I don't disagree with that, but the OP was implying quite strongly that it's ambiguous whether the government actually set up the 9-11 attacks: "Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks" "I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one."
His first couple paragraphs (which I didn't quote for length reasons) are actually a variety of scenarios by which he claims the US government could have taken down the buildings "with no leaks." One of the scenarios involved specifically designing a new class of drone with a huge fuel tank (and nobody would have noticed that they weren't passenger aircraft with hundreds of people aboard), another was that we could have used a missile battery and then killed the entire crew (without anyone noticing a missile crew was dead).
Bad shit happens. Generally the government uses the bad shit to try to justify more powers. That does not mean the government actually directs 100% of the bad shit.
It's hard to believe that the same government that built the SR71 blackbird and operated it in secret convincing many "useful idiots" that 'they aren't UFO's' is so incompetent that they couldn't stop a bunch of extremists from flying a plane into the largest buildings of the largest US city. How can any other security theatre be justified as effective in the wake of such a bungle.
Come on now.
Number one, the Blackbird was actually quite well known within a few years of it's debut. People didn't know or what it did precisely, but they knew what they looked like, what it was called, and who owned it. Revell even had a model on the market by the late 60s
Number two, since it's operations were classified revealing anything actually interesting about it would have gotten you arrested, and jeopardized a mission you probably supported because you'd worked on it. Instead of getting a pay-day, and attaboys form an adoring public; you get prison time and your friends refuse to talk to you again.
On the other hand, as far as we can tell nobody who actually knows anything about the relevant agencies thinks they created S11. Anybody who came forward with evidence would be lauded as a big damn hero. And thousands would probably have to be in on it one way or the other.
The main input to his equation is the number of people involved. The smallest number he considered was 125.
Moreover his definition of "failure" isn't whether some time-limited goal was achieved, it's that the conspiracy got caught. And they did.
He's really talking about the crazy-ass ones where hundreds and hundreds of people have to keep silent, for a decade or more, and there's no actual moral reason for them to do so.
Vaccines, climate, change, the Moon Landing Hoax, are all mentioned.
Monsanto probably has more resources then any single individual European company, but an industry association would have more money then Monsanto.
Europe is a much bigger market then the US, and their food is more expensive; partly because they've got the continent convinced that any technique that isn't extremely labor intensive will result in disaster.
"I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit"
No problem. I think it most likely already has.
You got any evidence of that?
You have a possible alternative scenario that also fits the evidence, but you have presented precisely zero facts that imply said scenario is actually true.
This story only broke on the 14th, so it's not like they can have a definitive investigation done.
So far all I've seen from Prof. Infascelli is a fairly standard denial, including the ever-popular "why would I even do that?," accompanied by the tidbit that the only thing that could possibly be relevant is whether his experiment can be repeated by anyone else. Which is very interesting because a) those experiments have not been repeated by anyone else and b) if he had the kind of records he should have there would be no need to talk about repeatability.
That's not definitive proof that he's an Evil Fraud, but it's not vindication either. It's actually pretty much what you'd expect from either an Evil Fraud or an Innocent Victim.
"Read the links at the bottom of the article"
I did, and agreed on that, Bucci's software is useful but not accurate, it spots intentional manipulation, simple mistakes, and lots of false positives:
Interestingly, that article says precisely jack-squat about false positives.
By definition it could catch innocent mistakes, but then any scientist whose actually doing the job right should be doing their utmost to minimize said innocent mistakes.
"Maybe the University also hired the same guy"
You lost me there. I must be misunderstanding you. Could you be more precise?
Pardon me if I misinterpreted you, but you seemed to be saying that Bucci was hired by either the University or Infascelli himself (Bucci is the only expert currently in the conversation), rather then the Senator.
"My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation"
Ok, but for me that definition leaves too much room for mischief.
It's a simple term. If you have any reason to believe something, you have evidence. It may not be strong evidence, but it is (by definition) evidence.
I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit.
"the consultant [nature.com] who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past"
Yes, and it found this too: "the 2013 Food and Nutrition Sciences paper was retracted, with a citation of “self-plagiarism”. However, the journal noted that the results were still valid and that it considered the issues an “honest error” -- Nature.com
Read the links at the bottom of the article.
In December of '13 this exact computer researcher (Enrico Bucci) used this exact method to completely discredit a researcher who is only related to the GM team in that they worked at the same University. It was bad enough there was a police investigation of the guy: http://www.nature.com/news/ima... It's just gotten worse for poor Alfredo Fusco since then: http://retractionwatch.com/201...
But even with those results it doesn't change the fact that the software isn't enough to go on by itself because it produces way too many false positives to be able to rely on its results alone.
"A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent"
If you read the link to La Rebublica in Nature: "according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Infascelli said that there is no substance to these allegations, and that an expert that he consulted about the papers had ruled out the possibility of data manipulation" (Nature.com), it appears the rector's investigating committee has consulted an expert on images and the expert said there was no evidence of any problems. Nature seems to have confused things a bit and its in fact the committee that's consulted the expert.
What I'd like to know, and what Nature doesn't tell us, is the content of the leak to the press: "details of the confidential findings of the investigation committee — composed of scientists in and outside of Naples — were leaked to the Italian press" (Nature.com).
Senator Cattaneo hired the guy who destroyed Alfredo Fusco. This piece has a much longer (and much more hostile to Infascelli) write-up: http://www.biofortified.org/20...
