If it is actually a girl... I by default assume any person I meet online is an overweight 40 year old man playing in his underwear unless I have really definitive proof otherwise.:p
About a week ago, I was by the AH in Org with my mage when a person (rather rudely) demanded, "Make me food." I was about to blow him off when I saw the character name was Chinese.
I'm a white guy, living in California, but I've taken a year of Chinese, so I don't know enough to really talk to Chinese players in WOW, but I have faked it well enough to get into all-Chinese parties. =)
[lai = come qu = go xia = down shang = up "qing lai" == please come (here), etc.]
So I asked the person in Chinese if they wanted food, and, sure enough, in Chinese they were a lot more polite (using "qing", please, instead of the imperative form they used in English).
Since then, whenever the player logs in, he asks for food in Chinese, and I make it for him. In exchange, I apparently get stacks of major healing and mana potions in the mail every day. =)
So, the Chinese guy (who I later learned was a woman, living in Manchuria) has been asking me to take her to UBRS. So last night I put together a party, went to UBRS... and yeah.
My Chinese friend accidentally clicked Need on an item she didn't need. So it pissed off the party, especially when they found out she was Chinese. But I smoothed it over. Then she Needed a loxbox. That just totally pissed off the party, so they wanted me to boot her. I puzzled out what she said, and apparently she just needed it for the lockpicking. So again, I got the item from her, and then lotted it to the party. After that, she passed on everything, and gave away all the other items she even legitimately won, because she was on the verge of tears after being yelled at by everyone. So yeah. I'd left some of the people in the party as assistant leaders, and at some point down the road, they booted her. So I reinvited...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a pretty crap experience. They all called her a Ninja Chinese Gold Farmer, she was desperately trying to explain that the 1st was a mistake and the 2nd was for her LP skill (and yeah, I agree she should have just greeded it and LPed it later), so she started the run happy (because she could never find a Chinese speaking UBRS party), and ended sad and hurt, and the Americans left with a further deepening of the stereotype that all Chinese people are Ninja Gold Farmers. And I was in the middle having to deal with both sides with only a year of Chinese under my belt.
Sigh, multiculturalism for the loss.
The ironic twist here, of course, is that I think she does sell gold. Or maybe she buys gold (without tone mai (buy) and mai (sell) are the same, or maybe she was just asking if all Americans buy gold. My Chinese really isn't that good.:p
I actually think the discoveries in the latter part of the 20th Century were quite exciting from a philosophical point of view. Watson or Crick (I can't remember which) became a strong determinist after his ongoing research in DNA led him to a mechanistic viewpoint -- essentially saying that we're slaves to our DNA, that we have no free will.
Since then, various advances showing the essential unpredictability of the world at the atomic and subatomic levels makes me hopeful that it will be actually impossible for, say, a perfectly oracular computer to ever be built, regardless of how much processing power it has. I.e., it will actually be impossible for a computer to state that two years from now you'll be working as a tuna packer in Alaska, on the lam from the law for murdering the Future Crimes policeman...
Quote: "The more immediate victim however, besides Al Gore and the system, is the supreme court itself. As the liberal lion of the bench, John Paul Stevens, put it in his strident, dissenting opinion: 'Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.'"
He was talking about the USSC ruling undermining the Flordia Supreme Court ruling, making it seem like their ruling had been done for partisan reasons. The article makes it seem like he's making the opposite claim, which is deceptive. I've read over the Flordia Supreme Court decision and consider it very reasonable and based on the correct interpretation of the law, so I understand where Justice Stevens was coming from on this.
Both found that Bush probably would have won if the recounts had gone through anyway (with margins of error, it's impossible to tell, of course). NORC was disingenuous in claiming that 4 methords would have given Bush the victory, and 4 Gore, when the Gore methods mainly involved determining intent on overcounts, which is illegal in every county in America. (I.e. if someone voted for both Buchanan and Gore, then claiming it is a vote for Gore. Sure, it's probably what happened, but it's still illegal.)
I didn't make any claim if they were honest or not. I made the claim that the electoral college magnifies the effects of individual votes. Which is unquestionably true in pivotal states like Florida.
But to address the question of honesty... who knows? There's a certain margin of error in everything. The final vote count was well within the margin of error. Machine recounts both found for Bush, as did a hand recount. So by the law Bush won, even if it's plausable that Gore had a higher count.
>>I have no idea what the votes actually were, AND I DOUBT THAT ANYONE ELSE DOES EITHER. What we saw wasn't the result of an election, but a non-violent coup.
But this is just false. They didn't destroy the votes. A bunch of newspapers went into Florida after the election and verified that Bush won.
I'm all in favor of consipiracy theories, but it does no one any good repeating provably false facts.
Actually, the US Election system works out nicely. Maybe not "fair" by some people's perspective, but nicely. If you had just, say, a popular election, then the candidates would camp California and the other big states. Maybe they would send a video to Wyoming or something. Elections would be won with differences in the millions.
The electoral system actually has the effect of magnifying the importance of individual votes.
Bush beat gore by only a COUPLE HUNDRED votes. This means that each person's vote in Florida was amazingly relevant to the national election, instead of a massive nationwide vote where people would probably not bother to turn out because the difference will be in the millions anyway. I live in California, I don't mind that my vote didn't matter. The fact that a nationwide election could come down to a couple hundred votes makes me feel happy that individual efforts still matter. If Gore volunteers had bussed only a few hundred more people to the polls, he would have won. That kind of participation is critical to the health of a democracy, and is something you wouldn't have under more "fair" electoral systems.
