torture counterproductive?

Remember Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? He was a high-end al-Qaida man most remembered for looking like this when he was captured. Recently, he confessed to being the mastermind behind such acts of terrorism as the September 11th attacks and the death of journalist Daniel Pearl, yet it hasn't gotten that much attention. I found an article on Slate.com about how his capture and confession are proof that torture is counterproductive. I'm not a huge fan of Slate, but it still brings up some good points.

In the column, they talk about how a lot of people thought that his capture would lead to some "ticking time bomb" scenarios. In other words, that his capture would immediately lead to information about attacks that would be happening within hours or days that they would now be able to thwart Jack Bauer style. But that didn't happen. His capture is proof that the "ticking time bomb" scenario, does not exist. So to all of you people who use 24 as an example for why it's ok to torture people because there's an imminent threat and it applies to real life, please join the real world.

The torture part comes into play because the U.S. was debating just what "torture" meant around the time of his capture. It's hard to believe they didn't torture this guy, probably just for kicks and to get his subsequent confession.

It is true that the administration has now stated clearly that torture, at least by its own definition, was not used in KSM's interrogation. ("We don't do torture" is how the White House press secretary cavalierly put it.) But even if we were to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, which hardly anyone will, the circumstances of KSM's detention have been unacceptable, at least by American standards. Even if he was not tortured, then certainly he was held in secret, extralegal, and completely unregulated conditions, possibly in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, certainly under nothing resembling what we in the United States normally consider the rule of law, either international or domestic. The mystery surrounding his interrogation—when it was carried out, how, and by whom—renders any confession he makes completely null, either in a court of law or in the court of international public opinion.

So not only is torture never necessary to stop an imminent threat, it also makes anything the torturee says suspect because of the duress they were under when they gave the information. They even say this about police interregations, some states are even making these sessions be videotaped to make sure it's on the up and up. I've used a lot of cliches in this post, what am I doing? Sorry. These terrorists are without a doubt bad guys. But when our own government tortures them and treats them inhumanly, it just makes our own government look bad and like we're stooping down to their level.

7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

I knew the writers would continue to bring me joy.

Gredenko explains to Fayed that they need to launch the drones RIGHT NOW because CTU knows where they are. This kind of makes Fayed happy because now he can finally get on Gredenko’s case for screwing up, since that’s what he’s been doing to Fayed all day. The Russian who’s in charge of flying the drone with a joystick launches it. Terrorists are always really high-tech, yet they are using the same gaming device that I used in 1996 to play EA’s NHL hockey with on my computer.

Nadia and Milo are talking at her desk, and Milo puts his hand on her wrist. They’ll be married next season. Chloe ominously comes over and tells them that she found out that Nadia was logged in under Milo’s username and that it’s a felony. Milo tells her that she can’t get them arrested because they need all the man power they can get. Chloe explains to them that if she was going to report them she would’ve already and she’s just giving them a warning so no one else notices it. And that Chloe, is how you interact with co-workers affectively.

CTU quickly finds out where it us, but the drone is not able to be picked up on radar. CTU has to use satellites to tell the air force where they are so they can shoot it down before it gets to its destination. Morris quickly loses the satellite image however, and no one can figure out why.

Jack is back in CTU but is sent down to medical. He sees Marilyn and stops and talks to her. Marilyn tells him how disappointed she was that they never worked out and leans in for a kiss and gets shafted. Jack Bauer does not settle for his dead brother’s sloppy seconds. Jack explains that he’s in love with another woman and that he has to talk to her. Marilyn knows he’s talking about Audrey, even though no one in Jack’s family has spoken to him since his wife died seven years ago. Marilyn explains to Jack that she read in the papers that Audrey died. WHAT? Where is this coming from? A major character died and we didn’t even get to see it? What a rip-off. She was in China and there was an accident. Jack is devastated. He runs out to talk to Chloe. He slams her phone down in the middle of her conversation and asks why she didn’t tell him about Audrey. She explains that since they all thought Jack was just going to die anyway there was no reason to tell him, but apologizes for not telling him after the fact. Chloe, that’s the second time in a row that you’ve known how to interact with people. And you were practically sensitive. I’m so proud of you.

