He was a giving a talk on a seminar on why gold is better than cash. The $4,300 was part of his props.
And he had to use real money, $4300 worth, for the prop? He couldn't have used Monopoly money to make the same point ("would you rather have gold or worthless paper")? Does he not understand that props don't have to be real?
I hope he doesn't teach CPR. "Now, can I have a volunteer..."
* Don't touch the envelope or paper without wearing several layers of surgical gloves. * Don't use a printer that leaves any identifying marks. Most modern color printers are traceable and most older typewriters are as well. * Don't lick the stamp or envelope! * Don't drop it in any drop-box that has a security camera anywhere nearby
This isn't electoral interference. It is an attempt to prevent censorship and aid people who are being oppressed and persecuted.
Whoa whoa whoa, don't let your (justified) sympathies with the opposition allow you to bastardize the language. Pressuring a company to do something that would help overthrow a regime during an election *is* electoral interference. The fact that it also a) prevents censorship, and b) makes us feel warm and fuzzy, is irrelevant.
Franky, I'm quite troubled by this. I haven't consulted the appropriate materials, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some international norms against interfering in an election by "giving aid and comfort" to a ruling regime's internal enemies.
Imagine if the Chinese maker of a common cell phone exploited a known backdoor to make all such phones blurt out "vote for Obama" on America's election day. Would that could as electoral interference? Remember, they could just as easily claim they're "promoting free speech" amongst "people who are oppressed".
Yeah, and what's more, the proper past participle of "smite" is "smitten", not "smote".
On top of that, I SERIOUSLY doubt the German kid said what they claim. He probably said something more like, "Zuerst hab' ich einen grossen Lichtball gesehen, und dann fuehlt ich ploetzlich Handschmerz." Und so weiter...
I must confess, you have me stumped. I had forgotten about the supersonic thin-plate orifice flow, and to be honest, I don't know how far the information theoretic analysis I gave of gas leaving a tank carries over to that. (And FWIW, it looks like node turned my point into a circular argument.) It's also been a while since i took gas dynamics, and remember very little of the vena contracta problems.
In the article on orifice plate, though, it looks like a fundamentally different situation, that of pipe flow. My point referred to flow out of a tank, and the reason I gave for it choking at the speed of sound was basically a sort of "you can't get there from here" argument. That is, *initially* supersonic flow could stay supersonic through the hole, because it's already supersonic. But if it starts out *stagnant* in a tank, it can't *accelerate* to supersonic flow because:
1) The inside gas must "know" the pressure ratio is supercritical. 2) This "knowledge", in the form of a compression wave, cannot travel faster than the maximum compression wave speed, which maximizes its net velocity at zero and chokes the flow of information back into the tank.
However, if I'm wrong, and the vena contracta setup applies to tanks as well, or accelerates flow in pipes where the flow starts out subsonic, then the explanation I would give, as to why that shape permits information to flow back across the subsonic/supersonic gap, would be:
"The outlet speed refers to the cross-section-area-averaged speed; not every particle in the cross section must be supersonic, or even going to the right in the diagram. The vena contracta shape forces the gas flow to the center of the hole, where it exceeds the speed of sound. It can 'learn' of the lower downstream pressure because the gas flow at the outer edge of the hole is *not* supersonic, and so information can propagate back upstream along that outer edge. However, it requires a special orifice shape to get the cross-sectional speed variation to do this; otherwise, like if you just stab a random hole in a tank, the speed will be very nearly uniform across the cross section."
You obviously don't understand the level of investigation we're talking here.
No, you obviously don't understand. We're talking about a girl who doesn't even have the pre-requisites (high school diploma) for the pre-requisites (college diploma) for the pre-requisites (medical degree) for the pre-requisites (specialization) to be qualified to look for this. Do you think she spent all day? No, she had limited lab time. And she STILL outdid an immense team of doctors.
Which one of us "doesn't understand" what's going on here?
