Chris Mooney has a very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized. Much U.S. counterterrorism and "homeland security" activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem.
He also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we've evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer's account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence.
Some of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist. I don't see it--he's not making the argument that reason doesn't work to find out things about the world, he's making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are. Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism.
My compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.
Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama's birth certificate (the PDF'd scan of the "long form" certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago. But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt's alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as "Dr. Conspiracy"), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims.
Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of "crank magnetism"--he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery. Vogt bills himself as a "geologist and science philosopher" who:
has funded and directed three expeditions to the
Sinai desert where he was the first person since Baruch (Jeremiah’s
grandson) to discover the real Mount Sinai. He discovered all the
altars that Moses describes in the Torah. In addition he was the first
person since Moses to see the real Abraham’s altar also located at
Mount Sinai and not in Jerusalem. He has discovered the code systems
used by Moses when writing the surface story of the Torah, which
enabled him to decode the Torah and other earlier books of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
His book features:
The first information theory of existence.
explains many of the hardest phenomena in the Universe such as: the
causes of the ice ages, polar reversals, mass extinctions, gravity,
light, pyramid energy, kirlian photography, psychic phenomena, and more!
So in addition to a self-proclaimed expert on typography, conspiracy theorist, and "birther," Vogt is apparently a creationist, pseudo-archaeologist, Bible code advocate, and promoter of a wide variety of pseudoscience claims.
Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005. He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists. Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many's My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley's Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee's Abuse at the Top).
I've read the first few chapters at his blog--it's quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.
I have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal.Please donate any amount you can - just as RESCUE saves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time.If you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts.
Just this morning Maricopa County Animal Care & Control announced that:
"there are more than 1,000 animals at [their] shelter.MCACC is doing everything we can to save as many lives as possible.Adoptable dogs and cats are stacked three+ deep in every available space."
Also today, RESCUE saved 6 dogs from MCACC. I've posted some of their pictures here. Helping RESCUE helps dogs and cats leave MCACC through the front door, not in a body bag.
As an incentive, a friend has made some cute dog & cat themed cards for me to give as a thank you for any donation of $25 or more.You'll get a four pack of cute cards you can use for any occasion!Please click hereto donate and let me know if you'd like a pack of cards in the message section.Donations are 100% tax deductible and your donation goes directly to the animals!
Here's a few of the things your donation can do:
$5 - will buy a martingale collar or a leash
$10 - will buy a container of cat litter
$20 - will buy a month supply of medication for RESCUE cat Nico
$25- will buy two cases of wet food for RESCUE cat Benny
$30 - will buy a 30 lb. bag of dog food
$60 - will buy five days of boarding for one RESCUE dog
$100 - will pay for medications for RESCUE dog Zeke
$150 - will pay for two weeks of boarding for one RESCUE dog
Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans' "love-hounds" mailing list, I don't recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian "rock music seminar" about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed "backwards masking" where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear.
It's interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," made a comeback two decades later--being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate.
Simon Singh, 2006:
Michael Shermer, 2006 TED Talk:
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 86 15:35 MST
From: "James J. Lippard"
Subject: Christian Death/rock seminar
Reply-To: Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Yes, I've heard of Christian Death, though I haven't heard much by them. That
reminds me of an article I wrote in October for ASU's "Campus Weekly"
(alternative campus newspaper) about a rock seminar I went to, and here it is.
The article was never printed, as the newspaper folded. (Note: There was
originally an additional paragraph about a fourth type of backwards
message--the kind that's at the end of the first side of "The Dreaming".)
Druids were Satanists.
Van Morrison reads Celtic literature.
Therefore, Van Morrison's music is evil.
I had hoped this kind of feeble guilt-by-association reasoning applied to
rock music by religious fanatics had died off. No such luck. The above was
typical of the reasoning presented at a seminar on rock music on October 21 by
Christian Life. Not only is the first premise false, the conclusion is a non
sequitur.
Things looked promising enough at first. A quote from the Confucian
philosopher Mencius about how the multitudes "act without clear understanding"
was projected on the large screen in Neeb Hall before the presentation began.
