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2. januar 2003
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Do we want bomber pilots to be on speed?
 Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, who risks being court-martialed by the US Air Force for dropping a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan in April, is blaming the drugs.
The US military has for a time been using dexamphetamine for "fatigue management." The pilots' lawyers claim that the drug can impair judgment, and further they claim they were pressured to take the drug, something the Air Force denies. Further, the Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer Ferrau claims that the drugs have been "thoroughly tested."
I certainly understand the need for "fatigue management" on long missions, but it does make me uneasy to know that people operating these massive killer machines are high on speed. Of course, this line of defense for the pilots is rather self-serving, but it does raise questions. One question is: does air force pilots flying missions in the "war on drugs" use amphetamines? Do they see the irony here?
5:37:34 PM 
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Clones and Raelians
 The UFO sect known as the Realians have attracted much attention lately, after a research center owned by the sect claimed that the first human clone was born from its efforts. The sect traces its origin not further back than 1973, when the French journalist Claude Vorilhon (picture) received a 'revelation' from a master race arriving to Earth to tell him, chosen as a 'prophet,' about the true origins of humanity. Vorilhon was given the name Rael.
Basically, the Raelians have a doctrine system combining old traditional religious ideas with modern science. Rael argues that the creation mythos in Genesis was mistranslated; the Hebrew word translated God, Elohim, really refers to the extra-terrestrials, who created humans through genetic engineering. All religious revelation is a mythical approach to these truths, but after science discovered the DNA the 'masters' found the time was right to reveal the real truth to humanity. This was done, the sect says, through Rael.
The Raelians apparently do not hold any supernatural doctrines, only referring to scientific explanations. The sect's beliefs in future hopes and salvation is tied to scientific breakthroughs, especially in cloning and gene manipulation. Through cloning it will eventually be possible to attain immortality, the sect argues.
Thus, after "Dolly" the massive attention to cloning research was bound to propel the UFO sect into the limelight. With its leader being a journalist, it is no surprise they have done excellent PR work. Scientists remains deeply suspicious that Clonaid has really managed to clone a human being, and if the claim cannot be verified, this may well backfire for the sect. In fact, even if it against all odds actually have produced a clone, this may well lead to problems too, as the world's legislative bodies jump to ban human cloning.
3:49:53 PM
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How difficult can it be to avoid one ship?
 On December 14, the Norwegian car transporter ship Tricolor sank in the British channel after a collision with a container ship. Two days later, the wreck, which lays in shallow sea, was hit by the ship Nicola. Realising how dangerous the sunken Tricolor was, the French maritime authorities buoyed off the ship with five beacons, and put a navy ship on permanent patrol to warn other ships in the heavily trafficed area.
Amazingly, on New Years day the Turkish ship Vicky, carrying 70,000 tonnes of highly flammable gas oil, managed to strike the sunken vessel. According to French navy authorities, the ship's duty officer had failed to heed and follow the instructions from the navy ship, and obviously didn't discover the luminous buoys.
I propose alcohol tests on the duty officers. It is appaling that the world's oceans are full of an increasing ratio of utterly incompetent sailors, and the shipping companies add to the misery by cutting crew size and recruiting the cheapest staff possible.
2:16:05 PM
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Can chimps talk?
 An American research team claims, in a recent New Scientist article discussed in BBC, that the adult pygmy chimp Konzi has learned some language. According to the scientists, they discovered that the chimp, who already knows how to use symbols to communicate with humans, had developed some distinct sounds that consistently were used along with the same symbol.
What we have here is a basic one-to-one relationship between very basic symbols, like "yes" or "banana", and a sound. While interesting, it is a stretch to call it "language." So far, it seems unlikely that Konzi will reach even George Bush's level of linguistic sophistication.
10:12:00 AM
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The friendly welcoming committee
 Mostly, Salon bloggers are nice people. There is a tendency sometimes for the old being jealous at the new, especially if the newbies get more readers, but this has been mostly absent from the Salon blogs community in my experience.
Hugh at Standing Room Only is the big exception. One of the recurring features on his blog is a list of the new blogs where he tells why all of them are utterly crap. And nothing infuriates him more than a newbie getting more hits than himself, which, frankly, is bound to happen quite often.
I recently became aware of Hugh slamming a friend of mine, Tim at For Whom the Blog Tolls, in which I was mentioned, and which contained some false information. Here is his little entry:
For Whom The Blog Tolls - This has been a High Roller on the Rankings list thus far and when I went to check it out, I discovered it's apparently because it only shows one day at a time. Secular Blasphamy questioned Real Live Preacher about this posting method yet hasn't brought this matter up with his self-proclaimed "mate". The author is also associated with Jehovah's Witnesses as are several other Blogs on Salon. Why are JWs attracted to Salon? Is there something I'm missing? FWTBT hails from Canada and from what I've read concerns alot of snow and drinking. Note to Potential Bloggers - Using Blog in your title is not clever, no matter how you use it.
Note the simulated links. For someone using the web as a medium, Hugh bizarrely refuses to use hyperlinks in his blog text. I assume he is very scared of giving referral hits to blogs he considers inferior.
Hugh has his opinions about what is good style and what is not, and he's entiteled to them. I simply don't share his tastes and preferences. However, some comments to what he says are in order. To Hugh, formatting your blog to show only last day's entries on the first page is a ploy to get more hits. To the rest of us, it is an inconvenience. Which is why I adviced Preacher against it when his blog was new, and for the same reason I advised Tim about the same on the first day. What made Hugh assume I did not?
Hugh must be outright dense if he thinks that I am a Jehovah's Witness. I blog extensively about freethought and atheism issues, and I suppose I don't have to tell you the joke about what you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness and an atheist to make the normal readers realise that I am not, in fact, a JW. Neither is Tim. What we have in common, and the reason we know each other from some time back, is because we grew up in the JWs, and have later departed that sect.
9:25:05 AM
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Biggest box office bomb
The Hong Kong movie "Psychedelic Cop" failed to attract as many as 10 viewers and netted only £26 in one week, making it one of the biggest flops of all time.
Of course, this record and a supreme turkey status may ironically make the movie net quite a bit on video.
1:27:37 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:36:20.
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