1441

Flat Earth Community / Re: NASA owes us an apology for Werner Von Braun

« on: June 10, 2015, 04:22:34 PM »

We are doing something very moral and humanitarian by bringing this issue to light...Scholars like us who are looking into these issues have a social responsibility to get this information out there.

I can only speak to what you've produced here, but you're not doing any scholarship.  You're not bringing any new issues to light, and the information you're using is already "out there."  That's how you found it.

The first source you provide is authored and published by NASA.  The only reason you know it exists at all is because NASA documented it; it's not because of any scholarship on your part.  And its publication runs directly counter to your argument that NASA is somehow keeping it from the public's attention.

It also doesn't agree with you.  Immediately after that quote, the author writes:

Morand goes on to state that he was known as "one of the inventors of the "V2" and made frequent "rapid inspections" of the hall.

The administration of corporal punishment in the tunnels, as opposed to the camp, would have been quite unusual, but we have no reason to doubt the story altogether. Yet it may rest on a case of mistaken identity. In September 1944 Wernher von Braun assigned his younger brother Magnus, a twenty-five-year-old chemical engineer and Luftwaffe pilot, as his special liaison to the Mittelwerk, particularly for servomotor production, which was afflicted with serious technical problems. Although still an employee of Peenemunde, Magnus von Braun stayed in the Nordhausen area full-time until the evacuation of April 1945. In contrast, his elder brother visited the Mittelwerk, by his estimates, twelve or fifteen times in total. Morand gives the time of the incident as the "second half of 1944," which corresponds to Magnus von Braun's assignment to the factory, and the testimonial never actually gives "von Braun" a first name.

Morand's story necessarily brings Jouanin's identification into question, as both deal with the servomotors. Although Jouanin's first instinct on timing was early May 1944, when I wrote him about it, he was less than certain. The description of a man in his thirties he saw only once fits Wernher von Braun better than Magnus, however. In the end, it is impossible to say with certainty that Georges Jouanin's identification of Wernher von Braun can be accepted as meeting a reasonable standard of certainty, as believable as I find it personally. Nor can we conclude with assurance that Magnus von Braun was responsible for either incident. For purposes of drawing up a balance sheet of Werher von Braun' s involvement with the SS and the concentration camps, therefore, we have little choice but to leave all stories of abuse aside.

Cherry-picking quotes from sources you claim are hiding things from you isn't scholarship.

Historians may already know of some of this, but apparently they are not doing anything about it. Well, I am. I am bringing this issue to public attention and demanding that NASA apologies to the world for protecting and supporting murderers like Werner Von Braun.

What positive steps have you taken to bring this issue to the public's attention?  I mean, the historians you're so quick to criticize (and upon whose scholarship you're relying) have actually collected primary and secondary source material on the subject, analyzed it, and published it for public consumption.  That sounds like a lot more than you've done, which to my count is make a post on a web forum visited by about a dozen regular users.

1442

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Indigenous constitutional recognition referendum in Australia

« on: June 09, 2015, 09:43:15 PM »

Actually, we do. I have a Hebrew name, which I use for all religious purposes, and a secular name, which is my legal name. I use it on my driver license, my debit card, etc. My Hebrew name is Ya'akov ben Avraham. My legal name is a typically boring English sounding name. Obviously I am not going to reveal it here.

Only in Israel would my Hebrew name become my official name. Although I am an Orthodox Jew, the only way my Hebrew name in the USA would be my legal name is if I changed my name legally, which I wouldn't do unless I felt the need to move into some place like Kiryas Joel, or something, which, given that I am a more Modern Orthodox, I really don't feel the need to do. But Jews that live among Gentiles do generally have secular names that serve as legal names.

If I'm a journalist named Ezra Klein, shouldn't my work be evaluated on its merit and not on how Jewy my name sounds?

I feel like you're missing the point entirely.  Jewish culture is distinctive.  Setting aside the silly notion that Jews don't have a set of culturally identifiable monikers, Mr. Abraham Weingoldbergstein, I have a hard time believing that you wouldn't decry the notion that Jewish communities are any less entitled to participate in the economy because of that distinctiveness.

