Tree Crystals

December 26, 2014 4:33 pm

A general Christmas post is forthcoming, but take a look at this grow-your-own-Christmas-tree kit (spoiler: it's actually salt crystals, not a plant). Thanks Mollie.

Here's a 2.5 hour time lapse of it growing (or download it here: Tree Crystals using right-click, save as...), and below is the fully grown tree.

IMGP2542a

"Discomfort" or Torture?

December 9, 2014 7:55 pm

Former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin tells NPR, "We may have made a few terrorists uncomfortable for a short period of time in order to get information that we felt was essential to protecting the United States."

By which he means:

In November 2002, a detainee died from hypothermia after he was held "partially nude and chained to a concrete floor."

Some detainees were kept awake for up to 180 hours, "usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads."

Some naked detainees were "hooded and dragged up and down corridors while being slapped and punched."

"At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal feeding' or 'rectal hydration' without documented medical need."

Detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in isolated cells, bombarded with loud noise and given only a bucket in which to relieve themselves.

The CIA may have waterboarded more than the three detainees it said it waterboarded.

...chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.

Multiple CIA detainees subjected to the techniques suffered from hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia and tried to mutilate themselves.

...became completely unresponsive after a period of intense waterboarding.

At least 26 were held "wrongfully," partly because there was no information to justify their detention.

The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting.

Detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them.

Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position.

...the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take "precedence" over his medical care.

CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families—to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to "cut [a detainee's] mother's throat."

Quotes from NPR, CNN, and SF Chronicle articles; and from the document itself.

And it goes on and on and on and on....

Is this what you consider acceptable treatment of prisoners?  Would we ever accept this if done to U.S. military personnel?  Is this simply making them uncomfortable?  How could anyone read those descriptions and say all we did was, "made a few terrorists uncomfortable."?

Torture - Not In My Name

4:06 pm

Having just finished my graduate course on terrorism the release of the summary of the report regarding the CIA's interrogation activities is particularly interesting to me.  [NPR coverage here.]

A lot of words have been written about whether the treatment of prisoners was "technically torture."  First, I think it should be seen as a clear sign that you're doing something wrong when you have to spend that much energy arguing over whether something is technically torture or not.  If the best you can do to defend your actions is to say "it wasn't 'technically' torture, so it was okay" then you're doing something wrong.

Second, instead of spending pages and pages (as the Department of Justice did) analyzing the legal definition of torture and whether you've violated it; let's use a much easier route.  Sample the population and describe the actions as having been committed against U.S. civilians captured by, let's say, North Korea.  If we consider it torture for North Korea to do that to our citizens then it's torture for us to do it to anybody else.

The argument then usually falls back to, "well, so what if it was torture, we needed the intel it resulted in."  Despite this being a highly disputed claim (especially within the new report) it's irrelevant.  Torture is wrong.  Efficacy does not matter.  Why?  Why is torture wrong?  The simplest argument is that it's wrong for the same reason that capital punishment is wrong.  At some point you're going to do it to someone who is completely innocent and there's no taking it back.  But it's wrong beyond that.  It'd be wrong even if you absolutely knew without any doubt whatsoever that the victim was guilty.  Despite the copious quantities of evidence that torture probably doesn't work, results in backlash, alienates allies, and radicalizes enemies we need no data points here.  This is moral conviction.  Treating another conscious, living thing that way is wrong.

The only thing I find more disgusting than the fact that these actions were carried out in our names is that no one will be held accountable for it.  No one has been or ever will be charged with violating human rights or international conventions.  They did these disgusting things and told the world they did it for us.  Your name, my name, my daughter's name, our flag, our country have been slapped on the use of torture claiming "We Approve!"

I do not approve.

It was wrong.

We as a country need to change.  We need to apologize to the victims and their families.  Yes, even though the prisoners most likely were awful people, what we did was unacceptable.  The idea that the victim was a bad person does not excuse mistreating them.  We need to do something to ensure it doesn't happen again.  We need to show why the United States is better than a terrorist organization, not stoop to their level.  If we're going to claim to stand for freedom and justice then we need to actually practice what we preach.

