Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.
But in terms of style and presentation, which I presume this is about, rather to my surprise Romney is coming over the better. He is glib whereas Obama is stuttering a lot; they are both achingly dull, but Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head. Neither of them shows any evidence whatsoever of charisma.
Four years ago Obama was talking with apparent belief about the need for change and inspiring people to follow him. He may even at the time have believed much of what he promised, but given the speed of abandonment of principle in office, I doubt it. Now Obama is just trying to present as a more managerially competent neo-con; a managerially competent neo-con competition is about the only one Romney can actually perform in.
I don’t really care who wins – debate or election.
Hello Clark,
thanks – you sound more relaxed, probably relieved at being free from the demands of sifting through those huge threads on conspiracies and assassinations etc. which can churn ones brain if not stomach.
Thanks for explaining your dilemma; I obviously don’t follow it all, and thought Sunflower was also somehow in there; however might there have been other ways to resolve it such as a trusted third party to mediate or make a pronouncement? Threats to publish private emails sounds nasty!
Provided they are initiated respectfully, it seems quite reasonable and appropriate that private conversations may develop with contributors.
On TTYA – perhaps I should have used tty1 then? tty is short for teletype i.e. tele-typewriter.
TaTaForNow (?) (more later…)
ttya, well, I’ve got Ubuntu 8.04 GNU/Linux on this system, and /dev doesn’t contain a ttya; the closest are ttya0 to ttyaf. The lowest are tty, tty0, tty1 etc.. But I recognised the tty part as a teletype device name as soon as you started using it as your nym, as I have configured an old serial modem on this system as a backup to ADSL. I hadn’t heard of “Talk To You After” until I discussed our exchange with someone else.
Yes, Sunflower did figure in my emotional crash. I feel that Sunflower was particularly dishonest, initially presenting as being ignorant of science and technical matters, but revealing increasing knowledge as the thread progressed. Why feign ignorance, unless to deceive? It was my criticism of Sunflower that triggered Zoologist’s, er, attack.
As to publication of e-mails, they contain only slight embarrassment for me, and once Zoologist’s allegations had been made, I would rather have published them. Jon’s actions really surprised me. If a contributor had published a comment like that about Jon, I would have copied it to somewhere private, and immediately deleted it and replaced it with a notice that complaints should be dealt with in private, and that further similar submissions would be deleted.
I’d always thought of New Agery as pretty harmless but annoying until that thread. But Scouse Billy’s evidence-free suggestions of treatments for my friend who may have cancer really shocked me. Then, as the thread progressed, I got more and more angry. My friend obviously gets her ideas about a grand conspiracy within the scientific / medical community from somewhere, and there it was, being propagated right in front of me, and being cheered on by Zoologist.
I also had a “real-world” situation in progress. A friend of a friend thinks that she has psychic powers. She tried “cold reading” me, but I was careful not to drop any clues; after she got things wrong a few times she started getting mad at me. But she had also convinced herself that she had insight from dreams, and thought that the suicide of someone I knew was actually a murder. She got really angry about my refusal to take her word for it, and she also got very distressed about what she’d convinced herself had happened. That situation is partly resolved now.
The criteria seems to be that New Agers will accept just about anything so long as it contradicts something which fits into the scientific picture. There is an occasional contributor here who goes by Angrysoba, who had suggested that conspiracy theorising and general woo increase the likelihood of mental illness. I used to scoff at that, but from now on I’m going to take it seriously. These fantasies are destructive. Organised religion is bad enough, but at least it has some structure that has to be adhered to. New Agery seems to accept anything that anyone cares to throw into the pot, and criticising any of these fragments is “disrespectful”. Can’t they just go and write for Uncyclopedia?
There are various things that I find really sad about all this. Firstly, reality as revealed by science is utterly fascinating. Just a quick exploration of one specialised field is enough to realise that you could spend a lifetime investigating one tiny aspect of reality, and it could spring surprise after surprise upon you. Yet the various fields all lace together into a grand structure, each aspect contributing understandings and support to other areas. It’s a wonderful community undertaking, with many dramatic stories of human endeavour and achievement. How sad to throw it all out as rubbish, a self-deception in order to conform to childhood “brainwashing”. I really did suffer religious indoctrination as a child, and my childhood education was quite clearly the opposite of that; school encouraged me to think.
