It’s sad how our modern world drives people to incredible ends to simply avoid being liable for things. We pay out the ass for insurance for driving automobiles, as it is the law to pay someone else to be liable. I have something called “personal liability insurance” that supposedly insures me in case I accidentally break something owned by someone else, as long as I wasn’t borrowing it or something (essentially it has to be an accident with something that was not in my ‘possession’). How crazy is that?

Here in Germany, as I have found out recently, people shovel their sidewalks here – not out of civic duty – but to avoid being sued. You see, if someone slips on the sidewalk in front of your house, although the sidewalk isn’t your property (it belongs to the city) – you are liable for paying damages to the victim. That’s right! So why aren’t people “falling” on sidewalks by the thousands, to take advantage of this interesting and common liability?

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I got this neat-o weather station a month or so ago. I’ve wanted one for a long time, and now I consult it daily to see just how cold it is outside while I sit at my desk in my comfy chair and screw around with my computer. It’s one of those fancy ones that automatically updates its time by a radio signal, and it has an outdoor remote temperature/humidity sensor that radios in its current feelings to the base station on my desk. Nice.

Anyways, last night near 3am it started beeping for some unknown reason. Like an alarm clock or something! I was awake and trying my best to play Halflife 2, but it wouldn’t stop beeping. So I did what any normal person would do, I took the batteries out. And you know what happened next?

We had an earthquake! No kidding! In the middle of my game, I had the unpleasant feeling that someone had grabbed my comfy chair and shook it all around just to annoy me, but there wasn’t anyone there! Neat. Read the rest of this entry »