From a new study:
‘High caffeine users’ – those who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day – were three times more likely to have heard a person’s voice when there was no one there compared with ‘low caffeine users’ who consumed less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day.
A reader writes:
One note that has been missed in the analysis of all of this: Crawford’s report talked about how Qahtani’s torture took place over a nearly two month period. Presumably the intelligence officials were not able to get whatever information they thought he had in a short time frame. Doesn’t this seriously undermine the "ticking time bomb" defence of torture?
If it took two months to break this man, how urgent was the information that he had? Also, isn’t it at least conceivable that in that two month period the intelligence officials could have gotten the information from him by methodically developing a relationship, a level of rapport, that would have ultimately lead Qahtani to realize that at America’s core is a decent society full of decent individuals, committed to treating the rest of the world with some core level of decency?
The ticking time bomb scenario has not happened in the US or anywhere else in human history. It was a rhetorical device to cover for Bush and Cheney’s desire to use torture as a routine weapon in the war on terror. It’s a talking point in a propaganda campaign, not a good faith argument for any actual current situations.
A simple question: now that the chief Gitmo prosecutor has said that Qahtani was tortured, will the New York Times, the AP, Newsweek and the Washington Post stop using words and euphemisms that are not true? Or do we have to endure more linguistic cowardice from the MSM?
An artist catalogs his year. Creative Review describes the project:
For three years now we’ve studied how many miles he has run, how many emails and texts he has sent, which books he has read. In 2007 we found out when he met Sarah and when he turned thirty (but were they linked?). We know how much money gathered in his coin bucket, how many photos he has uploaded to Flickr, when he was attacked on the train, and so on.
Dreher responds to my defense of 8 maps:
Here’s the thing: how would you feel if your wife or your kids were at home alone when some outraged creep from the Queer Avengers or somesuch organization showed up pounding on the door demanding to talk to somebody about your Prop 8 donation? Eightmaps makes that a lot more likely. In Texas, thank goodness, we have a castle law, which gives homeowners the right to shoot anybody who invades their property. It’s a good law, and though I certainly hope never to have to invoke it, after last summer’s experience I wouldn’t hesitate to make use of the liberty it grants me to protect my family and my property. Activists who wish to use Eightmaps or any of its successors to harrass Texans, gay or straight, conservative or liberal, in their houses risk getting their asses shot off.
Rod needs some help. This stuff is just deranged sexual panic – mixed up with fantasies of anti-gay violence.
New York, New York, 7.35 am
Daniel McCarthy notices that the chumminess from the period when she might have prevented the first black president has not dissipated:
[Clinton is] a monster of the conservative movement’s creation. Throughout the ’90s, the movement’s mouthpieces put about the idea that Hillary was the power behind the throne — she was, after all, less popular and further to the Left than her husband. This backfired spectacularly: after all, if Hillary could be co-president, doesn’t that make her eminently qualified for the senate, to be president again, or to be the nation’s top diplomat?
And having done at least as much as her feminist fans on the Left to build up the myth of omnicompetent Hillary, what is the Right doing now? Lying down for her: “even firebrand South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint,” Time’s Massimo Calabresi writes, “said he was ‘optimistic and hopeful about [Sen. Clinton’s] role as secretary of State.’” If there is a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, it’s evidently the best friend Hillary Clinton could hope to have.
Until, of course, they discover her real views about the Middle East.
Johann Hari has – yet again – a priceless story. It’s an interview and profile of David Irving. Money quote of many:
We settle in the living room looking out over the grounds, and our photographer begins to snap him. He mentions that the white coffee-cup Irving is holding works well against the green, and Irving says: “Well, it is an Aryan cup.”
A revealing and interesting interview with the outgoing Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Marburger. Money quote:
Seed: Did you see President Bush ever change his mind based on the scientific evidence that you presented him?
JM: As far as I can tell, the president, as a matter of principle, doesn’t think it’s wise to defy nature. By the time I’ve arranged a presentation about something for the president, all science questions have been resolved. And he expects it. He would probably fire me if I permitted a science question to leak into his briefings. I’m there to make sure that his advisors and his agencies have consulted with the science community, and that all the science issues have been taken care of before anything gets to him.
Ta-Nehisi speculates.
The Dish 