As I said, your quote all was in regards to the Selected Works, which was the basis for the Little Red Book. Case in point, it all quotes times from the 40s and 50s. The Little Red Book first came out in April '64.
If you're talking about a different part of the page, then quote that part. Quoting the history of a completely different set of books just looks bad.
And his reponse back to me. Although he didn't respond to the factual problems I noted in the article, I'm relatively satisfied by his response. Quoted verbatim:
----
Hi Bill Many thanks for kindly posting the piece and for your response. I apologize for not being able to answer all of your questions as I am rushing to finish an article on Chechnya for a book. The agents got the book from the Providence RI library that was the lender and brought it with them (I have no idea if they were wearing sun-glasses or not). It was the ILL (inter-library loan request that set of the investigation, getting the book themselves was obviously not a problem). They were from Homeland Security which, from what I understand, has its own agents. As to the order not to study Communism, they did not tell the student what to do they simply wanted to understand why he was engaging in such 'suspicious' activities. And thanks again for your kind comments on my field work in Afghanistan etc. I believe that if I am going to ask my students to go the sources and dig deep on historical issues I should do the same myself. If I am teaching on ethnic cleansing in the Balkans then I should go to Kosovo, if I am teaching a course on the Taliban I should go interview some myself. It inspires the students and makes classes more interesting! All the best and thanks for getting back to me, Brian.
> I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely, > Dr. Brian Glyn Williams > Associate Professor of History > University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Thanks for your response. I have copied it verbatim onto Slashdot. It has received a top moderation, so everyone viewing the story should be able to see it.
I'd like to begin by saying that no, it wasn't a reflexive attempt to delegitimize the story. Simply that the newspaper article raised enough red flags that I began questioning the legitimacy of the story, and began investigating things that seemed odd to me.
For example, the article claims that the Little Red Book was used during the 1950s, which is obviously incorrect, since the book wasn't even published until '64. It's also somewhat suspicious when the newspaper printed the story without interviewing the student -- even just quoting him on background, which would have kept his identity secret.
> A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history > student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President > Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this > incident as an example of the White House policies' very real > applications and how they trickle down to the university level.
Thank you, that clarifies that section nicely.
> B. There are several key > sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book > and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This > is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good > history!
If I recall correctly, the most common edition in print in America is the replica of the first English printing in 1996, which I would consider to be the 'original' English version. Do you mean to say instead that you were looking for a different translation of the Little Red Book? Or are you referring to the Selected Works of Mao, and not the Little Red Book (which is a separate work entirely -- an abridgement of the Selected Works).
Also, how did the federal agents get a copy of this rare translation? Why would they bring it to the student's house? What did they do with it after? It almost seems farsical to imagine a pair of sunglass-wearing agents going to a university library to check out a rare book so that they can brandish it at a poor student.
I'm also somewhat curious what the agents said to the student. What, "Don't research communism"? What department were they from?
> C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I > do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am > Associate Professor of History.
My apologies. I found a memo on the UMass Dartmouth site saying "Dr. Williams is currently applying for tenure", which is why I qualified the statement somewhat.
> But I do appreciate your reference to > the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to > understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this > sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must > go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi > webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I > just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of > investigation and encourage the same in my students.
And on a side note I'd like to say as part of the investigation I conducted prior to writing the post, I found your research to be quite interesting, and would love to see more hist
Of course both sides are biased. Whenever I research a debate, I always read as much biased material I can find on both sides, so that I can make an informed opinion.
Freedom of Association is a concept that only has come into the fore recently because it has been implicit in American society since the founding of the country. Could you imagine someone suing the freemasons in the late 1700s demanding to be let in, even though he was an avowed atheist? Or minorities suing the KKK demanding to be allowed in? Or Lutherans suing the Cathlolic church, demanding to be allowed to be a priest? It's part of that whole "freedom" thing. =)
The ACLU is actively working to apply pressure to the Boy Scouts to eliminate their right to choose who they associate with. This is the hypocritical aspect of the ACLU that I take issue with.
Otherwise I think we're both arguing in the same direction -- the government shouldn't give preferential treatment to one religion or private group based on their religion. But this is NOT the same as saying the government cannot have intercourse with religious groups at all (the mythic "wall between church and state"), or that the government can have intercourse with every group except Christians -- which is unfortunately the current policy at San Diego City Schools. In my 2nd grade classroom back in the day, we lit a menorrah, sang Hannukah songs, spun dreidels, but prohibited from singing Christmas songs, even non-religious ones like Jingle Bells. I still work with schools as part of my job. Last school I was at had two posters up in the hallyway, one explaining the meaning of Hannukah, the other Kwanzaa (what each day represents, etc.) This anti-preferential treatment towards Christianity has been going on for over 20 years, but the ACLU chooses instead to sue the Boy Scouts for receiving preferential treament.
I don't need to reiterate my stance again. The Boy Scouts had entered into a covenent with the city 50 years ago, wherein they'd pay for maintanence and improvements to the park in exchange for essentially free lease of the land. This was a fair deal. By ordering the city to break the agreement with the scouts, the judge essentially ruled it was illegal for the city to have intercourse with a private or religious group (unless, one presumes, the city can build 10 Balboa Parks and allow 10 different groups to each build their own camp on it).