Dismissing the scientific models of the world as “restrictive” shows that the critic really hasn’t bothered looking into science. It seems disrespectful of reality itself, as if the wonderful universe of matter and energy isn’t good enough for them. With some thirty three orders of (base ten) magnitude smaller than our own scale, and some twenty eight larger, you’d think they’d be satisfied, but no, they need some “spirit realm” or something. I don’t really approve of the Adobe Flash player, but if you find yourself on a suitable system, this is a rather nice toy (many thanks to Thatcrab):
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347
The other sadness is that fiction is a fine thing, so why dress it up as fact? Sure, go ahead, invent entire alternate worlds and realities. I had a friend once who was a “Dungeon Master” for Dungeons and Dragons, he put much effort into constructing fantasy scenarios for the group to play in. Creation of fantasy is to be applauded, but the author should just write “Fiction” on the cover, and all is well.
ttya, yes, TTFN is Ta Ta For Now.
I’m locked out of the software, and it is a huge relief.
Another thing that was getting to me was dealing with so many anonymous entities. This blog can be quite an adversarial place, which is unsurprising considering the material that Craig posts. But the anonymity complicates matters by stripping out reputation. We judge the meaning of the things people say to a large extent by reference to the things they’ve said before. This makes it possible to use sarcasm etc.; we know when someone is saying the opposite of what they really mean because we have an idea of their values.
Anonymity, and the lack of voice tone, non-verbal cues etc., all make it difficult to judge intent. I really don’t understand the intent of my adversaries in the conspiracy argument. They didn’t seem concerned to actually establish a single point they were arguing, and any questioning on my part was answered by saying that I was “beneath the curve”, one of the “sheeple”, or suffering from “cognitive dissonance”.
Truth, honesty and disclosure are very important values for me. This, I think, is a result of my having had to reason my way out of my childhood religious indoctrination. It is why I embraced Free Software when I realised what it was all about, why I approve of Wikipedia, and it was what attracted me about Craig’s writing in the first place. Reality is complex enough without distorting and misrepresenting things, hence my attraction to science.
This is why I am hostile to Sunflower’s argument that Julian Assange is some sort of double-agent. Whether the Swedish legal case against Assange is a fit-up or not (and it very much looks like one to me), it is reasonable of Assange to suspect that it is. It seems that he has lost his freedom in the pursuit of disclosure of the truth. Such a person, in my opinion, is worth a hundred Sunflowers, who can just throw in their unfounded allegations and create corrosive doubt which weakens support for Assange. Scouse Billy seems like another sort of disinformationist, just littering the threads with assertions of zero or near-zero evidence.
Then “Inside Mann” posted on the then most recent thread an argument about Assange that was very similar to Sunflower’s assertions. Suspecting deliberate disinformation, I checked “Inside Mann’s” IP address, and found matches with some of Scouse Billy’s. I posted my suspicion as a comment, but, to my shame, I had failed to investigate sufficiently and had leapt to an unsupportable conclusion; the IP address was that of a TOR exit router.
Well, it was all getting a bit much for me in any case. Like you said earlier, I’ll actually be getting out into the sunshine a bit more. My thoughts go out to those who can’t.
Time to take down my Black Flag, I think. No one even seems to have noticed its significance:
H L Mencken
ttya, I checked in again at eurid.eu, and expathos.eu is still showing as due to expire tonight. Watch This Space, I suppose…
Clark,
sorry, that is all a bit too much to take in and respond to. I hope at least that writing has benefited yourself. I still would recommend that you get to meet Craig to connect the matter into the real-life world of interpersonal relationships to give it some grounding so as to help with integration of mind and emotion etc.
