The Old Hack

Do you have an old-fashioned land line telephone lying around? Ideally an analog model with a dial. Try to foist that off on them. It probably wouldn't work but it would be a fun prank.

Maybe they can fasten it to the outside of the moonboot. At least it would look cute. o.O

Meh. I'll settle for having a net positive effect on the species. If I can manage that, I'll consider myself ahead of the game.

Or alternately Huge Bollocking Asteroid From Outer Space.

This is James Bond, corporate accounts payable. Please hold a moment.

Maybe they can put pieces of fruit and a little umbrella in it to improve the odds. o.O

Sure thing. Mind you, I still feel safe in stating that both Genghis and that hypothetical proto-eukaryote made a good go at it.

True. As to 24, I think it served mainly as a catalyst. It introduced the notions that torture was 1) effective and 2) justifiable. Other shows would then go on to reinforce this new trope. *sigh* Yes. Mind, I actually find it suggestive that interrogation without torture developed right alongside torture itself. It indicates that a significant percentage of investigators throughout history either doubted its efficacy or rejected it on ethical grounds, or both. True. Mind you, I still think it can be justified. Those plans were MASSIVE in size. Remember that enormous antenna the archive used as its transmitter? And it still took it, what, a minute to upload the entire set of blueprints. The flagship itself was in the middle of a fast-changing combat situation. In order to rebroadcast, it is not unreasonable to posit that it would need clear space and be able to remain stationary in order to properly aim the transmission. Remember, when Vader received news that the Emperor wanted to speak to him back in Empire Strikes Back, he ordered his Star Destroyer moved free of the asteroid field and into a position where it could get a direct line to Coruscant. And that was just for image and voice. What becomes a bit harder to justify was that Leia's corvette itself didn't either rebroadcast or create more physical hardcopies of the plans. Even ONE copy might have served the purpose of making the Empire think it had recaptured the stolen plans. Leia keeps the stolen plans on her person, R2 flies off with a copy of them, and whoever captured Leia returns satisfied. Mind you, I do not think Vader would have been fooled, but it might have been a lesser officer doing the capturing. That seems entirely reasonable. Everything else they use is secondhand, stolen or salvaged, why not the wifi? o.O Yeah. My wife and I have this standard spoof of it that we recite in unison every time it appears. "It is bad to do bad things and illegal to do illegal things." >.> I seem to remember something... Eh, it was a long tortuous argument. o.O

There is nothing to forgive, and you are welcome.

Genghis Khan made a pretty good go at it. Apparently 2% of all modern humans can trace their bloodlines back to him. Give it a few more centuries and he may at least have the majority of all humans.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=617

Dude, Don Juan can tell you right away that that IS the definition of 'fittest.'

The Jungle Law notwithstanding, Mother Nature has a very simple ruleset. The fittest survive. Precisely what makes 'fittest' is always demonstrated empirically. Behavior that aids survival is good, contrasurvival behavior is punishable by death. The End.

Hm. In this I am truly a little at sea. I am convinced that 24 had some effect on the public mindset but you are correct in that it would be a stretch to claim that it was transformative in its own right. Nonetheless, as a catalyst I feel it still did grave harm by helping to legitimise a mindset I consider insupportable. As to the larger pattern of propaganda, it is always there but as before I am reluctant to believe that there might be some great conspiracy behind it. For one thing it would be entirely unneeded, man is a political animal and expresses its ideas in its arts and entertainment. Why posit a conspiracy when just a few dozen entirely independent creators with related opinions airing their creations might have the same effect? And this goes for the entire political spectrum, of course, from left through middle to right. This is what I believe. Skilled interrogators are at the base of all information gathering. As you demonstrated earlier, they can be stunningly efficient when operating in a context where the subjects do not even know they are being interrogated. I cannot articulate scientific proof but I am nonetheless convinced that such comparatively 'gentle' methods can yield a great deal of fruit and certainly enough to be well worth basing an information network on. I should also mention that even within the framework of the Geneva Convention, harder forms of interrogation may nonetheless be comparatively róugh. One of my former superiors used to be in the Danish equivalent of the Seals. This is a very small but elite group which has at times had occasion to work together with the Seals. During one big exercise he was 'captured' and subjected to interrogation that kept inside the limits of the Convention and it did NOT sound like a picnic. Sleep deprivation, being forced to stand up in his undies against a wall for long hours at end, very harsh psychological methods used when he was actually being interrogated, and worst of all, those bastard interrogators got coffee and he didn't. Along the gentler lines, police interrogators have a huge cornucopia of tricks to draw on. The good cop/bad cop method is ages old but the reason it has lasted so long is that it works, even on subjects who know of it. Sitting down in a friendly manner with a subject and turning a visible tape recorder off, implying that this is 'off the record.' One very important technique is establishing a theme. If the interrogator can gain control of the narrative by convincing the subject that they are some form of authority, or that they actually want to help them, this confers enormous advantages. And so forth. Again, this was an era with an entirely different mindset. I recently had an interesting experience. I was discussing 'Star Wars: A New Hope' with a younger friend of mine. One thing he did not understand was the lackadaisical manner of the Imperials who just let the droids escape in their pod with the Death Star plans. He blamed it on cartoonish incompetence and felt it was 'an annoying but forgivable error.' I, on the other hand, had a different perspective. My friend had grown up in the increasingly security-minded post-9/11 era whereas I was a 70s kid. George Lucas made his first movie in an era where that sort of security would be considered obsessive and paranoid. The rather lax standards of the Empire fit with the times. I actually consider this a decent example of that very different mindset.

