Hellblazer

Only hours until the Training Wheels^tm come off.

June 13, 2004

An interesting case study in Trolling^tm by the left

This poor woman had the misfortune of committing a fairly huge blunder and getting noticed by some very high traffic blogs on the left. Heck, we're all amateurs, so mistakes are generally the rule rather than the exception. Still, it's a classic example of trolling behavior, and they are trolls from my side of the fence, politically speaking.

The comment swarm is an interesting phenomena. A vicious phenomena.

I'll bet there's more than one or two good papers waiting to be written about it. Just the data alone would be interesting to look at. It'd be really cool to do IP correlation of the comments and the purported identities and track the multiple identities in the storm.

There's got to be people out there looking at this kind of stuff, right? The sheer size of the group involved is amazing. You could never fit this many people in a room to have this kind of swarm, nor could the swarm exist vocally (unless it was recorded, but even then. . .). And the geographical diversity alone would make for some interesting data.

I guess the old Usenet was similar to this and certainly had it's swarms, but the population to draw upon was pretty small (relative to what it is today) and pretty narrowly selected (the group of people likely to have computers and access to the threads through the internet was primarily limited to scientists and computer geeks). Also, the notion of blogs implies a certain ownership to the swarm which was, I think, far more loosely defined in the Usenet - i.e. the moderator(s) "own" the threads.

In any event, hopefully some enterprising people will study this stuff and mine the weird behavior with good research. It'd make for fascinating reading.

Posted by Hal at 11:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

`The biggest bombs have yet to be dropped'

Getting really weird out there.

Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels'

The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident.

"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

Posted by Hal at 07:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Not even trying to hide it any more

This is really amazing. Lately there has been much talk about the Bush administration's efforts to change the law such that religious groups can have a free hand when it comes to helping out George Bush in his reelection bid. And as is usual regarding these topics, a little bit of hay has been made about how the Democrats have been over reacting in that liberal way they have about the issue of seperation between church and state. Well, I think we can cast aside such petty arguments now as George Bush has pretty much pulled aside the veil and has cleared everything up for us.

Bush sought Vatican help to get U.S. bishops' support

Citing an unidentified Vatican official, Allen wrote: ``Bush said, `Not all the American bishops are with me' on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism.''

Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts ``on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken.'' Sodano did not respond, Allen reported, citing the same unidentified sources.

A Vatican official declined Saturday to disclose the contents of the meeting, which followed the president's brief meeting with the pope. Jeanie Mamo, a White House press officer, said: ``They had a good, private discussion. They discussed a number of priorities of shared concern, and the president's and the Vatican's positions on these issues are well-known.''

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the report ``mind-boggling.''

``It is just unprecedented for a president to ask for help from the Vatican to get re-elected, and that is exactly what this is,'' Lynn said.

Linda Pieczynski of Call to Action, a liberal Catholic group, said, ``For a president to try to get the leader of any religious organization to manipulate his fellow clergymen to support a political candidate crosses the line in this country.''

Posted by Hal at 06:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 12, 2004

Simple Minds

Digby has a post up about something I've been wondering for some time.

Bad Books For Stupid People

This business of using dogs to torture Iraqi prisoners actually is more depraved than is obvious, if you can believe that.

Islam has a prohibition against keeping dogs in the house or touching them. They are considered impure. I would guess that the brain trust who is putting together this new torture regime thought they were being very clever by doing something that "the ayrabs" would find particularly unpleasant.

We know that big tough American guys like Trent Lott wouldn't piss all over themselves if they were tied up naked while a 150 lb snarling German Shepard was allowed to back them into a corner and take a piece out of their flesh. They don't have a problem with dogs like those arabs do.

This is but another example of the crude, stereotypical approach we seem to have taken toward the Iraqis (and undoubtedly the Afghans, as well.) And it is likely because the "intellectuals" who planned and implemented the war don't have a clue.

Basically, this speaks directly to the whole "cultural superiority" clap trap that I (and many minds greater and entertaining than I) have written about in the past.

Really. If I - your average white American guy - were thrown in a prison, pretty much any of the techniques used (or ever imagined) would work on me. There's not anything "cultural" about being threatened by a German Shepherd. There's not anything particularly middle eastern regarding being shuffled around in the nude and being forced into homo-erotic acts. Really. It'll humiliate pretty much anyone and apply unbearable pressure.

And so I am simply left stunned - yet again - at the intellectual immaturity of the pro-war side. The whole last three years has been driven by a literal comic book mentality of how the world works.

Words fail me. I simply cannot describe how repulsed I am at the level of intellectual discussion that has gone on. From the "Hulk Must Crush" attitude on the military side to the incredible semantic squirming from the so-called intellectual side.

And now we're justifying torture and quibbling about the constitutionality of the president's ability to "set aside" laws by fiat. . .

Posted by Hal at 09:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tortured Silence

Wow, the silence is really getting quite deafening. Back in May, all we heard was that the torture was the result of a few bad apples and the horrible liberal, anti-war partisans were just blowing all of this out of proportion. Then in June we saw an all out assault on Seymour Hersh because he dared to suggest that the responsibility for this ugly, loathsome behavior went far higher up the command chain than was being suggested.

