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29. november 2002
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No Smoking, please. We're Norwegian.
 The government in Norway has proposed a law banning all smoking in indoor public areas, including bars and restaurants, by 2004. If passed, Norway will be the first country in the world to have such a law.
Currently, restaurants and bars are required to keep half the seats reserved for non-smokers. Guess which seats are always taken up first? Bingo! The smoker section is generally full while hardly anyone sits in the non-smoking section. Opinion polls suggest half of those who go to restaurants and bars want to smoke. Nobody prevents anyone from setting up non-smoking bars. Of course nobody would use them, not even non-smokers.
9:19:55 PM 
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Sw€d€n?
The euro (€) is the currency in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. In September 2003 Sweden, who is a member of the EU, will have a referendum on whether the country will join the euro zone. Of EU countries, only the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have so far declined to join the euro cooperation.
Opinion polls suggests a close race, but there are lots of campaigning to be done between now and September.
9:09:02 PM
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Talk.Origins for  Cool Site
One of my absolute favourite sites on the Net is the Talk.Origins archive, which is essentially all you ever wanted to know about how life evolved on this planet, and how we know that is a fact.
I have been a frequent reader of that site since it was an ftp site with text files, before the web.
It's now nominated for Cool Site of the Month. If you feel like I do, please vote for it.
5:32:33 PM
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I would take that sign seriously!
From HumorShack.
12:53:39 PM
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Blaming the Victim: Aftermath of Nigerian Miss World Fiasco
The violent riots in Nigeria were at least partly triggered by the presence of the Miss World pageant. The direct cause for the explosion was some remarks by a journalist that were considered offensive to conservative Muslems.
Some feminists in the west blamed the Miss World contest. One even stated that "these girls will be wearing swim wear dripping with blood." The president of Nigeria blamed "irresponsible journalism." The female journalist responsible for the offending article, not a Muslem, has supposedly fled to the US, after a fatwa was issued encouraging Muslems everywhere to kill her (later annulled by a body of Nigerian clerics).
 A heated debate followed whether you can really blame the media or the pageant for the violent conduct of extremists. What really counts against those who want to blame the pageant was that I failed to see them warning before the fact that organising Miss World in a religiously divided, volatile country was irresponsible. Hindsight is always 20/20. After all, the direct reason Nigeria was supposed to arrange Miss World 2002 was that Agbani Daregbo (picture) of Nigeria won the title in 2001. Nigeria was thus a natural choice, and the authorities warmly welcomed the pageant.
The "blame" debate follows a well known pattern. And, as is often the case, it is a discussion of what you mean by 'blaming' and 'causing.' Consider a local example. A chief of police recently caused an outcry from feminists by stating that some women should be a bit smarter and not get into situations where they risked being raped, like going home with an unknown man. Immediately he was accused of blaming the victim.
Now, if this was not about an emotional subject like sex and rape, I doubt anyone would have reacted. If someone points out that it is unwise to flaunt a fat wallet in a shady bar, I doubt many would say he or she was 'blaming the victim' if the person was later mugged.
There are two kinds of responsibility: a moral responsibility, where you have done something ethically wrong and suffer the consequences, and a causal responsibility, where you may have done something unwise but not ethically wrong. It is totally clear that a woman acting 'provocatively' (whatever that may mean) or a man flautning a fat wallet in a shady area has no moral responsibility if they are subject to a crime. The moral blame for a rape or a mugging rests solely with the criminal, and any claim of "provocation" should be firmly rejected as even a mitigating circumstance.
Yet, it must still be possible to argue that since we don't live in an ideal world, and there exists religious fanatics, predatory men and muggers, it is wise to take certain precautions.
Whether that includes not arranging beauty pageants in Muslim countries is of course another debate entirely. I don't see the justification for requiring half a country's population to walk on eggshells to avoid provoking an angry, deranged minority who will resort to the most extreme acts of violence at the drop of a hat. I can understand the discomfort most Nigerians will have these days with the humiliation their country experienced. I don't at all understand the so-called liberal Muslems and their pathetically cowardly leftist allies in the west who call the Miss World pageant a 'provocation.' Rather, the extemists seem to have been all-too-eager to allow themselves to be provoced. I don't doubt for a second that the offending newspaper article was merely a convenient excuse for radical islamists in Nigeria to cause the riots.
Yet, for outsiders, the whole tragedy serves as a warning. You don't flaunt your fat wallet in a shady neighbourgood, and you don't show scantily clad women in a country with a strong presence of Islamists without expecting serious trouble. That is the sad state of affairs, as long as extremists persist in not allowing others the freedom to make different choices for how to live their lives.
12:33:01 PM
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A man's World, but which men?
Lisa Gournsey, who actually has a not-too-frequently updated blog in our neighbourhood, has written a piece in The New York Times on blogging. Her focus is, as you'd expect from the NYT, gender roles in blogging. She points out a rather undeniable fact: the majority of bloggers are male.
What is pretty strange, however, is her selection of examples of male bloggers:
"Andrew Sullivan, a writer; Scott Rosenberg, the managing editor of Salon.com; Glenn Reynolds, the force behind Instapundit.com; and Jim Romenesko, a monitor of the media."
By all means, no disrespect to these gentlemen, but they are professional journalists and editors. They are, in fact, her collegues, which explains why she knew about them. And that is exactly what blogging is not about. Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with professionals blogging, too, but what is interesting about the whole phenomenon of blogging is that normal people, who are not paid to write, are able to find an audience for their opinions.
You don't need to be famous, you don't need a degree in journalism, you don't need to sell your pieces to an editor, and you don't even need much of a clue. Still, you can be heard, or read, and the quality of your writing (and, arguably, marketing) is what decides whether you get a readership or not.
And I don't think the audience, men or women, check out whether the author of a blog is male or female before they decide if they like it. And that is the reason many of the most popular blogs on Salon (including the most popular) are written by women.
6:39:18 AM
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Swiss Institute Says Bin Laden Tape is Fake
 Just when the world was getting used to the idea that the recent Bin Laden tape is authentic, and the world's most wanted man is alive and well, a Swiss research institute says it is 95% certain it is not authentic.
The Director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, Professor Herve Bourlard, is a well-renowed expert in voice recognition. He contradicts American officials who have held that it is probable that the tape's voice really was Bin Laden's.
6:22:46 AM
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Sharon Reelected as Likud Leader
Ariel Sharon, for the occasion the moderate party leader in the Israeli Likud party, won the primary against Binyamin Netanyahu with a 20 per cent margin. Likud is leading the polls against the Labour party, and Sharon is thus highly likely to be reelected as prime minister.
It does indicate that Israel has taken a huge step to the right, doesn't it? Incidentally, while Netanyahu came across as a hardliner, what may have made him unacceptable to many Likud voters is that he has a reputation for always bowing out to American pressure.
4:05:58 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.12.02; 02:52:36.
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