Again while doing VSNP research, I've been looking through the declassified articles from the CIA's Studies In Intelligence. One article (which doesn't have anything to do with the VSNP, but which nonetheless caught my eye) is "The Interrogation of Suspects Under Arrest" written by Don Compos in 1968. (PDF version here.) Supporting my earlier argument regarding the ineffectiveness of torture, Compos writes:
The question of torture should be disposed of at once. Quite apart from moral and legal considerations, physical torture or extreme mental torture is not an expedient device. Maltreating the subject is from a strictly practical point of view as short-sighted as whipping a horse to his knees before a thirty-mile ride. It is true that almost anyone will eventually talk when subjected to enough physical pressures, but the information obtained in this way is likely to be of little intelligence value and the subject himself rendered unfit for further exploitation. Physical pressure will often yield a confession, true or false, but what an intelligence interrogation seeks is a continuing flow of information.
Emphasis added.
Related article: Clinton's Guantanamo: How the Democratic president set the stage for a land without law.
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Today's a NYT article on the difficulties that John Negroponte is having trying to coordinate national intelligence sounded awfully familiar, because I've been reading the aforementioned "History of U.S. Communications Intelligence During WWII: Policy and Administration." (If you must know, I'm doing some research for the VSNP [Very Secret Novel Project].) Basically it's a bureaucratic history of the cooperation, competition, and rivalries among all the agencies striving to produce intelligence during WWII. The Army (including the SSA which became the NSA), the Navy, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA), and even the FCC were all battling with each other over who was responsible for what, and what information was given to whom. (The British had separate relationships with many of these agencies, and sometimes played one off against the other.) The Navy and the FBI hated each other, especially. I won't even begin to describe all the internal battles within each of these agencies.
"It's amazing we won the war," I told Debbie, the in-house historian.
"Well, if you think our squabbles were bad, the Nazis were worse. Their system was set up to divide power so no one would have too much."
So there you have it -- the intelligence war is decided by who has the worst bureaucracy.
| VSNP | NSA | CIA | WWII | Military | History | VSNP |
Seen today at the entrance to the Q Train / 7th Avenue, a hand-lettered flyer advertising for sale a CHESTER DRAW.
| Errata | Park Slope | Brooklyn |
The On Our Blogs category here was originally meant to be used on the sidebar, for brief links to the latest posts on Ishbadiddlers' Other Blogs. It wasn't used so I took it out, but Colin asked for it back, so back it is! The most recent 2 items will show up in the sidebar; don't use the "On Our Blogs" category if you want your item to show up in the main blog because it won't appear. I'll up the number of items from 2 if anyone other than CJ uses it.
What would be really kewl would be a way to throw in RSS feeds for those sites directly, so no actual intervention would be necessary -- you would automatically see when (and what) Colin, Chris, Emily, Ennis, et al. have posted on their sites. (After doing a minimal amount of research, this seems like the best solution given that these pages are currently .asp not .php -- unless anyone [Tk?] has other ideas.) Since this would require work on my part, I'd only move forward if you, our readers, were really interested. So speak up if this something you're interested in, otherwise it'll get put in the "interesting project I might do on that mythical day when I have lots of free time on my hands" list.
Thanks to Mike for resurrecting this corner of Ish for any and all of us who want to hype our own blogging. I would definitely love to hear more from the Vast Ish-Wing Conspiracy. In any case, I'm going to occasionally offer up TWIBI: This Week in Big Ink. This week, TWIBI is really LWIBI (Last Week...), and that's harder to say. Nonetheless, it's a rogue's gallery of in-case-you-missed-them:
Bill Kristol
Bill Buckley
Bill O'Reilly
and for good measure
Rick Santorum
Also, as a bonus: how about those 250 pages of emails the White House just "discovered"? What emails? Swish!
| Journalism | Media | Politics | Culture |
I have the following two items in my bag: Lucky Magazine, and "A History of U.S. Communications Intelligence During WWII: Policy and Administration."
That is all.
