It's Hot As Hell In Here!

It’s not easy being the student representative for the maths department; every damn postgraduate mook wants you to lobby for them. Case in point: Danny and BT, who are annoyed about how hot the office has gotten. This leads to an oddly amusing half-hour of attempting to locate the University’s health and safety policy on temperature.

Danny: Hurry up, it’s getting hotter!

SS: It is not!

Danny: It is! The Thai Buddha thermometer you got me says so.

SS: I wouldn’t put too much faith into that thing; it cost me one-ninety nine from Woolworths. Plus, I’m pretty sure IBB broke it last week.

Danny: Just find the damn policy, would you?

SS: It’s pretty difficult to navigate.

BT: Nothing on temperature?

SS: No, although I can tell you our policy on chemical weapon attack, if you want.

Danny: We have a policy in case we get hit with Agent Orange?

SS: Yes. Also if we contract gastroenteritis, or if we get covered in amniotic fluid.

BT: What the Hell goes on in this university?

SS: Ah!

Danny: You got it?

SS: Maybe. It’s a check-list for office safety. Say, we’re not using razor-blades instead of scissors, are we?

BT: We try to keep sharp objects out of your reach.

SS: Very wise. We can tick that box, anyway.

Danny: Are you going to read the whole form?

SS: Wait! I’ve got it. The magic number for maximum temperature is… thirty degrees.

Danny: You’re kidding! We could open up a damn sauna. This is outrageous.

SS: The policy on amniotic fluid is pretty slap-dash, too.

BT: So we can’t get the university to do anything?

SS: They did install those tinted windows.

Danny: That just make the room darker.

SS: And those fans.

Danny: They just make the room louder.

BT: They’re also a hazard to paper work.

Danny: Do you have any work on paper?

BT: Shut up.

SS: If we can focus, the key aspect to all of this is: you’re boned.

Danny: But it’s hot as Hell!

SS: It’s only twenty-five degrees.

Danny: In April. In the North-East.

SS: Come back to me in June, then.

Danny: I’ll be a shrivelled, desiccated husk by then!

SS: We could turn off the computers.

Danny: We’re not allowed to turn off the computers.

BT: We could throw the computers out of the window; claim the insurance.

SS: Hypothetically speaking, BT, what would we write on the claims form?

BT: That the computers exploded from the heat.

SS: What, exploded, levitated, threw themselves out of the window, and smashed themselves on the ground?

A pause

BT: I’m starting to come around to this sauna idea.

SS: Ooh! We could grow tomatoes.

Danny: Or pineapples.

SS: Or opium.

BT: We could be drugs dealers!

Danny: Driving around in limousines with tinted windows.

SS: Haven’t we already decided that would just make it unbearably hot? We’d be halfway through hiring our first bunch of runners before we’d spontaneously explode, levitate, smash through the window, and throw ourselves to the ground.

BT: So what do you suggest?

SS: Erm, we check ourselves for gastroenteritis?

Our heroes exit, intent upon checking the firmness of their stools.

Torturous Logic

I've been thinking a bit more about Ashcroft's comments (the ones I repeated a few days ago, plus others) and about the debates they start (including here, apparently, which was a pleasant surprise). I still don't think people are making the right arguments against current US policy. There are a lot of posts along the lines of "Torture is axiomatically wrong", which is all very well, but once you take that stance you'll find it hard to back up (always the problem with axioms); so you sort of take yourself out of the debate. There is the much more practical point that torture is immoral and of questionable benefit, both in the short and the long term. I don't think the latter is under much debate, other than the usual nut-cases convinced that terrorists will become less keen to attack the US once they find out their mates are getting knocked about.

Most of the arguing, then, is over whether or not torture can, in the short term, save lives, and whether or not that makes it OK. I'm going to entirely skip the latter, although there are some interesting things to be said on it. What I want to concentrate on is the idea that torture is a useful tool, specifically in the case of the "ticking bomb" situation the GOP seems convinced is just bound to go off sooner or later like, well, a ticking bomb.

