I'm afraid I just can't take this seriously. Army intelligence analysts are concerned that terrorists might tweet each other. Or text each other. Or put Islamic wallpapers on their cell phones. Oooh.
Yes, they could. So? We're living in a world where communications technologies are advancing rapidly and where people can talk to each other constantly over long distances. This is a neutral technology; bad guys can use it, and so can good guys, and so can boring ordinary people who just want to chat about the weather.
Latest threat: Air. Terrorists could use this medium to respire and fuel oxidative phosphorylation, providing extra physical energy to allow them to carry out strenuous evil activities. Plus, it keeps them alive. American anti-terrorist organizations must be made aware of the nefarious purposes to which oxygen can be applied.
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On the l;atest threat:
I have no doubt that Bushy mcChimp wants them all to stop respirating
Not to mention dihydrogen monoxide.
So they haven't got around to considering the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide yet. I think, in their efforts to keep the terrorist-inspired terror alive, they may be getting a bit ridiculous.
Latest threat: Air. Terrorists could use this medium to respire and fuel oxidation phosphorylation, providing extra physical energy to allow them to carry out strenuous evil activities. Plus, it keeps them alive.
You win the Internet, PZ.
oxidative
So Rev, great minds think alike?
In the comments section, one Klebert L. Hall has the best perspective:
Oh, it's serious, and something of which to be aware. It's incrementalism, however, they get better communications as the rest of the world does. Amazing.
The military must be aware of possible new terrorist communications, they are, and well, I'm pretty bored with it already.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
wOOt!
It's always nice when the military can help get the word out to activists about using new technologies. Thanks!
I'm afraid I just can't take this seriously. Army intelligence... - PZ
Well, there's yer problem, squire: oxymoron right at the start of the second sentence!
Time to see if filtering dihydrogen monoxide through roasted arabic beans makes it lose its toxic properties.
(The Rev and Katkinkate beat me to my first thought.)
We'll show those terrists... kill all the plants! We'll take away their means of production!!! MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That should be arabica beans. DOH!
WATCH OUT 4 THE PREDATOR
WHERE?!?
J/K LOL
OMFA U SUCK
How 'bout that weather? Cold enough for ya?
Well, most of the chemists I know have long considered 'security' either a joke or, at best, a filter against crazy idiots (which it seems there are more than a few). I guess DHS just decided that EEs and CS folks should be in on the joke too.
I would think the military would want to keep up on how technological advances might aid the enemy as a matter of course, and Twitter is no exception. How it gets to be news, though, is another question.
This just fell out of my time machine:
Of course, it suffers a little in the translation.
That threat plus a Jesus cracker, will hopefully divert attention from the new mortgage buyout plan the government just announced via Faux News.
Oh yeah, the wealth will be indeed spread and it isn't gonna trickle downward. Joe the Stupid who bought beyond his means and Joe the Banker who made the irresponsible loan and Joe the Hedge Manager (no income-just capital gains taxed at the lower rate) who bet on the result will be just fine.
Guess who will be paying for this?
Suckers.
Coming soon:
The US military has determined that underpants are a threat to national security. Cities everywhere have put up rather racy photos of a bulging Uncle Sam with the caption "I want YOU... to go Commando"
Jane... stop this crazy thing!
tsg at #17:
Reminds me of that Far Side cartoon showing the lecture series on the cave wall, animal-hide-wearing cave dweller using a pointer to highlight (in a scene the young-earth creationists must love) the tail of a stegosaurus. Caption: "And this is what we call the Thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons."
Which makes me wonder,incidentally, if young-earth creationism's claim that humans and dinosaurs coexisted is older than, say, The Far Side, or perhaps, The Flintstones (1950s? Not sure how old the Flintstones is/are as a cultural reference point).
No kings,
Robert
Of course person-to-person communication can be used to co-ordinate activity. That will be the lead article in our next issue of Duh: The Magazine of the Obvious.
And it leaves a permanent activity trail on the Twitter web site. Maybe Intelligence is using this story to encourage wanna-be terrorists to use Twitter and texting?
Celtic_Evolution at #19:
Is that the Constitution in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Won't someone please think of the Mormons!
