It might at first appear that the intent of this legislation was to keep state employees from using state-owned computers and networks to access pornography and other sexually explicit material.
However, it's important to recognize that the real purpose of this legislation was to help the election chances of certain legislators.
Principled candidates with shreds of integrity who might point out the constitutional, philosophical, or practical flaws in such legislation are predictably trounced at the polls by scoundrels who sponsor push-polls asking:
"Are you less likely to support the reëlection of Rep. Hornswaggle after he refused to vote for the Prevent Government Bureaucrats From Surfing For Porn With Taxpayer Money Act?"
A little perspective helps.
The selective pressures on legislators seem to be those that lead to the evolution of the most unscrupulous law-makers and the most vacuous laws. Think about that next time you advocate giving more power or money to the government. ---
...first day of computer class in 10th grade, sitting down at the green, glowing terminal, hooked up to the mainframe in the closet, given a password and encouraged to keep it secret. Then:
I remember that shortly after the original chernobyl disaster, end-time bible thumpers in the U.S. were fond of pointing out that "Chernobyl" was Russian for "Wormwood," a la Revelation 8:10-11 -
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp,
and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the
star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men
died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
I'll admit, that's a lot creepier than any of the Nostradamian coïncidences they're still making noise about. ---
"Luddites" is a frequently-misused term that is also being misused by Katz here:
Antitechnologists, academic and other snoots, and
neo-Luddites equate technology with the erosion of
culture and civilization.
In the same way that slashdotters roll their eyes and grumble when the media misuse the term "hacker," people who know anything about the original luddites, or who participate in the radical critique of technology, cringe at the straw-man oversimplification "Luddite."
Many of today's "luddites" would say, for instance, that "culture and civilization" are of course promoted and assisted by technology. But they would argue that culture and civilization are being advanced at the expense of people, families, and human values.
Technology and civilization gave us the printing press, but they also gave us the practices of agriculture and urban living that unleashed smallpox and the black plague. A one-sided account of the effects of technology and civilization is a dishonest account. ---
Check out this page if you want to read more about impostors like Abignale, such as:
Stephen Weinberg, who
posed as the U.S. Consul Delegate to
Morocco, as a Serbian militia attaché, an American
navy lieutenant, the envoy of the Queen of Romania,
an army air corps lieutenant, a doctor (on several
occasions), as head of protocol for the U.S. State
Department, and (after serving some time for these
put-ons) as an expert on prisons.
George DuPre, who got his amazing story
of being an intrepid World War II spy published by
Readers Digest and by Random House books before
he was discovered to be a phony.
Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr., whose life was the
basis for the movie The Great Impostor. He was a
few doctors as well, and the assistant warden of a
prison, and a surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy, a
schoolteacher, a college dean, and who knows what
else. He is legendary for his ability to perform
admirably whatever he was doing with whatever
credentials he had assimilated.
Steven Jay
Russell who has taken the legal system for a ride by
impersonating a judge, a lawyer and a doctor to talk
his way out of custody. His trademark is to escape
on Friday the 13th.
William Voigt gets bonus points for putting on
the uniform of a Prussian military officer in 1906 and
using this ruse to gain the allegiance of a pack of
soldiers, then raiding the treasury of Köpenick on
the pretense of investigating tax irregularities.
---
Re:Nuclear fission is the only sustainable power t
on
Wave Driven Generators
·
· Score: 1
If I smoked as much plutonium as you do, I might believe this, too.
(I'm using the example of Diablo Canyon below because I'm most familiar with it, and because it's frequently cited as "one of the safest" plants around.)
Pollutes less? Nuclear fission not only pollutes, but for vast lengths of time - the pollution remains quite toxic for longer than the current age of literate civilization. They still haven't figured out what to do with the waste material generated from Diablo, but that didn't stop 'em from hitting "Start" - they're just going to store on-site indefinitely. And the heat pollution from the plant has demonstrably (and, as a recent decision and fine shows, illegally) altered the ecology of the nearby cove.
Less dangerous? Several decades ago, a number of petroleum tanks in San Luis Obispo caught fire, filling the sky with black clouds. Chunks of flaming tar fell on the town. About as bad a disaster as you could ask for in the petroleum scene. Today cow pastures line "Tank Farm Road" - what would happen to the agriculture and habitability of SLO county if Diablo pulled a Chernobyl?
Costs less? PG&E is taking a loss on Diablo Canyon. Yup, that's right. They aren't even going to break even.
As far as I'm concerned, nuclear fission can stay sustainable and reliable "on paper" until we can fix its substantial real-world problems.
