Even the idea of the arks is not original. It was done more than 50 years ago in George Pal's "When Worlds Collide".

Two comments: You suggested that I come by your "house, sign the release form and I guarantee I will have your computer password, your ATM PIN and your wife’s safe word in the bedroom in an hour." Maybe so, but that's not really the point. What if I don't have a computer password or ATM PIN? How much "enhanced interrogation" would you administer if you were convinced I possessed this information and how much would it take before I would invent the information you wanted just to get you to stop? No one questions that "enhanced interrogation" (doesn't one just love PC talk?) gets people to talk, what is in question is the reliability of the information it garners. This is hardly news---and its not an idea limited to liberals, either. I recently read an article written in 1940 by J. Edgar Hoover in which he condemns in no uncertain words the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques (he called it "the third degree") to obtain information, citing not only the illegality of it but numerous examples and statistics to show how unreliable information was that was gathered that way.

Comment two: You say that "There is no definition of torture anywhere that I can find." You must not have been looking very hard. My 1934 Webster's International Unabridged says that torture is "The act or process of inflicting severe pain, esp. as a punishment, in order to extort confession, or in revenge, specif., act of inflicting such pain under judicial or other authoritative order, as by water or fire, by the boot or thumbscrews, by the rack or wheel, etc. As a judicial procedure, torture, common among primitive peoples, survived in Europe until modern times, but is now obsolete in most civilized countries." You will find similar definitions in a hundred online dictionaries and encyclopedias...provided, that is, that one cares to look.