As a friend of mine is fond of saying, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
No kings,
Robert
Classic! Your characterization of the terror threat of communications devices to that of Oxygen hits the nail on the head. Who're the crazy fundamentalists/fascists now? Looks like they work for the good ol' US of A.
There are a lot of smart people in the US, and none of them are in government.
the eagle flies at dawn
Fist bumps for everyone!
They want to make a stink about such things to provide justification for personal-freedom-restricting legislation like warrantless taps, limitations on use of encryption by members of the public and so forth. If Twitter can be/is used by terrorists, then DHS needs to be able to monitor all Twitter traffic to check for threats to national security, right?
Don't be fooled by the superficial idiocy of such reports. There's a malignancy underneath that is dangerous to personal freedom.
Canada, for example, has taken to forced, warrantless forensic examination of laptops and USB memory devices belonging to people entering the country using the excuse that child porn might be there... Not using the justification that, say, there is actual evidence that YOU are suspected of transporting illegal porn but rather that the medium might have porn so they should inspect.
The funny thing is... I work in the security field, and I consider this sort of thing highly unreasonable. It does NOT improve national (or any other) security to do blanket, warrantless searches and seizures of property and data. I am, it seems, a minority voice in the field.
terrorists might tweet each other.
Is that allowed in Islam?
"I'm afraid I just can't take this seriously"
I'm not prone to using internet catch phrases, but one does spring to mind here - epic fail! P.Z., what happened? Usualy your posts are well thought and interesting musings on current events. This one was just rediculous though. Have you read the briefing?
In any form of security or military operation you have to be prepared for what your opposition may throw at you or may be using. Terrorist and paramilitary groups can get their hands on some pretty sophisticated material, but if they can't they use what is available to them. You have to be aware of what your adversaries are or may be doing. This doesn't look like a top level brief, but a quick information brief that gets used all the time to diseminate useful stuff that many may be unaware of.
Sorry P.Z., but this time you are discussing something you don't have a clue about. You go on about numbskulls discrediting evolution experts when they are ignorant of the facts, and that is perfectly fair enough. The problem is that this time it is you who is criticizing the experts without any facts. Clearly from this post you don't understand simple military intelligence (I know oxymoron and all that..), so why talk about it as though you are an expert when clearly you are ignorant of it?
If you are going to slate others then you need to play by the same rules. I hope you'll reconsider this post, as it makes you look a little ... um ... hypocritical.
Before anyone starts, I'm a military, atheist, republic (as in would prefer no monarchy) supporting Brit. I'm just very disapointed at the poor quality of this post.
Big deal. In Soviet America, they don't just look through your files, they make copies of all your data.
Ha!
Henry,
It's fearmongering. OMGWTFBBQ! Terra-ists is be uzin commune-ickashuns! Scream and terror! Waaagh! Now wez has to read all ur tweetz kthxbai.
In other words,
Military: Wer in ur toobz, spyin ur tweetz.
And I thought i had left this all behind when I left India....
When the Bombay Bomb Blasts took place the government blocked access to blogger- were they really thinking that terrorists would blog about the bombing? And guess what the suspects have not really been all caught even now...
Of course, the real danger here is that the terrorists might twitter while they're sitting on the can.
This falls into the "no $#!&, Sherlock" file.
Henry (#29), you've got a point. This seems like a basic briefing. But seriously, what's with pointing out that terrorists can change their cell phone background?
Oh god! It's so Islamic! Whatever shall we do?
OT but worth pointing out: I noticed in this BBC story titled "Muslim vote split in US elections" the following quote:
I agree that the slur against Muslims could be considered as offensive, but (and I am fed up of pointing this out) it is NOT racist. Islam is not a race, it is a religion.
We need a new word: "Religionist" - to refer to situations like this.
stogoe,
Um, no it isn't.
As it says, this is a draft brief that was internaly circulated. This sort of thing is COMMON. There's no OMG! or any fear causing. It's a little brief that looks like it was cobbled together. At no point in the brief is any mention of what to do about opposition forces using these technologies, only making people aware that it is possible.
If anything, this whole scenario has turned into a "OMG!WTFBBQ! They want to read your brains with layzers!!1!, quick get the tin foil hats" from a bunch of nutters who are as far left of left as they come. Get some perspective.