In the batcave, Veep Daniels is being brought up to speed on the aerial drones. He calls a chief of staff meeting and his weird creepy assistant, who will clearly become a bigger part of the show because of all the camera pans to her, tells him that Karen Hayes will be attending the meeting. We see Karen walking down the hallway and she runs into Lennox, and questions him about the cut on his forehead.

Karen- Did someone throw you down a flight of stairs?
Lennox- No, Karen, I tripped over your ineptitude.

Lennox you are one weaselly little guy but boy was that a quick, awesome response. Kudos. In the meeting Daniels explains that if the bomb goes off the U.S. will respond with a nuclear bomb on Derka Derkastan. Karen is not down with that and forcefully tells him so. She explains that their country does not support Fayed and the terrorists and that it could start another world war. The zoom-ins on Lennox made me believe that he was going to agree with Karen for once, and apparently so did she. But the meeting is adjourned with Daniels all set to destroy the Middle East.

Outside, Karen confronts Lennox calling him out on the fact that he doesn’t agree with Daniels’s plan either. Lennox gets really mad and tells her that she doesn’t know what he’s thinking and that he’s serving at the discretion of the president, who at the moment is Daniels. Then he gives Karen the finger and walks away. Well no, but he might as well have.

Milo comes up to Chloe and asks her if Morris has been drinking. She doesn’t think that he has but Milo wants her to check his breathe. She agrees, walks over to Morris’s station and kisses him. Morris asks her why she did that, and she told him that she was checking his breathe for alcohol. She reports an “all clear” to Milo and he shakes his head at her in an “alright Chloe you got me that was a good one” way. This might be the funniest moment ever on 24. I could not have been happier.

In the situation room at CTU, Chloe explains that the reason they don’t have satellite coverage is because someone is hacking into the system from inside. Surprise! Another mole at CTU. Is there ANY background check involved when applying to work here? Chloe says she can figure out which computer it’s coming from but it’ll take hours, so they need to narrow down there search. Doyle tells them to start with Nadia, DUH. Milo flips out, because he wants to tap that, and tells Doyle that Nadia is a loyal American. Doyle’s like “she’s suspect because she’s Muslim and everyone’s thinking it but I’m the only one who’s saying it.” Doyle might be the biggest tool to every grace the offices of CTU. Milo gets in his face and calls him a racist. Buchanan says they might as well start with her, Milo gets even angrier and Doyle goes, “you wouldn’t be saying this if you weren’t itching to sleep with her.” If you thought Milo was pissed before… Chloe interrupts all of this by saying that it did come from Nadia’s computer. Ok there’s NO WAY Nadia’s the mole. It would just be too obvious and unbelievable and CTU never gets the mole right on the first try.

Karen goes to see how Wayne Palmer is doing in surgery. The doc explains that he was crashing before, but they put him in a coma so they could [medical jargon I don’t care about.] Karen asks if he could be woken up to make a national security decision and the doctor said he wouldn’t approve of it. The only way he would let it happen was if a family member signed off on it, and his sister is watching him worriedly from behind a glass door.

Doyle has Nadia in the holding room and he chokes her to emphasize that he will do whatever he has to to get information out of her. Nadia shoots back with the knowledge that when Doyle was in Denver it was reported that he “got off” by hurting people. Ew. Milo comes in and tells him that they found information that will lead them to the drones, so he can leave Nadia alone. Doyle leaves and Milo checks to make sure she’s ok. Nadia asks if he believes her, and he hesitates, which means maybe they won’t be getting married after all.

Morris uses Nadia’s computer to track down the Russian guy who is playing Space Invaders with the aerial drone joystick. Doyle gets his team ready and Jack prepares to go with them. Buchanan confronts him and tells him to go back to medical. Jack is still mighty angry that Bill didn’t tell him about Audrey. This is completely irrelevant to finding nuclear bombs but that's how Jack justifies it somehow. He also says that he knows Audrey was murdered looking for him and that he’s going to fight the whole population of China if he has to to avenge her death. So Bill lets him go.

