Beth, I know the feeling. I really should go to sleep, but I'm not sleepy and don't want to go to bed. So instead, I'm eating Halloween candy and watching Gilmore Girls on Tivo.

The Killer B's are headed for Chicago!

I will have to see about anagramming their starting lineup. It will be easier if they have both Ensberg and Everett in the lineup along with Ausmus, because that way at least I can work with something like BLEEBABB[P].

Another postseason game, another controversial call. Did you see who the umpire was, that called the phantom tag on Baby Molina? It was Greg Gibson, of some infamy in Boston circles, for that game in May that he let out of control. I thought postseason assignments were on merit??

This is going to be a World Series of pitching, and although the White Sox guys are sturdy, I don't know that they're necessarily great. Oswalt? He's pretty overwhelming.

I'm starting some math seminar talks tomorrow. I thought I had everything planned, but today I was going through my notes and realized that there was one section I could organize a whole lot better. So, I tried to do that, and I think I got it, but now my notes are full of places where I have something on page 1, then a note to go to the * on page three, where I go through about half a page and then back to page 1, and I'm convinced I'm going to screw this up.

Doesn't really help that I wrote these notes a month ago, and had to go through them today to make sure I still remembered what everything meant.

I'm watching Frontline on the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and I'm embarrassed by my country.

It's such an institutional clusterfuck.

The two-star general's instructions were to treat the prisoners like dogs.

How is it these people are still in power? How are they not run out of office in shame?

I have a friend who was stationed at Guantanamo as a translator. The stories he told--and didn't tell--sickened us both.

I keep waiting for sme other country to roust Bush out of bed all crazy in his underwear and then liberate us.

can't watch such things. how can anybody not see what we did/do is wrong?

Or, if for some unfathomable reason they can't see that it's wrong, why can't they see that it's very counterproductive? in that torture doesn't yield reliable info and it has made many more people throughout the world hate us... Oh, and another reason why we didn't used to torture people is to make it less likely our soldiers and citizens would be tortured if they were captured.

Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack

Now that I've seen the rest of it -- it appears that the abuse is endemic, and not confined to the prisons or formal interrogations. One of the former interrogators is testifying that it's happening all over Iraq.