Now we have not just one, but several leaked memos from the Bush administration which pretty much state that this kind of interrogation techniques were authorized at the highest levels of our administration. Ashcroft, while not invoking executive privilege, has refused to release the memo. A memo which essentially says our chief executive can set aside the law when ever he wants. [for the whole, well linked shebang, go here].

Myself, I can only assume that things are going to get worse on this front, not better. After Ashcroft's performance this week, it seems the line in the sand has been drawn pretty clearly.

At least one conservative mind has decided to hit the eject button and remain silent on the issue. . .

Posted by Hal at 07:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

His only begotten son

The editors at The Poor Man have another story board up for the Bush campaign.

Priceless.

Posted by Hal at 08:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 11, 2004

The Two Things

Just found this little gem off of the main Furl feed. Here's a few of my favorites.

The Two Things about Philosophy.
1. Plato was wrong.
2. Wittgenstein was right.

The Two Things about Project Management:
1. The schedule will slip.
2. It's about how you manage the schedule slippage.

And this one, strangely reminiscent of the comment policy for this blog.

The Two Things about Blogging:
1. Everyone who runs one is a kook.
2. Everyone who comments in one is a kook.

And here's my personal contribution:

The Two Things About System Design:
1. Build a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
2. A fool and his money are soon parted.

Posted by Hal at 11:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A trivial blog process announcement

Due to the wonderful service that is Furl, I have changed my blogging process over the past 2 months - for the better, I believe. On the right of the blog pages is the latest 20 entries into my Furl clipping archive, generated using the most excellent "Feed to JavaScript" service.

At first I was rather skeptical about Furl's claim, but I find that I'm using it all the time now. As I'm searching around the net in the various directions that one gets led, I just "Furl" the page and a local copy is saved on their web site. There's several sites out there which provide a bookmark service, but what sets Furl apart is the fact that they archive a copy of the page so when they disappear you still have it. But that's not all. They also provide a pretty darn good search feature for all your archives (and other user's public archives) which is something that mere bookmarking of URLs doesn't supply. In addition, they allow annotations of the archived copy so I can add any snarky comments, or extracts I see fit.

So, the up shot is that I no longer just use this blog to post all the pointers to interesting articles that I find in my random walk through the web. This has resulted in a lot less posting on the blog which I think is for the better. There's plenty of sites out there which do this far better than I and since I have a tendency to find a lot of interesting articles out there, my blog fills up with a lot of posts which tend to obscure my posts which contain the deep and penetrating insight that I'm famous for (hey, that's called irony).

What's also cool about Furl is that they provide a general RSS feed for the entire public archive of the members, so by subscribing to this, you then get a quite broad and eccletic feed of information coming from the other Furl members - quite cool in its own right.

So anyways, the upshot is that while I might not be posting the number of posts I used to, you can still look over to the right to see the recent clippings I've been gathering from around the net. You can go to view the Hellblazer Furl archive, or you can subscribe to the Hellblazer Furl RSS feed.

Again, I can't stress what a great service Furl is. It's free and I keep finding new uses for it. The ability to search what I've archived and the use of the RSS feed to clean up my blog has been well worth the dollar. They've been nothing but responsive to support requests and they keep adding features.

Posted by Hal at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Now that's a good turn of phrase

Via John David Stone:

I wept because I had no answers, until I met a man who had no questions.

Posted by Hal at 07:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 10, 2004

Why Smart People Believe Weird Stupid Things

[ed. - this is a recycled post from December of last year]

Case in point: Iraq.

How to explain the insanity? Lot's of those who consider themselves on the left side of the political spectrum wonder about this a lot. Conspiracy theories. Evil. Corporate greed. Alien colonization. The list is way too long to enumerate.

The easy answer to this complex issue:

Smart people believe weird stupid things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons

There is a wealth of evidence to support this thesis, but nothing explains what's going on more than an extremely powerful cognitive bias that makes it extremely difficult for any of us to objectively evaluate a claim.

It's called the Confirmation Bias.

Here's what Francis Bacon had to say about this in 1620

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate...

There is an ingrained and well documented tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to already existing beliefs, and to ignore or reinterpret evidence unfavorable to already existing beliefs.

And the world has been getting a painful object lesson of this quirk of human nature in the prosecution of the war on terror.

Continue reading "Why Smart People Believe Weird Stupid Things"

Posted by Hal at 09:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 09, 2004

I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up

Drezner responds to Matt Stoller's calling him out on the blogosphere floor. The comments to Drezner's post are well worth the read (so far, at least. Who knows when the trolls drop by and Godwin's law is invoked).

Here's my shorter version of Drezner's response

1) I don't agree with the way Blankley said it, but I agree with the point he was trying to make.

2) While I agree that Iraq has been incompetently planned, executed, and prosecuted on a lie, the idea itself is a pretty darn good one.