1443

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Indigenous constitutional recognition referendum in Australia

« on: June 09, 2015, 08:16:46 PM »

Well, I do believe there was a recent speech given by a Professor at Duke, comparing Blacks to Asians, suggesting that Asians assimilate better to white culture, with names like "Charles" being used as personal names, whereas Blacks use names like "DaQuan". Perhaps if they used names like "Charles", that might get them a little further in life as well.

I myself remember a co-worker who spoke atrocious English, and was an immigrant from Laos. But he had given himself the name of "Wilson" Rathsasombeth rather than whatever his personal name had been to ease his way into our society. And he was picking up English more and more by the day. I don't doubt that this enterprising gentleman today probably speaks excellent English, and probably has that credit card, the application for which I helped him fill out.

Perhaps the Duke Professor has a point.

I think that this is an easy thing to believe when none of your cultural values and preferences are at stake.  It's a surprising line of thought coming from a member of a group of people perhaps best known for their ability to preserve their cultural artifacts, often under nearly insufferable conditions.  It has definitely been the case for many Jewish settlements that their cultural practices were a barrier to their participation in the economy.  Aren't you glad that those communities resisted those barriers and preserved their practices? 

Wouldn't you want members of those communities to be accepted or rejected by society based on their merits and not the peculiarity of the name Ezekiel?

1444

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Purgatory

« on: June 08, 2015, 02:19:53 PM »

Whoops; my original post was unclear at the end.  In my head I was considering ban and purgatory synonymously.  I think purgatory is a totally reasonable option.

1445

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Purgatory

« on: June 08, 2015, 01:55:18 PM »

FWIW, I don't think the issue is that he's annoying.  I think the issue is that he's obviously not genuine.  It's just some troll spamming our message boards.  It's ironic that this is happening in IRC literally as I type this, but I don't think it's any different than the people who come to IRC to spam the chat with things like "the earth is square" a jillion times.  We ban them, and it's fine to ban/purgatory EJ.

1446

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Game of Thrones

« on: June 08, 2015, 04:55:22 AM »

I don't hate the decision on the face of it, but I do think it was poorly written.  That aside, I don't think it's out of character for Stannis.  One of his hallmarks is that he's a strong-willed, decisive authoritarian.  He's willing to do whatever he believes is necessary, including death and violence, for the fulfillment of what he perceives to be Good/Right/Just/whatever (killing his daughter obviously isn't good, but saving Westeros is).

I sort of think it's D&D's devotion to this archetype that ruins this particular plot line.  I think this would have been better written if they had focused more on an internal conflict with Stannis over this decision, one where he suddenly, and perhaps for the first time, doesn't know what to do, and doesn't know what he thinks is right.  Then the moment he decides to kill his daughter becomes much more interesting; it would represent an all-in moment for Stannis; a total conversion to the faith.

Instead they just made him seem like a naive dick who murdered his daughter because he's scared.

1447

Flat Earth Community / Re: NASA ows us an apology for Werner Von Braun

« on: June 06, 2015, 03:12:56 PM »

Are you just leading this campaign here, or do you have a link for a petition or something?

1448

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Game of Thrones

« on: June 04, 2015, 11:58:14 PM »

He's perfectly entitled to put such an emphasis on the dark, unpleasant elements of history, but he should take responsibility for his focus, and face up to the positive and negative criticism that comes his way for it.  For him to duck all that now that the criticism has been so negative and say, "Nuh uh, it's not my fault, I'm just being historically accurate here!" is lazy and irresponsible.

I also like the way he seemed to equate less rape with "people walking on their hands."  That's a very fair comparison.

I don't think GRRM is 'ducking' criticism of the sexual violence portrayed in his books.  He's spoken about it before, and his response has been consistent.  I also don't think it's lazy and irresponsible to, as a writer, want to portray a history and culture for what it was.  That seems like the opposite of lazy and irresponsible, and I think it would be naive to assume that GRRM was unaware of the potential pitfalls of such portrayals before writing them.

On the contrary, I agree with GRRM that it's lazy and irresponsible to avoid writing about those unpleasantries:

I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned[...]I’m writing about war, which what almost all epic fantasy is about. But if you’re going to write about war, and you just want to include all the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and things like that and you don’t portray [sexual violence], then there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that. Rape, unfortunately, is still a part of war today. It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist.

