149 thoughts on “Don’t Post Linda Ellis’s ‘The Dash’.”

1. Lucia:

   $7500 is pretty typical actually.

   I know of many instances when a bar had a band playing live music, in which the band played a song (or more) which they were not licensed to perform.

   The blanket license groups routinely stop in to see if a band is playing songs which they are not licensed to perform – and the inevitable letter to the poor bar owner (the innocent infringer or contributory infringer) always asked for $5000.

   It is routinely payed because the cost of the legal action far outweights the damages – and there is no question about the liability, just the damage award.

   I suppose the bar owner would have a cause of action against the band (with the proper contract) – but usually they are long gone or judgement proof.

   Anyway – $7500 doesn’t seem that outrageous to me – but I do practice intellectual property law, so perhaps I am used to it.

2. RickA–
   Most of these cases are nothing like public performance by a band entertaining in a bar. In that case, there is something commercial about it. In some instances, Linda sends out letters in situations that are more like a person sitting in their living room playing the song for three friends.

   Many of these are poems quoted in the text of a funeral announcement — you know those two page printed thingies they hand out to 30 people or so? Sometimes, that gets turned into a pdf, gets uploaded, and the grieving family receives a demand. Or it’s some college kid who posts the poem on their low circulation totally non-commercial blog after a friend dies in a car crash. Or someone creates a funeral guest book and a visitors cut and pasted the poem into the guest book. Stuff like that.

   From what I’ve seen the educational institute I’ve seen is one of the more formal ‘postings’ — but the context might have been ‘fair use’ (or not. Fair use isn’t easy.) But some cases.. really… it’s like a person finding the song in a playbook, playing it at home during a party and then getting the demand. I find it very difficult to believe most judges would see this the same as a for hire band playing in a bar. And it appears though she has sent out a huge number of demand letters, Linda has never sued in these instances.

   I admit I could be wrong– but if people could get hit up for playing songs in their living room… I think there is something wrong with copyright law!

3. Oh– I should note: When these have appeared in things like condo-association news letters and such, those association’s insurance companies have sometimes settled. So have some funeral associations and churches.

   My understanding is for that reason, some funeral associations and churches have sent out warnings telling people to avoid accidentally including this poem in those little funeral thingies (what do they call those? ), on mass cards, guest books etc.

4. If it’s not Open Source, who needs it anyway.

5. Mark–
   Definitely not open source!

6. “I know of many instances when a bar had a band playing live music, in which the band played a song (or more) which they were not licensed to perform.”

   That’s one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. When the Beatles and the Stones started out, playing standard Blues numbers, did they get billed? Could they have afforded it?

   It’s news to me that such a concept even exists. I had no idea I was so naive.

7. More here (read the comments)

8. James–
   Bands, radios and others pay a general fee to so that songwriters can get a fee. I don’t know how long that’s existed. But it’s fair enough because song writers should be paid. But their paying or the bar paying for performing is different from requiring the bar to pay the song writer $7,500, if one drunk stands up, jumps on the the table and starts singing a song. It’s also different from the drunk having to pay the song writer.

9. Eli Rabett (#111507) –
   Wow! What a conversation (?) in the comments — and I thought climate blogs got nasty!

   Makes me think even less, if possible, of Ms. Ellis.

10. HaroldW…I just hope that folks like Steve Bloom and the SkS crew don’t get any ideas from those comments. The way they piled in on Julia H was not edifying

11. To learn more about the band situation google ASCAP

12. HaroldW … ain’t that the truth … a whole lotta unpleasant people there. And its the non-Ellis supporters that clearly appear to be the rational ones.

    It is ridiculous and disgusting that this woman Ellis plays this game. She is entitled to protection under the copyright laws, however, that is not a license to steal, nor is it a bludgeon to be used without restraint.

    Her’s is the mark of an internet bully, and shyster. A REASONABLE response to these minor, incidental uses, that protects her copyrights fully, is to simply ask that the copyrighted work be removed.

13. http://www.aprilbrown.com/copyright-infringement-the-das

    And the comments at the Marietta newspaper story are just as incriminating.

    http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/21980663/article-Poet-says-she%E2%80%99s-target-of-%E2%80%98online-cult-leader%E2%80%99#ixzz2NockyxBg

    Ellis claims she never goes after churches, etc., yet she used to require a public notice be posted by those who paid her extortion as part of the settlement.

    That notice is fairly easily searchable. It is a pretty clear and convincing indictment and confirmation of who was targeted by this woman.

    And yes – the list includes many organizations she claims not to target.

    Isn’t it strange that a poem that is inspirational to many, was written by someone seemingly with none of those qualities herself.

14. A. Scott–
    Simply asking people to remove stuff from the venues is what most poets would do. I’d been posting at http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/ at the time the Linda Ellis issue first came up. April Brown had been sent one of the settlement agreements– along with the language in the nondisclosure. In addition to a cash settlement, language required people to post that they had posted The Dash and provide a link back to her site. I googled on the language and found scads of examples of people who settled and posted the language. Sometimes, these examples really were things like short condo association newsletters who’d posted the dash, made it a pdf and uploaded it to their practically not visited site. Public schools ( I think one was in Waukegan– but I don’t remember well.) I assume that was a student or teacher who had posted it for either a death or an educational purpose, but I didn’t track that down. Given the utter obscurity of these places, I can’t help but imagine that surfing the web to find infractions– or paying for someone to crawl must be happening.

    But that information is now off line owing to the judge’s decree. (I’m not sure if Matt’s interpretation that he has to take down everything is true– but he may wish to be cautious under the circumstances. My impression is an appeal is planned. )

    Anyway, the demands are stuff like that. April has found lots of specific individuals who’ve told her stories privately.

15. Good God, are they calling that sort of stuff poetry these days?
    Had never heard of it, read it on her site, don’t know why you’d want to inflict that sort of nonsense on the bereaved.

16. yep lucia – its pretty disgusting – and you’re right – a simple request to remove copyrighted info is the proper response for almost every situation of this type. The right thing to do is publicize Ellis actions. Chances are she makes more from here extortion than anything else.

17. Geoff–
    The bereaved often aren’t thinking straight.

    A. Scott–
    I strongly suspect she makes more money from her demands for payment for ‘infringement’ than she does from direct sales. As far as I know, this poem is not appearing in text books, compilations, movies or any place where someone would intentionally be suggesting people read the thing. But –evidently– it gained circulation during the early 90s during a period where people did things like ‘cc-all” and sent the thing to lots of people (most of whom probably thought ‘oh. Auntie X. The one who sends me sappy c*ap’.) Some of these people do read it at funerala or think it’s “inspirational”.

    I think it’s insipid– but that’s not even the point. The point is: People tempted to post the thing need to know they shouldn’t. People who read it need to know they put those who hear it– and who might be tempted to quote it in some obscure venue–in jeopardy. They should not post it if they don’t think posting is worth paying the $7500 demand! If they want to post it enough to actually pay for the privilege, they should contact the author. Most likely no one wants to pay even 10 cents.

    In this regard, this is totally different from band in bars. Band in bars really do want to play hit songs and if they don’t play those the bar owners would not hire them. Because the customers want to hear those songs. In contrast: people at a funeral just listen to… whatever… after all. on is sort of numb with grief.

18. wow. that poem is begging for a rewrite or a parody.
    dash, gash, lash, cash, bash, hash, mash, sash, rash.

    the poems “dash between the years”
    ….becomes: gash behind her ears
    rash of stupid fears, hash and case of beers,
    bash upon the piers, lash my soul of tears,
    rash on babies rears, stop me please…
    cache of favorite beers, cash to last me years,
    lash with asparagas spears, Nash’s creepy leers,

    arrg I cant stop, have linda send me a letter..

19. What an insipid excuse for a poem! May I say that Linda Ellis ought to PAY anyone who shares her “poem” because it’s the only way she gets attention. For sure, any real poet would leave that thing buried in unpublished juvenalia.

20. Steven Mosher (#111527) –
    There is a topical parody of “The Dash” in the comments at the link which Eli posted, here.

21. I read Mosher’s poem. Does that mean he owes me $7500 now?

22. Steve Mosher, clearly a renaissance man, hits nail on head:
    She should be ridiculed and parodied at every opportunity.
    If she thought it through in a reasonable fashion, she would go out of her way to make it easy to use what appears to be a nice little poem in an authorized fashion. Poets, American poets in particular, are not high in the literary finance food chain. They are hardly household names. Ellis may achieve household name status, but not in the way the author hopes.

23. That ” poem” reminds me of the belly laugh I had watching Charles Durning reading a similar poem to a pro football team in North Dallas Fourty.

24. Lucia,

    I’d be a bit cautious about your what to do – option 2. above.

    In some legal jurisdictions and circumstances, an offer of compromise such as you suggest can be interpreted as a de facto admission of guilt/liability, or acceptance of the veracity of the claims made.
    e.g. in many jurisdictions, being involved in a bumper bashing and saying, ‘I’m sorry, my fault, I’ll fix the damage’ is not what most lawyers or insurance companies would advise.

