Seeing Both Sides

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Bob Hettinga wrote:
>But then, logic, much less independent thinking, was never 
>Foucault's strong point.

I took this statement at face value, but out of curiousity I decided to find
out who this guy Foucault was.  The things I read about him lead me to 
believe otherwise.

Some quotes from Michel Foucault:

 "The judges of normality are present everywhere.  We are in
  the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the 
  educator-judge, the 'social worker'-judge."

 "Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work
  begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each
  individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline."

How quick we are to condemn those who step out of the "norm", no?  As soon 
as someone says something even slightly controversial, our inner censors 
rush in to separate ourselves from that person, to chastise him, to condemn 
him, regardless of the relationship we have developed with him in the past.

There is this unfortunate property in man that leads him to disassociate 
himself from the ideas he holds true if it is convenient, and especially if 
it will allow him to avoid the ridicule, hatred and disdain of others.  In 
the never ending "pursuit of happiness" we seek to make our lives so 
comfortable that we will give up that which we hold dearest.

 "The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political 
  will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in 
  his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to 
  shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate
  conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and 
  institutions and...to participate in the formation of a 
  political will (where he has his role as citizen to play)."

In other words, to make people think.  This is the goal of the intellectual. 
To subtly influence the mass of humanity by appealing to their minds, their 
reason, instead of their base instincts and emotions.  Tolerance and 
acceptance are results brought about in us by communion with the mind, that 
which is greatest in us.  Hatred, persecution, violence are what we fall 
back upon when we cease to live to our fullest potential.  We degenerate 
into the animals we once were.

Once again, Bob wrote:
>The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an
>absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less
>independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point.

Perhaps one way of looking at it is that if you can't see the black and
the white, you're missing the whole picture.

After all, who would think that one would need to use an anonymous remailer
and a pseudonym to express oneself in a free and open society such as ours?

Nerthus

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At 5:17 am -0500 on 11/17/97, Secret Squirrel wrote:


> How quick we are to condemn those who step out of the "norm", no?  As soon
> as someone says something even slightly controversial, our inner censors
> rush in to separate ourselves from that person, to chastise him, to condemn
> him, regardless of the relationship we have developed with him in the past.

I find this particularly interesting in light of my treatment on this list
the past week or so. I point out that Tim threatens a federal judge, and
all shriek apostasy. I never knew there was cypherpunk orthodoxy until now.

It's vaguely refreshing to watch. Makes me feel positively radical.

> Once again, Bob wrote:
> >The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an
> >absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less
> >independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point.
>
> Perhaps one way of looking at it is that if you can't see the black and
> the white, you're missing the whole picture.

Yes, but I'm not sure that people with a moral handle on their universe
can't see in shades of grey. I just said that relativism is, fundamentally,
an idiot's philosophy.

> After all, who would think that one would need to use an anonymous remailer
> and a pseudonym to express oneself in a free and open society such as ours?

Ironic, isn't it? If I had kept my criticism of Tim anonymous, I wouldn't
have to shovel out from the gales of protest, to mix a metaphor like a dead
horse.

Oh, well. Persistance breeds character, or some such Neitchean platitude.

However, I refuse to be shouted down around here when I'm right.

Armageddon ain't here yet, folks.

Hell, 1984 is still behind schedule, and, frankly, it'll never happen,
because the PERT chart for it is a spaghetti bowl, and because people are
out there, right now, writing code instead of putting a few hundred rounds
a week through their ARs and Glocks, holing up in the mountains, throwing
(metaphoric) rocks at the local gendarmarie, and keeping their lawyers on
hot-standby.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

<Nice to see I'm back out of TCM's killfile. He apparently figured out he
can run, etc.>


At 12:41 am -0500 on 11/23/97, Tim May lobs a low, slow one, right over the
plate:

> Oh, and as for your typically Hettingian "writing code instead of putting a
> few hundred rounds a week through their ARs and Glocks" insult, you'd be
> surprised to know who I ran into at the Los Altos Gun Range this afternoon.
> And to think he was shooting an AR when he could have been coding "for the
> Cause"!

Actually, <insult> ya yutz </insult> :-), it's exactly *why* I wrote it, if
you notice the time of my posting.

Shooting is a good skill to have. I wish I had it myself. However, I have a
lot more respect for Vinnie, putting in practice at the range -- a firearms
instructor who shoots not only for self protection, but because he likes it
*and* is good at it (as you probably noticed) -- than I do for you, someone
who's on the verge of joining a militia somewhere, though not because
you're shooting per se. There's a difference between being ready for a
confrontation involving gunfire and going out and causing one, which you
clearly seem to be trying to do lately. The former is good sense. The
second is, of course, the act of a loon -- oops, "Freedom Fighter".

Interestingly, those people who are most interested in starting a
revolution are also the people who want to be in charge when the revolution
is over. cf., Townsend's "Don't get fooled again", and Radovan Karadzic. Is
that *you*, Tim?...

