Tduvally

A municipal broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado went live for new customers today, less than two years after the city's voters approved the network despite a cable industry-led campaign against it. Ars Technica reports: Fort Collins Connexion, the new fiber-to-the-home municipal option, costs $59.95 a month for 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds, with no data caps, contracts, or installation fees. There's a $15 monthly add-on fee to cover Wi-Fi, but customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own router. Fort Collins Connexion also offers home phone service, and it plans to add TV service later on. Connexion is only available in a small portion of the city right now. "The initial number of homes we're targeting this week is 20-30. We will notify new homes weekly, slowly ramping up in volume," Connexion spokesperson Erin Shanley told Ars. While Connexion's fiber lines currently pass just a small percentage of the city's homes and businesses, Shanley said the city's plan is to build out to the city limits within two or three years. "Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont," another Colorado city that built its own network, Shanley said. Beta testers at seven homes are already using the Fort Collins service, and the plan is to start notifying potential customers about service availability today. The city reportedly issued $143 million in bonds to finance the city-wide network. Fort Collins has a population of 165,000. The two residential internet packages that Connexion is offering are the $59.95 gigabit plan and 10Gbps plan for $299.95 a month. Shanley told Ars that "there are no taxes and fees on internet service," aside from the optional $15 charge to use city-provided Wi-Fi hardware instead of a customer-purchase router. The broadband service also offers a gigabit Internet and phone service bundle for $74.90 a month. "Phone service on its own starts at $19.95 a month," adds Ars. "When TV service is available, there will be an Internet and TV bundle for $119.90 a month, and a bundle of all three services starts at $144.85."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week I wrote about yet another claim for a possible location for Atlantis. This sparked some lively discussion, indicative of the fact that there is something alluring and iconic about the idea of Atlantis. I also think having a cool name is critical for such appeal (and not a small part of why Nostradamus, for example, is so iconic).

Long story short – there is no evidence that Atlantis existed, that Plato intended his writings to be an actual claim that Atlantis was real, and there is no evidence that the new supposed location, the Richat structure in Africa, is Atlantis or any ancient city.

In the comments, defenders of Atlantis made a claim, one that I have heard frequently before, that caught my interest.

One commenter wrote:

Atlantis a myth…?
Perhaps the story, but is the story based on something?

Let’s remember Troy was a myth until rediscovered in 1870.

Another:

They laughed at Heinrich Schliemann, but he found Troy and started, for the most part, the science of archaeology.

and:

back in 19th centrury(sic): The consensus of actual scholarship is that Troy is a myth.

Thank you Heinrich Schliemann for not caring about consensus.

The initial response by me and others was – so what? The logic here is not valid. Just because one city written about in ancient texts turned out to be real, that doesn’t mean they all are, or that Atlantis specifically is. Further, the analogy is not a good one.

Homer wrote about the Trojan War in two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad, Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, kidnaps the beautiful Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. This sparks a war essentially to rescue Helen and punish Troy. These events allegedly took place in the 12-13th century BCE, 400 years before Homer wrote his poems (and 800 years before the first known writings).

At the time of Homer the Trojan War was accepted as Greek history, and several sources discuss it and some of the historical figures depicted in the war. That amount of time, 800 years, is not too long for continuous cultural memory. This is similar to stories of Robin Hood today, which involve real places, events, and people, even if the legend of Robin himself is fictional.

Plato, however, is the only person to ever mention Atlantis, which he says existed 9000 years before his time. It is not plausible that Plato would have reliable knowledge about something so ancient, and there is no record to indicate any cultural connection from that time down to Plato. The two situations, Troy and Atlantis, are simply not analogous.

But upon further investigation, it also turns out that every factual claim made above about the discovery of Troy is not true. Those are the myths of Troy.

The core claim is that up until the 19th century the consensus of opinion was that Troy was nothing but a myth. Schliemann is credited with bucking the consensus, in the face of ridicule, and single handedly discovering Troy and even creating modern archaeology. Another commenter even stated, in response to my point that there are no archaeological findings at the Richat:

Yes, because they were digging … before digging, Troy was a normal hill. Troy walls were found after archeological excavations. No digging were done in Richat structure, so nothing was found, obviously.

So much for your ‘logic’.

My logic: Schliemann used solely Homer text to locate Troy, then he started digging and found it. Jim used solely Plato’s text to locate Atlantis, when somebody starts digging, he/she may find it.

Until u learn about how Troy was found, all you have is a bad logic.