They get to the sight where Russian aerial drone man is. Jack kills some guy just walking out of the building. Why did Jack assume he was a terrorist? It’s only like quarter to eight, he could’ve just been working late. Or Jack could’ve just told him to freeze and have someone cuff him. Maybe he’s practicing for the war he’s going to declare on China when this day’s over. They get inside, shoot mad homies, and find the computer that’s navigating the drone. Jack redirects it away from the target of San Francisco, and it crashes and burns in an industrial park. It’s still radioactive, but it didn’t detonate. Good job Jack, there’s no “do over” in the game of nuclear bombs.

Daniels is told that the bomb didn’t go off. He seems disappointed. When he’s informed that the area was still radioactive, he says that that is still considered an attack on the U.S. and we’re still going to bomb Derka Derkastan. Now even Lennox doesn’t like that idea. Everyone pleads with Daniels that there’s no reason to bomb them, since the bomb didn’t go off and the casualties will be like one firefighter. But he’s like nah, I’m gunna bomb them anyway. Peace homies.

This was a very CTU driven episode, which there haven’t been a lot of this season. This was a much better episode than the last couple of weeks, and maybe that’s why. This was also the best Chloe episode ever. The only way she could’ve been more awesome was if she was given a machine gun, a la season 4. However, there was still minimal Jack in this episode. Kiefer Sutherland is not the executive producer and the only person to appear in every single episode of the show for nothing. It’s because he’s awesome. So give me more Jack, all the time.

P.S. I just realized that there was no mention of Logan at all. Is he alive? What happened?

What have you done!?!??! -Jack Bauer

I found an article on msnbc.com that basically says exactly what I said at the end of my post yesterday. It makes the same argument that the writers might have blown some potentially good plotlines by getting rid of Jack's family so quickly.

After 12 hours, this season feels like the first few hours of any other season of “24,” where the show searches for a solid rope to climb up the rest of the season. Producer Howard Gordon has admitted as much, telling Entertainment Weekly that writers have “struggled much more with trying to find that big idea, and if you don’t find it, it’s like mining coal with your hands: It’s really bloody and it’s ugly.”

It's weird that the writers feel this way because I think nuclear bombs and Jack having a super-evil family are pretty big ideas. But all season there hasn't really been much talk about the bombs, well there has been but no one seems to be all that concerned. They're obviously the driving factor of all the action, but they still somehow seem in the background.

I think having Jack's family on the show could have shown us a lot about the character, why he is the way he is and how having his family involved could possibly change the decisions he would have to make during the day. But now Graem's dead and Poppa Bauer is MIA.

Oh well. There are still good things about this season, it is far from my least favorite and I have faith that the writers will be able to steer it back on track. I would still rather watch Jack Bauer shoot people and yell than watch most of the other progams on television.

6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Does anyone else think they should change the 24 theme song to "Bad Day" by R.E.M.?

Geez where to begin? Charles Logan does the infamous slow walk through CTU into holding room 2 where he gets very antsy very quickly. Chloe comes in and to Logan's question of "who are you?" Chloe responds with, "I’m just Chloe O’Brian and I have to do something with this computer." I thought that was pretty hilarious. Chloe obviously has no idea how to talk to this guy, which probably has something to do with the fact that she was an integral part of bringing him down.

In the CTU conference room, we meet Doyle, who is played by Rick Schroder. I don't know who he is, even though I've seen him in a million things. But my friend gave this perfect description of him, "he looks like a baby and an old man at the same time." It's true, look harder next time. Anyway, he's the new guy in charge of tactical teams. We quickly learn that he doesn't mess around and that there is a past history with him and Milo. And Milo's been pretty cool every since he took those bullets to the arm, so I don't like this Doyle character one bit.