We need to be better.

New Van!

December 4, 2014 9:03 pm

I've really been debating writing this post.  We're excited about our new van, but I dislike posts that come across as bragging.  So, I don't intend for this post to sound braggy.  We're just excited and we hope you can be excited for/with us.  [If you don't want to read the boring details, a picture gallery is at the bottom.]

IMG_20141202_164613as

Prep Work and TrueCar

As all non-trivial purchases around here do, this one started with research.  With the expectation that long road trips are likely in our future and a second child imminent we decided to go the minivan route.  Overall they're safer, more versatile, and more fuel-efficient than SUVs.

With that decision made, our first stop was Consumer Reports.  The 2015 Honda Odyssey EX-L is currently their top-rated minivan.  We stopped by the local dealer a couple of times to poke around the model they had in the showroom.  With my semester finally over (NSLP class on terrorism) and some major deadlines at work completed we decided it was time to move forward with our plans to purchase.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving we stopped by the dealer to do a test drive.  It went fine, but I really didn't think that Thanksgiving weekend is a big car-buying weekend.  It is.  So that could have been planned better.  With the test drive done we were sure the Honda Odyssey was the vehicle we wanted to buy.  Now the hard part.

I dislike the idea of haggling over prices.  I just want you to tell me for how much you're willing to sell and I'll decide if I want to buy at that price.  Luckily I had an email sitting in my inbox from Consumer Reports about their partnership with TrueCar.com.  TrueCar is a service that lets you configure a vehicle and then ask for quotes from nearby participating dealers.  TrueCar tracks purchase prices and gives you statistics on what prices people are paying for the car.  They also provide invoice prices and the MSRP.  This gives you a good idea of what price you can expect to get and what constitutes a good deal.  The entire process involves no commitments.

The main benefit seems to be that TrueCar-participating dealers make a commitment to not jerk you around once you get to the showroom.  Our local Honda Dealer, Livermore Honda, has a pretty good reputation for treating customers well so I was pleased to see the lowest offer come from them.  If TrueCar's information is to be believed then we paid about $500 below the factory invoice price--about $3,700 below MSRP.  And we were able to do it from the computer without haggling with anyone.  It was lovely.

At the Dealer

Once the dealer commits to a price they call you to talk details.  As it turned out the dealer was willing to sell us a matching vehicle at the quoted price, but they didn't actually have one on the lot (none at all for the trim level we wanted regardless of color).  They would need to make a trade with another dealer to get it, but (since that's a cost to them) they won't do it until we're in the dealership actually making the purchase.  Not a big deal.  The transfer and delivery adds $200 to the price, also not a big deal--still well below the other offers we saw on TrueCar and still below factory invoice.

So we went in on Monday after work.  We talked to the Internet Sales Manager who was working and he started calling around looking for a matching vehicle.  This is the part that exposes why car dealerships have bad reputations in general.  Livermore Honda sells their vehicles without modification.  If you want accessories then you can buy them, but they don't pre-install them.  Many dealers pre-install accessories and then charge you for them or charge you to remove them.  It's incredibly sleazy.

Since we were looking for a specific vehicle in a specific color we had to look for one with the least amount of junk added on from one of these other dealers.  Since making a trade is work, the other dealer isn't interested in negotiating the accessories.  And since our dealer has to pay for the accessories either way they're not really interested in eating the cost.  Fair enough from our dealer's perspective.  If I were a haggler I suppose I could have tried to convince them to eat the cost in order to make the sale.  But I already knew the price I was getting was a good-to-great price and since they'd been fair and transparent with me about the whole process I felt it was fair to treat them the same way.

