I can't be the only one who finds this annoyingm can I? Or am I just being more surly than normal? A new trend seems to be that people like the New England Historic Genealogical Society are making a big fuss about how if you go back in time long enough, and spend enough time looking you can find out how a specific famous person is related to other famous person.
[Obama] was previously identified as a distant cousin of US Vice-President Dick Cheney.
His political lineage includes not just President Bush but also Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S Truman, Dick Cheney and Winston Churchill.
The connection made with Hollywood star Brad Pitt adds a welcome splash of glamour to his family tree.
And this is somehow special, rather than something you could do for anyone on the planet if you were dull enough to bother, and willing to go back far enough. It's almost as though it's perpetuating the idea that 'Celebrities' and 'Normals' are different fucking species.
It's akin to 21st century astrology. I can see a man sitting infront of a whiz-bang computer telling some incredulous yokel that "you've a very commanding spirit because your 58th cousin 16 times removed from William the Conqueror, but yet your sensitive because of you 18th cousin of Florence Nightingale."
And what's this? Hillary Clinton is related to Madonna!? What joy!
Here's a ABC clip about what Creationists in America do when faced with the issue that every museum around them is based on data and the scientific method. If you've pulled your kid from school to hide him from science then it's a short step to hiring your own creationist tour guide whenever you venture outside (especially if your are going to science museum). One who will filter and worm and twist his way around this scary world doing his best to bend reality to your hopes and scriptures, all the time making sure he won't 'have enough time' for the panel about how scientists date the age of fossils.
The group are called B.C. Tours, which they explain:
B.C. stands for Biblically Correct. We are B.C. and not P.C. (politically correct). We might even say the "J" word in public.
Their site is amazing, with their main approach to getting custom being:
Win every argument!
Presumably then it's a common experience for creationists to lose arguments on their beliefs, so much so that they have to hire professionals to defend them on their behalf.
Depressingly that is just a stop gap till you can afford to build your own museum. Which you can watch a bunch of high school kids visit here.
When you publish a Scientific Paper who owns the copyright? I know most of us, naively, still consider our work to be our own. But according to New Scientist the American Physical Society will not publish two papers in Physical Review Letters because the authors had asked for a rights agreement compatible with Wikipedia. Normally you transfer the copyright to APS before publishing and hence your figures can't be used on Wikipedia and the like.
Change is happening in the scientific community. We are starting to really think about how we publish our science. But being scientists we put practical solutions (such as the brilliant ArXiv) above the true solutions. Science thrives on the free sharing of ideas and we should be at the forefront of movements like Creative Commons not playing catch up. Free sharing of ideas can't just be within an ivory tower of scientists, especially when creationists and their ilk are banging on the gate. We need our work to be in the public domain more than ever. With Wikipedia a bare minimum.
I often think we need a figure head to galvanise us on this. We need our own LarryLessig.
(Sorry for the rambling of this poor update, but I wanted to get this info out before the next protest in case it's of use to anyone.)
In the next few posts, I'll be reviewing how Anonymous handled itself in the February protests, what having an E-meter reading is like and what it's like being tailed and followed by Scientologists, and hence whether you should wear a mask.
I'll focus on the latter first, as I'm running out of time before the next protest happens. Also I'm writing this at 3 am when I really should be sleeping, so expect the spelling and grammar to be even worse than the normal terrible standard. Sorry.
In my *last post* on the the whole Scientology vs Anonymous shennagins I tried to explain who exactly Anonymous are and what the whole thing was about. Long story short, Anonymous is a joke that the real world (like FOX news) took seriously, and so ironically created. [The game will be played till they get bored. Since the first article It seems the majority of the community involved have got bored, but their seems to be a strong, if more traditional, group that's been created by all this.)
The Pre Game preparation (it's not paranoia if they are really out to get you)
Waking up, hung over, in an unfamiliar house, the idea of trampling around London didn't seem that appealing. Would anyone turn up? Uptil now I had seen just a few jpeg posters and comment threads, so for all I new it might just be a dozen people. Or no one. Still I had agreed to meet a friend, so I had no choice.
First issue, should I wear a mask? The fliers recommended it, but I didn't feel I had to hide who I was, so I decided I wouldn't. But the tails of *'revenge'* scientologists have been known to take on protesters meant I grabbed some shades and a bandanna on my way out.
So, thanking my kind hosts who had put me up and nursing the mother of all hang overs, I left for the nearby North london Tube station (about 5 stops north of their Dyanetics centre) to head south to their HQ, holding the Sunglasses and Bandanna in my hand, feeling stupid that I thought such measures might be necessary.