I want to portray struggle. Drama comes out of conflict. If you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book.

To me the only issue is the manner (and frequency, perhaps) in which such violence is portrayed.  If GRRM made writing choices that glorified rape or otherwise advanced some notion that rape is an acceptable element of human behavior, then I think that would be problematic.  I personally haven't felt that way while reading the books, although I think the TV writers have made some poor choices.

1449

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: On the notion of Investing

« on: May 28, 2015, 12:57:03 AM »

In short, buy commodities, sell stocks, rent don't own a house til after the crash and stock up on shotgun bullets and tinned food.

If you actually believed that your economy was in imminent danger of collapse, then this would be really terrible advice.  You'd be much better off owning a farm; you certainly wouldn't want to be renting property in a population center.

Also, how would buying commodities help you in the event of 'the end of the financial world'?

1450

Arts & Entertainment / Re: FES Book Club

« on: May 27, 2015, 08:35:13 PM »

Check out The River of Doubt.  It is a non-fiction account of Theodore Roosevelt's exploration and mapping of a major Amazon tributary.

I'll definitely check that out.  Teddy is super interesting.  I'm a big fan of Dan Carlin's description: "The guy sorta reminds me sometimes of a heavily armed, imperialistic, racist version of Peter Pan."

1451

Arts & Entertainment / Re: FES Book Club

« on: May 27, 2015, 05:10:07 PM »

I just finished my first memoir.  History has officially ruined fiction for me.  This is way more interesting than any adventure novel or war epic I've read, and it actually happened to someone.  Also it's only $0.01 on Amazon.

The Martian was fucking awesome.  There's nothing else to say say about a book that sort of makes me want to be get stranded on Mars.

The Martian really annoys me. I had begun plotting for an almost identical novel, except my protagonist wouldn't have had a hope of ever returning to Earth and would slowly be driven mad by the isolation.

Although I really loved The Martian, that would have been a way more interesting finish.

1452

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Cynicism

« on: May 12, 2015, 03:02:43 PM »

Markjo: is a bird nest natural?  Why or why not?

1453

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The qualifications of Rowbotham as a problem for REers accepting FET

« on: May 06, 2015, 03:33:22 AM »

Like I said. Feel free. I am particularly interested to hear what comes up @ Edinburgh. Now I'm still waiting for proof that G-d doesn't exist. Since I've been asked to prove a negative, I expect every atheist here to do likewise.

If you want to debate whether or not one can prove a negative, I started a thread on that.  Proving a negative is simple and noncontroversial.

http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=979.0

1454

Arts & Entertainment / Re: FES Book Club

« on: May 05, 2015, 05:44:31 PM »

The Martian was fucking awesome.  There's nothing else to say say about a book that sort of makes me want to be get stranded on Mars.



I'm almost finished with the first George Smiley novel.  If you like spy fiction, then you'll likely enjoy this.  I'm enjoying it, anyway, so I'll probably read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy next.

1455

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Cynicism

« on: May 04, 2015, 12:15:49 AM »

The distinction between natural and unnatural probably is useless.  It's a total contrivance.

1456

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Police Body Cameras

« on: May 01, 2015, 04:54:38 PM »

Quoting other people makes you right and me wrong? Wow. It's almost like you can't argue anything for yourself.

Quoting a politician talking about mass surveillance as a privacy issue indicates that privacy is a central issue in the public debate about mass surveillance.  You said that mass surveillance is not a privacy issue.  This is pretty good evidence that your statement, and the one about all politicians agreeing that it is not a privacy issue, are both wrong.

I've also already argued the point myself.  No one gives a shit about the police filming or photographing people in public.  That's already permissible.  The state can surveil citizens en masse in public.  Anything you do in public can be recorded by anyone.  That is the status quo.

Yes? Mass surveillance in and of itself is a bad thing. I'm not sure why you need some auxiliary reason.

Oh, I didn't realize that you were defining yourself to be correct axiomatically.  Well, yes, then, you are correct.