Maybe the University also hired the same guy, to look into the same thing, at the same time. He would be the logical go-to-guy for all involved.
My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation.
In this case it is possible their software is fucked-up, but a) at least some of their data is based the study authors submitting photos that humans couldn't tell apart either, and b) the consultant who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past.
A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent.
Or they can switch back to the non-GMO version. Which they can acquire from their local agricultural universities seed bank if the for-profit seed-dealer in the Country is only selling GM seeds.
In the US Farming is (and pretty much always has been) a business with a large number of players of a huge variety of sizes. To some extent, the little guys are always at the mercy of the big guys because that's how business works. Which is a fancy-ass way of saying that if farmers are dependent on Monsanto for a specific seed that's because it makes them more money.
OTOH, in Europe (this goes back to the feudal system) agriculture is a much different beast, with much longer traditions, and a much less pronounced "oh that major change to everything we do will increase profits by 1%? let's change everything we do" attitude.
There is evidence. There's the analysis of the images. It may be evidence you dislike. It may be total bullshit. But it a) exists in the physical world in which we reside, and b) implies that these the data papers are based on shit the authors made up. That is (by definition) evidence that the authors committed both scientific misconduct and fraud.
Don't get me wrong here. As I said, it's possible the evidence is total bullshit. Maybe the image analyzers don't understand how similar different images of goats are to each-other, or the journals in question lost the images the papers authors sent in and re-used goat-pics they had laying around from the last paper, or any other number of explanations that would vindicate the papers' authors.
But just because the papers' authors could theoretically be vindicated, that does not imply that they don't need to be vindicated. And, in the English language, you only need to be vindicated if there is evidence against you.
What would you call it if somebody made up a bunch of numbers to make climate change look non-existant?
In other words, in a scientific context "fraud" is not a legal term referring to actual monetary gain. It's making shit up because you want it to be true. Which is precisely what they're accused of.
Moreover, the scientists in question probably got their funding from some element of the Italian food industry, which is death on GMOs partly because they'd lose market-share to the dreaded Americans if Nebraskan GM corn were legal in Italy. They certainly hope to get future funding due to the notoriety they gained by fighting the good fight for the non-GM Italian agricultural sector.
Actually the Irish we got mostly spoke what you would call Gaelic, and everyone else calls Irish. The Irish that managed to stay in their homeland throughout the famine tended to be the English-speakers, which is why today almost everyone there primarily speaks English. During the Civil War both the Irish and Germans tended to be in their own segregated units, because they had trouble communicating in English.
As for the religious differences, the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism was enough to burn Germany to ground during the 30 years war, and damn near everyone else fought at least one pointless brutal Civil War involving the conflict. It was only the rise of Humanism, and the consequent realization that fighting over God was a fucking waste of time, that allowed the two denominations to make peace.
Which means that as soon as the Muslims adopt Humanism a bit more enthusiastically that should work fine too.
When my dad grew up his grandma lived with them. When she wanted to communicate with her daughter in secret they used Swedish. Their hometown (Rockford, IL) had a Swedish paper for years.
Spanish is not disappearing any slower then Swedish did. Italian is actually still around, generally in the pre-unification Southern Italian dialects that are gone from Italy proper, and Irish is probably stronger state-side then it is in Ireland.
If Muslims aren't trying to integrate, why it half the Brits I see on TV are brown-skinned with Geordie accents?
I think Europe would be a lot better off if it had gone whole hog on the EU back in the 90s.
If leader of Europe was an actual job title, and that guy/girl/whathaveyou had the defense budgets of all the European states to work with, then it's a lot harder for a) Syria to get out of hand, b) Putin to get frisky, c) refugees to flood the continent, etc.
Moreover if somebody is responsible to the voters of Greece AND the voters of Germany, and he's got a relationship with voters in both areas, then you might actually have gotten a solution to the debt problem, rather then kicking the can down the road with what is it? Three bail-outs? Because without generous terms the Greeks will need constant bail-outs, but the Germans don't trust anyone in power in Greece so they don't give generous terms...
I really feel like I'm watching the collapse of the European project, and nobody notices.
Got an example of that happening in Europe? Because it seems like every day somebody's freaking out about no-go-zones in Arab areas, and the next day some pretty blond newscaster is sitting in cafe talking to quite friendly people about how she should already be dead.
And in the states we get plenty of Arab neighborhoods. They're quite non-violent because there's less drinking.
Relentlessly, annoyingly commercial, tho. People who actually know Arabs would not think "oh shit a terrorist" when some Arab kid shows up at their Walmart with cash to buy cell phones. They think "I wonder what poor sucker is buying those?" They actually voted Bush the first time.
The thing is that all Europeans, Muslim Arab ethnics as well as native European humanists/Christians tend to have far fewer kids then their neighbors.
And while cultural change is inevitable in an immigrant society, you generally don't get wholesale replacement. You get a new assimilated culture that takes most of it's traditions from the original, while gaining some from the new guys (ie: the US is still basically an English, Protestant country, despite the fact nobody admits to being ethnically English and we've borrowed Halloween/Christmas Trees/Italian food etc. from newcomers).
