Penumbral Lore; the Shadows of Science

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Science for Your Amusement

Earliest chocolate drinks were alcoholic (but they already knew that), and 500 years earlier than previously thought. Archaelology Online and Dogfish Head Brewery may try to ‘reconstruct the brew. They previously did the same thing with Chateau Jiahu, which just might (probably not) be still available…

Here’s the abstract to the article “Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?” from “Evolution and Human Behavior”. A silly study, but it does have something to say about the concept of concealed ovulation.

Finally, the US Government is suggesting that, in case of a deadly influenza pandemic, Homeland Security gets preferential treatment - as though they’d be ‘on the front lines’ in response to the pandemic? Doesn’t make sense to me.

I’ve spent most of my blog time this morning working on the show notes for my husband’s new podcast, which will go live (hopefully) later on today or tomorrow. I’ve still got a bunch of tinkering to do on the graphics, but check out the Secret Frequency blog this afternoon - hopefully we’ll have a treat up for you.

So I’m going to put up a very short post today, on a subject everyone’s been hearing a lot about - waterboarding. There are a number questions which keep coming up about it:

1. Is it torture?
2. Is it legal?
3. Does torture work to get information?

Well, from the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is:

“any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

I don’t see any ambiguity there. It’s torture.

As far as the legality of waterboarding, and Congress having the ability to specifically make it illegal - the US is party to numerous treaties and conventions (the UN Convention cited above being only one of them) against torture. Therefore, it’s not only legal, it’s unconstitutional.

So, regardless of whether or not torture works, it’s not legal.

…but since this blog is about science, the question of ‘does it work’ is still an interesting question. As I discussed before, a reputable scientist could not just go out and torture people and see what information was good and what was not. Nor can we just rely on anecdotal evidence like “it worked for the Nazis“, because anecdotal evidence isn’t data.

No, in order to seriously research this, we need thousands of data points (which were not used in formulationg our theory, by the way), which were all obtained under controlled conditions, and which we can obtain from willing subjects. Sound impossible? Well, it’s not.

What we need, in this case, is something called a ‘retrospective study’. Look over old data, and use some serious data analysis. So, if someone has collected this kind of data in the past… who might have done that?

How about the Pentagon. Surely they’ve debriefed thousands of Americans who have survived torture, and given information under it. There must be records which can be obtained (with names and identifying information removed) of who said what, how much was true and how much was false.

Or we can just remember that, as Americans (and as citizens of the world) what makes us great is the fact that we’re the ones who don’t play those games, and we won’t let the enemies of Democracy turn us into the people who do.

’nuff said.

I didn’t join NaNoWriMo last year, because I started the novel in October, and because I figured it would take longer than a month to finish it. It’s a good thing, too, because I bogged down somewhere after the first couple of weeks. I might or might not talk about that Science Fiction attempt later*.

This year, as November rolled around, I discovered National Blog Posting Month, and I figured that this, at least, is a reasonable goal to commit to. I’ve stated my intention to post to this blog (at least) once per day in November. Not only will it get this start-up blog some exposure, it will (with any luck) help turn posting to the blog into a habit for me.

The blog promotion sounds like a lot of fun, and I hope you check it out. I’m getting in to it (possibly a bit too much - it has unfortunate time-sink potential), and have offered to donate a small prize, and adorable crochet dragon to be given to some random participant. If you’ve found this journal through there, I hope you enjoy this blog, and even come back and read again on occasion.

This seems as good a time as any to mention future topics for blog posts. There’s the Lancet commentary, my SF novel (which is in deep hibernation), Bioethics (why my mother is bothered by the very idea, it’s history and importance), Darwin, William Jennings Bryant, the Copenhagan Interpretation of Quantum Physics, Heisenberg and String Theory, my Mutation Socks (and the trouble I’m having graphing the biohazard chart) and more on the nature of religion and the religion of Science (and why it makes for poor science). Plus links to articles and podcasts as I come across them. Oh, yes, if I’m unlucky you’ll probably get a lovely subjective description of a migraine in progress.

Yeah, I think I’ll be able to come up with a months worth of posts.