The situation seems all up in the air at the moment, with not a word (that I have seen) from Craig. I’m still trying to fathom the way things are organised here; I’d expected Craig to be cut from a different cloth and to take more interest and concern in the social and technical responsibilities in running a site like this…
Normally I’d have something to say on science and hunting sockpupets, but reading too many posts on the state of the political world leaves me dazed right now…
Ttya
I’ve discussed a fair bit in emails but I don’t think a website too concerned in discussing its own inner workings is terribly interesting. The bottom line is I am pretty relaxed about what people post in comments as long as it isn’t racist, and I see no evidence of hostile attempts to “Hack” – and I use the term as a layman – the workings. I trust absolutely the goodwill of our webhost. In short lots of things worry Clark that do not really worry me; Clark’s concerns are extremely well-motivated but I think they make him get over-intense and he should chill out more about it all. I find it hard to get upset about sockpuppets.
Craig,
I am surprised that I have aparently said something that prompts you to respond like this to my person-centred statements of my own disappointments. Would you mind being clearer as to which of my statements you are referring to, or what you infer I am saying?
You seem to be immputing positions to me that I have not stated, somehow perhaps by association to behind the scenes exchanges with Clark and others? e.g. where did I say I was upset about sockpupets? If anything I was upset about naive attempts to look at IP addresses or browser strings and to make accusations; at the end of the day you may have two different people sharing one computer, so technically you cannot make definitive conclusions.
Perhaps you are not aware that I am an “old hand” from the early days of unix/usenet/internet well before TBL invented the web?
So, without wanting to offend anyone, it would be nice to have some interest in my experience and insights and to feel more welcome to have the freedom of expression to at least put my position for consideration or future reference when the relentless progress of governments and companies to control the internet catches up with you and becomes interesting.
Would it help to express myself in metaphor? Two come to mind.
ttya, well, our 31 October doomsday came and went, and everything is still here! The whois now lists “Expiry Date: October 31, 2013”, so looks like all is well.
Your technical input is greatly appreciated. However, to properly join in here, you should pick a recent thread and get involved in the political discussion! I’ve been rushed off my feet recently, but next week I get a break, so might just join in also 🙂
Jon,
I’m still awaiting Craig to explain the tone and intent of his intervention in my conversation with Clark, and hopefully treat me with more polite respect and appreciation for my technical/ social concerns (well beyond these minor dns matters). Thus I don’t appreciate yet more double-messages added from you as well in a impersonal directive tone and based on assumptions about non-involvement.
Is my politeness too Japanese-Zen style for you all and just goes over everyone’s heads? I thought I was actually being quite clear and trying to lay out a path for some better respect to be shown to myself and your community of contributors.
In the meantime, while I wait, I’d rather continue where I was with Clark and our common interest in the value of scientific thinking.
Clark,
you wrote “Time to take down my Black Flag, I think.” …
is that a reference to a Pirate Ship? Sorry, I block all the off-site images and scripts so I don’t see any avatars.
One of my metaphors was more along the lines of a chartered yacht, although there is also a sense of being a pirate radio station outside the UK. Is that what you had in mind?
Ttya: I don’t understand the cause of your frustration, but would advise that you’d find it easier if you try to assume good faith on the internet (until proven firmly otherwise, of course). There’s been no double-messages from me, but it’ll be best if I exit the conversation – anyway I have a cat demanding my attention 🙂
Jon,
I have been assuming good faith, and assuming that the ideals espoused by this site also translate into day to day human relations, and that responsibilities inherent in running a site that is not simply a blog about lol-cats but more in the vein of anti-establishment political dissidence and whistleblowing are taken very seriously, especially given the encroachment of governments and corporations on individual rights on the net.
Alas, despite my attempts to be polite and avoid rash or blunt replies, each response I receive is more tending to disprove my good faith assumptions. At the very least I have some bottom-line outcomes of clearer informing users I would strongly expect in good faith out of respect to the users would be taken on board. As expressed above to Craig my hopes aimed higher, and it is frustrating still not to have to conversation leading back to the point where Clark first engaged my expectations with clear intent and towards interest taken at least for me to set out some concerns for sincere consideration.
At the interactional level, the frustration is that having explained or hinted politely at how I do feel, or that you are making unwarranted assumptions, I expect you would give good faith consideration to how that may possibly be the case (to some extent), and hence respond in a way that respects my feelings (perhaps even apologetically) and inquire as to what my concerns are and how might a satisfactory resolution be attained. Instead you are repeatedly dismissive, and take on a position of giving me advice. Do you really not see what I mean about a double message? I thought you had done some psych. or was that Clark? So does explaining all this again this way help you follow what I have been saying and turn the exchanges around finally now? I hope so.