Splendid work, Illjwamh. It is good to have you back.

Hang in there, Prof. We're keeping you in our thoughts.

Back in 1888, someone wrote a book called The Titan, or Futility, in which a massive passenger liner said to be unsinkable met a disastrous end while crossing the Atlantic.

I am not against medications. In fact, precisely applied medication given to me with my consent has turned my life around for the better. It is when medication is used as a means to bludgeon an ill person into unthinking passivity because it makes them easier to handle that I start to twitch.

As long as it isn't like the execrable Enterprise episode Dear Doctor, in which Archer and Phlox decide that massive genocide is the only ethical course of action left to them.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2348

Do you count Cheerleadra appearances separate from Elliot or do they also count as Elliot appearances?

Once again briefly suspending my own rule against posting here... In the Danish system, the mentally ill -- especially the severely mentally ill -- are subject to constant and merciless funding cutbacks. It is very expensive to treat certain of these patients because of the high requirements in support staff, environments and security. Underfunded and understaffed facilities find themselves so stressed by the demands of these patients that it becomes 'simpler' to drug them into insensibility or to keep them constantly confined/strapped to stretchers. Some patients have been kept immobile on stretchers for weeks or even months at a time. Inhumane? Monstrous? In my personal opinion, yes. Worse than corporate-run? I do not know. All that I know is that merely getting a single-payer system will not solve the problem. And so all I can do is sit and lament that it is so easy to strip a person of their humanity, and think 'There but for the grace of God...'

Meh. I am no conspiracy theorist. I might go so far as to say that it is conceivable but that I am personally unconvinced of it. I would demand just as rigorous proof of it as you would before I bought into it. Unfortunately, the deleterious effect on the public mind remains there even if it was unintentional or inadvertent. Fair enough, and you are substantially correct, yes. It is an important reason I object to the ticking clock argument. Another reason is that conventional interrogation may -- may -- be slower than torture, but it is not necessarily slow and it is by far more reliable. I have to object to the phrase 'immediacy that would require torture' due to my stated conviction that torture is unreliable and counterproductive, hence never required nor even advisable. But I agree with the rest. Hum. I do not quite agree with that last as the plot could still have been foiled at a very late stage with the simple instructions of "Ground all flights. Scramble interceptors over important areas. Any planes that disregard instructions to land and be inspected are to be forced down." Admittedly such an order would have to come from someone very high up, but if the Oval Office is issuing the order it would presumably happen, right? Still, you could reasonably call that a quibble. The reason the information was underestimated was, once again, the mindset of the times. Terrorists had never acted in such a manner before. If someone had told me such a story on the tenth of September that year, I would likely have boggled at it, or even scoffed. It is all too easy to condemn the intelligence agencies and the administration in hindsight. Whatever other issues I might have with the GWB administration, failing to prevent 9/11 is not one. (Actually preventing it -- now, that would have been a heroic tale and one where those responsible would deserve great honour and plaudits. Sadly, this did not happen.)

Certainly. I just can't see what its practical use would be. Let's say that I wanted to apply butter or olive oil to the Hubble telescope, for example. Out in the vacuum of space and the freezing temperature the fats and slippery oils would soon either harden or evaporate. The only real effect would be to get the lenses smeared, I think. Of course, if you just do it to regular telescopes down here on the surface, you just wouldn't be able to apply a proper grip to the darn things. I don't think they would provide a very good view if people have to desperately juggle their telescopes or fight to maintain their grip. Mind you, it wouldn't be as bad with microscopes. These are fairly stationary and as long as the surface they stand on is level and you don't accidentally jiggle them when you look into the lenses, they should stay put.

You need to get certification in how to treat Uryuom.