Via Eve Tushnet, I read a very disturbing passage about the torture by right-wing squads in Latin America on Late Night Thoughts. You’ll have to follow the link to read that passage, but here is her conclusion: The human gene pool sometimes throws out monsters. There are psychiatric terms for them, but their common denominator… Continue reading Torture Again
Author: Zack
Dad, gadget guy, bookworm, political animal, global nomad, cyclist, hiker, tennis player, photographer
Face Recognition
Here is a news item on CNN about face recognition using a 3-D scanner instead of a regular 2-D photo. For a fleeting moment, Mohamed Atta appeared on an airport security camera minutes before he boarded one of the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Was there any way… Continue reading Face Recognition
An Illegal Immigrant
From Dawn: US authorities kept a nephew of President Pervez Musharraf in detention for two weeks for a visa violation, US and Pakistani officials said on Saturday. Aamir Javed Musharraf was detained on Feb 19 and released on Friday on bail, they said. He will now have to appear before immigration judge who could order… Continue reading An Illegal Immigrant
Census Data
As CalPundit pointed out, there is a lot of info available about your neighborhood on the Census website. It appears though that he has made a mistake in reporting the data (122 people) for his census tract. According to the Census Bureau, Census tracts generally have between 1,500 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size… Continue reading Census Data
Torture
A debate has been raging in the blogworld recently about using torture on Al-Qaeda members. Here are some of the posts on the topic: No Conclusions: Volokh Conspiracy For: Oliver Willis, The Agitator Against: CalPundit, Unqualified Offerings, Light of Reason, Path of the Paddle, Head Heeb. I would especially like to quote from Head Heeb… Continue reading Torture
Iraq War
While Jonathan Edelstein, Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum were pro-war and have major misgivings now, I have been trying to move in the opposite direction. I was very skeptical about Gulf War II initially. Not because it would be a quagmire during the war itself, rather because of what would come after the war. Driving… Continue reading Iraq War
No Blogging over the weekend
I haven’t been posting as much as I would have liked to as I had some personal errands to take care of at home. Anyway, I am driving back to school over the weekend. So, there won’t be any blogging before Monday.
Confederate Flag
One of the good things to come as a result of the patriotism expressed by people after the terrorist attacks of September 11 has been the large number of US flags on display everywhere. I like it especially since now it seems to me that Union flags outnumber Confederate flags in rural Georgia (since probably… Continue reading Confederate Flag
Definitely Broken
You are 33% geek You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important… Continue reading Definitely Broken
Conspiracy Theories
CalPundit wonders about Steven Den Beste’s sanity: Several weeks ago, weary of his futile efforts to understand the French psyche, Steven Den Beste announced that he had exhausted all other logical possibilities and come up with the only possible remaining reason why the French continue to oppose our war with Iraq: they have supplied banned… Continue reading Conspiracy Theories