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Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the

Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the HuffPo link, take my word for it, this is well worth reading.)

gadders 12y ago
Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  Yikes, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out. Still, I think it would be a mistake to skip the article because of who wrote it. As I said, it was a real eye-opener for me, and I'm glad I read it. I'm even glad I bought Hari's book Chasing the Scream. (I didn't even do my usual Kindle free sample, just a one-click purchase on the spot after reading the article, quite unusual for me!) You did have me worried for a moment, though: do I want to support someone like that? But he seems to recognize how he screwed up and is trying to make things right, apologizing to the people he mistreated, releasing the audio interviews used in the book, etc. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-on-fking-up-and-the-war-on-drugs/ http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-o... I too have done some things in the past that I'm ashamed of, and I'm grateful that the people involved forgave me. Perhaps Hari is a bit like the other people in this discussion and deserves a second chance?
  - mseebach 12y ago
    Maybe he deserves a second chance, but he doesn't seem to have changed his ways much. http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3zdvqrebxa3x http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3... The last section, "Update", is of particular interest to you, as it relates directly to the audio transcripts from Chasing the Scream.
- namenotrequired 12y ago
  So why should we skip it? Does it make the article invalid? If he's a liar, I might think differently, but the mistakes you mention seem irrelevant to me.
- sgift 12y ago
  Do you have any hints that he plagiarised this article or do you follow the principle of "misbehave once, be damned forever"?
- DanBC 12y ago
  Weird to see a positive article about the benefits of letting people who have served their time get back into work juxtaposed with your post saying, essentially, Burn him he's a plagiarist.
  - Natsu 12y ago
    If you read that, it wasn't just plagiarism, he actually made up stories, whole cloth. That said, I've worked for a factory. Many of the hires on the floor were for people with records of various kinds. It did help the higher-functioning people turn their lives around, which was quite encouraging. But we also had people who did stupid things and got arrested for things like domestic violence charges, which were related to their drug use.
  - hueving 12y ago
    They are two different things. One is directly related to the job. The other is being a felon for an unrelated reason. I wouldn't mind someone being a teacher if they got caught with pot 20 years ago. I would mind if they raped a few kids. The point is that if their crime was related to the job, it's fine not to trust someone to do that same job again. That's not the same as never employing them for anything.
- cubano 12y ago
  Wow, can the meta-irony of this particular point be any deeper? Good thing there will always be a job waiting for him at the bakery. "Following the release of his book, Chasing the Scream, in 2015, Hari gave a number of interviews where he expressed regret for his actions. In order to quell doubts about his reporting, he also released full audio copies of sources he interviewed for his book. In an interview with the Little Atoms podcast, Hari also stated that he would apologise to Nick Cohen and Francis Wheen."[1] I think the article is exceptionally well-written, personal, and informative, and gave me, as someone intimately involved with all things addiction for 30 years, fresh perspective. The fact that he seems to be currently deeply in love with an active addict may be motivation behind the piece, but it takes little away from the insights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [edits]
  - Stratoscope 12y ago
