3. januar 2003

New Year Blog If the first days of 2003 is any judge, it should be a good year on Salon blogs. I guess I should expand my reach beyond this island in the blogstream, but there really is sufficient good reading material here for me to keep track of. I often start at Raven, if I see his blog is updated, and now it is. Of the many interesting items that caught my attention: CNN has been firing some of its top anchors. Apparently, they are not done anything wrong, it is a strategical move by CNN away from in-depth coverage towards 'snappy live reports.' This is news MTV style, slicing and dicing world news into manageable pieces for an audience whose attention span is limited to 5 seconds. I prefer calling it a dumbing down process. And the reasons for getting a TV are one less. The Raven also covers the sensitive topic police profiling, and that is what Kriselda at Different Strings picks up. The idea of profiling, in particular racial profiling, makes most people uneasy, for a good reason. On the other hand, if a specific group of people are overwhelmingly involved in a type of crime, and the police are prohibited from using that piece of information in fighting crime, then police work will be less effective than it could be. This is a real life dilemma with no easy answers. Mark's Fried Green al-Qaedas must win the prize for the most varied blog around. Visit Mark's and you will be surprised. Mostly pleasantly. Some time back he added a persona to his blog authorship, Wendy, and her bimbo impersonations are fascinating. I hope she's not someone he knows. Speaking of which, he argues bad pitbull owners, not bad pitbulls, is the problem. Definately. I still miss some of the regulars in the new year. I am sure we'll see them soon. 9:20:43 PM    comment []

Electricity price hits the roof After little rain over the last months, and now very low temperatures, the price of Norwegian hydropower electricity keeps increasing. The latest record, for today, is NOK 0.804 ($0,12) per kilowatt/hour. The effective price for consumers will be around NOK 1.50 ($0.22). Consumer households can expect first-quarter bills in the range NOK 4,500 to 8,300 ($640-$1200). There is no sign that the price will be falling any time soon. And I am very glad that electricity and heat is included in my rent! 5:41:24 PM    comment []

— Female impotence "created" by pharmaceutical industry A recent article in the British Medical Journal, reported in CNN, accuses the pharmaceutical industry of manufacturing a disease called "female sexual dysfunction" and marketing it to prepare the audience for a drug for females corresponding to the success drug Viagra (picture). Australian medical journalist Ray Moynihan accuses the industry and researchers of a too cosy relationship, citing for example a controversial 1992 University of Chicago study that claimed 43 per cent of adult women suffered from sexual dysfunction. Rather than a medical condition, some researchers say, lack of sex drive in women is caused by stress, tiredness and threatening behaviour from their partners. There is also a well-known theory that sexual dysfunction in females is caused by eating wedding cake. 3:10:46 PM    comment []

Clone Wars, the sequel I was probably not the only one a little bit suspicious that Clonaid, the research institute owned by the sect the Raelians (Rael, picture) who claimed to have created the first ever human clone, was so willing to have the claims tested independently. This could mean, of course, that the girl 'Eve' is a genuine clone, but most experts have considered that rather unlikely. It could also mean that there is some clever scheme here to hold the media's attention for weeks, milking this story for all the PR value it has for a sect. Now the next act is playing out, and the move makes more sense. A lawyer in Florida, Bernard Siegel, has sued to have the unknown child & parents presented to a court to determine if the child is being exploited by Clonaid. Of course, as a reaction the parents are said to be very reluctant to reveal themselves to anyone, including the independent investigators, fearing they might end up in endless litigation and risk losing their daughter. Call me a cynic, but this is a bit too convenient. Now Clonaid and the Raelians can get away with not presenting the DNA evidence that 'Eve' indeed is a clone (that she indeed exists at all!), and at the same time they get the bonus that they are being persecuted by the authorities. If that wasn't enough: Clonaid now announces a second cloned child will be born in the next few days, this time in a 'less sensitive' country, in Europe. This sect knows how to keep the media's attention, that's for sure. 2:48:17 PM    comment []

And they flopped again... CSICOP's Skeptic Inquirer are doing at this time what the tabloids will never do for themselves: checking out what alleged psychics predicted for the year 2002. In hindsight, it is easy to summarise what they got right. Nothing. The psychics predicted for 2002 that the Superbowl would be cancelled half way, time travel would be invented, and Satan would be found working in a homeless shelter (huh?). Of course, no such luck. Lately, tabloids have become more reluctant to use such predictions, perhaps because some people actually check them out, and some tabloids that do use 'psychics,' use non-existant ones. I guess the paychech is lower, too. 12:42:37 PM    comment []

Orangutan Culture Culture, regional differences in aspects of learned social behaviour, have previously been demonstrated only in humans and chimps. A new study in Science suggests that also orangutans have culture. As with humans, differences increase with distance. 12:20:13 PM    comment []

Kissing Satan Goodnight David at No Code has been persuaded to post chapter two of his daughter's horror story "Kissing Satan Goodnight." It's definately worth a read. With  the snow and darkness here now, it is the right season for a scare. So, when is the next installment? 9:05:09 AM    comment []

Bigfoot lives on in popular lore I earlier wrote about the death of Ray Wallace, and the revelation from his sons that he had done an elaborate hoax that apparently gave rise to the popular stories about Bigfoot. To nobody's surprise, such facts do not deter the true believers, as the NYT explains. Even those who acknowledge the hoax are still adamant that somewhere, somehow, there is a real hairy creature behind the myths. 8:50:25 AM    comment []

The professor! Today would be the eleventy-first birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien. 5:54:40 AM    comment []

Wall Street begins 2003 with a bang Ignoring bad consumer confidence numbers, and emphasising very good manufacturing indeces, investors return to Wall Street with a surprising amount of confidence and optimism. On Jan 2, Dow Jones was up 3.19%, and Nasdaq 3.69%. 2:53:08 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.02.03; 00:36:22.