    I’m not saying this applies to copyright law in the above cases, just that ‘admit nothing, and button the lip’ is usually good default behaviour.

25. Chuckles–
    These are cases where — generally– the poet will have evidence of copying. But I would advise not volunteering any details. I’m pretty darn sure that in the US and in copyright courts, “While admitting no wrong, I am willing to pay you $200 if you agree to go away”, is not taken as an admission of guilt in these sorts of torts. As litigious as American’s are, the court encourage negotiating these things away so they don’t hit the courts. Turning offers to settle disputes into admissions of guilt should it get to court would be counter productive in this instance.

    But you have to be careful you don’t say “Sorry. You’re right. I copied. Yada, yada, yada….” So, yeah… no insurance company wants you to say “‘I’m sorry, my fault, I’ll fix the damage’ is not what most lawyers or insurance companies would advise.” (Of course, if you do think it’s your fault and do plan to fix the damage, this is not an issue. It’s only a bad thing to say if you plan to later say it was not your fault and try to avoid fixing the damage.)

    You know… some interesting things go on in our copyright courts. There is a case where the defendant didn’t even appear in court (owing to being a bankrupt corporation). Usually, in this case, the judge just rules for the plaintiff (I think it was Getty– but it might be another photofirm) the judge went through the evidence presented, criticized the photo companies copyright/license provenances and ruled for the defendant.

    I wish I could find it on http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/ They need better indexing!!

26. Interesting info there Lucia, thanks, unusual to see a court attempting to get people to settle….
    My comment was addressed more to the point that there are very differing legal jurisdictions around the world, and it would be very foolish to apply case 2 anywhere outside the USA.
    I’d strongly advise against taking that approach in a Roman Dutch or Roman law jurisdiction, or even in the UK for that matter.
    As Kipling noted –

    ‘And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
    That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.’

    I’ve also discovered that in the UK, we have a defence of ‘incidental use’ (e.g. where the above disputed text would be visible on one card in a picture of all cards received), which apparently does not exist in the USA.

27. I’m not familiar with that clip. But Charles Durning in this….

    The dance starts at 1:35.

28. why thank you.

    After reading the poem I’m fairly certain that I could improve it ten fold or write a hilarious parody. That is the tactic these folks should have taken. Now excuse me there has been a horrible accident in the castro.. its a crash of campy queers, who drank too many beers
    in their dash to waterfront piers….arrrggg

29. Chuckles–
    We have “de minimus” infringement– which is not seen as infringement. It likely overlaps your ‘incidental” to a large degree. We have “fair use”.

    For example “de minimus” might involve this scenario:

    On your wall hangs an original 5×8″ photograph that has been copyrighted. While making a commercial video for –oh– say a catering business, you film yourself in your living room. The camera — focused on you or the food and what not, the camera happens to also capture background images on the wall. The original 5×8″ photo then appears in the background of your video.

    Later, the photographer sees the image in your video and files a suit. It’s obvious the image is there. Even if it’s blurry, if questioned, you know it’s there and you can’t commit perjury because that would be very, very bad. So, now what’s your defense? It’s ‘yes I copied, but it was deminimus’. The judge will then look at the video and decide what he thinks of your defense. He’ll look at factors like:

    Is it really in the background? How long does it appear? Is it blurry? Does it affect market value? Is your use in the movie actually precisely the sort of use the the copyright owner would wish to market?

    (Does it affect market value will matter in fair use also.)

    And so on. If the judge believes your use was not de minimus, you lose. If he thinks it was, you win. But no one can gauge what a judge will decide without seeing the video and so on. Fair use is equally complicated. But both defenses exist– and some of the users sent letters by Linda would win on this basis. They could win even if– out of ignorance– they didn’t initially know their defense and admitted ‘guilt’. That said: previous admitting your guilt are rarely helpful in a suit.

    (I think you guys call our “Fair Use” “fair trading”.)

30. Mosher–
    There are numerous parody poems in the forum that has been taken down as a result of the court order. They were funny. I wrote a few.

    There are also instances of quite juvenile photo-shop images. Examples: images showing a Ellis’s surprised face attached to a cartoon body being flushed down a toilet. (You’ve been to climate blogs. Similar things are done with Al Gore’s face. The climategate scientists did a similar photo shop thing with Pielke and other’s faces slapped on the Gilligan’s island crew and stranding them on an iceberg.) Matt — the one who the judge deemed a stalker did not post these. He was the ‘moderator’. (Moderation was… erhmmm … light!)

    There were– to my knowledge zero death threats, zero threats of bodily harm, no suggestion anyone else threaten bodily harm by anyone on the thread.

    Unfortunately, Matt did post 1 very vague comment discussing things like “don’t push me”, “you don’t know what I’m capable when I’m angry”. (I read that at the time. I thought it was pointless, but never interpreted it as any sort of threat. )

    Not long after that, he “carried out” this threat by making fun of the contrast between how Linda looks in her PR photos (young 30s) and how she really looks in life (mid 50s). (FWIW: I read that one and told him it was probably counter productive to write that. Lots of people have dated sites on their promotional literature and relative to demanding $7500 for posting the poem… who cares if her photo is not representative?)

    Then someone else (not matt) hotlinked an image of Linda’s house from Google Earth. The court record isn’t available, but from the news reports, these things seem to be what constitutes “stalking” by Matt in Georgia.

    Or not. I think an appeal will be filed. We’ll see what happens.

    If the Linda Ellis forum threads are resurrected you will be able to see the thing it it’s full glory including all the mock-poems.

31. Just a Dash of rent-seeking behavior.

    I hate the term “Intellectual Property”. It really obfuscates the issue – the works themselves are not property. Only the state granted monopoly could really be considered property, but the work itself or ideas are not actual property. Now the key word in this is ‘granted’, since the state could decide that a shorter term on this monopoly is in the best public interest and defines what is considered ‘fair use’.

    Copying them is about as victimless as a ‘crime’ can get; in real ‘theft’ you deny the ability of the property the actual item. Copying a work doesn’t prevent the copyright holder from the use of their work or making copies for sale.

    As such I find it very strange that the state penalty for infringement (hundreds of thousands of dollars), is significantly higher than that for stealing the book from the store.

    Too many Disney-like rent-seekers have had their hands in writing bad laws.

32. Scott–I have no objection to IP or copyright in general. I think it’s good that song writers get paid for the songs they write. I think it’s good that the actual author of a book gets paid. I think if someone wants to use Josh’s cartoons for a commercial purpose– say printing t-shirts, Josh should get a cut of that. Otherwise, the t-shirt printing person should use someone else’s cartoon or sell plain undecorated t-shirts.

    But there is a point where the creator or copyright holder is just being ridiculous, mean spirited, and possibly even evil. Linda Ellis seems to fall int that category.

    Not withstanding how the law can be made to read, actual levied penalties for infringement vary according to what specifically happened just as actual levied penalties for theft vary depending one what specifically happened. Steal 1 book from a store– you probably won’t be fined $100,000. Steal King Tut’s mummy or hold up a bank with a gun? The penalty will be severe. Similar things happen with IP even though letters like Linda’s make it sound as if all violators will “automatically” be fined huge amounts for what may be de minimus infringements.

33. Scott Basinger (Comment #111549)
    March 20th, 2013 at 1:41 pm

    Without really disagreeing with your drift, you might want to take a look at this book.

    http://www.amazon.com/Most-Powerful-Idea-World-Invention/dp/0226726347/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363812618&sr=1-1&keywords=most+powerful+idea+in+the+world

    It takes a shot at answering the question my IP attorney was unable to, namely, where did the whole idea come from. When did the concept of intellectual property first surface and what were they thinking.

    it’s a good read.

34. Scott Basinger (Comment #111549):

    ” the works themselves are not property”

    Actually, once the work of authorship (the poem or book or photo or whatever) is reduced to tangible form – the copyright exists – automatically.

    You merely register the copyright when you fill out the copyright application and file it with the copyright office.

    So for copyright – the property right attaches right to the work, whether you register it or not.

    Now, you cannot sue in Federal Court unless you register the copyright.

    By the way – copyright is a Federal matter – not a state matter.

    Finally, while there are copyright laws which set the term and damage provisions – the source of copyright and patent rights comes from the US Constitution (Article 1, section 8):

    “Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”.

35. Pretty awful poetry. Reminiscent of Scotland’s second most famous poet, William Topaz McGonagall. Here is arguably his most famous work: “The Tay Bridge Disaster”.

    http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-tay-bridge-disaster

36. Lucia, “But there is a point where the creator or copyright holder is just being ridiculous, mean spirited, and possibly even evil. Linda Ellis seems to fall int that category.”