As you know, I've recently joined the staff of DonorsChoose, where you can make a teacher's classroom dream into reality with the simple click of a button (OK, and the outlay of some cash too.) The funds you donate will go directly to support the classroom projects that you select.
Now I've been tasked with bringing together two of my favorite things -- saving the world, and blogging. DonorsChoose is launching a "Bloggers Challenge" initiative which will encourage bloggers to raise funds for teacher projects.
We're in the beta stage at the moment, and I'm hoping you all will help me beta test our Challenge code by donating to the Ishbadiddle Challenge. You can either give to the challenge directly, or to one of the proposals I've selected. (I picked them with y'all's interests in mind, hopefully you'll find one that speaks to you.)
You don't have to give a lot (of course if you can that's great!), but please help by giving what you can -- and by letting me know how the donation / challenge experience works for you. You can email me feedback or leave it in the comment box below.
Thanks!
| Philanthropy | Education |
A while ago, Patrick sent in this query:
Here is a question for your readers: What is a good term for “the collection of objects that you carry around with you on a daily basis that are not absolutely necessary but which you never leave home without such as your keys, your wallet, your cell phone, your glasses, your blackberry, etc”. An alternative definition is “Those things that cause you frustration when you can’t find them in the morning when you are walking out the door”. The best I can thing of is “daily tools”. As Apple keeps inventing more things I think the management of daily tools is going to become a bigger issue. -- Patrick
My personal vote is for either "sinnequas" (sin-eh-KWAs) or "quanons" (KWA-nons), both neologisms based on sine qua non, an indispensable thing. Just decide which sounds better:
"Honey, where are my sinnequas?! I put them on the table!"
or
"Honey, where are my quanons?! I put them on the table!"
Personally, I think I like the former.
43 Folders prefers the phrase "urban crap." They also have a list on their wiki of things to carry. I added a few things from my paranoia bag, including the Pak Light, Sharpie Mini, Phone Wire, and Photon Freedom Light. I also added the latest addition to my Utility Belt: the Velstrap. It's a 6' strap with velcro all along it and a handle, and it's damn useful. If you have a bunch of boxes, or an uwieldly load, you just wrap it around and then presto, it's easy to carry. I've also threaded it through the handles of a bunch of assorted luggage and carried the whole lot on my back. Ditto on a bunch of plastic grocery bags. I've used it to instantly repair a broken Buggy Board.
Buy a couple of these, throw one in your car and one in your bag. I got mine at the local hardware store for about $7.
| Sinnequas | Personal Tech |
So I found this program called MusicBrainz (actually a community database that you access via one of several programs) that will automagically put the proper tags on your MP3s. Perfect! Fire it up!
It actually works pretty well by comparing the MP3s hash, length, and name against the database. However, once you start with obsessively tagging your MP3s, you cannot stop. Or rather, I cannot stop. Of the files I have on my laptop, it ID'd 1,254; 482 returned an error; and 825 were "unidentified." Which basically means you have to look through a list of possible tracks and pick the one that matches. About 2/3 of the time, the file is easily found in the database. The other 1/3 requires some digging over at All Music Guide, or importing a new CD from the database via freedb, or just giving up because the track is some obscure damn thing you got from some obscure damn blog and are you going to listen to it anyway?
So in doing a bit of digging for tags, I ran across an album entitled "Haruki Murakami Original Sountrack". Um, what? There's been two movies based on Murakami works, but neither of them seem likely for this collection of songs. And there are three of them! Apparently, they aren't soundtracks to his movies -- they are bootleg soundtracks to his books, collections of songs that are mentioned in his novels.
Evidently, there have been a couple of book soundtracks written before, including the TMBG / McSweeney's collaboration which I can't listen to without triggering some very bad memories.
But anyway, are there some album / book pairings that just go together? Like a fine wine and good food?
| Tagging | MusicBrainz | Freeware | Soundtracks | Haruki Murakami |
I'll be on a panel tonight sponsored by the New York Press Club on "Traditional Vs New Media" including: Jonathan Landman of The New York Times; Rachel Sklar of FishbowlNY; and New York University Journalism School professor Jay Rosen - author of Pressthink.org and blogger for the Huffington Post.