Without sounding grandiose, try to think of me more as someone a bit like a Dennis Ritchie or Vint Cerf or Frank Gehry or Glenn Greenwald or Carl Jung who is trying ever so patiently to raise some serious concerns and lead to a satisfactory outcome.
ttya, hello again. I have been avoiding this site for a few days; I’ve also been leaving my e-mail uncollected. I think I’ve been having an emotional crisis, and I seem to be physically unwell, too; cold, and lacking in energy. I’ll try to get an appointment with the doctor tomorrow.
My “black flag” comment was in reference to my avatar, which I changed to a black flag because I was feeling angry. I’ve changed it back to a common slug now.
Regarding Craig’s comment about sock puppets; yes, he’s referring to my suggestion that this site should employ implicit, anonymous registration. I think that would reduce sock puppetry, as well as being effective against spam. Craig doesn’t regard sock puppetry as a problem, but nearly all the contributors we’ve had trouble with have been puppeteers.
You said you’d like this site to be more self-contained, such that it distributes less information about the connections from which comments are submitted. I agree, but I don’t think it’s going to be done, since I seemed to be the only person with such concerns.
As to the DNS chain, Craig chose a web-host in the Netherlands specifically to place the host out of reach of the UK libel laws; you can follow that story through these links:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/alisher_usmanov/
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/usmanov_redux/
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/12/the_sad_death_o/
The Netherlands hosting company was originally Safehosts, but the name was changed to Expathos at some point. How iDotz etc. got involved I have no idea.
Clark,
I’m looking again at your two Oct 30 posts; you covered a lot of ground, so I hope I didn’t seem dismissive in not wanting to get involved beyond expressing genuine concern based on my experience with the pressures placed on admins with little appreciation for the demands of the job, and also extrapolating from what I’ve seen in usenet and listservs and forums.
I’d like to think there are other supportive resources and fora dealing with the quite challenging issues you have been confronting. On the “New Agers”, might there be material by skeptics such as James Randi on how to start to engage with them, or better still that you can point them to for some “homework” in rational thought and discourse? 🙂 Are Bill Bryson’s books on science something they might pick up and open? There are still some good science shows on radio around the planet which usually are available as podcasts, or sometimes there are public lectures to engage the public with science. Perhaps it is a matter of finding something that leads them to experience their own “aha!- science works!” moment, rather than trying to apply logic through words…
Perhaps it helps to show that science is an intellectual pursuit and philosophy for individuals too, and not just something that the establishment does and announces through press releases, and that it is distinct from public policy decisions.
There is a late night BBC radio program that brings science to the personal level with caller’s questions to Dr Karl that might be suitable for that.
tbc…
Clark,
sorry – crossed posts there as I didn’t refresh before posting.
Given the change of seasons and so on could it just be that or a cold? What is your body trying to tell you? Sleep? Walk in nature? Visit a science museum or art gallery?
Thanks for finding the energy to respond to me; are you wanting me to say anything? Certainly from experience, after investing much of ones self into some enterprise, a sudden break can take quite a toll; when it also involves a role in a network of online social connections that may be an added factor. It can take a while to re-adjust one’s sense of purpose … just think how people talk of “withdrawal symptoms” if they are offline from twitter and sms status updates etc. 🙂
At least thes days internet access is ubiquitous, unlike the early days when it went with the job.
I was earlier tactfully trying to refer to the lack of “status updates” following your offering your resignation, as if there was some ongoing negotiation or you are trying a break, so could it be that matters there are unresolved and are affecting you?
Certainly don’t feel ashamed about these upsets with difficult posters.
Well, hope you get on well tomorrow. Also thanks for the tech responses.
ttya, thanks for your reply and your concern. I have an infection, and have been prescribed antibiotics. They’ll check me after, but I suspect that no underlying cause for the infection will be found. I probably just became susceptible through stress; I’m recovering from about three years of… well, assorted trouble.