And I find your example a bit hard to swallow - sorry the nurse shouldn't be TOLD the drugs,
First of all, work on the reading comprehension. I said the pharmacist caught the interaction because the pharmacist caught the interaction, not the nurse. Second of all, no shit they weren't following basic procedure -- that's how they made the mistake in the first place, and that's not to the health care system's credit!
Here's how it went down: my primary doctor has me take medications A, B, and C. I get a referral to a neurologist. There, I don't get to write down what I'm taking, I have to say it verbally to a ditzy nurse that can't figure out computerized system. Neuro puts me on D. I call back to report on how it's working -- as I was told to -- and spoke to a nurse. Then I get a call back to stop taking D and take E instead.
Then I do my part to clarify: "So, I should be on A, B, C, and E then?" "Yes." THEN I go to the pharmacist to pick up E, who tells me, "Just don't take any B with this." WTF?
So I call back and explain what happened -- to a nurse, of course, doctor can't be bothered to be involved at any point in patient care. Later, I get a call back saying "Oh, um, yeah, you're not supposed to be on B."
Oops.
You don't believe it because you're clueless about how the system actually works.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to scan every single slide in its entirity, for a granuloma.
Right, except that that's your fucking job, genius. What do you think they're paying you for, the calm and reassuring voice?
The girl found the granuloma because she was scanning the slides as if someone's actual health were at stake, rather than, as if it were something keeping her off the golf course.
I'd have sympathy except that this matches the experience of every doctor I've had, like a neurologist who can't be bothered to tell the nurse the right medications I'm supposed to be on (this was a few years ago, thanks for asking) and so a pharmacist has to catch the dangerous drug interaction.
How can GM afford such an expensive, long-term research facility? Oh, that's right: the money they saved by stiffing workers, pensioners, and their families in bankruptcy.
That's somewhere in between a metaphor for Hawking Radiation and the real thing.
Not a physicist, but here's how I think the metaphor between the experiment and the real thing is supposed to work:
Speed of light: maximum speed information can travel through a vacuum ("the void") Speed of sound: maximum speed information can travel through a medium composed of atoms ("substance")
(When aircraft go supersonic, the air they run into is incapable of "preparing" to be hit, in a manner of speaking...)
We can't create stuff that goes faster than the speed of light, but we can create stuff that goes faster than the speed of sound. And just as you can't go fast enough to come back through an event horizon, information can't propagate fast enough in the experiment to go back across the subsonic/supersonic boundary. This shows us what it looks like to be in a situation like that of a black hole.
By the way, there's a similar, cheaper experiment you can do: pop a hole in a pressurized container. The gas cannot escape it (at the outlet) faster than the local speed of sound, which is obtained whenever the ratio of pressure inside to pressure outside exceeds a critical value. One gas dynamics professor said I can think of it like this: "even though a higher pressure ratio creates a greater pressure potential difference, the gas inside the tank cannot 'learn' of the greater difference because that would require information to go *into* the tank, *against* the gas that is escaping at the speed of sound"
Kind of like in the setup described in the article...
Hah! Joke's on them! They try to make sure their members are living in Scientology-owned compoundes and so have no separate residence which makes it harder to leave or be persuaded by others!
Bout time that policy came back and bit them in the ass, eh? Not that they'll stop editing Wikipedia, it'll just be more inconvenient.
Btw, is there going to be a big asterisk at the slogan now? "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone* can edit. *not including the Church of Scientology"
Thanks for the input, but I'm not tall -- 5'8/5'9. I think I have something that gives a similar effect though: I broke my collar bone when I was little and had to wear a shoulder harness. What that means is that my "default resting position" for my arms is in front of my torso, like I'm holding two dumbbells vertically in front of my stomach, rather than at my sides like most people. This makes me look really on-edge, and the bolder people point it out to me.
Also might want to check out LVO3. It's some great stuff.
Er, *another* expensive pick-up artist school? I actually tried one of these (not the one you linked) and there, my social disconnect became even more apparent (I did it two years ago, long before joining this church). For example, the coach would ask me to approach a girl, and I'd ask, "what do I say", and he'd roll his eyes and say "dude, I'm not going to give you pick up lines or a magic phrase, that's not how this method works." I was unable to convey to him that I didn't know how to start a conversation with people completely at random.
