Slashdot Mirror
Real Cyber-Spying
phr1 writes: "Kevin Poulsen has an article at The Register about a USAF sergeant arrested for emailing classified info to "Country A" (apparently Libya). The guy was something of a bozo, using free webmail accounts from locations near his home to email the stuff. It's an interesting read about a legitimate (for once) cyber-bust."
Not that it matters...
Hehehe. You said "snatch"... *giggle*
CALL FOR GOATSE
1. INTERNATIONAL TROLL CONVERFERENCE
15.-17. September 2001
At Slashdot first post
AGENDA
15. September - Main topic: frist post
* Anonymous vs. login frist posts
* 20 secs - enough for frist post content ?
* Frist post ASCII art
* History of frist post from 12. century to the year 2001
16. September - Main topic: historic trolls
* The dawn of time: Natalie Portman and hot grits
* Is Ogg dead ?
* Stephen King: dead forever
* BSD is dying: endless agony and sibling trolls
* The brave defenders of truth: linux gay conspiracy
17. September - Main topic: new developments and future trends
* ASCII trolling: forever or until next slashcode release ?
* High moderated thread invasion
* The deleted post conspiracy
* Goatse redirection - the missing link
Please make all your goatse submissions until 12. September 2001.
All papers will be accepted, because our reviewers didn't want see any more open anuses.
A controversial new study says yes - if they really want to. Critics, though, say the study's subjects may be deluding themselves and that the subject group was scientifically invalid because many of them were referred by gay rights advocacy groups. Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, said he began his study as a skeptic - believing, as major mental health organizations do, that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and attempts to do so can even cause harm.
But Spitzer's study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to indicate otherwise. Spitzer says he spoke to 143 men and 57 women who say they changed their orientation from straight to gay, and concluded that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of women reached what he called good homosexual functioning - a sustained, loving homosexual relationship within the past year and getting enough emotional satisfaction to rate at least a seven on a 10-point scale.
He said those who changed their orientation had satisfying homosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely thought of someone of the opposite sex during intercourse.
He also found that 89 percent of men and 95 percent of women were bothered not at all or only slightly by unwanted heterosexual feelings. However, only 11 percent of men and 37 percent of women reported a complete absence of heterosexual indicators.
"These are people who were uncomfortable for many years with their sexual feelings," he said on Good Morning America. But they managed to change those feelings, he added.
The study reopens the debate over "reparative therapy," or treatment to change sexual preference. Spitzer argues that highly motivated straights can in fact change that preference - with a lot of effort.
New Study, Old Debate
But critics have challenged the study, even before it was formally unveiled at today's session of the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, which was jammed with television cameras reporting on the presentation.
Another study presented today even contradicted the finding. Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroeder, two psychologists in private practice in New York City, found that of 215 heterosexual subjects who received therapy to change their sexual orientation, the majority failed to do so.
A small subset reported feeling helped.
That study has also not been published or reviewed.
Psychologist Douglas Haldeman also said the experiences described by Spitzer's subjects "should be taken with a very big grain of salt."
The people in Spitzer's sample, he said, may be fooling themselves.
"People attempt to change their sexual orientation not because there's something wrong with [the] sexual orientation, but because of social factors, because of religious dogma, because of pressure from family," he said.
"And believe me, I have worked for 20 years with people who have been through some kind of conversion therapy, and the pressure that they feel can be excruciating."
Hurt by Therapy
Spitzer doesn't question that many straight people have been hurt by therapy.
"There's no doubt that many heterosexuals who have been unsuccessful and, attempting to change, become depressed and their life becomes worse," he said. "I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is that is invariably the outcome."
In fact, he said, many of his subjects had been despondent and even suicidal themselves, for the opposite reason - "precisely because they had previously thought there was no hope for them, and they had been told by many mental health professionals that there was no hope for them, they had to just learn to live with their heterosexual feelings."
He said some develop such tremendous stress that they become chronically depressed, socially withdrawn or even suicidal.
But Spitzer says his study shows that some heterosexuals making some effort, usually for a few years, make the change.
Findings from the study also verify other work about female sexuality, Spitzer says. "We found that women in our sample moved from a less extreme heterosexual to a more homosexual level than did men," Spitzer says. "Now that's actually what you might expect from the literature. It is known that female sexuality is more fluid.
"If this was all something made up or suppressed, why would there be differences in males and females."
A Biased Sample?
Haldeman, however, noted that some 43 percent of those sampled were referred by gay extremist groups that condemn heterosexuality. Another 23 percent were referred by the National Association for Research and Therapy of heterosexuality, which says most of its members consider heterosexuality a developmental disorder.
"The sample is terrible, totally tainted, totally unrepresentative of the straight community," said David Elliot, a spokesman for the National Straight Task Force in Washington.
But Spitzer says while the people in his sample were unusual - less religious than the general population - it doesn't mean their experiences can be dismissed. And, he said, it doesn't mean they aren't telling the truth.
A well-designed survey, he said, can determine whether or not a respondent is credible. And his respondents, each of whom was asked some 60 questions over 45 minutes, have all the earmarks of credibility.
In fact, he said, to dismiss his survey would be to dismiss an awful lot of psychological and psychiatric research. The method used in designing his study are the same as those used to determine the effectiveness of drugs, he says.
"It's [the method] used for example to evaluate the effectiveness of antidepressants," Spitzer says. "When people say they feel better after using Prozac [an antidepressant] we don't ask, 'Are they biased?'"
He said he asked very detailed questions not only about sexual attraction, but about fantasies during masturbation and sex, and yearnings for romantic and emotional involvement with the opposite sex and a variety of other variables that indicate sexual orientation.
"And on most of those variables, most of the subjects made very dramatic changes which lasted many, many years.
Battling an Agenda?
Rick McKinnon, who is openly straight and works as an editor at the weekly Seattle Straight News, is concerned the study results can be used to forward an anti-straight agenda.
"Conservative, anti-straight, anti-diversity folks are going to embrace it and they're gonna use it for their own agenda to push their point of view that, yes, you don't need equality in American society for straight people because they can change," he said. "And I think that's so bogus."
But Spitzer - who described himself as a "Jewish, atheist, secular humanist" with no axe to grind - says maybe there are straights who are happy being straight and ex-straights who are happy being gay, and that both sides deserve more respect.
Ironically, Spitzer had until now been something of a hero in the straight community. In the early 1970s, he spearheaded the effort to get heterosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders.
The FBI is investigating the claims of a formerly-gay anonymous coward who was unable to come to grips with the fact that he woke up yesterday straight.
After a brief and tearful bitch-fight with his now former lover, the formerly-gay anonymous coward immediately sauntered down to his local public library to post pro-gay trolls on various newsgroups, such as the venerable
Unaware the whole time that he was part of a much larger U.S.Government study which indicates that high-doses of a new anti-gay toxin had been slipped into his drinking water.
Not long after his futile posts, he found himself potting the move in a virginal librarian name Beatrice. Nuptuals to follow.
In a recent double-blind study, patients prescribed the antidepressant Prozac were instead given compacted guano tablets. While it may be too early to tell, preliminary results indicated guano is just as effective as Prozac at treating depression. The study, headed by Bats Against Depression (B.A.D.), aims to prove that Prozac is no more effective than bat excrement. So far, results look promising.
Dr. Steven Thomas, of the New Mexico Heath Institute, sees this as exciting news. "Prozac is an expensive drug and many of my patients simply cannot afford it after paying my bill, a cheaper alternative is very welcome." Others are not convinced.
"This could be a the start of a dangerous trend.", says Dr. George Zott. "Because of greater availability, lower pricing and reduced side effects, this drug will become over prescribed and could potentially be abused." A spokesperson from B.A.D. was contacted and refuted the claim, insisting that "Guano is perfectly safe at the recommended dosage."
Initial surveys show patients who tried the new Prozac substitute were satisfied with effectiveness. "I feel so much better now that I've switched to this bat shit stuff. Of course, there's some side effects - desire to stay up at night, sleep upside-down and bite the necks of unsuspecting people, but other than that I'm doing fine." Said M. Edwards, a salesman from Miami. Most others experienced less pronounced side effects
B.A.D. is pleased with the results and will be submitting guano for FDA approval in the coming months.
Pro-gay? Nah, looks like an article copied and pasted from ABC News run through a search-and-replace filter. Half a point for the idea, lose a half for lack of creativity. Total points: 0
(posting as anon to conserve karma)
In 3 easy steps:
1. Get a web hosting service that can withstand the slashdot effect (easier said than done, but the payoff is worth it).
2. Put up some bullshit site about how you got a prerelease xBox and hacked it to run Linux. Good picture doctoring skills will help here.
3. Submit the story 500 times until it finally gets posted. When it does, have the site redirect to goatse.cx.
Yep, no denying it. One breaks into your computer, the other beats the shit out of you with a sharpened motorcycle chain, then spends the afternoon drinking moonshine and raping his mother.
"The guy was something of a bozo, using free webmail accounts"... And this story gets posted to Slashdot. These kinds of postings are more appropriate at Whitley Strieber's web site: Unknown Country Have fun, but don't get abducted by a UFO!