OPINION
Intended to provoke thought. Includes
personal reflections, rants, humor, satire, resources for further study, and
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page for current rants. A Letter to Betty -- in which I think about the life and world-view of a cultist. HTML PDF A New Recruit Writes Home From Boot Camp.... Well here I am in AtomicTangerine Boot Camp, which began here in the Alameda CA office on Monday the 8th of May 2000 and runs through Friday the 12th. I'm really excited but also a bit scared; everyone says that we won't have time to do anything else during this training, so I'd better get to sleep right away. I'll try to write a few words for you every day if I can.... HTML PDF A Rant About INFOSEC: A Security Veteran in a Bad Mood Dumps on Everyone. HTML PDF Airport Safety: Case study in thinking clearly about the difference between security and propaganda measures. HTML PDF Anti-Bigotry Tirade: Someone sent me a link to a blatantly bigoted video implying that most Muslims support terrorism. I blasted back with this rant. Lots of useful information (not that it will change the minds of thoroughly bigoted people). HTML PDF Biblical Behavior: Helpful hints with precise quotations from the Judeo-Christian Bible for people interested in adjusting their 21st century view of marriage and other social conventions to the mores of itinerant bronze-age migrants of roughly 2000 BCE and later. HTML PDF Critical Thinking and Disintermediation: Using our INFOSEC training
to cut through propaganda and rumor.
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PDF Disintermediation of News & Comment: controlling content
in the digital age. Disintermediation Required by Law is Dangerous. Fighting for Net Neutrality: resist the propagandists using free-market rhetoric to mask an obvious attempt to restrict access for increased profit. HTML PDF Fruit of the Poisoned Tree --Why Criminal Hackers Must Not Be Rewarded: The original version of the following essay appeared in the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Information Warfare in Arlington, VA (7-8 Sept 95). The "Great Hacker Debate" on the 7th of September 1995 pitted Robert Steele, President of Open Source Solutions Inc., against M. E. Kabay. The title of the event was "Hackers: National Resources or Criminal Kids?" HTML PDF INFOSEC, Quality Assurance and Extortion: Professional vs unprofessional (ethical vs unethical) ways of reporting a bug or flaw in commercial software. HTML PDF Letter to an Anti-Abortionist: response to earnest arguments objecting to legalized abortion. Warning: not a friendly analysis of the anti-abortion position: read at your own risk of being offended (or of having your opinions changed). HTML PDF Michael Moore's Easy-to-Follow 10-Point Plan to Stop Trump. National Center for Science Education (NCSE) May 2006 report and membership form. Read about the successful defense against creationist subversion of science education in Dover, PA and sign up to defend rationality against the growing forces of intellectual repression. PDF National Identification Cards and National Security: Discussions of the REAL ID act and the importance of identity cards often miss a fundamental issue about identification and authentication in security. HTML PDF Net Neutrality: The debate about selective service level agreements from ISPs has been framed as TEOTIAWKI (The End of the Internet As We Know It). I don't think the situation is nearly as bad as some people are claiming. HTML PDF No Praise for Fascists -- a rant directed at a correspondent who tried to defend a bunch of neo-nazi fascists on MY FACEBOOK (FB) PAGE. I was unable to post my rant on FB because the anti-evil algorithm spotted links documenting the bigotry cited in the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) analysis of the group. Here's a link to a PDF version of my rant, which I posted on FB as a couple of images hoping to escape being blocked for a month for violating their anti-hate-speech rules. Not Zero-Sum Game -- disputing Republican orthodoxy. On a Life of Teaching: Reflections on six decades of helping people learn. HTML PDF On Not Knowing: Embracing the Opportunity to Learn. HTML PDF Open Letter to an Anonymous Critic: provoking discussion, not indoctrination. HTML PDF Pepys into the Corridors of Power: Deciding how long a student should speak upon receiving an award, university-style. HTML PDF Pew Research Survey 2016-08-01: Invited to respond to interesting questions about effects and future of computing technology. Had fun responding. HTML PDF Prisoner Abuse --The Blame Game: Is it reasonable to fix blame for abuse of Iraqi and Afghani prisoners soley on individual soldiers? HTML PDF PSYOP in Action: a Network World Security Management newsletter article that provoked some readers to accuse me of supporting genocidal terrorists by using only one example of propaganda as an illustration of how not to be swayed by (or to spread) racist lies. HTML PDF REALLY Traditional Marriage: Yet more helpful hints on marriage from the Judao-Christian Bible to help lawmakers adjust their constitutional amendments to match G-d's will as revealed in some people's sacred texts. HTML PDF Reply to a Flat-Earther: For reasons unknown, some nut wrote to me either to engage me in a discussion of his belief that the earth is only thousands of years old or simply to annoy me. Here's my response (originally in email). HTML PDF Religious Freedom: On the refusal of a homophobic bigot to resign from public office when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- and the claim that opposing bigotry is an attack on religious freedom. HTML PDF Recipe for the 2017 US Presidential Inauguration JPG Science and Non-Science: An Epistemological Conflict. A small minority of religious people are confusing the public about fundamental differences between science and religion. This essay is intended to help clarify the issues and to support educators, politicians and ordinary people opposing the imposed introduction of religion into science classrooms. And it might make the religious zealots think about why they shouldn't have science forced into religion classes, either. HTML PDF Those Who Don't Teach?!? Rubbish! Thoughts on Watching the Movie "Elysium"
PDF Time for Industry to Support Academic INFOSEC: Viruses Are Not Speech: Highly controversial position on rejecting First Amendment protection for virus code. Constitutional lawyers who have written to me universally condemn this proposal as untenable, but I still think it's fun to discuss. HTML PDF Why a Straight Married Guy Marches in Gay Pride Parades: letter submitted to the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection in February 2008. "Every now and then I meet somebody who expresses surprise that my wife Deborah and I march in a Gay Pride Parade every year and have been doing so since 1988...." So far (2020) we have marched in 31 consecutive years of marches and are looking forward to our 32nd in 2020 assuming we have one at all this year -- maybe we'll just have a very large ZOOM meeting.... HTML PDF Why a White Jewish Guy from Canada is a Member of the NAACP: I have been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for years, even before I came to the United States as a permanent resident. At Norwich University, I was the first academic advisor for our NAACP student chapter. Now, why would a "pinko-gray" (E. M. Forster's more accurate description of the skin tone generally called "white") man join the NAACP? HTML PDF
Copyright © 2024 M. E. Kabay. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in any of the writings on this Web site represent the author’s opinions and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of his employers, associates, colleagues, students, relatives, friends, enemies, cats, dog or plants. Materials copyrighted by M. E. Kabay from this Website may be freely used for non-commercial teaching (i.e., specifically in any courses for academic credit or in free industry training at workshops or within organizations) but may not be re-posted on any Website or used in commercial training (where participants must pay fees for participation in the conference or workshop or where the instructor is paid) without express written permission. Any unauthorized sale of these copyrighted materials will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Updated 2024-02-26 |
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