* Guillermo Del Toro is kinda walking back the notion that there will be a second Hobbit film–in essence he says he’d like to do one but he’s not going to force it if it turns out that the material in the books for which the filmmakers have the rights (The Hobbit and the three Lord of the Rings books including the appendices in The Return of the King–all the other ancillary materials are off-limits) doesn’t readily yield a story. (Via Jason Adams.)
* For some reason, DC Comics prevented the inclusion of an excerpt from Paul Pope’s excellent Batman Year 100 in this year’s Best American Comics. What a country!
* Brian Ralph likes He-Man figures too!
* Finally, here’s something I’ve been putting off linking to for some time. Just when you thought you’d heard the worst story of incest and child abuse that could possibly surface this year, you see this story about a Czech woman who over a period of months partially skinned alive her son, who she kept chained in a basement naked in his own filth, and consumed the flesh along with her family, including a 34-year-old woman posing as the boy’s 13-year-old sister, all of whom were members of the Grail Movement cult; the crime was discovered when a neighbor installed a baby monitor that accidentally picked up live footage of the imprisoned boy that his mother would watch for pleasure.
Enjoy your weekend.
Remember: The death penalty is wrong.
Yes, it is.
Holy fuck.
So how will they rehabilitate that woman?
They probably won’t, since (assuming she’s a sociopath, which seems pretty safe to assume) sociopaths and pedophiles are frequently untreatable until middle age when sociopathy sometimes “burns out.” The alternative is simply incarceration, since I don’t believe governments should be in the murder business.
Thumbs-up on that, Sean.
Thumbs-up on that, Sean.
“Murder”? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Killing someone who can’t defend themselves (because they’re imprisoned) and poses no threat to you (because they’re imprisoned)? No, I’m pretty sure murder means what I think it means.
Well, you’re the legal expert…
*death and philosophy geek*
Murder is typically defined as the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being. Now, you can argue this from the subjective legal standpoint that Jim seems to be taking… that if it’s not illegal, it’s not murder, in which case the death penalty is clearly not murder, since it is, in fact, legal. Or you could argue it from a natural law standpoint, as Sean seems to be doing… that at any time and in any place it is against a larger, universal law, to kill someone who is defenseless and of no immediate threat, regardless of what the local laws may be at the time. At which point the term “murder” can arguably be applied to the death penalty.
I tend to be more on the natural law side of things, myself, but I don’t think it really matters. Whether or not it’s murder, it’s still wrong. Always.
*/death and philosophy geek*