Well, the CIA torture report is out. And for the record, it's pretty depressing that I now live in the kind of country that has a torture report.I'd heard about some of this stuff before, but some of the details are shocking. The rectal feeding, for example, is not a normal medical procedure, and using that route to get nutrition into the body is inefficient. It seems to … [Read more...] about Some Tortured Thoughts
My Photography Day Bag
Original photography has been a part of this blog for almost ten years. If you've met me in real life, then probably at some point you've seem me carrying around my camera bag. I thought some of my readers -- especially other amateur photographers interested in the kind of photos I take -- might find it interesting to see what I've been carrying around all that time.The … [Read more...] about My Photography Day Bag
Believing Victims
In the Washington Post, Zerlina Maxwell insists that, despite the way the UVA fraternity gang rape story seems to be falling apart, when it comes to accusations of rape: In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a … [Read more...] about Believing Victims
Thinking About Lethal Force – Part 2
This is my second post in a series that explores how we can think about news stories about people using lethal force in an act of claimed self defense. Part 1 discussed the basics of what might or might not be self defense, and this part expands the discussion to cover witness reliability.I want to emphasize again that my discussion is neither legal advice nor self defense … [Read more...] about Thinking About Lethal Force – Part 2
Mother Jones’s Weak Math
Steve Marmel posts this infographic he apparently got from Mother Jones magazine that purports to show institutionalized racism in Ferguson, Missouri:[Image reads: Institutional racism by the numbers. In 2013 in Ferguson: 483 black people were arrested, 36 white people were arrested, 92% of searches and 86% of car stops involved blacks.]I wonder if either Marmel or … [Read more...] about Mother Jones’s Weak Math