Quizzers

Yesterday I had to leave behind the tranquility of the babbling brook by my house and head into the Big City.

22 seconds of the Connecticut River along Route 5.



Finally I arrived in ol' Pine Point.

There was a car accident in front of the Pine Point Library.

This looks interesting. Are there ominous parallels between the War on Terror and the Spanish Inquisition?

Clerics were given authority to use torture in a document issued by the pope in 1252. They were also given advice manuals with instructions for interrogating suspected heretics. Murphy says he was astonished by the similarities between the Inquisitor advice manual and modern-day guides for intelligence agencies and police departments.

"You see that everything that is being suggested now had already been anticipated," he says. "For instance, you want to spook the person you're interrogating. [The Inquisitors] have a whole bunch of tricks they lay out. The person to be interrogated comes into the room and the inquisitor [advice manual advises]: 'Be sitting there. Have a huge stack of documents in front of you. And as the person is answering questions, flip through the documents as if you have more information than this person could dream of. And every so often, shake your head as if you can't believe what they're saying.' It's almost word for word, you find the same thing in modern handbooks."

Read more here.

Jay is still living in a small apartment in New York City, but at least he's paying for it by playing music. Bob Dylan said, "Anybody that gets up in the morning and does what they want is a success." Note that there is no mention of income levels in that definition.