In case you’re wondering what waterboarding feels like, check out this description by a member of the Straight Dope boards. The Straight Dope is a weekly column where readers ask questions about various things, usually about conventional wisdom, and the author Cecil Adams researches and writes columns giving us “The Straight Dope”. The message board is a pretty active community of people arguing about the truth of different things, so it’s not surprising that this would come from there.
Anyway, this guy says he tried it on himself so he could speak on it authoritatively, using his weight bench and a watering can.
Spoiler: Yes Virginia, it is torture.
chellman.org: spreading Christmas Cheer since 2000.
If you want to learn more about government spending, check out USASpending.gov. It’s a website that was finished recently by the Office of Management and Budget to make it easier for people (inside and outside of the government, I’d imagine) to see where money is spent.
That’s pretty cool by itself, but what’s more impressive to me is who built the site. OMB Watch, which I hadn’t heard of before now, is a watchdog organization that has been quite critical of the OMB, but was hired to build the site. The Washington Post has an article about it. OMB Watch had built a version of this site on their own, but USASpending.gov looks like it’s more comprehensive, and of course it’s an official source with better access to all the relevant data.
Sometimes adversaries make the best partners.
I just found out that my high school music teacher, Bill Gibson, passed away. He and his wife Jill were the music teachers at my middle school and high school, so they shepherded me and many other kids through our early musical development. Bill was a percussionist (I call myself a drummer, a term he didn’t care for because it’s not as broad), so he was especially helpful to me with the music we played in the symphonic band and various smaller groups. It was because of his support that I ended up auditioning for the all-state orchestra and jazz bands, and got in a few times. He was always very encouraging, even when I occasionally drove him crazy. I owe him, and Jill, a large debt for giving me the lift they gave me into musicianship. I would quite literally not be where I am today without them.
One thing Bill could never get me to do with play tennis. He was the boys’ tennis coach, and he would bring it up every once in a while, but I never did learn to play properly. Basically, by the time I started playing drums, most other ways to spend my time took the back seat. I have since made feeble attempts to play, and maybe there was a time when I could have been good, but it has passed, much to the entertainment of friends who like to play.
I thinking of Jill today, and her and Bill’s two sons. I have no idea what this must feel like, but they’re in my thoughts. Several cousins are in high school now playing music, so they’re coping with his loss even more directly than I am. I’m thinking of them now too. I miss him.
It appears the donut hole in that image is over me right now. It’s probably a good time to walk the dog.
