Effective Crowd Control

Wired News describes it as the "Goodbye Weapon". The military has developed a non-lethal beam weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq. It creates a burning sensation in which "most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds." Any damage, even to the eyes (which rarely happened in tests - even monkeys under anesthesia blinked), is healed in 24 hours.

R U Serious? Rutgers to play 7-5 team in Texas Bowl

Not many people probably noticed, but Rutgers football team is going to play in the Texas Bowl a few days before New Years. And this team that was undefeated late into their season and would have played in a major BCS bowl had they won their last game are playing...Kansas State. Now, I have a good friend who graduated from Kansas State and have nothing against them, but how does the 16th ranked team in the country play a team that is 7-5 for its bowl game?

What's actually worse for Rutgers is this game isn't even being broadcast by a major television network. It will be broadcast on the NFL network which is only available on cable. So Rutgers doesn't even get the added bonus of helping its nationwide recruiting by playing on national TV.

Send a Soldier Silly String

What does the most technologically equipped military in the world use to save lives from trip wire bombs? Silly String! As reported on Wired, some are starting an effort to ship silly string in care packages over to soldiers in Iraq.

Space Food Upgrade

I remember being in middle school and eating "space ice cream" - the ice cream astronauts eat. I know some people liked it but I thought it was pretty disgusting. Well, no more of that - at least for a couple meals. Rachael Ray, the celebrity chef - has been tapped by NASA to create a few of the meals the astronauts will be eating on their next meal. I guess some of the smartest people in the world doing some of the most dangerous work anywhere deserve a good meal now and then.

Looking for a Digital SLR for Christmas

This article provides some useful tips. I can't help smiling that his #1 recommendation is the Canon Digital Rebel XT, which is the camera I shoot mostly with. Of course, he also makes the VERY important point that in the SLR world it is not just the camera but also the lens you pair it with which is critical to great pictures.

I want this flashlight!

I always tell my mother that a cool flashlight is always a good gift for a guy. This may be the coolest (or is that HOTTEST) flashlight I have ever seen. Not exactly safe, but you'd feel like a super hero with that thing on your utility belt.

With great incandescence comes great responsibility.

Waterboarding - The Debate, Part 2

The wikipedia article that BowHunter posted contains a definition of waterboarding that seems in line with other authorities on the web. (Yes, I am too lazy to go out and look up the precise legal or procedural definition.) I think a reasonable summary of it would be?

Waterboarding is a technique where a subject is made to believe s/he is drowning, while attempting to hold back from inflicting actual permanent damage and death upon the subject. This technique has been used both as a method of applying psychological pressure for interrogation and as a method of torture to humiliate and break the psyche of prisoners. The technique has been called horrific by most who have been subjected to it, and can lead to brain damage or worse depending on how it is applied and the health of the subject.

This practice is something I hope to never have cause to see or hear about in my daily life.

The other thing we need defined for this discussion to really begin, is "torture" vs "psychological pressure." Dictionary.Com defines torure as "the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty." "Psychological Pressure" is harder to define, but the common man's view of it might be "the act of inflicting low-level suffering upon an individual to impel them to an action."

Under these definitions, "psychological pressure" might be a good-cop-bad-cop interrogation of a suspect, or sending a child to stand in the corner to keep him/her from bothering their neighbors. "Torture", on the other hand, might be removing the fingernails of a subject or burning them with hot irons in order to extract a confession.

However, it becomes obvious very quickly that these two definitions are not two different things, but simply positions along a spectrum. Standing in the corner is "pressure", standing in the corner even when one needs to use the bathroom is painful, standing in the corner when one needs to use the bathroom and is hungry and is exhausted is extreme, standing in the corner with all the previous conditions plus an open wound is cruel, standing in the corner for days without sleep or relief is torture, standing in the corner without sleep, food, or relief for long enough is a death sentence.

This leaves us with two real questions that need answering for this discussion:
1. Where along the spectrum does "pressure" become "torture"?
2. In which part of the spectrum does Waterboarding lie?

(I know this is going slow. Stick with me, we're almost to the meat of it.)