Here's a conversation I can't believe hasn't happened yet; if only it would...
Scientist: Science explains how reality works.
Intelligent Designist: Science merely describes mechanisms that God put in place to govern the universe. We don't dispute physics after all, ha ha.
SC: Evolution explains where we came from; we slowly get better over time, see...
ID: Evolution is a crock. God made us this way.
SC: Then, just like momentum being the method God uses to keep objects in motion, why can't evolution be the method God used to create us?
ID: (pause) Ummmmmmmmmmmmm...
See what I mean? One possibility is that they're BOTH right. But acknowledging in public that the other side WAS credible after all would make both sides lose face. Can't have that!
I ran Reiser over a year on an 80-gig partition. It started out just fine; speedy, recovered instantly upon reboots, etc. But as time went on, it got slower... and slower... and slooooower... until I got so fed up with it I got another 80-gig drive just so I could get rid of Reiser. It's all on ext3 now and literally five to ten times faster. It took a good 10 seconds just to start xv on Reiser (my machine is a 1.2-GHz, ATA100, 320M of RAM, linux 2.4.18); on ext3, it takes half a second. Netscape went from a minute to load to a mere five seconds. Adding indices to a Postgres database to speed up searches made it SLOWER because of the extra disk access. I was lucky to get 2 meg/second data transfer rates on file copies with Reiser; with ext3, I get 15 meg/second. Sustained. And bear in mind; these comparisons are all done on the same hardware, same kernel version. And no, since I can sense you all about to ask this, I didn't have the Reiser Debugging enabled in the kernel.
Stay away from Reiser unless you only make 50-meg partitions. Trust me. Sure, it's "stable" and doesn't corrupt data, but ext3 combines the best of ext2 and Reiser... and doesn't bring your machine to its knees.
Does anyone else get this mental image of a guy in a trenchcoat standing in a dark alley holding his coat open to reveal the rows of.Net CDs lining it? "Pssst; hey, kid... over here... the first one is free... just a little taste to whet your appetite... send all your friends my way..."
At least it isn't physically addictive. But then again, neither is gambling...
Our laws should be 1) outlines 2) able to be abolished by the people 3) completely public
They are able to be abolished by the People. It's called "Jury Nullification." It's been our right ever since America was formed. If a jury thinks that the person on trial is guilty of a crime, but thinks it's an unjust law and thus he shouldn't be punished for it, they just say so and the person goes free. Yet no judge in this nation will allow anyone to even mention it in an actual court, for fear the jury will discover it has this power and - gasp - actually use it.
Learn all you can about it, tell your friends... and the next time you're on jury duty, don't forget it.
To learn more about Jury Nullification, visit your local library.. oh wait, never mind.. erm, visit this link instead.
First of all... this isn't the "first sign of trouble." This is just the sign of trouble that broke the camel's back. Do rats stay on a sinking ship? No; they're usually on their way out by the time the first sign of trouble appears. We've tried making things better. If your "vote the idiots out of office" philosophy had any merit, we wouldn't be in this mess. The US is under attack because our foreign policy has for decades been something like "Bomb them if they can't fight back." Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan... long-distance bombing. Killing by remote control, and for what? Why do a million Iraqis have to die thanks to economic sanctions and bombing runs? What, because their leader doesn't like us? Who can blame him? Yeah, he's an evil sadist, and we were probably right to drive him back inside his borders when he invaded Kuwait, but does that give us the right to keep trying to destroy his country for the past decade, long after he's any threat whatsoever? I don't think so.
Sure, we can vote the people who decide things like "Let's bomb Iraq in perpetuity" out of office, but they're just replaced by virtual clones of the people we pushed out. They say whatever they think we want to hear to convince us to vote for them, then get into office and do whatever the hell they like. "No new taxes." "Gays in the military." Broken campaign promises are the norm, not the exception. And once the people we elected pass laws we don't like, what the hell good does voting them out of office do? All the laws they created are still there.
So ask yourself: "Does my vote really matter?" If you're open-minded and objective enough, you'll realize "Nope; it doesn't matter anymore than an umbrella in a hurricane." And some of us have sat here watching it happen for decades, doing all we can with votes and protests and demonstrations and even civil disobedience, and can't stand it anymore. They've had their chance... and they'll never change. And we can't make them change. We don't have enough power... and probably never will. All we can do is desert the sinking ship and hope it doesn't take down too many millions of innocent people with it.
There are millions of criteria to consider when planning a move of this magnitude. Geek job availability, native friendliness, open-minded government, language, weather, standard of living, the list is virtually endless. How hard do they make it to get their equivalent of a green card? Do they even allow emigrants from the US to live there? Do they let them work there? And as if that wasn't bad enough, then you have to prioritize each criterion into a proper list. Which is more important to you? Which can you live without? Some people may list criteria important to them but which others couldn't care less about; how gay-friendly are they? Do they allow gay marriages? How about marijuana? Age of consent? What's the favorite sport of the nation? Is nudity in public allowed? Are there decent art museums? How good is their internet backbone? Can a man have seven wives if he wants? Do they, in fact, have a McDonalds?
I personally would rate their crypto-friendly quotient rather low in my priorities... after all, if they'll let two men get truly, legally married, and allow people to sit in little cafes smoking pot all they want, it isn't likely they're going to care about cryptography... and even more importantly, they aren't likely to start caring about it in the future. N'est pas?
Troll? Why Troll? I bet there are thousands of Americans who'll be fleeing this country soon. But not, I think, to Canada; it's too close to the US. I myself would be more partial to The Netherlands. They at least know what civil liberties are. They at least don't legislate morality. They at least just keep their noses out of their citizens' private affairs. To hear Ashcroft talk, US citizens have no private affairs now.
Let me share a nice quote I saw today with you all...
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering
I'd say it's abundantly apparent "our" leaders have read that statement from Hitler's right-hand man before.
Will Batgeek manage to escape The Explorer's diabolical Blue Screen of Death trap?
Will the Boy Geek get Code Red 2 removed from the Mayor's web server in time to save Geekgirl from
certain death at the hands of the truly naughty and villainous Virus Ivy?
And will the Police Chief make it to the roof in time to reboot the massive Geek Signal, without which There Is No Hope??
Can Gnutham City Survive???
Tune in next week and find out! Same geek time, same geek channel!
"Yes, Geekette? What is it? You're blue with exhaustion!"
"I had to run from the evil Gatesgamel! He shot flying Rainbow Disks at me, labeled with evil
symbols like 'XP' and 'Do not make illegal copies of this disk'! He sent his Ballmercat after me! I was nearly geeked to death!"
"Great geek in the morning! Gatesgamel, so close to Geekville? Quick! Everyone! Geek for your
lives! And hide your little geeks! Don't let them listen to his words! They'll follow him and
never geek again!"
I posted that entire essay, completely redone in HTML by me, AND with WORKING links, yesterday. Took me hours to turn that crappy text into pretty HTML. Suddenly, today, here it is on the front page of/. but all ugly and broken. But I don't care... really I don't... I'm used to being ignored by the proprietors of this site. Notice how Taco doesn't even mention anything like "UserX submitted this essay about..."? It's almost like he just came up with the entire idea himself. I don't even bother submitting interesting stories anymore because they invariably get rejected (even though they suddenly show up weeks later with credit given to someone else who submitted it weeks after I did). Guess I haven't kissed enough ass to be One Of The Cronies yet.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Okay, so he started working on it before the general public got into it... the time frame of my statement might be off, but the overall sentiment is intact and even agreed-with by you... this amounts to just more nitpicking. The simple fact is that Al Gore did a lot of Senate-type things to help the internet come into being. Perhaps if he hadn't done it, someone else would have, but he did... and here we are with OC-192's all over the place and all-optical switches and neat stuff like that because, at least in part, of him. The POINT, which everyone seems to want to avoid thinking about at all costs around here, is that the "I invented the internet" statement (which 90% of Americans think Al Gore actually said) is ridiculous fiction, but they believe it because the media have been repeating it so much that it's indistinguishable from fact now by all the sheeple who believe everything they see on CNN. This means that either the media are purposely being biased themselves, or are also sheeple who just repeat everything that some other sheep bleated at them. Either way, they're spreading lies, and are not to be believed.
Fool me once, shame on you...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Your high school or college transcript doesn't exactly show how "smart" you are, it only shows how well you managed a combination of things: intelligence, not getting on the teachers' bad sides, happiness level, social standing, how many friends you had, etc. I myself graduated high school after five years and failing English 4 twice with a final GPA of 78%... but my IQ is 183. Clearly, how well you do in school has more to do with other factors than with how "smart" you are. Why did I do so miserably? Simple: I was a geek, everyone hated me for it, and I was utterly miserable. It's amazing how much being universally despised for doing nothing more wrong than just being who you are will depress you. A depressed student is a student who gets failing grades, no matter how smart he is. You just lose the will to achieve anything important; "What does it matter whether I get an A or an F in american history?" is a question you'd hear depressed students thinking all the time if you could hear them think. I've learned infinitely more since high school about things like history than I ever learned in it. I can't even remember 90% of my high school days now, they're so traumatic. My mind just blocks them out automatically, I'm sure. But I digress.
Yes, Bush is very much just as subject to the whims of the media as Gore is. But put not thine trust in polls. God only knows who really ran the polls, who responded to them, how honest the pollsters and respondents were, etc. See my other post somewhere around here about how media outlets all act in their own best interest; it's precisely like Microsoft's hideous little Mindcraft benchmarking fiasco, if you remember that. Besides, we're talking about a poll of roughly a thousand people from all across America; that's, what, about.00037% of the population?? How accurate could that possibly be? I personally think Bush & Gore are both utter retards, and that opinion has nothing to do with college transcripts -- nor am I the only one with that opinion. I listen to what comes out of their mouths during debates (which nobody else is ever invited to speak at for some reason) and almost all of it is a childish attack on the other. "HE wants to spend all your tax money on welfare recipients!" "Oh yeah, well HE wants to increase spending and raise the national debt!" "Well, HE smells funny!" "I know you are, but what am I???"
It's almost like they WANT to look like idiots.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Then slashdot needs to get more mainstream readers somehow; otherwise, efforts like mine to educate people just might end up only preaching to the choir...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Well, there must be *something* causing the media to keep repeating provably false assertions. If it isn't bias or coercion, what could it be?
The problem with the media as a whole is that it's far far too powerful for several reasons; (1) everyone instantly believes everything they hear from any published news source; (2) the owners of these news sources have their own agendas and opinions and biases and thus just cannot have their own news programs going against these biases and agendas; (3) the owners of these news sources are very rich and very powerful and have friends who are very rich and very powerful, which means they're *always* going to be willing to subvert, warp, mangle, spindle, and mutilate the truth so that it favors the viewpoints of anyone who happens to be in power over them (first), themselves (second), and their friends (third). This mixture cannot help but lead to gross misrepresentation of facts (and lies AS fact) on the news programs that they as a group control (which is, at last count, all of them except for a few Access Television programs in various cities).
And yes, I applaud you for not quibbling about semicolons. Too many others do, though... as if it's their only means of attacking a post they don't like. Poor Jon Katz...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Just because it's been around a while doesn't make it "all right." Character assassination is the dirtiest of dirty tricks and about as morally responsible as getting your daughter's Girl Scout Troop hooked on crack. Yes, I hate both of the men in question, but I would never resort to distortion of the truth to make either of them look worse than I can make them look by simply dissemination the real truth about them (like, for example, that Al Gore is a huge proponent of that nasty Clipper Chip thing and would almost certainly start pushing it if he got elected; he cares about how we feel about censorship about as much as Metallica cares how we feel about peer-to-peer file sharing).
Gore has benefitted from it before; now he is the victim of it. I'm sure Bush is the victim of a bit too (though that Agre article is lamentably pro-Gore). The point is that you pretty much can't believe anything the press says these days, and that the people of America are mostly sheep who can't do any original thinking or research for themselves and thus are at the mercy of whatever CNN spews at them as Truth. They see it on TV; they believe it; they pass it on to the people who somehow didn't see it on TV and are believed when they do so as if they were the original source of the information to begin with. "Oh, well, I saw it on (CNN|MSNBC|ABC News|CBS News|NBC News|20/20|Nightline|The Rupert Murdoch Propaganda Network) so it must be true!"
That's what I'm trying to prevent. People need to learn that the media has opinions just as biased as the rest of humanity (being humans themselves) and are under the control of a very very few, very very powerful moguls who are more inclined to protect their peers and the very few people who might possibly have some power over them (the other moguls and almost all politicians), and thus themselves, by spreading propaganda instead of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Objective journalism just doesn't exist anymore in mainstream society. Yes, there are a few websites here and there with Truth on them, but they're so swamped by the ones that spew garbage that you'd never notice them unless someone pointed them out to you.
So here I am. Pointing things out to you. Things you would probably never be exposed to if left to your own devices and media outlets. I do this in the hope that you will learn something, even if that something is only that you mustn't believe something just because it was said by a "trusted, respected" news source like CNN.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
He didn't "help create the internet." He never claimed to have done so. To quote from the article (which you obviously didn't read at all):
"As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the
significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet
possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the
context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the
story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet.
This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches."
Yes, the internet *existed* for many years before Al got anywhere near political power. But it wasn't *popular* with anyone but techie-types until the mid-1990's, and it was then that Al, recognizing its potential, started a campaign of promoting and supporting it.
By the way, no -- I'd never vote for either Bush or Gore. They're two different facets of the same kind of evil, far as I'm concerned.
Next?
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Perhaps Philip Agre doesn't care about J. Edgar Hoover (it was more than likely before his time anyway). I haven't even looked at the entire list of his essays; there may even be one in there about Quayle (or even Hoover). Perhaps you could do some research about them.
This is another example of the typical Slashdot reaction: you see an article that you don't like, so you proceed to pick it to pieces in any way possible; all that matters is that you point out every misspelling, every uncapitalized word at the beginning of a sentence, every missing comma, every place a semicolon was used instead of a colon, etc. The fact that Philip didn't mention Quayle or Hoover in THIS ONE PARTICULAR ARTICLE has absolutely, utterly, precisely NO bearing on THIS ARTICLE'S accuracy, poignancy, or relevance. He also didn't mention that Josef Stalin murdered millions of Russians; does that mean this article can't be taken seriously? Give me a break.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
The New Science of Character Assassination Phil Agre
15 October 2000
You are welcome to forward this article electronically to anyone for any noncommercial
purpose.
The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like
when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the
polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al
Gore's character. A story in today's (10/15/00) New York Times states openly what has been clear
all along, that this campaign of character assassination has been planned and executed over a long
period by the Republicans.
--Story Link--
Character assassination is, of course, nothing new for Republicans, who mastered the art in the
days of Richard Nixon. What's new is that the press constantly repeats the lies. Not just once or
twice, not just the occasional slip, but over and over and over.
Let us consider the New York Times story in detail. Written by Alison Mitchell, it describes Al
Gore's abject apology for two trivial and much-exaggerated errors in the first debate as "the
culmination of a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice
president as flawed and untrustworthy".
The New York Times discerns four landmarks in this campaign, and they are as follows:
Landmark number one:
... in December 1997... the [Republican National] committee announced it had started a
contest to come up with a slogan for Mr. Gore after he told reporters that the hero and heroine in
the novel "Love Story" were modeled after him and his wife, Tipper. (Erich Segal, the author,
soon said that his protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, was only partly based on Mr. Gore, while Jenny
Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore.)
In this case, the RNC's claim was false. Gore had not told anyone that Love Story was based on him
and his wife. Rather, he had mentioned a newspaper article that had inaccurately said that, and was
carefully to say that he only had the article's word to go on. Observe that Mitchell repeats the
RNC's false account, and then (following the longstanding convention) makes it sound as though
Segal was contradicting Gore, when in fact he was defending him. The false "Love Story" store
continues to be repeated to the present day.
--Story Link--
Landmark number two:
So when Mr. Gore said in an interview with CNN in March 1999 that "during my service in the
United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", Senator Trent Lott of
Mississippi, the majority leader, issued this mocking statement: "During my service in the United
States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the paper clip".
The problem, of course, was that Gore's claim was correct. As the Internet's scientific
leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and
took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the
Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear
that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he
is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by
omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to
have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions,
and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches.
--Story Link-- --Story Link-- --Story Link--
Landmark number three:
On the day Mr. Gore announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim
Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode
in a wagon pulled by mules to the hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much
of his youth.
"He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and
that is not what he is", said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des
Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later
told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers
on the family farm.
The problem, again, is that Gore's claim was true. He did work on his family farm as a child.
This time, Mitchell admits that the Republicans were making it up. But she still shades the story
by making it sound as though the truth hadn't come out until later, and as though the contrary view
rests solely on the word of Gore's friends. In fact the childhood farm chores had been extensively
reported for a decade. The false claim that Gore had lied about the chores was repeated on many
occasions in the press.
--Story Link-- --Story Link--
Landmark number four:
The Republicans got help as well from an unexpected source. When the Democratic primary fight
became bitter, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey insisted that Mr. Gore had deliberately
distorted his policy positions in what he called a "pattern of misrepresentation". At one point,
Mr. Bradley spat out, "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you
don't tell the truth as a candidate?"
The problem is that Bradley is endlessly quoted to this effect without any attempt to determine
whether he is right. In fact Bradley often wrongly accused Gore of distorting his positions.
And that's it. That, according to the New York Times, is the story of the Republicans'
campaign to paint Al Gore as an embellisher. The New York Times cites four accusations, all of them
false, and in every case the New York Times either repeats the false accusations as truth or else
provides misleading accounts of them.
The New York Times' article is not an aberration. The list of false attacks on Al Gore's
character that have been circulated in the media for the last two years is extraordinary. In some
cases, as in the ones (mis)cited by the New York Times, Gore is accused of lying when he was
actually telling the truth:
Several publications have called Gore a liar in very harsh terms because he claimed that
his father was a pioneer in the civil rights movement. It is true that his father lost his nerve on
the Civil Rights Act, but that does not change the overwhelming and (until recently) universally
accepted evidence of his leadership on civil rights. Gore's assertion is perfectly accurate.
In probably the single most vicious attack of the entire campaign, several publications have
suggested that Gore lied when claiming to have been present at his sister's death. The only
evidence they offer is that he also made a political speech the same day, and Gore's driver has
explained his schedule for that day in detail.
In other cases, Gore's words are twisted, misquoted, or simply made up to make him sound as
though he were making a claim that he was not making. For example, some publications have even
claimed, falsely, that Gore literally uttered the words "inventing the Internet".
--Story Link--
There are many others:
In the closing moments of Gore's second debate with George W. Bush, Jim Lehrer falsely accused
Gore of having called Bush a "bumbler" in one of his campaign commercials.
Was this simply a mistake on Lehrer's part? Okay, but Lehrer made his "mistake" in the context
of rebuking Gore for his own miniscule mistakes in the first debate.
Gore told a a union audience that his mother had sung the "union label" song to him as a child.
Gore's comment was obviously a joke and the audience took it as a joke. Yet, incredibly, numerous
supposed journalists have asserted that he meant it seriously, or else tried (on no evidence) to
cast doubt on Gore's obviously-true claim that it was a joke.
When Gore spoke of his proposal to put Social Security and Medicare in a "lockbox", some
"journalists" accused him of dissembling on the astonishing grounds that he was not actually
proposing to put the money into a physical box.
When the Washington Post finally gave up on the "Love Story" story, pretending that it had only
recently been disproven, they moved to another falsehood. Gore had claimed that his sister was the
first volunteer for the Peace Corps. This claim was accurate, inasmuch as his sister had in fact
worked for the Corps without pay from its earliest days, only later joining its paid staff. But the
Post called Gore's claim a "lie", on the grounds that she had not worked as a volunteer *overseas*,
which Gore had never claimed; they did not mention that she worked without pay.
Gore told some students in New Hampshire the story of a Tennessee community activist who brought
his attention to a toxic dump, whereupon he looked for other examples, found Love Canal, and held
the first hearings on the issue. "Journalists" first misquoted him as having claimed to to have
started the issue, when in fact he was giving credit to the activists. Even when the misquotation
was grudgingly corrected, they continued to distort his words, as if he were claiming to have
discovered the toxic pollution at Love Canal.
In yet other cases, Gore made a trivial error that has been exaggerated by his critics, and the
exaggeration has been falsely attributed to him. Such is the case with the school in Florida that
Gore cited in the first of his debates with George W. Bush.
--Story Link--
These are just a few examples among many. People make mistakes all the time. Al Gore is one of
them, and it's surprising that an army of opposition researchers hasn't come up with more
substantive errors after fact-checking a whole life of public statements. So is George W. Bush,
whose errors during the two debates so far have been dramatically worse than those of Gore. To
start with, Bush falsely implied that the Europeans have no troops in Kosovo, when in fact they have
tens of thousands, and that the United States has significant numbers of troops in Haiti, when it
does not. And he made numerous false statements:
that Gore was outspending him, when the opposite was true;
that the rate of uninsured people was falling in Texas and rising
nationally, when the opposite was true;
that the men who killed James Byrd would be put to death, when
only two had been sentenced to death and their appeals had not been
exhausted;
that middle-income seniors would get drug coverage
immediately under his Medicare plan;
that Gore had lied about this;
that the new spending in his budget plan is equal to
the tax cuts;
that "most of the tax reductions [in his plan] go to
the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder";
that the president is unable to influence the
actions of the Food and Drug Administration;
that Hillary Clinton's 1993 national health
insurance initiative would have entailed nationalizing health care; and
that Gore had claimed to be the author of the Earned
Income Tax Credit law.
That is just a partial list of Bush's "mistakes" in two ninety-minute debates, and it doesn't
include the dubious numbers he quoted from Republicans in the Senate or the mess he made of
education, taxes, Social Security, and the Middle East. Nor does it include the "mistakes" that
littered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, or the especially egregious "mistakes"
of his brutal campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and so on.
--Story Link--
With only a few exceptions (like the one just cited), the press has gone to great lengths to
cover up or minimize Bush's false statements. Press coverage of the first debate focused
overwhelmingly on Gore's two comparatively trivial errors and on endless suggestions that Gore was
rude for having sighed several times.
--Story Link--
Of course, the sighs were often exaggerated by turning the volume up. (Falsely calling someone a
liar, as Bush did several times, is not rude?) Pundits bizarrely praised Bush for his command of
the issues after the first debate despite his lengthy catalog of errors:
--Catalog Link--
And the 10/5/00 Washington Post buried the Democrats' list of Bush errors at the end of a long
story about Bush's accusations against Gore.
The problem is systemic. A reporter for a British newspaper, the Observer, was struck at the
completely different approaches of the reporters covering Gore and Bush, and reported a disturbing
incident in which a Washington Post reporter well-known for her open hostility to Gore held a toy
gun to his head.
--Story
Link--
The press, following the lead of Republican "investigators", has repeatedly falsified and spun
the famous Buddhist temple event, among others.
--Story Link--
They have also falsified and exaggerated Gore's performance in earlier debates, thereby creating
a caricuture of him as a vicious attacker.
--Story Link--
Yes, the press has suggested that Bush is not mentally competent to run the country. But it has
not fabricated huge amounts of evidence to support this charge, and it has not routinely used
vocabulary that is remotely as harsh as that used against Gore. You have rarely seen the media call
Bush a "moron" or "idiot", but Gore has routinely been called much worse. Here is a very partial
list:
(I am citing the Daily Howler for most of these examples so that you can read some analysis of
them. But the Howler provides precise citations for the originals, which should be easy to look
up.)
Indeed, Bush's alleged mental incompetence is often tacitly used to excuse his falsehoods -- he
doesn't know what he's talking about, so he can't be lying. Or Gore is accused of a "pattern" of
false and exaggerated statements, but then Bush escapes the same accusation for the simple reason
that nobody bothers to gather Bush's false and exaggerated statements in one place.
This is just the press. We're not even talking about the conservatives on the Internet that have
been circulating long lists of Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations -- most of which are, of
course, themselves lies or exaggerations, including garbled and embellished versions of the already
false versions in the press. Some of these lists are credited to the RNC, but of course it is hard
to know for sure.
The new science of character assassination, then, has several components:
It starts with a strategy: a conscious choice by a political party that it is going to position
its opponent in a certain way. The 10/15/00 Washington Post quotes a Republican consultant as
saying that "PR 101 is define your opponent before he tries to define himself", and the whole
campaign is clearly organized by the principles of PR.
It requires a clearinghouse to distribute "facts" that fit the strategy. In this case the burden
has been carried by the Republican National Committee and by the office of House majority leader
Dick Armey, which got its start by circulating the original fraudulent charges from Wired News about
Gore's Internet statement.
It requires rank-and-file supporters who are willing to pass along any junk that fits the party
line.
But above all, it requires a press corps that has decided to go along with it. Part of the
problem is that the press operates in packs -- an echo chamber of lazy pundits in which every "fact"
that fits a prevailing stereotype gets endlessly repeated.
But it's not just that. It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch's media properties, such as Fox
and the New York Post, publish smears against people who disagree with Murdoch's far-right views.
But it can hardly be an accident that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated
Press have all assigned reporters to the Gore campaign who write, day in and day out, the same sorts
of exaggerated smears. To be sure, the press is not unanimous in spreading Republican lies as truth;
the contrast between the NYT/Post/AP axis and the calm reporting of the Los Angeles Times could
hardly be greater. But the Post, Times, and AP, all well-connected and widely syndicated, set the
tone for the press as a whole. The fix is clearly in, and these establishment media operations are
clearly down with it. They see which way the wind is blowing, and they don't want to get left
behind.
A kind of coup is in effect, continuing the pattern of the Whitewater hoax and impeachment. If
the far right succeeds in its campaign, then the incoming government will be staffed by people who
are trained in the new science of character assassination. It's all they know. And having
destroyed Al Gore, they will come after the rest of us.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Philip E. Agre. All rights reserved.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Of course it's important how much the government spends. What I'm saying is that Bush & Gore will both continue to support repressing the American public (and anyone in any other country they can manage to get their tendrils into) in favor of big business, foreign politics, religious zealots, etc etc, so their budgeting ability is immaterial... and there are many candidates who not only will NOT support such repression but can also balance the budget. I won't tell you who to vote for... but I can certainly suggest who you shouldn't vote for.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
There are far more important issues at stake here than money. The government's budget is a figment of its imagination anyway. Which would you rather have: a country (or world) where the budget is balanced but you aren't allowed to choose for yourself whether to home-school your kids or send them to public school to be bullied and ridiculed and dumbed-down and shot at and punished for being individuals instead of good little sheep, or a country where there's a deficit but everyone can make ALL their own decisions for themselves? It's like comparing apples and chainsaws, really. The budget and issues such as our personal freedoms are vastly unrelated. Bush might spend less money than Gore, but they'll BOTH screw us all over with regard to personal freedoms, so the question of the budget shouldn't even be a consideration. You shouldn't be considering voting for EITHER of them... you should find someone who can balance a budget AND just live and let live, and vote for him (or her). And screw Greenspan; he's one of Them, you know...:)
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
...unless they're tearing apart someone else's opinions. Jon, you rule. Everyone else who can't seem to find anything better to do with their day than pick at every miniscule detail of every JonKatz post, get a life. The grammar isn't perfect, but whose is? Things occasionally get misspelled, but who among us has never misspelled anything? Yes, he seems preoccupied with the youth of today, but there's a good reason for that: they're the future. This world is divided into two camps: all the control freaks currently running the government, big business, and the media, and all the rest of us who are appalled at the idea of downsizing a company just so its stock value goes up a tenth of a point, or of a program like that hideous WAVE thing (which encouraged kids to rat each other out for things like "being different" just like in Nazi Germany), or of restricting anyone's access to information that might encourage them to formulate their own opinion instead of just taking on faith whatever Society crams down their throats. I'd be willing to bet that damn near everyone who reads slashdot belongs to the second camp. Guess what, folks? That puts us all on the same team. It's us, the freedom-loving people who hate the thought of being kept under the heels of those who strive to control us, against them. Like it or not, most of you people who bitch at Jon every time he puts two words together and forms a sentence are at heart actually on the same side as he is. As I am. As we all are. You just need to realize that the reason it seems like he keeps repeating himself about things like kids and Columbine is because you haven't gotten it yet, which is self-evident from the fact that 90% of the responses to anything the man says are overwhelmingly negative.
Now to address the subject of his essay: Politicians suck. Like anyone can argue with that. I haven't voted in any election in about 15 years because I realized long ago that voting is pointless. Like it or not, we do have to put up with a 2-party system. 80% of the voters in this country will vote either Republican or Democrat no matter what. Ralph Nader? He doesn't have a chance in hell because so few people take *any* third-party candidate seriously. My own parents, god love 'em, always always always vote Republican no matter what, especially now that the Republican is someone who professes to be as Christian as they are. In their minds, all that matters is that the man says "I'm a Southern Baptist." His actual opinions and views on important things like education and freedom and how much control the government has over them don't matter whatsoever; "As long as he's a Christian, he'll do the right thing." When I remind them that Bill Clinton also professed to be a Christian during election times, their faces go all grey and clammy and suddenly the topic changes to what I want for Christmas or something. They hate Clinton with a passion, you see, and can't reconcile themselves with the fact that he fooled them by saying he was a Christian (not that they voted for him, of course, since he's a Democrat). My point is that you can't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of a politician, ever, before or after they're elected:
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
"Read my lips -- no new taxes."
"I am not a crook."
How many times do we have to catch them in lies before we stop believing what they say?
It's all about control, people. They'll say quite literally anything to get voted into office; whether it's true or not, and whether they intend to follow through on it or not, doesn't enter into it. We can't even tell if Bush Jr. actually believes that the net turns kids into brutal dark-hearted monsters that yearn to take out all their frustrations on the people who're mean to them; he's saying that because he thinks that's what the majority of Americans wants to hear. Everything that they say is geared towards making us more likely to vote in their favor. We're nothing but a table full of demographics to them, and whatever they think the majority of people wants to hear is what they'll spew forth; screw the minorities and their opinions. That's the biggest fault with democracy, incidentally; if 90% of the people think that the other 10% shouldn't be allowed to, say, marry each other, even though it doesn't affect that 90% in any way whatsoever at all, period, then 27,000,000 people are just out of luck. Viewing things in percentages disguises the extent of the truth. If there are 27,000,000 people who have a certain opinion, I'd have to say it's a pretty valid one no matter what the other 90% says, and that 90% has no right whatsoever to force 27,000,000 people into a way of life that they hate... and all politicians pander to this "You'll do what we say whether you like it or not" mentality because voting is also geared around what the majority wants. "Truth," "compassion," "understanding," "tolerance"... these are all concepts which escape them utterly, and so millions upon millions of people have to suffer because whatever group outnumbers them gets to dictate how they'll live their lives. That concept sickens me, and being the freedom-loving bunch of guys slashdot readers are, it probably sickens you too.
And that's all Jon is trying to do... point out to us the fact that the politicians we're presented with every few years -- the "official" ones, of course, not those third-party and fourth-party and green-party candidates who're doomed from the word go because they favor taking some control away from the government and giving it to We, the People, where it belongs, which they of course just can't allow -- are complete idiots who spout beliefs they think will be popular in an attempt to get elected. Doesn't anyone remember the Simpsons Halloween special where Kang and Kodos, the space aliens, replaced Dole and Clinton? "It doesn't matter which one of us you vote for," they said... "Either way, your planet is doomed! Doooooomed!!" Nothing could be closer to the truth... but I suppose because it was presented as humor, nobody took it seriously. I think the show's writers were being deadly serious when they wrote that episode. And everyone who watched it knew it was true, said "Boy, that's so true," especially the part about how voting for a third-party candidate was tantamount to throwing your vote away, but then went right on with their lives afterward. Nobody thinks they have any chance of changing the very foundation of the political system, so we all just put up with it, thus guaranteeing that nothing will change. A self-perpetuating system of oppression designed to keep the powerful in power. You can't even hope to run for any office unless you have millions of dollars to throw away on advertising yourself. If this were truly an equal opportunity political system, there wouldn't be any election campaign fundraisers; all politicians would be allowed a certain number of free political ads on TV and radio and newspapers and magazines and websites. That way, nobody would have an advantage simply by virtue of being wealthier than the rest of them. "Who will pay for the ads," I hear you ask. Well, who pays for public service announcements? I think political ads are just as important to the public as PSA's are and should be just as free to those who make them. Think that'll ever happen? Think those in power (who are, remember, among the wealthiest in America) will willingly give up the advantage that their wealth gives them? Think again.
Politics as a whole stinks. Politicians stink. I can count the number of good honest politicians who actually worked for the public interest (as opposed to the interests of Big Business and themselves) in the past 50 years on one hand. And as long as we all just put up with it and keep deluding ourselves into thinking that happiness and liberty and freedom and equality for all are merely one election away, that all it'll take is the right person in the White House, we might as well just glue wool to our bodies, get down on all fours, and let the shepherds bugger us until the end of time. Why do you think "equality for all" has eluded us for hundreds of years? It should be a very simple thing to accomplish; just treat everyone like you yourself would want to be treated. The quintessence of simplicity. And I think most people do that, for the most part, except when it conflicts with their religion (which is another post entirely, although you could probably replace every instance of "politics" in this post with "religion" and be close to the truth). What's stopping us as a society from just loosening up our sphincters and letting people be who they are without trying to force them into whatever ethical/moral mold is currently in vogue? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. And now, back to the point.
Jon Katz is trying to wake you sheep up and reveal What's Really Goin' On to you. Soon as you open your eyes and break out of the social conditioning you've been subjected to all your lives, as soon as you think for yourselves instead of letting someone else do it for you, as soon as you realize the ridiculousness and idiocy that permeates all things political, as soon as you let yourselves believe that nothing is going to get any better as long as the governments of this world (yes, it isn't just the US that sucks) keep everyone under their thumbs and heels, "the healing can begin." Separately we may not have enough power to do anything about it (though I thrill to the thought of the positive changes that could be wrought on this planet if we all banded together and said "Screw you and your greed!" to those in power), but at least we don't have to keep deluding ourselves into thinking that our votes matter and we only have a choice between Republican A and Democrat B, between Kang and Kodos. Realize that saying "Don't blame me; I voted for Kodos!" isn't an excuse; we are all to blame.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
I guess since they're operating with losses in the billions now, they decided fleecing consumers a bit and calling it "research" was acceptable... let's see what they do now that they've been caught at it.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Turn on some really loud, energetic music (I find trance/techno works wonders). Just make sure it's all instrumental; words will destroy your concentration. And yes, headphones are best unless you have 1200-watt speakers and an amp to match and no roommates and you live in a house in the Australian outback.
Get really stoned. (See below.)
Close your eyes, put your head in your hands, and stare into the blackness while your ears are assaulted by Orbital or whatever music you put on (but because there're no words, it isn't distracting).
Starting from about 30,000 feet above the problem, just kinda 'think' down at it and slowly settle down upon it. This lets you see it from all approaches and angles. Feel free to glance at your monitor now and then if you need to.
Get more and more specific in your approaches. Try them all and use whatever one solves the problem best. Don't "try" to solve the problem; just go on instinct and let the solution come TO you from wherever it is solutions gather.
Rejoice.
Codeine, methamphetamines, oxygen deprivation, etc can be substituted in step 2 if you have hangups about things that are illegal but shouldn't be. I've found alcohol numbs you a little too much, but it can also be effective in small amounts. The point is that in order to solve a problem you can't rationally solve while perfectly sober, you have to numb that part of your brain that does all the "logical" thinking. A problem that escapes your every attempt to solve it logically requires turning off the "left brain" analyzer so the "right brain" (instinctive) heuristic tools can be heard above the din the left brain creates by being so loud and sure of itself. Perhaps that's why we have two brain halves... one to solve problems, and another to solve the problems the first half can't solve because it's not trying to create a solution to it, it's just letting solutions come to it and filtering out the best one. I know it makes little sense, but how better to find a solution to a problem that doesn't make sense than to try solutions that don't make sense?
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Slashdot Mirror
(PS: Yes, I do realize it's inertia, not momentum, that keeps objects in motion. It... was a pun.)
Here's a conversation I can't believe hasn't happened yet; if only it would...
Scientist: Science explains how reality works.
Intelligent Designist: Science merely describes mechanisms that God put in place to govern the universe. We don't dispute physics after all, ha ha.
SC: Evolution explains where we came from; we slowly get better over time, see...
ID: Evolution is a crock. God made us this way.
SC: Then, just like momentum being the method God uses to keep objects in motion, why can't evolution be the method God used to create us?
ID: (pause) Ummmmmmmmmmmmm...
See what I mean? One possibility is that they're BOTH right. But acknowledging in public that the other side WAS credible after all would make both sides lose face. Can't have that!
Human adults can be so childish...
Ok. Real-life, hard data?
I ran Reiser over a year on an 80-gig partition. It started out just fine; speedy, recovered instantly upon reboots, etc. But as time went on, it got slower... and slower... and slooooower... until I got so fed up with it I got another 80-gig drive just so I could get rid of Reiser. It's all on ext3 now and literally five to ten times faster. It took a good 10 seconds just to start xv on Reiser (my machine is a 1.2-GHz, ATA100, 320M of RAM, linux 2.4.18); on ext3, it takes half a second. Netscape went from a minute to load to a mere five seconds. Adding indices to a Postgres database to speed up searches made it SLOWER because of the extra disk access. I was lucky to get 2 meg/second data transfer rates on file copies with Reiser; with ext3, I get 15 meg/second. Sustained. And bear in mind; these comparisons are all done on the same hardware, same kernel version. And no, since I can sense you all about to ask this, I didn't have the Reiser Debugging enabled in the kernel.
Stay away from Reiser unless you only make 50-meg partitions. Trust me. Sure, it's "stable" and doesn't corrupt data, but ext3 combines the best of ext2 and Reiser... and doesn't bring your machine to its knees.
Does anyone else get this mental image of a guy in a trenchcoat standing in a dark alley holding his coat open to reveal the rows of .Net CDs lining it? "Pssst; hey, kid... over here... the first one is free... just a little taste to whet your appetite... send all your friends my way..."
At least it isn't physically addictive. But then again, neither is gambling...
They are able to be abolished by the People. It's called "Jury Nullification." It's been our right ever since America was formed. If a jury thinks that the person on trial is guilty of a crime, but thinks it's an unjust law and thus he shouldn't be punished for it, they just say so and the person goes free. Yet no judge in this nation will allow anyone to even mention it in an actual court, for fear the jury will discover it has this power and - gasp - actually use it.
Learn all you can about it, tell your friends... and the next time you're on jury duty, don't forget it.
To learn more about Jury Nullification, visit your local library.. oh wait, never mind.. erm, visit this link instead.
First of all... this isn't the "first sign of trouble." This is just the sign of trouble that broke the camel's back. Do rats stay on a sinking ship? No; they're usually on their way out by the time the first sign of trouble appears. We've tried making things better. If your "vote the idiots out of office" philosophy had any merit, we wouldn't be in this mess. The US is under attack because our foreign policy has for decades been something like "Bomb them if they can't fight back." Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan... long-distance bombing. Killing by remote control, and for what? Why do a million Iraqis have to die thanks to economic sanctions and bombing runs? What, because their leader doesn't like us? Who can blame him? Yeah, he's an evil sadist, and we were probably right to drive him back inside his borders when he invaded Kuwait, but does that give us the right to keep trying to destroy his country for the past decade, long after he's any threat whatsoever? I don't think so.
Sure, we can vote the people who decide things like "Let's bomb Iraq in perpetuity" out of office, but they're just replaced by virtual clones of the people we pushed out. They say whatever they think we want to hear to convince us to vote for them, then get into office and do whatever the hell they like. "No new taxes." "Gays in the military." Broken campaign promises are the norm, not the exception. And once the people we elected pass laws we don't like, what the hell good does voting them out of office do? All the laws they created are still there.
So ask yourself: "Does my vote really matter?" If you're open-minded and objective enough, you'll realize "Nope; it doesn't matter anymore than an umbrella in a hurricane." And some of us have sat here watching it happen for decades, doing all we can with votes and protests and demonstrations and even civil disobedience, and can't stand it anymore. They've had their chance... and they'll never change. And we can't make them change. We don't have enough power... and probably never will. All we can do is desert the sinking ship and hope it doesn't take down too many millions of innocent people with it.
There are millions of criteria to consider when planning a move of this magnitude. Geek job availability, native friendliness, open-minded government, language, weather, standard of living, the list is virtually endless. How hard do they make it to get their equivalent of a green card? Do they even allow emigrants from the US to live there? Do they let them work there? And as if that wasn't bad enough, then you have to prioritize each criterion into a proper list. Which is more important to you? Which can you live without? Some people may list criteria important to them but which others couldn't care less about; how gay-friendly are they? Do they allow gay marriages? How about marijuana? Age of consent? What's the favorite sport of the nation? Is nudity in public allowed? Are there decent art museums? How good is their internet backbone? Can a man have seven wives if he wants? Do they, in fact, have a McDonalds?
I personally would rate their crypto-friendly quotient rather low in my priorities... after all, if they'll let two men get truly, legally married, and allow people to sit in little cafes smoking pot all they want, it isn't likely they're going to care about cryptography... and even more importantly, they aren't likely to start caring about it in the future. N'est pas?
Troll? Why Troll? I bet there are thousands of Americans who'll be fleeing this country soon. But not, I think, to Canada; it's too close to the US. I myself would be more partial to The Netherlands. They at least know what civil liberties are. They at least don't legislate morality. They at least just keep their noses out of their citizens' private affairs. To hear Ashcroft talk, US citizens have no private affairs now.
Let me share a nice quote I saw today with you all...
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering
I'd say it's abundantly apparent "our" leaders have read that statement from Hitler's right-hand man before.
Will the Boy Geek get Code Red 2 removed from the Mayor's web server in time to save Geekgirl from certain death at the hands of the truly naughty and villainous Virus Ivy?
And will the Police Chief make it to the roof in time to reboot the massive Geek Signal, without which There Is No Hope??
Can Gnutham City Survive???
Tune in next week and find out! Same geek time, same geek channel!
"Yes, Geekette? What is it? You're blue with exhaustion!"
"I had to run from the evil Gatesgamel! He shot flying Rainbow Disks at me, labeled with evil symbols like 'XP' and 'Do not make illegal copies of this disk'! He sent his Ballmercat after me! I was nearly geeked to death!"
"Great geek in the morning! Gatesgamel, so close to Geekville? Quick! Everyone! Geek for your lives! And hide your little geeks! Don't let them listen to his words! They'll follow him and never geek again!"
I posted that entire essay, completely redone in HTML by me, AND with WORKING links, yesterday. Took me hours to turn that crappy text into pretty HTML. Suddenly, today, here it is on the front page of /. but all ugly and broken. But I don't care... really I don't... I'm used to being ignored by the proprietors of this site. Notice how Taco doesn't even mention anything like "UserX submitted this essay about..."? It's almost like he just came up with the entire idea himself. I don't even bother submitting interesting stories anymore because they invariably get rejected (even though they suddenly show up weeks later with credit given to someone else who submitted it weeks after I did). Guess I haven't kissed enough ass to be One Of The Cronies yet.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Okay, so he started working on it before the general public got into it... the time frame of my statement might be off, but the overall sentiment is intact and even agreed-with by you... this amounts to just more nitpicking. The simple fact is that Al Gore did a lot of Senate-type things to help the internet come into being. Perhaps if he hadn't done it, someone else would have, but he did... and here we are with OC-192's all over the place and all-optical switches and neat stuff like that because, at least in part, of him. The POINT, which everyone seems to want to avoid thinking about at all costs around here, is that the "I invented the internet" statement (which 90% of Americans think Al Gore actually said) is ridiculous fiction, but they believe it because the media have been repeating it so much that it's indistinguishable from fact now by all the sheeple who believe everything they see on CNN. This means that either the media are purposely being biased themselves, or are also sheeple who just repeat everything that some other sheep bleated at them. Either way, they're spreading lies, and are not to be believed.
Fool me once, shame on you...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Your high school or college transcript doesn't exactly show how "smart" you are, it only shows how well you managed a combination of things: intelligence, not getting on the teachers' bad sides, happiness level, social standing, how many friends you had, etc. I myself graduated high school after five years and failing English 4 twice with a final GPA of 78%... but my IQ is 183. Clearly, how well you do in school has more to do with other factors than with how "smart" you are. Why did I do so miserably? Simple: I was a geek, everyone hated me for it, and I was utterly miserable. It's amazing how much being universally despised for doing nothing more wrong than just being who you are will depress you. A depressed student is a student who gets failing grades, no matter how smart he is. You just lose the will to achieve anything important; "What does it matter whether I get an A or an F in american history?" is a question you'd hear depressed students thinking all the time if you could hear them think. I've learned infinitely more since high school about things like history than I ever learned in it. I can't even remember 90% of my high school days now, they're so traumatic. My mind just blocks them out automatically, I'm sure. But I digress.
Yes, Bush is very much just as subject to the whims of the media as Gore is. But put not thine trust in polls. God only knows who really ran the polls, who responded to them, how honest the pollsters and respondents were, etc. See my other post somewhere around here about how media outlets all act in their own best interest; it's precisely like Microsoft's hideous little Mindcraft benchmarking fiasco, if you remember that. Besides, we're talking about a poll of roughly a thousand people from all across America; that's, what, about .00037% of the population?? How accurate could that possibly be? I personally think Bush & Gore are both utter retards, and that opinion has nothing to do with college transcripts -- nor am I the only one with that opinion. I listen to what comes out of their mouths during debates (which nobody else is ever invited to speak at for some reason) and almost all of it is a childish attack on the other. "HE wants to spend all your tax money on welfare recipients!" "Oh yeah, well HE wants to increase spending and raise the national debt!" "Well, HE smells funny!" "I know you are, but what am I???"
It's almost like they WANT to look like idiots.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Then slashdot needs to get more mainstream readers somehow; otherwise, efforts like mine to educate people just might end up only preaching to the choir...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Well, there must be *something* causing the media to keep repeating provably false assertions. If it isn't bias or coercion, what could it be?
The problem with the media as a whole is that it's far far too powerful for several reasons; (1) everyone instantly believes everything they hear from any published news source; (2) the owners of these news sources have their own agendas and opinions and biases and thus just cannot have their own news programs going against these biases and agendas; (3) the owners of these news sources are very rich and very powerful and have friends who are very rich and very powerful, which means they're *always* going to be willing to subvert, warp, mangle, spindle, and mutilate the truth so that it favors the viewpoints of anyone who happens to be in power over them (first), themselves (second), and their friends (third). This mixture cannot help but lead to gross misrepresentation of facts (and lies AS fact) on the news programs that they as a group control (which is, at last count, all of them except for a few Access Television programs in various cities).
And yes, I applaud you for not quibbling about semicolons. Too many others do, though... as if it's their only means of attacking a post they don't like. Poor Jon Katz...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Just because it's been around a while doesn't make it "all right." Character assassination is the dirtiest of dirty tricks and about as morally responsible as getting your daughter's Girl Scout Troop hooked on crack. Yes, I hate both of the men in question, but I would never resort to distortion of the truth to make either of them look worse than I can make them look by simply dissemination the real truth about them (like, for example, that Al Gore is a huge proponent of that nasty Clipper Chip thing and would almost certainly start pushing it if he got elected; he cares about how we feel about censorship about as much as Metallica cares how we feel about peer-to-peer file sharing).
Gore has benefitted from it before; now he is the victim of it. I'm sure Bush is the victim of a bit too (though that Agre article is lamentably pro-Gore). The point is that you pretty much can't believe anything the press says these days, and that the people of America are mostly sheep who can't do any original thinking or research for themselves and thus are at the mercy of whatever CNN spews at them as Truth. They see it on TV; they believe it; they pass it on to the people who somehow didn't see it on TV and are believed when they do so as if they were the original source of the information to begin with. "Oh, well, I saw it on (CNN|MSNBC|ABC News|CBS News|NBC News|20/20|Nightline|The Rupert Murdoch Propaganda Network) so it must be true!"
That's what I'm trying to prevent. People need to learn that the media has opinions just as biased as the rest of humanity (being humans themselves) and are under the control of a very very few, very very powerful moguls who are more inclined to protect their peers and the very few people who might possibly have some power over them (the other moguls and almost all politicians), and thus themselves, by spreading propaganda instead of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Objective journalism just doesn't exist anymore in mainstream society. Yes, there are a few websites here and there with Truth on them, but they're so swamped by the ones that spew garbage that you'd never notice them unless someone pointed them out to you.
So here I am. Pointing things out to you. Things you would probably never be exposed to if left to your own devices and media outlets. I do this in the hope that you will learn something, even if that something is only that you mustn't believe something just because it was said by a "trusted, respected" news source like CNN.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
He didn't "help create the internet." He never claimed to have done so. To quote from the article (which you obviously didn't read at all):
"As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches."
Yes, the internet *existed* for many years before Al got anywhere near political power. But it wasn't *popular* with anyone but techie-types until the mid-1990's, and it was then that Al, recognizing its potential, started a campaign of promoting and supporting it.
By the way, no -- I'd never vote for either Bush or Gore. They're two different facets of the same kind of evil, far as I'm concerned.
Next?
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Perhaps Philip Agre doesn't care about J. Edgar Hoover (it was more than likely before his time anyway). I haven't even looked at the entire list of his essays; there may even be one in there about Quayle (or even Hoover). Perhaps you could do some research about them.
This is another example of the typical Slashdot reaction: you see an article that you don't like, so you proceed to pick it to pieces in any way possible; all that matters is that you point out every misspelling, every uncapitalized word at the beginning of a sentence, every missing comma, every place a semicolon was used instead of a colon, etc. The fact that Philip didn't mention Quayle or Hoover in THIS ONE PARTICULAR ARTICLE has absolutely, utterly, precisely NO bearing on THIS ARTICLE'S accuracy, poignancy, or relevance. He also didn't mention that Josef Stalin murdered millions of Russians; does that mean this article can't be taken seriously? Give me a break.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
The New Science of Character Assassination
Phil Agre
15 October 2000
You are welcome to forward this article electronically to anyone for any noncommercial purpose.
The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character. A story in today's (10/15/00) New York Times states openly what has been clear all along, that this campaign of character assassination has been planned and executed over a long period by the Republicans.
--Story Link--
Character assassination is, of course, nothing new for Republicans, who mastered the art in the days of Richard Nixon. What's new is that the press constantly repeats the lies. Not just once or twice, not just the occasional slip, but over and over and over.
Let us consider the New York Times story in detail. Written by Alison Mitchell, it describes Al Gore's abject apology for two trivial and much-exaggerated errors in the first debate as "the culmination of a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy".
The New York Times discerns four landmarks in this campaign, and they are as follows:
... in December 1997 ... the [Republican National] committee announced it had started a
contest to come up with a slogan for Mr. Gore after he told reporters that the hero and heroine in
the novel "Love Story" were modeled after him and his wife, Tipper. (Erich Segal, the author,
soon said that his protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, was only partly based on Mr. Gore, while Jenny
Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore.)
In this case, the RNC's claim was false. Gore had not told anyone that Love Story was based on him and his wife. Rather, he had mentioned a newspaper article that had inaccurately said that, and was carefully to say that he only had the article's word to go on. Observe that Mitchell repeats the RNC's false account, and then (following the longstanding convention) makes it sound as though Segal was contradicting Gore, when in fact he was defending him. The false "Love Story" store continues to be repeated to the present day.
--Story Link--
So when Mr. Gore said in an interview with CNN in March 1999 that "during my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, issued this mocking statement: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the paper clip".
The problem, of course, was that Gore's claim was correct. As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
On the day Mr. Gore announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode in a wagon pulled by mules to the hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much of his youth.
"He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and that is not what he is", said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers on the family farm.
The problem, again, is that Gore's claim was true. He did work on his family farm as a child. This time, Mitchell admits that the Republicans were making it up. But she still shades the story by making it sound as though the truth hadn't come out until later, and as though the contrary view rests solely on the word of Gore's friends. In fact the childhood farm chores had been extensively reported for a decade. The false claim that Gore had lied about the chores was repeated on many occasions in the press.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
The Republicans got help as well from an unexpected source. When the Democratic primary fight became bitter, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey insisted that Mr. Gore had deliberately distorted his policy positions in what he called a "pattern of misrepresentation". At one point, Mr. Bradley spat out, "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?"
The problem is that Bradley is endlessly quoted to this effect without any attempt to determine whether he is right. In fact Bradley often wrongly accused Gore of distorting his positions.
And that's it. That, according to the New York Times, is the story of the Republicans' campaign to paint Al Gore as an embellisher. The New York Times cites four accusations, all of them false, and in every case the New York Times either repeats the false accusations as truth or else provides misleading accounts of them.
The New York Times' article is not an aberration. The list of false attacks on Al Gore's character that have been circulated in the media for the last two years is extraordinary. In some cases, as in the ones (mis)cited by the New York Times, Gore is accused of lying when he was actually telling the truth:
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
In other cases, Gore's words are twisted, misquoted, or simply made up to make him sound as though he were making a claim that he was not making. For example, some publications have even claimed, falsely, that Gore literally uttered the words "inventing the Internet".
--Story Link--
There are many others:
--Story Link--
Was this simply a mistake on Lehrer's part? Okay, but Lehrer made his "mistake" in the context of rebuking Gore for his own miniscule mistakes in the first debate.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
In yet other cases, Gore made a trivial error that has been exaggerated by his critics, and the exaggeration has been falsely attributed to him. Such is the case with the school in Florida that Gore cited in the first of his debates with George W. Bush.
--Story Link--
These are just a few examples among many. People make mistakes all the time. Al Gore is one of them, and it's surprising that an army of opposition researchers hasn't come up with more substantive errors after fact-checking a whole life of public statements. So is George W. Bush, whose errors during the two debates so far have been dramatically worse than those of Gore. To start with, Bush falsely implied that the Europeans have no troops in Kosovo, when in fact they have tens of thousands, and that the United States has significant numbers of troops in Haiti, when it does not. And he made numerous false statements:
That is just a partial list of Bush's "mistakes" in two ninety-minute debates, and it doesn't include the dubious numbers he quoted from Republicans in the Senate or the mess he made of education, taxes, Social Security, and the Middle East. Nor does it include the "mistakes" that littered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, or the especially egregious "mistakes" of his brutal campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and so on.
--Story Link--
With only a few exceptions (like the one just cited), the press has gone to great lengths to cover up or minimize Bush's false statements. Press coverage of the first debate focused overwhelmingly on Gore's two comparatively trivial errors and on endless suggestions that Gore was rude for having sighed several times.
--Story Link--
Of course, the sighs were often exaggerated by turning the volume up. (Falsely calling someone a liar, as Bush did several times, is not rude?) Pundits bizarrely praised Bush for his command of the issues after the first debate despite his lengthy catalog of errors:
--Catalog Link--
And the 10/5/00 Washington Post buried the Democrats' list of Bush errors at the end of a long story about Bush's accusations against Gore.
The problem is systemic. A reporter for a British newspaper, the Observer, was struck at the completely different approaches of the reporters covering Gore and Bush, and reported a disturbing incident in which a Washington Post reporter well-known for her open hostility to Gore held a toy gun to his head.
--Story Link--
Indeed, press coverage of Gore has been spun in a strongly negative fashion for a long time.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
The press, following the lead of Republican "investigators", has repeatedly falsified and spun the famous Buddhist temple event, among others.
--Story Link--
They have also falsified and exaggerated Gore's performance in earlier debates, thereby creating a caricuture of him as a vicious attacker.
--Story Link--
Yes, the press has suggested that Bush is not mentally competent to run the country. But it has not fabricated huge amounts of evidence to support this charge, and it has not routinely used vocabulary that is remotely as harsh as that used against Gore. You have rarely seen the media call Bush a "moron" or "idiot", but Gore has routinely been called much worse. Here is a very partial list:
(I am citing the Daily Howler for most of these examples so that you can read some analysis of them. But the Howler provides precise citations for the originals, which should be easy to look up.)
Indeed, Bush's alleged mental incompetence is often tacitly used to excuse his falsehoods -- he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he can't be lying. Or Gore is accused of a "pattern" of false and exaggerated statements, but then Bush escapes the same accusation for the simple reason that nobody bothers to gather Bush's false and exaggerated statements in one place.
This is just the press. We're not even talking about the conservatives on the Internet that have been circulating long lists of Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations -- most of which are, of course, themselves lies or exaggerations, including garbled and embellished versions of the already false versions in the press. Some of these lists are credited to the RNC, but of course it is hard to know for sure.
The new science of character assassination, then, has several components:
But it's not just that. It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch's media properties, such as Fox and the New York Post, publish smears against people who disagree with Murdoch's far-right views. But it can hardly be an accident that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all assigned reporters to the Gore campaign who write, day in and day out, the same sorts of exaggerated smears. To be sure, the press is not unanimous in spreading Republican lies as truth; the contrast between the NYT/Post/AP axis and the calm reporting of the Los Angeles Times could hardly be greater. But the Post, Times, and AP, all well-connected and widely syndicated, set the tone for the press as a whole. The fix is clearly in, and these establishment media operations are clearly down with it. They see which way the wind is blowing, and they don't want to get left behind.
A kind of coup is in effect, continuing the pattern of the Whitewater hoax and impeachment. If the far right succeeds in its campaign, then the incoming government will be staffed by people who are trained in the new science of character assassination. It's all they know. And having destroyed Al Gore, they will come after the rest of us.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Philip E. Agre.
All rights reserved.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
a DAMN fine question! Where are those mod points when ya need 'em?
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Of course it's important how much the government spends. What I'm saying is that Bush & Gore will both continue to support repressing the American public (and anyone in any other country they can manage to get their tendrils into) in favor of big business, foreign politics, religious zealots, etc etc, so their budgeting ability is immaterial... and there are many candidates who not only will NOT support such repression but can also balance the budget. I won't tell you who to vote for... but I can certainly suggest who you shouldn't vote for.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
There are far more important issues at stake here than money. The government's budget is a figment of its imagination anyway. Which would you rather have: a country (or world) where the budget is balanced but you aren't allowed to choose for yourself whether to home-school your kids or send them to public school to be bullied and ridiculed and dumbed-down and shot at and punished for being individuals instead of good little sheep, or a country where there's a deficit but everyone can make ALL their own decisions for themselves? It's like comparing apples and chainsaws, really. The budget and issues such as our personal freedoms are vastly unrelated. Bush might spend less money than Gore, but they'll BOTH screw us all over with regard to personal freedoms, so the question of the budget shouldn't even be a consideration. You shouldn't be considering voting for EITHER of them... you should find someone who can balance a budget AND just live and let live, and vote for him (or her). And screw Greenspan; he's one of Them, you know... :)
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
...unless they're tearing apart someone else's opinions. Jon, you rule. Everyone else who can't seem to find anything better to do with their day than pick at every miniscule detail of every JonKatz post, get a life. The grammar isn't perfect, but whose is? Things occasionally get misspelled, but who among us has never misspelled anything? Yes, he seems preoccupied with the youth of today, but there's a good reason for that: they're the future. This world is divided into two camps: all the control freaks currently running the government, big business, and the media, and all the rest of us who are appalled at the idea of downsizing a company just so its stock value goes up a tenth of a point, or of a program like that hideous WAVE thing (which encouraged kids to rat each other out for things like "being different" just like in Nazi Germany), or of restricting anyone's access to information that might encourage them to formulate their own opinion instead of just taking on faith whatever Society crams down their throats. I'd be willing to bet that damn near everyone who reads slashdot belongs to the second camp. Guess what, folks? That puts us all on the same team. It's us, the freedom-loving people who hate the thought of being kept under the heels of those who strive to control us, against them. Like it or not, most of you people who bitch at Jon every time he puts two words together and forms a sentence are at heart actually on the same side as he is. As I am. As we all are. You just need to realize that the reason it seems like he keeps repeating himself about things like kids and Columbine is because you haven't gotten it yet, which is self-evident from the fact that 90% of the responses to anything the man says are overwhelmingly negative.
Now to address the subject of his essay: Politicians suck. Like anyone can argue with that. I haven't voted in any election in about 15 years because I realized long ago that voting is pointless. Like it or not, we do have to put up with a 2-party system. 80% of the voters in this country will vote either Republican or Democrat no matter what. Ralph Nader? He doesn't have a chance in hell because so few people take *any* third-party candidate seriously. My own parents, god love 'em, always always always vote Republican no matter what, especially now that the Republican is someone who professes to be as Christian as they are. In their minds, all that matters is that the man says "I'm a Southern Baptist." His actual opinions and views on important things like education and freedom and how much control the government has over them don't matter whatsoever; "As long as he's a Christian, he'll do the right thing." When I remind them that Bill Clinton also professed to be a Christian during election times, their faces go all grey and clammy and suddenly the topic changes to what I want for Christmas or something. They hate Clinton with a passion, you see, and can't reconcile themselves with the fact that he fooled them by saying he was a Christian (not that they voted for him, of course, since he's a Democrat). My point is that you can't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of a politician, ever, before or after they're elected:
How many times do we have to catch them in lies before we stop believing what they say?
It's all about control, people. They'll say quite literally anything to get voted into office; whether it's true or not, and whether they intend to follow through on it or not, doesn't enter into it. We can't even tell if Bush Jr. actually believes that the net turns kids into brutal dark-hearted monsters that yearn to take out all their frustrations on the people who're mean to them; he's saying that because he thinks that's what the majority of Americans wants to hear. Everything that they say is geared towards making us more likely to vote in their favor. We're nothing but a table full of demographics to them, and whatever they think the majority of people wants to hear is what they'll spew forth; screw the minorities and their opinions. That's the biggest fault with democracy, incidentally; if 90% of the people think that the other 10% shouldn't be allowed to, say, marry each other, even though it doesn't affect that 90% in any way whatsoever at all, period, then 27,000,000 people are just out of luck. Viewing things in percentages disguises the extent of the truth. If there are 27,000,000 people who have a certain opinion, I'd have to say it's a pretty valid one no matter what the other 90% says, and that 90% has no right whatsoever to force 27,000,000 people into a way of life that they hate... and all politicians pander to this "You'll do what we say whether you like it or not" mentality because voting is also geared around what the majority wants. "Truth," "compassion," "understanding," "tolerance"... these are all concepts which escape them utterly, and so millions upon millions of people have to suffer because whatever group outnumbers them gets to dictate how they'll live their lives. That concept sickens me, and being the freedom-loving bunch of guys slashdot readers are, it probably sickens you too.
And that's all Jon is trying to do... point out to us the fact that the politicians we're presented with every few years -- the "official" ones, of course, not those third-party and fourth-party and green-party candidates who're doomed from the word go because they favor taking some control away from the government and giving it to We, the People, where it belongs, which they of course just can't allow -- are complete idiots who spout beliefs they think will be popular in an attempt to get elected. Doesn't anyone remember the Simpsons Halloween special where Kang and Kodos, the space aliens, replaced Dole and Clinton? "It doesn't matter which one of us you vote for," they said... "Either way, your planet is doomed! Doooooomed!!" Nothing could be closer to the truth... but I suppose because it was presented as humor, nobody took it seriously. I think the show's writers were being deadly serious when they wrote that episode. And everyone who watched it knew it was true, said "Boy, that's so true," especially the part about how voting for a third-party candidate was tantamount to throwing your vote away, but then went right on with their lives afterward. Nobody thinks they have any chance of changing the very foundation of the political system, so we all just put up with it, thus guaranteeing that nothing will change. A self-perpetuating system of oppression designed to keep the powerful in power. You can't even hope to run for any office unless you have millions of dollars to throw away on advertising yourself. If this were truly an equal opportunity political system, there wouldn't be any election campaign fundraisers; all politicians would be allowed a certain number of free political ads on TV and radio and newspapers and magazines and websites. That way, nobody would have an advantage simply by virtue of being wealthier than the rest of them. "Who will pay for the ads," I hear you ask. Well, who pays for public service announcements? I think political ads are just as important to the public as PSA's are and should be just as free to those who make them. Think that'll ever happen? Think those in power (who are, remember, among the wealthiest in America) will willingly give up the advantage that their wealth gives them? Think again.
Politics as a whole stinks. Politicians stink. I can count the number of good honest politicians who actually worked for the public interest (as opposed to the interests of Big Business and themselves) in the past 50 years on one hand. And as long as we all just put up with it and keep deluding ourselves into thinking that happiness and liberty and freedom and equality for all are merely one election away, that all it'll take is the right person in the White House, we might as well just glue wool to our bodies, get down on all fours, and let the shepherds bugger us until the end of time. Why do you think "equality for all" has eluded us for hundreds of years? It should be a very simple thing to accomplish; just treat everyone like you yourself would want to be treated. The quintessence of simplicity. And I think most people do that, for the most part, except when it conflicts with their religion (which is another post entirely, although you could probably replace every instance of "politics" in this post with "religion" and be close to the truth). What's stopping us as a society from just loosening up our sphincters and letting people be who they are without trying to force them into whatever ethical/moral mold is currently in vogue? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. And now, back to the point.
Jon Katz is trying to wake you sheep up and reveal What's Really Goin' On to you. Soon as you open your eyes and break out of the social conditioning you've been subjected to all your lives, as soon as you think for yourselves instead of letting someone else do it for you, as soon as you realize the ridiculousness and idiocy that permeates all things political, as soon as you let yourselves believe that nothing is going to get any better as long as the governments of this world (yes, it isn't just the US that sucks) keep everyone under their thumbs and heels, "the healing can begin." Separately we may not have enough power to do anything about it (though I thrill to the thought of the positive changes that could be wrought on this planet if we all banded together and said "Screw you and your greed!" to those in power), but at least we don't have to keep deluding ourselves into thinking that our votes matter and we only have a choice between Republican A and Democrat B, between Kang and Kodos. Realize that saying "Don't blame me; I voted for Kodos!" isn't an excuse; we are all to blame.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
I guess since they're operating with losses in the billions now, they decided fleecing consumers a bit and calling it "research" was acceptable... let's see what they do now that they've been caught at it.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Here's what I do:
Codeine, methamphetamines, oxygen deprivation, etc can be substituted in step 2 if you have hangups about things that are illegal but shouldn't be. I've found alcohol numbs you a little too much, but it can also be effective in small amounts. The point is that in order to solve a problem you can't rationally solve while perfectly sober, you have to numb that part of your brain that does all the "logical" thinking. A problem that escapes your every attempt to solve it logically requires turning off the "left brain" analyzer so the "right brain" (instinctive) heuristic tools can be heard above the din the left brain creates by being so loud and sure of itself. Perhaps that's why we have two brain halves... one to solve problems, and another to solve the problems the first half can't solve because it's not trying to create a solution to it, it's just letting solutions come to it and filtering out the best one. I know it makes little sense, but how better to find a solution to a problem that doesn't make sense than to try solutions that don't make sense?
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."