OK, so let him reproduce the memos on a typewriter and win the $37,000. . . (still waiting. . .)

Q: What's funnier than watching a clown hit himself in the face with a pie?

A: Watching him do it all over again!

time to MoveOn

This is an example of writing a lot, adding lots of references and diagrams, and hoping no one notices it's all garbage.

It's common in academia.

did anyone see Larry King last night, with the religious stuff.

the Jew talking about how he rejected secularism in college noted a verse in pslam that says 'without God there is no wisdom'

He said universities have tons of facts but no wisdom because of this, so true. And that he would rather have the first 100 names out of boston phone book run gov't. than the professors at Harvard.

They may be trying to start a myth, kind of like:

Bush's secret plan to draft all high schoolers
The SBVT have been totally discredited
Bush was AWOL
Bush's secret plan to destroy dairy farmers
Kerry is fit to be President

Intellectual dishonesty in a cloud of misdirection.

Nice try.

OT

Group holding Iraq hostages pays ‘tribute’ to French stand on Iraq

". The specific font used is from a typewriter family in common use since 1905 and a typewriter capable of producing the spacing has been available since 1944."

Really? We had word-wrap in 1944? How come nobody used it for the next forty-some years?

Ditto with proportional spacing. They had it for forty
years, but somehow nobody produced a document
in all those years (and that's millions, probably billions,
of documents) that had proporitional spacing?

Either every typist in the world was an incompetent
geek, or else the typewriters couldn't do what he is claiming they could do.

Dave the...

Don't forget the fledgling meme: Republicans want to legalize rape and control women's bodies.

I noted that none of the memos this guy "analyzed" were the one Charles blew up in the infamous flashing GIF. I suspect some PHD candidate knows his professor's politics well enough to figure this is a slam dunk winner...And all this bullhockey about fonts still doesn't address how General Staub could be pulling strings for GWB when the General had retired a year and a half before the date of the memo.

I used to think that only very special people could be college professors. Only the most educated, brillant, sharpest people could acheive such a position.

I know realize how wrong I was. The bar to get in isn't as high as I thought it was.

#10

Actually I just got my secret email from Halliburton on that.

Has nobody caught Charles's little joke? This professor has "a background in literature and creative writing." Now, isn't THAT appropriate...this guy is fully qualified in forging documents!

#12 Dave the...

It's actually a step down. :-(

creative writing?...creative imagination would be more fitting:

The professor's CV

certainly not the credentials of a document expert.

Sarosaide...the drink of the left. The more you drink the more
you...Allliiiccceee don't eat that...start seeing funny little
critters with top hats, very long ears, and pocket watches...

Kelley b

Let the Dems keep this issue alive as long as possible - most rational voters know by now that the docs are fake, so any attempt to glue legs back on this keeps the pressure on Rather and See B.S.

It is sad though that so many LLL's are willing to go down in self-immolation over this crap.

#16,

From the professor's CV:

Ph.D., University of New Mexico
Technical Communication and Critical Theory.
DISSERTATION: The Objective Metaphors: An Examination of Objects as Metaphors and Metaphors as Objects; 1994.

Apparently, he works in the New Mexico Dept of Redundancy.

Note that he's dodged the two most convincing bits of evidence: the exact match with line spacing and the centered header.

His text appears underneath the Killian memo text. I suspect he had to do this because if he overlaid the two it would show how off the line spacing is.

He punted entirely on the centered header. I wonder why?

#20 MarkD33

L.M.F.A.O.

I'll bet if the truth be shone he has some financial or political connection with a hienz foundation or soros' foundations

Good thing I'm doing this at work.

And what about the little animated comparison/overlay of the supposed Killian memo and the one done by you using MS Word, and how they are identical in every detail, including character style, character spacings, word spacings and word wrap? How does explain that?

I looked at his analysis and ho hum.

It might have been a whole lot more convincing if he had been working from an original instead of a PDF scanned from a FAX.

Now I'm no document expert but wouldn't that fact alone have to make you nervous about your analysis? From a PDF scanned from a FAX how in the h**l would you determine that a character shows signs of damage characteristic of a typewriter? Or maybe a few dropped pixels, just maybe, ya think? I guess the good Professor has never received a fax over a noisy phone line.

People been watching TV too much --- you know the shows where the CIA boffin 'enhances' the 20 pixels into a UK telephone number (and then the computer automatically identifies the owner and dials it too :-)

Seems a moot point at this stage to discuss how Microsoft Word existed in 1973.

The Earth is flat!

The Earth is flat!
 

Objects as Metaphors? Metaphors as Objects?

MoveOnLies.org

Now this is a mirror image of MoveOn...only it's evil doppleganger version...

Just a quick online search under "David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D."... just look what comes up:

[Link: www.blatanttruth.org...]
(Just go down to the Sunday, September 26, 2004 item titled "Republican Logic".)

[Link: crooksandliars.com...]
(This includes the professor's CV which ought to be fun.)

CV:
[Link: imrl.usu.edu...]

[Link: imrl.usu.edu...]
(This appears to be the professor's website. Apparently this guy considers himself some kind of artist... so do I, a bad one.)

Hey folks, this guy is really great... for me to poop on!

Peter

It amazes me that a newspaper reporter can't get their rump down to the print-rooms or the layout people and ask their own people. There's probably even a few employees who worked with (real!) moveable type and /or typewriters. But there's a wealth of info beneath the reporters' own noses.

Since nobody's ever seen the alleged originals (in fact, the concept of 'original document' seems to have vanished) the next best thing is experts on typeface. To the best of my knowlege, the most authoritative pool of typography experts in North America is at Adobe Systems in San Jose.

Just from curiousity, does Utah State U. even know that they're presenting this 'research'? Poor old Doc Hailey's out of his depth --his example of worn 'e' keys is contradicted by his very next example. Whatta hoot.

Does anyone see something wrong with Dr. Hailey's thesis?
"... I served in the U.S. military (Army) from 1963 to 1972. For five of those seven years I was an Army illustrator...
Another moonbat?

the problem with investigating an original is that BURKETT BURNED THEM IN THE KINKO"S PARKING LOT AFTER HE COPIED THEM BEFORE FAXING THEM TO SEE...BS, USA TODAY...AND WHOEVER ELSE

THERE ARE NO ORIGINALS

Oh and by the way I really didn't have sex with that woman. Ms Lewinski

#32

Don't ask them to do any subtraction.

Simple math confuses them. And math with dates...well, you can just forget about it.

My motto, "cogito ergo falsus sum," means "I think, therefor I am wrong." I say it often to remind myself that my opinions are always suspect; I am unqualified to judge the ideas and opinions of others. If I am unqualified, as far as I am concerned, so is anybody else. (That statement is made with the full knowledge that I am unqualified to make it.)

- David E. Hailey, Jr.
Assistant Professor
Professional Writing/Hypermedia
Utah State University

If any of you get accosted by a triple-L telling you how compelling this idiot's arguement is, just point out that his example Selectric font was GENERATED ON A COMPUTER, fer cryin' out loud. He never showed an exemplar from a genuine mechanical typewriter of that era--or any era--that matched the suspect memos, because there WASN'T ONE! And there isn't one. The $37k prize money is out there for anyone who can find one, and it will remain unclaimed.

I'm sure some of you who held college professors in relatively high esteem have had your eyes opened by this fiasco-upon-a-fiasco. I certainly hope so. The truth is, the majority of college professors teaching literature and creative writing are there because they couldn't MAKE it in the real world--or didn't want to try. There are exceptions, but most of them are social wash-outs who made a career of going to college and then staying there to teach rather than to face the harsh realities of life outside the masonry edifices. Their lives are insular; their perceptions distorted. Don't be fooled by the alphabet-soup after their names.

If evidence demonstrates that the memos were typewritten using a font usually available in the military, but less common among civilians, at least on this evidence they were right to air the memos

Get that? Had they been typed on a 70s typewriter more likely to be in military use, that evidence alone would have been sufficient to these people to air them.

That's how low their standards are. Not proof of authenticity, just lack of conclusive proof of forgery. Had the forger just used a old typewriter, they would have asked for no other proof, save evaluating the signature?

Lord help us, how many other frauds have been shown to us over the years based on their low "if it's possible it's true" standards?

Having a specialty in computers you would think that he would realize that the defects in the type he is looking at is due to the artifacting of the JPEG compression. Duh...

#20 MarkD33:

Apparently, he works in the New Mexico Dept of Redundancy.

That's not the name of the department. It's the New Mexico Department of Redundancy Department.

/this sarcasm tag intentionally left blank intentionally.

#32 - excellent catch, that's just sad to have in someone's CV/bio.

I hate to say this, but the reverse piling on of this is just silly at this point. If someone provides the document and wins the money, we will have a discussion on this - but for the moment, it's overwith. Are we going to have "experts" continue to be pulled out of the woodwork?

Note the obvious grammar error in the section of his analysis that trys to show how credible he is. Like CBS, he could have benefited from a little more care before publication.

In one case, the author assumes that the document was done in Times New Roman and continues by assuming that he can recreate the proportions of the memos.

Assumes he can recreate the proportions?

The ability of the military to produce the proportional text with a superscript “th” with a typewriter is beyond question.

Then DO it.

Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos, it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica.

With a computer. And I can point out several flaws. You had to compress the font for starters.

This is a comparison of direct matches that existed in both the Bush memo and comparable documents in our archive. Capitals are not compressed. Lower case characters are compressed, except the “m,” which is extended. The lower case “s” is doubly compressed. The majority of characters used in the Bush memo match with no manipulation beyond compression. The upper case R, however, needs a slight change to match.

In addition, I served in the U.S. military (Army) from 1963 to 1972. For five of those seven years I was an Army illustrator

Hmm..more lefty lib fuzzy math..

1972 - 1963 != 7

He shows one example in which he claims to have been able to "reproduce" the spacing of a memo, but he provides insufficient information to evaluate it. What word processor and font version (he calls it "Typewriter") did he use? Did he use automatic word wrapping? Did he make any line length adjustments? Really, pretty unprofessional performance for an academic. In any case, since he clearly produced it on a word processor, it doesn't offer any evidence that the original was produced on a 1972 vintage typewriter.

His analysis is based upon distinguishing subtle variations in a low-resolution digitized version, and somehow divining which are artifacts of reproduction and which are accurately reproduced from the original. I find his argument unconvincing. I think he's seeing faces in clouds. His methodology of choosing the "best" version of each character in the memos is fundamentally flawed. How do you identify the "best" version in an unbiased way? What are the criteria? The proper way to do this, by the way, would be to use an automated image averaging method to find the best alignment of all copies of a particular character and add them together.

His focus on the numeral "1" -- the numeral with the least number of identifying features-- is decidedly odd. I note that on my computer, at least, the digit "4" has a serif on the bottom in American Typewriter, while the 4 at the top of the memo does not.

#42 bohnsack

He also uses "affects" when I'm fairly certain he means "effects" but I'll let stupid lil' errors slide if the science of other was sound.

but the replication of affects are virtually exact.

His point about wear on the more used letters and not there on the less used letters interested me. In the midst of all the BS arguments FOR the docs, that one sounded reasonable, if true. A computer would not show more wear on common letters. But I just didn't see the proof of his hypothesis in the figures he shows.

He shows close ups of several "e"s and they do indeed have dots on the bottom. Had they shown the same wear that would have been something, especially if he had shown some other rarely used rounded letter, like a row of "q"s perhaps, without the dots. He shows some "o"s but in a different format (pixelated) so you can't compare.

And we he explains that his scanned and copied "t"s match the memos, I'm not sure if he's arguing that they are fake or real. :-)

Oh well, another day, more "fun with fonts."

tgibbs wrote:

I find his argument unconvincing. I think he's seeing faces in clouds.

It's worse than that -- it's deliberately fraudulent. See my latest post.

The wear indicators our learned professor writes about could have easily been cause by the form being sent by a heavily used facsimile machine that had dirty/faulty image sensor and/or received by a facsimile machine that required a new cartridge.

Ha...I linked to the wizbang site on the Bill Burkett blog site...and about 10 seconds later it was deleted!! The administrator of that site(who comments often)must be none other than Nicki Burkett, because she refers to "my husband" and "we"...I would love to see this site go down...

Now might be a good time to send a question to the President of Utah State asking him about his position on Dr. Hailey's fraud.

Perhaps more telling, this section of his expose:

Finally, I have extensive experience using computers to manage and manipulate images, including type.

Heh. Indeed.

This is so SWEET! Nothing getting past the blogkings! What will the left do now??? Play fair maybe?
Oh its good to be king!

When I first read the title of this thread I thought it was about Kerry's tan!

#36 me

Correct link is here.

#37

He never showed an exemplar from a genuine mechanical typewriter of that era--or any era--that matched the suspect memos, because there WASN'T ONE! And there isn't one.

With all due respect, you're completely wrong on this...

A limited number of typewriters capable of doing all of the things required to produce the documents were hand crafted in a hooch inside Cambodia back in the late 60's...

The CIA even authorized a secret mission as a joint-op between the USN and the TANG to go deep inside Cambodia to get one... You may even have heard about that mission, but not all of the details...

JM