Again – not true. Here’s the actual story – Heinrich Schliemann is an interesting character. By all accounts he was a wealthy explorer, a genuinely smart and talented guy, but also a self-promoter and even a con-artist. He decided to take up archaeology at age 46, partly because of his fascination with Homer and the classics. But he was an amateur and essentially didn’t know what he was doing.

Frank Calvert was an actual archaeologist at the time. He was looking for Troy, and believed it might be in Hisarlik, a city in Turkey. Contrary to that last comment, in Hisarklik there is a hill that the locals all knew contained the ruins of an ancient city. In fact it was a local tourist attraction. It was not “a normal hill” – it was a “tell,” a mound created by building cities on top of cities. Calvert did some preliminary excavation and uncovered evidence that one of the cities buried in that mound could be the Troy of Homer.

Calvert, however, did not have the money to do a major excavation. He tried to get funding, but failed. So he went to the famous rich guy who was fascinated with Troy and hit him up for the money. Calvert told Schliemann about Hisarlik. Schliemann then used his personal wealth to excavate Hisarlik, and he uncovered lots of evidence of ancient cities. In fact, there were at least nine layers of different cities of different ages in that mound (which he named Troy I – Troy IX).

In Troy II he found the mother load – a treasure of gold and silver jewelry. Schliemann claimed this was the treasures of Priam, proof that Troy II is the Troy of Homer’s Trojan War. It turns out, this is not true. The artifacts are too old and don’t match the late Bronze Age of the Trojan War. So Schliemann’s primary claim turned out to be false. Schliemann also took all the credit for the find himself, did not give Calvert any credit, and generated the myth that he discovered it all by himself. This is the myth that grew into the modern manifestation, which is used by Atlantis apologists as above.

As the Schliemann legend grew it evolved, making it more profound – claiming that the experts at the time did not believe him, even laughed at him. None of this is true.

Knowledge that Troy was a real city existed continuously from ancient times. There was never a consensus of scholars that Troy was only a myth. What was lost to knowledge sometime in the Dark Ages and had to be rediscovered by Calvert and Schliemann was the location of Troy. That’s it. Further, it was always known that the Hisarlik hill was an ancient city, and the locals even believed it was Troy.

Finally, Schliemann did not create modern archaeology or revolutionize it. He clumsily dug into Hisarlik, destroying evidence, poorly documenting the site. He did, to his credit, identify the nine city layers, and did find the large cache of treasure, but anyone just digging up the site would have discovered that. Later archaeologists had to go back to more carefully explore the site.

Further still – Schliemann was wrong in his main claim. He did not find the Troy of the Trojan War. His discovery, in fact, did not change the consensus on the remaining question of how much of the Trojan War is true. It still remains unknown.  The different accounts have many conflicting details, and it was already a foggy legend by Homer’s time. The legends do seem to be based on Greek history (as much as the Robin Hood legend is based on English history), but it is likely that they were transformed by time out of all recognition.

In fact, the story of Schliemann shows how this happens. The version that has come down to public awareness, from just 145 years ago, is almost completely wrong. Stories tend to have themes and a moral lesson, and the facts morph over time to amplify those themes. Eventually the morphed details become the story, which is more apocryphal than real. So in a century and a half we go from: archaeologists believing Troy is historical, having several theories of where it might be, and Schliemann essentially stealing credit from one archaeologist believing it to be in Hisarlik, to – they laughed at Schliemann for claiming Troy was real. They thought that was just a hill. Schliemann invented archaeology.

The fact that the myths of Troy being a myth serves a specific rhetorical purpose amplifies the amplification. The Troy myth is used, knee-jerk, to dismiss any appropriate skepticism regarding extraordinary claims about ancient aliens, advanced civilizations, or Atlantis.

As almost always turns out to be the case – the real story is more complex, and more interesting, than you think. It is also yet another example of why you should be skeptical of stories that are really useful, especially when they support your side. Nice clean and punchy stories are rarely accurate.  At the very least you should do some serious digging before using the story as a major talking point.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
This was also the origin of the stealth bomber.

New comic!
Today's News:

It's Public Domain day again -- the day when music, books and movies enter the public domain in countries where copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50 years (hint: not the USA).

But as John Mark Ockerbloom points out, the list of life+50 countries keeps getting shorter, as more and more countries are arm-twisted into extending their copyright terms by the US Trade Representative. And increasingly, countries are passing regressive copyright laws that take works out of the public domain and put them back into copyright -- an insane policy that ends up criminalizing new art that incorporates the old, and that provides no new incentive to create (give Elvis or the Beatles 50 more years of copyright if you like, they're still not going to record any more music).

It's not all bad news: between the Hathi Trust lawsuit (which held it legal to scan old, in-copyright books under some circumstances) and the growth of Creative Commons licenses.