After a few calls we found one that only had the stupid wheel locks installed.  The other dealer invoiced the wheel locks at $149 for being pre-installed, but our dealer wasn't trying to make additional money off the wheel locks that we didn't want anyway and told us the price increase would only be $99.  This was another point in favor of Livermore Honda.  You may be thinking, "Yah, but you still ended up spending $99 you didn't have to."  And you're right.  But we decided it was worth it to get the exact van we wanted with the color we wanted instead of settling for something else.  If I had a regret about my Civic it'd be that I didn't get it in the color I wanted--I got it in the color they had available.

Anyway.  The salesman was helpful and transparent about the entire process and never once attempted to sell us anything.

With the dealer trade arranged it was time to fill out paperwork.  We decided to finance the full price at the 0.9% APR Honda is offering and keep our money in the bank.  The total interest on the loan will be a little over $500.  I expect interest rates to start ticking up over the next few years and if that happens then we'll likely end up earning more interest on the money we're keeping in the bank than we'll pay on the loan.

Aside: The new "Truth in Lending" forms they have to use are really nice.  They clearly and unambiguously state the principal being loaned, the interest rate, the total interest charge over the life of the loan, and the monthly payment.  It makes it impossible to trick someone into something.  And I believe it has a fraud clause that if the information is incorrect then the contract is nullified.

The Finance Person

This is always the worst part of buying a car.  The salesperson didn't try to sell us anything, but for some reason the finance person always does.  I suppose it has to do with the psychology of having gotten this far and sitting in a little office instead of out in the open.  However, the only things she tried to sell us were a service contract and an extended warranty (unlike the finance guy when I bought my Civic who tried to hard-sell us 4 or 5 things).

The most frustrating aspect to me is how the pitch they use is always in almost direct contradiction to what the salesperson would tell you (and usually what actual data says too).  The Civic guy used a line about how Civics are always being stolen to push some secondary insurance scheme (a complete mis-statement that I addressed in a previous blog post about Bayesian reasoning).

This finance person tried to tell me about how these new cars are full of so many electronics (true) and that they'll basically fail all the time because it isn't an "exact science."  Seriously?  Electronics aren't an exact science?  If electronics aren't an exact science then I'm not sure anything really is.  The only real question is, "To what level of quality did they build and install the parts?" If I were concerned that this vehicle were going to start falling apart the minute I drove it off the lot I wouldn't be buying it in the first place.  So which is it: Hondas are reliable, well-built vehicles or their electronic systems are shoddy and fail at the drop of a hat?  I'll make my decisions based on data rather than fear, thanks.  And the Consumer Reports data is that even the electronics are reliable.

Anyway, after turning her down a couple times she moved on and we signed all the paperwork.  No little fees tucked away.  The agreed-upon price from TrueCar plus the $200 transportation / dealer-trade fee plus the $99 wheel locks.

Of course, the vehicle wasn't actually there, it was in Merced.  So the next day they sent their driver off with the trade vehicle to pick up our van and bring it back.  They got it, cleaned it off and dried it (it had been raining all day) and did all the delivery prep work and called us to let us know it was ready.

The Pickup

After work on Tuesday we drove over to pick it up.  The salesperson walked us through most of the various features and then Jess drove it home while Heather and I rode in the Civic.

After we got Heather to bed we went out to the garage to play with it, customize the displays, get our phones paired to it, clone the garage door opener into the built-in system, mess with the controls, etc.

I actually hadn't even driven it yet until today when I backed it out of the garage into the driveway to take some pictures.

Features

We decided that if we're going to buy a van to keep for the next 10-15+ years we should get something a little nicer.  This is probably the closest thing to a luxury vehicle we will ever own.

The EX-L includes as standard: leather interior, heated front seats (important here in California), heated side mirrors (ditto), power sliding doors, power tailgate, power moonroof, backup camera, passenger-side blind-spot camera, lane-departure warning, front-collision warning, Bluetooth audio connection for music and phone calls, and many other little features. We also opted to get the DVD player with fold-down screen.

Pictures

And now, the only part, if any, I'm sure most of you care about: