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.
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.
HRm. I can't respond right now to the torture thing. My thoughts are too... too... I have too many of them on the subject. (No, it's true. I tried to write an essay on it but then I got pregnant, and now all those thoughts are there just waiting to be written down.)
Anyway, I had a great birthday. One of my students brought me flowers. And then after school, we went to a little French cafe I like and Franny was all perky but basically well behaved and Isaac was sweet as usual and I had steak au poivre and Franny ate most of my frites.
Now I am tired.