The logic runs that if we catch a terrorist and if he knows where a bomb is planted and if we can't find it any other way and if standard interrogation techniques have failed and if we assume that torture will lead to accurate intel (as oppose to whatever lies this guy decides to come up with in order to win a reprieve, however brief), we'd better make damn sure there is a legal contingency for that. I guess they're terrified that " if we catch a terrorist and if he knows where a bomb is planted and if we can't find it any other way and if standard interrogation techniques have failed and if we assume that torture will lead to accurate intel" is terrifyingly plausible, but " if we catch a terrorist and if he knows where a bomb is planted and if we can't find it any other way and if standard interrogation techniques have failed and if we assume that torture will lead to accurate intel and if one of his captors is prepared to torture him without rules allowing him to do so" is fairly unlikely.

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that legally allowing torture in case the above situation comes up is equivalent to removing speed limits on roads in case someone needs to get their dying child to a hospital. Or making murder legal purely in case an abused wife stabs her husband in self-defense the next time he drunkenly lunges at her with a baseball bat. I think I'm pretty safe in saying that the vast majority of people understand that laws are frequently inflexible, and that the system relies on compensation for this from the police, and from the courts. We don't want them completely overruling what they want when they want, but there are reasons a policeman can book driver A for speeding, but let driver B off, or why a judge can give a jail sentence to one drug user and community service to another. Oftentimes we hear about the ways this system has gone wrong, or given the impression that is has gone wrong (Pete Doherty is certainly an example of one or the other), but in principle, there are very good reasons we call them "judges". [1]

So why make torture legal on the off-chance this ticking bomb scenario actually does arrive? Surely if everything clicks into place, and a nuclear bomb is discovered because Agent Brown beat on some terrorist until he blabbed, then should Brown be officially charged, the system will take the situation into account. The man's a hero, the saviour of millions of American lives. He'd be showered in medals. Serious repercussions are liable to be somewhat thin on the ground. So what exactly is the situation that permitting water-boarding prevents? More likely, it's the occasion when someone gets tortured and it turns out to have been fuck-all use. This, apparently, is supposed to be OK too [2]. We're not talking about enabling success, we're talking about removing the repercussions of failure. Much as I pointed out in my last post, it's an attempt to shirk responsibility for what are potentially very serious mistakes, and pass it off as an attempt to save lives. And as cplcarrot said, people need to be willing to stand by this sort of stuff.

[1] There's a more general point to be made here. People really need to stop screaming and shouting every time a new law seems overly draconian. Take the furore over no longer allowing parents to give their children any alcohol in their own home. Is that the Nanny State flexing its muscles? Or just ensuring that there is no ambiguity over the law if the police choose to deal with parents who are clearly giving their children too much.

[2] Here's an interesting set of questions. If such an event occurs, and a terrorist is being tortured right up to the moment where the bomb goes off and a million people are vaporised, then there's no longer any reason to keep up the torture. Do we think it likely that Agent Brown will then immediately stop? Or is more likely that the guy the US Government are paying to inflict pain upon its enemies is going to continue out of frustration, or loss, or revenge? How would the system deal with that one?

An Odd Line

Thanks to dday over at Hullabaloo I got to read an exchange between a Daily Kos diarist and fiend-in-human-form John Ashcroft from a college Q&A on Tuesday night. Much of what he said has already been ripped apart. Deservedly so, too; I like to hear conservatives make arguments so that I can try and counter them, but Ashcroft didn't actually put forward arguments, he just ridiculed or sidelined every tough question he got.

There was one thing, though, that neither dday nor Elsinora (the Kossack in question) tackled (maybe because it was just too depressing to unpick) the way I would have, which was this exchange ("me", of course, refers to Elsinora):

