Follow-up Brains

[elfs]

NYT: The American use of torture is inexcusable.

By now, we know the truth: In the aftermath of 9/11, panicked administration officials authorized the use of torture as a means of getting information. Cheney, especially, authorized the use of torture to extract information about the assumed link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein because existing interrogation techniques had not revealed the link. He was informed by his own people that such techniques might be illegal, and even while the CIA was going at it he was ordering a legal team to create justification.

The claim that Khalid Sheik Mohammed broke after one waterboarding session, and provided useful information, is now revealed as a lie: the United States waterboarded Mohammed 183 times over a 30 day period.

Intelligence officials entrusted with vetting the torture program, a derivative of the military's SERE program (which trains soldiers how to resist torture), were unaware of its history or efficacy. They did not know that they were reverse-engineering Communist techniques used to elicit false confessions from prisoners of war. They gave the task of doing that research to John Yoo, who as far as we know, never did any research at all.

About that other al-Qaeda plot

One of the myths going around is that toturing KSM got us information abouta plot to destroy towers on the West Coast as a kind of coda to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. The problem with this is that, looking at the memos closely, we captured KSM in 2003, but the FBI had already asserted that the plot had been foiled and was dead as of 2002. So he gave us useless, out of date information, that the defenders of the torture regime are touting as their greatest success.

Louisiana seeks to one-up Texas and ban all medical research

A bill has been introduced into the Louisiana State Legislature banning all "mixing of human and animal cells" in a petri dish. Apparently, the Catholic Church of Louisiana is behind this bill, but equally apparently nobody there understands that mouse cultures are frequently used to support other cells for research. All non-agricultural research is at risk from this bill.

This is of a piece with modern fundamentalist religious thinking: it does not matter how much suffering or hellishness we create on this Earth, as long as our souls are oriented toward the next life properly. It would seem the Catholic Church of Louisiana takes Jesus's statement "The wretched will be with you always" as an instruction. (via Pharyngula)

To be a conservative, you must approve of torture

John Hindraker, from the loony right website Powerline, describes the current wave of anger about torture as "mere policy differences" between administrations, and characterizes Barack Obama's attempt to regain "our moral bearings" as "criminalizing conservatism."

If that's what conservatism means, then we should be glad it's doomed.

The Evolutionary Basis For Female Orgasm

Oh, just read it. Really.

Helpful cheat sheets for web programmers

The latest gallery of web design galleries.

30 gorgeous website footers. Yeah, they're that important.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What bugs me, this old school command line wonk, is that the footers seem to have to be so *big*. Give me a nice, clean, *compact* footer, well-organized, and I'm there. If your footer is half a freakin' screenful or more, you're overdoing it. Like the old four-line .sig limit, eh?

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that I now need to write something with the title "The Island of Dr. Boudreaux (http://lafourche.k12.la.us/teymard/boudjoke/)"?

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Um. What the Hell kind of serious crack was that writer about female orgasm on? Seriously.

Okay. Here's the simple truth: Evolution is a lazy beast. Men and women are nearly identical.

The penis and the clitoris are the SAME organ. The prostate and the cowpers gland are the SAME organ.

Give a female the right hormones, those bits grow (along with body hair, etc)

Give a male the right hormones, those shrink, their breasts grow and can even be induced to lactate.

Females have orgasms for the same reason males do. It feels good and 'feels good' turns out to be a pretty effective means of getting animals to breed. If it feels good, we tend to do more of it.

Sometimes I have to wonder if these people take stupid pills or if they just got dropped on their head repeatedly.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Oh no, poor Khalid Sheikh Mohammed! Why are we so mean to such wonderful people?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter who he is. American Does Not Torture.

And let's look at all the wonderful countries that do torture: WW2 Japan. WW2 Germany. The (former) Soviet Union. The (former) Khmer Cambodia. They're all out on the ashheap of history.

From a strategic point of view, it would seem that torture does more damage to the torturing nation than is worth the loss of dignity and soul.

[lovingboth]

It'd be interesting to see what Cheney would confess to after that treatment.

You'd probably clear up the truth about the 2000 election, the Kennedy assassinations, and where Bigfoot is hiding.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

You need to reconsider your personal standards. I really want to live in a country where the standard is higher than 'Not as bad at Stalin's Russia'.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

I've thought for a long time that to be a Republican, you must be a *complete* asshole. Rush Limbaugh is a fine example of what it means to be Republican, in my mind. And the Republican party is in the process of confirming that.

Also, apparently it's required that you be a hypocrite in the extreme. To rant endlessly about family values, while simultaneously creating an environment in which families are sure to fail. To rant endlessly about morality, while simultaneously endorsing torture and extreme punishments for criminals. To give speech after speech about financial responsibility while simultaneously running up the deficit.