@stogoe
Henry is right. It is an informational brief. Presenting it as anything else is sensationalist. Stop being a sheep, and start thinking for yourself.
Then why is Wired running an article about it with the title "Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists"?
@tsg
Because Wired is being sensationalist?
It's laying the groundwork for an expansion of (admitted) surveillance. They're already doing it, this is just getting it in the public consciousness so we won't make a big fuss when they start admitting it.
Like warrantless wiretaps.
@tsg
Exactly!
@ Wilbur
Irony... ur doin it right!
2-D man,
Not as daft as it sounds. The briefing mentioned honeypots. It could be possible to make a honeypot by uploading a wall paper that would appeal to your opponents onto a torrent site or something similar and track the IPs of those who download it. They are not just interested in terrorists, but terrorist sympathisers as well. But I would admit that that would be a very long shot. It's more about raisng the awareness of the facilities available to their opposition.
Fortunately, Twitter is a relatively public medium. I imagine that the federal government regular check Twitter.com/deathtoAmerica.
Did you notice that they singled out "Vegetarians" among other social groups (i.e. "Atheists", "Socialists", and "Terrorists")?
When did we vegetarians become a threat?
Or are they shuffling "vegetarians" under the "PETA" and radical animal-rights crazies tent?
The only things that should be fearing Vegetarians is Soybean (and other legume) crops. :)
Which is what people are complaining about.
TSG,
I more facinated by how easily you are manipulated by a headline in the media than by actualy reading the draft briefing.
In one particular quote, we get a mention:
"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,"
Positive and negative groups seem to alternate:
Positive:
Human rights groups,
Vegetarians,
Religious comunities,
Political enthusiasts
Negatives:
Socialists,
Communists,
Anarchists,
Atheists,
Hactivists
This stuff irritates the hell out of me
@stogoe
Stop being sensationalist about this. If they wanted to expand surveillance, then they don't need to establish a foundation. Terrorists use communication tools. These include the Internet, websites, cell phones, paper and pen, and even their own vocal cords. The so-called foundation already for this fictional flimsy argument already exists.
Well it's because all that tofu / soy causes men to turn gay.
And we all know about the radical homosexual agenda.
Duh!
@tsg
If people are complaining about the Wired story being sensationalist, I agree. If they're complaining about the report itself being sensationalist then it's plainly absurd. They should read the report.
Oh, please. From my #17:
I've been doing nothing but criticizing the media for hyping this from the get-go. That's who's doing the fear mongering.
Stop assuming everyone else's position is the most unreasonable you can imagine and maybe you won't be so "fascinated" all the time.
But it's our duty to our country to be terrorised. If we aren't terrorised then we must be the terrorists.
@9:
It doesn't surprise me that police thugs got upset about Twittering protesters at the RNC, because now the citizenry can quickly group and document their brutality. They've lost their deniability, where you could count on terrorizing the 'perp' you just beat into silence. The military doesn't like new media for the same reasons - if you knew you could be filmed and uploaded to Youtube minutes after you raped and burned that village of Iraqis, you'd think twice about doing it in the first place.
Who watches the watchers? Turns out it's the Watched.
Thuis reminds me of Paul Simon's song "The Boy in the Bubble":
TSG,
In #32 and #38, Stogoe and I were addressing whether the military were using scare mongering tactics. So why you used the media headline (who deffinatly are scare mongering) in #40 to refute my point in #38 that the military weren't using scare tactics, I don't understand.
If I misunderstood you I'm sorry, but then that means your post #40 makes no sense.
Having worked (or is survived a better word?) Army intelligence for a little over seven years, I can think of a few reasons why this presentation was made.
It may have been prepared for the John McCain-type officers who don't even know how to send a fucking email, let alone what Myspace or Twitter is. I never understood why senior officers felt it necessary too brag about how little they know about modern technology: "I'll leave that fancy electro-gram stuff to you youngsters and just stick to my pigeons thank you very much! If it was good enough for GEN Sherman, it's good enough for me!" So exactly how did you convince the Senate to give you that fourth star again?
