Break-in at CI Host colo facility
UPDATE (February 4, 2007): There was some followup discussion.
Posted by Lippard at 11/04/2007 06:38:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: crime, security, technology
Posted by Lippard at 11/04/2007 06:33:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: education, religion, Scientology
I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.
In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.
Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.
How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.
(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)
Most of the media discussions of waterboarding have completely omitted the part about the subject's lungs filling with water and made it sound like it's no more than having your head dunked under water, like bobbing for apples at Halloween.Posted by Lippard at 11/04/2007 01:53:00 PM 3 comments
Posted by Lippard at 11/03/2007 10:07:00 AM 0 comments
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Posted by Lippard at 11/01/2007 08:40:00 PM 2 comments
Labels: Arizona, economics, housing bubble
Posted by Einzige at 10/31/2007 08:58:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Arizona, housing bubble
Ronson also links to Robert Lancaster's stopsylviabrowne.com.Famous anti-psychics, such as Richard Dawkins, are often criticised for using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Dawkins' last television series, The Enemies Of Reason, was roundly condemned for making silly, harmless psychics seem too villainous. This criticism might be true were it not for the fact that, when the likes of Sylvia Browne make pronouncements, the police and desperate parents sometimes spend serious time and money investigating their claims.
In 2002, for instance, the parents of missing Holly Krewson turned their lives upside down in response to one of Sylvia's visions. Holly vanished in April 1995. Seven years later her mother, Gwen, went on Montel, where Sylvia told her Holly was alive and well and working as a stripper in a lap-dancing club on Hollywood and Vine. Gwen immediately flew to Los Angeles and frantically scoured the strip clubs, interviewing dancers and club owners and punters, and handing out flyers, and all the while Holly was lying dead and unidentified in San Diego.
Posted by Lippard at 10/31/2007 09:53:00 AM 18 comments
Labels: books, psychics, Richard Dawkins, Sylvia Browne
Posted by Lippard at 10/27/2007 07:42:00 PM 20 comments
Labels: hoaxes, religion, skepticism
What if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters?
That too will not matter . . . anymore than I care much about the “Lost Books” (really his notes) that the Tolkien family keeps publishing from the author of Lord of the Rings insofar as it could possibly change the meaning of Tolkien’s main work. The text is fixed and it is as it is. The fact that Tolkien had other ideas about Frodo, Merry, or any other characters is important to discuss how the story came to be, but does not change the meaning of the text, if there is no explicit (or even hint) of the “new” matter.
This seems to be at extreme odds with how most Christians view the Old Testament in light of the New (and, as an aside, how Mormons view the Old and New Testaments in light of the Book of Mormon). It's pretty clear that Christians do hold that the words of the Old Testament have different meanings than Jews attribute to them.
Posted by Lippard at 10/27/2007 10:23:00 AM 6 comments
Labels: books, creationism, Discovery Institute, intelligent design, Mormons, movies, religion