Monthly Archives: January 2017

The neuroscience of interrogation (Why torture doesn’t work) – New Scientist

As O’Mara emphasises, torture does not produce reliable information largely because of the severity with which it impairs the ability to think. Extreme pain, cold, sleep deprivation and fear of torture itself all damage memory, mood and cognition. Torture does

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Torture

Commenter Ignore Button Plug-In Now Available from the WordPress Repo

Commenter Ignore Button (CIB) lets a user to put one or more commenters “on ignore.” To have such an option enabled is a frequent request at blogs and other sites where comment threads are plagued by trolls or other problematic commenters, but where site operators prefer to err on the side of open discussion – or don’t want to get involved unless they really have to. Once users become generally aware of the option, people just seeking attention may either be more polite or move somewhere else, while regular commenters – and lurkers – may become more willing to engage.

Posted in WordPress Plug-Ins Tagged with:

Eric Levitz: Trump Aides Can’t Stop Blabbing About How He’s a Madman – New York

Ultimately, though, the most astounding sentence in the Post’s write-up might be the following: This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants,

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness

Jonathan Chait: Don’t Let Anybody Tell You the Marches Didn’t Matter – New York

It matters that Trump drew a sparse crowd to inaugural festivities that he had billed beforehand as a historic, Jacksonian uprising of the People. And it matters much more that millions of Americans came out on a Saturday to register

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness Tagged with: , ,

Kim Stanley Robinson: Our Generation Ships Will Sink – Boing Boing

With the enormous successes of Star Trek and Star Wars, the idea was firmly planted in the popular imagination: if we survived as a species, we would be moving out into the galaxy. This awesome diaspora would mark our maturity

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Science, Technology Tagged with:

Charlie Jane Anders: The Essential Difference Between Star Wars and Star Trek – io9

The later Star Trek series are frequently concerned with the wisdom of command—Picard, in particular, obsesses about choosing the wise path and being a responsible leader. Deep Space Nine and Voyager try to take away some of Starfleet’s awesome power

Posted in Movies, Neo-Imperialism, Noted & Quoted, TV Tagged with: , ,

David Frum: Why Trump’s Inaugural Celebration Rings Hollow – The Atlantic

The message will be stated and restated this day: For the 58th time, the system has worked, and power has smoothly transferred from one heir of George Washington to another. The truth is not so happy. With full advance notice,

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness

David Corn: At His Inauguration, Trump Signals No Break From His Politics of Fear and Loathing – Mother Jones

Today, as of noon, the president of the United States is a man who boasted of sexually assaulting women. The nation’s leader is a purveyor of fake news and conspiracy theories who led the racist birther campaign. The commander in

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness

Ignoring in “Illdy”: A CIB Adaptation to a “Bootstrapped” Theme (Case Study)

If you’re not able to perfect your theme yourself, or not willing to hire a designer, then being a perfectionist is unrealistic. Yet just getting good enough on first glance results when adding CIB to customized comment templates, even before fine-tuning, may require some more complicated work. For those intimidated by the prospect, here is an example of curing the output on one typically atypical theme.

Posted in WordPress Plug-Ins Tagged with: ,

Ken White: On Punching Nazis – Popehat

…We have social and legal norms, including “don’t punch people because their speech is evil, and don’t punish them legally.” Applying those norms is not a judgment that the speech in question is valuable, or decent, or morally acceptable. We

Posted in Internet, Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness