The EntitleMen: techno-libertarian right wing sockpuppets of silicon valley - <AUTHOR> http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193575.html <comment><USER2> This brings to mind a quote I posted in another discussion:

 _Cicero made the point fifty years before the birth of Christ: "Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child." The American historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., made the same point in the essay that served as his epitaph when it was published in the New York Times on January 1, 2007, two months before he died. Under the heading, "Folly's Antidote," he prescribed strong doses of history as a cure for "the delusions of omnipotence and omniscience," akin to those that persuaded the Bush Administration to stage a rerun in Iraq of America's misadventure in Vietnam. The failure to connect the then with the now Schlesinger diagnosed as an illness which, if left untreated, he thought likely to lead to the death of the American idea. Children unfamiliar with the world in time make easy marks for the dealers in fascist politics and quack religion._

From: [http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/gulf- time](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/gulf-time)

I fear that because many in tech disdain the value of the liberal arts and the humanitites, there could be a fertile, critical mass of ignorance. Even worse, because many in tech are there for there intellectual abilities, we get the deadly mixing of ignorance and arrogance.</comment>


Will stupid people & their pseudoscience cost more lives this year? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/03/aids-hiv-deniers-christine-maggiore

<comment><USER2> I don't really know, but I read one seemingly well researched and footnoted paper on the HIV/Aids connection and I am now quite skeptical. The general assertion was that though HIV and Aids commonly occur together, but that HIV does not cause Aids. Two interesting points I recall were statistics on drug use and Aids, and malnutrition and Aids, and the stats are available on the CDC website for verification. Of course there will be higher HIV infection in the drug user community, but the numbers are so high that it becomes a little suspicious. And there is also another very high correlation between malnutrition and Aids, and the paper asserted that a great deal of the statistics of "Aids" deaths in Africa are in fact malnutrition, as the patients weren't even tested for HIV. Is this true or false? I don't know, but if not, and the HIV/Aids proponents steer away from questions or discussions on this topic, it seem to me a bit suspicious. After all, there is, in fact, a massive economy built around HIV Aids (research grants, drugs, NGO's, etc)...they have every financial reason to maintain the status quo, even if it is false.

Now that I'm thinking about it, there were several other good points in the paper....I tried googling it but couldn't find it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for preserving the original newspaper article headline as the submission headline. That's really the issue: how many people have to die before they acknowledge reality?

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally believe that HIV causes AIDS but I also have to admit that denialists such as Peter Duesberg and Kary Mullis are more qualified to have an opinion on this subject than I will ever be.</comment>


Want to Know What Facebook is Saying About You? Try This Tool - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/04/27/want-to-know-what-to-know-what-facebook-is-saying-about-you-try-this-tool

<comment><USER2> I can't see anything about myself except my profile picture and full name. I sometimes wish there was more outrage at how little facebook does to protect privacy now. It seems like the only choices are either paranoid over- protection to the point of facebook becoming useless for people to connect with you, or just letting anyone see your info and hoping for the best!</comment>