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9. desember 2002
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Troops take Venezuelan Fuel Plants
In a further escalation of the conflict in Venezuela, national guard troops have taken over petrol distribution plants across the country. Today, bank employees joined the strike which is about to paralyse the country. Oil exports, the economic lifeblood of Venezuela, are already stopped.
Protesters demand the resignation of President Chavez or at least early elections.
11:11:21 PM 
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I'm a fan!
I have been listening to The Tea Party quite a bit lately, thanks to my friend George. I strongly recommend checking them out. The music is intelligent and great, and for literature and mythology buffs there are lots of esoteric references in the lyrics.
8:33:28 PM
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North Korea
The Guardian kicks off a week-long major feature on North Korea today. I have enjoyed their detailed feature articles before, and this introduction certainly indicates I will not be disappointed.
3:37:48 PM
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Mozilla on Trial
 I got one popup too many today, and decided to download and install the Mozilla browser. It supports a number of features that are pretty neat, including popup blocking and refusing to let scripts resize windows.
However, Mozilla failed to import my IE favorites. More critically, it does not support the control that allows me to use the wysiwyg feature with Radio (the blogging software). Right now I have both IE and Mozilla open, and there are no apparent problems, but it sorta defeats the purpose of the switch.
Freaky: When I added a bookmark to my blog (this page) with drag & drop, the name automatically chosen was "Secular Blasphemy (my BLOG)". So how did Mozilla know this was my blog???
2:55:24 PM
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Trial against DeCSS programmer begins
 The trial against Jon Lech Johansen (picture), now 18, the Norwegian who became net.famous for his part in cracking the DVD access protection scheme, started in Oslo today. Not surprisingly, the teenager called "DVD-Jon" by Norwegian media pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecutor and the white-collar crime unit of the police have received harsh criticism from rights advocates in Norway for giving in to pressure from the American entertainment industry. Norway has no real equivalent to the American DMA, only a normal copyright law, and many legal experts have expressed puzzlement with the legal work done by the prosecutor.
The small program DeCSS that Jon helped write and distribute is able to break the access protection on DVDs, allowing people to play the movies they have legally obtained on non-approved equipment. Jon, a Linux user, claims his primary motive for cracking the code ("surprisingly easy") was to be able to play his legally bought DVDs on his own PC, without buying a DVD player. The entertainment industry says that DeCSS also allows illegal copying and distribution of movies, violating their legal rights.
The copyright laws, especially the draconian DMA, is one example of a law passed through heavy industry lobbying that has zero support in the population at large. Calling unauthorised copying 'theft' is simply disingenious, considering that the process leaves the original behind, unlike the activity people normally consider theft. I have never ever met a PC users who did not accept copying of software, music and movies, as long as it was done non-commercially. That includes a cop who is a member of the same white-collar unit that is now prosecuting Jon; he merely expressed with some regret that it would be a bit dodgy to keep illegally copied software on his police PC. When the law is so out of touch with the population, it cannot help undermining the respect for lawgivers. Respect for the entertainment industry nobody had to begin with. There are some people who just look too ridiculous when they try to hold the moral high ground.
1:38:31 PM
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NASA: Mars probably has water, but it is frozen
New findings by NASA suggests that while there is water on Mars, it is frozen. NASA has not found evidence water has ever been free-flowing to any significant degree in the past, undermining the hypothesis that Mars was once a warm place hospitable to life.
10:55:36 AM
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Why skeptics should debunk crackpot ideas
It's not popular being a naysayer. I often hear complaints by people who may or may not themselves believe in various pseudo-scientific theories or outright crackpot ideas, and the consensus seems to be that it is not polite to debunk ideas that are near and dear to people..
Not polite, maybe. But necessary.
We have a civilisation built on science and technology, and we're having a population that gets more and more alientated from the hardcore of reality, believing all sorts of wacky things: creationism, UFO theories, homeopathy, conspiracy theories, astrology, you name it. Ideas lead to actions. If you have a population of irrational and ignorant people, they make irrational choices most of the time. Like refusing lifesaving medical treatment for crackpot ideas or prayer or whatever.
A lot of serious decisions comes down to knowledge of some complicated facts. Think environmental issues, for example. People making these decisions are mostly lawyers and economists, who don't have a smattering of an idea what it is about, and thanks to the negative rap science gets in the mainstream media (journalists, for one, are almost always scientifically near-illiterate), politicians are less and less likely to listen to scientists.
I think, in fact, scientists should say loud and clear what is crackpot ideas and why they are crackpot ideas. Critical thinking is a crucial quality in the modern world that is more and more lacking of it.
4:39:14 AM
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A reaction to a reaction
I am always skeptical to any area of thought or art that is prefixed with "post-". After all, it is defined negatively, as to what it is not, instead of what it actually is supposed to accomplish. One day I might start to rave and rant about my deep contempt for post-modernism.
 Be that as it may, I greatly enjoyed reading Tamar at Zoe's Human getting all worked up about Post-Colonialism. Anthropology and all related fields, including mine (history of religions, a potpourri of all humanistic arts and social sciences as it applies to the study of religion) has been in a deep crisis for decades, born from bad conscience over the role it played in imperialism and colonialism (picture: David Livingstone). I don't disagree that some soul-searching were in order, but sometimes the pendelum swings too far back.
The blanket accusation of western-centrisism in studies of third world cultures is often vaguely unfair. If what "western-centric" scholars say is factually wrong, by all means, it should be criticised on that. Such labels smacks too much of an ad hominem to me.
If I wanted to provoke, and I always do, I could add there is actually some basis for western-centricism in science and scholarly studies. Like it or not, it is a western invention. The science, scholarship and technology that the whole world benefits from today is indeed based on the industrial revolution that happened in Europe, in fact Britain. There are disciplines for understanding cultures that were developed here, and they are applied to all different cultures. How successful these methods are is subject to debate, but there is not one "western way" and one "oriental way" to do scholarly studies in the humanities. There is one humanity, after all, and we are all in it, studying ourselves.
Likewise, there is only one science, that happens to have been invented in the west, and it is my strong opinion that this is by far the best instrument for finding truths that humans have ever developed. The truth is the truth, no matter who states the fact.
3:30:04 AM
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Fake for fakers
The misnomer of the decade must be "Reality TV." Fox TV (who else?) has decided on a new scheme on the theme of "who wants to marry a millionnaire": Twenty gold diggers courting Joe Millionnaire in luxurious surroundings in France. In the end, he picks one "lucky winner." The punchline? Then he'd reveal to her that he is not at all a millionaire, but a normal guy with a nominal income. The TV audience knows this the whole time.
Any comments necessary? I am certainly not a puritan, and I think people should be allowed to watch whatever they want to see. I just think this is sick.
2:53:10 AM
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Cold!
-7 C outside here now, (21F). Quite chilly, we call that.
And electricity prices are going through the roof, since there have been very little rain this year (Norway is almost 100% hydropower). The good.news for me is that my rent contract has electricity and heat included. Yay!
12:06:10 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.01.03; 04:00:00.
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