After the course, I explained the (lack of) results to his overlord, who was surprised and invited me to attend one of his own seminars for free. After that, he gave up and refunded the money I originally spent. Props to him, but not a good sign.
(Digression: Before anyone gives ultra-obvious advice, I'm normal in every other way: I shower, smile non-threateningly, brush my teeth, look people in the eye, introduce myself at groups, etc. When I checked myself into a hospital, the women there all unprovokedly told me I was handsome and had great teeth. I hold a steady non-McJob job.)
***
I also thought I'd use this chance to provide more substantiation my claim of unique similarity to the described symptoms. From the article:
People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances.
For a while after the event, I brought up my treatment with anyone I met.
People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge
The most fucked-up part: the only thing that kept me from killing myself was wanting to make everyone involved suffer to their last breath.
When something unexpectedly awful happens -- they don't get the promotion, their spouse files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team -- a profound sense of injustice overtakes them.
The one thing I kept saying over and over the time since then was that my "strong sense of justice" requires revenge.
"Embitterment is a violation of basic beliefs," Linden says.
As noted before, the experience fundamentally -- and incorrectly -- altered my "mental model" of how people interact (though obviously I didn't think of it in those terms at the time; it just felt like having to rule out 99% of the things I used to think were okay to do, and so live my life walking on eggshells).
"These people usually don't come to treatment because 'the world has to change, not me,' "
I was like this, but from a different perspective. The attitude was more like, "This is reality, I'm simply cut off from it." Or in math-nerd terms: "Any transformation on me based in reality has my disconnect as an eigenvector." (And no, a negative-disconnect is not a connect, nice try though.)
I'm not one to buy into the attempt to turn every inconvencience into another officially-recognized psychiatric disorder with a $100 co-pay solution. However, the description did resonate me, and I can definitely see the difference between "normal travails of life" and what they're describing.
Let me tell you a bit of my experience:
In college, I joined a large organization. Soon after, I was kicked out.
So far, no big deal.
But when I was kicked out, I was told that "numerous people" felt "physically threatened" by me, and I had *no idea* why that was. Previously, some people that were nice to me had suddenly turned around and refused to talk to me. Nobody would give me any explanation except extremely kafkaesque ones.
Then, through a coincidental connection I had (cousin's friend had also joined the same time I did) I found that people believed I -- a virgin at the time -- had threatened to rape some of the women there. Soon after, I learned of similar, viscious rumors going on about me.
I filed a formal complaint about this where I explained everything. Then, again by coincidence, I the writeup and the complaint had been destroyed and no one told me they did so. I appealed to another group, who refused to do anything after meeting with me, on the grounds that I "seem so angry" (ya think?). I appealed to the faculty sponsor of the organizations, and got a letter back saying, in a formal tone, "you deserved what you got, bro".
Getting kicked out of an organization is bearable, of course, but without being given any reason why, all while being stabbed in the back and having what reputation I had destroyed? I couldn't stop thinking about it for years and years. I did try to "get over it"; I sought conseling (and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety) and tried to join other groups, but inevitably was unable to form any kind of relationship with anyone.
I've explained my situation on slashdot before (can't find the link right now), and people refused to believe me, insisting that I must have somehow done something wrong. And throughout the whole time, I've noticed that my socialization is fundamentally different from everyone else. People suggest that I do things (in social situations) and then I refuse, saying, "but won't they [do something evil in response]" and people are astounded that I would even imagine something like that.
I also always feel like I'm in some sort of paralysis in my life, where I don't want to make any changes (like join a group, look for work somewhere else) because every concern feels like it's preventing me from addressing the others. "Angry and helpless" described me perfectly. (I use the past tense because I recently got more intensive help and started going to church, where I have more social support.)
