What the hell is wrong with people?

Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second violent incident on what is historically one of the year's busiest shopping days, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.

Honestly, are we humans, or are we monsters?

World Philosophy Day

In honor of World Philosophy Day, I ask you to mull this question, first posed by Friederich Nietzsche:

If you knew you had to live your life over again, exactly as it has been - no changes, no derivations from the path you have been on - would cry in agony or dance in jubilation?

Heavy lifting

From Kathimerini:

Phoenix Lander, I hardly knew ya...

Wired Magazine is having an epitaph contest for the Mars Phoenix Lander, which is slowly dying on the red planet as the sun filled "days" are decreasing and unable to charge its solar cells. Phoenix was, thankfully, an incredibly successful mission that gave scientists plenty of information about Mars.

Some of the epitaphs are touching, some are funny. Here's to the lander and the NASA/JPL crew behind it - and to many more successful missions in the future.