The punk rock group Crass spliced together bits of speeches by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, along with background noises, to make a tape that sounded like a phone conversation between the two of them that had been recorded from a crossed line. The U.S. State Department denounced the recording as the product of the KGB.
The legendary Dick Tuck played a number of tricks on the other Tricky Dick during his campaigns.
You should definitely check out this parody billboard altered as a commentary on the latest Bush candidacy.
The group ®TMark has made parody web sites of Rudy Giuliani's and George Bush's campaigns, amongst their many other hacks.
But also, citizens have been able to use sneaky and theatrical tactics against their oppressive governments. Some of the street theater being practiced now against Fujimori in Peru is similar in flavor to that of the recently successful Otpor group in Serbia, which in turn owes a debt
"I think they're both hellbent on taking away our liberties. I would have to say that if you choose of two devils, you've got to pick the most incompetent one. I think Gore is very intelligent, so you don't want to choose him. I think Bush is one of those cute little fumbly Disney devils from the film Hercules with his pitchfork, and he's always getting into shenanigans. He's the one I would have to choose, because he's like the cute little fumbling devil, and he'll probably even make things better; that's how fumbling he is. So I would have to vote for Bush. It's a tough question. I'm reminded of H.L. Mencken's
line -- this is from back in the Harding election, I think -- where he likens the American populace to a fellow who's at a banquet, and there are all the wonderful foods of the world on top of the banquet table, and he's under the table feasting on the flies. I don't believe that, of the 280 million people in the country, these are the best two guys we could come up with. Either of these
guys wouldn't have made the last six, so I don't get it."
Washington, DC (GPI) - In a move which left observers stunned, members of Congress today did something mind-numblingly stupid and short-sighted.
"I'm shocked," said one, "shocked, I say, that for momentary political advantage and the crass pursuit of power, our noble congresspeople would stoop to enacting unwise legislation."
Nope, Carnivore was designed for warrantless searches, if I can trust what I've read on the subject.
The gov't isn't supposed to open your mail without a warrant, but it can look at the postmark and the return-address; it can't listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, but it can make a list of what numbers you call and what numbers call you.
Similarly, Carnivore is allegedly designed to be able to do similar things with email - figure out who you're sending email to and who is sending email to you, while keeping the contents of the email hidden until such time as a warrant is issued.
Yep. Pretty cool: by finding which electrical frequencies resonate on the DNA that you and your sex partners carry (via benign STDs), they'll be able to determine who you've slept with and when (plus-or-minus some margin of error).
As Phil Ochs wrote in his lyrics about The Thresher, "it was a death ship all along; died before it had a chance to kill." Those crew members were in the death-dealing business - I don't miss them. Not a one.
In Portsmouth town on the eastern shore
Where many a fine ship was born.
The Thresher was built
And the Thresher was launched
And the crew of the Thresher was sworn.
She was shaped like a tear
She was built like a shark
She was made to run fast and free.
And the builders shook their hands
And the builders shared their wine,
And thought that they had mastered the sea.
Yes, she'll always run silent
And she'll always run deep
Though the ocean has no pity
Though the waves will never weep
They'll never weep.
And they marvelled at her speed
marvelled at her depth
marvelled at her deadly design.
And they sailed to every land
And they sailed to every port
Just to see what faults they could find.
Then they put her on the land
For nine months to stand
And they worked on her from stem to stern.
But they could never see
It was their coffin to be
For the sea was waiting for their return.
Yes, she'll always run silent
And she'll always run deep
Though the ocean has no pity
Though the waves will never weep
They'll never weep.
On a cold Wednesday morn
They put her her out to sea
When the waves they were nine feet high.
And they dove beneath the waves
And they dove to their graves
And they never said a last goodbye.
And its deeper and deeper
And deeper they dove
Just to see what their ship could stand.
But the hull gave a moan
And the hull gave a groan
And they plunged to the deepest darkest sand.
Now she lies in the depths
Of the darkened ocean floor
Covered by the waters cold and still.
Oh can't you see the wrong
She was a death ship all along
Died before she had a chance to kill.
Yes, she always ran silent
And she always ran deep
Though the ocean has no pity
Though the waves will never weep
They'll never weep.
Creative and clever "reality hacks"
on
Voteauction.com
·
· Score: 2
This strikes me as an example of a reality hack, in which some slight itch of cognitive dissonance is amplified until it becomes impossible to ignore. It's a neat trick, but there's an art to pulling it off - hard to say whether this one will make the grade.
