Today I don’t want to talk about to the legal aspects of my case. Those who care about it long ago understood everything. Instead, I want to talk about hope—the most important thing in life.
Those who started this shameful case contemptuously called us "merchants", regarding us as lowlifes, capable of anything just to protect our prosperity and avoid prison. The years have passed. So who are the lowlifes now? Who has lied, tortured, and taken hostages, all for the sake of money and out of fear of their bosses?
Your Honor, I think all of us understand perfectly well that the significance of our trial extends far beyond my fate and Platon's, and even beyond the fates of all of those innocents who suffered in the destruction of YUKOS, those whom I found myself unable to protect. I have not forgotten about them. I think about them every day.
It's no exaggeration to say that millions of eyes throughout the whole country, and the entire world, are watching the outcome of this trial. They are watching with the hope that Russia will at last become a country of freedom and of the law.
Call it conscience, if you like, but I believe this is how it will be.
- Where supporting opposition parties will no longer be a cause for arrest and repression.
- Where the police will protect the people and the law, not protect the bureaucracy from the people and the law.
- Where human rights will no longer depend on the mood of the tsar, whether good or evil.
- Where, on the contrary, power will truly depend on the people, and the court will depend only on the law and on God.
I am not an ideal man, but I am a man with ideals. Prison life is hard for me, as it would be for anyone, and I don’t want to die here. But I will, if I have to, without a second thought. The things I believe in are worth dying for. I think I’ve proven that.
And what about you, my esteemed opponents? What do you believe in? That your boss is always right? Do you believe in money? In the impunity of the system? I don’t know; it’s up to you to decide.
— Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, summation from his second trial, 2 November 2010
Abridged; original Russian, excerpted English translation
Everything you need to know about editing Wikipedia, in two excerpts
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
— How Facts Backfire, Boston Globe, 11 July 2010
In a practical, immediate way, one sees the limits of the so-called “extended mind” clearly in the mob-made Wikipedia, the perfect product of that new vast, supersized cognition: when there’s easy agreement, it’s fine, and when there’s widespread disagreement on values or facts, as with, say, the origins of capitalism, it’s fine, too; you get both sides. The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information... Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that.
— Adam Gopnik, "How the Internet gets inside us"; New Yorker, 14 February 2011
The Cynic's Guide to Wikipedia
He who is attached to notability criteria and NPOV will suffer much. The man who expects only self-promotion and POV-pushing will never be disappointed.
The Fourth Law of Stupidity: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.
- If you wrestle with a pig, both of you will get muddy. And the pig will enjoy it.
- Ignorance is infinite, while patience is not. Ultimately, you will lose patience with the unchecked flow of ignorance, at which point you'll be blocked for incivility. The goal is to accomplish as much as possible before that inevitability comes to pass.
- If a person edits Wikipedia largely or solely to promote one side of a contentious issue, then the project is almost certainly better off without them.
- On Wikipedia, any form of real-life expertise is a serious handicap. If you have real-life expertise on a subject, do not under any circumstances mention it here.[1] There is no faster way to turn the masses against you.
- If your edit sticks close to the original source, you will be accused of plagiarism. If your edit is paraphrased to avoid plagiarism, you will be accused of straying from the original source. Rinse and repeat.
- Jimbo's talk page is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
- Anyone who edits policy pages to favor their position in a specific dispute has no business editing policy pages. Corollary: these are the only people who edit policy pages.
- The more abusive an editor is toward others, the more thin-skinned they are about "personal attacks" directed at themselves.
- Some people never do anything without an ulterior wikipolitical motive. That motive may not be clear immediately, but it will be clear eventually.
- The more a viewpoint is odious, ignorant, wrong-headed, or obscure, the more likely its adherents will perceive Wikipedia as their best opportunity to promote it.
- Anyone who defends their edits by citing WP:NOTCENSORED doesn't have the first clue.
- When a Wikipedian uses Latin, you can be sure they are up to no good.
- if $username =~ m/truth|justice|freedom|neutrality/i, then the account should probably be blocked preëmptively, because nothing constructive will ever come from it.
- Being blocked has never made anyone more civil. On many occasions, it has made people less civil. Nonetheless, our default approach to increasing the general level of civility is to block people.
- When someone complains that Wikipedia is biased, it usually means that their ideas have failed to gain traction because they've misunderstood this site's goals. For example, to a committed flat-Earther, Wikipedia will appear to have a systemic round-Earth bias which stymies their efforts to contribute.
- The more incapable an editor is of assuming good faith, the more prone they will be to cite WP:AGF at others.
- Wikipedia's processes favor pathological obsessiveness over rationality. A reasonable person will, at some point, decide that they have better things to do than argue with a pathological obsessive. Wikipedia's content reflects this reality, most acutely in its coverage of topics favored by pathological obsessives.
- Anything truly insightful has been said better, and earlier, by someone else.
Received wisdom
But why the pride in these doctor children (why not shame, why not incredulous dread?): intimates of bacilli and trichinae, of trauma and mortification, with their disgusting vocabulary and their disgusting furniture... they are life's gatekeepers. And why would anyone want to be that?
Life is short and the art is long; opportunity fleeting; experience is deceptive, and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.
All who drink of this remedy are cured, except those who die. Thus, it is effective for all but the incurable.
