A Classic

I'm really only trying out the feature on here that allows you to post movies NOT on YouTube.

Me 'n' Birdbrain

On Torture

I feel like I'm missing something in the debate over the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales's replacement. The debate about whether the U.S. should torture people, and more specifically about whether waterboarding is torture.

Today things got even murkier for me after skimming the op-ed piece in the paper by David Reinhard, The Oregonian's lone voice in support of all things Bush. His piece today tries to argue that waterboarding isn't all that bad -- that's it's not really torture, while at the same time arguing that it's bad enough (apparently) that it makes terrorists give up valuable information. He uses the well-worn example of our lives hanging in the balance and the only way to safety is through torturing a suspect.

Of course, it seems to me if our entire security apparatus comes down to that, we're hurtin' gators. I have a hard time going along with this fantasy scenario. Especially since it comes from the so-called "values" crowd. In effect they are saying we NEED to go against our values to preserve the state. So there's "do the right thing" and then there's "well, it would be NICE to do the right thing, but we can't always do the right thing." If anyone else suggested this approach, they would be charged with "moral relativism," which used to be a bad thing, but now I have learned that, appropriately enough, moral relativism is only bad sometimes!

Here's my favorite snippet from Reinhard:

"But is any and all waterboarding torture and therefore illegal? I don't think so. First, if all waterboarding is torture, why does the U.S. government waterboard its own folks in survival training programs? It doesn't gouge out trainees' eyes or rip out fingernails to get them ready to withstand the horrors of capture. Is it because waterboarding is safe and painless?"

It's confusing, and you'll have to take my word for it that it wouldn't make any more sense if I included the whole piece. It sounds as though he's saying we use waterboarding to train our men to "withstand the horrors of capture" -- but if that's the case, he's saying waterboarding is, in fact, a "horror" of capture. That sure sounds like a definition of torture.

I don't really get it.

The other part of the debate that confounds me is U.S. senators (pro-Bush, pro-torture) who say "well, the nominee for the AG's office can't really say it's a crime because then he'd have to prosecute the people who did it." Um... YEAH, that's right! "We can't really call murder a crime because then we'd have to punish murderers." Does that sound any better?

Spray Paint Rules

A new city ordinance goes into effect today that will put a damper on my spray paint joy. No, I'm not a tagger, but I do buy probably a dozen or more cans of spray paint a year. It's useful and fun. Now when I go to buy some I will have to get assistance from the shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper must "keep [my] information on file" for two years. Oh, I'm sure it will all be worth the hassle six months from now, when we've finally won the War on Graffiti.

I noticed in the newspaper that 11-13% of tagging is deemed "gang-related" (whatever that means, really), and "the rest is political or hate speech."

Heh! here is a photo I took recently: Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons, on a boxcar that was parked out by Smith and Bybee Lakes last week. I'm not sure which gang associates with Chief Wiggum. Or perhaps this is hate speech?

Here's a copy of the new rules:

Horror Shopping

Several weeks ago we decided we should probably rent THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to round out the kids' pop culture education. You know, it's in the canon. Like Willa Cather or Twizzlers.

But we didn't (read: I didn't) get around to adding it to our Netflix queueueueueueueue. And then Halloween came along and it seeemed more and more like we should watch it. Some of this comes from The Office -- there's a small part of that show that alludes to Blair Witch.

In the last week I've been to five different places that specialize in selling DVDs, and none of them have The Blair Witch Project.

It's a sign o' the times that I find it odd and vexing that I can't go buy whatever movie I want.

Newsmakers

After years of researching and writing about famous people, I have concluded that so-called "newsmakers" are the least interesting people to research. The celebrities and politicians and athletes you see in the news all the time... those guys have pretty uninteresting stories, a lot of 'em.

Mostly because so many of them have spent their entire lives wanting to be in the news. So their life experience prior to becoming famous is often a series of steps to becoming famous. There are exceptions, of course. But celebrities of the modern variety, from Britney Spears to Rudy Giuliani, often seem to have the same basic storyline. They went to the right places and made friends with the right people along the way and were determined to become famous and so... that's what happened.

I find more twists and turns when I research historical figures.

I'm not making any kind of judgement about it, really. There have been plenty of times when I read about some historical figure and it dawns on me that they were just like one of these people you see on VH-1 or E! They maybe go down in history as a great man or woman, but in fact they were basically showboaters and spotlight hogs as much as some of the flashy celebs seen on today's "red carpet."

I could write an entire new post on why I think Red Carpet should become our 51st state. Since we now formulate national policy on non-state entities such as "terrorism," I think there's a legal case for a 51st state being the stretches of red carpets famous for those celebrity forced marches prior to awards shows, screening, etc.

Photo of the Day

Mr. Holznagel sent this to me, but didn't exactly say why. The statue is supposed to be of Vincent Price (write to Who2 and ask them to profile Mr. Price).