Hypo Man 1

Hello all. It's been a while.

Some of you have been to law school, and some of you are married to someone who has been to law school. You'll probably get where I'm coming from. For those of you with no experience to the weirdness that becomes of law students, allow me to explain a little bit. One of the biggest parts of law school is the hypothetical. Students read the cases, learn the laws of a certain area, and then (students or teachers) come up with some of the weirdest factual situations you could ever imagine to see how the law would apply according to those facts. Sometimes it's bizarre (think of frozen turkeys falling from an airplane in the sky and injuring people in a hotel's swimming pool); sometimes its morbid, which is what I'm going to present to you today.

Here's the deal. Law students, on average, are not as interesting as we think we are. (If you don't believe that the average law student thinks he or she is much more interesting than anyone else, just visit www.top-law-schools.com and read through some of the personal statements. It's a clinic in taking the ordinary and making it seem incredible.) So it basically comes down to this: I often grow tired of hearing what the not-as-interesting-as-advertised law student thinks (self included), and I want to know what you (i.e., the interesting reader) think.

Here you go. Fair warning, it might be slightly morbid. You have just been in a car accident and your car is at the bottom of a ravine in a river. You weren't wearing your seatbelt and were thrown from the car. Luckily you were uninjured, but your child was strapped in her car seat and is still in the car. You can see her, and the water is starting to slowly rise. She is starting to panic and struggle. The problem is that it is 100% certain you will not be able to reach your child before she dies, and if you try to get her it is 100% certain that you will die as well (you have a spouse and 4 other children at home, so you can't really kill yourself in an attempt to save her). Because you live in the ghetto you always have a gun, and you have a perfect shot. So your options are either (1) you can watch her drown (she will suffer), or (2) you can shoot her and kill her instantly (no suffering). There are no other options, and you are the only person around. What do you do? (Remember, it is certain that she will die either way and you can't do anything about it.)

If you said watch her drown, would your answer change if the car was not sinking, but instead it was on fire (meaning more suffering for a longer time)?

No matter what you answered, would it change if it were a stranger's child and you could see that the mother was already dead? (You were the only other person in the entire area, and you happened to witness the accident.)

Last one. If you were a juror in a case where a person had been charged with manslaughter for shooting the child in any of the situations above, would you vote to convict them? No to all three? Yes to all three? Yes to some no to some? Tell me what you think in the comments.

If the result is good, maybe I'll post more of these. If not, I'll just leave the blogging up to my wife. She's much better at it anyway.

What Does a Monkey Say?

Yup. I feel like this* right now.

The files. They're in here. I've seen 'em. I just can't get 'em out.

Until I do, enjoy this. I know you will. Have seconds if you like. The boy loves an audience. Oh! I almost forgot. Turn the volume up.

*Adding insult to injury, that isn't even the link I'd originally found--it too is in the computer, but you get the gist.