Am I totally out of my mind, or has life become tremendously fucking scary, and nobody but me has noticed?
This list is quite simply the only place I know of where single sentences as perceptive and straight to the point as the quote above are made on a regular basis. I am sure many potential revolutionaries have ended up in asylums over the years as a result of the consequences of the above effect, if the "terrorist" retains their sanity they are put in an asylum as a dangerous lunatic, more normally the total stupidity and blindness of those around them drive them to genuine insanity. This same effect can likely be used to explain the high rate of insanity in the late years of many of the pasts great philosophers.
Sometimes I feel like the guy on the plane in the "Twilight Zone" movie, who is the only one who can see the monster on the plane's wing that is endangering everyone's life.
Small question: I seem to remember this film, is it the small green monster which keeps dancing and fucking with the planes engines?
And if you shoot at the monster nobody else can see, then they strap you down and take you to the rubber room. (Obvious analogy to McVeigh and Death Row purely unintentional.)
Of course, and anyone who saw such an analogy without it being pointed out would probably be a dangerous terrorist anyway.
Yes, and one day, even our private thoughts will be considered to automatically make us guilty criminals unless we allow LEA's access to them. (The "lie detector" is a case in point, and it has in the past come dangerously close to being afforded the same status as the breathalyzer, even though it represents "voodoo" as much as it does "science.")
How much confidence do US courts have in polygraph tests? I believe UK systems qualify the tests as evidence to be considered as ancillary to the other evidence rather than relied on as a major part of a case. Not really relevant though, polygraph tests are hopelessly innacurate, any good poker player or general good liar could beat one, or indeed someone who practiced one of the many forms of meditation in which ones blood pressure, respiration and pulse may be consciously controlled.
TruthMonger
BTW, one of the many Mongers of several sorts uses toad.com for all messages, I`m sure it is now just a forwarder but just to point it out, it may still be censored. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"