Details at their website (check out that design!). $15 for non-members.
Debbie and I had a great DVDCDTBAD last night:
No meat pies were consumed during the course of the evening.
Howdy. I'm now writing about journalism and the media (with a side dish of culture and politics) at my new blog Big Ink. Yeah, it's not as fun as Ish. But I blogged Ann Coulter's little voter registration problem, for example, so you never know what might be going on over there.
It'd be great to have you drop by and chime in. Please feel free. And if you know of a place to promote it, go for it or give me a holler. Thanks.
| Media | Politics | Blogs |
I think that SaveMyAss is not only a great business model, but the Best. URL. Ever.
Save My Ass is a personal assistant that helps you make your girlfriend or wife happy by sending her flowers on your behalf, on a regular but semi-random basis.
Why do I need this?
If you're a successful professional whose career demands the bulk of your time, you know the situation. You want her to be happy, but work keeps you so busy... and maybe you're just not as good at being romantic as you'd like to be. Imagine how she'd feel if you sent her flowers on a regular basis. Sign up for this service once, and we'll take care of the rest.
Alexander Muse notes that "psychologists call it variable interval reinforcement (Pavlov’s dog was more excited to get fed at variable times than on a regular basis)."
Of course, there's a difference between computer-generated randomness and actual romantic spontaneity. The folks at SaveMyAss say that women don't really care, as long as they're getting flowers. Ahem.
Similarly, HassleMe will remind you at "semi-unpredictable intervals" to do something. (I currently have it set to remind me to call my Mom every 3 days or so -- Hi, Mom!) I guess if you were really busy you could use HassleMe to remind you to tell your SO that you love him or her on some variable but regular basis.... Fortunately, I don't need reminding.
| Dating | Web Tools |
I decided recently to pick up a few domains, and was going to use 000domains.com, which Kerim had recommended the last time I asked. Just before checkout I googled them for coupons, as I usally do, only to find that they'd been sold to a less than reputable vendor. So after some reading on the forum, I went with Namecheap which is only $7.99 per if you use the coupon "EVENLOWER".
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Cheney Accident Triggers Jokes on Late-Night TV. Also: Dick Cheney's visual hunting aid. And Gun Safety Lessons for Dead-Eye Dick.
| Quailgate |
Congratulations to Ennis and Debbie for placing in the Breakup Girl Haiku Contest:
Portrait in perseverance
Damn contest sucks eggs
I enter every year but
I am still single
-- Ennis
Best Haiku-as-PSA:
It's me again. Click.
Still love you. Click. Please call. Click.
Don't drink and dial.
-- Debbie Everett-Lane
Also, via TMN, these Unfortunate Valentine's Day Cards, including a certain caped crusader...
| Haiku | Valentine's Day |
Still, I thought I would share with ... umm ... me this list of singles for singles on V-day from the Washington post. It's actually a contest, with songs in three categories: Rage, Regret and Revenge. I can't say V-day makes me angry, but I'll still endorse any anti-V-day effort around.
| Music |
Greg Pak's been tapped to write a 14-issue Incredible Hulk arc called Planet Hulk, in which the big green guy finds himself on an alien planet that's one part sci-fi, one part Rome, and three parts Hulk. The first issue (Incredible Hulk #92) came out at last week. I'm really digging it, and the fans are as well -- the first issue sold out, so get yours now! You can read more on the Planet Hulk arc .
| Greg Pak | Hulk |
I've started to read Autismland, a blog about a classicist and a theologian's efforts to raise an autistic boy. The blog is subtitled "The Autism Reality Show Starring Charlie" which indicates the extent to which their son's gravitational pull is the major factor in their daily orbits. Still, the mother (and blogger) manages to remain intellectually engaged with classics, which sometimes form the frame through which she understands their lives.
Continue reading "Autismland" » | Blogs |
Whoa! You can't stop Chris Kalb!
Check out the Custom Candy Heart eCard Generator!
