I wrote up some personal goals for the next few months, in several different areas, analogous to the goals that I set at work. These cover what I want to do in terms of fitness, socializing, music, correspondence, and reading. These are all quantifiable, ongoing goals, such as “bike to work 4 times per week on average”, so I’m using Joe’s Goals, a free, simple goal tracking app, to keep track of this. I’ve been using it for a day, and it seems pretty good so far… recommended if you’re doing something similar.

The New Yorker has a brief video segment about the use of torture in the TV show 24. Normally, I’d say that it’s just TV and there’s no need to worry about it, but I’ve heard the term “Jack Bauer interrogation” used too many times by people trying to sell torture in serious forums. It’s worth watching (unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to embed it).

In the video they mentioned that torture used to be what the bad guys did.. I hadn’t really thought about that before. While I can think of films in which protagonists used torture, I can’t think of any movie or show that uses it so regularly and positively.