The deciding factor, of course, falls on what defines "preferential treatment". I obviously think the deal was fair, you probably don't. It's fine for people to disagree on where the line should be drawn. That's not really what troubles me.
What troubles me is that the ACLU is actively pressuring a private and religius group to change its beliefs. This is theoretically antithetical to the mission of the ACLU. Don't believe me? "If they do not [change their beliefs], the ACLU will continue to seek ways to change the Boy Scouts' discriminatory policy." (http://www.aclusandiego.org/boy_scouts/BOYSCOUTS. htm)
And of course, they have a pressure web site dedicated solely for this purpose, to encourage other agencies to join against the Boy Scouts, and/or cut off all contact and support for them. http://aclusandiego.org/boy_scouts/dissociating.ht ml
How is this a goal for an organization that supposedly feels that Americans should be able to decide for themselves what they want to believe? That applies economic pressure to eliminate their Freedom of Association?
The professor mentioned in the story (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams) took the time to answer these points. I'm pasting it verbatim here.
-----
Dear Bill, Delighte to hear from you and I hope my response is of service. If you could post it I would be most grateful. I am one of the professors mentioned in your 'conspiracy theory response' (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams)With all due respect I wanted to add a few comments. A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this incident as an example of the White House policies' very real applications and how they trickle down to the university level. My description of the incident was in response to an inquiry from a reporter at the Standard Times, New Bedford who called requesting a commentary and I thought it was appropriate. B. There are several key sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good history! C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am Associate Professor of History. But I do appreciate your reference to the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of investigation and encourage the same in my students. D. I know this student well. He is the real thing, he is mature, honest, reliable, hard-working and genuinely interested in getting to the truth on issues, i.e. he is everything we train our students to be. The fact that Dr. Bob Pontriband who is by the way a passionate educator who seeks to instill just this sort of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty research in his students also vouches for him lends two voices to his defense. I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams Associate Professor of History University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Ok, all my bullshit meters went off when I read this article. It might have happened, but I'm laying odds that it's either a hoax, or that the professor is studying to see how neo-anarchistic sites like Slashdot can uncritically accept stories about our government, or that the student successfully bullshitted the professor. Or it could be our government is actually somewhat retarded (Chairman Mao is a threat in the era of the War on Terror?) and somewhat fascist. I wouldn't be surprised either way.
Random points, in no particular order:
1) It's too coincidental. It happened (or was published) a day or so after secret eavesdropping policies from the administration made front page news in the New York Times.
2) Why the hell would agents bring the book? Can you imagine NSA agents walking into a remote library (and not the local library, because he needs the extra-special "Peking" version of the world's secondly most commonly printed book) and checking out this "rare" copy of a book? *How* did they check it out? Do they keep library accounts with all the universities in the state? And, why? Just so they can wave it in his face? What did they do with it after? Just toss it in the mail? Drive it back across town or to another city to return it? It makes no sense.
3) As best as I can tell, there's no such thing as the extra-special Peking Version of the book. My fiancee is Chinese, she's never heard of it (though she dislikes Communism, and isn't an expert on it either). Google '"Peking Version" Quotations of Chairman Mao' (or Little Red Book) and you get no results. Even the name is a bit suspect since Peking is the British name for Beijing, and the communists worked to change the name on everything to Beijing (via the uniform adoption of the standardized Pinyin system). But it's an older book, so it could be legit (the Pinyin reforms didn't happen for a while during Mao's reign). But neither does "Beijing Version" get any hits. Even the 1st edition was published in a variety of places, not just Beijing, so it would be a misnomer to call it a Peking Version.
Here's quotes from the article: '"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."' and "In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book."...which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
There is a rare-ish 1st edition, but it's only two chapters shorter than the common 2nd edition, and the text isn't different in any meaningful way (I think there was a typo or two fixed.) Having the student request a rare 1st edition wouldn't make any sense since (beyond the obvious fact the English versions aren't rate), he doesn't speak Chinese, and there's no textual changes between the English versions based on the different editions (2 chapters were added for the 2nd edition, and one for the 3rd).
4) The Little Red Book IS the bloody abridged version of the multi-volume Selected Works of Chairman Mao. But in the article it states the kid wanted the 'unabridged' version (of an abridged book??), and one that was "translated directly from the original version". Heh, I didn't know the Quotations of Chairman Mao (again, 2nd most published book in the world) was so rare that most American versions were, what... translated from the original Japanese? This request of the student's is nonsensical.
5) The professor is up for tenure. Which may or may not make a lick of difference, depending on the professor. He seems cool enough, though, doing some sort of extreme history thing in Afghanistan. http://www.brianglynwilliams.com/
Just as a slight disagreement, terrorists actually are pretty stupid. Captured PDAs, laptops, etc., rarely have their data encrypted, so are treasure troves for the military in Iraq.
I think most of the "smart terrorist" mystique is us projecting how *we'd* do it if we were the terrorists. Too much counterstrike maybe. =)
>>But if at that time you were an employee of Bioware it would have been harder to trust you. Maybe you were making things up to sell more copies of Baldurs Gate?
Indeed, and if people had reason to believe I was a Bioware employee, it would be the correct thing for them to do to point it out.