The problem these guys have is not gonna be that their plan is stupid, it's gonna be that getting a bunch of Libertarian internet activists to a) actually follow the fuck through and move to New Hampshire, b) show up to vote in boring off-years elections when nobody actually votes, and c) all vote the same fucking way even if both candidates disagree with them on some issue; is pretty much the definition of impossible. Especially c).
Which is why if they really wanted to make the most of their voting power they should be voting third-party Libertarian candidates into power instead.
Not sure that would help.
State-side third parties are the homes of people who strongly prefer ideological purity to policy results, which means they tend to schism whenever the Party Committee can't all come to a single position on an issue. When they've got nobody in actual office this isn't a problem, but if you got 20 people into the General Court, and the Governor said "let's trade horses" and only 10 of them sign on...
Given their numbers, and the fact that NH only has 3,300 voters per representative, it would be trivial for them to elect a couple of dozen third-party candidates in office. The problem with libertarian politics in the US is that they've made a devil's bargain with the Republican party. Social issues, foreign policy, immigration, privacy rights and internal security - on all these issues Libertarians fundamentally disagree with Republicans. It's about time Libertarians realize that their alliance with Republicans has only served to dilute their message to the broader public. Get a significant number into the state legislature, and they'll be a third party that will have to be taken seriously.
Getting your voters spread that evenly across the state is damn near impossible as a coordination issue. You'd need 1,000 or so empty housing units per district to move people into, and your people would have to be willing to move to a part of the state where 1,000 units of 3,300 were vacant.
The way this helps the LP as a party is that if 1.5% of a state's population is willing to man the phones for you, walk door-to-door, etc. and the state is already the "Live free or Die!" state; then their candidates have a lot better shot at office then in Michigan or Ohio.
Look at it this way: there's 20k people moving there. There're 400 Reps at the State Court. The average State Rep race is going to have 50 Libertarian-leaning volunteers. Representing 3,300 people each (most districts seem to be multi-member, so the average district size is probably in the 6k-7k range). In the states I'm familiar a State Rep has 90-120k constituents is very lucky to have a half-dozen committed volunteers. Who, unlike votes, can volunteer across district lines.
I don't know if they'll use the Libertarian Party label. I doubt it -- there's not really a penalty to being a Republican so Libertarian you could be in the LP, assuming you've got dozens of FSP volunteers to cover your ass when election time comes; whereas Third Party tickets tend to be the kiss of death. But they're destined to have some major impact, and it will be quite interesting to watch.
Turnout for state-level races tends to be under 50%, and some of the population is too young to vote, so that 1.5% is probably gonna be a full 5% of the electorate. Assuming a) they all show up on election day, and b) they all (or at least a reasonably large proportion of them) vote the same way.
A 5% voting block is pretty important. It really helps that they are in a state where they won't be the only people going "live free or die," and that the state's legislature is so fucking huge. With a 400-member lower House, there's only 3k or so people per legislator, which means it's much easier to get in on the ground floor then it would be in Cali.
The problem these guys have is not gonna be that their plan is stupid, it's gonna be that getting a bunch of Libertarian internet activists to a) actually follow the fuck through and move to New Hampshire, b) show up to vote in boring off-years elections when nobody actually votes, and c) all vote the same fucking way even if both candidates disagree with them on some issue; is pretty much the definition of impossible. Especially c).
That said, I wish them luck. Whatever happens, this is a lot more productive then the internet activists typical routine of posting a rant, and then concluding that the process is rigged/corruption is rampant/the parties are Fascistic Nazi-lites/etc. when everything isn't fixed in an hour.
I live in the one where McDonald got shot, and his killer wasn't even charged until it was clear a failure to charge the guy would result in a riot. And you know the cop's going to get off with a mistrial at best, because a) it's very difficult to convict people who have the money for their own lawyers and go to trial, and b) it's almost impossible to convict cops. In this case it's worse because the Supremes have made it very easy to let a police officer off for killing someone who is walking away from the police while carrying a weapon.
This is fucking America. Stupid and vicious is our racial policy, has been since that time a dude whose sister-in-law doubled as his sex slave wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Are you sure you understand zero-sum game in the context of this debate?
Because a zero-sum game means that every gain for privacy has to be a loss for security. The scenario I brought up (the government has access to everything, but only if it can acquire it through some sort of bureaucratic procedure such as the warrant process it uses to get literally everything else) is a gain for both.
The sentence you're taking issue with specifically is hyperbole. It is complete nonsense in a literal logical sense, because it is too fucking extreme.
The rest of my post is a point about how damn difficult it is to move forward on a serious policy issue when your entire side assumes someone who only 92.4% agrees with you is arguing in bad faith. You are taking something that may have been perfectly reasonable in-context as a blanket statement of evil government policy; despite the fact that a) the guy involved is not actually in-government (he seems to be a "consultant," which generally means he makes money from telling rich conservative businessman what they want to hear about the government), and b) we have no context so we don't know whether he was being evil in-context.
You, yourself, have just added another extremely interesting data-point by ignoring the possibility that a ridiculously extreme statement was hyperbole.
BTW, that post is probably the most on-topic Slashdot post I have ever made, given that the article is about the average Americans preference for internet surveillance.
The only Dem-side bit of the working class that is currently worked up is the black bit, and they're worked up because the cops like to give them extra-special attention, not because they're pissed at the double-whammy of a) declining economic clout, and b) extreme (and quick) cultural change.They hate Trump with a passion that has to be seen to be believed. The reaction he gets from the white working class reminds them of some dark times, and with African-Americans the dark times are really dark.
The Hillary-Bernie split is a fight within the white middle and upper classes. Blacks and Latinos are fairly firm in their support for Hillary, and the working-class unions are using to push Hillary to the left on economic issues.
I agree that it's depressing that someone like Trump can do so well in the polls, saying the things he says. But at the same time, I don't quite understand the relevancy of the points you listed here?
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
America has a long history of encouraging people to get/keep a job. Traditionally, it's been the honorable thing to do, if one wants to be a productive member of society and not mooch of of the labor of others. Technology ALWAYS winds up changing around the type of labor worth paying humans to do. Historically though, it also winds up increasing the total number of available jobs. (For example, just think how many new careers were created with the advent of television. Think how many new jobs were created by the personal computer.) There is always some pain during periods of transition -- but people are remarkably good at adapting, if we're pushed up against a wall and forced to do so. We lost a LOT of jobs in manufacturing to the Chinese and others -- but there are still plenty of things to be done. Might need a little training or education to do them, but it's possible.
And historically a charge of Heavy Horse destroyed almost every infantry formation. Until Pikes became common. Then the push of Pike decided battles. Until guns got really good in the late 16th century.
The current reality is that the elite (top 20% or so) manage to fire a bunch of working class schmucks, replace them with Chinese, and the working class guys end up with shittier jobs. Reeducation would work great, if we were fucking Denmark, and college was fucking free. But we're not. It's $10kish a year in-state, $20kish out-state, and $30k+ in private schools. The way you pay it is a 10-year loan.
Which is kinda difficult for a 50-something to re-pay.
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
I disagree with this assertion. Most people I know consider poverty a real problem. But the idea that government forcibly taking a portion of everyone's income to help these people out bothers me. Charity, by definition, is voluntary. If you can't comprehend or accept this, you may as well advocate all the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something.
So you oppose Social Security?
Because that's pretty much exactly how it works. Almost all of the benefits are paid for by a payroll tax on people who are currently working.
That's kind of my problem with this argument. People freak out about free stuff for people, imply it's one step towards Communist Revolution ("the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something"), except for instances that already exist.
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
Perhaps so, but can you blame them? Big pickup trucks aren't cheap. How will people be compensated for the loss of use of expensive vehicles they purchased, if you decide they're no longer allowed due to the climate change issues they help cause? The truth is, we don't yet have better solutions for the need for cars and trucks on our roads, or else we'd already all be using them.
And yet whenever somebody proposes trying to build an alternative people oppose it to death because they already have their pick-up.
No mass transit, except hourly buses; high-speed rail is anathema because it has startup costs; Bike lanes are a huge political lift in most towns; etc.
That's kinda the problem. You can't actually offer an alternative to pick-ups without running into a buzz-saw of bullshit, so you might as well ban them entirely and let the poor schmucks in rural working class areas come to the decision to implement a
The white working class's problems with the elite are way deeper then disgust at Progressivism. If it wasn't they'd be running into the arms of a guy who spent the past few years in DC fighting progressivism, rather then the one who invited the Clintons to his wedding.
In particular the Right's insistence on spending the past few years demanding an end to Obamaism, without articulating a coherent and plausible alternative (note to morons: anything that involves Social Security cuts is roughly as plausible as my plot to restore Her Majesty Elizabeth II to the throne of Ohio), and frequent government brinksmanship as part of said plan to end Obamaism, without actually managing to accomplish anything is a huge part of the problem.
Did you read the actual article giving the quote? Because ion my experience if one is not an expert in the field it almost never makes sense to conclude that some guy's take on a topic supported by evidence you haven't read is not bullshit.
Let me give you the whole quote from the Ars article that has the quote:
"Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
That could mean what you're saying, and that he thinks that he needs a database of 100% of everyone's communication or there's no security. It could also mean he wants some bureaucratic tool to search google's servers for specific targeted info from specific targeted individuals. To actually figure that shit out you'd need a whole hell of a lot more context, including shit like the exact phrasing of the conversation prior to his statement.
But let's do what you have done, assume bad faith. Is that shit gonna work? The answer is yes, assuming we've got the votes to replace Giorgio's ally McConnell, but we don't.
Otherwise it's terribly stupid because the only bit of the government designed to check the NSA is Congress, and Mitch is one of the most important members of Congress. You need Mitch McConnell or you'll get warmed-over bullshit served to you as NSA reform, and you ain't gonna get him if you assume Fascism. Especially if it's true.
Always remember: to win Civil Rights it took both Dr. King (assuming good faith, being nice to the opposition, and figuring out which horses he could trade to end up ahead) and Malcolm X (who took a rather more radical line, altho by the time he was shot he did acknowledge that white people were not the result of a twisted science experiment). It also took an rather complicated about-face on segregation by the guy who invented the idea of Japanese Internment.
Remember that famous line from Harrison Ford? "George, you can type this shit, but you sure has hell can't say it."
I doubt he was getting that kind of feedback from 19-year-old then-unknowns Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen. Probably not the more established actors either. Maybe Samuel L.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree with that, but the OP was implying quite strongly that it's ambiguous whether the government actually set up the 9-11 attacks:
"Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks"
"I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one."
His first couple paragraphs (which I didn't quote for length reasons) are actually a variety of scenarios by which he claims the US government could have taken down the buildings "with no leaks." One of the scenarios involved specifically designing a new class of drone with a huge fuel tank (and nobody would have noticed that they weren't passenger aircraft with hundreds of people aboard), another was that we could have used a missile battery and then killed the entire crew (without anyone noticing a missile crew was dead).
Bad shit happens. Generally the government uses the bad shit to try to justify more powers. That does not mean the government actually directs 100% of the bad shit.
What about the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government?
They aren't competent enough to orchestrate something like that. They also weren't competent enough to stop it, despite getting plenty of notice about some of the orchestrators. That doesn't make them any less responsible.
It's hard to believe that the same government that built the SR71 blackbird and operated it in secret convincing many "useful idiots" that 'they aren't UFO's' is so incompetent that they couldn't stop a bunch of extremists from flying a plane into the largest buildings of the largest US city. How can any other security theatre be justified as effective in the wake of such a bungle.
Come on now.
Number one, the Blackbird was actually quite well known within a few years of it's debut. People didn't know or what it did precisely, but they knew what they looked like, what it was called, and who owned it. Revell even had a model on the market by the late 60s
Number two, since it's operations were classified revealing anything actually interesting about it would have gotten you arrested, and jeopardized a mission you probably supported because you'd worked on it. Instead of getting a pay-day, and attaboys form an adoring public; you get prison time and your friends refuse to talk to you again.
On the other hand, as far as we can tell nobody who actually knows anything about the relevant agencies thinks they created S11. Anybody who came forward with evidence would be lauded as a big damn hero. And thousands would probably have to be in on it one way or the other.
Take a look at the fine print.
The main input to his equation is the number of people involved. The smallest number he considered was 125.
Moreover his definition of "failure" isn't whether some time-limited goal was achieved, it's that the conspiracy got caught. And they did.
He's really talking about the crazy-ass ones where hundreds and hundreds of people have to keep silent, for a decade or more, and there's no actual moral reason for them to do so.
Vaccines, climate, change, the Moon Landing Hoax, are all mentioned.
Monsanto probably has more resources then any single individual European company, but an industry association would have more money then Monsanto.
Europe is a much bigger market then the US, and their food is more expensive; partly because they've got the continent convinced that any technique that isn't extremely labor intensive will result in disaster.
"I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit"
No problem. I think it most likely already has.
You got any evidence of that?
You have a possible alternative scenario that also fits the evidence, but you have presented precisely zero facts that imply said scenario is actually true.
This story only broke on the 14th, so it's not like they can have a definitive investigation done.
So far all I've seen from Prof. Infascelli is a fairly standard denial, including the ever-popular "why would I even do that?," accompanied by the tidbit that the only thing that could possibly be relevant is whether his experiment can be repeated by anyone else. Which is very interesting because a) those experiments have not been repeated by anyone else and b) if he had the kind of records he should have there would be no need to talk about repeatability.
That's not definitive proof that he's an Evil Fraud, but it's not vindication either. It's actually pretty much what you'd expect from either an Evil Fraud or an Innocent Victim.
"Read the links at the bottom of the article"
I did, and agreed on that, Bucci's software is useful but not accurate, it spots intentional manipulation, simple mistakes, and lots of false positives:
http://www.popsci.com/article/...
(Software Scans Journal Papers, Finds 1 In 4 Have Suspicious Images)
Interestingly, that article says precisely jack-squat about false positives.
By definition it could catch innocent mistakes, but then any scientist whose actually doing the job right should be doing their utmost to minimize said innocent mistakes.
"Maybe the University also hired the same guy"
You lost me there. I must be misunderstanding you. Could you be more precise?
Pardon me if I misinterpreted you, but you seemed to be saying that Bucci was hired by either the University or Infascelli himself (Bucci is the only expert currently in the conversation), rather then the Senator.
"My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation"
Ok, but for me that definition leaves too much room for mischief.
It's a simple term. If you have any reason to believe something, you have evidence. It may not be strong evidence, but it is (by definition) evidence.
I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit.
"the consultant [nature.com] who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past"
Yes, and it found this too: "the 2013 Food and Nutrition Sciences paper was retracted, with a citation of “self-plagiarism”. However, the journal noted that the results were still valid and that it considered the issues an “honest error” -- Nature.com
Read the links at the bottom of the article.
In December of '13 this exact computer researcher (Enrico Bucci) used this exact method to completely discredit a researcher who is only related to the GM team in that they worked at the same University. It was bad enough there was a police investigation of the guy:
http://www.nature.com/news/ima...
It's just gotten worse for poor Alfredo Fusco since then:
http://retractionwatch.com/201...
But even with those results it doesn't change the fact that the software isn't enough to go on by itself because it produces way too many false positives to be able to rely on its results alone.
"A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent"
If you read the link to La Rebublica in Nature: "according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Infascelli said that there is no substance to these allegations, and that an expert that he consulted about the papers had ruled out the possibility of data manipulation" (Nature.com), it appears the rector's investigating committee has consulted an expert on images and the expert said there was no evidence of any problems. Nature seems to have confused things a bit and its in fact the committee that's consulted the expert.
What I'd like to know, and what Nature doesn't tell us, is the content of the leak to the press: "details of the confidential findings of the investigation committee — composed of scientists in and outside of Naples — were leaked to the Italian press" (Nature.com).
Senator Cattaneo hired the guy who destroyed Alfredo Fusco. This piece has a much longer (and much more hostile to Infascelli) write-up:
http://www.biofortified.org/20...
Maybe the University also hired the same guy, to look into the same thing, at the same time. He would be the logical go-to-guy for all involved.
My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation.
In this case it is possible their software is fucked-up, but a) at least some of their data is based the study authors submitting photos that humans couldn't tell apart either, and b) the consultant who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past.
A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent.
Or they can switch back to the non-GMO version. Which they can acquire from their local agricultural universities seed bank if the for-profit seed-dealer in the Country is only selling GM seeds.
In the US Farming is (and pretty much always has been) a business with a large number of players of a huge variety of sizes. To some extent, the little guys are always at the mercy of the big guys because that's how business works. Which is a fancy-ass way of saying that if farmers are dependent on Monsanto for a specific seed that's because it makes them more money.
OTOH, in Europe (this goes back to the feudal system) agriculture is a much different beast, with much longer traditions, and a much less pronounced "oh that major change to everything we do will increase profits by 1%? let's change everything we do" attitude.
There is evidence. There's the analysis of the images. It may be evidence you dislike. It may be total bullshit. But it a) exists in the physical world in which we reside, and b) implies that these the data papers are based on shit the authors made up. That is (by definition) evidence that the authors committed both scientific misconduct and fraud.
Don't get me wrong here. As I said, it's possible the evidence is total bullshit. Maybe the image analyzers don't understand how similar different images of goats are to each-other, or the journals in question lost the images the papers authors sent in and re-used goat-pics they had laying around from the last paper, or any other number of explanations that would vindicate the papers' authors.
But just because the papers' authors could theoretically be vindicated, that does not imply that they don't need to be vindicated. And, in the English language, you only need to be vindicated if there is evidence against you.
What would you call it if somebody made up a bunch of numbers to make climate change look non-existant?
In other words, in a scientific context "fraud" is not a legal term referring to actual monetary gain. It's making shit up because you want it to be true. Which is precisely what they're accused of.
Moreover, the scientists in question probably got their funding from some element of the Italian food industry, which is death on GMOs partly because they'd lose market-share to the dreaded Americans if Nebraskan GM corn were legal in Italy. They certainly hope to get future funding due to the notoriety they gained by fighting the good fight for the non-GM Italian agricultural sector.
Actually the Irish we got mostly spoke what you would call Gaelic, and everyone else calls Irish. The Irish that managed to stay in their homeland throughout the famine tended to be the English-speakers, which is why today almost everyone there primarily speaks English. During the Civil War both the Irish and Germans tended to be in their own segregated units, because they had trouble communicating in English.
As for the religious differences, the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism was enough to burn Germany to ground during the 30 years war, and damn near everyone else fought at least one pointless brutal Civil War involving the conflict. It was only the rise of Humanism, and the consequent realization that fighting over God was a fucking waste of time, that allowed the two denominations to make peace.
Which means that as soon as the Muslims adopt Humanism a bit more enthusiastically that should work fine too.
When my dad grew up his grandma lived with them. When she wanted to communicate with her daughter in secret they used Swedish. Their hometown (Rockford, IL) had a Swedish paper for years.
Spanish is not disappearing any slower then Swedish did. Italian is actually still around, generally in the pre-unification Southern Italian dialects that are gone from Italy proper, and Irish is probably stronger state-side then it is in Ireland.
If Muslims aren't trying to integrate, why it half the Brits I see on TV are brown-skinned with Geordie accents?
I think Europe would be a lot better off if it had gone whole hog on the EU back in the 90s.
If leader of Europe was an actual job title, and that guy/girl/whathaveyou had the defense budgets of all the European states to work with, then it's a lot harder for a) Syria to get out of hand, b) Putin to get frisky, c) refugees to flood the continent, etc.
Moreover if somebody is responsible to the voters of Greece AND the voters of Germany, and he's got a relationship with voters in both areas, then you might actually have gotten a solution to the debt problem, rather then kicking the can down the road with what is it? Three bail-outs? Because without generous terms the Greeks will need constant bail-outs, but the Germans don't trust anyone in power in Greece so they don't give generous terms...
I really feel like I'm watching the collapse of the European project, and nobody notices.
Hell, the Chinese can co-operate with the WASP elite better then the Italians or blacks.
Got an example of that happening in Europe? Because it seems like every day somebody's freaking out about no-go-zones in Arab areas, and the next day some pretty blond newscaster is sitting in cafe talking to quite friendly people about how she should already be dead.
And in the states we get plenty of Arab neighborhoods. They're quite non-violent because there's less drinking.
Relentlessly, annoyingly commercial, tho. People who actually know Arabs would not think "oh shit a terrorist" when some Arab kid shows up at their Walmart with cash to buy cell phones. They think "I wonder what poor sucker is buying those?" They actually voted Bush the first time.
That's a bit extreme.
The thing is that all Europeans, Muslim Arab ethnics as well as native European humanists/Christians tend to have far fewer kids then their neighbors.
And while cultural change is inevitable in an immigrant society, you generally don't get wholesale replacement. You get a new assimilated culture that takes most of it's traditions from the original, while gaining some from the new guys (ie: the US is still basically an English, Protestant country, despite the fact nobody admits to being ethnically English and we've borrowed Halloween/Christmas Trees/Italian food etc. from newcomers).
The problem these guys have is not gonna be that their plan is stupid, it's gonna be that getting a bunch of Libertarian internet activists to a) actually follow the fuck through and move to New Hampshire, b) show up to vote in boring off-years elections when nobody actually votes, and c) all vote the same fucking way even if both candidates disagree with them on some issue; is pretty much the definition of impossible. Especially c).
Which is why if they really wanted to make the most of their voting power they should be voting third-party Libertarian candidates into power instead.
Not sure that would help.
State-side third parties are the homes of people who strongly prefer ideological purity to policy results, which means they tend to schism whenever the Party Committee can't all come to a single position on an issue. When they've got nobody in actual office this isn't a problem, but if you got 20 people into the General Court, and the Governor said "let's trade horses" and only 10 of them sign on...
Given their numbers, and the fact that NH only has 3,300 voters per representative, it would be trivial for them to elect a couple of dozen third-party candidates in office. The problem with libertarian politics in the US is that they've made a devil's bargain with the Republican party. Social issues, foreign policy, immigration, privacy rights and internal security - on all these issues Libertarians fundamentally disagree with Republicans. It's about time Libertarians realize that their alliance with Republicans has only served to dilute their message to the broader public. Get a significant number into the state legislature, and they'll be a third party that will have to be taken seriously.
Getting your voters spread that evenly across the state is damn near impossible as a coordination issue. You'd need 1,000 or so empty housing units per district to move people into, and your people would have to be willing to move to a part of the state where 1,000 units of 3,300 were vacant.
The way this helps the LP as a party is that if 1.5% of a state's population is willing to man the phones for you, walk door-to-door, etc. and the state is already the "Live free or Die!" state; then their candidates have a lot better shot at office then in Michigan or Ohio.
Look at it this way: there's 20k people moving there. There're 400 Reps at the State Court. The average State Rep race is going to have 50 Libertarian-leaning volunteers. Representing 3,300 people each (most districts seem to be multi-member, so the average district size is probably in the 6k-7k range). In the states I'm familiar a State Rep has 90-120k constituents is very lucky to have a half-dozen committed volunteers. Who, unlike votes, can volunteer across district lines.
I don't know if they'll use the Libertarian Party label. I doubt it -- there's not really a penalty to being a Republican so Libertarian you could be in the LP, assuming you've got dozens of FSP volunteers to cover your ass when election time comes; whereas Third Party tickets tend to be the kiss of death. But they're destined to have some major impact, and it will be quite interesting to watch.
Turnout for state-level races tends to be under 50%, and some of the population is too young to vote, so that 1.5% is probably gonna be a full 5% of the electorate. Assuming a) they all show up on election day, and b) they all (or at least a reasonably large proportion of them) vote the same way.
A 5% voting block is pretty important. It really helps that they are in a state where they won't be the only people going "live free or die," and that the state's legislature is so fucking huge. With a 400-member lower House, there's only 3k or so people per legislator, which means it's much easier to get in on the ground floor then it would be in Cali.
The problem these guys have is not gonna be that their plan is stupid, it's gonna be that getting a bunch of Libertarian internet activists to a) actually follow the fuck through and move to New Hampshire, b) show up to vote in boring off-years elections when nobody actually votes, and c) all vote the same fucking way even if both candidates disagree with them on some issue; is pretty much the definition of impossible. Especially c).
That said, I wish them luck. Whatever happens, this is a lot more productive then the internet activists typical routine of posting a rant, and then concluding that the process is rigged/corruption is rampant/the parties are Fascistic Nazi-lites/etc. when everything isn't fixed in an hour.
Dude,
What country do you live in?
I live in the one where McDonald got shot, and his killer wasn't even charged until it was clear a failure to charge the guy would result in a riot. And you know the cop's going to get off with a mistrial at best, because a) it's very difficult to convict people who have the money for their own lawyers and go to trial, and b) it's almost impossible to convict cops. In this case it's worse because the Supremes have made it very easy to let a police officer off for killing someone who is walking away from the police while carrying a weapon.
This is fucking America. Stupid and vicious is our racial policy, has been since that time a dude whose sister-in-law doubled as his sex slave wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Are you sure you understand zero-sum game in the context of this debate?
Because a zero-sum game means that every gain for privacy has to be a loss for security. The scenario I brought up (the government has access to everything, but only if it can acquire it through some sort of bureaucratic procedure such as the warrant process it uses to get literally everything else) is a gain for both.
The sentence you're taking issue with specifically is hyperbole. It is complete nonsense in a literal logical sense, because it is too fucking extreme.
The rest of my post is a point about how damn difficult it is to move forward on a serious policy issue when your entire side assumes someone who only 92.4% agrees with you is arguing in bad faith. You are taking something that may have been perfectly reasonable in-context as a blanket statement of evil government policy; despite the fact that a) the guy involved is not actually in-government (he seems to be a "consultant," which generally means he makes money from telling rich conservative businessman what they want to hear about the government), and b) we have no context so we don't know whether he was being evil in-context.
You, yourself, have just added another extremely interesting data-point by ignoring the possibility that a ridiculously extreme statement was hyperbole.
BTW, that post is probably the most on-topic Slashdot post I have ever made, given that the article is about the average Americans preference for internet surveillance.