Would I meet the criteria if I went in to be evaluated? I don't know. But if this diagnosis enables psychiatrists to carry over the same tools from treating PTSD, then it looks legit. It certainly runs the risk of being overdiagnosed, and it would be a shame if it ended up like ADHD, but the idea itself doesn't sound outlandish.
You *could* die or be wounded in a hijacking, but for the most part, you would live through it. They might be willing to die for their cause, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Of course, after 9/11, that strategy has changed. And perhaps the government should have known to change their story.
Not to indulge in hindsight bias or anything, but I think the government should have changed their story about how you should respond to hijackers. I believe that the government's counter-terrorism efforts failed the Schneier test: they didn't think about the problem like a determined attacker would. If an anti-reason team of fanatics could figure out the existence of a hole in "do what the hijackers say", surely our experts should have done the same?
Or perhaps they did realize terrorists would try that, and took no countermeasures, which amounts to the same thing.
(by the way, I have no idea how the conversation got here from, "The Internet has enabled widespread, effective volunteer collaboration", which was the story... well, the story, minus the emotion-laden terminology)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to err on the safe side here. My blog will go back to its blue theme after this foray with pro-Mousavi green. :-/
For instance the ancient mayans used shapes for numbers, instead of 1, 2, 3
Psst! The numerals "1", "2", and "3" are shapes too!
F***in' indocentrists...
Wow, it appears the $124,700 took the Fifth. Ballsy move there.
He was a giving a talk on a seminar on why gold is better than cash. The $4,300 was part of his props.
And he had to use real money, $4300 worth, for the prop? He couldn't have used Monopoly money to make the same point ("would you rather have gold or worthless paper")? Does he not understand that props don't have to be real?
I hope he doesn't teach CPR. "Now, can I have a volunteer ..."
Was the rest of the world interfering in US elections by allowing ex-patriots to communicate with other Us citizens stateside ?
Yes, that's called "covert operations involving defectors" and it would be interfering in US elections.
OTOH, if you meant expatriates, then your point is correct ;-)
* Don't touch the envelope or paper without wearing several layers of surgical gloves.
* Don't use a printer that leaves any identifying marks. Most modern color printers are traceable and most older typewriters are as well.
* Don't lick the stamp or envelope!
* Don't drop it in any drop-box that has a security camera anywhere nearby
They'll still find you from the return address...
This isn't electoral interference. It is an attempt to prevent censorship and aid people who are being oppressed and persecuted.
Whoa whoa whoa, don't let your (justified) sympathies with the opposition allow you to bastardize the language. Pressuring a company to do something that would help overthrow a regime during an election *is* electoral interference. The fact that it also a) prevents censorship, and b) makes us feel warm and fuzzy, is irrelevant.
Franky, I'm quite troubled by this. I haven't consulted the appropriate materials, but I'm pretty sure there are at least some international norms against interfering in an election by "giving aid and comfort" to a ruling regime's internal enemies.
Imagine if the Chinese maker of a common cell phone exploited a known backdoor to make all such phones blurt out "vote for Obama" on America's election day. Would that could as electoral interference? Remember, they could just as easily claim they're "promoting free speech" amongst "people who are oppressed".
Disclaimer: I hope the opposition protesters win.
Yeah, and what's more, the proper past participle of "smite" is "smitten", not "smote".
On top of that, I SERIOUSLY doubt the German kid said what they claim. He probably said something more like, "Zuerst hab' ich einen grossen Lichtball gesehen, und dann fuehlt ich ploetzlich Handschmerz." Und so weiter...
*is the OP*
I must confess, you have me stumped. I had forgotten about the supersonic thin-plate orifice flow, and to be honest, I don't know how far the information theoretic analysis I gave of gas leaving a tank carries over to that. (And FWIW, it looks like node turned my point into a circular argument.) It's also been a while since i took gas dynamics, and remember very little of the vena contracta problems.