It may have been produced at the behest of some brown-nosing officer looking for a cheap bullet on his yearly evaluation: "Hey, maybe if I task some private to create a PowerPoint concerning a 'threat' that is obvious to the entire fucking world, I can finally get that star I've been gunning for!" I can't tell you how many times I was given some inane task the sole purpose of which was to add a new layer of shit to the nose of some promotion-seeking whore. If you've ever spent a weekend in a motor pool applying shoe polish to tires that just weren't black enough for some colonel's comfort, you'd have no problem understanding why this report was created.
However, I suspect the main reason for this presentation was busy work. Ninety percent of what the military has done was done because there was nothing better to do at the time. That includes just about every war we've fought since World War Two. Fat budgets and quick promotions aren't given for doing nothing.
As an Army Intelligence Officer currently deployed to the Middle East, I will tell you little of this is taken seriously in the overall intel community. These are considered fringe reports about hypothetical methods that often make little to no sense from a practical standpoint. These things happen every now and then, and the rest of us get a good chuckle out of it.
I didn't read #32 as necessarily accusing the military of using scare tactics. It could just as easily be read to be about the Wired article. I used the article title to point out that, yes, there is fear mongering going on, by Wired.
If that's not what Stogoe meant, then I misunderstood.
if you knew you could be filmed and uploaded to Youtube minutes
Interesting are the new wifi video cams that replace a jacket button. A simple wire serves as an antenna to a nearby computer. Even if the camera is confiscated, the video is already out in the ether...
Be careful. There is a very fine line between "Twitter Threat" and "Trick -or- Treat"
Which makes about as much sense as OHS does.
As a follow-up to myself @ #60:
According to the Wired article, the report was put out by the 304th MI Battalion on their (primarily) internal web-based collaboration portal. I spent six months assigned to them, so I know them pretty well.
The 304th is the school-house for MI Officers at Fort Huachuca, AZ. The different companies are for different courses - one for the MI Officer's Basic Course, one for the MI Warrant Officer's Course, one for the MI Captain's Career Course, etc.
What does that mean about the report? It's probably a speculative report done by new Second Lieutenants in a classroom setting for one of their projects. They're only just learning asymmetric warfare and how to think "outside the box," so these are more like growing pains than serious field analysis.
Just to clarify:
One of the problems of the journalistic style of "just the facts" is that it doesn't tell you why the particular publication felt the story was newsworthy. Not every story gets printed and one is left wondering why this one got chosen and others didn't. I haven't read Wired in years, and even then it was only a couple of issues, so I am ignorant of their position on government surveillance.
I saw a couple possible motivations for printing an article about what I thought was ordinary military intelligence gathering and threat assessment: 1) Wired thinks it really is a threat that the government should be doing something about; 2) Wired thinks the government is going to try to intercept Twitter and doesn't think they should; and 3) Wired had some space to fill and sensationalized the headline to make it more interesting. In the context of 2), Stogoe's comment at #32, read as a complaint against Wired, makes perfect sense.
What I took exception to was the assumption that the complaints of fear mongering were necessarily aimed at the military and not Wired.
@Henry:
You're arguing with ideologues. Never a productive activity. It's easier to convert a religious loon.
Mystyk has it right. I've worked on technology that supports intel efforts. These sorts of theoretical studies are done all the time because you never know what you might discover. I've personally seen some that looked silly at the start, but then you wind up with a solid counterintelligence technique a ways down the road.
And would this report have even been made public without the Federation Of American Scientists? There's no scare tactics. It's a manufactured controversy for the faithful.
It's research that might seem nonsensical to those outside the community. Maybe it produces something interesting, maybe not. You don't know. That's why you do the study in the first place.
I would expect those who have been recently excoriating Sarah Palin for not understanding that to understand it themselves a little better in a different situation.
And to all the "Soviet America" and "Army Intelligence = oxymoron" folks, grow up already, will you?
Don't be fooled by the superficial idiocy of such reports. There's a malignancy underneath that is dangerous to personal freedom.
And they want to corrupt your precious boldly fluids, too, General Ripper!