Unbelievable. Should we tell him we all got laid off?
| Candy Hearts | Chris Kalb |
The Fantasy Novel Title Generator has been getting linked all over, but I think the Villainess Name Generator is pretty cool too: Gitana von Drear! Medea Bloodcrow! Also the Plot Twist Generator could be almost useful: "Just then the person you mentioned briefly in chapter 2 arrives, in a rush." You can see all of Manon's generators, and even more at Seventh Sanctum.
| Web Tools | Random |
I wonder what muzak makes people want to buy?
You go to the supermarket and stop by some shelves offering French and German wine. You buy a bottle of French wine. After going through the checkout you are asked what made you choose that bottle of wine. You say something like "It was the right price", or "I liked the label". Did you notice the French music playing as you took it off the shelf? You probably did. Did it affect your choice of wine? No, you say, it didn't.Continue reading "Music soothes the savage consumer" »That's funny because on the days we play French music nearly 80% of people buying wine from those shelves choose French wine, and on the days we play German music the opposite happens [Link]
| Psychology |
And this is how:
A published report for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said machines can easily determine the sex, approximate age and social class of a speaker. They are also learning to look for clues to deceptive intent in the words and "paralinguistic" features of a conversation, such as pitch, tone, cadence and latency.This kind of analysis can predict with results "a hell of a lot better than chance" the likelihood that the speakers are trying to conceal their true meaning, according to James W. Pennebaker, who chairs the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin.
"Frankly, we'll probably be wrong 99 percent of the time," he said, "but 1 percent is far better than 1 in 100 million times if you were just guessing at random. And this is where the culture has to make some decisions." [Link]
| Civil Liberties |
Q: How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?
Nabokov: I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile – some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.
Via Quipsologies.
| Emoticons | Typography |
In case you weren't wasting enough time looking through Wikipedia articles, here's a tool that calculates how many articles are between any two Wikipedia entries. For instance, there are 5 degrees of separation between the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Boo Radley. An Ishpoint for each (interesting) connection that's 5 degrees or more!
Via BoingBoing.
| Six Degrees | Web Tools |
Syllables, that is.
Come over to the spectacularly cool redesign of BreakupGirl.net and enter the sporadically annual Valentine's Day Haiku Contest. Some faves from years past:
My long dating drought
has been reclassified a
"dating climate change."
"Wine, women, and song"
beat out "a loaf of bread, a
jug of wine and me."
If love means never
having to say you’re sorry,
he must love me, right?
You have morning breath
and a weed-wacker hairstyle.
I still snuggle you.
Supah-cool prizes on the line, including the first season of Veronica Mars on DVD!
Come over and send in your haikus (as many as you like) and please help us spread the word around!
Thanks!
| Valentine's Day | Haiku | Contests |
Take that, ID.
| Intelligent Design |
This sounds more like fantasy than reality, but it's amusing still, and worth reading the whole thing:
At 42nd street, a woman strides into the car and starts PREACHING. The entire car bursts into laughter. I interrupt this new preacher lady and note that she is wearing a flowered straw bonnet.Me: “Excuse me, Ma’am…but I must warn you that there has been a 12 subway stop donnybrook regarding the unwanted intrusion of religious beliefs into our morning commutes.”
Preacher Lady 2: “I got freedom of speech! And GOD TELLS ME THAT THE GAY DEVILS ARE CONTROLLING NEW YORK.”
Me: (standing up) “If you do not cease and desist fouling the air with homophobia, I must sing…SHOW TUNES.”
There are now 3 or 4 gay men on the train. They start laughing.
Preacher Lady 2: “The Lawd says you are going to …” (litany of punishments that would be fun with the right person).
Me: (sings) “The Girl that I marry will have to be, as soft and as sweet as a nursery… the girl I call my own, will wear diamonds and laces and smell of cologne…”
One of the boys on the train starts to harmonize. [Link]
via Trillia
| Subway | Preaching |
DebbiesIdea.com fills a need in the world of book recommendations -- if you haven't read an author before, which book should you start with? Take James Joyce -- if you started with Finnegan's Wake you'd never touch anything by him again. Users of the site vote on which works are the best to start out with (in Joyce's case, Dubliners and POTAAAYM are currently in the lead) and which are the worst.
The Debbie of the site's name is a late friend of the site's creator, Ellen Pall:
Long before the Internet was commonly available, Debbie had the idea that it would be useful to have a reference work suggesting which book of an unfamiliar author would be best to read first. Start reading an author with a poor or atypical example of his work, she observed, and you would likely never read that writer again—perhaps losing in the process a world of pleasure and knowledge. On the other hand, since there would seldom be one right book to read first, the resource would have to be a compendium of opinions.
There's a neat story about Ellen and David and Greenwich Village.
The site needs about 5,000 more users before it gets really useful (and comprehensive). It also needs an apostrophe! (And why don't the "buy it" links go to the book's page on Powell's?)
So go, cast some votes, help out.
Via the "infamous" Rebecca Blood blog.
| Reviews |
Here's Your Prescription and Your Tract
A 36-year old Kissimmee woman who mentioned to her doctor during a routine checkup that she is a lesbian has filed complaints with the Florida Department of Health and CIGNA Healthcare against him and his assistant for advocating she change her sexual orientation.
Jamie Beiler alleges that at the end of her appointment with Dr. John R. Hartman she was handed a packet of anti-gay propaganda referring to homosexuality as “sinful” and advising lesbians and gay men to change their sexual orientation.
[...] Beiler said she first made a formal complaint with Dr. Hartman's office manager, who informed Beiler that their office routinely disseminates the anti-gay materials to patients.
Next thing you know, pharmacists will be able to refuse to dispense birth control! Oh, wait.
Actually, I want a Christian Scientist to get his/her pharmacist license and then refuse to dispense any medicine at all. That'll show 'em.
Via peksy'
| Medicine | LGBT | Religion | Crusaders |
Daily Kos, Wonkette, Kaus
Fierce with a computer mouse
Metafilter, Dave Winer
Peter Rojas, gadget finder
They had style, they had grace
Kottke had the interface
| Madonna |
... the ACLU and Bruce Schneier: NSA's America.
| Surveillance Society | NSA | ACLU |
If you haven't done a virus scan on your computer, today would be a good day to do so. The BlackWorm virus delivers its payload tomorrow (2/3/06) -- deleting all Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, and Zip files from your system. Grab the free AVG anti-virus program if your system's not protected.
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The IT guys here at DonorsChoose asked me to create an "install log" on my laptop. It's a great idea -- every time I install a new program I add it to the list (in chrono order), thusly:
Program Name | Path | URL of download or developer
If I remove a program I just append REMOVED to the end. It's kept as a plain text doc in My Documents. I wish I had done this for my desktop at home (which I'm considering rebuilding software-wise, it's getting mad slow and I'm not sure why).
Just another tech tip from Ishbadiddle, your friendly neighborhood blog.
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Crossposted from Fojazz:
It's Groundhog Day, and that can only mean two things: the annual appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, and the singing of the Groundhog Day Song.
I composed this song when I was ten years old, and I have sung it (out loud!) every February 2nd for the past 25 years:
Let's hear it for groundhogs
'Cause they're really neat!
They're small and cute 'hogs,
And smell better than feet.
So if you like groundhogs,
Give a great big cheer! (YAY!)
Hip-hip-hooray,
Hip-hip-hooray,
Groundhog Day is here!
Hip-hip-hooray,
Hip-hip-hooray,
Groundhog Day is here!
Would you like to sing along? Click here to hear the melody!
PS: Phil sez six more weeks of winter. Foo.
| Groundhog Day | Songs |
WESTERN UNION TO STOP SENDING TELEGRAMS FULL STOP
I only ever sent one telegram -- it was my Grandmother's 80th Birthday, and I was late in sending a card for the big shindig. So I sent a telegram instead. She got a big kick out of that.
| Obsolete Media |
The 2005 Internet Movie Poster Awards have been announced. Can't say I disagree with any of the picks -- except that I still think the Deuce Bigalow poster was funnier.
| Posters | Internet Movie Poster Awards |