At the Russian consulate, Jack is thrown down a flight of stairs and he falls very quickly and violently down them. He cuddles for a little bit with the dead body at the bottom of the stairs as his captor calls to make sure it’s ok to kill him. Markov says that’s cool with him and the Russian guard draws his gun. Meanwhile Jack undoes the belt of the dead guy and when the guard aims his gun at him Jack uses the belt to disarm him and kills him while his hands are tied up. It looks really cool, but it doesn’t seem like it would actually work in real life. Whatever. Jack is clearly in pain and he grabs a gun and stumbles around looking for a place to hide. He finds a phone and calls CTU to tell them he knows where Gredenko is, but Markov shuts the phones off before he can tell them. At least now CTU knows that Jack must be saved. Jack cuts the power in the consulate and goes into a room where two Russians are canoodling and he makes the guy go find him a phone. While he aims his gun at the woman he tells her not to be afraid and that he’s not going to hurt her. At this point, I don’t even think I would be afraid of Jack because he can barely stand or breathe. I would just want to hold him and stroke his beautiful blonde hair to make him feel better.

In the batcave, evil Vice President Daniels is telling Lennox that the Ambassador of unnamed Middle Eastern country (on blogs4bauer.com they refer to it as Derka Derkastan, which I will steal, because Team America is the funniest movie ever) will be meeting with him soon. He wants Lennox to say he saw Assad carry the bomb to the podium so he can declare war on Derka Derkastan. Lennox does not want to do this, but he agrees anyway, because the vice president is terrifying.

Buchanan is finally meeting with Logan and is explaining to him that the Russian president is in a diplomatic stand-off with the veep and that they’re sending in a tactical team to go get Jack. Logan flips out and does not like this act of war. He tells him that his ex-wife Martha is BFFs with Anya Subarov, the Russian president’s wife. He thinks Martha can convince Anya to speak to her husband about the matter, and have the Russian consulate hand Jack over peacefully. Bill rolls his eyes and is all “yeah this is a good idea” but he knows there aren’t too many other options so he tells him to call her up.

We see Aaron Pierce carrying a bag of groceries to Martha’s insane asylum bungalow. Aaron Pierce has lost a ton of weight while living with Martha in her crazy cabin. For some reason this scene cracked me up. I think it was because when Aaron asked Martha what she had been doing, she was just like “Well I’ve been chilling reading this book, now I’ll eat this awesome produce.” I don’t know, I just couldn’t stop laughing for some reason. Personally, I like it better when Aaron is an all-business awesome Secret Service agent as opposed to babysitter for crazy Martha, but I’m still glad he’s back. So Charles calls Martha and Aaron picks up and says, “Martha Logan’s bungalow.” See? Hilarious. Anyway, Martha initially doesn’t want to talk to him, but comes around and then goes crazy on the phone. Charles decides it would be better to talk to her in person.

Charles arrives in his chopper and tries to convince Martha that he’s asking her to do this for the good of the country and not for his own personal benefit. Since she’s crazy, she flips out, taunts him and runs around the bungalow in a very nervous matter as they wait for Anya to be put on the phone. Martha starts chopping up Mel’s produce, there are a lot of zoom-ins on knives and when heading back to the kitchen, Martha stabs Charles in the shoulder in slow-motion. WHAT?!? I think she needs more than just a little crazy-halfway house bungalow, put that woman in a padded room. If she’s crazy, why is she allowed to keep so many knives at her disposal? Aaron’s secret service sense must have dwindled significantly. They cuff Martha, which confuses her, because she’s crazy, and still ask her to talk to Anya. Everyone doubts that she’ll be able to pull this off, but she convinces Anya to talk to her husband. President Subarov calls Vice President Daniels and tells him, “The United States of America has the full support of the State of Russia in this matter” which is good, now there won’t be another cold war. Markov refuses to stand off and the tactical teams move in. It’s a full bloodbath with Jack and Doyle leading the charge. Jack fights off about 37 Russian guards with only a handgun. Before Markov is shot in the stomach, he calls Gredenko and tells him he has to launch the drones ASAP. Jack tells Bill where Gredenko is and sends people out to the desert to find him.

The episode closes with Charles Logan crashing in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. They are killing of major characters incredibly quickly if he’s dead.

