In his story "The Purloined Letter," Edgar Allan Poe writes about a man who hides a letter he doesn’t want found in plain sight, amongst the other letters and bills on his desk. Whenever I’ve wanted to hide something, I’ve remembered that story. Apparently, Osama bin-Laden read it too, since he was killed while hiding in plain sight.
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I consider PFC Bradley Manning, who gave Julian Assange most of the military information for Wikileaks, to be a hero, despite the fact that he is now a prisoner at Quantico, a top security military prison, AND being tortured with sleep deprivation, by being waked up constantly during the night. Scientists who study sleep have done this with mice, and it makes them psychotic. He is also forced to stand naked during morning inspection, although all the other inmates are wearing prison uniforms. This sort of humiliation is another sort of torture, that was used by the US on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib.read more
It was almost 7 years ago: Oct. 16, 2004 to be precise. Whitley was scheduled to be on Coast to Coast AM that night, starting at 10 pm. His friend Art Bell was still hosting the show at the time. That afternoon, I staggered up the long flight of stairs from the laundry room at the apartment building where we were staying at the time, complaining of a terrible headache. Then I collapsed on the floor and began having seizures. Whitley immediately knew what was wrong and called an ambulance, which took me to the nearest hospital, one that Whitley was dismayed to discover had an obviously second-rate neurology department.
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Whitley and I are always on a diet, and as I recommend in my diet book, we allow ourselves one treat a week–whatever we want. Often it’s the lemon cake with incredibly rich icing from our local bakery. If one of us doesn’t eat their piece fast enough, the other one sometimes eats (sneaks) bits off the other’s piece. read more