Just FYI, I’ve upgraded FatMixx to WordPress 2.0. Please let me know of any issues you see either in the comments or via email. Hope this goes smoothly. I know I’ve got several plugins to rewrite now…

Too often discussions about extraordinary renditions and torture end up being completely theoretical. You know the arguments: the ticking bombs, “they’re terrorists, screw ‘em”, or that torture may be the only/best way to get information. No matter that these arguments are generally flawed. At the core of all of these ideas is that we somehow know that we’ve got the right people and that they know what we think they know.

Beyond that, though, extraordinary renditions are wrong for other reasons. We cede control over these investigations to authorities of other countries who have their own sense of right and wrong. In the case of some partner nations, this might not be too risky. But in other cases, we destroy any hope of defeating the sort of hate and distrust that drives terrorists in the first place. Say, for example, partnering with a country like Uzbekistan where it seems we and the Brits encouraged the torture of children:

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
“The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.” While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family’s links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

Go to the web site and make your own judgement on the integrity of the source. He’s the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, so he might actually know what he’s talking about. He’s publishing letters he wrote back to the British government in order to highlight problems he saw with the policies of the British government. Lest anyone think this doesn’t necessarily mean Americans are doing this, remember that we’ve been pretty close to the Uzbek government in the past. We may have even done this ourselves.

It’s a sad statement about the conduct of the U.S. government, our own adherence to human rights and international law, and our collective moral compass that we embrace policies that so horribly contradict everything our country stands for. That advocates for torture want to enshrine this behavior into law, well, that just makes me angry and sad.

I haven’t said much of anything about the wiretap scandal in part because I’m hoping the President will just fess up and ask Congress for the authorization he needs. It seems like a relatively small step and something he should’ve done anyway. If you want some legal analysis of the whole issue, Volokh has a great piece by Orin Kerr looking at the issues. More troubling to me, though, is that the President seems insistent that he doesn’t need to follow the law at all, specifically FISA. The administration has also acted in a way that indicates that they knew they were in conflict with the law. But because of political issues or because it would’ve taken some serious legal work to craft an appropriate statute, they decided they just didn’t want to deal with it and decided to ignore the law.

I still want to find out more before I say much of anything. I’m keeping my mind open on this because the type of pattern analysis and broad data gathering could have value that is unique and not replaceable with other surveillance techniques. While I’m inherently uncomfortable with this type of monitoring especially without a strong legal framework and conducted by this administration, I’m not sure we don’t need something like it.

At the end of the day, my main concern is that the administration follow the law and work with our system of government to do things the right way. That’s all that I’m are concerned about. The ACLU captures the problem well in these ads they’ve taken out in the New York Times:

You can find the ad (including larger versions and PDFs) here and the first ad they ran here.

I just got Serenity on DVD and am watching it tonight. Even after all this time, it’s still hard to watch Wash die.

On the off chance you haven’t see the really funny SNL sketch from this past weekend, here’s a link to it on iTMS. NBC and Apple are offering the video as a free download. Grab it, watch it, sing it. This is great stuff.

The guys behind this video were hired by SNL based on an amateur video project they started a while back. I would check out The ‘BU while you’re there, which features Sarah Chalke of Scrubs and Roseanne fame.

Since I’ve had a few days off, instead of being productive, I decided to catch up on Scifi’s Battlestar Galactica. By catch up, I mean watch the miniseries and first season. I’m hoping to catch the the first half of the second season next thursday before they launch the second half.

So, in order to catch up, I either had to buy the DVD or try iTunes video. Being lazy, I went for iTunes. So, my first thought: Sure is cheaper on iTunes. Amazon sells Season 1.0 for $39 with free super saver shipping and iTunes sells it for $26 + tax and I get it now. So far, I’m liking this iTunes thing. The con is that a season sucks up 2 gb, which is 5% of my laptop’s hard disk. So a bit of a minus there. Plus, when you realize that I just purchased a 6 MP digital camera, I’m suddenly seeing visions of a full hard drive.

But all that is really secondary. The question is how does it look? Not bad but not fantastic. There are some clear pixelations at points, especially during the credits. To be fair, I’ve seen some of the same issues with DVDs so it may be more of a TV resolution on a computer screen issue, rather than a weakness in iTunes video format. The sound, coming out of computer speakers, was fine. I’d love to get the DVD, just to compare, but even if the video isn’t quite as good, the price and convenience certainly make it viable.