    The law allows the copyright holder to be ‘ridiculous’, because the laws themselves have been written with deference to the industries. She’s almost doing the public a service by being ‘ridiculous’ and exposing this bad legislation for what it is. The tradeoff for a state granted monopoly over copying absolutely should be a sensible ‘fair use’ policy for non-profit and individuals, and penalties for commercial use that fall into line with actual damages.

    RickA: “Actually, once the work of authorship (the poem or book or photo or whatever) is reduced to tangible form – the copyright exists – automatically.”

    No, this is incorrect and requires a careful distinction. The first PHYSICAL manuscript you wrote is property, and the PRINTED PHYSICAL COPIES are property but the words and ideas are not. The state granted monopoly (copyright) that automatically applies could be considered property as you can trade this right. But again, the words and ideas themselves are not property.

    j ferguson: Thank you very much for the book suggestion. I’m sure that I’ll find it interesting.

37. Scott

    The law allows the copyright holder to be ‘ridiculous’, because the laws themselves have been written with deference to the industries

    I agree. The law permits that.

    property but the words and ideas are not

    Ideas aren’t considered property and copyright does not extend to ideas.

    But I think one can quibble over “words”. Depends on what you mean by “words”. One the word “turd” doesn’t become my property if I write a poem containing the word “turd”. But the string of words that constitutes the entire poem can be– or at least the right to reproduce and display the words that constitute the entire can be my property and is considered to be such in law.

    If you want to define this as something other than property– I guess that’s fine. But then we need to coin a word for “intellectual property” that conveys the right to control use the thing. As far as I’m concerned using an adjective to modify ‘property’ is fine. If you need a new word, coin it. (I predict dictionaries would immediate define your coinage as “a type of property with ‘whatever’ characteristics characteristics”.)

    could be considered property as you can trade this right.

    Could be — and in fact is.

    But again, the words and ideas themselves are not property.

    But again, collections of words themselves can be considered property and are.

38. Scott Basinger (Comment #111597):

    Lucia is correct.

    Yes – you cannot copyright an idea – only the expression of the idea.

    So I cannot copyright the idea of boy mets girl. However, my particular story about a boy meeting a girl – whether written in a manuscript or a blog post – is a work of authorship, and I have a copyright in the work of authorship as soon as it is “written”.

39. Sorry, yes, you’re right you can’t copyright an idea, only the expression of an idea.

    To restrict / monopolize use of an idea requires a software patent.

40. Chuckles-
    This sort of thing is in many of the Linda Ellis settlements:
    
    For discussion purposes to permit you to see the sorts of settlements Linda’s group is negotiating, I’ve uploaded an example of a settlement.

41. A. Scott

    http://www.aprilbrown.com/copyright-infringement-the-das

    And the comments at the Marietta newspaper story are just as incriminating.

    http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/21980663/article-Poet-says-she%E2%80%99s-target-of-%E2%80%98online-cult-leader%E2%80%99#ixzz2NockyxBg

    By the way, the comments at mdj online were taken down. Someone posted “The Dash” prior to take down. I don’t know if that had anything to do with their taking comments down. But that lively thread is gone.

42. Here’s a poem I found that is a good example of “same concept-different wording”. Mr. Trammer wrote this as an alternative to Ellis’s “The Dash” poem, and welcomes non-commercial use of it.

    The Dash Between
    Ron Tranmer©

    I knelt there at the headstone
    of one I love and cried.
    Name with dates of birth and death
    were perfectly inscribed.

    I pondered these two dates
    and how little they both mean
    when compared to the tiny dash
    that lies there in between.

    The dash serves as an emblem
    of our time here on the earth
    and although small, it stands for all
    our years of life and worth.

    And our worth will be determined
    by how we live each day.
    We can fill our dash with goodness,
    or waste our life away.

    To ourselves, as well as others,
    let’s be honest, kind and true,
    and live our lives in the way
    we know God wants us to.

    Let’s look for opportunities
    to do a worthy deed,
    showing love and understanding
    to those who are in need.

    For If our hearts are full of love
    throughout our journey here,
    we’ll be loved by all who knew us
    and our memory they’ll hold dear.

    And when we die, those memories
    will bring grateful loving tears
    to all whose lives were touched
    by the dash between our years.

43. Among the many reasons for not studying Latin is the resultant temptation to pendantry when one sees “de minimis” spelled “de minimus.”

    Fortunately I had the willpower to forbear.

44. Joe–
    As you may have guessed, I refused to take Latin despite the nuns and my mother’s attempts to force me to take it.

45. Lucia: “I refused to take Latin. . . .”

    That’s much to your credit.

    Just a few days days ago I was about to find this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324081704578233814190553202.html commentator persuasive–until me lost me with “Yes, the children have to learn Latin, too.”

46. Yes, the children have to learn Latin, too, just as the Founding Fathers did, because that language gives the greatest insight into the vocabulary and grammar of our own tongue and the Romance languages, including Spanish.

    Ridiculous. You need to learn complicated declensions to gain insight into English or Spanish?

    For what it’s worth, I was born in El Salvador. I took French in highschool. I speak French fairly well. But anyone who says children have to learn Latin and give the reason this guy gave is nuts.

    My mother wanted me to learn Latin because she had some sort of Roman Catholic fondness for the idea. That said: the nuns at her high school did not require her to take Latin. She took French.

    My Father took Latin. He also spoke Spanish because he lived in Cuba for part of his childhood. (My mother eventually learned Spanish after marrying my father and moving to Columbia, then Guatemala the El Salvador.)

    No one needs to learn Latin any more than anyone needs to learn Yiddish, ancient Greek or Aramaic.

47. I want to write a program to generate all possible texts from a dictionary and then copyright everything that could possibly be written.

48. Steven-san: Have you ever read Jorge Luis Borges’ story, “The Library of Babel?”

49. lucia,

    IMO, it’s not the declensions that justify learning Latin, it’s the vocabulary. Learn a basic vocabulary in Latin and German and you have access to more root words that would allow you to puzzle out the meaning of a word you’ve never seen before. Admittedly, this is likely only really helpful when taking the SAT or ACE. My opinion may not mean much, though. My daughter, who outscored me on the SAT verbal (but not math) 750-730, disagrees.

50. DeWitt–
    I”m not convinced that knowing Latin helps significantly with the SAT verbal. Reading a lot would help much more. But even if knowing Latin helped on the SAT, if the main motivation is to get a good score on the SAT, that’s probably not a good national policy. “Maximizing student SAT scores” would seem an odd goal relative to “Learn critical thinking”, “Know basic facts of history” etc.

    Anyway: If you are puzzling out words on the SAT, you won’t finish. And French is probably just as good as Latin for puzzling out roots. French is a romance language and the Normans invaded England bringing in a fresh batch of words.

51. Re: lucia (Mar 27 08:16),

    If you are puzzling out words on the SAT, you won’t finish.

    Sure if you do the test linearly. But proper multiple choice taking technique is to skip over any question you can’t answer immediately and come back to it later. That applies in spades to the reading comprehension questions, which should always be answered last with the questions read before reading the passage. Btw, ruling out obviously incorrect answers to a question you can’t answer is also important. Eliminate one wrong answer and odds favor guessing again as the penalty for wrong answers assumes that all answers are equally probable.

    I agree that a Romance language is effectively equivalent to Latin and certainly more useful. But back in the Stone Age when I was in high school, Latin was required.

52. jorgekafkazar (Comment #111782)
    March 27th, 2013 at 12:48 am
    Steven-san: Have you ever read Jorge Luis Borges’ story, “The Library of Babel?”

    Borges is one of my favorites, especially since I used to have an issue with never forgeting things I read. I especially loved The story of Funes. Hmm somewhere back in time I wrote article on him around the theme of the Third Tiger from this poem

    http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/jorge-luis-borges/the-other-tiger/

53. jorge… people often wonder how I went from literature to programming.. Borges was one of my inspirations to move into natural language generation. hehe

54. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/georgia-court-order-threatens-message-boards-everywhere

55. If you google linda ellis and the dash it becomes fairly clear that someone is “protecting” linda ellis’ reputation whether for fun or profit. Some things sneak through (the april brown page) but not much on the first page which is pretty much pap.

    Googlewar??

56. eli–
    Before ExtortionLetterInformation (ELI) was forced to yank all their Linda Ellis content, it filled the top of the search results. The Linda Ellis controlled stuff was all on the 2nd page. But then the ELI stuff was yanked… and google figure it’s not there. So, Linda Ellis’s stuff moved up. Otherwise, there isn’t that much stuff there.

    Oddly, if you know how to search, you can find some of it. For example, one of the things that evidently “frightened” her was her home address appearing. Well… real estate records are public by law and… ahem: http://www.city-data.com/cobb-county/P/Preakness-Court-1.html . The other thing that “frightened” her was that photos of her home appeared– and she makes it sound like Matt took the photos. But no… they are the google earth photos.

57. Mosher, that cooment #111781 reminds me of the infinite monkey theorem

58. mrE. A 1000 quatloos if you can cite one of the sources
    for the monkey idea..