Thanks also for the suggestions regarding New Agers. I think that they have an aversion to science. I tell them that they should read Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but of course they don’t want to, presumably out of fear that it could weaken their aversion.
I sympathise, to an extent, but I wish they’d learn the value of expressing how they feel and what motivates them. I think that modern societies, and particularly “the establishment” within such societies, tend to treat people as objects. I’m finding this myself in trying to find psychotheraputic support to help me recover from the recent events I mentioned. I can get pills, or a brief course in self-conditioning (“cognitive behavioural therapy”), but I can’t get psychotherapy. The thing is, I have a story to tell, and having that story heard and witnessed is important to my sense of self-worth. To be told “No one has time to hear your story, which doesn’t matter anyway. Just follow these instructions and you’ll get better” is to be treated as a machine; it is essentially the same as the message “you don’t matter; only the effects of your behaviour matter”, for what makes any of us individuals if not our unique experiences?
I don’t think that it is the scientific attitude that is trying to treat people as standardised components. In the case of UK society it’s corporatism and the crazy worship of money above all else. It’s ironic that capitalism’s criticism of communism was that it tried to make everyone the same. The “free market” was supposed to offer us more choice, and it is true that I have a choice of dozens of different toothpastes – but due to “market forces” they all taste of mint.
As to my resignation, well, this is a fiery sort of blog, so it’s probably appropriate that I left with a bit of an explosion. It has done me good to get away from the Internet a bit. I think that the main problem with voluntarily tending something like this blog is that it is continuous; whenever there is respite from life’s chores, there was the blog to be checked on.
Anyway, Jon has installed a Captcha and a new spam filter, so there is a lot less to be done now. I’ll stay off the recent threads for a while longer, and probably only return as a normal contributor.
Craig, Jon: I wish to draw your attention to this, by ttya:
Really, Craig, this is an excellent offer, a bit like having an ex-ambassador offer to handle ones claim for asylum.
ttya, I’d like to hear your metaphors, even if no one else seems interested.
Craig, Jon, I don’t regard any of ttya’s contributions as “off topic”. ttya first posted about website technicalities during the outage, admittedly not about the US presidential debate, but the outage rather upstaged the original topic, I think, force majeure. Website technicalities are a freedom of speech issue; it’s all very well being able to express ourselves privately, but our Internet-based means of public communication need to be defended and safeguarded. And central to that is the one centralised vulnerability of the Internet, DNS, the Domain Name System.
Craig, this may all look like techie-talk, but it isn’t. The cause of our outage was an accidental occurrence very similar to the method the authorities will use to selectively shut down web sites.
Clark,
thanks for the update; before I get diverted here are some first thoughts:
In good humour – I hoped you are not hypochondriac and were not taking Craig’s exhortation that “he should chill out more about it all” too literally! 🙂 What is the converse? Rug up and get cosy! Chicken soup with hot chilli? 🙂 Are you ok with that sort of slang american “chill out” team-player talk?
I’d suggest asking your doctor about the effects antibiotics can have wiping out the good stomach bugs that help digestion and tackle fungi etc. and how to re-establish them, and what best to eat now to get energy.
Do you feel you are in some sort of state of shock? That can make one cold. I was thinking about all the grim news about the world that streams by this site that is far beyond my own capacity to humanly digest; so I have no idea how you handle years of that. I hardly know how a TV newsreader would cope. Is it that one feels one is part of a cause with a purpose doing good by making news public? I have an image now of having been driving a speedboat, you have stopped and the wake of all that has caught up with you and crashed over the stern.
I need to find some book references etc. to respond on CBT etc.
Might there be any “men’s sheds” in your area, where one can at least hang out with people who acknowledge that everyone has their own story.
As you seem inspired by the idea of Hacking code, do you feel like learning some programming language? It can be a satisfying learning experience, and when it works you get results to see, and keeps you in tech but away from the crowds.
Might there be a hacker-space or fabrication-lab nearby, as they seem to be catching on a lot.
On your resignation – that was a pretty quiet explosion 🙂
(or did I miss it/ it get deleted?) No seething letter letting rip about all and sundry? … One is reminded of Rory in “The IT Crowd”!