The real question is still unanswered though: How does iTunes compare to Tivo? That is harder to say. I can’t compare picture quality, but I would assume they are similar. If I had Tivo, I certainly wouldn’t need to buy episodes of Battlestar Galactica…Tivo would take care of them for me. Of course, if I miss the episode, Tivo can’t help, but right now iTunes selection is so limited, that much of the time it can’t help me either. On one hand, I can buy 75 TV shows for the yearly subscription price of Tivo. But on the other hand, with Tivo, I can burn DVDs of shows I record. Frankly, I don’t think there are 75 shows a year that I want so badly I’d pay for them, but I can see a lot that I might record and burn if I had Tivo.

Frankly, for those with a DVR, I can’t imagine them using iTunes video all that often, except maybe to get very old programs that aren’t broadcast any longer. For those without, it is a nifty service, but I’d still be tempted to break out the VCR if I know I am going to miss an episode of a current show. Digital cable with “On Demand” style services throw another monkey wrench into the whole thing. I’d like to think that eventually people will use a combination of all these services, however I suspect that with DVRs and On Demand available, iTunes video is going to be relegated to service for finding older video with low demand or as an independant type distribution house. While it is cool that iTunes is slowly moving to becoming a complete multimedia distribution system, I am pessimistic as to its future success. Music worked as means of driving iPod sales. I just don’t think that video is going to translate.

All that being said, second season Battlestar Galactica repeats on Thursday Jan 5 starting at 8 am until 5pm. The second half of season two starts at 10pm on Friday the 6th. I just hope that I am home in time for the 1 am repeat…but you can bet the VCR will programmed to record it.

Just a quick followup to my Measure Map, Google Analytics, SiteMeter extravaganza: I just noticed today that Measure Map rolled out RSS feeds for your site data. In other words, I now have 3 feeds in my aggregator that give me a quick view of what happened the day before on my blog. Very cool.

I’ve had another friend ask me to help set up a blog for them. For a variety of reasons, I’m going to host it. Since this is the fourth blog I am now hosting for others, I’m thinking about installing WordPressMU, the multiuser version of WordPress that’s under development. I have custom tools that I’m adding all the time to the FatMixx installation (including an automatic athlete name linker and some ad tools that are under development), and this seems to be the easiest way to offer those type of features to everyone in a centralized manner.

If you’re interested in being a guinea pig on this install, let me know. What I’ll likely do is set this new person up with a standard WP installation, but then I’ll work on the MU install and work on the migration software to move them to the MU install when it’s stable.

I think this could be kind of fun. Centralize the management and hosting costs and let everyone manage and run their own blogs and templates (including their own advertising accounts, Amazon associates info, etc.). And, it makes my life easier so that I’m not updating 4 WordPress installations each time there’s an update. I’m not looking forward to the WordPress 2.0 upgrade process, especially after some of the grief others have had.

India for ten days, starting today. I have weekends and evenings free. What to do?

Bombay 4 days
Delhi 4 days
Agra day trip
Jaipur 1 day

Suggestions welcome now. The clock is ticking.

Who would’ve imagined that a Republican congress, the supposed party of “small government” and federalism would so wantonly embrace social engineering via federal mandate? If I have a major disappointment with the modern Republican party, it’s that they no longer offer a consistent policy alternative to the Democrats, at least not on policy principles. We’re reduced to ideology.

See, liberals and/or supporters of the federal government also want healthy marriages and aid for the poor. Now it’s not a debate about whether we should do these things, but of what particular constituency we’ll “please” with a particular policy proposal. Republicans like Santorum want to please their faux-religious arch-conservative supporters like the AFA. Liberals want to… well, I dunno, since the people they tend to please on these marriage things don’t write big campaign checks. They do make people like Heidi happy, so I know there’s a constituency there…

Used to be that one party would oppose a program on the principle that the federal government shouldn’t be interfering in social policy. The other would support it and we’d get a robust debate (even if it was just in the magazines and policy papers) about balancing those fundamental principles. Now, that discussion is useless because we know that big government lies at the end of all possible roads. Sad, really.

So, I’m watching Sportscenter this morning (as I pretty much do every morning), and at the end of this particular episode, they decided to show everyone who works for ESPN (on a scrolling right marquee with some Inside Sportscenter stuff going on the left side).

Two things struck me as interesting:

1.) there are a LOT of people who work there
2.) Sujal’s name was listed about 3/4 of the way through (during the bloopers segment) with the rest of the web team.

So, go Suj! You’re famous!

Hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and if you have off, the gorgeous day off as well.

Via Josh, here’s a good little explanation of how fantasy football works.

Merry Christmas! To those that don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you’ll enjoy the extra day off you’ve gotten or will get. I hope everyone’s holiday season is going well whatever you’re doing and wherever you are.

And as Christmas approaches, clearly, it is time for us all to celebrate our favorite Oklahoman. CARRIE UNDERWOOD, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Happy Holidays, everyone!