59. hint. part 3 chapter 5.
    more obscurely it happens at an acedemy where a proffesor is trying to extract sunshine from cucumbers while a linguist tries to remove all words but nouns from the language.
    18th century text.

60. That idea traces back at least 2000 years. Are you just asking when monkeys were introduced to it?

61. brandon:

    A 1000 quatloos if you can cite one of the sources.

    ONE of, there are many. no fair googling.

    not so much the monkey part, but there would be extra credit for that.

62. Mosher,

    Gulliver’s Travels?

63. And I didn’t look until after I posted.

64. Now of course brandon you could just read Borges as we were discussing him. He wrote a history of the idea.

    as in duh.

65. yes dewitt. swift is awesome. lawrence sterne also awesome.

66. Right, duh. I was familiar with Cicero’s version, but the fact I didn’t realize Borges had the same idea more than a thousand years later merits a mocking tone.

    Duh. I mean, I should have realized the source you wanted wasn’t the source of the idea itself but some particular implementation of it.

    Duh

67. Wow, I had no idea that Cicero had invented the typewriter. Maybe it is to him that those carriages should be returned.

68. Wow, I had no idea that Cicero had invented the typewriter. Maybe it is to him that those carriages should be returned.

69. The above was probably silly enough once. I tried to delete the second one but nojoy.

70. brandon.
    we were talking about borges
    borges wrote a history of the idea from aristolte on to swift and pascal.
    i offered qutloos to any who could names ONE of the sources.
    i gave hints to one . the one most likely people might get.
    dewitt got it.
    you misunderstand and say the idea goes back thousands of years.which it does and which has nothing to do with my hints
    to ONE source. finally i said borges wrote a HISTORY.

    btw have u read Gao.

71. brandon if i wanted the first source id ask for that. what part of ONE of the SOURCES did you not get. u are stuck on misunderstanding

72. steven mosher:

    brandon if i wanted the first source id ask for that. what part of ONE of the SOURCES did you not get. u are stuck on misunderstanding

    What are you talking about? I noted you referred to an 18th century text even though the idea traces back thousands of years. Seeking clarification, I asked if you were just looking for when monkeys were introduced to the explanation of the idea. You mocked me for this. If you were fine with just “ONE of the SOURCES,” why would you mock me? You could have just said, “No, I’m looking for any ONE of the SOURCES.” That’d have resolved the issue. You could have acknowledged I was referring to an appropriate source, just not the one you had in mind. You didn’t. You chose to mock me… why?

    btw have u read Gao.

    If you had bothered to read my responses to you, you’d already know the answer to this question. It’s rude to force someone to repeat themselves just because you decide to randomly leave a discussion without indicating your departure. But since you’re forcing me to repeat myself, I will. You said a mistake was acknowledged by the authors of the paper. I responded:

    Gao et al did not say this. Their paper doesn’t say there was a mistake made. Their paper offers a very clear reason the El Chichon volcano doesn’t show up in their record, and it has nothing to do with a mistake. I’ll quote Gao et al:

    The El Chichón signal was missed from our ice-core-based reconstruction because most of our Arctic ice cores end before or around 1980s, and due to its asymmetric distribution [Robock, 2000] no El Chichón signal was extracted from the Antarctic ice core records.

    It was missed just due to a limitation of their data. There was no mistake. You’ve completely fabricated that claim. You fabricated a claim about a paper while claiming I clearly didn’t read the paper.

    I clearly did read the paper. That’s why I represented it accurately. That’s why I didn’t spread misinformation about it. That’s why I didn’t accuse people who discussed it accurately of not reading it.

    Moreover, you claimed the paper “clearly state[s] the value one should use” to modify their record to account for the El Chichon volcano. I responded:

    By the way, Gao et al did not “clearly state the value one should use.” They didn’t even say their record should be modified. All they said is they tested an approach with a different record because El Chichon was missing from there’s:

    Therefore, in a subsequent MAGICC run we replaced our ice core–based reconstruction with Sato’s [Sato et al., 1993] (and updated to present) values after 1970 and compared the model response to NH temperature reconstructions [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007, Figure 6.10] for the past millennium (Figure 4). The model simulation generally captured the temperature variation on the decade to century timescale

    This doesn’t say any modification should be made to their record. It certainly doesn’t “clearly state the value one should use” for the El Chichon volcano. In no way does Gao et al support anything Steven Mosher is saying.

    To put it simply, you claimed “it is pretty clear that” I hadn’t read a paper based upon the fact I wasn’t aware of aspects of the paper that didn’t actually exist. You fabricated things about the paper, and you then amazingly accused me of not having read the paper.

    Not only do you directly contradict the paper you snidely claim I haven’t read, you even contradicted yourself. You said BEST contacted Gao et al to point out a mistake, and they thanked you for pointing it out. However, you also say Gao et al clearly stated what value should be used to fix that mistake. If a source acknowledged a mistake and explained how to correct for it, there would have been no reason for BEST to have told Gao et al they made a mistake, much less for Gao et al to have thanked them for pointing it out.

    The truth is I read Gao et al long before the exchange between us. That’s why I knew exactly what it said. That’s why I knew you were making things up about what it said. That’s why I knew exactly where to look for quotes to prove what it said.

    You made things up about your source. You used your fabrications to insult me and defend BEST. That’s all there is to it.

73. Brandon: Hell hath no furry like a dweeby self-appointed mentor scorned. You two could have done such great things together!

    Mosher/Brandon dynamic reminds of George Costanza (SM) who always wanted to pretend to be an architect. One day, at the foundation of his dead fiance, George encourages a adolescent protege (BS) to study architecture. George dumps the kid when he learns that the his real ambition is to be an Urban Planner because he wants real power and architects are just bit players.

74. Howard, I really don’t get it. Mosher has been openly hostile to me for quite a while, and I can’t figure out why. All I know is it is extremely tedious to deal with. It wastes time, it makes him look bad, and it accomplishes nothing.

    By the way, I find it funny he likes to say I am no Steve McIntyre. Neither Steve McIntyre or myself (or lucia or many others) would let hostility get in the way of resolving issues like he does.

75. Brandon,

    Sorry, but IMO you’re the one that’s always overreacting. Pot, kettle, black; first stone; etc. Not to mention: “Bored now.” (You can learn everything you need to know from BtVS.)

76. DeWitt Payne, I’m always willing to consider other opinions, but given the fact I’ve never called Mosher any names, I’m not sure how I could be “the one that’s always overreacting.”

    Mosher’s consistently behaved far more hostily than I have. For your opinion to be correct, I’d have to behave so much worse than he has that my relatively congenial manner is more of an overreaction than his naked hostility. I don’t know how I could have managed that.

77. Brandon:

    It started right here on the Blackboard sometime last year and it might be partly my fault. I don’t recall the thread name or date. You were expressing frustration about commenting at Skeptical Science Blog. Mosher recommended that you employ some sort of psycho-head game to help befuddle the enemy and “win” the thread.

    As I recall, you dismissed this advice. I don’t know if you gave a reason, but it is dishonest and pathetic as a regular debate tactic and you don’t appear to be a jerk by nature.

    After your rejection of the advise, I made a sarcastic post chastising you for turning down this offer of sage wisdom from the greatest and famous blog sensei of all time. You should have been honored, etc. because *not just anybody* was lucky enough to have the light and wisdom of Mosher shine upon them. Neither you or Mosher got the joke and he actually quoted my sarcasm as evidence you were missing a grand opportunity to learn at the feet of “the master”. I then sprung the trap hoisting Mosher on his own psycho-head game petard. I think that made him go away, it usually does work to shut him up for a while.

    In any event, since that time, it is obvious that he has a bit of a *thing* for you.

78. Harold, that’s interesting. I remember the exchange you’re talking about, but it didn’t strike me as being any special changepoint at the time. I completely missed the significance of it if you’re right.

    I think I’m going to go track down that exchange. It’d be nice to know when it took place for chronological purposes. I have it on my harddrive somewhere. I just have to find it.

79. Eek. After spending 15 minutes trying to find that exchange, I realized your handle is Howard, not HaroldW. Sorry for the mixup. I remember both of your names as people I’ve had pleasant exchanges with before, and I guess my mind just combined the two into one name. It’s weird even though your names are somewhat similar.

    The weirdest part is even with the right name, I haven’t been able to find that exchange. I must be screwing up my search parameters somehow.

80. Add El Chicon
    Per Gao et al., the 1982 eruption of El Chicon was missed in available
    ice cores. As instructed by Gao, add 14 Tg in 1982

    Brandon is it that hard to figure out what happened.

81. Steven Mosher really won’t admit anything. He says:

    Per Gao et al., the 1982 eruption of El Chicon was missed in available
    ice cores. As instructed by Gao, add 14 Tg in 1982

    Brandon is it that hard to figure out what happened.