When the show finally started, the speaker gave some facts about the size of
the music industry and its influence on society.
For a while things were rational. Since the seminar was focusing on the
seamy side of rock, it seemed reasonable to show slides of Lou Reed shooting
heroin on stage, Sid Vicious, Kiss, and so forth. Still, the impression was
given that this was representative of the majority of rock music. Obscure
groups such as Demon, Lucifer's Friend, and the Flesh Eaters say nothing about
rock in general.
Apparently the writers of the seminar were aware of this, because it then
shifted to analyzing album covers of fairly popular groups. But this analysis
was taken to a ridiculous extreme, pulling interpretations out of a hat. If
an album cover had a cross on it, it was automatically blasphemous. Any other
religious symbols on an album along with a cross were putting down
Christianity by calling it "just another religion."
Other symbols also drew criticism. From the following Bible verse, Luke
10:18, it was concluded that lightning bolts are a demonic symbol:
And He said to them, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven
like lightning."
Since all lightning bolts are evil, the lightning bolts in the logos of
Kiss and AC/DC show that they are in league with the devil. Interestingly, on
the backs of many electrical appliances is a symbol which serves as a warning
of potential shock hazard--a yellow triangle containing a lightning bolt
exactly like the one in AC/DC's logo. Surely this is a more obvious source
than the Bible for AC/DC's lightning bolt, given the electrical symbolism in
their name and many of their album titles.
As the Jesuits knew, if you teach a child your ways early, he will likely
follow them for the rest of his life. But to conclude from this that Led
Zeppelin is trying to influence children because there are children on the
cover of their _Houses of the Holy_ album is absurd.
In the interest of "fair play", quotes from several artists denying any
involvement with the occult were given. But these were shrugged off,
including the disclaimer at the beginning of Michael Jackson's _Thriller_
video which says, in part, "this film in no way endorses belief in the
occult." Michael Jackson is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, so I seriously
doubt he had any more intent in promoting the occult through _Thriller_ than
the creators of Caspar the Friendly Ghost.
Finally, the seminar got to its most entertaining subject: backwards
messages on rock albums. There are several types of messages commonly
referred to as "backmasking," most of which were covered. The first is a
message recorded normally, then placed on an album in reverse. The example
given was from ELO's Face the Music album, which says "The music is
reversible, but time is not. Turn back, turn back..." There is little doubt
about the content of such messages.
The second type of backwards message is where words are sung backwards,
phonetically. On Black Oak Arkansas' live album _Raunch and Roll_, there is
no question about what they are trying to do when the singer shouts "Natas!"
The conference speaker seemed to imply that this message was unintentional,
however, when he gave an example of a song by Christian Death. The words are
sung backwards (as seen on the lyrics sheet), but pronounced in reverse
letter-by-letter rather than phonetically. He seemed surprised that this
resulted in nonsense when reversed.
The third type of backwards message is where a perfectly ordinary record
album is played in reverse to produce gibberish and creative imaginations
supply the translations for supposed messages. According to the speaker, this
must occur in one of three ways. Either they are intentional, accidental, or
spiritual. They can't be intentional, because creating such a message is
unimaginably complex. They can't be accidental, otherwise we would hear
messages saying such things as "God is love" or "the elephant is on the back
burner" as often as we hear messages about Satan. Therefore, the messages
must be spiritual (i.e., Satan caused them to occur).
This completely ignores what has already been well-established as the
source of these messages. Someone person plays his records backwards,
listening for evil messages, and hears something that sounds like the word
"Satan". He then tells his friends to listen for the message, and plays it
for them. Since they have been told what to hear, their mind fills in the
difference between the noises on the album and the alleged message.
This explanation was mentioned, but was dismissed out of hand because, the
speaker claimed, the backwards messages are as clear as most rock lyrics are
forwards. He played the first message, in Queen's "Another One Bites the
Dust", without telling the audience what to hear. I heard no message, but he
told us that we clearly heard "start to smoke marijuana". When the tape was
played again, I could hear it.