ME: After WWII, the Tokyo Tribunal was basically the Nuremberg Trials for Japan. Many Japanese leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture. And among the tortures listed was the "water treatment," which we nowadays call waterboarding...
ASHCROFT: (interrupting) This is a speech, not a question. I don't mind, but it's not a question.
ME: It will be, sir, just give me a moment. The judgment describes this water treatment, and I quote, "the victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach." One man, Yukio Asano, was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor by the allies for waterboarding American troops to obtain information. Since Yukio Asano was trying to get information to help defend his country--exactly what you, Mr. Ashcroft, say is acceptible for Americans to do--do you believe that his sentence was unjust? (boisterous applause and shouts of "Good question!")
ASHCROFT: (angrily) Now, listen here. You're comparing apples and oranges, apples and oranges. We don't do anything like what you described.
ME: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that we still use the method of putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water down their throat...
ASHCROFT: (interrupting, red-faced, shouting) Pouring! Pouring! Did you hear what she said? "Putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water on them." That's not what you said before! Read that again, what you said before!
ME: Sir, other reports of the time say...
ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read what you said before! (cries of "Answer her fucking question!" from the audience) Read it!
ME: (firmly) Mr. Ashcroft, please answer the question.
ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read it back!
ME: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach."
ASHCROFT: (shouting) You hear that? You hear it? "Forced!" If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...does this college have an anatomy class? If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...
ME: (firmly and loudly) Mr. Ashcroft, do you believe that Yukio Asano's sentence was unjust? Answer the question. (pause)
ASHCROFT: (more restrained) It's not a fair question; there's no comparison. Next question! (loud chorus of boos from the audience)

dday points out that this is muddying a clear precedent. My argument would be more damning that that. I think that even if Ashcroft is right, and there is a difference between "forcing" and "pouring", which is ridiculous stance to take, but never mind (I guess Ashcroft isn't using "forcing" in the sense of "entering without permission" so much as "using force beyond that which is supplied by gravity"; one can only assume he'd be fine with holding a person upright and pumping water into their mouths and nostrils at a rate consistent with the flow of water downhill), he is still implicitly making the case (by refusing to either admit either that current tactics are bad or that the Japanese gentleman in question was unjustly punished), that a fractional change in the velocity of the water used should genuinely make the difference between morally justifiable and punishable by a decade and a half of hard labour.

So my question (this wasn't a speech either) is this. Can anyone out there think of a situation in which such a tiny difference (i.e. a rate of flow greater than the terminal velocity of a water stream) in methodology can suddenly change the legal and moral into the illegal and harshly punished?

Update: Yes, I promised something lighter, and delivered torture. I am not always to be trusted.

A Passing

Dr P passed away peacefully in her sleep yesterday afternoon, with her husband present. She was a tremendously intelligent and unflinchingly determined woman, whose dedication to her profession was remarkable even before you factor in her terminal illness, which caused her great discomfort and inconvenience. Despite the many obstacles her condition placed in front of her, she never complained about her situation, or at least no more than you or I might bemoan the rain or a cold bacon sandwich. I am both proud and humbled to share authorship of the paper she worked on last, and endlessly grateful for the support given to me by her, in circumstances where so many would have tempted to give up anything so irrelevant as keeping a PhD student happy. The department, the world of probability, and the world in general are all the lesser for losing her. I hope she knew the value I placed upon her.

I promise my next post will be lighter.

Dr P And The Diary Question

When I started this blog all of six weeks ago, I had some vague idea that it might, amongst other things, provide me with some sort of outlet for all the amassed crap in my life that even my closest drinking buddies have gotten sick of hearing me vomit into their ears (could you actually hear someone literally vomiting into your ear? Or would the sound of the experience be muffled by the chunder now clogging up your aural canal? Why doesn't science stop fucking around with dark matter and investigate something useful?). Since then, I've begun to wonder whether or not this is a particularly good idea. By and large, I dislike the idea that the only difference between a blog and a diary is the medium in which it is stored, and by the number of people who read it (I should probably say who could potentially read it, I'm hardly The Onion or anything). It isn't. Anyone who writes their diary hoping someone else will read it is, I suggest, a tool. It immediately lends itself to warping your recounting of events (by shifts in emphasis, sneaky editing, or downright lying) in order to impress other people. And it won't work. Even if I do find a given person sufficiently fascinating, the most I'll do is read their autobiography (current number of autobiographies read by SpaceSquid: 0). I won't suddenly feel the need to trawl through their endless scribblings about the day the post was late or their wife forgot to get the kind of marmalade they like best. This is not to say that a diary cannot be of historical interest, to those studying the writer. And sure, some people are so talented in their writings that even diary entries (properly edited) can be entertaining or thought provoking.