When a man took my photograph.
I looked at him, and he preceded to continue to photograph the wall behind me, whilst his friend waited for him to finish. I walked on a few meters and turned into the station. I stood their for a second, composed my thoughts leant back round to look at him.
He was there with his friend. Watching me watch them. I realised they both had big, black SLR cameras. One of the ones with big telephoto lenses.
Whilst topping up my Oyster card my confusion started making me feel paranoid. I decided to lean round the corner and snap a photo of the two. Just in case.
Yeah, not very good is it? But the two suspects, are the two blurs facing away from me hidden by those in the foreground.
During the tube journey I realised that I was being stupid. They wouldn't be photographing people before they got to the protests would they? Before you had put on your mask?
Of course they wouldn't be...
Realising that I had some time to kill before I met my friend I hopped of the tube at Goodge Street thinking I would check how the centre of Dynatics was behaving before the protests were scheduled to start. Anonymous's (sic?) plan was to protest the HQ in the morning, have a break for lunch and reconvene at the centre about 2.
One thing lead to another and I ended up having a E-meter reading. But I'll save what happened till later.
20 minutes later, I'm heading down to meet my friend, and we make our way to the UK Headquaters of Scientology. You have to remember this was something organised on the internet with no real figureheads. No leaders. I didn't expect many people. I definitly didn't expect this (click to biggify):
I'll save a review of the protest till later, but the people were friendly, they were polite, and they had fliers and banners and were enthused with talking to the public. I caught a number explaining why they felt they had to wear masks to passers-by. I started to see their point. The protest was of such high quality that a few people had decided they were on clean up duty and were collecting litter. I was impressed.
But then I got creeped out. I expected the Scientologists to be filming everyone. That was a given. But I realised that the staff members, typically 18-35 year old males in casual clothes wandering around taking photo's of the protestors, all had the same black SLR camera.
The same camera those two men had early this morning. Scientology must have placed its members around tube stations in London to try and pre-emptively photograph people before they arrived at the protests. There was no other explanation.
A Trip to Forbidden Planet and a hasty retreat
During the break we headed back via the tube. Hundreds of masked anonymous people on the underground was quite a site.
As was the fact that there were already the same mid 20's man with black SLR cameras. Trying to get photos of people without their disguises on the tube. Assuming quite rightly that many would take them off to avoid the wrath of the transport police.
Frankly, it had been a strange day. I was hung over and creeped out. A little on edge we decided that before going to the place where I had already introduced myself to everyone by having an E-meter reading a disguise was in order.
So we decided to go buy one of the V for Vendetta masks that everyone was wearing from Forbidden Planet, the main provider of the mask of choice of Anonymous.
And this is where it gets fucked up.
Inside forbidden planet we see another two people. This time a man and a woman. Late twenties. With the same identical big SLR cameras.
Scientologists were staking out the geek shop to look for people buying masks.
We watched the woman pretend to be interested in some Dr Who figures for about ten minutes. Who would keep scanning the store looking for trouble makers.
I decided to try and get footage of the two of them, by pretending to make a phone call whilst using it's camera to film them from across the store (my camera phone is shit, it didn't work). I'm no James Bond, but if they were just ordinary shoppers they wouldn't have noticed anything. Or at least not cared. But they weren't.
We left the store, and quickly realised that we thought we were being followed. Like in some poor movie.
Thinking fast we did what anyone would have done. We went round the nearest corner, stopped and waited for them.
And waited, and waited, and waited.
And just as we were giving up and assumed we imagined it, they came round the corner camera high snapping away. Whilst we took this:
Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others! Here they are in the bottom right.
We waved and smilied and the scientologists, who were visible shaken and quickly left.
In hindsight we should have repeated the favour and followed them. But we didn't.
Likewise the next protest had even more scientologists scattered around the area trying to photograph suspects on the way to the protest. And plenty shoving their cameras into the crowd. Like this guy:
Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!
Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!
So sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but I wanted to just give some advice on the level of surveillance Scientology will employ tomorrow. The joke may have got old, and no one may turn up. But the scientologists will. So even if your not protesting, if your travelling around London keep and eye out for them by the tubes in North London. I'll try and improve the post over the next day. But I'm snowed under with work...
And you thought it was bad in the UK. When replying to a mother with an autistic child in a town meeting a few days back the republican presidential candidate said the following:
"It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines."
It's especially depressing when you realise compared to Huckabee and Romney, this is the Republicans most 'pro-science' candidate.