The rest of the messages of this type played at the seminar were
accompanied by text on the movie screen telling the audience what to listen
for. I closed my eyes to ignore the hints, and was unable to hear anything
but gibberish. The same method was used and the same results obtained by
several other audience members I questioned after the presentation.
In addition, an anti-rock program aired a few years ago on the Trinity
Broadcasting Network stated that there were several messages on Led Zeppelin's
"Stairway to Heaven", including "here's to my sweet Satan" and "there is power
in Satan". The rock conference, on the other hand, combined these two into
one large message which began "my sweet Satan" and ended "whose power is in
Satan". Having heard the TBN version first, those were what I heard when they
were played at the conference. If the words "there is" can be mistaken for
"whose", isn't it possible that the same is true for the rest of these
messages?
Even the transcriber of the backwards messages had problems coming up with
words to fit the message. The slide for Rush's live version of "Anthem"
played backwards read:
Oh, Satan, you--you are the one who is shining, walls of Satan,
walls of (sacrifice?) I know.
As any ventriloquist knows, many sounds can be mistaken for many other
sounds. An m for an n, a t for a d, a c, a z, or a th for an s. Given that
the most frequent letters in the English language are ETAOINSHRDLU, it is no
surprise that something sounding like "Satan" is quite common.
With enough effort, evil symbolism and backwards messages can be found
anywhere. Try visiting a record store and finding satanic symbols on
Christian album covers, or listening to some Christian albums backwards. I'm
sure much can be found with little difficulty.
It is true that most rock is not Christian. It is even true that much of
it conflicts with the Christian faith in some way. But to bury these points
in a mire of fuzzy logic and fanaticism by engaging in a witch hunt is
counter-productive. Before the conference, I commented to a friend that if
"Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards, the presenters would have destroyed
any credibility they had. That, unfortunately, was the case.
Jim (Lippard at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA)
As this blog has reported on multiple prior occasions (in 2006, 2008, and 2009, at the very least), the fact that U.S. airport security separates the checking of the boarding pass by TSA from the use of a boarding pass to check in to board makes it easy to get through security with a boarding pass that matches your ID while flying under a boarding pass on a ticket purchased in a different name.
Now, as The Economist (July 2, 2011) reports, Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a 24-year-old Nigerian American, has been arrested after successfully doing something along these lines to fly around the country, apparently on multiple occasions. Only Noibi wasn't even using boarding passes valid for the flights he was on--he was caught with a boarding pass in another person's name for a flight from a day prior. And he wasn't caught because the boarding pass was detected at check-in--he had already successfully boarded the flight and was seated. He was only caught because of his extreme body odor and a fellow passenger complained, which led to his boarding pass being checked and found to be invalid.
As a result of the investigative reporting of Radley Balko, Cory Maye is about to be released from prison after ten years of incarceration and seven years after being sentenced to death on the basis of a terrible defense and kooky testimony from a now discredited and removed medical examiner. Maye shot and killed a police officer during a no-knock drug raid against a duplex property in which Maye resided, on the basis of a report of unusual traffic at the other unit of the duplex by an unreliable informant. Maye was defending his daughter from an unknown intruder kicking his door in.
the program does not discriminate against any candidate or point of view, and it does not restrict any person's ability to speak. In fact, by providing resources to many candidates, the program creates more speech and thereby broadens public debate. ...
At every turn, the majority tries to convey the impression that Arizona's matching fund statute is of a piece with laws prohibiting electoral speech. The majority invokes the language of "limits," "bar[s]," and "restraints." ... It equates the law to a "restrictio[n] on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign." ...
There is just one problem. Arizona's matching funds provision does not restrict, but instead subsidizes, speech. The law "impose[s] no ceiling on [speech] and do[es] not prevent anyone from speaking." ... The statute does not tell candidates or their supporters how much money they can spend to convey their message, when they can spend it, or what they can spend it on. ...