    Is it that hard to figure out what happened? Well, let’s consider. If one reads the BEST paper, they won’t see anything about the El Chichon eruption. Suppose they go to the BEST website’s page which gives a link to the paper? They’ll find a link that doesn’t direct them to the paper. Suppose they go to the journal the paper is published in? They’ll be given this Supplementary File, one that says nothing about the El Chichon eruption.

    Suppose an individual happens to find the right link on the right page by chance. What will they find? They’ll find a file that says this:

    Per Gao et al., the 1982 eruption of El Chicon was missed in available ice cores. As instructed by Gao, add 14 Tg in 1982

    So, if someone happened to stumble across the correct link by chance, they’d find out what was done. They’ll find no record justifying what was one other than a hand-waving claim of “Gao told us to do it,” but they’ll find out what was done.

    However, what they’ll find is not what Mosher said was done. According to Mosher:

    The correction to Gao et al, somewhat insignificant, came from a correspondence with several people, among them Gao.

    1. the mistake made was acknowledged
    2. They thanked us.

    As I’ve shown above, Gao et al never admitted any mistake. As for thanking BEST for finding the “mistake,” that doesn’t make sense given Mosher has also said:

    Brandon. it is pretty clear that you havent read Gao.
    They clearly state that the record was missing the volcano in question. They clearly state the value one should use. We cite Gao et al for a reason. That is the source of the correction.

    If Gao et al. had clearly stated the value one should use to “correct” their record, they’d have had no reason to thank BEST for pointing out this supposed “mistake.” Mosher claims BEST found a “mistake” and was thanked for it, yet he also claims that very “mistake” was found and corrected for in the original source. These two claims are incompatible.

    In fact, by claiming Gao et al clearly stated the value one should use for this “correction,” Mosher hides the fact there is no documented record justifying the “correction.” There is nothing more than a single sentence in a semi-hidden file to explain it.

    Is “it that hard to figure out what happened”? Well, if you started with the BEST paper, you’d have no way of finding out about the correction other than blind luck. You’d have to stumble across a random link on a random page of the BEST website to even get at the data file which mentions the correction. I consider that fairly difficult.

    And what if you didn’t do that? What if you instead talked to a representative of BEST? If that representative was Steven Mosher, you’d have no chance of finding out what had happened. He’d just make one untrue claim after another. And if you pursued the matter, he’d likely make things up about you and attack your integrity by saying things like:

    Here is a hint. You are no steve mcintyre….
    you would bitch…
    it is pretty clear that you havent read Gao….
    You never checked that….

    So, “is it that hard to figure out what happened”? I think so. To support this belief, I offer readers a question. If you weren’t already aware of the truth, and you read the BEST paper, how likely do you think it would be that you’d find out what had happened with this particular modification to BEST’s volcanic record?

    You have no link between the paper and the record of the “correction.” You have no documented record justifying the “correction.” You have a BEST member repeatedly telling untruths about the “correction.”

    Is it that hard to figure out what happened?

82. By the way, Steven Mosher started this issue here by saying:

    btw have u read Gao.

    I responded by showing I had not only read the paper in question, but I was much more familiar with its contents than Mosher was. How did Mosher respond? Did he respond by addressing what I said about the paper? Did he respond by admitting he was wrong to claim I hadn’t read the paper? No. Rather than make the slightest effort to resolve matters, he simply said:

    Add El Chicon
    Per Gao et al., the 1982 eruption of El Chicon was missed in available
    ice cores. As instructed by Gao, add 14 Tg in 1982

    Brandon is it that hard to figure out what happened.

    I challenge anyone to explain how Mosher’s response is anything but incredibly unreasonable. I’m not sure how one could even argue his response is an honest attempt at communication. This certainly doesn’t support DeWitt Payne’s belief that I’m “the one that’s always overreacting.”

    I think this sort of exchange is pathetic, and I think it wastes everybody’s time. But if it’s going to happen, I think we should all be willing to say who is to blame for it.

83. Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #111828)

    Brandon, since I like this blog because I can learn from the information and topics presented here and including from presenting my own analyses and views I tend to go with those who stay on topic by avoiding personalities and rather using bandwidth presenting pertinent information and analyses.

    I always hearken back to my experience several years ago with another blog where a frequent poster would present views that were not always in line with the majority of posters there and he would get blow back that sometimes tended towards personalities or changing the subject. The man, who was a lawyer and someone whose POV I did not always agree, had to be admired because of his ability to keep the discussion on topic and argued with evidence. He had this “better man” approach where his responses always went with the evidence and ignored the personalities. Seldom did he spend time defending what he had previously presented unless someone had pointed to an error he had made whereby he would admit it and move on with the discussion. He was beyond being baited into off topic debates.

    I think most us fail to some degree to meet this gentleman’s high standards, but I think his standards are worthy of our striving.

84. Brandon: Kenneth Fritsch make an excellent point. My observation is that sometimes you can get pulled into time wasting threads with people who just like to debate for it’s own sake. Of course, it’s your time and effort to spend how you like. For me, I’m mostly a lurker interested in the science. I also enjoy some of the conflict for pure entertainment value and occasionally try and rub the noses of narcissists and bullies into the BS they leave. I know that is immature behavior on my part and I know that I contribute nothing to the debate. I keep reading, however, because many papers that folks link to contain science that is very very useful for some engineering problems useful to my business. Most of the useful links come from the Blackboard.

85. I try not to make things about people or personality, and I normally don’t care about why people behave the way they behave. I’d mostly just tune out Mosher’s nonsense except it is difficult to ignore someone consistently attacking you as a person. Mosher uses pretend problems with what I say to try to make me look bad. If I don’t respond, will people believe him?

    On top of that, Mosher uses his attacks on me to speciously defend BEST’s work. There are a number of issues I’d like to resolve with BEST’s work, but if when I talk about them I get trashed by the blogosphere spokesperson for BEST, it’s difficult. And since Mosher makes his attacks on me part of his defense of BEST, it’s almost impossible to discuss BEST without discussing his attacks on me.

    I’m sure I could handle things better, but I don’t see a good way to handle behavior like Mosher’s.

86. Just ignore him and people like tempterrain, springer, webhub, girma, bug, etc. Or perhaps respond by telling them that you hope their new meds work this time, or that you will keep praying for them. “Okay then” usually works as well.

    As I recall, you are in your 20’s, my kids are late 20’s-early 30’s. Us baby-boomer gray-hairs are cynical and polarizing, whereas your generation (at least from my anecdotal sampling) does not play these games like we do. Personally, I think it’s proof of rapid evolution. In any event, your apparent lack of guile is likely seen as weakness from the older guys that like to debate nonsense.

    If you don’t respond, they will usually come back with some petty put-down that removes all doubt regarding their supreme lameness.

87. Brandon, one way might be to ignore it.

    I continue to be astonished by Nick Stokes’ complete and seemingly total resilience to snide remarks. He seems to take the approach to what he reads of “What could possibly be wrong with this?” and then if there is anything (wrong as he sees it), he lays it out. He’s a skeptic’s skeptic. And he seems to get beat up a lot for it.

88. Howard, I think if I ignore the abuse, I have to ignore the person all together. I don’t think it’d work to respond to parts of what they say but not others (especially not when they use abuse as an ad hominem). And if I do that, I’ll miss out on funny exchanges like this one!

    j ferguson, Nick Stokes is not “a skeptic’s skeptic.” Not even close. In some ways, he’s the least skeptical person I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how anyone could read his contortions to try to defend Mann 2008 (or any of a dozen other things) and think he’s skeptical. Or even reasonable.

    Oh, and yes, I am in my 20s (26 at the moment). I sometimes wonder if I’m the youngest participant on these blogs.

89. Brandon,
    Maybe i put it inartfully. Wouldn’t you agree someone skeptical of what skeptics write might be called a skeptics’ skeptic?

    That this has him appearing to support Mann etc. would seem to be the cost, but if we are to have our stuff cleansed of its inevitable nonsense, don’t we need to have someone like Nick saying “Wait a minute there, this doesn’t work the way you imply”?

    Or is there no nonsense among the skeptics?

90. Ooh, I see what you meant. I thought you were saying that like people say someone is a “man’s man.” You might want to try changing the wording to something like “skeptic of skeptics” for the future. Or at least make it plural (skeptics’ skeptic). Your wording wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t really clear either.

    Anyway, I think Nick is too much of an advocate to be considered a skeptic of any sort. Being skeptical of a view is one thing, but assuming everything about that view is wrong is another. That’s the difference between Nick Stokes and a “skeptics’ skeptic.”

    There’s definitely plenty of nonsense to point out with skeptics. You just can’t tell what is and is not nonsense based on Nick Stokes disagreeing with it.

91. Brandon,
    Andrew_FL who I believe is a university student in Boca Raton is about your age, maybe a little younger. He must be very busy right now – doesn’t post often.

    Independent of wherever you think Nick is coming from, the point was that he seems immune to the sarcastic remarks people frequently make to him. He never responds.