In the article on orifice plate, though, it looks like a fundamentally different situation, that of pipe flow. My point referred to flow out of a tank, and the reason I gave for it choking at the speed of sound was basically a sort of "you can't get there from here" argument. That is, *initially* supersonic flow could stay supersonic through the hole, because it's already supersonic. But if it starts out *stagnant* in a tank, it can't *accelerate* to supersonic flow because:
1) The inside gas must "know" the pressure ratio is supercritical.
2) This "knowledge", in the form of a compression wave, cannot travel faster than the maximum compression wave speed, which maximizes its net velocity at zero and chokes the flow of information back into the tank.
However, if I'm wrong, and the vena contracta setup applies to tanks as well, or accelerates flow in pipes where the flow starts out subsonic, then the explanation I would give, as to why that shape permits information to flow back across the subsonic/supersonic gap, would be:
"The outlet speed refers to the cross-section-area-averaged speed; not every particle in the cross section must be supersonic, or even going to the right in the diagram. The vena contracta shape forces the gas flow to the center of the hole, where it exceeds the speed of sound. It can 'learn' of the lower downstream pressure because the gas flow at the outer edge of the hole is *not* supersonic, and so information can propagate back upstream along that outer edge. However, it requires a special orifice shape to get the cross-sectional speed variation to do this; otherwise, like if you just stab a random hole in a tank, the speed will be very nearly uniform across the cross section."
But I'll admit, "you got me". :-/
No, the correct Russian reversal would be,
"In Soviet Russia, millions of paiges extract meaning from YOU!"
You obviously don't understand the level of investigation we're talking here.
No, you obviously don't understand. We're talking about a girl who doesn't even have the pre-requisites (high school diploma) for the pre-requisites (college diploma) for the pre-requisites (medical degree) for the pre-requisites (specialization) to be qualified to look for this. Do you think she spent all day? No, she had limited lab time. And she STILL outdid an immense team of doctors.
Which one of us "doesn't understand" what's going on here?
And I find your example a bit hard to swallow - sorry the nurse shouldn't be TOLD the drugs,
First of all, work on the reading comprehension. I said the pharmacist caught the interaction because the pharmacist caught the interaction, not the nurse. Second of all, no shit they weren't following basic procedure -- that's how they made the mistake in the first place, and that's not to the health care system's credit!
Here's how it went down: my primary doctor has me take medications A, B, and C. I get a referral to a neurologist. There, I don't get to write down what I'm taking, I have to say it verbally to a ditzy nurse that can't figure out computerized system. Neuro puts me on D. I call back to report on how it's working -- as I was told to -- and spoke to a nurse. Then I get a call back to stop taking D and take E instead.
Then I do my part to clarify: "So, I should be on A, B, C, and E then?" "Yes." THEN I go to the pharmacist to pick up E, who tells me, "Just don't take any B with this." WTF?
So I call back and explain what happened -- to a nurse, of course, doctor can't be bothered to be involved at any point in patient care. Later, I get a call back saying "Oh, um, yeah, you're not supposed to be on B."
Oops.
You don't believe it because you're clueless about how the system actually works.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to scan every single slide in its entirity, for a granuloma.
Right, except that that's your fucking job, genius. What do you think they're paying you for, the calm and reassuring voice?
The girl found the granuloma because she was scanning the slides as if someone's actual health were at stake, rather than, as if it were something keeping her off the golf course.
I'd have sympathy except that this matches the experience of every doctor I've had, like a neurologist who can't be bothered to tell the nurse the right medications I'm supposed to be on (this was a few years ago, thanks for asking) and so a pharmacist has to catch the dangerous drug interaction.
How can GM afford such an expensive, long-term research facility? Oh, that's right: the money they saved by stiffing workers, pensioners, and their families in bankruptcy.
That's somewhere in between a metaphor for Hawking Radiation and the real thing.
Not a physicist, but here's how I think the metaphor between the experiment and the real thing is supposed to work:
Speed of light: maximum speed information can travel through a vacuum ("the void")
Speed of sound: maximum speed information can travel through a medium composed of atoms ("substance")
(When aircraft go supersonic, the air they run into is incapable of "preparing" to be hit, in a manner of speaking...)