This is quite entertaining and if you often find yourself battling fools on the internet, it's could even come in useful. If even the dullards at AiG thinks your arguments are bullshit, then you've got to be wrong.
Their webcomic makes their aims clear.
It's clearly all about the science
Answers in Genesis is the 'Peer Review Journal' that sets out to prove, defend and proclaim creationism. Now obviously, actual peer review journals work by being about a subject, but with no set aims for where the research they publish will take them. That way the scientists who publish within the journal compete amongst themselves, checking and improving, each others work despite having separate, and often contradictory, ideas about their subject.
Brilliantly Answers in Genesis have decided what arguments for creationism are too stupid. Even for them. They recommend that creationists do not use the following:
Darwin recanting on his deathbed.
Moon-dust thickness proving a young moon.
NASA's computers 'find' Joshua's missing day whilst modelling the past.
Wooly mammoths were flash frozen during the flood.
The second law of thermodynamics began at the Fall.
If we evolved from apes then apes shouldn't exist anymore.
And it goes on and on. Now if they are trying to raise the quality of their arguments, and weed out the flaws, then this is great news. They are attempting (poorly) the scientific method. They are still looking for data that supports a hypothesis rather than vice versa, but at least they are cutting out the data that is wrong right? They'll eventually exclude everything and give up right?
Well we can hope. But this little nugget implies that they are mearly trying to find the most successful arguments rather than the most truthful.
“There are no transitional forms.”
"Since there are candidates, even though they are highly dubious, it’s better to avoid possible comebacks by saying instead: “While Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even a century and a half later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples.”
An idea fans of memes understand well. So unfortunately It seems they don't really want to follow their own advice buried in the middle of the page:
"We must not try to read into Scripture that which appears to support a particular viewpoint."
Housekeeping: Finishing a PhD is hard work, so I haven't had chance to write part 2 of my Scientology protest thing. But it is coming. Honest. They'll be a guide to how Scientologists will stalk you if you go to the next protest on March 15th.
Out of a sense of civic duty this reporter ensured that the "Riots" by "Anonymous" in London yesterday were covered, for you, the readers. As the first protest of it's kind, and having always been interested in the idea of "memes" since reading Dawkin's and Blackwell's books - I've been interested in the recent events. I think this protest is an important shift. Though not nessecellery a shift in the right direction. Or one that will last.
I'm going to ramble a little, but I've a lot to cover - and I've a busy week ahead. I've been meaning to mention all these shenanigans for a while now. So I suspect this'll be a quite long rant.
Who they are
If you've watched fox news then ANONYMOUS is a group of Internet Super Hackers on Steroids. It isn't. At all.
However If you don't know what "Anonymous" is - then it's embarrassing to tell you. Basically this is an excellent and comprehensive review. And you should read it.
But if you won't read that link here is a breakdown from what I've gathered. A forum called 4chan exists (I was going to write NSFW - but it's not safe fullstop). You might read b3ta. Or SomethingAwful (who were also very involved in this). I'm sure you aware how they are less "appropriate" than other forums. Well 4chan is another step up.
On 4chan you don't need to register to post. You just post. No one ever has names. No one will remember you. Your posts will only last a few hours.
You combine that anonymity with a fan base of hormone riddled self-aware geeky teenagers and should-know-better twenty somethings (going by todays protests at least) and you get a site riddled with porn, extreme porn, shock images, racism and porn. Oh and porn. Please don't go there. Seriously. Not even in a "I'm telling you not too in order that you do" way. Seriously. No.
But crucially that anonymity serves another purpose. When posting on a chan board no karma, respect, friendship or trust can be built up over time. Which, it can be argued, are the main mechanisms that reward people for posting in normal forums (like "Bad Science"!). And it's that fact which is crucial. It means the reward for any creativity can only come from it's popularity. How often text becomes "copypasta" and how often people repost an image that you made.
So these sites become a thriving meme pool - ideas, jokes and pictures become a boiling soup of internet memes. The most popular survive. The weak die. Occasionally they get big enough (and socially acceptable enough) to break out of 4chan and invade the overbelly of the internet. Like LOLcats, Sparta, Rick Rolling and now it seems ANONYMOUS itself.
In short "ANONYMOUS" was an in-joke, postmodern, mythical "organisation" that people talking on the decrepit piss stain that is 4chan amused themselves by pretending it was a real, nebulous, secret group that is responsible for their actions. They like to pretend that they have a common cause and it's all part of a bigger plan. It's "post modern." It's self aware. It's a self deprecating joke infact. Nerdy, horny geeks aware they are nerdy horny geeks. Yes a proportion are evil little fucks, but the most are just people.