But those people are famous already. In every case of which I am aware, a particular diary is of arguable interest because the person involved was extraordinarily important, extraordinarily talented, or in the case of Anne Frank, an ordinary person living in an extraordinary time (for all the wrong reasons, of course, and I'll happily concede that by living through what she did she was in at least some sense extraordinary herself). Diaries are supposed to be a record of your life so that you can benefit from it, the prose equivalent of looking at old photo albums and sniggering at your ridiculous hair-styles. There's no point in hoping that if you draw enough pictures in the margin or write enough poems filled with awkward cadence and Gothic imagery you will one day be recognised for who you were. It's just an attempt to feel you are doing something of worth without actually exposing it to outside criticism (which I know something about, believe me).

Blogging, on the other hand, is supposed to be about keeping other people entertained, or interested, or informed. Whether or not I actually manage that is entirely up for debate, but the attempt is there. A strange attempt which mixes jokes with poems with cod-philosophy with political commentary with miscellaneous observation, but an attempt nonetheless. And I think I'd be actively sabotaging that idea if I continue to post up windows into my private life; unless they in themselves seem to be interesting to the non-me members of the blogosphere. In my heart of hearts, I doubt anyone reading about the endless struggle with the mysterious DB (which, on the off-chance someone was wondering, has become less of an issue of late; proof-positive that there is no problem on Earth that cannot be solved by drinking until your brain no longer recalls the basic shapes of the object that has offended you), unless in the process it throws up a hilarious escapade or an insight into the human condition, or something.

Anyway, I mention all this because I'm about to entirely contradict it. The ongoing illness of Dr P is, in all likelihood, of no real interest to anyone reading this. On this one matter, though, I have chosen not to care. She's back in the hospital again and the signs point to her never leaving it again, and it feels like I have to mark that here. I haven't seen her in three months, and only spoken to her once in all that time, since she is now too ill to use a computer. The experimental medicine doesn't seem to have worked, and if there is any other option, Dr F didn't mention it today. It looks like this may finally be it.

Anway, I reserve the right to post up further updates on her condition, because the only reason you don't find this of interest is that you never knew her, which is your loss. Otherwise, take comfort in the sudden reduction of self-indulgent whining, which will be compensated for by an upswing in self-indulgent social commentary and dick jokes.

What I Learned This Weekend

Five things I learned over the weekend, in the order in which the knowledge was inserted into my brain.

1) Oxford reminds me a great deal of Durham. So much so that for the first twenty minutes I was absolutely convinced that instead of visiting jamie I should have just set fire to a hundred quid and then walked to my local pub. At least I could find the way back home whilst drunk out of my head. On the other hand, it's always a pleasure to meet new people, and label them as racist. Everyone up here is so inured to my abuse that I'm always surprised by the reaction gained from viciously heckling those who have yet to build up a resistance to it.

2) My devotion to the interweb has now reach such embarrassing heights that the merest suggestion of new Facebook friends requires an immediate Spring cleaning session to ensure my profile is impressive enough to receive visitors. For a man who understands computers little, and likes them less, I seem to be disturbingly happy to use them as a social crutch.

3) The new Mario Kart is awesome. It's hard to convey the enormous sense of satisfaction gained when three old gaming buddies all manage to not totally fuck up at the same time, and that feeling is only heightened when two of you are reptiles on motorcycles.

(Be warned, however, that the steering wheel add-on might as well be a paper plate with a remote sellotaped to it, for all the advantages it confers upon you).

4) James continue to "bring it", as I believe the kids are saying these days [1]. If a band that's been going on for twenty seven years (well, with six off for good behaviour) and released eight studio albums (six of which people actually bought, sort of) can pull off a set which (pre-encore at least) contains 50% new material and it not seem like a Rolling Stones-esque "Please Christ don't let it be anything post Exile..." type of affair, then you know things are going well. Only the fact that the gig was seated and that our seats were atop a balcony which STARED INTO THE VERY HEART OF THE ABYSS prevented some truly epic getting-down, as I believe the kids are saying in my 1981 Blake's 7 annual [2]. Well, that and the fact that my sister's epileptic seizures boast more rhythm to them than my shape-throwing can.