The problem is when we work to shame people who point out potential bias problems, if they have been honest in their reporting.
>>What? You mean, if we state that it appears that someone has a particular bias >>towards a certain product because we suspect they appear to be getting kick >>backs that we are no better than them?
Exactly. The ability to expose bias (or just plain old sell-outs) in the media is one of the critical components to running a free press. Flogging the messenger is the wrong thing to do.
For example -- I played a RPG back in the day called Olympos or something. It was literally the worst RPG I'd ever bought (some freeware/shareware games were worse, but not many). On the Baldur's Gate forums (before BG1 came out) a guy posted a question: "Hey, before BG comes out, has anyone played this game, Olympos?" I (and about five other people) responsed with withering criticism of the game. A sole person responded saying they LOVED it, and it wasn't nearly so bad as everyone was saying it was. The forums showed the IP addresses people posted from, and I noticed that this guy was posting from the same regional ISP that the Olympos people used (I had traded emails with the company trying to resolve one of their numerous bugs.) I posted on the forum my suspicions that the person was a plant from the company. People flamed him. He wrote back a scathing "How Dare You" email, then suddenly people were flaming ME. All I'd done was note that the only person in the greater United States that liked the game had been from the same podunk ISP as the company, not said the guy was absolutely a member of the company, simply a suspicion, and yet I was the person who ended up getting attacked. It's an interesting social mechanic, and I don't doubt something similar is going on here.
As long as the SCOPE of the suspicion is not deceptive (i.e. as long as the author doesn't say he has stronger evidence than he actually has), and he simply posts his evidence and lets people draw their own conclusions, I think that's the proper way to root out weasels, bought reporters, or people posting under fake identities.
They have been involved in the attacks across the country, dunno if they were involved in that exact one. Our local ACLU was the primary group pushing for the exlusion of Boy Scouts from all public lands in San Diego.
But an essential fact that most people don't know is that the freedom of association has been determined to be one of the components of the 1st Amendment freedom of free speech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_associatio n
A society, such as the Boy Scouts, has the right to determine who they associate with, in the same manner than a Catholic church cannot be sued because they did not choose a Buddhist as their new priest. Additionally, the government has the ability to have relations with private groups that discriminate in their membership, as long as the government does not favor one over the other. In other words, at a local high school, they let church groups run after school programs as part of their greater after school program. The local Catholics and Lutherans both run programs and get funding for it. There's no Jewish or Muslim group -- but if such a group offered, the school would have to treat them equally.
That's that part that most atheists get tripped up on. They see these religious groups operating programs at schools and flip out and file lawsuits which then cost the schools way too much money even if they're in the right. (In fact, that's what happened at one area school. They also sued the Lutheran church when the church traded city land in our area for church land in another area. It was a fair trade, but a litigatious atheist thought the law said the government can't deal with churches at all. He lost, though after costing the church a ton of money defending the trade.)
The sticky part about the Boy Scouts is that they have *history*. There's just no other identical organization that's been around for 90 years. Over the years, the Boy Scouts have dumped millions of their own dollars, and thousands of man-hours of effort into improving the CITY facilities they lease (for $1/month). It's impossible to say they get favorable/inequal treatment simply because there are NOT any other groups that have spent millions in San Diego improving city buildings, so it's a white elephant to claim they're getting free rent whereas everyone else has to pay. And as an amusing side note: the facilities they maintain is used to run an LBGTA kids camp during the summer when the Boy Scouts aren't using it.
And to come back to my original point in my first post, it is the ACLU is leading this attack on the freedom of association. They have a certain set of morals, which are different from the morals of the Boy Scouts, and are using lawsuits and politics to pressure them into accepting gay scout leaders. This is a blatantly contradictory stance for an organization that claims to be the defenders of the 1st Amendment.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is actually a girl... I by default assume any person I meet online is an overweight 40 year old man playing in his underwear unless I have really definitive proof otherwise. :p
Which is why I shouldn't write when in combat in WOW.
Should have said, "What, you ask them how they voted?"
Current events?
What, you ask em how they voted for?
About a week ago, I was by the AH in Org with my mage when a person (rather rudely) demanded, "Make me food." I was about to blow him off when I saw the character name was Chinese.
:p
I'm a white guy, living in California, but I've taken a year of Chinese, so I don't know enough to really talk to Chinese players in WOW, but I have faked it well enough to get into all-Chinese parties. =)
[lai = come
qu = go
xia = down
shang = up
"qing lai" == please come (here), etc.]
So I asked the person in Chinese if they wanted food, and, sure enough, in Chinese they were a lot more polite (using "qing", please, instead of the imperative form they used in English).
Since then, whenever the player logs in, he asks for food in Chinese, and I make it for him. In exchange, I apparently get stacks of major healing and mana potions in the mail every day. =)
So, the Chinese guy (who I later learned was a woman, living in Manchuria) has been asking me to take her to UBRS. So last night I put together a party, went to UBRS... and yeah.