I hate to break it to you folks, but:
1. There is NOT a bogeyman lurking in every shadow.
2. You are not members of a rag tag rebel fleet fighting the evil Empire.
3. Most likely no one is out to get you, personal vendettas aside, of course ;-)
I'm guessing that you won't be thanking me from saving you from the eternal black doom which I alone am warding off (for now).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
i am not worried. i have faith that god will take care of us all. will cure world hunger. will save the harp seals. will stop global warning. and more importantly, will crash all the DNS servers on the internet with a DDoS attack to keep terrorists from twittering each other and keep everyone else from looking at porn. plus, i hear god is going to start production on season two of Firefly.
Wait, I'm confused. Who turned out to be the fear monger?
the eagle flies at dawn
the dog barks at midnight
Half-twits.
GuyIncognito, Mystyk, and 3:
Thanks for those posts. I stand corrected on my own initial suspicion of, and disdain for, the Twitter analysis. Thanks for the inside report and I apologize for jumping to conclusions.
Though I stand by my invocation of The Far Side in an attempt to find solidarity through humor.
No kings,
Robert
Molly Malone. Oh, wait, you said fear monger....
"3. Most likely no one is out to get you, personal vendettas aside, of course ;-)"
pffft, that's easy to say by someone who doesn't have their palm-prints stored (in triplicate!) with Homeland Security. and they actually do bother to check my fingerprints whenever I re-enter the U.S.; and my bags. and you should have seen the drama when I came back without an entry stamp from the country I just went to!! (The E.U. doesn't stamp the passports of E.U. citizens)
I'm starting to suffer from serious paranoia, heheh.
Cockles and mussels... alive, alive oh!
Ahhh... that brings back memories...
Now this is hilarious. Twitter is amazingly insecure - and easy to monitor. To the extent that terrorists use it - they'll be easier to catch. There have already been criminals caught because they twitted about their deeds.
(If you are a terrorist, do not read the following.)
#77: That would explain a lot. I mean, why would the military announce to the world that terrorists might use that technology? Is our military afraid that the terrorists might run out of ideas?
But if Twitter is so easy to monitor, and if that would make terrorists easier to catch, that would make sense of the public announcement that "Oh, no, terrorists might use this technology." Could it be a trap for terrorists?
Shamelessly copied from an Slashdot poster about this same piece of news ( http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1008323&cid=25519057 ) :
"Lord Help us all!
- Buying explosives. Thanks tom!
- Shaping explosvies.
- Milling bomb casing.
- Filling bomb casing.
- Rigging fuse. Hehe I made the + terminal blue instead of RED! That'll get'em!
- Putting bomb in suitcase. This new Ralph Lauren suitcase design is DYNOMITE! :D
- Getting in car. We sould really put some Al-Qaeda funds into something better than an 92 GeoMetro. This thing sucks.
- Leaving on Airplane. Phone off! ByeBye for now! Don't want to crash plane.
- Landed! The big apple awaits!
- Picked up food at McDonalds on third street. Mmmmmm McFlurry goodness.
- Bomb planted on 5th and James. They should make larger trashcans. Those things are TINY!1!
- Bored. Waiting at Starbucks. Prices are insane!
"
Yeah, but I'm holding back the eternal black doom's *boss*.
Oh, all right... here's a cookie.
http://thehealthblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/cookie.jpg
It's been over two years (and it hasn't been fun)
Since the first of the candidates started to run;
Now the shouting and screaming is reaching its peak--
A sign that we vote in just under a week.
[...]
(If we're lucky, it might last a month, maybe two,
Before someone starts the whole process anew.)
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-home-stretch.html
As for the report, I don't quite grok the reaction here. A fundamental part of intelligence work is monitoring the communications of the Enemy.
So, a report pondering what new methods the Enemy might be using to communicate is out of line.... how, exactly? To be honest, I'm glad the intelligence community is keeping up with that whole intertubes thing. ;-)
Like a couple others said, you support basic research, but this, for some reason, deserves the Sarah "Duh! Why we study froot flies?" Palin attack?
Related note: Do you think Sarah Palin thinks fruit flies are called that because they haz The Gay?
Hickory dickory dock
The election is here,
But their mouths won't stop.
TSG, it seems we had a misunderstanding and were in truth agreeing, so I appologise.