I have now stopped watching previews. I didn’t watch them at the end of last week’s episode, or this week. Apparently if you watched them for this week’s episode you knew Martha and Aaron were coming back and that Logan was going to be stabbed. They give away too much and I’m done with them.

Not enough Jack in this episode. I think I’ve had to say that 4 or 5 times this season, which is 4 or 5 times too many. While this season started off really strong, I think it’s slowing down and losing direction now. The writers had a lot of great opportunities with Graem, Phillip and the return of Charles Logan. Now, at least the first two characters were quickly killed or written out. This was the third episode in a row with no Poppa Bauer. Having Jack’s family involved could have brought a lot of heightened drama for way more episodes, but it was like the writers didn’t know where to go with those plots and ended them just as soon as they began. Now if Logan’s dead, they will have definitely wasted an opportunity to have a lot of Jack and everyone else verse Logan style episodes. We were convinced to trust him too quickly, and now he’s probably dead.

I’m sorry ... I’m feeling ambivalent, Torres out.

spring break

One of my assignments this week, along with my usual blog duties, is to write about my spring break. From Friday night to Wednesday morning, my friend and my dad and I went to the lovely island of Puerto Rico, where half of my family happens to be from.



This is me with a starfish. Look at how big it is! Some guys found it just chilling in the ocean and let me hold it. I've never seen a starfish this big, let alone in the wild. There's a big part of me that wishes i was a marine biologist. This is me fulfilling my dream. I couldn't tell if it was still alive though, he was out of the water for a long time. If I was a marine biologist, I would know this.



A bunch of my friends were staying in San Juan, so we drove across the island (which was terrifying) and went to some bars at night. The bar of our choice had three floors and the top floor was for smoking. Only the top floor was just a roof where we could see the stars. It was awesome.



This is the view from the restaurant we ate at the last night of our journey. This is now the background for my computer because I can't believe how beautifully this picture came out. It was hard to leave the 80 degree weather with zero humidity and sunshine, to return to New Jersey where it was 10 degrees and snowing. I got a pretty gross cold so for the remainder of my break I slept a lot and did some shopping and hung out with the fam. I had a quiet birthday celebration with my family on Thursday, the eighth, because I still wasn't feeling too hot. And part of me wants to save my energy for my first 21 year old celebration of St. Patrick's Day in Boston. I got my new 21 year old license! We also had a big birthday party for my mom because her birthday is exactly two weeks after mine. It was a good time, I saw a lot of family and friends that I haven't seen in a long time. Then I took the train back to Boston and it took approximately 7 hours because the train didn't have an engine. I'm not lying the conductor announced "we'll leave as soon as we get an engine." So that was a nice cold hard fall back into reality. A reality of papers, tests, co-op interviews and winter coats. Jack's on in less than an hour.

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5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

The reason for the extremely delayed post is because I have been systematically kicking the shit out of myself for the past couple of days in Puerto Rico. Injuries I inflicted on myself include the most severe sunburn ever, dropping a chair on my toe so the nail split in half and falling down stairs which resulted in a bruise literally the size of a slice of bread. I wish I was exaggerating. But it was a good time none the less.

Kiefer Sutherland in a suit. As soon as I stop drooling I can get on with this post.

Ok I'm good. Logan and Jack head over to the Russian consulate so they can chat it up with the guy who supposedly knows where Gredenko is. Logan convinces Jack that the best way for him to get the consulate to talk is if he goes in alone. Jack is not down with that, but Logan eventually convinces him. Logan seems to be sincere about just wanting to help the country, which is making me like him as a character. So he goes in, they chat it up and the consulate, Markov, tells him he doesn't know where Gredenko is. During this scene, I noticed that Logan has one blue eye and one brown eye. I think that's really cool. Logan comes back out and tells Jack that Markov is lying about not knowing where Gredenko is. Logan explains that he's done enough lying to know the signs, which is a vast understatement.