My Chinese friend accidentally clicked Need on an item she didn't need. So it pissed off the party, especially when they found out she was Chinese. But I smoothed it over. Then she Needed a loxbox. That just totally pissed off the party, so they wanted me to boot her. I puzzled out what she said, and apparently she just needed it for the lockpicking. So again, I got the item from her, and then lotted it to the party. After that, she passed on everything, and gave away all the other items she even legitimately won, because she was on the verge of tears after being yelled at by everyone. So yeah. I'd left some of the people in the party as assistant leaders, and at some point down the road, they booted her. So I reinvited...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a pretty crap experience. They all called her a Ninja Chinese Gold Farmer, she was desperately trying to explain that the 1st was a mistake and the 2nd was for her LP skill (and yeah, I agree she should have just greeded it and LPed it later), so she started the run happy (because she could never find a Chinese speaking UBRS party), and ended sad and hurt, and the Americans left with a further deepening of the stereotype that all Chinese people are Ninja Gold Farmers. And I was in the middle having to deal with both sides with only a year of Chinese under my belt.
Sigh, multiculturalism for the loss.
The ironic twist here, of course, is that I think she does sell gold. Or maybe she buys gold (without tone mai (buy) and mai (sell) are the same, or maybe she was just asking if all Americans buy gold. My Chinese really isn't that good.
Solipsism for teh win?
I actually think the discoveries in the latter part of the 20th Century were quite exciting from a philosophical point of view. Watson or Crick (I can't remember which) became a strong determinist after his ongoing research in DNA led him to a mechanistic viewpoint -- essentially saying that we're slaves to our DNA, that we have no free will.
Since then, various advances showing the essential unpredictability of the world at the atomic and subatomic levels makes me hopeful that it will be actually impossible for, say, a perfectly oracular computer to ever be built, regardless of how much processing power it has. I.e., it will actually be impossible for a computer to state that two years from now you'll be working as a tuna packer in Alaska, on the lam from the law for murdering the Future Crimes policeman...
Uh, the sheer number of commercial spinoffs from ARPA projects is astounding.
The military does its own thing, and loves it when its projects find some other use too, since it's good publicity and whatnot.
The GP doesn't understand the meaning of "falsifiable". I think he just meant to say, "It would be found to be false."
A while back I proposed a way to make ID a falsifiable theory, and hence "scientific" (even though it might probably be later found to be false).
http://slashdot.org/~ShakaUVM/journal/121956
Ok, so according to this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/ 0,2763,410902,00.html) the ballots were supposed to be kept under lock and key and never counted. Which is obviously incorrect, as can be seen here (http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBa llots.pdf), that Florida has a Sunshine law which allows all of its ballots to be examined. The guardian article had other errors.
- june01/recount_4-3.html
Quote:
"The more immediate victim however, besides Al Gore and the system, is the supreme court itself. As the liberal lion of the bench, John Paul Stevens, put it in his strident, dissenting opinion: 'Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.'"
He was talking about the USSC ruling undermining the Flordia Supreme Court ruling, making it seem like their ruling had been done for partisan reasons. The article makes it seem like he's making the opposite claim, which is deceptive. I've read over the Flordia Supreme Court decision and consider it very reasonable and based on the correct interpretation of the law, so I understand where Justice Stevens was coming from on this.
Here's the results of one newspaper recount:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan
Here's the results of another:
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp
Both found that Bush probably would have won if the recounts had gone through anyway (with margins of error, it's impossible to tell, of course). NORC was disingenuous in claiming that 4 methords would have given Bush the victory, and 4 Gore, when the Gore methods mainly involved determining intent on overcounts, which is illegal in every county in America. (I.e. if someone voted for both Buchanan and Gore, then claiming it is a vote for Gore. Sure, it's probably what happened, but it's still illegal.)
Wiki is your friend.
c ampaign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#2000_
You can follow the sources, even though the summary on the first one is incorrect if you read the full article.
I didn't make any claim if they were honest or not. I made the claim that the electoral college magnifies the effects of individual votes. Which is unquestionably true in pivotal states like Florida.
But to address the question of honesty... who knows? There's a certain margin of error in everything. The final vote count was well within the margin of error. Machine recounts both found for Bush, as did a hand recount. So by the law Bush won, even if it's plausable that Gore had a higher count.
>>I have no idea what the votes actually were, AND I DOUBT THAT ANYONE ELSE DOES EITHER. What we saw wasn't the result of an election, but a non-violent coup.
But this is just false. They didn't destroy the votes. A bunch of newspapers went into Florida after the election and verified that Bush won.
I'm all in favor of consipiracy theories, but it does no one any good repeating provably false facts.
Actually, the US Election system works out nicely. Maybe not "fair" by some people's perspective, but nicely. If you had just, say, a popular election, then the candidates would camp California and the other big states. Maybe they would send a video to Wyoming or something. Elections would be won with differences in the millions.
The electoral system actually has the effect of magnifying the importance of individual votes.
Bush beat gore by only a COUPLE HUNDRED votes. This means that each person's vote in Florida was amazingly relevant to the national election, instead of a massive nationwide vote where people would probably not bother to turn out because the difference will be in the millions anyway. I live in California, I don't mind that my vote didn't matter. The fact that a nationwide election could come down to a couple hundred votes makes me feel happy that individual efforts still matter. If Gore volunteers had bussed only a few hundred more people to the polls, he would have won. That kind of participation is critical to the health of a democracy, and is something you wouldn't have under more "fair" electoral systems.
It's a bit small of me, but I feel a certain sense of satisfaction for calling it correctly. =)
There were just too many problems with the story.