Mystyk - I was gonna say earlier that this looked like a project that's normaly given to a baby officer, but didn't bother in the end. Like I said earlier, the whole thing looks cobbled together. Not being proper intelligence, I obviously don't know how the serious people take this kind of thing, but lower down we get this type of thing frequently. It's certainly common (though never usualy put together this bad).
As I've said, my specific complaint was that Wired thought it was newsworthy and the title they ran the article under. I read PZ's original post to be about the article and not necessarily the report.
I don't see anything wrong with the army war-gaming different scenarios where the bad guys use new technology. I think some of the blogosphere is acting silly by overreacting to this.
I saw the memo, and while I recognize the need for evaluating new technologies for their potential as intelligence sources and threatening messages, I still had to chuckle.
OBL (11:42AM): Who is the best white basketball player?
KSM (11:45AM): There are no good white basketball players.
OBL (11:48AM): Dude, what's shakin? Here's your zip file. Password is our favorite Chinese basketball player.
It's even worse - it has been reported that terrorists are using vibrations within our atmosphere as a communications medium! We must deprive them of this so-called "speech" at once! Before, you know, a negotiated peace breaks out or something.
TerRorists coUld also hide encrypTed messages in pHaryngula blog comments.
Mmmmkay.
It seems like a lot of work explaining something that should be very obvious. And why single Twitter out of all possible cell phone communication methods?
Given that Congress not only legalized warrentless wiretaps on American citizens but legalized them retroactively, I think "Soviet America" comments are entirely justified. At least since the Nixon adminsitration there has been a cadre in Washington trying to reduce the freedoms and rights of American citizens. We ignore them at our peril.
Shouldn't it be "The Twitter Thweat"?
I'm just glad Richard Reid was the shoe bomber not the butt bomber. It's bad enough you have to take off your shoes at the airport.
This was decades ago, but it reminds me of the military's infamous MDIG's - "Multi-Directional Impact Generator" development program, a project that ate up millions in government funding, where each unit cost some several hundreds of dollars, as I recall.
Ordinary people were able to acquire the same basic design at their local hardware stores for around 20 bucks and called them "hammers".
Overheard recently, a conversation from fifty thousand years ago:
Did you hear?
Hear what?
That booming sound.
Oh yeah. What is it?
Something the other tribe is doing. They hit logs with sticks and talk to each other with the noise.
Damn.
Damn straight.
What'll we do?
Well, we could burn all the logs.
Wouldn't burning the sticks be easier?
Yes, but what will we use for walking sticks?
Hmm. Well, I guess we could use parking meters, but they haven't been invented yet.
We need to find a way to make noise differently, and louder.
That won't work. The other tribe would find out and do it too.
You're right. Come to think of it, there is nothing we can do about it.
Damn.
Damn straight.
"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,"
Heh. And oh-oh.
Hey there! a.bastion is using Twitter*
a.bastion
_
Still at the rally. Enjoying the company of other Atheist Activist and Godless Liberals. Enjoying our organic Black Forrest Berry Honest Tea, arugula, and MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars.
_____________________________
Hey. Quite a crowd here at the amazing Atheist Activist and Godless Liberal political rally. Lots of vegetarians and Pastafarians. A veggie-spaghetti fest is in the works for election night. Be there!
See some terrorists I used to pal around with on the education committee. And some of the guys and gals who were at the social activist meeting this AM!
_____________________________
On my way to watch the Obama TV extravaganza with other dedicated political atheist activists and godless liberals from the not-real America. Should be fun!
________________________________
At E & E's. They're all excited about their plans to hack some major anti-soy web site. E & E also all wound up about their plan to start a new human rights group sponsored by vegetarian anarchist hackorz, The Soy Beanz Liberation Alliance or something like that. As if they're not already so busy with the Anarchist Book Club and Knitting Circle.
____________________________________
After a long day at work, now on my way to visit my anarchist BFFs Emma and Emil.
_________________________________
Just got an invite to the St. Pesto Rigatoni FSM Church Fri. eve to discuss their upcoming Pastafarian retreat. Hope I can make it. I try to stay really really involved with the FSM congregation, but been so busy with all my social and political activism lately, I haven't seen most of the folks there since the huge Talk Like a Pirate Day ceremony.