At the bottom of this concept is the idea that the internet is inherently stupid and it shouldn't be taken seriously. And anything personal you post on it shouldn't be taken seriously either.
ANONYMOUS VERSUS SCIENTOLOGY
And incredibly Fox News bought it.
They reported that this "ANONYMOUS," these bored teenagers, were infact a bunch of elite internet hackers "on steroids".
Whilst the DDoS attacks and the fucking up of kids lives are horrible, horrible things (and to be fair they've also foiled bomb threats and caught paedophiles), I do find amusement in the fact that Fox, so terrified of kids exposing themselves on the internet, have also become terrified of the very product of kids doing the opposite. This is kids being evil fucking kids, but the moral behind it is - "if you post personal shit on the internet you can't be sad when people laugh at you." That you can't afford to be serious on the internet. That baring your soul on your mypace and facebook pages is an inherently bad idea. And you can't really help but to agree with them about that.
But because Fox News believed in ANONYMOUS they bascially created it. They forged the meme and made it stronger than it ever could have been otherwise. And in doing so they created the protests around the world yesterday.
If your playing a silly game and someone takes you seriously that's inherently hilarious. And the game becomes more fun.
When the very real issue of Tom Cruise's mad rant flowering and being cut down all over the web occurred then it was only natural to pretend that ANONYMOUS wouldn't stand for it. If you are of the right mindset then it's only natural to think thats funny and awesome and carry the joke on. When you believe, as most young people do, that the internet is inherently ridiculous then a DDoS attack is just another joke. And so to attack the Scientology sites was a funny (to them) way to highlight the fucked-uppery of Scientology.
But of course whilst the internet is "serious buisness" the real world is actually serious business. When the excellent Mark Bunker of Xenu.net and a long time fighter against Scientology, criticised "ANONYMOUS" over the DDoS attacks and told them to protest peacefully and legally they listened. And what I find most interesting was that in order for his message to be heard and propigated they meme'd him.
They made him the "Wise Beard Man". So his ideas were worthy of being heard. That's important.
Then as the protests were getting nearer and they were galvanising, they cast of the anything goes policy of the internet and started organising, naturally on a wiki, collectively and anonymously. And crucially civility became a successful meme again.
But of course Scientology is ridiculous in the real world - and well known to film, identify then persecute its critics and protesters. Which goes hand in hand with a bunch mask wearing geeks who've watched and read V for Vendetta....
And so "ANONYMOUS," who even themselves didn't know if the joke was good enough to show up, showed up.
End of Part 1. Coming up next - How the day went - How Anon behaved and the people who tailed and photographed us.
P.S. Please don't kill me for explaining things Anon - I thought it was for the best. Do correct me if I'm wrong though.
I know I told a few people in confidence that there would be a post reviewing the protests today. But that won't be for a little while as I'm very busy. But the decrepit, disgusting den that is 4chan was impressive - in a positive way - for once. Who would have thought?
The full story involves having e-meter readings, interviews with both Scientolgists and "The Internet" and being tailed by "undercover" scientologists.far away from the actual protests.
Here's a clip of Marcus Brigstocke moaning about religion on the BBC's 'The Now Show.' It's really rather splendid.
Currently I am stuck in the office 24-7, but thankfully the BBC's mighty iPlayer is keeping me sane, and finally made it possible for me to watch Brigstocke's 'The Late Edition', which in turn lead me to a wikipedia which started one of them damn web cascades - which produced this vid.
Rather busy at the mo, what with the final year of my Phd an all, but I've a few things in the pipe line, For instance I've been meaning to talk about the whole Scientology thing that's happening at the minute, but I've no time.
So during this period I'm pushing The News Fart to the top of the blog. I typically try and drop one or two links in it a day, and they're pretty interesting to me at least.
Also click on The News Farts title to be taken to the archive of previous links.
Sorry if it looks a little ugly, and sorry about the emails I've yet to use or reply too. I really appreciate them though!
writes Skeptobot. It serves as a medium to vent about Nonsense and geek out about Awesome. You'll find stuff about Badscience, Goodscience, Atheism, Humanism, Bad Religion all that New Renaissance Jazz. Awesome people email links, greetings, ideas and schemes to skeptobot@yahoo.co.uk
You can also follow him on Twitter, Delicious & Youtube..
A little vain & presumptuous this but as a kind person asked about this I thought I might as well. If you want to buy me a pint in thanks for the site then feel free you lovely person.
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