There's urgent work to be done. We need to fight copyright term extension, to expand fair use and fair dealing, increase access to orphan works, and discredit and destroy the new practice of making global copyright law through secretive treaty negotiations like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Open Knowledge Foundation are all working to bring copyright into line with the modern world, and to stop its from being used for censorship and surveillance.

The next major plateau for international copyright terms, life+100 years, is now in sight.  The leaked TPP draft from August also includes a proposal from Mexico to add yet another 30 years onto copyright terms, to life+100 years, which that country adopted not many years ago.  It doesn’t have much chance of passage in the TPP negotiations, where to my knowledge only Mexico has favored the measure.   But it makes “life+70″ seem reasonable in comparison, and sets a precedent for future, smaller-scale trade deals that could eventually establish longer terms.  It’s worth remembering, for instance, that Europe’s “life+70″ terms started out in only a couple of countries, spread to the rest of Europe in European Union trade deals, and then to the US and much of the rest of the world.  Likewise, Mexico’s “life+100″ proposal might be more influential in smaller-scale Latin American trade deals, and once established there, spread to the US and other countries.  With 5 years to go before US copyrights are scheduled to expire again in significant numbers, there’s time for copyright maximalists to get momentum going for more international “harmonization”.

What’s in the public domain now isn’t guaranteed to stay there.  That’s been the case for a while in Europe, where the public domain is only now getting back to where it was 20 years ago.  (The European Union’s 1990s extension directive rolled back the public domain in many European countries, so in places like the United Kingdom, where the new terms went into effect in 1996, the public domain is only now getting to where it was in 1994.)  But now in the US as well, where “what enters the public domain stays in the public domain” has been a long-standing custom, the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can in fact remove works from the public domain in certain circumstances.   The circumstances at issue in the case they ruled on?  An international trade agreement– which as we’ve seen above is now the prevailing way of getting copyrights extended in the first place.   Even an agreement that just establishes life+70 years as a universal requirement, but doesn’t include the usual grandfathered exception for older works, could put the public domain status of works going back as far the 1870s into question, as we’ve seen with HathiTrust international copyright determinations.

Public Domain Day 2014: The fight for the public domain is on now (Thanks, John Mark!)

Six years after I bought my home, the coffeehouse across the street was transformed into a Hard Rock Café. The new management decided to promote the place by affixing a couple of trunk-sized, weather-proof speakers to the roof and playing a one-minute rock medley several times a day, at such eardrum-shattering volumes that the din could easily be heard three or four blocks away.

A trip to City Hall resulted in the town manager telling me his hands were tied, as there were special rules permitting the loud music, based on the interests of the hundreds who are clearly drawn to such places.

So I had a talk with the Hard Rock Café business manager, first pleading and then demanding that she stop or reduce the ruckus. She heard me out while studying her nails, and said a bit nonchalantly that she had every right to do what she did, and that her clientele obviously enjoyed the thrice-a-day sonic bursts.

Last week, at my wit’s end, I filed a lawsuit, because the joint illegally interferes with my peaceful enjoyment of my property. The Hard Rock Café management, in response, put out the following statement:

So many in the community have enjoyed hearing the snippets of rock music for years for but minutes a day. The Hard Rock Café believes such sounds are reasonable and well within its rights. The music-loving community is saddened that a sole individual would continue personal, inappropriate attacks harassing visitors and staff.

…

All right, time to come clean. If this story sounds vaguely improbable, it’s because I invented it. Sort of. (Last year I took this photo of my actual view — note the absence of noisy rock temples!).

But the tale is very close to real for some people. Just substitute church for rock joint. Ask yourself why virtually no home owner would stand for the situation I described, but why it’s okay for a house of worship, as opposed to a house of rock, to produce an ungodly number of decibels some 25 times a week.

These are the facts of a current conflict in Rhode Island, as relayed in the Providence Journal.

John Devaney lives in the former parish rectory on Rockland Street in Narragansett, across from St. Thomas More Catholic Church. He bought the house 18 years ago. There were no church bells to disturb his peace and quiet during his first six years there. At that point, a new church administrator was brought in, who added a bell, and had it electronically amplified. Since then, the church bell has sounded for a minute three times a day — at 8:45a, then at 12:00p, then again at 6:00p. On Sundays, the pealing begins at 7:45a. On the weekends, the bell is also used to announce weddings and funerals.

The town can’t do anything because places of worship enjoy blanket exemptions from local noise ordinances.

