tkahn6

If it was a question, it was rhetorical - and irrelevant.

Ok?

Um right, hence the original comment I made.

EU nations spy on the US. That's not up for debate. It is a fact.

That's how the world works.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/30/world/us-expanding-its-eff...

Yes it is easy to blow up shopping centers. Hence the Boston Marathon bombing. Hence the surveillance programs that ostensibly identify and investigate and stop potential bombers.

The existence of 'security theatre', the only example I can think of being the TSA, doesn't preclude the possibility that there are real threats.

I think the best solution would be to have the NSA and other security apparatuses stop or significantly scale down their surveillance programs for a few years.

Two scenarios would play out:

1) Nothing happens or a maybe Boston Marathon Bombing-style attack once a year at most.

2) Bombs go off in a major shopping center or movie theatre every week, perhaps a few in the Bay Area. This is similar to what happened in Israel in the 90s.

In the first case it would mean that the surveillance really was for nothing and the matter would be easily resolved.

In the second case, we would at least be in a position to make an informed decision about whether the surveillance programs were worth the security it gained us. I suspect people would have a different opinion about the surveillance programs if scenario two came to pass - because preventing the second scenario is ostensibly the motive behind them.

... do you think the EU isn't spying on the US?

It would be absurdly naive to think they weren't.

uses the unreasonably invasive tools to save the day and is never brought to account for it by anyone.

Except that no one knows about it besides he and Fox, so how can he be brought to account for it by anyone?

Except that he tells Fox to destroy it precisely because it is so powerful and invasive.

The problem is that it's still oversimplifying.

Except that in the exact movie I gave as an example, in the end the CIA explicitly is shown to be covering up the events of the movie and it is indicated that they will continue to do immoral things.

See my original comment about the reason why you find this theory so attractive.

Except, you know, all the movies where the antagonist is actually given a backstory or character development.

Example: Safe House where eventually the audience is shown that the reason Denzel Washington's character defects and turns on the CIA is because the CIA was doing clearly immoral things.

I know this narrative is attractive because it makes 'the masses' out to be sheep with you as the one that can see through it all, but it's the height of arrogance and you happen to be wrong.

The same Bourne movies where the government is portrayed as being nefarious and overreaching and the people they 'look up' in their databases are foreign or domestic spies?

So.. do you have any examples of this?

Because I have a counter example: A large part of the drama in shows like Law and Order on the legal side comes from the process of acquiring a warrant or prosecuting a case where it turns out that the evidence was acquired unlawfully.

No, I don't think that would be an appropriate headline in that case. But that is somewhat of a red herring/straw man since I am sincerely doubtful that was the first headline they put up. More likely that came a day or two after the story broke. And in that case, it would be appropriate.

If you want 'critical' reporting, I highly recommend Rachel Maddow or Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olberman or Glenn Beck. Pick whichever flavor you want.

He anticipated this point and explicitly acknowledged there are levels of opinion.

As if that was the only headline or angle the NY Times displayed on the front page about that story as that story evolved.

C'mon man.

- note the lack of front-page coverage of this story in the New York Times

1. As of right now, the story is linked to on the front page in the Opinion box since this is an opinion piece and not a news piece. If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy.

2. The story of the NSA surveillance was front page on the NY Times when it broke and for about a week or two after.

3. The Mainstream media has been reporting on this consistently, both on the Snowden drama and the actual substance of his leaks.

It's sad to see both longer-time and newer users running around with this chicken little reddit-level bullshit. The mods seem to be complicit in it so oh well. The upside is that I waste less time here.

Maybe because outside...

I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it as a possible explanation.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable.

And for the same reason the claim that terrorism is not a problem due to lack of sufficiently motivated terrorists is also not falsifiable. Hence my suggestion that the government scale back their anti-terrorism [spying] operations and see what the outcome is.

we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government

Agreed.

I think your fictional example perfectly captures how flawed your argument is.

It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem like a big threat precisely because of the extreme precautions taken to stop it.

Comparing traffic related deaths to terrorism related deaths is invalid since we don't spend the same resources or give up comparable liberties to prevent traffic related deaths.

Any analysis that doesn't seriously consider that cannot be taken seriously.

As the Boston Marathon Bombing showed us, it's very easy to create a lot of destruction and disruption and fear with very mundane items (gunpowder and pressure cookers). If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more? Either terrorism is genuinely not a serious threat or our security organizations are very good at what they do using the tools they have at their disposal.

I would be in favor of our security apparatuses 'taking a break' or scaling back spying operations for about 5 years just to see what the result would be and if the American public would be able to tolerate it. Bombs going off every week in a major shopping mall or in an airliner or in a bus (like in Israel in the 90s) would probably not be acceptable to the American people.

Alternatively, we would discover that terrorism is not a big threat and the debate about giving up liberties to prevent terrorism would be a very simple one.

The video is probably gonna be offputting for some people but it's hilarious. I actually laughed out loud at it.

Currying is like air in functional programming.

Here's a small example:

map (+ 3) [1, 2, 3] == [4, 5, 6]

I really would like to use this but it seems like it's getting hammered right now.

Edit: seems to be working now

And how about the students in different sections not taught by this teacher who have a closed-book no-collaboration final exam?

Is it cheating if you specifically take this class taught by this professor (as opposed to the same class taught by a different professor) because you know her final exam will be open notes and collaborative?

I'd be more surprised if even 1% of college students had to goal to learn as much as possible as opposed to get the highest grades possible.

I doubt he is proposing to prevent people from studying the origins of the universe or prevent women from wearing bikinis.

Just because this sentiment has become a self-parody in many circles, it does not mean that Bloomberg doesn't earnestly believe it.

And it doesn't mean that it is invalid. The ideological basis for a lot of Islamist terrorism is Qutbism which is quite regressive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutbism#Qutbism_and_non-Muslims

I think a few Dutch cartoonists would disagree with you.

From my experience porting CUDA code to OpenCL code, CUDA is much cleaner and more succinct since it is able to assume a lot about the underlying hardware.

I'd actually rather ride the NYC subway today than the one in the 80s or the one in Moscow today, so I guess you're presenting a false dichotomy.