What do they have in common?

Well, it seems to me that if enough people could believe that their plastic water bottles are causing global warming, then there’s easily enough to believe that Christopher Jones caused those two news helicopters to collide, crash, and kill four people. Not only that, but they’ll even buy first degree, i.e., premeditation.

Apparently, prosecutors are going to try everything they can to charge and convict the man of murder. If you read that article, you’ll see that there’s a really good debate over the whole issue. No legal stone goes unturned, and it turns out that while nothing exactly like it has ever happened, there is appellate-affirmed precedent for convicting people of murder who didn’t murder anyone, so that’s good, right? But it’s interesting, and it really highlights the value of brilliant legal minds. Hell, there was a time when people far less socially evolved than ourselves could never have made sense of charging, convicting, and electrocuting people for murdering other people when they haven’t, in fact, murdered other people. Simpletons! They just didn’t have enough brilliant legal minds and prosecutorial fervor. Thankfully, we’ve evolved past the point of plain facts to where the meat is: nuance.