A Gentleman's Domain

It is torture. End of story.

This has been around for a bit, but here it is for the benefit of those who haven’t seen it before. 

I’ve been an admirer of a lot of Christopher Hitchens’s writing, and I agree with many, though certainly not all, of his opinions.  He is a highly entertaining and enlightening humanist and anti-theist writer and debater, among other things.   He admits to having been a Trotskyist in his youth, though like many of the radical left has mellowed somewhat with age.  To the surprise of many, he is an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq.  That does not mean that he sacrifices his other values.  He was critical of the practice of torture by waterboarding, and  he arranged to be waterboarded himself, to see what it was like.  Ths shows what happened, and he gives his own conclusions afterwards.
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He has challenged other political commentators, notably Sean Hannity, to try it themselves, but as far as I know, no one has dared.
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Think again, lady!

Here's a wonderful, almost sad, example of self delusion.  I don't know who wrote the letter but it is pretty certain from what she says that she is from blue-collar, silent minority, Middle America. I've no idea how it all ended, when the mother realized what was what and had to use the G-word to describe her son.  I hope it turned out well -- I suspect it didn't.

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Two Die At Spiritual Retreat Taking New Age Quack Cures

It is incredible that in this day and age, people still believe in this sort of unproven, superstitious drivel. This place apparently provided '...healing carried out by harnessing the consciousness of a dolphin, or "vortex experiences"...in which participants "experience our human energy system interacting with the earth".' And it is not incredible at all that there are people waiting to take large sums of money from the gullible for providing these "cures". To counteract this sort of crap, there is The Enemy Of Reason which is well worth watching all the way through if you can. The first episode starts at http://bit.ly/KQ7fu