Snakes, Literal and Figurative

I clicked on an Ask.com ad because it had a graphic of a snake that caught my eye. I actually like snakes, so... this ad might not have gotten more squeamish folks to click on it. From the Ask.com page, I followed a link on Dealing with Snakes, and where this sentence made me laugh out loud: "Sadly, the survival of many of our snakes is threatened by development, road mortality, and persecution by humans." Yes, yes, The Free Dictionary says that's a valid use of "persecution," but the images in my head... of people picketing with signs that say "Down With Snakes!" or "God Hates Snakes!" just made me laugh.

Last week, I stumbled across a website with an interesting article on Stanley Milgram's research on obedience. I remembered studying his research back in my college psych classes -- where the subject is told to administer increasingly painful shocks to someone. Sheesh. I've been trying to write about this for half an hour. But I just don't know what to say. I'm fairly horrified. (If you can say "fairly," can you truly still say "horrified"? idk) Check the links. Or even Wikipedia. Crazy.