We learn that Assad was killed in the blast and Wayne is severely injured. He's in surgery after taking shrapnel in his chest and neck. No one knows if he'll survive, so Vice President Daniels now has to take over his duties. After a cabinet meeting, which now includes warden guy from Shawshank Redemption as the secretary of defense, everyone starts looking for Lennox. When they realize he's missing, the secret service is told to do a sweep of the batcave looking for him. Reed runs back to the bunker where he's being held and convinces the bomb maker not to kill him, that Reed can reason with him. Reed tells Lennox that none of them will be suspects, that everyone will think Assad planted the bomb. He lets him go and outside of the room they are greeted by secret service. Lennox automatically tells them that Reed and the bomb maker are the ones responsible for attempting to assassinate the president and they are arrested. I did a little fist pump when this happened.

Back in the limo, Jack orders the driver to pull over just outside of the gate. He calls Chloe and asks her to shut down the security cameras long enough to get him inside. Logan can't believe that Jack is going to do the same thing he did at the Chinese consulate which landed him in China for almost 2 years. I can't believe the writers are doing the exact same thing that they did in season 4. Jack sneaks back onto the property and a Russian guard stops him and asks him something in Russian. Then Jack responds in Russian. WHAT? Jack speaks Russian? That's convenient. So even though Jack couldn't possibly look more Aryan, he responded in Russian, so he must be ok, and the guard lets him go. Chloe shuts down the system and Jack rushes in to Markov's office where he promptly punches him in the face.

Jack yells to the security guards outside that he's holding the consulate hostage at gunpoint. I feel like Jack really didn't think this through. What good could possibly come of this? But Jack never thinks things through, so he starts beating the crap out of him. Markov tells Jack that he hasn't spoken to Gredenko since he arrived in the U.S., but Jack never told him that's where he was. Gotcha. Now Jack gets serious. He picks up Markov's cigar cutter and tells him he will start losing fingers one by one if he doesn't tell Jack what he needs. Markov still pleads innocent, and Jack takes off his pinkie. With a gun pointed at his head, Markov finally tells Jack that Gredenko is in the Mojave Desert. He is preparing to launch aerial drones to deliver the nukes. I don't know what this means, but Jack is not happy about it and punches Markov one last time in anger. He starts to walk towards the door and the security guards detonate a bomb that knocks Jack unconscious, and he's taken into custody. Now he's the only one who knows where Gredenko is.

Bill, who never seems to be doing any work, calls Karen. We see that she's in a diner waiting for her flight. Karen's a high ranking official and she can't get a flight to Los Angeles? She's been chilling in a diner for 6 hours watching Fox News on her Sprint phone? Anyway, Bill tells her that there's been an attempt on Wayne's life and that the veep is in charge now. Karen doesn't like this one bit and decides she has to go back, knowing that Daniels was in favor of Lennox's earlier proposals.

Lennox is being questioned about the plot against the president. The guy questioning him suspects that Lennox was initially on board with the plan, then had seconds thoughts. He's very astute. Lennox denies that and says that he only pretended to go along with the plan to get more information to give to the secret service. So Lennox is still quite weaselly, but at least it's for better reasons now. VP Daniels comes in to question Lennox and says that when he addresses the nation, he will blame the bombing on Assad. Lennox is like "nah don't do that, it ain't cool b" and Daniels says that the American public will support his plan more if they believe Assad was behind the attempt on the president's life. He tells Lennox if he isn't on board with that, then he'll continue the investigation. Daniels addresses the nation and explains that he'll be suspending civil liberties for the time being. He does this with an incredibly sinister and booming voice, because if you're a man on 24 you have to have an awesome awesome voice.

Jack pleads with the Russian guard holding him hostage. He explains to him why he needed to torture Markov and convinces him to call CTU with the information he obtained. He finally agrees to and leaves the room, and as he gets on the phone with Buchanan, another Russian guard shoots and kills him.