The clergy at St. Thomas Church are not receptive to Devaney’s demands that either the frequency of the pealing is reduced, or the noise level, or both, and issued the following passive-aggressive response to the lawsuit that their irate neighbor just brought:

So many in the community have enjoyed hearing the bell for more than 10 years for but minutes a day. The parish believes the brief ringing of the bell is reasonable and well within its rights. The parish community is saddened that a sole individual would continue personal, inappropriate attacks harassing visitors, worshippers and staff of St. Thomas More Parish. As a community of faith, we will pray for peace and understanding and that all our neighbors know of our charity and concern.

As we found out during the Jessica Alquist controversy, Rhode Island has its share of Bible lovers, and they’re out in force again.

“Seems like a nice enough gentleman… too bad he’s buying a one way ticket to hell,” was the response of one Suzanne Lavallee Nocco; and a man by the name of Charlie Oaks followed that up with “Another idiot atheist out to make a buck and a name. Butler Hospital has a nice room ready for you Devaney.” (Butler is a local psychiatric clinic.)

By that standard, I guess we’ll all have to check into a mental ward — at least those of us who dare ask whether it’s constitutionally sound to auto-exempt religious organizations from the municipal ordinances that everyone else in town must follow. Why wouldn’t a church be subject to the same rules, the same permit process, the same hearings, and the same appeals as the rest of the townspeople and local businesses?

Click here to view the embedded video.

A poll on the Providence Journal website currently shows an early 2:1 victory for those who like their church bells to sound loudly, unassailably, and at all hours. But voting is still open.

Do your worst.

(Thanks to Jane for the link)

A few years ago, computer science whiz Chris Harrison created a beautiful visualization linking up every cross reference in the Bible. So, for example, if a verse in the New Testament referred back to a verse in the Old Testament, there was an arc drawn between the two chapters they were in (the vertical lines at the bottom represent the number of verses in that chapter):

Amazing! Turns out there are 63,779 cross references in the Bible (and that many arcs in the image)! If it’s any indication of how complex this image is, the high-resolution version is more than 100MB large.

In 2009, graphic designer Andy Marlow used Harrison’s work as his inspiration to created a similar visual for Sam Harris‘ Reason Project. This time, though, he only included arcs representing contradictions in the Bible:

Helpfully, this visual also included text explaining what the contradictions were and where they could be found:

Also amazing! But very bulky and not very user-friendly. I don’t know that you could really print out a poster that large and, even if you could, the arcs are still a blur.

Now, computer programmer Daniel G. Taylor has taken all that data and turned it into a visual masterpiece.

His website, BibViz (Bible Visualization), gives you the same linking arcs as before, but when you hover over one of them, it lights up and tells you in the upper right-hand corner of the screen which verses are being linked together. Click on an arc and it takes you directly to those verses as compiled in the Skeptics Annotated Bible:

That’s not all. The visual also shows you where in the Bible you’ll find the passages featuring Cruelty/Violence, Discrimination against Homosexuals, Scientific Absurdities/Historical Inaccuracies, or (below) Misogyny/Violence/Discrimination against Women:

See the long bar on the far left side? That means the Book of Genesis has more anti-women verses than any other book in the Bible. And all those bars are clickable and lead you to the specific passages in the Skeptics Annotated Bible.

When I asked Daniel what inspired him to create this, he said (via email):

Some of my family is extremely religious, and after quite a few discussions with them and some friends I was inspired to look up the Reason Project’s contradictions poster again as a reference, but thought it might be nice to have something like that without the duplicated entries, with the ability to click individual links, and something that could be regenerated easily should errors be found.

The whole site is seriously an incredible resource. Go there and just play around with it. Then show your fundamentalist religious friends and watch them squirm. There’s just no plausible way anyone can take the Bible literally after spending time on this site… unless they’re closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and refusing to think about any of the errors in their worldview.

(Thanks to Ed for the link!)

Last year, the International Humanist and Ethical Union published “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Non-religious” (PDF):

This report shows that atheists, humanists and other nonreligious people are discriminated against by governments across the world. There are laws that deny atheists’ right to exist, curtail their freedom of belief and expression, revoke their right to citizenship, restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents.

IHEU has now launched a support site for that report at FreethoughtReport.com and they’re also seeking information from people around the world who are subject to systematic, legal discrimination in their country — especially countries that aren’t included in their 2012 report. (If you want to submit something, there’s a secure way to do it.)

This report will become an annual tradition — one that would end soon in an ideal world.

You probably haven't seen Manos: The Hands of Felt, a theatrical puppet musical based on one of the most legendarily awful films ever made — it's been performed around the U.S., but not often and not everywhere. But you have a chance to fix this egregious error by crowdfunding an official DVD release!

Read more...