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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrific story. Not terrific for any parties involved, but a well-written and well-told _story_. For any of you that just skimmed it - it's worth going back and reading the whole thing.

With lots of journalism these days it's terribly easy to give up on the storytelling part and stick to dry facts. Sometimes the case calls for that, but other times the weaving of the tale can be the best part.

Here, the reader is brought along for the ride - we're led to believe one version, then learn some dramatic differences that arose during the trial. Fun and worthwhile.

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If you like this kind of thing, you may enjoy http://www.longform.org/ or one of the other similar sites that highlight long form journalism.

You might also like the Fiddler in the Subway, a collection of articles by Gene Weingarten

Or http://thefeature.net. - formerly Givemesomethingtoread. This is Marco's, or is associated with him somehow. It has great stories, and they tend to be the right length for the evening situation where lights are out, but I want to read before I sleep.

You might also like TheBrowser.com which is a collection of great reads sorted by topics.

Another: http://www.aldaily.com/

Oddly enough it reminds me of the better articles in Vanity Fair. Sadly, they're still mostly offline, but their less fluffy serious and political pieces are well worth it.

I must admit I don't get the appeal. What is there to learn from it? Seems like a pretty standard scenario (internet lure)?

Not every piece of writing is an instruction manual.

On HN it tends to be, though. I think it is kind of implied by "news" which are things one didn't know before reading about them.

Don't watch the "news" on TV then. It's the same stuff your grandparents watched when they were young.

I don't

No, but the best are (even/esp fiction).

Retelling a tired, old, heard a million times plot requires superlative writing or at least something knew to be entertaining. (or I guess bad memory on reader's part).

Yeah, I felt the same. I can appreciate good writing, but from the first paragraph this screamed to me a story about how someone actually fell for one of those scams. Maybe I should be happy that it's so rare that people fall for them that it's noteworthy when someone does.

I think the unique thing about this story is that we don't know for sure that he "fell" for it...or, at least we don't know what he fell for, exactly.

There's the simplest explanation: that he, like the archetypical older, single, naive man he seems to be, fell for an online scam.

But most online scams don't end up with people in a foreign prison. The prosecutors argued successfully that he knew what he was doing, and the texts shown as evidence seem to indicate that he knew something.

But how much was that something? Did he go through the scheme because he believed his online lover was real and that this was just a task to prove his worth to her (and get them some money)? Or did he know everything? That is, he needed money and he figured that, unlike all those other dumb drug mules, he could use his history of seeming like an aloof nerd and make the case that he "accidentally" smuggled drugs across the border.

Layered on top of this is that we're reading this after he's been sentenced. He of course doesn't want to say anything revealing until he's out of jail, but he's retelling this crazy story even after it's failed in court. Which seems to indicate that he actually was bamboozled...and yet, what about those text messages? What about all those days in the airport, waiting for the e-ticket to Brussels that arrived too late? He never once was curious what was in the bag? Even the idiots in Dumb and Dumber looked in the bag.

This story is fascinating because I'm sure anyone who knows the professor even on a casual basis could spend hours at the dinner table trying to untwist the WTFs. It's a particularly great story because there are so many loose ends, but they are ends that are loose for very understandable reasons.

I thought the article said he did look in the bag, it was empty and he filled it with laundry? Presumably it was in the lining, handle, etc. But I was thinking the same as you about the rest, hard to know what to believe.

I was wary of the elderly on-line scam defence tactic. He spent a significant time on the internet and was familiar with electronic communications. And it took me only a few seconds to find out that lived in L.A. at the time of the scam. That was less than basic due diligence.

His "greatest dream" was to win a Nobel by factually verifying "through experimentation" an amazing prediction. Any great scientist must balance the odds of failure against the price of failure and he seems to have forgotten basic methods during that step in this particular experiment.

Two kilos? Heavy bag, for being empty.

I don't know if you would notice it. A typical lightweight carry-on piece of luggage is 3-5 kilos empty.

Or is the internet lure scenario so "standard" that it can be used as a defense when caught smuggling drugs?

Is that what the story suggests? My impression was that it concludes that the prof probably knew he was smuggling drugs, but was still doing it for his love interest?

If you didn't learn from an experience, chances are high the blame lies with you and not the experience.

Here are some things you can easily learn from this article…

"Smart" people are easily duped.

Things which seem obvious at first are often less obvious -- did you originally assume he was innocent, a bumbling professor? What about after the texts? Did you believe he was innocent then? Did you WANT to?

What is it that kept you reading the whole story? Something the author did? A technique you could use yourself?

Etc etc etc etc. If you expect "learnings" to present themselves to you on a plate, labeled "Learnings," pre-selected and pre-digested for you, you will never become as wise as you could.

So basically everything is Hacker News?

Agreed! Amazingly the "twist" doesn't appear until after around 4300 words -- which were themselves captivating even without yet encountering the twist!

I think twist is inaccurate. More like it veers you from strongly believing one side, back to feeling uncertain about which side to believe.

Great story but also captivating title, I was hooked the moment I read the title and the idea of it. This is writing.

20 minutes later still sitting in my shower robe =)

Agreed, this is the best thing I've read on a newspaper site in as long as I can remember. What a story. True journalism at work.

I'm also amazed by the work done by the journalist into this article over a quite long period of time, the interviews, the fact-checking, ... It's a bit sad that content on most blogs or even respected papers is written several orders of magnitudes faster.

This was definitely well-written, and very enjoyable to read. But I don't think it was true journalism. The story was manipulated to show first one side, then the other, then to leave the reader hanging in the balance. I can appreciate the writing skill to do that, but I'm still left wondering whether some information was sacrificed to achieve it.

HN commenters have come up with some probable scenarios (my favorite is that he knew there were drugs but really thought Denise was real [1]), and I would think a more journalistic piece would explore those. Obviously, the writer can't put in all the details from months of research, but can give scenarios that seem plausible given those details.

Finally, I'm surprised there was no research into who the con men were. Maybe it's dangerous to investigate that, but it still seems like a totally one-sided story if he was conned, but nobody is trying to figure out who did it. So in the end, I think the entertainment value was higher than the news value or even the investigative reporting value.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5344496

>> The story was manipulated to show first one side, then the other, then to leave the reader hanging in the balance.

This is true, but this is always true. The idea of pure journalism, imo, of a story presented without artifice or bias, is an illusion. A dry style with a linear presentation of facts shorn of judgement and opinion is itself an artifice. It just happens to be an artifice that has, by cultural convention, branded itself as "true" and "objective."

I don't think recasting this story in such a style would have provided much new information or left me with a clearer picture of what had actually happened. But I think quite a bit would be lost.

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