The only Dem-side bit of the working class that is currently worked up is the black bit, and they're worked up because the cops like to give them extra-special attention, not because they're pissed at the double-whammy of a) declining economic clout, and b) extreme (and quick) cultural change.They hate Trump with a passion that has to be seen to be believed. The reaction he gets from the white working class reminds them of some dark times, and with African-Americans the dark times are really dark.
The Hillary-Bernie split is a fight within the white middle and upper classes. Blacks and Latinos are fairly firm in their support for Hillary, and the working-class unions are using to push Hillary to the left on economic issues.
I agree that it's depressing that someone like Trump can do so well in the polls, saying the things he says.
But at the same time, I don't quite understand the relevancy of the points you listed here?
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
America has a long history of encouraging people to get/keep a job. Traditionally, it's been the honorable thing to do, if one wants to be a productive member of society and not mooch of of the labor of others. Technology ALWAYS winds up changing around the type of labor worth paying humans to do. Historically though, it also winds up increasing the total number of available jobs. (For example, just think how many new careers were created with the advent of television. Think how many new jobs were created by the personal computer.) There is always some pain during periods of transition -- but people are remarkably good at adapting, if we're pushed up against a wall and forced to do so. We lost a LOT of jobs in manufacturing to the Chinese and others -- but there are still plenty of things to be done. Might need a little training or education to do them, but it's possible.
And historically a charge of Heavy Horse destroyed almost every infantry formation. Until Pikes became common. Then the push of Pike decided battles. Until guns got really good in the late 16th century.
The current reality is that the elite (top 20% or so) manage to fire a bunch of working class schmucks, replace them with Chinese, and the working class guys end up with shittier jobs. Reeducation would work great, if we were fucking Denmark, and college was fucking free. But we're not. It's $10kish a year in-state, $20kish out-state, and $30k+ in private schools. The way you pay it is a 10-year loan.
Which is kinda difficult for a 50-something to re-pay.
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
I disagree with this assertion. Most people I know consider poverty a real problem. But the idea that government forcibly taking a portion of everyone's income to help these people out bothers me. Charity, by definition, is voluntary. If you can't comprehend or accept this, you may as well advocate all the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something.
So you oppose Social Security?
Because that's pretty much exactly how it works. Almost all of the benefits are paid for by a payroll tax on people who are currently working.
That's kind of my problem with this argument. People freak out about free stuff for people, imply it's one step towards Communist Revolution ("the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something"), except for instances that already exist.
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
Perhaps so, but can you blame them? Big pickup trucks aren't cheap. How will people be compensated for the loss of use of expensive vehicles they purchased, if you decide they're no longer allowed due to the climate change issues they help cause? The truth is, we don't yet have better solutions for the need for cars and trucks on our roads, or else we'd already all be using them.
And yet whenever somebody proposes trying to build an alternative people oppose it to death because they already have their pick-up.
No mass transit, except hourly buses; high-speed rail is anathema because it has startup costs; Bike lanes are a huge political lift in most towns; etc.
That's kinda the problem. You can't actually offer an alternative to pick-ups without running into a buzz-saw of bullshit, so you might as well ban them entirely and let the poor schmucks in rural working class areas come to the decision to implement a
The white working class's problems with the elite are way deeper then disgust at Progressivism. If it wasn't they'd be running into the arms of a guy who spent the past few years in DC fighting progressivism, rather then the one who invited the Clintons to his wedding.
In particular the Right's insistence on spending the past few years demanding an end to Obamaism, without articulating a coherent and plausible alternative (note to morons: anything that involves Social Security cuts is roughly as plausible as my plot to restore Her Majesty Elizabeth II to the throne of Ohio), and frequent government brinksmanship as part of said plan to end Obamaism, without actually managing to accomplish anything is a huge part of the problem.
Did you read the actual article giving the quote? Because ion my experience if one is not an expert in the field it almost never makes sense to conclude that some guy's take on a topic supported by evidence you haven't read is not bullshit.
Let me give you the whole quote from the Ars article that has the quote:
"Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
That could mean what you're saying, and that he thinks that he needs a database of 100% of everyone's communication or there's no security. It could also mean he wants some bureaucratic tool to search google's servers for specific targeted info from specific targeted individuals. To actually figure that shit out you'd need a whole hell of a lot more context, including shit like the exact phrasing of the conversation prior to his statement.
But let's do what you have done, assume bad faith. Is that shit gonna work? The answer is yes, assuming we've got the votes to replace Giorgio's ally McConnell, but we don't.
Otherwise it's terribly stupid because the only bit of the government designed to check the NSA is Congress, and Mitch is one of the most important members of Congress. You need Mitch McConnell or you'll get warmed-over bullshit served to you as NSA reform, and you ain't gonna get him if you assume Fascism. Especially if it's true.
Always remember: to win Civil Rights it took both Dr. King (assuming good faith, being nice to the opposition, and figuring out which horses he could trade to end up ahead) and Malcolm X (who took a rather more radical line, altho by the time he was shot he did acknowledge that white people were not the result of a twisted science experiment). It also took an rather complicated about-face on segregation by the guy who invented the idea of Japanese Internment.
Remember that famous line from Harrison Ford? "George, you can type this shit, but you sure has hell can't say it."
I doubt he was getting that kind of feedback from 19-year-old then-unknowns Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen. Probably not the more established actors either. Maybe Samuel L.