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  Posted By: StarSword @ 05/29/2009 11:05:40 AM

  I preface this post by saying that I'm not a psychiatrist, psychologist, neurologist, or anything other than a person with mental illness who has studied the brain for his own benefit. Any readers who are, feel free to comment.
  
  The swine flu scare is just another example of how the human limbic system makes people into idiots.
  
  The so-called reptile brain governs the human "fight or flight" response, and several other instincts that during the pretechnological era were essential to keep us from winding up inside a predator. Now, of course, we have guns, planes and cars, and don't need it, but evolution hasn't caught up with this yet.
  
  What this has to do with the swine flu is an example of risk analysis. Intelligent beings fear what is new, what is unexpected, what they know little about, etc. Heidi Lum's letter in the May 25 issue mentioned the AIDS problem. While its true that, whereas the swine flu virus, while affecting people not usually infected by seasonal flu, seems to be no deadlier than seasonal flu, HIV and AIDS continue to infect and kill millions, HIV, pardon me for saying this, is old news, and just doesn't scare people like it used to now that, even though we can't yet cure it, we can treat it and prevent new cases.
  
  Meanwhile, the last "pandemic", avian flu, managed to get at least one indy horror film based on it, "Flu Birds". This is ridiculous, but it goes to show you just how dominant the limbic system is in the human brain.
  
  Aaron J. Davis

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  Posted By: StarSword @ 05/29/2009 10:41:48 AM

  Well, Mr. Weiner, I'm not a professor-grade expert on the Constitution, but my best (and favorite) subject in high school was history. The Constitution in fact makes no mention of torture. If it is forbidden anywhere, it would fall under the jurisdiction of the Eighth Amendment, which states, and I quote, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
  
  This, is of course, intentionally vague, like much of the Constitution: the Founding Fathers wanted the Constituion vague so it could be applied to fit changing circumstances as history went on. Compare this to countries like France, which is now on its FIFTH entirely new constitution; we've only scrapped ours once, back in 1789 when the Articles of Confederation were replaced with the Constitution. The trouble is inherent in the vagueness: "cruel and unusual punishment" could mean virtually anything, but traditionally has not included jail time, fines, probation, and the like.
  
  And not many people understand this as far as I know, but this is not the first time that torture--ahem, "enhanced interrogation techniques"--have been used by the USA. During either the Mexican-American War or the Spanish-American War (I forget which), both sides resorted to torture on occasion. This, of course, was outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, which define the rules of war and rights of POWs. Naturally not every nation abided by them (*cough* Bataan *cough* Hitler *cough cough*), but they are nevertheless an essential part of international law. Do they forbid torture of POWs? Yes. Do captured terrorism suspects count as POWs? THAT is the real question.
  
  My opinion: just because the enemy doesn't follow the rules of war, doesn't mean we don't have to.

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