Seriously, if it is all settled now, would it help to write calmly when you can a few paragraphs to tell everyone that. Then it would be fit and proper for Craig to publicly acknowledge and thank you for your work in moderating the site, and to privately provide you with a letter of reference. Even though it may have been on a volunteer basis, that may come in handy sometime. Can some numbers on how many posts were on the site, number of edits, your own posts, and numbers of page views etc. be looked up to go on such a reference.
A big thanks for finally getting my drift, (although I’m not taking on an individual asylum case – remember my wish not to be dragged into admin or consulting), and for the invitation which finally may motivate me to write. I’ve said all along this could have been better moved elsewhere. Might it all be moved over to the Outage post if that can then be reopened?
There are two levels to this – the political and how governments keep passing more intrusive legislation since it doesn’t seem “interesting” to even those who are politically aware, and the particular of what I’d expected a site like this to be rather on the lookout against should matters continue on the current trajectory towards more repression of sites and harassment etc. of the “radical supporters” we are probably all classified as.
Also – are you familiar in general terms with C.P Snow’s Two Cultures?
take care.
ttya, thanks for the health tips. I’ve always been OK with antibiotics (brilliant things – three pills in 36 hours, and already I’m feeling much better), but thanks for reminding me to attend to probiotics. I do have some hypochondriac tendency, but awareness of it compensates.
Your analogy of a speedboat and its wake are apt. There are various things that I’ve found particularly rewarding about this site. The diverse collection of contributors seems quite unusual and leads to interesting discussion. But it’s the structural understanding of politics and current events that seems most valuable to me. We all see the “news” offerings from the corporate media, but such reports seem to pass like a procession of apparently pointless political set-piece slapstick battles, and otherwise unrelated horrors mostly in far away places (with sport and the token humorous report at the end). What I’ve learnt here has changed that for me; it has helped to reveal the mechanisms behind the horrors, the political misdirection of debate into trivia, and the corporate media’s, er, idiosyncratic approach to reporting. With that knowledge comes hope. We’re not locked into a hell that inevitably follows from “human nature”; the problems are consequent upon structure, and with understanding and will, structures can be modified for the better.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/theres_good_mon/
Predictive power is indicative of a good theory, so here’s a follow-up from a year and a half later:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/jack_straws_cor/
I suppose that this is part of why I became so upset with the conspiracy theorists’ line of argument; it shifts the whole emphasis from structure to hidden knowledge, and it seems to attack the basis of structural analysis itself.
“Men’s sheds” – contributor “Nevermind” sent me a link to a video about Men’s Sheds a couple of weeks ago. They look like a great idea, but I’m not sure that we’d get away with it in the UK; probably insurance and “health-and-safety” would prove too much for most projects. Establishment structures would effectively insist upon producer-consumer organisation. I’ve seen one such project shut down. Similar clubs do exist; there’s the Chelmsford Society of Model Engineers, for instance, but most of them seem to pre-date the current fetish for Rules and Regulations. I just need to get about more, really; when I do, I’ll soon get involved with something.
Yes, programming is very rewarding. I’ve barely done any for a decade or so. That was before I’d encountered the Free Software movement, so I’ve had a lot of catching up to do, and I’ve never worked on a collaborative software project.
Oh, I understood you early on; sorry I didn’t make that clear to you, but I passed it on in my e-mails to the rest of the team. Taking on asylum cases is one of the things Craig does.
It seems OK right here where it is to me. The outage itself put an end to any “Presidential Debate” discussion, and active conversation follows the more recent posts in any case, so we’re not intruding upon anything.
I’ve heard of Snow’s The Two Cultures, and I’m in the process of reading about it. I must read the book itself soon.
ttya, regarding my “explosion”, now I come to think of it, I kept most of it to private e-mails, but you can see the public bit of it here:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/10/those-despicable-foreigners/#comment-374385
As to discussions and reconciliation, it may be just be that I’m feeling miserable, but I think that the chances are low; I’m too low in the pecking-order to be taken seriously. I can’t risk pressing for such a resolution because I still feel too vulnerable to risk being rebuffed.