Safe Assumptions

[Plane]

I like this guy.

In order to exist in society, we have to assume that the vast majority of people are sane.

In order to eat a slice of pizza, you have to assume that no one in the vast supply chain that provided each of the ingredients and proto-ingredients had snapped and decided to dump arsenic or anthrax or polonium into their vat.

You also have to assume that no one sprinkled poison onto your slice while your back was turned, or when you blinked between bites.

You have to assume that there isn't someone lurking behind you with a knife, or that there isn't a bomb under your chair, or that a sniper isn't targeting you from a half mile away.

While we're throwing caution to the wind, let's also assume that sending signals down the nerves in your arm will cause it to move the pizza to your mouth, and not the fork to your eyeball. Let's assume that the information being delivered via our senses corresponds to reality, and that we can make decisions based on it. Let's assume that our memories of the past five minutes also correspond to reality, and that the next five minutes will proceed logically from events in the present. Let's assume that the universe will continue to exist, rather than spontaneously ceasing.

That's a lot of assumptions.
-http://www.leftoversoup.com/first.php

[Plane]

http://www.leftoversoup.com

[Xavier_Onassis]

Although I am not in favor of eating the dead, there was that incident of the Uruguayan Rugby team that crashed in the Andes and was forced to eat their dead comrades in order to survive.  There have been two films and one documentary on this. Both the films were entitled "Alive".

[Plane]

  Now seating the Donner Party... calling the Donner Party.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The difference between the Uruguayans and the Donner Party is that members of the Donner Party apparently killed and ate their fellows, while the Uruguayans only ate those who died as a result of the plane crash. The Donner Party lore was written up in lurid 19th Century fashion as a scandal, while the story in "Alive!" was written matter-of-factly, with the question "put yourselves in our shoes, what would YOU do?"

[Plane]

http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/gilbert/yarn.html

It is a sort of a classic question, when you are up against it , which is more wrong?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNL0KfD0nts

[Xavier_Onassis]

Amusing. The lesser of two weevils.  However, the insects I see in that clip do not resemble weevils. I think they might be weevil larvae.