As I said, your quote all was in regards to the Selected Works, which was the basis for the Little Red Book. Case in point, it all quotes times from the 40s and 50s. The Little Red Book first came out in April '64.
If you're talking about a different part of the page, then quote that part. Quoting the history of a completely different set of books just looks bad.
And his reponse back to me. Although he didn't respond to the factual problems I noted in the article, I'm relatively satisfied by his response. Quoted verbatim:
----
Hi Bill
Many thanks for kindly posting the piece and for your response. I apologize for not being able to answer all of your questions as I am rushing to finish an article on Chechnya for a book. The agents got the book from the Providence RI library that was the lender and brought it with them (I have no idea if they were wearing sun-glasses or not). It was the ILL (inter-library loan request that set of the investigation, getting the book themselves was obviously not a problem). They were from Homeland Security which, from what I understand, has its own agents. As to the order not to study Communism, they did not tell the student what to do they simply wanted to understand why he was engaging in such 'suspicious' activities. And thanks again for your kind comments on my field work in Afghanistan etc. I believe that if I am going to ask my students to go the sources and dig deep on historical issues I should do the same myself. If I am teaching on ethnic cleansing in the Balkans then I should go to Kosovo, if I am teaching a course on the Taliban I should go interview some myself. It inspires the students and makes classes more interesting!
All the best and thanks for getting back to me,
Brian.
My response to him (again, quoted verbatim):
-----
BrianGlynWilliams wrote:
> I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely,
> Dr. Brian Glyn Williams
> Associate Professor of History
> University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Thanks for your response. I have copied it verbatim onto Slashdot. It has received a top moderation, so everyone viewing the story should be able to see it.
I'd like to begin by saying that no, it wasn't a reflexive attempt to
delegitimize the story. Simply that the newspaper article raised enough
red flags that I began questioning the legitimacy of the story, and
began investigating things that seemed odd to me.
For example, the article claims that the Little Red Book was used during
the 1950s, which is obviously incorrect, since the book wasn't even
published until '64. It's also somewhat suspicious when the newspaper
printed the story without interviewing the student -- even just quoting him on background, which would have kept his identity secret.
> A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history
> student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President
> Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this
> incident as an example of the White House policies' very real
> applications and how they trickle down to the university level.
Thank you, that clarifies that section nicely.
> B. There are several key
> sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book
> and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This
> is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good
> history!
If I recall correctly, the most common edition in print in America is
the replica of the first English printing in 1996, which I would consider to be the 'original' English version. Do you mean to say instead that you were looking for a different translation of the Little Red Book? Or are you referring to the Selected Works of Mao, and not the Little Red Book (which is a separate work entirely -- an abridgement of the Selected Works).
Also, how did the federal agents get a copy of this rare translation? Why would they bring it to the student's house? What did they do with it after? It almost seems farsical to imagine a pair of sunglass-wearing agents going to a university library to check out a rare book so that they can brandish it at a poor student.
I'm also somewhat curious what the agents said to the student. What, "Don't research communism"? What department were they from?
> C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I
> do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am
> Associate Professor of History.
My apologies. I found a memo on the UMass Dartmouth site saying "Dr. Williams is currently applying for tenure", which is why I qualified the statement somewhat.
> But I do appreciate your reference to
> the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to
> understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this
> sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must
> go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi
> webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I
> just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of
> investigation and encourage the same in my students.
And on a side note I'd like to say as part of the investigation I
conducted prior to writing the post, I found your research to be quite
interesting, and would love to see more hist
Of course both sides are biased. Whenever I research a debate, I always read as much biased material I can find on both sides, so that I can make an informed opinion.
. htm)
t ml
Freedom of Association is a concept that only has come into the fore recently because it has been implicit in American society since the founding of the country. Could you imagine someone suing the freemasons in the late 1700s demanding to be let in, even though he was an avowed atheist? Or minorities suing the KKK demanding to be allowed in? Or Lutherans suing the Cathlolic church, demanding to be allowed to be a priest? It's part of that whole "freedom" thing. =)
The ACLU is actively working to apply pressure to the Boy Scouts to eliminate their right to choose who they associate with. This is the hypocritical aspect of the ACLU that I take issue with.
Otherwise I think we're both arguing in the same direction -- the government shouldn't give preferential treatment to one religion or private group based on their religion. But this is NOT the same as saying the government cannot have intercourse with religious groups at all (the mythic "wall between church and state"), or that the government can have intercourse with every group except Christians -- which is unfortunately the current policy at San Diego City Schools. In my 2nd grade classroom back in the day, we lit a menorrah, sang Hannukah songs, spun dreidels, but prohibited from singing Christmas songs, even non-religious ones like Jingle Bells. I still work with schools as part of my job. Last school I was at had two posters up in the hallyway, one explaining the meaning of Hannukah, the other Kwanzaa (what each day represents, etc.) This anti-preferential treatment towards Christianity has been going on for over 20 years, but the ACLU chooses instead to sue the Boy Scouts for receiving preferential treament.
I don't need to reiterate my stance again. The Boy Scouts had entered into a covenent with the city 50 years ago, wherein they'd pay for maintanence and improvements to the park in exchange for essentially free lease of the land. This was a fair deal. By ordering the city to break the agreement with the scouts, the judge essentially ruled it was illegal for the city to have intercourse with a private or religious group (unless, one presumes, the city can build 10 Balboa Parks and allow 10 different groups to each build their own camp on it).