In the usual First Amendment subsidy case, a person complains that the government declined to finance his speech, while financing someone else's; we must then decide whether the government differentiated between these speakers on a prohibited basis--because it preferred one speaker's ideas to another's. ... But the speakers bringing this case do not make that claim--because they were never denied a subsidy. ... Petitioners have refused that assistance. So they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance. Some people might call that chutzpah.
Indeed, what petitioners demand is essentially a right to quash others' speech through the prohibition of a (universally available) subsidy program. Petitioners are able to convey their ideas without public financing--and they would prefer the field to themselves, so that they can speak free from response. To attain that goal, they ask this court to prevent Arizona from funding electoral speech--even though that assistance is offered to every state candidate, on the same (entirely unobjectionable) basis. And this court gladly obliges.
The majority position on this issue is that the unconstitutionality arises from the way that the subsidy to clean elections candidates is tied to campaign spending by the non-clean-elections candidates; I take it that had the subsidy been a fixed amount the argument would not have worked at all.
On June 24, DPS posted a press release responding to the attacks, accusing LulSec of being a "cyber terrorist group"--a term better reserved for the use of criminally disruptive activities intended to cause physical harm or disruption of critical infrastructure, not embarrassing organizations that haven't properly secured themselves. In the press release, DPS enumerates the steps they've taken to secure themselves and the safeguards they've put in place. It's an embarrassing list which suggests they've had poor information security and continue to have poor information security.
First, their press release has a paragraph suggesting that the damage is limited, before they're probably had time to really determine that's the case. They write:
There is no evidence the attack has breached the servers or computer systems of DPS, nor the larger state network. Likewise, there is no evidence thatDPS records related to ongoing investigations or other sensitive matters have been compromised.
Just because they have "no evidence" of something doesn't mean it didn't happen--what records did they review to make this determination? Were they doing appropriate logging? Have logs been preserved, or were they deleted in the breach? Do they have centralized logging that is still secure? When did the compromise take place, and when did DPS detect it? The appearance is that they didn't detect the breach until it was exposed by the perpetrators. What was the nature of the vulnerability exploited, and why wasn't it detected by DPS in a penetration test or vulnerability assessment? LulzSec has complained about the number of SQL injection vulnerabilities they've found--was there one in DPS's web mail application?
Next, they report what they've done in response, and again make statements about how "limited" the breach was:
Upon learning that a limited number of agency e-mails had been disclosed, DPS took action. In addition to contacting other law enforcement agencies, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC) has been activated. Remote e-mail access for DPS employees remains frozen for the time-being. The security of the seven DPS officers in question remains the agency’s top priority and, since a limited amount of personal information was publicly disclosed as part of this breach.Steps are being taken to ensure the officers’ safety and that of their families.
They've disabled the e-mail access that they believe was used in the breach--that's good. Presumably the exposed officer passwords were discovered to be from this system. Perhaps they will not re-enable the system until they have a more secure mechanism that requires VPN access and two-factor authentication--or at least intrusion prevention, a web application firewall, and effective security monitoring. They've notified ACTIC--presumably in part because of their overblown claim that this breach constitutes "terrorism" and in part because there are some ACTIC personnel who have good knowledge of information security. And they're doing something to protect the safety of officers whose personal information (including some home addresses) was exposed.
In the final paragraph of the press release, they list some of the safeguards they have in place:
-24/7 monitoring of the state’s Internet gateway.
-Industry-standard firewalls, anti-virus software and other capabilities.
-IT security staff employed at each major state agency.
-Close coordination between the State of Arizona and state, federal and private-sector authorities regarding cyber-security issues.
This sounds like a less-than-minimal set of security controls. Is that 24/7 monitoring just network monitoring for availability, or does it include security monitoring? Do they have intrusion detection and prevention systems in place? Do they have web application firewalls in front of web servers? Do they have centralized logging and are those logs being monitored? Are they doing event correlation? How many full-time information security staff are there at DPS? Are there any security incident response staff? Is there a CISO, and if so, why isn't that person being heard from? Does DPS have an incident response plan? Are they reviewing policy, process, and control gaps as part of their investigation of this incident? Have they had any third-party assessments of their information security? Have any past assessments, internal or external, recommended improvements that were not made?
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