agrees with me.

Kerry responded Monday, telling Vermont Public Radio that Dean has never laid out a clear plan for how Iraq should be handled.

"Governor Dean has no policy on Iraq evidently, except 'no.' 'No' is not a policy," he said. "I voted to hold Iraq accountable and hold Saddam Hussein accountable. That was the right vote for the defense of the United States of America."

Kerry sees that, I see it, let's see if anyone else catches on.

A well-meaning Army commander was behind the form letters sent home to families who had sons fighting in Iraq.

The letters appeared in roughly 12 newspapers across the country. From Massachusetts to California, and many places in between, family members and local newspapers received letters from soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment detailing their successes in northern Iraq. Each letter was signed by a different soldier, but the words were identical: Amy Connell, of Sharon, Mass., knew as soon as she received the letter from her son Adam that he did not write it. "He's 20 years old and I don't think his language or his writing ability would have entailed that kind of description," she said.

She was right. Her son didn't write the letter. In an e-mail to ABCNEWS today, the commander of the battalion, Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, said the "letter-writing initiative" was all his idea.

Caraccilo said he circulated the form letter to his soldiers to give them "an opportunity to let their respective hometowns know what they are accomplishing here in Kirkuk. As you might expect, they are working at an extremely fast pace and getting the good news back home is not always easy. We thought it would be a good idea to encapsulate what we as a battalion have accomplished since arriving Iraq and share that pride with people back home."

Fine. Facts found, case closed. Col Caraccilo may have made a mistake in trying to organize this, but that's his perogative. Even if it was a suggestion from above, he decided to implement it. But those who immediately tried to make this some new conspiracy still cling to that. Why? Jesus people, I spent this weekend working on my Chevelle and playing video games, and getting ready for Halloween. Maybe Halloween (and the rest of the year)would be scarier if I thought that everything the government did was a ploy to steal my soul.

(link via John Cole)

Instapundit has a worthwhile line on this:

Interestingly, ABC seems to agree with that part, saying that things really are better in Kirkuk. It would be better, of course, if the words were actually those of the soldiers.

But then, there are rather a lot of people who speak in public words that they didn't write.

Heh.

Leaving all questions of policy and law aside, is abortion a moral act or an immoral one?

I have had it with remakes of good movies. First of all, they're rarely as good as the original. Second of all, why make them when you have the original? Ugh!

And what's worse is that it's sometimes insidious. Take this, for example:

Wild and crazy guy Steve Martin is contemplating whether to star in MGM's proposed remake of THE PINK PANTHER. If he agrees, Martin will be stepping into the gumshoes of Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the French detective who always was getting into trouble while on the trail of his latest suspect. The role was first made famous by Peter Sellers who starred in a total of five PANTHER films. Producer Ivan Reitman (who's better known as the director of STRIPES and GHOSTBUSTERS) is developing the remake.

See how they get to you. On the one hand, you have a series of great movies with Peter Sellers that I've watched several times. But on the other hand, I'd love ot see Steve Martin and Ivan Reitman's take on them.

But then, there's that voice inside that is telling me that I'm just going to be disappointed. It tells me that Ivan Reitman has made some great films--and also some really, really lousy ones. It also tells me that Steve Martin's last good movie was Bowfinger--which was almost 4 years ago, and his last decent movie before that was the fantastically brilliant and beautiful L.A. Story, which came out over 12 years ago.

And I'm pretty sure that the voice telling me I'm going to be disappointed is right. I mean, why do a remake, anyway? Why can't Reitman and Martin do something original?

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert Heinlein

This is an incredible breakthrough.

Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.

The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate machines or tools with their thoughts as naturally as others today do with their hands. It might even allow some paralyzed people to move their own arms or legs again, by transmitting the brain's directions not to a machine but directly to the muscles in those latent limbs.

This is such an amazing and incredible technological advance that I expect the wacked out Greens and religious types to begin protesting it soon.

Can an act be immoral if committed by an individual but moral if committed by a group?

This is just a bizarre story.

A 28-year-old man accused of stealing a man's penis through sorcery was beaten to death in the West African country of Gambia, police said.

A police spokesman told Reuters that Baba Jallow was killed Thursday by about 10 people in the town of Serekunda, nine miles from the capital Banjul.

Reports of penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, with purported victims claiming that alleged sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear in order to extort cash in the promise of a cure.

At first I thought this was funny, but it's really not, is it? A man was beaten to death because of some paranoid superstition. It's a throwback to the Salem witch trials and similar incidents. It's just unbearably sad that this kind of thing still goes on in the 21st century...

"You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."
- Albert Einstein