People vs. Jeremy

Can a Star Trek transporter be used as a legal defense?  

In order to restore balance to the nerdiness, Jeremy is following up yesterday's Star Wars themed Status with a Star Trek themed Status.  Very inclusive of you, Jeremy.  

Thank you.  

So, I recently "read" an audio book that started with a bit of a thought experiment.  It goes basically thus:  

You own an axe.  You use it for a while and the blade breaks.  So, you go to the local hardware store, buy a new blade, attach it to the handle, and you have a functional axe again.  Later on, after further use, the handle breaks.  So, you go to the local hardware store, buy a new handle, attach it to the blade, and you have a functional axe again.  The question is, do you have the same axe you started with?  

It's interesting, because as much as you have entirely new components to your axe, you could make the case that since the entire thing was never replaced at once, and there is constant continuity between your existing axe and the original axe that you never replaced your axe.  

The same question applies to people.  

See, Star Trek transporters work on the very simple scientific fact that matter and energy are interchangeable.  The idea is that the transporter takes an image of every atom and subatomic particle in your body (compensating for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle by using the brilliant "Heisenberg Compensator"), and converts all of it to energy.  At this point in time, you no longer exist, which is part of why Dr. McCoy always hated the transporter.  The energy is then "beamed" down to the surface of the planet and the original image is rebuilt in its new location, atom by atom.  The resulting person is quite genuinely not the original person, but a presumably perfect reproduction of the person on the spaceship.  

So, can this be used as a legal defense?  "I didn't shoot that person with the phaser.  The person I was before I transported did it!  I'm just a recreation."  To my knowledge, this important legal concept has never been broached in the episodes of Star Trek I've watched.  It's important because...you know...it could happen some day...presumably around 46 years from April 5. 

Give or take.

...Just Staggering

Every day, I get surprised by static electricity.  One might say it’s...startling  

I'm dumbfounded, Jeremy.  You had a perfect opportunity to make the world's dumbest joke and you passed it up?  

Well, that pretty much is the joke.  Thanks for ruining it.  

You ruin comedy all the time.  Mostly by writing it.  

So anyway, it is winter.  A time of cold temperatures and dry air.  This leads to two things.  First, I wear a coat when I go outside.  My coat (actually one of two coats, but they're largely the same, so we're splitting hairs now) is made of wool which is magnificent at storing up massive amounts of static electricity.  The second part is that the dry air is a significantly worse conductor of electricity, meaning that the charge build-up is not allowed to dissipate quite as much as it would in more humid air. 

I've never put an ammeter to myself while being discharged, but I estimate the total charge collected in my woolen capacitor coat to be 8.3 metric craploads.  

All of this charge is stored up in my coat every time I come into work because that's how the world works.  All of this charge is discharged the moment I attempt to hang my coat up in the little metal cabinet in my office.  Because that's also how the world works.  

No matter what I try to do, I can't seem to stay properly grounded while taking my coat off, meaning I get the world's second worst electric shock (only surpassed by the one generated standing up off my couch and touching the metal plate around the light switch) every fricking day.  It doesn't matter what I do, like trying to stay in contact with the metal housing while taking the coat off, slapping the door, wearing metal shoes, etc.  It always ends the same way...with poor Jeremy getting a static shock from my cabinet.  I don't know why I find this so astounding now, since it happens all the time, but for some reason, I'm never expecting it. 

I Also Don't Want To Pay More

‘Ace’ Rothstein may have had a point about the blueberries…

I've seen that movie.  Things didn't go so well for Ace after that.  

Ehh...could have been worse.  Anyway, today's Sametime Status invokes the movie "Casino" starring everybody who's ever starred in an 90s mobster movie.  And Dickie Smothers.  The reference is a scene in which Robert De Niro is micromanaging the muffin production in the casino he's not technically allowed to run, but is running anyway.  He gets remarkably offended that his blueberry muffin has considerably fewer blueberries that somebody else's.  He issues a decree to the kitchen staff that each muffin from that point on is to have an equal number of blueberries.  

So, why is this important today?  Simple.  I forgot my banana.  

More often than not, my workday breakfast consists of a banana.  They're nutritious, I enjoy them, and they're pretty convenient.  I grab one on my way out the door, eat it while I'm opening my morning's email, and cleanup is quite simple...drop the peel in the garbage.  On days when I forget to bring a banana to work, or I've Tragically Miscalculated My Banana Supply, I resort to heading down to the Adorably Tiny Cafeteria Thing In My Building to locate breakfast.  Today, that meant Blueberry Muffin.  

Or should I say "Blueberry" Muffin.  

I'm not making this up...there was precisely one blueberry in my entire muffin.  It was in the top, too, which makes it worse.  That's canonically the Best Part Of The Muffin, and it had the only blueberry.  The entire bottom was a bland wasteland of muffin flavored muffin.  I exaggerate, since the muffins in the ATCTIMB are actually pretty decent, but you get the idea.  One blueberry is entirely insufficient for a blueberry muffin.  'Ace' was right...they need to put an equal number in each muffin, no matter how much longer it takes.  Quality control is worth it!