This was a vastly better episode than last week's, especially since Morris was only in it for half a second. I have a feeling that Nadia will soon be punished for being Arab, which could lead to some interesting plot twists. I think this was one of the most blatant examples of Jack not thinking things through before doing whatever he wants. Really nothing good could come of him going into any consulate. I'm a little disappointed that this is pretty much exactly what happened in season 4, when Jack snuck into the Chinese consulate to get a suspect. One thing that's different about this season is that everyone is letting Jack do what he wants. In previous seasons, there was always someone trying to stop Jack from doing his renegade thing. It added to the drama, and there was always one person, usually Chloe, who had to look over their shoulder to make sure no one knew they were helping Jack. Also, I feel like there should be a more prevalent feeling of danger. There are three nuclear bombs out there somewhere, and no one seems to be all that worried. And where's Fayed? There should definitely be more of him. Oh well. Fellow fans, we're halfway through the season. How bittersweet.

You're a good liar, but I've seen better. -Jack Bauer

As Jack Nicholson yells in The Departed, "THIS AIN'T REALITY TV!!!" Apparently, the American public seems to think that fictional television shows accurately represent actual jobs.

I recently found two articles discussing how television makes us perceive actual jobs. A really good article from Newsweek discusses a reporters misconceptions about forensics because of CSI. Now, I love CSI, but I realized a long time ago that the technology shown on that show is simply not in every lab in America, and it doesn't take 30 seconds to process a fingerprint. It takes more like weeks. And being a crime scene investigator is actually incredibly boring. On the shows, the investigators also double as detectives, in reality they literally process the scene and move on. All evidence is given to detectives so they can solve the crime. On television, crime fighting, chasing down and cuffing criminals, and collecting evidence looks cool and sexy. As the writer of this article learned, it really isn't.

The criminal justice system and the forensic science community that serves it just are not sexy. It’s slow and verbose and in a word, gross. I wandered through sessions and seminars and workshops and lectures and nearly vomited every time. On day 1, I learned that arterial spray is a complete misnomer unless you call what comes out of a fire hydrant spray. Day 2 brought hard proof in black and white of what a bullet actually does to the human head. I guess the reason we only see the entry wound on TV is because a big bullet takes most of the head with it on its way out. On my third day, I got a quick tutorial on the host of bugs that move into our bodies after we leave them and well, I just couldn’t take it. I had to walk out. I always thought I had an iron-clad stomach because I could watch forensic television, but no, I can watch it because it’s fake. I know it’s fake, it looks fake and the reality of violent death is so much worse.

I've read a lot of articles about the "CSI-effect" which is that juries now need more evidence to convict someone of a crime. They don't understand that fingerprints aren't actually at every crime scene. The interest in becoming a CSI has led to increased enrollments in colleges all over America after the shows debut.

I also found a similar article to this about 24. It's a little older but still relevant. Over the summer there was a 2-hour panel that included 24 cast members, politicians and ::cringe:: people like Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh loves the show and I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I found out that I had something in common with Limbaugh. That is, besides a love of prescription pain killers. (100 PERCENT JOKE.) Michael Chertoff, the Head of Homeland Security, stated that his department is nothing like CTU. The article says "he doesn't have a way-cool, state-of-the-art Counter Terrorist Unit like the one on the Fox TV show. Bad guys aren't foiled on an hourly basis. And not everybody is romantically involved with co-workers." However, he did draw one similarity.

In one parallel between Homeland Security and the show, Chertoff spoke of the challenges in "trying to make the best choice with a series of bad options."Characters on "24" constantly face situations "where there is no clear magic bullet to solve the problem, and you have to weigh the cost benefits of a series of unpalatable alternatives," he said.

That makes sense, I just find it a little sad that the public has to be constantly reminded that fictional television shows don't portray jobs accurately.

David Heyman, a homeland security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said "24" may give the public a false impression of how fast and easy it is to battle terrorists and other threats against the nation. Agreed Heritage's James Jay Carafano: "If we're waiting for Washington to do something before we can start saving lives, we're all going to die."

It's easy to get caught up in a really good television show. CSI and 24 both base their shows on actual jobs, but then take considerable liberties for the sake of entertainment. Because that's what these shows are for, entertainment.

Kiefer Sutherland is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. One reporter was on the set for 24-hours to see what it was like to actually film the show. The article is pretty interesting, but there are a couple of spoilers, which is dumb. And now I head off to the lovely island of Puerto Rico. Happy spring break everyone!