brooklynmutt:

The Hacker is Watching

Every online scam begins more or less the same—a random e-mail, a sketchy attachment. But every so often, a new type of hacker comes along. Someone who rewrites the rules, not just the code. He secretly burrows his way into your hard drive, then into your life. Is he following your every move?

Read —> GQ

“Sitting at home, Mijangos brushes off quick fixes to hacking. Webcam tools like his are readily available online. Anyone with time and determination can put them to criminal use, infiltrating people’s lives—converting webcams to eyes, microphones to ears. “Nothing is secure,” Mijangos says simply. “If we’re going to hack you, we’re going to hack you.”’

Some of my Internet buddies are famous hackers and unfortunately this is too true. 

(via brooklynmutt)

kohenari:

I caught a few minutes of a discussion on radio this morning about the video of four Marines urinating on the corpses of three Taliban fighters. Most of what I heard revolved around the notion that war is hell, that soldiers might do terrible things because they are encouraged to think of their enemy as radically Other, and that — of course — these are the terrible actions of a tiny, unrepresentative handful of American soldiers.

It’s also worth noting that, no matter how vile the behavior, it’s really nothing new. The above image is of Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot, one of the most famous scenes from the Trojan War. In the book that I’ve just finished on heroism, I look at Achilles’ repeated attempts to defile Hector’s body and make the argument that, even within the context of a brutal war in a far more brutal time period than our own, Achilles’ behavior was out of step.

He has avenged his friend Patroclus by killing Hector, but still Homer (XXIV.3-13) says that “Achilles / thought of his friend, and sleep that quiets all things / would not take hold of him. He tossed and turned / remembering with pain Patroklos’ courage…He lay / on his right side, then on his back, and then / face downward—but at last he rose, to wander / distractedly along the line of surf.” It is at this point that Achilles begins his daily desecration of Hector’s body, the savagery of which is even noted by the gods; Apollo, arguing that the corpse be taken from Achilles, says that he “shows no decency, implacable, / barbarous in his ways as a wild lion…The man has lost all mercy; / he has no shame” (Homer: XXIV.47-52).

Zeus determines that Achilles should accept ransom from Priam in exchange for Hector’s body, and he sends Thetis and Iris as messengers to inform both parties of his will. And so the great king of Troy departs for the Achaean camp “to do what no man else / has done before—to lift to my lips the hand / of one who killed my son” (Homer: XXIV.606-609).

When Priam arrives at Achilles’ tent at Zeus’ behest, a personal connection between the old king and the young warrior can finally made: “Remember your own father, / Achilles, in your godlike youth: his years / like mine are many, and he stands upon / the fearful doorstep of old age. He, too, / is hard pressed, it may be, by those around him, / there being no one able to defend him / from bane of war and ruin” (Homer: XXIV.82-87). Achilles, at this moment, takes pity on the king through a recognition of all that has been lost by both of their families. Achilles, after all, knows that Priam’s comparison is particularly apt; in the end, neither Priam nor Peleus will have a son to comfort him in his old age. As Seth Schein (160) points out, “the two old men are linked in their sorrows through Achilles.” The great warrior knows what Priam does not: Peleus will not see him alive again, precisely because of his decision to fight against and kill Priam’s son.

As Homer (XXIV.609-611) writes, “Now in Achilles / the evocation of his father stirred / new longing, and an ache of grief. He lifted / the old man’s hand and gently put him by.” Moved by the circumstances in which they find themselves, both men are overcome by emotion: “the old king huddled at Achilles’ feet / wept, and wept for Hektor, killer of men, / while great Achilles wept for his own father / as for Patroklos once again” (Homer: XXIV.613-616). Having shed these tears together with Priam, Achilles seems transformed; he is neither the daimon who killed so many Trojan warriors nor the beast that dragged Hector’s corpse around Patroclus’ tomb. But the change is an incomplete one as yet; although he is impressed that Priam has come to the Achaean camp and emotional about his father’s similar sorrow, the dangerous and savage killer rages just below Achilles’ exterior.

When Priam refuses to sit down with Achilles, saying that he cannot rest while Hector’s corpse lies in the dust, the warrior reminds the king that his pleas have only succeeded because Zeus has commanded it. And, even then, his position is a precarious one: “I have intended, in my own time, / to yield up Hektor to you. She who bore me, / the daughter of the Ancient of the sea, / has come with word to me from Zeus…Therefore, let me be. / Sting my sore heart again, and even here, / under my own roof, suppliant though you are, / I may not spare you, sir, but trample on / the express command of Zeus!” (Homer: XXIV.671-674, 680-683). It is unlikely that Achilles would actually defy Zeus –- especially as he immediately agreed to the god’s order when it came to him from Thetis (Homer: XXIV.165-167) –- but it is telling that Achilles continues to vacillate here between the daimon who challenges the gods and the mortal hero who understands his place in the community of other men.

At the same time, Achilles leaves his tent to make ready Hector’s body for Priam’s return journey; although he departs “like a lion” (Homer: XXIV.685), he takes great care in preparing the corpse. Homer (XXIV.697-699) says that Achilles “ordered the body bathed and rubbed with oil— / but lifted, too, and placed apart, where Priam / could not see his son.” He does so, notably, out of concern for Zeus’ order and also for Priam, “for seeing Hektor / he might in his great pain give way to rage, / and fury then might rise up in Achilles / to slay the old king, flouting Zeus’s word” (Homer: XXIV.699-702). Having done as Zeus commanded, Achilles apologizes to Patroclus’ spirit for agreeing to the return of Hector’s corpse.

He then returns to his tent and convinces the king to join him for a meal. It is at this point, his rage spent and his feelings of fellowship with Priam ascendant, that Achilles fully returns to the moral community. After Patroclus was killed, he insisted on abstaining from food and when he fought with Lycaon on the battlefield, he refused to acknowledge the cultural significance of breaking bread together.[i]

 These two important incidents signaled the difference between Achilles and all other men; now, however, he returns to the traditional fellowship of the shared meal. Schein (161) argues that “The two break bread together in an expression of their shared humanity; this takes precedence of their previous enmity and acknowledges the necessities of a life that goes on even after such deep losses as they have suffered.” He is once again fully human, no longer more -– daimon –- or less -– bestial or symbolically dead -– than other mortals.

Having eaten together, Achilles and Priam are once again overwhelmed; this time, however, it is not their grief but their awe of one another that causes them to share a very intimate moment. Homer (XXIV.753-758) writes that “When thirst and appetite were turned away, / Priam, the heir of Dardanos, gazed long / in wonder at Achilles’ form and scale— / so like the gods in aspect. And Achilles / in his turn gazed in wonder upon Priam, / royal in visage as in speech.” While a bed is prepared for Priam, who says that he has not slept since his son’s death, Achilles asks how long the Trojans will require in order to conduct a proper funeral for Hector. The king asks for eleven days and Achilles agrees to suspend the fighting for that time, both men knowing that a resumption on the twelfth day will lead to their deaths.

With this, the Iliad comes to a close; Achilles goes to sleep and Priam, awoken by Hermes, returns to Troy to conduct Hector’s funeral. Schein (159) argues that, in Priam, “Achilles finally finds a ‘father’ whom he can accept, one with as great or greater a need than his own for consolation and elemental human solidarity.” Achilles, then, is brought back from the brink of infamy by Priam, a most unlikely savior. In making plain their intimate connection, Priam not only succeeds in claiming his son’s body but also restores Achilles to the human community from which he has been divorced by what he thought was his singular grief and the brutal warfare to which it led him.

The desecration of corpses has a long history but it has always been regarded as the most vile behavior, out of step with even the many brutal deeds committed on the battlefield (for which a warrior could earn acclaim). For most of the warriors who fought at Troy, the Other was not so radically different; they generally recognized the conventions of the day because they recognized the humanity in one another. And when Achilles — the greatest of the warrior of his time — acted reprehensibly, he needed to be corrected, reminded that his enemies were like him and deserved respect and pity.

The American people generally need to be reminded too, as do our politicians who send troops all over the world and clearly those soldiers themselves. Who will be our Priam?

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[i] The fellowship found in the relationship between guest and host -– which involves ceremonial gift-giving and, often, a shared meal -– is a theme that is featured prominently in the Iliad and with good reason. While the cleartest example can be found in the battlefield conversation between Diomedes and Glaucus (Homer: VI.253-275, who choose not to fight because their ancestors exchanged gifts with one another and broke bread together, it is noteworthy that a particularly egregious example of broken fellowship –- Paris’ stealing of Helen from the house of Menelaus after the former receives the latter’s hospitality -– provides the context in which all of the poem’s action takes place.

Great read.

rtnt:

Read This, Not That: Why Don’t We Believe In Science?

Writing for Mother Jones, Chris Mooney explains why people don’t change their views to fit the evidence, but rather attempt to fit the evidence to their views:

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

…

Another study gives some inkling of what may be going through people’s minds when they resist persuasion. Northwestern University sociologist Monica Prasad and her colleagues wanted to test whether they could dislodge the notion that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were secretly collaborating among those most likely to believe it—Republican partisans from highly GOP-friendly counties. So the researchers set up a study in which they discussed the topic with some of these Republicans in person. They would cite the findings of the 9/11 Commission, as well as a statement in which George W. Bush himself denied his administration had “said the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda.”

As it turned out, not even Bush’s own words could change the minds of these Bush voters—just 1 of the 49 partisans who originally believed the Iraq-Al Qaeda claim changed his or her mind. Far more common was resisting the correction in a variety of ways, either by coming up with counterarguments or by simply being unmovable.

Read the full article here.

One of my favorite Long Reads of the year but it neglects to discuss that science and medicine, perhaps through no fault of their own, have done enough to instill skepticism in the minds of the public. Here’s Jonathan Miller talking about the sustained popularity of alternative medicine in 1981.

kohenari:

I’ve written a great many words about the death penalty over the past week (here and here) and many people have seen fit to read them, to think about them, to share them widely across the internet, and to discuss them with me. For this I have been extremely grateful.

I think it’s safe to assume that not a single one of the people who attended the GOP debate last night read any of those words. That’s not surprising; I’m an academic blogger with a fairly narrow readership. Of course, the debate audience likely also didn’t read this excellent and unsettling piece about Cameron Todd Willingham. And they haven’t read anything about Troy Davis. They certainly don’t know the names of any of the people who have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence came to light. In fact, they probably don’t know that any such people exist.

I would happily wager that they haven’t read much of anything about the death penalty they so vigorously applauded. Their support for it is, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” They do it reflexively, without a care in the world. They hear “justice” and, like Pavlov’s dogs, they salivate. But they haven’t spent any time considering what “justice” means; the only context in which they seem to understand it is when it is used as a synonym for vengeance.

This is the justice that is done to someone else. Never to them, never to anyone they care about or have even met. That situation is one they cannot even imagine; their privileged position affords them the opportunity to sit in judgment of another person without even considered what life must be like for someone who ends up on death row or for someone who cares about a death row inmate. Indeed, for a great many, their position is so privileged that they do not even recognize that privilege exists.

This is what underlies the applause and this what underlies Rick Perry’s absolute certainty that not a single one of the people on death row in Texas might be innocent of the crime for which he has been condemned. And this is what separates me from the applauding audience members and from someone like Rick Perry; I know what death row looks like, I’ve talked with condemned men, and because of my interaction with the death penalty in this country I’ve been given a good look at the privileged life I lead.

There is nothing to applaud when people die. There is nothing to applaud when people fail to examine their own lives and the good fortune they have had. There is nothing to applaud when our leaders do not understand the difference between justice and vengeance. There is nothing to applaud when people believe that the only thing our government can do properly is inject some citizens full of poison.

The deaths that this audience applauded are the deaths of human beings, more than 200 human beings. No matter what they did — and I don’t pretend that they were all innocent, kind, or virtuous — they were human beings. Their deaths ought not to be cheered like we would cheer at some sporting event. Their deaths did not make us safer and they certainly did not make us better. What that audience applauded was its own smug self-satisfaction, its distinct pleasure at not knowing or caring or empathizing.

By the time you read this, you’ll likely know that the progressives are already making jokes about Rick Perry and about the blood-thirsty audience. I began to see them on Twitter less than an hour after the debate’s conclusion. But there isn’t anything funny about what happened. It signals, in fact, how deeply divided we are in this country: this crowd believes that Americans fall into two camps, but it isn’t the divide that Republicans politicians have been suggesting between the “real” Americans who love freedom and family values, on the one hand, and some other “fake” Americans who hate those things, on the other. This spontaneous applause demonstrates the divide as it actually us: between those with whom these supposed “real” Americans can identify and those with whom they cannot. In the former camp are the Americans whose life experience is similar to the life experience of these audience members; they are similar in appearance, they grew up in similar circumstances, they face similar daily challenges. In the latter camp is everyone else, those who don’t look like “real” Americans, whose names don’t sound like “real” American names, whose religion is not the dominant one, whose life experiences do not bear even a remote resemblance to the experiences of the “real” Americans in that audience. And because the “real” Americans cannot recognize how privileged are the lives they lead, how well-off they are in so many ways, they cannot empathize in any way with those other Americans; indeed, far from attempting to care about their plight, they do not even consider those other Americans. They are not objects of care or respect and thus, when some of them commit terrible crimes and are executed, these “real” Americans cheer those executions because they are not “real” deaths. They are, instead, better likened to the way we destroy the dangerous dogs that snap at our children. We are so deeply divided in this country that one group cannot even recognize that the deaths they are applauding are the deaths of human beings like themselves, who once had hopes and dreams, plans for the future, and families who loved them. No one should be surprised, then, that these “real” Americans don’t want to be taxed to provide much-needed basic services for others or that they refer to people, not actions, as “illegal.”

The two minutes shown in the video clip above are, for me, absolutely heart-breaking; those two minutes speak volumes about the state of affairs in this country. This crowd, the one that broke out into spontaneous, extended applause at the mention of the death of more than two hundred people, is the pro-life crowd. They profess a deep and abiding belief in Christianity and blithely ignore the messages of forgiveness and mercy at the very heart of their religion. They are fiscally conservative and cheer for a shockingly expensive, unnecessary government expenditure. They have a fundamental distrust of the government and can’t wait to vote for someone who believes that the government — with all of its many, many flaws — ought to be in the business of deciding life and death.

This is either a stunning display of dishonesty or of stupidity. Either way, it is all terrifying and profoundly sad. It actually makes me feel that this is a group of people as disconnected from me and my experiences as they are from those whose deaths they applauded. The difference is that, if they think about this at all, it pleases them. I am unsure how we bridge that divide, but I am absolutely convinced that such a deep division on the very nature of our relationship to one another ought to be considered a crisis by anyone who cares about the future of this country.

(via politicalprof)