92. Brandon,

    I suggest you ponder this quote from Harry Truman, 33rd President of the US: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

93. j ferguson, is Andrew_FL that young? I never knew. As for Nick Stokes, I’d be more impressed by what you describe except Nick Stokes is something of a running joke. I don’t think that’s something to aspire to. Besides, as memory serves, I’ve seen him respond to sarcastic comments quite a few times.

    DeWitt Payne, that quote makes no sense in this context. I haven’t said a word suggesting I “can’t stand the heat.” In fact, I’ve shown the exact opposite. Many times. The fact I criticize baseless abuse used to avoid actual discussion doesn’t mean I feel overwhelmed by said abuse. It just means I think that abuse is pathetic.

    By the way, I’m still curious what makes you think I’m “always overreacting.”

94. Does this thread win an award for the most devolved Blackboard post ever?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    (We started with Linda Dash, I didn’t think it could go further South.)

95. Brandon,

    Do something useful. Modify the Greasemonkey killfile script so it works here.

96. Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Mar 31 21:12),

    Would you like some cheese with that whine?

97. Carrick:

    (We started with Linda Dash, I didn’t think it could go further South.)

    I guess if you’ve got to have a bad conversation, it’s best to have it when the topic of conversation is already low? I probably shouldn’t have bothered with these topics, but… *shrugs*

    DeWitt Payne:

    Do something useful. Modify the Greasemonkey killfile script so it works here.

    Oddly enough, I wrote a program a few weeks back to adapt an RSS reader’s output to be able to filter out comments by commenter (or date/time). I still need to figure out how to add the option to separate comments by blog post, and I’m not going to even try to mess with nested comments.

    If I can get that part worked out, the next step will be to make it so I can post a comment without opening the page. I’ll be able to browse blogs and post comments without even using a browser.

    Does that qualify as doing something useful?

    Would you like some cheese with that whine?

    I’m not sure you know what the word “whine” means.

98. If I can get that part worked out, the next step will be to make it so I can post a comment without opening the page. I’ll be able to browse blogs and post comments without even using a browser.

    Please leave a proper referrer!! And remember I set a cookie and not having the right “time” on your cookie could put you sideways with my spam filter.

99. BTW: My ATT ISP and phone service was on and off all weekend. The repairman just left. I think it’s ok now. 🙂

100. Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Apr 1 11:29),

     I’m not sure you know what the word “whine” means.

     I’m certain that you don’t. You spend lots of bandwidth saying little more than “Mosher is mean to me.” Mosher is a pussycat compared to some denizens of the Web.

     You also have a problem with ‘overreacting’ as you continue to demonstrate that you are while denying the obvious. Here’s another word to ponder: defensive.

     Speaking of reading comprehension, you’ve also completely missed what jferguson was trying to tell you. But then you seem always to be looking for subtext while ignoring the obvious meaning:

     Mosher:

     mrE. A 1000 quatloos if you can cite one of the sources for the monkey idea..[my emphasis]

     Then he gives a blindingly obvious hint to Gulliver’s Travels as one of the sources.

     Brandon:

     That idea traces back at least 2000 years. Are you just asking when monkeys were introduced to it? [my emphasis]

     Obviously (to most people anyway) not. No wonder Mosher gets annoyed.

     The killfile script already exists. All it needs is a an additional few lines of code to locate the poster’s name at this blog.

101. lucia:

     Please leave a proper referrer!! And remember I set a cookie and not having the right “time” on your cookie could put you sideways with my spam filter.

     That’s one part of the project I’m unsure about. Because I’m writing this as an extension to another program, I don’t have the freedom I’d have if I wrote it from scratch. I’m still working out what my options are for handling browser emulation.

     What I ought to do is ditch my current RSS reader and make my own. I could cannibalize the code of some other reader and just compile it with additions/modifications. I just don’t know if I want to put that much effort into it.

     By the way, I hear NewsBlur is growing. The horror.

102. DeWitt Payne:

     I’m certain that you don’t. You spend lots of bandwidth saying little more than “Mosher is mean to me.” Mosher is a pussycat compared to some denizens of the Web.

     I’m curious how accusing Mosher of using untruths to attack my character as a method to defend BEST’s work from legitimate criticisms is “little more than ‘Mosher is mean to me.'” I’ve focused more on the effects of Mosher’s behavior than the behavior itself. That doesn’t mesh with your description.

     You also have a problem with ‘overreacting’ as you continue to demonstrate that you are while denying the obvious.

     I challenged you to show how I am overreacting. Surely that would require doing more than saying, “you continue to” overreact?

     The killfile script already exists. All it needs is a an additional few lines of code to locate the poster’s name at this blog.

     It sounds like an easy task then. Why don’t you do it rather than try to pass it off to me? You keep posting to offer hand-waving criticisms of me. Surely you can find something more useful to do 😉

103. By the way, I hear NewsBlur is growing. The horror.

     Yep. They evidently got a lot of customers when google dumped some feed reader or other. Carnac bloggers will rediscover the ‘need’ for framebusters and someone will get pissed enough about his business model being a based on his copying of the full html of the top blog page to file a copyright action. The former already happens. Large news papers etc. were already framebusting and groups like google etc. will probably just start doing something by default. The latter will happen after Newsblur is no longer judgement proof due to lack of customers. Of course… that’s just a prediction. I’ve been wrong before.

104. @ Brandon Shollenberger: Gao 2008 says,

     “The model also did not produce cooling for the 1982 El Chicho ́n eruption. This is because the El Chicho ́n signal was missed from our ice core-based reconstruction because most of our Arctic ice cores end before or around the 1980s, and owing to the asymmetric distribution of the El Chicho ́n cloud [Robock, 2000], no El Chicho ́n signal was extracted from the Antarctic ice core records. Therefore, in a subsequent MAGICC run we replaced our ice core–based reconstruction with Sato’s [Sato et al., 1993]”

     I believe this is what Mosher’s referring to. They missed something and then turned to Sato to fill in the blanks. We’d have to look at Sato 1993 to see what the replacement is, and what “replaced our ice core-based reconstruction” means. Sounds like a lot more than the brief note you found about the exchange with Gao, but…

105. Ok guys. I know this is partly my fault for not posting. But sometimes you have to stop arguing about arguing all around. I’m not going back to diagnose who said what when etc!

106. I started it. I’m sorry. I’ll go on timeout.

107. Bradon–
     On the proper referrer, I think one reason checking referrers works to catch a sizeable number of spam bots is that to get the truly proper referrer the bot needs to know the precise page associated with the comment. Lots of bots just try to leave a comment with “rankexploits.com/” — not even “musings”. Some leave a blank referrer which really makes no sense. Obviously, the perfect spam bot needs to know that the proper referrer for a comment submitted to appear on this page is “http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/dont-post-linda-elliss-the-dash/”. Mind you, I don’t think wordpress checks that by default– but that would be the ultimately proper referrer. Meanwhile, at my site, there is no way a proper referrer starts with anything shorter than “http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/ “. I guess you could go by post ID’s. But if I started seeing a lot of that, I’d tweek wordpress to force display of pretty urls, and then ban anything giving wrong referrer. I don’t do that yet. But it would be a way to force a spam bot to know the correct url.

108. Wayne2:

     I believe this is what Mosher’s referring to.

     Mosher said El Chichon was missed because of a mistake by Gao et al. He said Gao et al acknowledged the mistake and thanked BEST for pointing it out. That is obviously at odds with his later claims that Gao et al “clearly state the value one should use” to modify their record.

     Supposing we ignore that contradiction, I discussed the what you found in Gao et al over at Judith Curry’s blog where the exchange began:

     By the way, Gao et al did not “clearly state the value one should use.” They didn’t even say their record should be modified. All they said is they tested an approach with a different record because El Chichon was missing from there’s:

     Therefore, in a subsequent MAGICC run we replaced our ice core–based reconstruction with Sato’s [Sato et al., 1993] (and updated to present) values after 1970 and compared the model response to NH temperature reconstructions [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007, Figure 6.10] for the past millennium (Figure 4). The model simulation generally captured the temperature variation on the decade to century timescale

     This doesn’t say any modification should be made to their record. It certainly doesn’t “clearly state the value one should use” for the El Chichon volcano. In no way does Gao et al support anything Steven Mosher is saying.

     In addition to what I pointed out over there, Gao et al’s test using the Sato record involved them replacing their entire record with Sato’s. They replaced one series with another. That’s nothing like modifying a single point in their series.

     If that is what Mosher was referring to, he grossly misrepresented it.

109. lucia:

     sometimes you have to stop arguing about arguing all around.

     Agreed. I’d still like to resolve the issue with BEST and the Gao et al paper though. Regardless of who said what when, it’d be good to get a straight answer on what should be a simple point.

     On the proper referrer, I think one reason checking referrers works to catch a sizeable number of spam bots is that to get the truly proper referrer the bot needs to know the precise page associated with the comment.