3) I didn't cheat when I bashed Soros, here's a taste of how I thoroughly trash his book by misrepresenting Soros' arguments and assuming he's a loon as my working premise.

4) Let me conclude by implying Stoller is anti-semitic and finish on the high note of an ad hominem attack.

Matt's going to respond soon, so hopefully this debate will continue. Drezner's response so far is very limp. I know he's a busy man, but perhaps he can take more time to address the meat of the issue rather than just casting aside Stoller's charges with an academic huff.

Posted by Hal at 06:24 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Revisionist History

Via Ara, I'm led to a rather frightening article in the L.A. Times.

U.S. Will Revise Data on Terror

The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration.

When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world.

"Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report.

But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon.

Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.

"It will change the numbers," said one State Department official who declined to comment further or be identified by name. "The incidents will go up, but I don't know by how many." [emphasis added]

I guess Dean Esmay is going to have eat his words.

This should demonstrate once again for some people that the news media prefers to sensationalize violence and bad news, and not to look at successes. It should also demonstrate that certain people are not above using this tendency of the media in order to forward their own narrow agendas--either anti-war or simply anti-Bush.

As opposed to those who have a tendency to sensationalize false statements and false good news ,who never take an honest look at what is actually happening in the misguided belief that sticking their head in the ground will make it all go away. And this should also demonstrate that certain people are not above using this tendency to forward their own personal agendas -- either anti-democrat or simply anti-Kerry.

Indeed, you can pretty much assume that, aside from glancingly mentioning this--the fact that things are going astoundingly well, I mean--the news media will quickly return to hyping every negative development, every nasty surprise, and every successful attack as top news. Even if there are fewer all the time, even if things get better all the time, even if things will never be perfect or ideal, you will rarely see the fact that we're doing so well pointed out.

It will be the job of those of us who actually care about the facts, and view them as more important than partisanship, to try to get the truth out. I hope you'll all join me in that. Think of it as your contribution to the war effort--it's what I think of as my main contribution, that's for sure.

So I can assume that Dean will be blogging about these new facts as vociferously and as strongly as he's been pushing the "non facts".

[crickets chirping]

Posted by Hal at 10:05 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (2)

June 08, 2004

Queries about me

Over at Share Your Experience, I seem to have two people who are willing to give information regarding me and someone who is looking for information about me. The two that are information providers work with me (or have in the past). One knows claims to know me very well and the experience is "current", meaning, I suppose, that they currently work with me. The other declines to state how well they know me and the experience is within the current year. The person looking for information regarding me apparently knows me socially and claims to know me well.

I'm of two minds about this service. It's anonymous, so you don't have a clue who is saying what to whom. But on the other hand, this is pretty much the way things work in real life so there's hardly any thing new going on here. It's just amplified because of the internet.

I can only hope they're saying good things about me. . . I really don't have any recourse anyway. But I do find it odd that someone who claims to know me well should be casting around the net looking for more information about me, anonymously. Hmmm... What enemies do I have? They would know me well, I suppose. But I would hardly be social with them.

Oh well. The whole thing still kind of freaks me out. After all, talking about someone behind their back is... well... supposed to stay behind your back. It's a little alarming to receive an email from "Share Your Experiences" notifying you that people are talking behind your back.

I mean, it really does nothing more than feed one's natural paranoia to find this out without any way to figure out what's going on.

Posted by Hal at 12:50 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

June 07, 2004

Chomsky turns comments back on

Over at Turning the Tide, they learned the hard way that comments are more than a mixed blessing. Now you have to be a registered Z sustainer to comment. Interestingly, they have retroactively restored the comments. I had missed all the nonsense when it occurred, so it was interesting to go read all the juvenile crap these right wing loons decided to spew all over the place.

Really, it is pretty sickening. I've thankfully never been witness to such raw bile and hatred in my life. It's stunning to see.

Heart of Darkness, Chris? It's no surprise. The only thing I find surprising is that there's any light left at all.

Posted by Hal at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Entropy

Christopher Allbritton has a rather depressing post up from Iraq.

I write this not as a plea for pity or understanding. I don’t understand this country myself, so that may be impossible. And I know I have written things that will anger people: I am ashamed of many of the emotions I feel these days. But I care about the truth as best as I can see and tell it. I once believed that telling the truth — or a small part of it — could help the world. It could help people understand things better and thus make the world better. But this war defies comprehension. It’s so stupid and there seems to be no point to anything that happens here. People die on a daily basis in random, terrifying attacks. And for what? Freedom? Stability? Peace? There is none of that here and it’s likely there won’t be after the Americans leave. Iraq has spiraled into a dark place, much worse than where it was a year ago during the war. There is no freedom from the fear that is stoked by mutual hatred, cynicism and an apprehension about the future. So what if one side has superior firepower? Every bullet fired helps kill souls on both sides of this war, whether it hits flesh or lands harmlessly.

We — Iraqis and the Americans here — are caged by fear, and we are all conquered people now.

Words fail.

Posted by Hal at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)