We can't create stuff that goes faster than the speed of light, but we can create stuff that goes faster than the speed of sound. And just as you can't go fast enough to come back through an event horizon, information can't propagate fast enough in the experiment to go back across the subsonic/supersonic boundary. This shows us what it looks like to be in a situation like that of a black hole.
By the way, there's a similar, cheaper experiment you can do: pop a hole in a pressurized container. The gas cannot escape it (at the outlet) faster than the local speed of sound, which is obtained whenever the ratio of pressure inside to pressure outside exceeds a critical value. One gas dynamics professor said I can think of it like this: "even though a higher pressure ratio creates a greater pressure potential difference, the gas inside the tank cannot 'learn' of the greater difference because that would require information to go *into* the tank, *against* the gas that is escaping at the speed of sound"
Kind of like in the setup described in the article...
In Mecha anime/manga they usually make up some pseudosience as to why they're using walkers and not tanks and planes.
It's pseudoscience that human brains have an extremely well-refined intuitions on how to effectively control and use a humanoid structure?
Tanks are good for fighting, of course, but their human controllers don't "get" all the subtleties involved in making the most out of them.
It's true that bipedal walkers are hard to balance, but just the same, we have an "off-the-shelf" solution for it.
Enough is enough! I have had it with these great-grandmother-fuckin' trolls on this great-grandmother-fuckin' plane!
No.
Let P1 = the probability of a human pilot, mechanic, or inspector screwing up.
Let P2 = the probability of a meteor intersecting an airplane midflight
P1 is much, much, much, much, much, much greater than P2.
Didn't Katrina take care of that problem? [/insensitive]
No, you forgot:
"There's a world market for maybe 14 hydraulic computers."
Hah! Joke's on them! They try to make sure their members are living in Scientology-owned compoundes and so have no separate residence which makes it harder to leave or be persuaded by others!
Bout time that policy came back and bit them in the ass, eh? Not that they'll stop editing Wikipedia, it'll just be more inconvenient.
Btw, is there going to be a big asterisk at the slogan now? "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone* can edit. *not including the Church of Scientology"
Thanks for sharing your experience, I noticed a lot of parallels to mine. You're right about shrinks; most were useless for me.
Thanks for the input, but I'm not tall -- 5'8/5'9. I think I have something that gives a similar effect though: I broke my collar bone when I was little and had to wear a shoulder harness. What that means is that my "default resting position" for my arms is in front of my torso, like I'm holding two dumbbells vertically in front of my stomach, rather than at my sides like most people. This makes me look really on-edge, and the bolder people point it out to me.
Also might want to check out LVO3. It's some great stuff.
Er, *another* expensive pick-up artist school? I actually tried one of these (not the one you linked) and there, my social disconnect became even more apparent (I did it two years ago, long before joining this church). For example, the coach would ask me to approach a girl, and I'd ask, "what do I say", and he'd roll his eyes and say "dude, I'm not going to give you pick up lines or a magic phrase, that's not how this method works." I was unable to convey to him that I didn't know how to start a conversation with people completely at random.
After the course, I explained the (lack of) results to his overlord, who was surprised and invited me to attend one of his own seminars for free. After that, he gave up and refunded the money I originally spent. Props to him, but not a good sign.
(Digression: Before anyone gives ultra-obvious advice, I'm normal in every other way: I shower, smile non-threateningly, brush my teeth, look people in the eye, introduce myself at groups, etc. When I checked myself into a hospital, the women there all unprovokedly told me I was handsome and had great teeth. I hold a steady non-McJob job.)
***
I also thought I'd use this chance to provide more substantiation my claim of unique similarity to the described symptoms. From the article:
People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances.
For a while after the event, I brought up my treatment with anyone I met.
People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge
The most fucked-up part: the only thing that kept me from killing myself was wanting to make everyone involved suffer to their last breath.
When something unexpectedly awful happens -- they don't get the promotion, their spouse files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team -- a profound sense of injustice overtakes them.
