5 Scientific Reasons A Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen

This weekend was nuts!
Let's start with Friday. In the morning, I got up, walked in the rain to work, only to find out no one was coming into the office (and since I don't have a key, that meant I wasn't coming in either). Normally I would be quite pleased to have a Friday off, but it's an internship, and I have hour requirements, and blah. I had a ton of homework lined up for the weekend, though, so I got cracking on that. Doing homework doesn't feel so bad when it's pouring outside. Adam and I went out to lunch, and then I went to Party Depot for costume supplies.
On Thursday, we had noticed that the ceiling in our 2nd bedroom, which we use as an office, was leaking. Again.


That's so gross.

We already had this problem over the summer, and the roofer claimed he had fixed it. Anyway, the leak was right over my desk, so we just moved my desk into the middle of the room and put down a towel to sop up the water. By Friday evening, the leak was getting worse.



We put down more towels, and tupperware, and went out to dinner. After a rousing game of monopoly (I won!), we decided to get ready for bed. Around midnight, we heard a crash. I told Adam to go check it out, and, yeah...the ceiling collapsed.





We spent the next TWO HOURS moving the furniture out of the room (luckily, nothing was damaged - just messy), picking up ceiling fragments, and putting down garbage bags to catch the water that was now pretty much pouring in. Oh man, did it suck. We went to sleep a little after 2, and were awakened again at 6, when more ceiling came down. I was pretty glad that we had already covered the floor in trash bags.

That was Friday night. On Saturday night, we went Halloweening with my friend Carolyn and her roommate Baret. First we went to Carolyn's house for some pregaming, then went to a house party near Shirlington, then went to Dupont, and finally ended up in Adams Morgan, where we got the BEST falafel. There was a toppings bar with green olives AND the best pickles ever. You can't beat that.


Carolyn & Baret (a.k.a. Medusa & Pippi!)


Andy & Edie!




We were drunk...

On a completely unrelated note, look how cute!!

This past Wednesday, the Civil Rights Law Journal held a symposium about the second amendment (http://www.law.gmu.edu/gmucrlj/events.php). As a candidate member, I was required to go, which was okay with me because I'm always up for a good debate over civil rights. All the panels were pretty good, but two things were said that really irritated me, and they are as follows.

(1) The panelists were asked how they felt about requiring a national gun registry. We don't have one right now, but some gun control advocates are pushing to create one. Anyway, one of the panelists (a pro-gun person) got up, and started talking about how the Nazis first required all Jews to register their firearms, then made firearm possession illegal, and then used the gun registries to arrest Jews. He then tried to imply that if we were to require a national gun registry, the same thing would happen in America - people would be targeted and arrested (and executed?) for owning guns (and it would be easy to round them up due to their names being on a national list). I had a lot of problems with this response, the primary concern being that we all know the Nazis didn't do this because they were anti-gun, or even just anti-Jews-owning-guns. The Jewish gun registry was clearly just a pretext to get more names. No Jew was killed in Nazi Germany for the sole reason that he was a gun owner. And, of course, Nazis got names from lots of other lists, including synagogue members list. Does this panelist think that churches, synagogues and other places of worship shouldn't keep membership lists? Because, you know, then we could outlaw Catholicism and then use the lists to round up all the Catholics and kill them.

(2) In a different panel, the panelists were asked why firearms should be allowed on college campuses. Another pro-gun guy stood up, and launched into a story about how, a long time ago, Muslims invaded a town that consisted primarily of Christians and Jews, and allowed them to keep their religions, but forbid them from owning weapons or "raising their fist" against any Muslim. The guy talked about how Muslim children could run up to a Jew or Christian in the street and shoot him in the knee, and the Jew/Christian couldn't do anything about it. The guy said that Muslim men would come into the homes of Christians and Jews and rape the women, and the Jews/Christians couldn't do anything about. The guy then said - "you think that sounds bad, right? You're glad we don't live in a place like that, right? Well, if you're a college student living on a college campus, that is your reality." His point was that if we didn't let college students carry weapons, then they'd be at the complete mercy of the next Virginia Tech killer, and they'd be completely defenseless. Again, this is bullshit. No one is saying that we're going to knowingly permit gun-toting maniacs onto college campuses and let them have free reign, while telling the poor little unarmed students that they just have to sit there and take it. Plus, way to play up Muslim stereotypes.

Anyway, there was a nice range of opinions at each panel, and some lively debate. It was a good day.