Torturous Logic

Enhanced Interrogation Technique (EIT) - this is the new euphemism and acronym so conservatives do not have to use the word "torture". I don't know of anyone who has undergone waterboarding who doesn't think it is torture. I understand that the US military does it to our own troops as part of Ranger training. I guess that justifies it in the minds of people like Sean Hannity. I am waiting for him to take advantage of Keith Obermann's offer to donate $1,000 to charity for every second that Hannity submits to the procedure.

In the heat of the debate over who knew about these techniques and how effective they were, let us not lose perspective. Back in 2003, we were expecting more terrorist attacks here in the US. It is not hard to imagine that the questioning of terror suspects might have been less genteel than we normally would expect for citizens suspected of shoplifting.

I tend to go along with John McCain's position that torture is not an effective way of eliciting truthful information, and it places us on a moral par with those enemies that have used these practices against our captured soldiers.

We have heard conflicting declarations from government experts about whether the rough interrogation practices of the Bush administration were directly responsible for at least one foiled attempt to create mass destruction in LA.

So, as usual, we are left with conflicting data and no one we can trust to tell us the truth. Thus we must rely on common sense. Ok, maybe one bullet in the kneecap -- we are still talking about Sean Hannity, right?

Penultimate Day Musings

Your humble scribe has made a career of searching and hoping to find one day the ideal job. But, alas, he has always been disappointed. He has worked at 27 different jobs in his life. He started hawking copies of the Boston Herald Traveler to commuters in Watertown Square as a lad. He went on to work numerous part-time/summer jobs after school. He fixed duplicating machines, worked as a painter, wrangled horses on a dude ranch, academic administrator, systems analyst, program manager for new product introduction, wrote resumes for people, and worked as a direct marketing database manager. He has unloaded trucks and stocked shelves, he has been paid for published essays, unpaid for poetry and has killed and eaten a moose single-handedly (Just wanted to see if you were still reading), and, most recently has been one of those unfortunate persons on whom god has played another of His cruel jokes - condemned to be a person who waits on the public.

If you have never had such a job - dealing with the public - you have no idea how loathsome and rude the public can be. If you worked in an office in some bureaucracy all your life, you probably thought your boss was a dick wad and most of your coworkers were evil backbiting shits - oh, and you are totally correct on that point - but now, throw-in an unfiltered rabble of customers to this mix, whose only qualification for your attention is that they are suspected of having money. Management insists that these walk-in, random people should be treated as if they were royalty, instead of ravenous doltish vultures with credit cards, which most of them are.

Don't misunderstand, I am not whining. I am merely pointing out that human beings tend to be nasty, brutish and short-tempered. The world consists of two basic types of people: people who provide service and people who consume service. If you are exclusively in the latter group, you probably have little respect for people in the former group, but I need to tell you, it is probably you who is the moron.

That poor menche that is wrestling with a badly-designed computer system to handle the vagaries of your desires is probably doing the best he or she can. And, even if they respond to you in an unpleasant manner (which you probably deserve) perhaps it is understandable if you consider that they have spent the whole morning dealing with inconsiderate assholes, and maybe they have exceeded the reasonable tolerance point for interfacing with people who think the world revolves around them.

Thank god, tomorrow is my last day. Suck on that, public!

The Pursuit of Happiness

The IDEAS section of today's Boston Globe had and interesting article discussing recent scientific research into what makes humans happy - and unhappy.

I know what you are thinking, Grasshopper: Happy = beer; and Unhappy = running out of beer.

But, the topic is not quite so simple. Most of us would assert that the pursuit of happiness is a constitutionally guaranteed right, despite the persistent nagging feeling that a lot of people are having more fun than we are. Even when something good happens, like a lottery hit, or we get something we have always wanted, the feeling of euphoria does not last very long. Delight fades to mere satisfaction which starts to rust almost immediately. Before we know it, we start to develop a new goal/dream/desire to add to our "To Do/Wish" list.

I have previously remarked on this phenomena of dissatisfaction with the status quo, which I have attributed to human nature. I believe it has been adequately explained by Abraham Maslow' s theory of human motivation - The hierarchy of needs - which everyone studied in college (Psychology 101). The pursuit of happiness is an ongoing process, because the things that make us happy keep changing.

No Grasshopper, I am not just talking about the pleasure one finds in strips of crisp bacon on buttered toast in the morning, or the ecstasy a frosty Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on a warm afternoon sitting on a screen porch with a cigar and a good spy novel. These are immutable moments of happiness, but sadly, they end all to soon.

The happiness we are talking about here is a lasting state of being. The research as discussed in the Ideas article shows that people are not very good at predicting what will bring them lasting happiness. The new boat or a bigger house usually involve unintended effects that diminish the sense of satisfaction. For example: moving to a bigger house may involve a migration to exurbia which entails a longer commute. The research seems to indicate that the unhappiness introduced by a longer, unpleasant commute seems to overshadow the joy of a bigger bathroom.

The ultimate determining factor of those who self report a sense of happiness is having a social network. (Maybe I need to reactivate my Facebook account.) Family, friendship, people to talk to - these are what make the difference.

So, there it is. Stop wasting your time trying to "be happy". You are doomed to never be totally satisfied. Go out and talk to your neighbors and call your mother.

The other side of this research is kind of interesting, too. People who ought to be very unhappy because they have suffered terrible trauma (such as loss of limbs or eyesight) seem not to be as bad off as we would predict. (read the article)

In other words, we suck at predicting the impact of future events of our state of being. In a 2006 survey, the Pew research org did a survey on happiness that is worth your review.

By the way, the pursuit of happiness was a phrase from the Declaration of Independence not the constitution. But you already knew that didn't you?

All this scholarship makes me thirsty. But, I seem to be out of beer :-(
Good thing I am friendly with the neighbors...