Who Still Hangs?
Sorry to get a bit morose, but in talking with Kenny B yesterday he was saying that some states in the US still use the gallows as their method of execution. I was shocked amd skeptical. Of course, he was right. Washington and New Hampshire still list hanging as their way to kill killers for killing. When was the last time a state in the US hanged a person? 1996.(!!) But it really should never happen again. Is that because we've become so much more civilized we now recognize hanging as barbaric? No. It's because a legal, er, loophole has been discovered. Should you ever be condemned to hang in the US, and you'd rather die some other way, the thing to do is eat yourself silly. Slate's Explainer has more, if you can handle the super-unpleasant details.

Oh yeah, and happy new year.