The one thing I kept saying over and over the time since then was that my "strong sense of justice" requires revenge.
"Embitterment is a violation of basic beliefs," Linden says.
As noted before, the experience fundamentally -- and incorrectly -- altered my "mental model" of how people interact (though obviously I didn't think of it in those terms at the time; it just felt like having to rule out 99% of the things I used to think were okay to do, and so live my life walking on eggshells).
"These people usually don't come to treatment because 'the world has to change, not me,' "
I was like this, but from a different perspective. The attitude was more like, "This is reality, I'm simply cut off from it." Or in math-nerd terms: "Any transformation on me based in reality has my disconnect as an eigenvector." (And no, a negative-disconnect is not a connect, nice try though.)
I'm not one to buy into the attempt to turn every inconvencience into another officially-recognized psychiatric disorder with a $100 co-pay solution. However, the description did resonate me, and I can definitely see the difference between "normal travails of life" and what they're describing.
Let me tell you a bit of my experience:
In college, I joined a large organization. Soon after, I was kicked out.
So far, no big deal.
But when I was kicked out, I was told that "numerous people" felt "physically threatened" by me, and I had *no idea* why that was. Previously, some people that were nice to me had suddenly turned around and refused to talk to me. Nobody would give me any explanation except extremely kafkaesque ones.
Then, through a coincidental connection I had (cousin's friend had also joined the same time I did) I found that people believed I -- a virgin at the time -- had threatened to rape some of the women there. Soon after, I learned of similar, viscious rumors going on about me.
I filed a formal complaint about this where I explained everything. Then, again by coincidence, I the writeup and the complaint had been destroyed and no one told me they did so. I appealed to another group, who refused to do anything after meeting with me, on the grounds that I "seem so angry" (ya think?). I appealed to the faculty sponsor of the organizations, and got a letter back saying, in a formal tone, "you deserved what you got, bro".
Getting kicked out of an organization is bearable, of course, but without being given any reason why, all while being stabbed in the back and having what reputation I had destroyed? I couldn't stop thinking about it for years and years. I did try to "get over it"; I sought conseling (and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety) and tried to join other groups, but inevitably was unable to form any kind of relationship with anyone.
I've explained my situation on slashdot before (can't find the link right now), and people refused to believe me, insisting that I must have somehow done something wrong. And throughout the whole time, I've noticed that my socialization is fundamentally different from everyone else. People suggest that I do things (in social situations) and then I refuse, saying, "but won't they [do something evil in response]" and people are astounded that I would even imagine something like that.
I also always feel like I'm in some sort of paralysis in my life, where I don't want to make any changes (like join a group, look for work somewhere else) because every concern feels like it's preventing me from addressing the others. "Angry and helpless" described me perfectly. (I use the past tense because I recently got more intensive help and started going to church, where I have more social support.)
Would I meet the criteria if I went in to be evaluated? I don't know. But if this diagnosis enables psychiatrists to carry over the same tools from treating PTSD, then it looks legit. It certainly runs the risk of being overdiagnosed, and it would be a shame if it ended up like ADHD, but the idea itself doesn't sound outlandish.
You *could* die or be wounded in a hijacking, but for the most part, you would live through it. They might be willing to die for their cause, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Of course, after 9/11, that strategy has changed. And perhaps the government should have known to change their story.
Not to indulge in hindsight bias or anything, but I think the government should have changed their story about how you should respond to hijackers. I believe that the government's counter-terrorism efforts failed the Schneier test: they didn't think about the problem like a determined attacker would. If an anti-reason team of fanatics could figure out the existence of a hole in "do what the hijackers say", surely our experts should have done the same?
Or perhaps they did realize terrorists would try that, and took no countermeasures, which amounts to the same thing.
(by the way, I have no idea how the conversation got here from, "The Internet has enabled widespread, effective volunteer collaboration", which was the story ... well, the story, minus the emotion-laden terminology)
Spare hot-swappable pinky fingers?