Like I said, once you start bringing auxiliary reasons into it, your logic starts to break down when it comes to why I can't put cameras in your home. You can't say "you can't put cameras in my home because privacy" because then you'll have to tell me why privacy is a good thing that should be kept. If you're not doing anything wrong, then privacy isn't an issue, which is why mass surveillance is not a privacy issue and anyone who argues that it is will be easily kicked to the side.

Public authority figures authorized to use lethal force against citizens should be required to keep as detailed a record as possible of their actions and activities in public spaces while on duty.  This seems like a clear brightline. 

How does this position inevitably lead to then why not film literally everything everyone ever does?!?!?!?!?! scenario?

There are already constitutional prohibitions on state surveillance in our homes.  Everything that you're talking about would be solved by judicial review.

1457

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Police Body Cameras

« on: May 01, 2015, 03:34:54 PM »

Incidentally, this happened to be on the top page of reddit when I was checking it this morning: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/30/irate-congressman-gives-cops-easy-rule-just-follow-the-damn-constitution/

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. Why do you think Apple and Google are doing this? It's because the public is demanding it. People like me: privacy advocates. A public does not want an out-of-control surveillance state. It is the public that is asking for this. Apple and Google didn't do this because they thought they would make less money. This is a private sector response to government overreach.

Then you make another statement that somehow these companies are not credible because they collect private data. Here's the difference: Apple and Google don't have coercive power. District attorneys do, the FBI does, the NSA does, and to me it's very simple to draw a privacy balance when it comes to law enforcement and privacy: just follow the damn Constitution.

Yep.  Mass surveillance is not a privacy issue.

My problem is mass surveillance. Which is why I stated that as the problem in the OP.

So the problem with mass surveillance is mass surveillance?  What are you, hourly?  I'm trying to figure out why you think mass surveillance (in public spaces) is bad, other than hurr but who's gonna store all the tapes?!?!?!

What's the bad thing that happens from having beat cops keep a visual record of what happens to them while on patrol?

With that kind of logic, why not just put them everywhere? In your house, your car, your workplace. Why not record yourself 24/7? You aren't doing anything bad, are you? Certainly there is another way to stop corruption other than mass surveillance. "What's wrong with the NSA? Look at all the terrorists they have stopped!" Yes, certainly the NSA watching everyone all the time has made corruption and crime nonexistent.

So the bad thing that happens is that you make a really shitty strawman argument?  Or is it that you make a really shitty ~*slippery slope*~ argument?  Either way, it's a bargain at twice the price.

Besides, how does that make any sense? "Cops are corrupt, so let's have cops record cops so they can view their own corruption in HD" That... makes no sense.

 

The government is already almost exclusively in charge of regulating itself and eliminating corruption internally.  That's nothing new.

It's really not hard to imagine a NGO being charged with storage and maintenance of the data.  Problem solved.

1458

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Police Body Cameras

« on: May 01, 2015, 03:48:03 AM »

Mass surveillance is not a privacy issue.

Setting aside the Thork-level inanity of this statement, I don't get what your problem with police body cameras is then.  What's the bad thing that happens from having beat cops keep a visual record of what happens to them while on patrol?

1459

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Police Body Cameras

« on: May 01, 2015, 02:54:40 AM »

[N]ot but a year or so ago, the entire country was up in arms about mass surveillance of everyone via the NSA, Facebook, and other organizations. Now we not only have the idea of creating a perpetual state of cameras watching from CCTV on the corner to cameras on LEOs, but many people are begging for more of it. Am I in the twilight zone? I'm guessing it is safe to assume that the people against mass surveillance aren't the same people wanting these cameras everywhere.

This sounds to me like you're asking why the people who oppose NSA surveillance don't also oppose police body cameras.  Mass surveillance is a privacy issue.  I thought you were talking about a privacy issue.  I'm not sure how else to read the OP.

Since the state is already allowed to photograph and film people in public, and since people don't have any expectation of privacy in public, then I don't really see what the problem is. 

1460

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Police Body Cameras

« on: May 01, 2015, 01:45:26 AM »

i'm not a lawyer, so it's possible that i have no idea what i'm talking about.

that said, i don't really understand the logic of the op.  you're talking about privacy in public spaces in a way that makes no sense to me.  walking on a sidewalk isn't like having a private phone conversation.  what expectation of privacy is there for a person in a public space?