The deciding factor, of course, falls on what defines "preferential treatment". I obviously think the deal was fair, you probably don't. It's fine for people to disagree on where the line should be drawn. That's not really what troubles me.
What troubles me is that the ACLU is actively pressuring a private and religius group to change its beliefs. This is theoretically antithetical to the mission of the ACLU. Don't believe me? "If they do not [change their beliefs], the ACLU will continue to seek ways to change the Boy Scouts' discriminatory policy." (http://www.aclusandiego.org/boy_scouts/BOYSCOUTS
And of course, they have a pressure web site dedicated solely for this purpose, to encourage other agencies to join against the Boy Scouts, and/or cut off all contact and support for them.
http://aclusandiego.org/boy_scouts/dissociating.h
How is this a goal for an organization that supposedly feels that Americans should be able to decide for themselves what they want to believe? That applies economic pressure to eliminate their Freedom of Association?
You realize you're quoting the "Peking Version" of the wrong book...?
The Little Red Book is, um, not the Selected Works of Mao. It's the abridged collection of the Selected Works.
The professor mentioned in the story (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams) took the time to answer these points. I'm pasting it verbatim here.
-----
Dear Bill,
Delighte to hear from you and I hope my response is of service. If you could post it I would be most grateful.
I am one of the professors mentioned in your 'conspiracy theory response' (Dr. Brian Glyn Williams)With all due respect I wanted to add a few comments. A. The incident with our Univ. of Massachusetts history student happened several weeks ago, I was asked to comment on President Bush's sweeping surveillance activities only yesterday. I cited this incident as an example of the White House policies' very real applications and how they trickle down to the university level. My description of the incident was in response to an inquiry from a reporter at the Standard Times, New Bedford who called requesting a commentary and I thought it was appropriate. B. There are several key sections omitted in the version here in the USA of the Little Red Book and we are proud of our student trying to search out the original. This is exactly the sort of primary document research that makes for good history!
C. I have tenure and I do not know how you came to the assumption that I do not, my web page brianglynwilliams.com clearly states that I am Associate Professor of History. But I do appreciate your reference to the field work I do in Afghanistan and Central Asia in trying to understand the roots of jihadism and terrorism. It is precisely this sort of cutting edge research and teaching I hope to protect. One must go to the original sources to get the facts, wether it be jihadi webpages or Mao's Little Red Book. I am hardly a liberal firebrand, I just want to carry out my research unfettered by the fear of investigation and encourage the same in my students. D. I know this student well. He is the real thing, he is mature, honest, reliable, hard-working and genuinely interested in getting to the truth on issues, i.e. he is everything we train our students to be. The fact that Dr. Bob Pontriband who is by the way a passionate educator who seeks to instill just this sort of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty research in his students also vouches for him lends two voices to his defense. I sincerely hope that your questions are meant to be the sort of critical inquiry we expect from our students and not some reflexive attempt to de-legitimize our reporting of what it is frankly a rather disturbing act of surveillance that does not seem to be an example of productive, preemptive counter terrorism. Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Glyn Williams
Associate Professor of History
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
And 8) The newspaper didn't even interview the student.
Ok, all my bullshit meters went off when I read this article. It might have happened, but I'm laying odds that it's either a hoax, or that the professor is studying to see how neo-anarchistic sites like Slashdot can uncritically accept stories about our government, or that the student successfully bullshitted the professor. Or it could be our government is actually somewhat retarded (Chairman Mao is a threat in the era of the War on Terror?) and somewhat fascist. I wouldn't be surprised either way.
...which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Random points, in no particular order:
1) It's too coincidental. It happened (or was published) a day or so after secret eavesdropping policies from the administration made front page news in the New York Times.
2) Why the hell would agents bring the book? Can you imagine NSA agents walking into a remote library (and not the local library, because he needs the extra-special "Peking" version of the world's secondly most commonly printed book) and checking out this "rare" copy of a book? *How* did they check it out? Do they keep library accounts with all the universities in the state? And, why? Just so they can wave it in his face? What did they do with it after? Just toss it in the mail? Drive it back across town or to another city to return it? It makes no sense.
3) As best as I can tell, there's no such thing as the extra-special Peking Version of the book. My fiancee is Chinese, she's never heard of it (though she dislikes Communism, and isn't an expert on it either). Google '"Peking Version" Quotations of Chairman Mao' (or Little Red Book) and you get no results. Even the name is a bit suspect since Peking is the British name for Beijing, and the communists worked to change the name on everything to Beijing (via the uniform adoption of the standardized Pinyin system). But it's an older book, so it could be legit (the Pinyin reforms didn't happen for a while during Mao's reign). But neither does "Beijing Version" get any hits. Even the 1st edition was published in a variety of places, not just Beijing, so it would be a misnomer to call it a Peking Version.
Here's quotes from the article:
'"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."'
and
"In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book."
There is a rare-ish 1st edition, but it's only two chapters shorter than the common 2nd edition, and the text isn't different in any meaningful way (I think there was a typo or two fixed.) Having the student request a rare 1st edition wouldn't make any sense since (beyond the obvious fact the English versions aren't rate), he doesn't speak Chinese, and there's no textual changes between the English versions based on the different editions (2 chapters were added for the 2nd edition, and one for the 3rd).
