Rather than keep pulling links from The Memory Hole, here’s a link to The Memory Hole. Go there and spend all day long getting more and more upset, just like me.
Archive > December 2003
If you get arrested in the United States with a sodium cyanide bomb, other bombs and chemicals, illegal weapons, hate literature, fake I.D., gas masks, bomb-making books, and coded plans for “meetings” in 10 US cities, and if hundreds of subpoenas are issued around the country for more arrests, there’s one good way to stay out of the national media: be Christians instead of Muslims. Because there are no Christian terrorists. None. Not even one.
How much less funding for the arts will be available in the new year in your state? And where are our taxes going instead? Maybe education? Or maybe something else?
Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) is a nationwide student group. Although SOS has always been a nationwide student group, there is evidence to suggest that it first appeared at Columbia University. As to be expected, SOS has been quite successful. Since the events of 11 September, we have been able to convince a number of figures in national and local politics to help forward our aims. How could they do otherwise? Our successes can be shown to fit into the three major ideals of Ingsoc as expressed by Orwell: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength
newzBin is a service that is dedicated to indexing the ever-changing contents of Usenet, also known as Newsgroups. The reason why we do this is to remove the hassle of crawling through the thousands of newsgroups and millions of headers to find what you’re looking for. Think of it as a TV guide, but we’re a guide that applies to Usenet. So .. How do I download from newzBin? You can’t. It is as simple as that.
Let’s pretend. Your name is Sue Smethurst, and you are a reporter from Australia visiting the United States of America.
What are you here for? (Say you’re writing an article) What’s the article about? What sort of stories do you write? What kind of magazine do you write for? Where is it published? What is its circulation? Does it print politically sensitive articles? When will your article appear? Who will be reading it? Who is your father? His occupation? Your mother’s maiden name and occupation? What were their dates of birth, where did they live?
“I thought at that stage something was quite wrong,” Smethurst says, “so I asked the man with the coffee if there was some problem.”
“I will tell you when there’s a problem,” he abruptly snapped, according to Smethurst. Then he pointed to a nearby sign:
Question: How many surveillance cameras are there in downtown Portland, Oregon, where are they, and who is watching them? Answer.
nget is to nntp as wget is to http. Proceed accordingly.
The Grand Canyon: a Different View.
December the 25th! A fine and important day for science, because it is the day that Sir Isaac Newton was born. Sir Isaac gave us the laws of motion, that were very accurate until something more accurate came along. Similarly, the laws of thermodynamics have been very accurate for some time. But it seems something more accurate has come along. The second law of thermodynamics, which states (in so many DEVO-esque words) ‘things fall apart’ is only partially true. Things fall apart, and they also do not fall apart. That’s how science works: use the best thing you have, and be ready to question even the stuff you are most certain about.
(Some people celebrate something else on December 25th. That thing doesn’t use the best things it has, and never questions even the stuff it is least certain about.)
On January 31, 2003, a top U.S. National Security Agency official wrote a memo outlining the surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the U.N. Security Council, noting a focus on “the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.” And one of those goals, the big one, was support for war on Iraq.The NSA memo said that the agency had started a “surge” of spying on diplomats at the United Nations in New York, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of e-mails. The targets were delegations from six countries considered to be pivotal – Mexico, Chile, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea and Pakistan – for the war resolution being promoted by the United States and Britain. The scoop caused headlines in much of the world, and sparked a furor in the “Middle Six” countries. The U.S. government and its British ally – revealed to be colluding in the U.N. surveillance caper – were put on the defensive.
A few days after the story broke, Norman Solomon of the The Baltimore Sun contacted the man responsible for leaking the huge trove of secret documents about the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers more than three decades ago. What was his assessment of the U.N. spying memo? “This leak,” Daniel Ellsberg replied, “is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers.” The exposure of the memo, he said, had the potential to block the invasion of Iraq before it began: “Truth-telling like this can stop a war.”
Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee, leaked the memo to the press. For this she has been arrested, lost her job, and faces up to two years in prison under the Official Secrets Act.
I think I somehow missed reading about all this in the US press. I’m sure it was on the front pages of every major newspaper, as befitting a story of this kind.
Some days I want less bullshit, some days I want more, some days I get everything I want.
Daze Reader leads us to New Scientist which reports…
Resources have a value to individuals that changes through time. For example, immediately available cash is generally worth more than the same amount would be in the future. But greater amounts of money in the future would be worth waiting for under so-called ‘rational’ discounting. But some people, such as drug addicts, show ‘irrational’ discounting. For example, preferring a small amount of heroin today rather than a greater amount in the future.
Margo Wilson and Martin Daly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada decided to investigate discounting behaviour and see if it varied with sexual mood. Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website ‘Hot or Not‘. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward. They could either accept a cheque for between $15 and $35 tomorrow or one for $50-$75 at a variable point in the future.
Wilson and Daly found that male students shown the pictures of averagely attractive women showed exponential discounting of the future value of the reward. This indicated that they had made a rational decision. When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an “irrational” way – they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward. Women, by contrast, made equally rational decisions whether they had been shown pictures of handsome men or those of average attractiveness.
The White House spokesman said Mr Bush interrupted Mr Rumsfeld’s first words – “Mr President, the first reports are not always accurate,” to say, “This sounds like it’s going to be good news”. Mr Rumsfeld told him the military believed it had captured Saddam. “That is good news,” Mr Bush replied.
Mr. Bush then jumped up and down, clapping his little hands while saying “I was right! I was right! Good news!”
The George Walford International Essay Prize is an annual essay competition in memory of the late George Walford. The subject of the essay is systematic ideology and the prize is £3,000 for the winner to spend at the college and on the course of the winner’s choice. Everything you need to apply for, research and win this prize can be found at this site.
thiS heEr is MiLi aNd TiLduH’s weB siTe.
Shame on me for quoting the majority of Black author talks about converting KKK members by Alicia Leonardi, © 2003 Colorado State Collegian.
Many Americans cannot imagine becoming buddies with national leaders of the Ku Klux Klan. Daryl Davis doesn’t have to try. He did it. The 47-year-old black man befriended many Klansmen, witnessed the resignation of several Klan members and wrote a book on his experiences. Davis said he achieved this feat by treating Klan members with enough respect that they would take him seriously. After forging a relationship with Kelly, Davis began introducing him to different people with different viewpoints. “I wasn’t trying to convert him. I was trying to expose him to people who were not like him and didn’t think like him,” Davis said. “I wanted him to see that maybe he was the exception.” Davis learned as a child that racial hate was the exception to the rule. Since his first experiences with discrimination in high school in 1974, Davis has been fascinated with race relations. He began a lifetime of research during his studies at Howard University.
After looking though pages of writings on supremacist groups, he noticed that no black person, other than people who had nearly escaped lynching, had written a book on the Ku Klux Klan. A few years later, Davis decided he needed to write that missing book. He and his Caucasian co-worker set up an interview with Kelly and took great care not to divulge his race until Kelly showed up for the interview. Though they had differing views, Davis and Kelly got along because Davis genuinely listened to Kelly’s ideas and did not respond hatefully. Kelly was one the first Klansmen to quit the organization after forming a positive relationship with a black person. Davis now possesses many Klan artifacts, including 13 Klan robes from supremacists who resigned after speaking with him. “I’m glad that I have these things because it means that the people who had them no longer need them because they’ve changed,” Davis said.