Also, bonus points for the audience sing-along finale. Anyone upset by the portly guy in row C screaming "Somtiyiyimes, I look in your eyes and see your sohl!", I apologise entirely. Unless you're jamie, with whom I accidentally formed the world's most appalling a capella cover-version double act. Cheeky-Girls-in-a-power-cut kind of level, we were. Only ugly men, without any sexual connection to Lembit Opik. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

5) There is a bizarre kind of person in this world convinced that failing to bring adequate (i.e. any) entertainment for a four-hour train journey makes the poor sod sat opposite them (i.e. me) morally bound to engage them in pointless conversation. This strange sub-species reveals this idiosyncrasy by phoning their friends one after another and loudly complaining that those surrounding him (i.e. me again) are too busy reading books to have a chat with total strangers who are possibly drunk and certainly foul-smelling (should I feel bad about not wanting to swap small-talk with people whose breath smells like the corpse of an alcoholic dog? Comments welcome). "The art of the train-ride conversation is dead" he loudly proclaims to his presumably long-suffering wife, with whom he occasionally discourses in pidgin Spanish (perhaps believing this to be romantic). Good to see the art of the train-ride act-like-a-total-fucking-tool is still going strong, though. On several occasions our subject complained that his lack of preparation was down to him eschewed train travel for the last twenty-five years. I don't really remember what rail travel was like back then (being all of three years old), but I'd hazard a guess that it was unlikely to feature party clowns wandering the aisles and brass quartets in the vestibules.

[1] They are not.

[2] Presumably moments before they're all gunned down by faceless Federation troopers. I always figured B7 was ripe for a BSG-style makeover, partially because it's the only sci-fi series I can think of for which the remake producers would seriously have to consider lightening it up as the first step.

A Plan Forms

Overheard in our living room during an impromptu showing of Silence of the Lambs. All is calm until the moth-drenched finale.

SS: Argh! A soul-searing encounter with my greatest fear!

Big G: I'd forgotten your idiotic fear of small harmless creatures.

SS: There are so many. So many.

Big G: Is it a volume thing, then? Would a single solitary moth freak you out?

SS: Only if it flew at my head. Or was a giant moth. Like Rodan.

Big G: You mean Mothra.

SS: Yeah. That was a fairly obvious mistake, now I think about it.

Big G: So you don't like insects near your face?

SS: I don't like anything near my face. Or neck. Insects, seatbelts, women trying to kiss me.

Big G: That explains a few things.

SS: That's why I never wash my face, either.

Big G: That explains other, somewhat unpleasant things.

SS: Beetles are the worst. Hideous arthropodic gits.

Big G: What if a moth came at you carrying a beetle?

SS: Beetles can fly too, as a general rule.

Big G: I suppose. Have you considered aversion therapy?

SS: Do I get to kiss a lot of women?

Big G: My plan was more to keep kicking a football at your face.

SS: This is exactly why I don't like you watching this film in the house. Can't we watch Red Dragon?

Big G: Is it any good? Because Hannibal was so bad I almost ate someone.

SS: Sort of. It's entirely thanks to Red Dragon that I know you can arrange for a blind woman to stroke a tiger and in return she is immediately required to perform fellatio upon you.

Big G: Is this legally binding?

SS: It is. Of course, setting up some kind of big-cat-feeling session isn't particularly easy, so our secret knowledge doesn't really get us very far.

There is silence.

Big G: We could use a cat.

SS: Too small.

Big G: We could keep moving it around, I guess.

SS: Tricky.

Big G: Erm... we could bind the cats together?

SS: I think the law would have a few things to say about stitching cats together.

Big G: Velcro would be a more obvious choice, surely?

SS: Excellent! The RSPCA will be powerless to stop us! Bring me thirty tabbies and your most attractive blind friend!

Exeunt stage right, carrying twelve cans of Whiska's and two very disturbing leers.