__________________________________
At work. Newest humongous project is to find all the ways we can take the money from all the rich folks in small town real-American and redistribute it to all the not-rich non-real-Americans in big cities and on both coasts.
__________________________________
Organizing meeting very productive--and afterwards, ate a delicious vegetarian lunch at the union hall sponsored by the socialist Workers' Organizing and Vegan Cooking Committee was great! Meatless three bean chili and organic 12 grain bread. Was surprised to see several long time and dedicated members of the local communist organizing committee there too. Guess they know a good lunch when they hear about it! Next time, you should come too. The networking opportunities are fantastic.
______________________________________
Today I'm meeting with a bunch of social activists and community organizers about improving working conditions for the laborers in our local vegetable packing factory. Expect to be back right after lunch.
*Not really.
Hey, let's not forget that about a month back, the CIA or somebody proposed that terrorists were going to use World of Warcraft to send messages. Never mind that that you'd have to know which server, have to pay 15 dollars a month (making you somewhat trackable), have to know which faction (Horde can't talk to Alliance and vice versa) and which characters. All of which you could communicate via email, so why not just use the damn email. My theory at the time was some guy got caught goofing off on the job and tried justifying it by saying he was doing research. Many of same limitations hold true for Twitter. You'd have to know which posters and which threads....so why not just email.
BOMB THE OXYGEN FACTORIES!
FREEDUMB AND PROSPERITY FOR ALL NON-TERRORISTIC HUMANS!!11!
/sarcasm
It seems like a lot of work explaining something that should be very obvious. And why single Twitter out of all possible cell phone communication methods?
It's only one report. There may be other for all we know. I think it's like others have said. It was probably a "beginner" report for some intelligence community noob. Hack, maybe it was some sort of hazing activity. ;-)
Hey, I look back at my first engineering design reviews from 20 years ago and cringe. We all start somewhere.
I'm still confused as to what P.Z.'s gripe is with this thing. If his issue was to point out how hysterical the media can be at hyping up even the least interesting of things, then I completely agree. This media headline is a joke. And I would say I'm sorry for my original post, for the attack on the pathetic media coverage would be warrented.
If, however, P.Z. was trying to express some outrage at the military doing its job, and was getting upset in a tinfoilhat-becareful-therearealiens way, then all I can say is - P.Z., you have become what you have previously criticized,
...and I'm am teribaly disapointed.
I hope you soon make it clear what you intended by your post. Because on the one hand you may be expressing what many of us are already aware of (i.e. media being hysterical), on the other hand you might just be an ignorant jackass.
I hope it's the former and not the later.
What outrage? Did you even read what I wrote? The tone is one of bemusement at all of the silliness.
Yes, I very clearly read what you wrote. If your issue was with what the press wrote then I appologise. I can not agree more with how daft the media can be at dramatising events to sell their own product.
However your post was in no way clear. Indeed to my mind it was an attack against that which you were ignorant of. It would appear your issue was with (I suspect) the original military draft brief. If so then I can only shake my head at your original statement, and my disapointment still stands.
I would love to be proved wrong as your blog is one of my favourite haunts on the net, and my humiltiy begs to let somoeone I respect so much prove me wrong. However, your originaly post does not make it clear what in particular you are raising issue with, and (to my mind) has the inflection that you are not so concerned with the over hysterical reaction some people may make of this, but is an over hysterical reaction in itself.
I have re-read your original post many times through and I still stand by my first post, unless you claim that it is the media fear-mongering that you were originaly opposed to. (Though to be honest, I'd raise issue that that was ther original intention by your wording - you certainly did not make the effort to make it clear)
Let this be an end to this.
Oh, Henry? (#102)?
Whatever that slippery stuff is that greases so many folks into sliding the blame off of the source of a message onto the messenger (aka "The Media") every time? That stuff must be the most efficient lubricant ever invented. If you haven't patented it by now you must, in plain fact, be incredibly stupid.
And The Cheerful Nilhilist? (#103)? Quit suggesting what we can or can't do or say. Either SAY something SUBSTANTIVE, or let it be an end of you. Fair enough?
Arnosium Upinarum
You've destroyed my hijinx. Aw well, it amused me for a couple of hours. (Which was the point.)
There are a lot of smart people in the US