It was a peculiarity of her memory.
Macbeth: | How does your patient, doctor? |
Doctor: | Not so sick, my lord, |
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, | |
That keep her from her rest. | |
Macbeth: | Cure her of that! |
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, | |
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, | |
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, | |
And with some sweet oblivious antidote | |
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff | |
Which weighs upon the heart? | |
Doctor: | Therein the patient |
Must minister to himself. |
Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease."
Languebam: sed tu comitatus protinus ad me
Venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis.
Centum me tetigere manus aquilone gelatae:
Non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo.
Now listen here, Colonel... Batguano, if that really is your name...
He could feel quite tangibly the difference in weight between the fragile human body and the colossus of the State. He could feel the State's bright eyes gazing into his face; any moment now the State would crash down on him; there would be a crack, a squeal—and he would be gone.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows that the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight is fixed.
The poor stay poor and the rich get rich.
That's how it goes.
And everybody knows.
I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and institutions... but I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their barbarous ancestors.
Ivanov let a few seconds go by. He smoked and drew figures with his pencil on the blotting-paper. He seemed to be searching for the exact words.
"Listen, Rubashov," he said finally. "There is one thing I would like to point out to you. You have now repeatedly said 'You' - meaning State and Party - as distinct from 'I' - that is, Nikolai Salmanovich Rubashov. For the public, one needs, of course, a trial and legal justification. For us, what I have just said should be enough."
Rubashov thought this over; he was somewhat taken aback. For a moment it was as if Ivanov had hit a tuning fork, to which his mind responded of its own accord. All he had believed in, fought for and preached over the last forty years swept over his mind in an irresistable wave. The individual was nothing, the Party was all; the branch which broke from the tree must wither... Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve.
In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible."
Such was his feeling.
Michael Williams: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, "We died at such a place;" some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Wonderful meal in T[aranto]. Steak—eggs—cherries—white wine—macaroni—and Marsala. We should never have fought these people.
Annihilation of the spirit. The game does not appear to be worth the candle. What is seen through the explosions is that this, no less than any other war, is not a moral war. Greek against Greek, against Persian, Roman against the world, cowboys against Indians, Catholics against Protestants, black men against white—this is merely the current phase of an historical story. It is war, and to believe it is anything but a lot of people killing each other is to pretend it is something else, and to misread man's instinct to commit murder.
When I was running about this town a very poor fellow, I was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty; but I was, at the same time, very sorry to be poor.
I don't believe in excess; success is to give.
I don't believe in riches, but you should see where I live.
The teacher said no college,
But still a kid's gotta get a check with a couple commas...
The Templars have something to do with everything
What follows is not true
Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate
The sage Omus found the Rosy Cross in Egypt
There are cabalists in Provence
Who was married at the feast of Cana?
Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancée
It follows logically that
If
The Druids venerated black virgins
Then
Simon Magus identifies Sophia as a prostitute of Tyre
Who was married at the feast of Cana?
The Merovingians proclaim themselves kings by divine right
"A bit obscure," Diotallevi said.
You know what, Stuart? I like you. You're not like the other people here in the trailer park.
"You must try not to think of them," Major Danby advised affirmatively. "And you must never let them change your values. Ideals are good, but people are sometimes not so good. You must try to look up at the big picture."
Yossarian rejected the advice with a skeptical shake of his head. "When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy."
"But you must try not to think of that," Major Danby insisted. "And you must try not to let it upset you."
"Oh, it doesn't really upset me. What does upset me, though, is that they think I'm a sucker. They think that they're smart, and that the rest of us are dumb."
The only thing wrong with literature in our time is that it lacks... malice, envy, and hate.
/* You are not expected to understand this */
Sources of self-esteem
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For MastCell, this award was meant for you. It is for those who seem to do everything right on Wikipedia, and go beyond that to show excellence and be respected in every aspect. You have the uncanny and never-ending patience to control your words in even the most intense and controversial situations. You are special. I hereby award MastCell with the “Cool Award.” -- Dēmatt (chat) 15:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
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Today's recommended reading
- Goertzel T (July 2010). "Conspiracy theories in science". EMBO Rep. 11 (7): 493–9. DOI:10.1038/embor.2010.84. PMID 20539311. http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v11/n7/full/embor201084.html.
Prepare to be horrified
Footnotes
- ^ You might naïvely think that a project attempting to summarize human knowledge would value people who actually know things. You would be badly mistaken, for two reasons. First of all, Wikipedia tends to attract obsessive amateurs—people who are deeply interested in arcane topics but who lack academic qualifications or recognition and thus view such things as suspect. Secondly, Wikipedians have really strange ideas about "conflicts of interest". It's been seriously suggested that (for instance) a physician would have a conflict of interest in writing about medical topics, by virtue of actually knowing something about them.
Wikipedia's hostility toward real-life expertise is usually externalized and blamed on the experts, who are portrayed as too arrogant and entitled to thrive in this democratic marketplace of ideas. But that's bullshit. Experts get frustrated because Wikipedia lacks any mechanism to ensure that sane people triumph over pathological obsessives, as outlined here. (If anything, our existing processes reward pathological obsessiveness much more than sane, reasonable approaches).
Anyhow, take my word for it—hide any real-life expertise at all costs.