Can You Consent to Your Own Murder?
by Jason Now that we’ve had time for people to think about our last Aporia, let me give my own opinion on the matter. I think that Cogito is fundamentally correct to say that: “you can’t consent to your own murder, just like you can’t consent to your own rape.”  This distinction is important, as rape is definitionally something that one cannot consent to; so, too, with murder.  Were a person to consent to such an act, it would be “assisted suicide.”  This is a euphemism for asking another (assisted) to

Climategate?
by Jason The Telegraph (UK) is reporting that a hacker has broken into the computers at Hadley CRU and has taken confidential data that allegedly shows that the team at Hadley doctored the evidence in favor of anthropogenic global warming and tried to keep skeptics from publishing papers to the contrary. I can't wait to see how this turns out. -------------------------------------- Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Aporia: Can You Consent to Your Own Murder?
by Jason I recently heard of the case of Armin Meiwes, a German man made famous after he was arrested in December of 2002 for eating Bernd Jurgen Brandes (who consented to both his murder and the eating of his body).  Meiwes was originally tried for manslaughter, although the case was later reopened and he was found guilty of murder. There are numerous questions raised in this case, but I want to focus on these: - Is it murder if another man consents to you killing him? - Do you have the right to consent to your own murder? Although the answers amy

Sexual Etymology: Masturbation
by Jason In a series I'm going to be calling "sexual etymology," I'm going to explore the origins of some of the words that are in our sexual vocabulary.  I'm going to do this once a week or so.  If you have any requests, make them in the comments and I'll add the word to the list of forthcoming articles. The word of the week is: Masturbation. Masturbation: (n.) manual stimulation of the genitals.  1766, in A. Hume's Onanism; borrowed from French masturbation (1570 in Montaigne) and probably derived from New Latin masturbationem (nominative

The Truth about Christianity
by Jason I saw this poster on Tumblr (without attribution) and I couldn't resist putting it up here. In case you can't read the poster, it says: CHRISTIANITY: The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an