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Saturday, May 30, 2009
Conquistadors
BLDG BLOG has (yet another) great post with an interview with Richard Mosse, who ran around taking photos of U.S. troops in Saddam's old palaces. The photographer makes what to me is a very interesting point:
The most interesting thing about the whole endeavor for me was the very fact that the U.S. had chosen to occupy Saddam's palaces in the first place. If you're trying to convince a population that you have liberated them from a terrible dictator, why would you then sit in his throne? A savvier place to station the garrison would have been a place free from associations with Saddam, and the terror and injustices that the occupying forces were convinced they'd done away with.
Perhaps instead we should have taken his advice, but I have to admit it was a thoroughly satisfying feeling to see Saddam's shoddy, ridiculous palaces turned into U.S. garrisons. Then again, they are going through the process of giving them back to Iraq (finally), and that does threaten the possibility that the photographer will ever get a chance to photograph all of the palaces (he visited six out of the eighty one palaces).

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posted by Steve @ 6:24 PM   1 comments
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Ultra-high grade products
Years ago, I found a catalogue of $500 boots online. The boots were so awesome and so absurdly high-end, $500 seemed an absolutely reasonable price. They were waterproof, protected the wearer from electrical shocks, had lightweight aluminum toes and metacarpal guards, and on and on and on.

Thanks to the long tail, online vendors can get these "you wish" type products out there, and I've found one I would not have thought of: a $300 flashlight, the U2 Ultra. Terrifyingly, it's not their most expensive flashlight.

There's something to be said for this type of product being available to the general public. Most of the people who bought this were heads of state law or military groups. Even though I'm not sure I'll ever buy one of these flashlights (OK, maybe one day) it is good to know you really can buy a flashlight that will outlast its owner.

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posted by Steve @ 7:27 PM   0 comments
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Torture: Amoral and Ineffective
A follow-up to the "Compassionate Conservatives" who have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that it's BAD to hurt people, even if they're bad people.

Seriously, what did these people's mothers teach them in grade school?

"There are been several Gitmo detainees who've confessed under those circumstances. The issue is morality, though, and is water boarding unethical." - Ms. Proctor


Confessions under torture - and waterboarding has been recognized as torture since the Inquisition - aren't reliable, since people in that situation will say anything to appease the interrogator. That's why the Inquisition liked it so much: get the confession and execute.

Confessions under torture are the source for so much wasted paranoia and, I would think, wasted work for our Intelligence workers about plans that never existed. Some of that has leaked to the public, and so it is also the source of a great deal of, well, terror.

So by dropping all of its previously-untouchable moral standards about torture, the U.S. has helped terrorists succeed in their main goal: terror.

This exact issue about whether nor not the only problem with torture/waterboarding is the morality or legality has been addressed already by professional interrogators before the Senate:

"I find it curious that in the debate involving the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, there has been a pre-supposition that physical, psychological, and/or emotional coercion will compel a source to provide actionable intelligence, the only issues in contention being those legal and moral arguments in favor or in opposition. To the best of my knowledge, there is no definitive data to support that supposition and considerable historical evidence to suggest the contrary."


- Former USAF interrogator Steven M. Kleinman's Statement before the Senate 9/25/07


So, despite from the fact that up until now, the U.S. was a bulwark against torture (Reagan, Eisenhower, Washington) and causeless imprisonment and nobody would've even thought that in America we would even have to debate it, torture doesn't work anyway.

So despite your own problem with finding moral problem with causing excruciating mental and phyisical pain, hopefully I've at least appealed to your sense of practicality.

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posted by Steve @ 9:20 PM   0 comments
Sunday, July 01, 2007
"... I'm never going to need this!"
The mantra of every high schooler in a class they dislike: "... I'm never going to need this!"

Yet, as a teacher, I could very rarely give a convincing rebuttal. Do I know what the subjunctive mood is? Yes. Subordinate conjunction? Yes. Do I use them as well as I need to, and were I ever to be asked by a stranger to give an example, I could (in fact, that last sentence illustrates both).

It makes me want to teach things that matter. Most of what we teach does matter, if nothing else as an exercise in how to get oneself to understand concepts without 'feeling like it.'

But why not the stuff that you need to survive as an American?

I wish someone had taught me how to:
  • Do my taxes.
  • How the current health care system works
  • The relationship between taxes and government benefits
  • The military-industrial complex
  • The effect of fanaticism in religion
I did learn some things that tangentially helped me: Supply and demand, inflation, and other basic economic concepts. I do wonder if that's because of where I went to school, though.

I responded to a post to The Daily Dish with this sentiment here.

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posted by Steve @ 12:44 PM   0 comments
Sunday, September 17, 2006
If I Ran for President

I literally had a dream last night that I had been nominated for President of the USA by the people that knew me. For no other reason but to make me feel better about my country, I'll probably write a few blogs about what I'd do in the interminable distance between now and January 20, 2009.

My main concerns are tax efficiency. medicare, military efficiency, educational inflation, good-will terror fighting, and Social Security. I'll tackle them in that order.

I also hope that now, with my life going the way I more-or-less like it, I can consistently update this blog and things like it (such as my car's blog), take care of my own finances, and have a consistent schedule.

Currently listening :
12/Loup EP
By The Notwist

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posted by Steve @ 9:04 PM   0 comments
 
About Me


Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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