Nawwww...


If attacked under the proper conditions, like, say, at Concord, fighting is
a real good idea. :-). If you read interviews with people at the time, and
not, say, 50 years later after several historical revisions, those folks
defended themselves more because an occupying army was marching up the road
straight at them, threatening their lives, limb and property, than for any
political consideration.

That and the fact that they actually had the military wherewithall to slow,
and apparently stop, that army. :-). Being a near-frontier society, where
people still used a, um, geodesic, force architecture :-) to fight bandits,
and had at least a memory of dealing with marauding indians that way, paid
off handsomely. Texas and the Texas Rangers were an analogous situation
with the Commanches, for instance.

Concord is clearly proof that Britain didn't understand that they couldn't
control America anymore and acted on that misinformation. It was *their*
problem, as the revolution bore out.


And, frankly, as a member of a congregation whose church was broken up for
firewood as a "nest of traitors" during the occupation of Boston, and,
having done some myself once in a while, I'm no stranger to the fun and
games of good old fashioned rabble-rousing, something this list seems to
excel at these days. But, the point is, if someone went out alone, in the
middle of, say, occupied Boston, and started shooting, they'd die, and
everyone would call them a fool. And, no, I don't think that modern
Corrolitos, much less Boston itself :-), is the equivalent of occupied, or
even pre-revolutionary war, Boston, either.


Finally, as far as code is concerned -- or even *talking* about
cryptographic technology and what it can do anymore -- the irony of what
*you* do all day, Tim, versus what Vinnie does, is of course, rather
immense.


I'll answer the rest of your post when it crawls to the top of the dreck
pile, like all the rest of them...


Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

At 8:59 PM -0700 11/22/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:

>Hell, 1984 is still behind schedule, and, frankly, it'll never happen,
>because the PERT chart for it is a spaghetti bowl, and because people are
>out there, right now, writing code instead of putting a few hundred rounds
>a week through their ARs and Glocks, holing up in the mountains, throwing
>(metaphoric) rocks at the local gendarmarie, and keeping their lawyers on
>hot-standby.

Spare us the "writing code instead of" appeals to some sort of guilt. The
moral equivalent of "unlike you, I have a _life_." Or the German war guilt
posters, "What have _You_ done for the War today?"

Not many people are "writing code," at least not _interesting_ code, at
least not recently. A lot of reworkings of basic crypto, a lot of
mindnumbingly boring SET crapola, but not a lot of truly interesting stuff.
The remailers, the implementations of digital cash...a lot of those who did
this at one time are now off working at real companies. Unfortunately, they
appear to be mostly buried in corporate projects of little interest to
causes of any importance. (I certainly don't blame them for working for
Verisign, or Cybercash, or whatever.)

Several days ago you listed some number of projects or articles or such
you're working on, and claimed this proved your Greater Worth to the Cause.

I'm happy for you that you believe this to be the case.

In several of your rants you have repeatedly fallen into this pattern of
attempting to lay a guilt trip on me, suggesting, variously, that I should
be sending you money for your dreams, or that I should be funding other
people, or that I should be "doing something."

I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I think I do it pretty well, Certainly
better than learning C or C++ and becoming YACC (Yet Another C Coder). No
insult to C coders, but at age 45, after making a bundle of money doing
physics and AI,  and retiring eleven years ago, I hardly think training
myself at this point to be a C journeyman is what I want to do with my life.

(Nor, as I have said several times, to no avail, am I hot to "fund a
startup." So don't repeat your pleas on this score, either.)

So, as I have said before, knock off on the moralizing about what I should
be doing and about how I'm Not Doing Enough for the Cause. Your moralizing
reminds me of Detweiler, who had an unnatural fixation on me and my exact
words and how my words were torturing him and on and on.

Get a life. Preferably, your own.

Oh, and as for your typically Hettingian "writing code instead of putting a
few hundred rounds a week through their ARs and Glocks" insult, you'd be
surprised to know who I ran into at the Los Altos Gun Range this afternoon.
And to think he was shooting an AR when he could have been coding "for the
Cause"!

Deep down, you're still basically a liberal.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I think I do it pretty well, Certainly
> better than learning C or C++ and becoming YACC (Yet Another C Coder). No
> insult to C coders, but at age 45, after making a bundle of money doing
> physics and AI,  and retiring eleven years ago, I hardly think training
> myself at this point to be a C journeyman is what I want to do with my life.

Let's take an inventory of what Tiny Timmy can contribute to our cause:
* capital
* ability to spec out projects and figure out what needs to be done
He lacks:
* time
* C coding skills
* understanding of non-RSA cryptography (such as elliptic curves)
Here's an idea. Suppose you want a certain program to be written and
made available for free.  Spec out the design and offer to pay a few
thousand dollars for someone to code it and post it.
Put your money where your mouth it, Tiny Timmy.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

At 2:01 PM -0700 11/23/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
><Nice to see I'm back out of TCM's killfile. He apparently figured out he
>can run, etc.>

A red herring. I last had Hettinga in my filter file about a year ago,
after his "Watching the MacRubble Bounce" eruption and aftermath. It is
true that I usually just glance at your posts and then hit the D
key....it's tough to extract meaning out of strings of expressions like:

"The ganglia twitch... don't forget to swallow your milk before you read
this....Don't want to blow it all out your nose... Er, thanks. I think.
Makes me sound like an ibogaine-crazed Barbie doll with an AK... :-)....
<BudLightMan> I *Love* you man...</BLM>... Ooops. I am. I do. With e$pam, I
mean. Well -- never mind. Can I, um, backpedal that?... So, boys and
girls,... Ooops. Sorry. Heh... Lost my train of thought... Vinnie saying to
him (YANC), in effect, we need him (YANC) for a proper Laying-On of Hands,
him being a Piece of the True Crypto Cross, and all.... The ganglia, um,
twitch... Thanks to the e$ e$lves... (at 360lbs soaking wet, *I* should
talk...)... Now, where *is* that "kick me" sign... Ding! You rang? Welcome
to Random Acts of Kindness, Inc. Our motto: "You never know when we're
going to make your day!"..."

(These are just a few of the Bobisms out of my "H-Files."

This weird mix of "Alice's Restaurant" and "Fear and Loathing on the Road
to Las Vegas" styles is incomprehensible to me. Maybe it makes sense to
Bob's intended audience...maybe to Guy Kawasaki and other such hucksters.

What nuggets of truth Bob uncovers are usually buried in mountains of
florid rhetoric. More than anything, he needs to get back on his Ritalin,
or whatever he takes for his ADD, and


>Finally, as far as code is concerned -- or even *talking* about
>cryptographic technology and what it can do anymore -- the irony of what
>*you* do all day, Tim, versus what Vinnie does, is of course, rather
>immense.

Yet another claim that I am not doing enough for the Cause, or at least
that Bob's friend Vinnie is doing ever so much more. (Knowing Vinnie,
however slightly, I imagine he must find this hero worship by Bob a bit
unseemly.)


--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tiny Timmy May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
<a long collection of statist quotes from Bobby the geodesic baron>
> (These are just a few of the Bobisms out of my "H-Files."

Now who's displaying an unnatural obsession?

> What nuggets of truth Bob uncovers are usually buried in mountains of
> florid rhetoric. More than anything, he needs to get back on his Ritalin,

I suggest cyanide.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Tim May wrote:
> Your moralizing
> reminds me of Detweiler, who had an unnatural fixation on me and my exact
> words and how my words were torturing him and on and on.

  More foolish speculation on Tim's part, as well as a shoddy 
attempt to associate my eloquent missives with the mad ramblings
of Detweiler.

  As for Tim's grandoise claims of my having an "unatural fixation,"
on him, my stalking of him and my use of binoculars and electronic
devices to monitor him have proven well worthwhile in helping to 
gain the information needed to expose him for what he is (although I
am afraid I cannot share this information with anyone without violating
the confidential integrity of the stalker-victim relationship.) 

  An "unnatural fixation" is revealed by more personal and sick,
twisted habits, such as Bill Stewart using his Eudora software
to filter Toto's posts to a special directory he projects onto
an overhead screen during his sexual orgies with farm animals.
(Pictures to follow...)
  I am astounded that Bill as much as admitted so on the list,
much as I was astounded when Tim announced that he would be
murdering Jim Bell's judge on Friday, at 4 p.m.

	Cheers,
		Bad BobbyH

Robert Heidegger <rh@dev.null> writes:
> Tim May wrote:
> > Your moralizing
> > reminds me of Detweiler, who had an unnatural fixation on me and my exact
> > words and how my words were torturing him and on and on.
>
>   More foolish speculation on Tim's part, as well as a shoddy
> attempt to associate my eloquent missives with the mad ramblings
> of Detweiler.

I have great respect for Detweiller.  LD is kewl.  You're no Detweiller,
Bobby, and neither is Timmy.

>   As for Tim's grandoise claims of my having an "unatural fixation,"
> on him, my stalking of him

I agree with Timmy on this one. Your fixation on Timmy is unnatural.

>   An "unnatural fixation" is revealed by more personal and sick,
> twisted habits, such as Bill Stewart using his Eudora software
> to filter Toto's posts to a special directory he projects onto
> an overhead screen during his sexual orgies with farm animals.

Proof, please.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sat, Nov 22, 1997 at 10:59:19PM -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote:
[...]
> I find this particularly interesting in light of my treatment on this list
> the past week or so. I point out that Tim threatens a federal judge, and
> all shriek apostasy. I never knew there was cypherpunk orthodoxy until now.

Get used to it.  I described the cryptoanarchy cult some months ago
(check the archives).  The result was a hilarious chorus of letters 
assuring me how unique and individualistic cryptoanarchists were.  

"...lost in a twisty maze of little passages, all alike".

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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