    While we're talking about people who did bad things in the past and got a second chance... How about John Carmack? > As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of kids steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of Thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. John was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions 'no empathy for other human beings' and describes Carmack as 'a brain on legs'). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. Carmack's comments (from 1999): > I knew I wanted to work with computers from a very early age, but there were also a lot of other stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. > I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. > I went to a couple semesters of classes at the University of Missouri (UMKC), taking nothing but CS classes, but it just didn't seem all that worthwhile. In hindsight, I could have gotten more out of it than I did, but I hadn't acquired a really good attitude towards learning from all possible sources yet. > I dropped-out of college to start programming full time, but trying to do contract programming for the Apple II/IIGS post 1990 was not a good way to make money, and I only wound up with between $1k and $2k a month. Not having enough money is stressful, and I did some things I didn't want to. I wrote a numerology program for a couple hundred bucks one time... > Softdisk publishing finally convinced me to come down to Shreveport for an interview. I had been doing contract work for Jay Wilbur and Tom Hall, so I knew there were some pretty cool people there, but meeting John Romero and Lane Roath was what convinced me to take the job. Finally meeting a couple sharp programmers that did impressive things and had more experience than I did was great. > After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. I was programming, or reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking hour. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!). > I learned a huge amount in a short period of time, and that was probably a turning point for my personality. I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as being ignorant about various things, but after basically doubling my programming skills in the space of six months, I realized how relative it all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven years since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmac...
- pcthrowaway 12y ago
  yeah, let's not read the article on barriers to employment because of past offenses written by someone who is presumably trying to make it as a writer with a record of criminal offenses.
- arsenide 12y ago
  Why are you judging the merits of an article by the author and not the content?
  - ars 12y ago
    Because if the subject matter is in a domain that is outside someone's expertise they don't really have a way to judge by the content. It's possible to make really good arguments for things that are simply untrue. So instead we judge by the author - i.e. is the writer at least trustworthy.
    - arsenide 12y ago
      I will certainly agree: there should be more skepticism for such at article by a known untrustworthy author. Does that mean we should immediately dismiss something written by him? Your advice is good to take in general: don't trust what you read without judging both the credentials of the writer and the content the writer is putting forth. But to dismiss it based only on the author is shortsighted. I see nothing in your reply specifically about the content of the article, does anything else truly matter? Sure, take the author's history and intentions into consideration, but at the end of the day the content is what matters.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  What cyber stalking are you talking about? This page only talks about plagiarism and wikipedia vandalism. Making negative edits about people you don't like on wikipedia involves exactly zero stalking. Is information missing here? And it sounds like the 'plagiarism' was him using quotes he did not personally acquire, which is pretty minor and wouldn't turn me away from reading anything.
  - emiliobumachar 12y ago
    Hypothetically, imagine gadders would now edit some public information about you with lies, because you criticized him. Would that not feel a little bit stalky?
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      So let's say we got in a big argument and then he went to my github profile and called me a poopy head and a bad coder. I would find that obnoxious, I would find it harassment if he kept doing it, I don't think I would find that stalky.
- seivan 12y ago
  The irony of you letting a man hang to dry in a post about atonement. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... C'mon dude.

gadders 12y ago

Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

Stratoscope 12y ago
Yikes, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out. Still, I think it would be a mistake to skip the article because of who wrote it. As I said, it was a real eye-opener for me, and I'm glad I read it. I'm even glad I bought Hari's book Chasing the Scream. (I didn't even do my usual Kindle free sample, just a one-click purchase on the spot after reading the article, quite unusual for me!) You did have me worried for a moment, though: do I want to support someone like that? But he seems to recognize how he screwed up and is trying to make things right, apologizing to the people he mistreated, releasing the audio interviews used in the book, etc. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-on-fking-up-and-the-war-on-drugs/ http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-o... I too have done some things in the past that I'm ashamed of, and I'm grateful that the people involved forgave me. Perhaps Hari is a bit like the other people in this discussion and deserves a second chance?
- mseebach 12y ago
  Maybe he deserves a second chance, but he doesn't seem to have changed his ways much. http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3zdvqrebxa3x http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3... The last section, "Update", is of particular interest to you, as it relates directly to the audio transcripts from Chasing the Scream.
namenotrequired 12y ago
So why should we skip it? Does it make the article invalid? If he's a liar, I might think differently, but the mistakes you mention seem irrelevant to me.
sgift 12y ago
Do you have any hints that he plagiarised this article or do you follow the principle of "misbehave once, be damned forever"?
DanBC 12y ago
Weird to see a positive article about the benefits of letting people who have served their time get back into work juxtaposed with your post saying, essentially, Burn him he's a plagiarist.
- Natsu 12y ago
  If you read that, it wasn't just plagiarism, he actually made up stories, whole cloth. That said, I've worked for a factory. Many of the hires on the floor were for people with records of various kinds. It did help the higher-functioning people turn their lives around, which was quite encouraging. But we also had people who did stupid things and got arrested for things like domestic violence charges, which were related to their drug use.
- hueving 12y ago
  They are two different things. One is directly related to the job. The other is being a felon for an unrelated reason. I wouldn't mind someone being a teacher if they got caught with pot 20 years ago. I would mind if they raped a few kids. The point is that if their crime was related to the job, it's fine not to trust someone to do that same job again. That's not the same as never employing them for anything.
cubano 12y ago
Wow, can the meta-irony of this particular point be any deeper? Good thing there will always be a job waiting for him at the bakery. "Following the release of his book, Chasing the Scream, in 2015, Hari gave a number of interviews where he expressed regret for his actions. In order to quell doubts about his reporting, he also released full audio copies of sources he interviewed for his book. In an interview with the Little Atoms podcast, Hari also stated that he would apologise to Nick Cohen and Francis Wheen."[1] I think the article is exceptionally well-written, personal, and informative, and gave me, as someone intimately involved with all things addiction for 30 years, fresh perspective. The fact that he seems to be currently deeply in love with an active addict may be motivation behind the piece, but it takes little away from the insights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [edits]
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  While we're talking about people who did bad things in the past and got a second chance... How about John Carmack? > As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of kids steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of Thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. John was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions 'no empathy for other human beings' and describes Carmack as 'a brain on legs'). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. Carmack's comments (from 1999): > I knew I wanted to work with computers from a very early age, but there were also a lot of other stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. > I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. > I went to a couple semesters of classes at the University of Missouri (UMKC), taking nothing but CS classes, but it just didn't seem all that worthwhile. In hindsight, I could have gotten more out of it than I did, but I hadn't acquired a really good attitude towards learning from all possible sources yet. > I dropped-out of college to start programming full time, but trying to do contract programming for the Apple II/IIGS post 1990 was not a good way to make money, and I only wound up with between $1k and $2k a month. Not having enough money is stressful, and I did some things I didn't want to. I wrote a numerology program for a couple hundred bucks one time... > Softdisk publishing finally convinced me to come down to Shreveport for an interview. I had been doing contract work for Jay Wilbur and Tom Hall, so I knew there were some pretty cool people there, but meeting John Romero and Lane Roath was what convinced me to take the job. Finally meeting a couple sharp programmers that did impressive things and had more experience than I did was great. > After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. I was programming, or reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking hour. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!). > I learned a huge amount in a short period of time, and that was probably a turning point for my personality. I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as being ignorant about various things, but after basically doubling my programming skills in the space of six months, I realized how relative it all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven years since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmac...
pcthrowaway 12y ago
yeah, let's not read the article on barriers to employment because of past offenses written by someone who is presumably trying to make it as a writer with a record of criminal offenses.
arsenide 12y ago
Why are you judging the merits of an article by the author and not the content?
- ars 12y ago
  Because if the subject matter is in a domain that is outside someone's expertise they don't really have a way to judge by the content. It's possible to make really good arguments for things that are simply untrue. So instead we judge by the author - i.e. is the writer at least trustworthy.
  - arsenide 12y ago
    I will certainly agree: there should be more skepticism for such at article by a known untrustworthy author. Does that mean we should immediately dismiss something written by him? Your advice is good to take in general: don't trust what you read without judging both the credentials of the writer and the content the writer is putting forth. But to dismiss it based only on the author is shortsighted. I see nothing in your reply specifically about the content of the article, does anything else truly matter? Sure, take the author's history and intentions into consideration, but at the end of the day the content is what matters.
Dylan16807 12y ago
What cyber stalking are you talking about? This page only talks about plagiarism and wikipedia vandalism. Making negative edits about people you don't like on wikipedia involves exactly zero stalking. Is information missing here? And it sounds like the 'plagiarism' was him using quotes he did not personally acquire, which is pretty minor and wouldn't turn me away from reading anything.
- emiliobumachar 12y ago
  Hypothetically, imagine gadders would now edit some public information about you with lies, because you criticized him. Would that not feel a little bit stalky?
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    So let's say we got in a big argument and then he went to my github profile and called me a poopy head and a bad coder. I would find that obnoxious, I would find it harassment if he kept doing it, I don't think I would find that stalky.
seivan 12y ago
The irony of you letting a man hang to dry in a post about atonement. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... C'mon dude.