     I’m not worried about that part. I’ll already need to have the right URL. It’d be pretty pointless to have a program that let me post comments if I couldn’t control what page they landed on!

     What I worry about is cookies. There are only two ways to ensure you use the right cookies with a site. 1) Examine the site and modify your code to “know” its cookies. 2) Emulate a browser’s handling of cookies. The latter is obviously better. It can just be tricky to implement properly.

110. Brandon:

     Agreed. I’d still like to resolve the issue with BEST and the Gao et al paper though. Regardless of who said what when, it’d be good to get a straight answer on what should be a simple point.

     I don’t think you’ll get one here (I am not going to speculate on why this is, as Lucia *has* asked for an end of that meta-discussion).

     I suggest try contacting Robert Rohde.

111. Carrick, for what it’s worth, I think I already know what happened and why: BEST contacted Gao about the series, he suggested they modify the series in a particular way, and they did. Nothing complicated or fishy.

     As for contacting Robert, I was planning on doing that a week or so ago. There are a few issues I wanted to talk to him about. I’ve just been caught up dealing with the Lewandowsky papers and haven’t gotten around to it.

112. J furgeson,
     I think Andrew_FL graduated last year and is either in grad school of has enter the work world. I could be wrong though. Youth lends itself to much enthusiasm but less to examination of uncertainties.
     .
     Is MV Arcadian still on a mooring, or are you already under way?
     I spent 10 days anchored out in the Bahamas.. no internet or email. Seeing this thread upon my return was a bit jarring.

113. Brandon

     What I worry about is cookies. There are only two ways to ensure you use the right cookies with a site. 1) Examine the site and modify your code to “know” its cookies. 2) Emulate a browser’s handling of cookies. The latter is obviously better. It can just be tricky to implement properly.

     I think the former is what motivates some script kiddies to create bots that are carrying around a zillion cookies. They just pre-fill every cookie they think a site might look for and hope it gets by whatever they need to get by. With the latter: even if you emulate a browser’s handling, if the user does something to create random-ish cookies, you still need to visit the submit page to create the cookies, right?

114. Brandon

     I’m not worried about that part. I’ll already need to have the right URL. It’d be pretty pointless to have a program that let me post comments if I couldn’t control what page they landed on!

     Yes. But spambots don’t care. . .

115. Hi SteveF,
     we’re underway, just now anchored southeast end of Julia Tuttle while I have the bump on my head removed at Mt. Sinai, then on to Baltimore, leave boat in marina for our annual visit to civilisation, then on to Maine.

     Andrew_FL and I corresponded a bit a few years back after I had worried that he might be might not be surrounded by people as smart or smarter than he appeared to be, and accordingly would miss out on having his thoughts challenged by thoughtful discussion.

     I have his email address. Maybe we should look into what he is presently up to – I would have thought grad school.

116. A recent press release (timely as the Boston Marathon is coming up in a couple of weeks) touts this 2012 paper as showing that global warming has an adverse effect on race times.

     [Edit: This is marginally on-topic for a post entitled “the dash”.]

117. dash of this; dash of that.

118. HaroldW–Now there’ssomething to worry about.

119. HaroldW (Comment #111870)

     HaroldW, thanks for that blurb on AGW and the adverse effects of it on winning race times. It is important that the article noted that “weather” variability can be a factor in obscuring the adverse effects of AGW and even the earlier starting times. So many skeptics and deniers are going to look at the racing statistics without considering these extenuating circumstances and come to wrong conclusions.

     Since most of the consensus crowd knows that AGW effects are entirely or at least almost entirely detrimental to all human activities they are going to be more inclined to take a more sophisticated view of these statistics and know where to look for the proper adjustments to the data.

     Skeptics will also tend to take the attitude that winning times in a marathon race are not all that important in the bigger picture and, of course, overlook the proposition that we can extrapolate a human activity for which we have good statistics to all human activity. In fact one could visualize that if we could jump ahead a century or so with the current rate of warming and watch the daily activities of people it may well look as those we were viewing it in slow motion given our current day activities in a cooler world as a point of reference.

120. lucia:

     With the latter: even if you emulate a browser’s handling, if the user does something to create random-ish cookies, you still need to visit the submit page to create the cookies, right?

     That depends on the cookies. You can store cookies like a browser does. Then you only have to visit pages however often you’d need to refresh your cookies. That approach takes a lot more effort, but it cuts down on bandwidth consumption for both the user and server.

     Yes. But spambots don’t care. . .

     Which is something I’ll never understand. It should take about two lines of code to get the right referrer in most cases. Why not take such a simple step to mask your actions?

121. The programmer knows their spam didn’t get through but they don’t know why. If some success rate is high enough, I guess they figure it’s better to let that spam bot crawl and get some successes. It might not even have to be very high. Meanwhile if they feel like it they can be developing the new improved spam bot. The fact that the imperfect spambot is crawling doesn’t bother them.

     In contrast, you actually want to place an ontopic comment on a blog that interests you. Most people would just place the comment and be done with it. But if– for whatever reason– you want to do it without loading the blog, that’s fine. But clearly, you want to take greater care than the spambot.

122. Lucia,
     I’ve been puzzled by comments, apparently unfiltered, which say something like “What a great blog, I’ll be hanging out here!” not to suggest that these not appearing here would imply that this is not a great blog.

     Are these sorts of comments “flags” to indicate a website penetration or ??

123. j ferguson–
     Those were probably left by bots because a) few people would be motivated to leave them and b) lots of bots are programmed with something that inane. What happens is a bot- programmer reads the html for the comment form. That comment form might look like this:

     <form action="http://bannasties.com/wp-comments-post.php&quot; method="post" id="commentform"><input id="author" name="author" type="hidden" value="" size="1" aria-required="true"/><input id="email" name="email" type="hidden" value="" size="1" aria-required="true"/><input id="url" name="url" type="hidden" value="" size="1"/><input type="hidden" id="_nonce" name="_nonce" value="47658e8e09"/><input type="hidden" name="_wp_http_referer" value="/2007/101/you_ve_been_stung_like_a_bee/"/><input id="comment" name="comment" cols="1" rows="1" aria-required="true" type="hidden"><input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="378" id="comment_post_ID"/><input type="hidden" name="comment_parent" id="comment_parent" value="0"/><input type="image" name="submit" src="http://bannasties.com/submit-small.gif&quot; border="0" /></form>

     Because these tend to look very similar, the person coding will parse it and look for bits it recognizes. For example:

     <input id="email" name="email" type="hidden" value="" size="1" aria-required="true"/>

     When it sees that, it will stuff an email address to the value=”email@gmail.com”. Then, it will stuff in a comment.

     Often, when this game is being played, the bot will leave a url in the url field hoping the blog will leave those live (and possibly ‘followed’) . The goal of that is to credit for a link when google visits. But the bot writer might have other goals. What those are is difficult to guess, but it’s possible they send out their dumbest bot first to see what gets through the spam filter. Afterwards they might send out another better programmed bot. Who knows? It’s really hard to say. But if you know the goal is often a link and the entity they hope will count the link is google, that explains a lot.

124. Thanks, Lucia, I think I’ve got a better grasp of the motivation now. A friend erected a site to support his business and thought that no housekeeping would be required. The site was ultimately swamped by this sort of thing. He gave it up.

125. j ferguson,
     What type of business?

     Cloudflare and ZBblock out of the box would have helped a lot. He’d still see spam, but not as much. Depending on his business, he might want to set cloudflare to block all countries except the US. That’s actually what the majority of people setting up pages to support some local business should do. If it’s a handyman, dog walker, house painting, legal practices etc business, you probably don’t need to permit spammers from China, the Ukraine, India, Thailand, the entire continent of Africa and so forth to read your content. Banning them at cloudflare (or any firewall) cuts down a huge amount of the problem. After that, ZBblock gets lots of the server based stuff many script kiddies.

126. It was a marine generator-set business marketing a really elegant 4kw generator, of which I have an example. The business did not survive the recent downturn despite 30 years of prior business. He sold out, but I still keep in touch – an engineer and a very good one.

     I cannot remember whose blog locked out traffic from OZ, likely not a climate one, but I was unable to even see one of the blogs I frequent during our trip there. I seem to remember that I could see Blackboard from Thailand 2 years ago. I think Kim lives there, but maybe he was only there same time we were.

127. j ferguson–
     With a storefront, you don’t want to get too tight. On the other hand, housekeeping for a site costs too. Assuming he was in the US, he might have wanted to permit Latin American’s to shop– and possibly Canadians. But quite likely, the amount of business he would lose by excluding Africa would have been near zero. So, for a site like that, given the reality of spam/hacking etc. it might have been wise and cost effective to exclude Asia, Africa and most — though possibly not all– Europe.

     It’s true he could lose out on selling to someone in South Africa but on the other hand, the house keeping was so large he eliminated the entire site. So it seems to me a site with access limited to a smaller range of countries might have been better for him.