4) The Little Red Book IS the bloody abridged version of the multi-volume Selected Works of Chairman Mao. But in the article it states the kid wanted the 'unabridged' version (of an abridged book??), and one that was "translated directly from the original version". Heh, I didn't know the Quotations of Chairman Mao (again, 2nd most published book in the world) was so rare that most American versions were, what... translated from the original Japanese? This request of the student's is nonsensical.
5) The professor is up for tenure. Which may or may not make a lick of difference, depending on the professor. He seems cool enough, though, doing some sort of extreme history thing in Afghanistan.
http://www.brianglynwilliams.com/
6) Another quote: "The professors had bee
From marines I know that have come back from Iraq.
Sure, I love conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but you can only take them so far.
Just as a slight disagreement, terrorists actually are pretty stupid. Captured PDAs, laptops, etc., rarely have their data encrypted, so are treasure troves for the military in Iraq.
I think most of the "smart terrorist" mystique is us projecting how *we'd* do it if we were the terrorists. Too much counterstrike maybe. =)
>>But if at that time you were an employee of Bioware it would have been harder to trust you. Maybe you were making things up to sell more copies of Baldurs Gate?
Indeed, and if people had reason to believe I was a Bioware employee, it would be the correct thing for them to do to point it out.
The problem is when we work to shame people who point out potential bias problems, if they have been honest in their reporting.
>>What? You mean, if we state that it appears that someone has a particular bias
>>towards a certain product because we suspect they appear to be getting kick
>>backs that we are no better than them?
Exactly. The ability to expose bias (or just plain old sell-outs) in the media is one of the critical components to running a free press. Flogging the messenger is the wrong thing to do.
For example -- I played a RPG back in the day called Olympos or something. It was literally the worst RPG I'd ever bought (some freeware/shareware games were worse, but not many). On the Baldur's Gate forums (before BG1 came out) a guy posted a question: "Hey, before BG comes out, has anyone played this game, Olympos?" I (and about five other people) responsed with withering criticism of the game. A sole person responded saying they LOVED it, and it wasn't nearly so bad as everyone was saying it was. The forums showed the IP addresses people posted from, and I noticed that this guy was posting from the same regional ISP that the Olympos people used (I had traded emails with the company trying to resolve one of their numerous bugs.) I posted on the forum my suspicions that the person was a plant from the company. People flamed him. He wrote back a scathing "How Dare You" email, then suddenly people were flaming ME. All I'd done was note that the only person in the greater United States that liked the game had been from the same podunk ISP as the company, not said the guy was absolutely a member of the company, simply a suspicion, and yet I was the person who ended up getting attacked. It's an interesting social mechanic, and I don't doubt something similar is going on here.
As long as the SCOPE of the suspicion is not deceptive (i.e. as long as the author doesn't say he has stronger evidence than he actually has), and he simply posts his evidence and lets people draw their own conclusions, I think that's the proper way to root out weasels, bought reporters, or people posting under fake identities.
They have been involved in the attacks across the country, dunno if they were involved in that exact one. Our local ACLU was the primary group pushing for the exlusion of Boy Scouts from all public lands in San Diego.
o n
Here's our local ACLU's page attacking the Boy Scouts:
http://www.aclusandiego.org/boy_scouts/
Here's a take on it from the other viewpoint:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/zeiger/040114
and the scouting site:
http://www.defendscouting.com/sldf/
But an essential fact that most people don't know is that the freedom of association has been determined to be one of the components of the 1st Amendment freedom of free speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_associati
A society, such as the Boy Scouts, has the right to determine who they associate with, in the same manner than a Catholic church cannot be sued because they did not choose a Buddhist as their new priest. Additionally, the government has the ability to have relations with private groups that discriminate in their membership, as long as the government does not favor one over the other. In other words, at a local high school, they let church groups run after school programs as part of their greater after school program. The local Catholics and Lutherans both run programs and get funding for it. There's no Jewish or Muslim group -- but if such a group offered, the school would have to treat them equally.
That's that part that most atheists get tripped up on. They see these religious groups operating programs at schools and flip out and file lawsuits which then cost the schools way too much money even if they're in the right. (In fact, that's what happened at one area school. They also sued the Lutheran church when the church traded city land in our area for church land in another area. It was a fair trade, but a litigatious atheist thought the law said the government can't deal with churches at all. He lost, though after costing the church a ton of money defending the trade.)
The sticky part about the Boy Scouts is that they have *history*. There's just no other identical organization that's been around for 90 years. Over the years, the Boy Scouts have dumped millions of their own dollars, and thousands of man-hours of effort into improving the CITY facilities they lease (for $1/month). It's impossible to say they get favorable/inequal treatment simply because there are NOT any other groups that have spent millions in San Diego improving city buildings, so it's a white elephant to claim they're getting free rent whereas everyone else has to pay. And as an amusing side note: the facilities they maintain is used to run an LBGTA kids camp during the summer when the Boy Scouts aren't using it.
And to come back to my original point in my first post, it is the ACLU is leading this attack on the freedom of association. They have a certain set of morals, which are different from the morals of the Boy Scouts, and are using lawsuits and politics to pressure them into accepting gay scout leaders. This is a blatantly contradictory stance for an organization that claims to be the defenders of the 1st Amendment.