Waterboarding on a sunshiny day!

According to the Wikipedia entry on waterboarding, CIA officers who subject themselves to this particular torture technique (just for practice?) last an average of 14 seconds.

Was your first thought, "Wow, I gotta try that"? Because mine was. And now that soon-to-be-ex President Bush has signed an executive order banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of terror suspects, I suspect we'll see waterboarding booths set up at amusement parks, carnivals, and county fairs. See, if they can put on a show that waterboarding is fun for the whole family, then they can claim it's not cruel, inhuman or degrading and continue to use it. Then again, I find amusement parks, carnivals, and county fairs to be cruel, inhuman and degrading all on their own, so maybe the addition of waterboarding booths wouldn't be such an outlandish step. Do you hear what I'm saying, Six Flags?

This evening I went to see Sunshine, the latest movie from Danny Boyle. It was equal parts contemplative space picture and "cast-attrition thriller", as the Onion AV Club coined it. Personally, I love both those genres, so I liked the movie quite a bit. Admittedly, it could have used a bit more of the former and a bit less of the latter, but what can you do? Make your own movie? Madness!

Danny Boyle was in the theatre for a brief Q&A after the movie. Considering the number of times he mentioned Solaris and Alien in his responses, it's not surprising Sunshine had a strange, servant-of-two-masters feel. He also answered my question, saying that the character in Sunshine named "Pinbacker" was indeed a reference to the character "Pinback" in Dark Star. I thought it was kinda obvious, but I wanted to be sure.

Fig. 1: Neat.