One former US soldier says that in the absence of clear guidelines from their superiors, military interrogators looked to TV and movies for ideas on how to get information from prisoners.

For my money, Greg Beato’s piece on TV and movies contributing to police violence is the best there is on this general subject. I quote:

According to the activist group October 22nd, “the number and rate of people killed by law enforcement agents have jumped alarmingly in this new political climate of increased ‘homeland security’ and repressive laws.” The group publishes a book called Stolen Lives and is now working on a third edition of it. In the 2nd edition of the book, it documented “over 2000 cases of people killed by law enforcement agents in the 1990s.” (In contrast, it appears that around 60 to 80 law enforcement officers were deliberately killed in 2002, with a total of 135 duty deaths for the year.)

Go back a hundred years, and there were undoubtedly rogue cops pissing on Indians and raping 12-year-olds then too. But those cops are dead now, so who cares? The relevant issue: why are there so many violent and out-of-control cops today?

I blame Dirty Harry Callahan.

Just a few items that have caught my eye in the past few days:

• Twelve year old boy dies after a tooth abscess spreads to his brain. Not only is the child dead, but his total medical bill wound up at $250,000. Extracting the tooth would have cost $80.
• One study estimates that 750,000 Americans are living on the streets.
• Severe poverty in America is at a 32 year high. 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty.

I thought I was the only person who randomly clicked around on web pages while they read. Turns out, there’s a whole slew of us.

greatfirewallofchina.org uses a server in China to test which Web sites the Chinese government is blocking. rc3.org is available to Chinese users, I’m sure they’re happy about that.

His description of how CIOs responded to his talk:

I’m still musing over an eye-opening experience a few months ago when I spoke at CIO Magazine’s annual conference. You might have expected, as I had, that most Chief Information Officers wanted to know about the latest trends in technology so they could keep ahead of the curve. Nothing of the sort. CIOs, it turns out, are mostly business people who have been given the thankless job of keeping the lights on, IT wise. And the best way to ensure that they stay on is to change as little as possible.

Most CIOs behave this way because that’s what’s expected of them.

Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise explains why turned down the opportunity to work for the John Edwards campaign:

And aside from the risks to the campaign, I wasn’t sure this arrangement would be healthy for my blog. With this responsibility weighing on my mind, how could I continue to deliver the independent perspective that my readers value? If I were suddenly on a candidate’s payroll, yet still posting my own “independent” thoughts on Majikthise, what would my longtime readers think? Would they still trust me? Should they? Full disclosure wasn’t going to solve the problem of divided loyalties.

In the end, she makes a Yochai Benkler-esque argument about bloggers and campaigns that sounds about right to me:

In my opinion, though, the real lesson of the Webb campaign is how effective bloggers can be when they’re outside the campaign. I think the candidates who benefit the most from the netroots are the ones who can inspire bloggers to do their work for free. They create unpaid, unofficial surrogates. Webb is a netroots success story because his team captured the imagination of independent bloggers and online activists.

Yesterday I explained my one simple rule for finding good guilds in online games — join guilds with girls. I’d say that the rule works elsewhere as well. Diverse teams make better teams. Today I thought I’d take a stab at explaining why I think that is the case.

When people are surrounded with people they consider to be like themselves based on stereotypes (rather than actually knowing all of the people present somewhat intimately), they form a false sense of security that enables them to be more insensitive to others. Chances are in a group of any size there will be a great diversity of opinion, but if everyone in the group looks the same, people in the group will underestimate that diversity of opinion.

Put a group of obviously different people together, and everyone but the biggest boors will be more sensitive to the fact that others in the group may not appreciate their “being themselves.” Everyone involved will conduct themselves in a more thoughtful manner, and the group will benefit.

On a slightly separate note, I think that the theme of this blog for 2007 will be the benefits of thoughtfulness and living deliberately. (I kind of got started in this in my post on email signoffs, but I have a lot further to go.)

Anil Dash has a good post on why it’s a good idea to explicitly seek out female speakers for tech conferences. I don’t go to many tech conferences, but I have my own point to add on the subject of the value of diversity.

I have been playing online games for many years, and in those games, I’ve been in many guilds (organized associations of players who band together to just hang out or to achieve common goals). I’ve been in guilds that have a lengthy and complex application process, and guilds where I’ve been invited a minute or two after inquiring about the guild. In my experience, there is one simple indicator of whether a guild is good or bad, and that’s whether or not it has female members.

Guilds with no female members are the worst. Guilds with lots of female members, especially those that have females involved in the leadership, are the best. That’s the only rule you need to remember when looking for a guild. Guilds that don’t have female players in there tend to be rife with homophobic comments, selfish players, and idiocy. Guilds that have female players are more civil and don’t have all of the negative attributes of a locker room atmosphere.

Diversity is a worthwhile end unto itself.

Tonight I watched Rory Kennedy’s new documentary, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. The documentary tells the story of the events leading up to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and of what actually happened in the prison, and includes interviews with some of the soldiers eventually convicted for abusing prisoners at the prison and some of the prisoners who were abused.

First, a quick word about Rory Kennedy. She is an amazing documentary filmmaker. I had previously watched her documentary American Hollow, which documented and exposed the dark side of abject rural poverty in United States. It changed the way I thought about this country and about poverty.

Her film on Abu Ghraib is even more powerful. I had seen the photos from Abu Ghraib and knew almost everything she reported in the documentary, but seeing it was different. I know that saying every American should see something is an overused cliché, but every American should see this documentary. I have thought many times that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others have ruined this country, but I’m now more convinced than ever.

The documentary takes the infamous pictures from Abu Ghraib and puts them in context, at the same time revealing what a hollow sham the comments from the people in power were.

If you get a chance, watch this film. It’s harrowing and painful, but necessary, especially if you’re one of the people who thinks that torture is justified.

For more, check out this interview with Rory Kennedy from The Nation.

A jury awarded over $1.5 billion dollars to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft over the MP3 audio format. Microsoft had previously licensed rights to use MP3 from Fraunhofer/Thompson, but the jury ruled that Alcatel-Lucent also holds patents which apply to MP3 and must be paid license fees as well. Needless to say, this poses a big problem for the other licensees, as anyone who hasn’t paid Alcatel-Lucent is exposed in the same way as Microsoft.

The old GIF patent issue led to the creation of the PNG format, which is unencumbered by intellectual property issues and is superior to it in every way. Can we expect to see Ogg Vorbis take off at this point? It’s already a well-established alternative to MP3, but it’s not supported by the iPod or iTunes. It’ll be interesting to see what shakes out from this court case. I’m sure Apple would love to see its customers move wholesale to AAC, but this is going to give Ogg advocates ammunition for another big push. As far as I’m concerned, Apple adding support for Ogg Vorbis would be a very good thing.