Gobble Gobble

There's a lot to be thankful for in the early 21st Century: penicillin, flush toilets, Kindle, adjustable insoles, myelin sheaths in the neocortex, GPS, the Large Hadron Collider. What I'm thankful for this year is the people in my life. People are, and have always been what really makes life worth living.

I can see the appeal of the line: "L'enfer, c'est les autres", but I'd guess that Sartre didn't bother considering the alternative. Try to imagine for a moment how perfectly unlivable life would be in the absence of others. How much stuff are you able to create from the raw materials around you? How long would it take? Would you survive even a mild winter? We rely on other people for our food, our comfort, our entertainment, our very survival. The alternative to the Zarathustrian nightmare is true wretched misery, starvation, and the most terrifying of all ancient punishments: exile.

So here I am in my cozy apartment in Northern Virginia, surrounded by people on every side and I can't imagine being any more content.

Infants are unable to signal their desire to live, and in the absence of that ability, what is the Functionalist take on infanticide? Also, does criminal law dilute the efficiency of civil law? The latter is a question for the Spivonomist, I think.