From the opening paragraphs of the zdnet interview with Judge Jackson:
The judge himself explains:
"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," he says, citing a Latin aphorism meaning, "Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything."
"I don't subscribe to that as absolutely true," the judge says. "But it does lead one to suspicion...."
Wait a minute... if it's not absolutely true, then by its own logic, it must be completely false, which means it must not be true that if it is false in one thing it is untrue in everything, but since we've already demostrated that it's false in everything, it must be false in something, which means that it can't be true that it's untrue in everything, but wait a minute, didn't we just show that... could I approach the bench?
...and sarcasm in the form of visual representations of spoken human language, using the form of recognizable contexts for similar representations as an ironic counterpoint for the ostensible message contained in the linguistic symbols in order to convey the actual intended message, with inevitable misinterpretations serving as further ironic counterpoint that can be leveraged to underscore the intended message.
Should the last-minute pop bailout of Iridium fail to gather the required momentum, there's another project you might want to save your tax-deductable nickles & Sacajawaeae for: "wolf pack" U-boats dropped intact into the Baltic at the end of WWII. It'll cost about $200K U.S. to raise one, and another $6K U.S. (estimated) to win the right to do so at a government auction.
I run a site that, in part, documents hoaxes that have been played on newspapers and other parts of the news media.
Hoaxing the news is a fun hobby, but in a way it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Complicated and proud doctrines of journalistic ethics don't save reporters from breaking the one important rule of journalism: Don't talk big shit about stuff you don't know anything about.
I have a rule I've developed for evaluating newspaper stories, and it almost never fails:
The more I know about a subject from actual experience and personal expertise, the less accurate the news coverage of that subject seems. But the more my knowledge of a subject is based on prejudice and guesswork, the more news coverage of that subject seems to agree with my preconceptions.
Reporters can't be experts on everything, and they can't even be very good reporters from the looks of things. So a reporter who wants to succeed quickly has to learn how to spackle over the available facts with a plausable narrative that flows smoothly with folk psychology and consensus reality.
What comes out the end of this process is competent, professional crap. It doesn't allow us a window on the world, but only a nonconfrontational mirror of our own preconceptions.
You can get as much value from swapping urban legends.
It's interesting that/.ers are even talking about this. We ought to be among the more critical readers, both in terms of our science knowledge and our skepticism toward baloney (or don't you get the same email nonsense I do).
The Pseudoscience page has some great examples of scientific-sounding nonsense. And sure enough, the historical examples show that the outwardly sophisticated are often the most thoroughly taken marks.
Slashdot Mirror
However, it's important to recognize that the real purpose of this legislation was to help the election chances of certain legislators.
Principled candidates with shreds of integrity who might point out the constitutional, philosophical, or practical flaws in such legislation are predictably trounced at the polls by scoundrels who sponsor push-polls asking:
A little perspective helps.
The selective pressures on legislators seem to be those that lead to the evolution of the most unscrupulous law-makers and the most vacuous laws. Think about that next time you advocate giving more power or money to the government.
---
---
I'll admit, that's a lot creepier than any of the Nostradamian coïncidences they're still making noise about.
---
Take a look at:
For some examples of radical critiques of technology. A couple I'd recommend:
---
In the same way that slashdotters roll their eyes and grumble when the media misuse the term "hacker," people who know anything about the original luddites, or who participate in the radical critique of technology, cringe at the straw-man oversimplification "Luddite."
Many of today's "luddites" would say, for instance, that "culture and civilization" are of course promoted and assisted by technology. But they would argue that culture and civilization are being advanced at the expense of people, families, and human values.
Technology and civilization gave us the printing press, but they also gave us the practices of agriculture and urban living that unleashed smallpox and the black plague. A one-sided account of the effects of technology and civilization is a dishonest account.
---
---
(I'm using the example of Diablo Canyon below because I'm most familiar with it, and because it's frequently cited as "one of the safest" plants around.)
- Pollutes less? Nuclear fission not only pollutes, but for vast lengths of time - the pollution remains quite toxic for longer than the current age of literate civilization. They still haven't figured out what to do with the waste material generated from Diablo, but that didn't stop 'em from hitting "Start" - they're just going to store on-site indefinitely. And the heat pollution from the plant has demonstrably (and, as a recent decision and fine shows, illegally) altered the ecology of the nearby cove.
