“If I wanted my computer rendered useless,” I said, “I would’ve saved myself some time by simply continuing to run Windows XP on it.”
Refusing to take “no” for an answer from my computer, I made a second attempt to install Windows Vista. For the full story, check out my article at Global Nerdy.
Today, November 1st, is All Saints’ Day, a.k.a. Hallowmas (which is why October 31st is All Hallows’ Eve, a.k.a. Hallowe’en). It’s the day before All Souls’ Day: November 2nd, unless it’s a Sunday, in which case it’s moved to November 3rd). However, in Mexico, festivities for what they call El Dia de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — typically begin today.
In the Philippines, we don’t throw fiestas like the Mexicans do. Instead, November 1st is typically the day when you go visit your relatives’ graves. I decided to go traditional this morning and pay Dad a visit.
I miss the big guy.
Courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele and Headturban, here’s a sampling of incredibly cheesy newspaper ads for movies, whose vintage ranges from 1959 to 1977 (click the photo below to see them at full size). They’re schlock-tastic!
It’s a day late, but here’s an amusing Hallowe’en comic courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele:
In torture-related news, Dilbert creator Scott Adams — whose opinion matters among the educated, rationalist, leaning-towards-libertarian crowd (geeks, technologists and such) — has shifted slightly in his opinion on torture, from “pro” to “undecided”:
The media have trotted out expert after expert to say that regular non-torture interrogation is MORE effective than torture. I discounted those experts as selectively chosen by the liberal media. One thing that all of the experts seemed to have in common is that none of them had USED torture. So how would they know torture was worse than the alternative?
But much time has passed since this debate began. You’d think that the proponents of torture (cough, cough, Fox New, cough) would have produced one credible torturer to say, “Torture works great! I get all of my information in minutes and I’m home to help the kids with homework by five!”
Or perhaps the media could find one torture victim who would say, “I wasn’t going to tell them anything until they started water-boarding me. Man, that stuff works!”
Now granted, it might be hard to find someone to confess to being a torturer. And it might be even harder to find someone who was tortured who is willing to endorse it. But it seems to me that with all the torturing going on, you could at least find a friend of a friend who saw it work. Or the American government could find some CIA operative who is willing to be filmed in silhouette with his voice garbled saying he’s seen torture produces excellent results.
But nothing? For years?
Move me to the skeptical column. The burden is on the proponents of torture to produce some proof that it works. I still don’t rule out the possibility that torture can be effective, but if it’s being done in my name, I want some fucking evidence.