     Unfortunately, you’ll find all sorts of advice on the web where the “privacy” advocates will just state flat out that it’s stooooopid to block by IP or country. Well… no. It’s not. If your site is a business site and your customers are only in the US, it’s not stoooopid to block Thailand. Whether you permit it or not is a business decision and that decision should balance the cost to you of permitting connections from Thailand vs. the possible extra sales if you let Thailand have access. (Thailand is somewhat spammy/hacky. Not a major source– but for someone selling marine engines in Florida, it might not be worth permitting access.)

     Of course after banning some countries, run ZBblock. 🙂

128. He was selling his gensets all over the world. a lot in the west indies and a lot in south pacific. He and his dad had designed them and they were real marvels – I am very fond of mine and know it intimately having rebuilt it twice when it ran through its time-between-overhaul – 6500 hours. My suspicion is that his website was not well thought out. I think he wanted to host a dialog among the users and then the thing sort of got away from him.

     I ran a bbs in Mount Prospect in the early ’80s. it was dial-up and supported data rates up to and including (gasp) 1200 bps. It was cp/m based, ran on a “little-board computer (made by a guy in Arlington Heights) which was size of a 5 1/4 inch drive, had two 840 kb double side quad density (floppy) drives and was a lot of fun. You couldn’t get into it if you didn’t know what the cp/m debugging utility was – ddt.com . It accumulated about 80 regulars over time. Discussions were on a single thread as I remember and tended to be about books of all things. I did discover that things that were written tongue-in-cheek were often understood literally. And I did need to do some fire-suppression from time to time.

     the number of dial-up bulletin boards in 1983 was still relatively small and I imagined that most of the operators (sysops) knew each other.

     Software was evolved from CBBS, the software Ward and Randy ran at what may have been the first BBS, Chicago Bulletin Board Service – CBBS.

     I miss it, a bit, but what we have now is far better, with much more variety.

129. J Furguson.

     having rebuilt it twice when it ran through its time-between-overhaul – 6500 hours.

     Jumpin’ Jesus! 6500 hours between overhauls? That is pretty impressive. My genset is at ~2000 hours and I am getting nervous.

130. jferguson–
     Ahh… well, spam and hacking in the 2010s and spam/hacking in the 80s are totally different beasts. But yeah… if you run a bulletin board, you have to deal with personalities.

131. SteveF, I should point out that these hours are accumulated in a relatively short time on an engine that I watch like a hawk. The eventual failure on these engines is most often cam-wear. I didn’t rebuild these because it was time either, just ran them until they failed. First one was loss of compression due to worn wrist-pin bushing and consequent piston “wobble.” Second was broken intake valve. Most everything in each engine was well beyond tolerances so I bought “short-blocks” for the replacements. I did completely rebuild an earlier engine, but it didn’t turn out well – things I didn’t replace but should have.

     Most people I know get 4500 hours on a diesel genset – doesn’t matter whether its 3600 or 1800 rpm – 4,500 hours.

     This ought to be far enough off-topic for anyone.

     BTW, I sent Andrew_FL an email to see what he’s up to. Will let you know.

132. Lucia,
     in the ’80s hacking, if it was an issue was pretty rare, although since the software (not mine btw) was downloadable, some systems were more easily infiltrated than others. Once in a while, I could see in the log that someone had tried, and what they had done, but it was never a really intelligent assault, just more mousing around. And I usually knew who it was.

     It wasn’t like today. You had to know the phone number, then if you’d reached the system by dialing all the numbers looking for systems you had to know what to do next, like what the answer to the question was. It’s amazing that since ddt was the right answer to about 1/3 of the systems at the time it would have been tried, but never was. They could have been looking for banks.

133. No Joy on finding Andrew_FL, otherwise known as Timetochooseagain: abbreviated bio at Jeff’s.

     In 2010, he admitted to being 20, in engine school headed for aeronautics.

     If you see this, Andrew, some of us would be interested in an update.

134. j ferguson, Andrew has a blog but hasn’t posted for several months.

135. LL, I know. He also had another one that was last posted in august. I’d sent him an email at an address that had formerly worked but no response. ??

136. Erstwhile contemporary commenter Andrew_FL, where are you? (not rhetorical)

     Andrew

137. This

138. Eli–
     Prenda is outrageous.

139. Then you should take a look at what is happening btw Chad Purrington and CPMB (a lot of links here at the bottom including more to the Prenda thing🙂

140. I’m with Lucia, “My advice is don’t [read] the stupid poem in the first place,” it’s a literary one-liner – totally Hallmark®. One might also wonder about the spiritual development of a person who has turned their ‘inspirational’ poetry into a legal shake-down operation.

     I’m with Rick A no lawyer these days is going to get their butt out of their chair for less than $5000, the extra $2500 is what Linda would be likely to get, lawyers being an essentially avaricious breed always expect the lions share – the legal profession also being a kind of shake-down operation.

     Ms. Ellis seems to be very direct and insistent in the protection of her copyright and terms for its use and non-use, fair enough, but she hasn’t really provided a reasonable method for complying with her copyright for non-commercial use, say an on-line licensing arrangement. And by reasonable I also mean reasonable in cost, say $1.00 per use, not like one of these ‘pay walled’ journal articles where you are expected to shell out $45 for a $5 article. Instead, with Linda you are expected to buy a bunch of cheesy or over-priced gift shop items or link to her own web page which is itself just another sales organ.

     I guess if you are a poet and you’ve only produced one verse that anyone ever reads – back in 1996 – you might feel tempted to defend its profit making potential to the death, rather than say using it as the give-away razor handle to your vast array of literary blades.

     We’ll have to see if Linda [and her lawyers] changes the way she is living her dash.

     W^3

141. It appears that Ms. Ellis continues to Dash with threatening a lawsuit for anyone who uses her poem “The Dash”. Over 14 years ago I used her poem as a eulogy for my aunt who died from a long battle with cancer in a book of memoirs that I had written for my family & friends. At the time that I was writing this I received a copy of my senior newspaper from our senior center & in it was this Poem in which it had clearly stated that the author was unknown so that’s what I went with at the time. Here we are over 14 years later & Ms. Ellis has Mr. Jolin threatening me with a law suit unless I give them $7,500! Just how Heartless are these people? I assumed that the person who had written this poem had written it to share as a eulogy for the loss of a love one & not as revenge in a shake down for a large sum of money. I have nothing yet alone thousands of dollars to give her & I’m dealing with stage 4 breast cancer so Ms. Ellis better hang onto all of her lawsuit money that she gets from caring people who used her poem so that she can use it to pay for her sins when she approaches Heaven’s Door.

142. CJ Schultz,
     Can you scan the letter so we can read it? It would be useful to post these tings.

143. Hey, it just happened to me and I had no idea and didn’t even think to look at the internet before posting and of course found this after I received the Copyright Infringement

144. Wilene,
     April told me about you! I”m going to contact you.

145. I just got one too! Before I considered trying to negotiate I decided to do a google search on the court case the lawyer mentioned in the letter and I found you guys! You are a life saver! Thank you!

146. I just got the letter too!! and the threat to pay USD7,500. for copyright infringement against using The Dash!

     What is everyone else doing in response? Please share

147. DYH,
     Different people do different things. As far as we can tell, she does not file suits. So history suggests there is little danger in ignoring her demands. Of course, I have no control over what she will do in the future, so it’s up to the letter recipient. But I suspect the fee for an attorney and the amount a judge would levy would be less than $7,500. But then, I’m not an attorney, so who knows?

148. I received notification regarding infringement from this entity, and we don’t even have the poem on the site!

     The only thing I can think of is that we do have an affiliate program running with Amazon. It’s possible that Amazon is selling her product and it’s appearing on our site as a connection to their’s.

     I’m ignoring it, but if there’s other advice I should be following, I’d love to hear.

     thanks!

149. terrie,
     I can’t give legal advice because I’m not a lawyer.
     Did she send the letter recently?

     In the past, she pretty much never took anyone to court. I suspect that hasn’t changed but I don’t really know. The statute of limitations is something like 3 years from the time of discover, so she would have to file in that amount of time. Filing costs money so people generally don’t do it unless they think they have a strong case. (Also, the general rule is she has to file in the district that has jurisdiction over you. She can’t drag you to her jurisdiction. This makes the case a PITA for her — unless you happen to live in or near Georgia, which is where she lives.)

     http://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/copyright_law/copyright_statute_limitations.htm

     Presumably when she wrote you she explained in what way she thought you were violating her copyright? Did she show a screenshot of your page or anything? Anything at all?

     Obviously, in the (very unlikely event) she took you to court, she would need to present a case to a judge. You would present your defense. Obviously, if the “case” was that your site included links to ads to her own books or products she lists for sale on Amazon, I’m pretty sure the judge would have a hard time not laughing. Because her claim of copyright violation would be wrong on sooooo many levels.

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