- Less dangerous? Several decades ago, a number of petroleum tanks in San Luis Obispo caught fire, filling the sky with black clouds. Chunks of flaming tar fell on the town. About as bad a disaster as you could ask for in the petroleum scene. Today cow pastures line "Tank Farm Road" - what would happen to the agriculture and habitability of SLO county if Diablo pulled a Chernobyl?
- Costs less? PG&E is taking a loss on Diablo Canyon. Yup, that's right. They aren't even going to break even.
As far as I'm concerned, nuclear fission can stay sustainable and reliable "on paper" until we can fix its substantial real-world problems.Nothing? Guess you should have checked out the Culture Jamming: Scams & Frauds page instead.
Political dirty tricks have been an amusing part of campaign season for a long time now. The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia has a number of examples, particularly in their Guerrilla Hacks and News Trolls sections.
Among these:
The punk rock group Crass spliced together bits of speeches by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, along with background noises, to make a tape that sounded like a phone conversation between the two of them that had been recorded from a crossed line. The U.S. State Department denounced the recording as the product of the KGB.
The legendary Dick Tuck played a number of tricks on the other Tricky Dick during his campaigns.
You should definitely check out this parody billboard altered as a commentary on the latest Bush candidacy.
The group ®TMark has made parody web sites of Rudy Giuliani's and George Bush's campaigns, amongst their many other hacks.
But also, citizens have been able to use sneaky and theatrical tactics against their oppressive governments. Some of the street theater being practiced now against Fujimori in Peru is similar in flavor to that of the recently successful Otpor group in Serbia, which in turn owes a debt
Other good sites on campaign hacks include: How to Make Trouble and Influence People and Dirty Deeds and How To Deal With Them.
From The Onion
"I'm shocked," said one, "shocked, I say, that for momentary political advantage and the crass pursuit of power, our noble congresspeople would stoop to enacting unwise legislation."
Nope, Carnivore was designed for warrantless searches, if I can trust what I've read on the subject. The gov't isn't supposed to open your mail without a warrant, but it can look at the postmark and the return-address; it can't listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, but it can make a list of what numbers you call and what numbers call you. Similarly, Carnivore is allegedly designed to be able to do similar things with email - figure out who you're sending email to and who is sending email to you, while keeping the contents of the email hidden until such time as a warrant is issued.
Check it out at http://www.syntac.net/dl/Clam/reson.html.
As Phil Ochs wrote in his lyrics about The Thresher, "it was a death ship all along; died before it had a chance to kill." Those crew members were in the death-dealing business - I don't miss them. Not a one.
Some good examples of this sort of hacking can be found at the Idiosyntactix Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia - especially in their Guerrilla Hacks and Modest Proposals sections.
Wait a minute... if it's not absolutely true, then by its own logic, it must be completely false, which means it must not be true that if it is false in one thing it is untrue in everything, but since we've already demostrated that it's false in everything, it must be false in something, which means that it can't be true that it's untrue in everything, but wait a minute, didn't we just show that... could I approach the bench?
...and sarcasm in the form of visual representations of spoken human language, using the form of recognizable contexts for similar representations as an ironic counterpoint for the ostensible message contained in the linguistic symbols in order to convey the actual intended message, with inevitable misinterpretations serving as further ironic counterpoint that can be leveraged to underscore the intended message.
Should the last-minute pop bailout of Iridium fail to gather the required momentum, there's another project you might want to save your tax-deductable nickles & Sacajawaeae for: "wolf pack" U-boats dropped intact into the Baltic at the end of WWII. It'll cost about $200K U.S. to raise one, and another $6K U.S. (estimated) to win the right to do so at a government auction.
Hoaxing the news is a fun hobby, but in a way it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Complicated and proud doctrines of journalistic ethics don't save reporters from breaking the one important rule of journalism: Don't talk big shit about stuff you don't know anything about.
I have a rule I've developed for evaluating newspaper stories, and it almost never fails:
Reporters can't be experts on everything, and they can't even be very good reporters from the looks of things. So a reporter who wants to succeed quickly has to learn how to spackle over the available facts with a plausable narrative that flows smoothly with folk psychology and consensus reality.
What comes out the end of this process is competent, professional crap. It doesn't allow us a window on the world, but only a nonconfrontational mirror of our own preconceptions.
You can get as much value from swapping urban legends.
The Pseudoscience page has some great examples of scientific-sounding nonsense. And sure enough, the historical examples show that the outwardly sophisticated are often the most thoroughly taken marks.
Perhaps its our curiosity toward (and faith in) scientific-sounding things that makes us especially vulnerable to magic laundry magnets, cargo cult engineered diagnostic machinery, and the like.