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7. januar 2003
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Terror police finds deadly poison in London
Anti-terror police arrested six Algerian men and confiscated an amount of the dangerous poison ricin. So far its not been revealed how much ricin was found in the apartment. Amateurs can create tiny amounts of the posion, but large quantities requires some expertise. And 'sources' don't fail to point out that ricin was also discovered at al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan.
11:29:07 PM 
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Obesity as bad as smoking
A Dutch study published in Annals of Internal Medicine finds that if you are obese at the age of 40, you lose up to seven years of your life expectancy. That makes obesity in that age as dangerous as smoking. Combined, obesity and smoking adds up to take 13 years off your life.
8:03:39 PM
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2004 watch: Gephardt will run, Daschle will not
On Monday, Dick Gephardt decided to join the Democratic hopefulls who plan to run for the US Presidency in 2004. In a decision that surprised many, US Senate minority leader today announced he will not run.
In politics, it is an age and a half until the election. 2002 mid-terms was what the British called a khaki election. In times of war, people have a tendency to rally around leaders, and besides the GOP is believed to have a higher credibility among voters on security issues. It's not always the economy, stupid.
In 2004, however, either Bush have successfully dealt with Iraq or not, the economy is likely to be a chief focus. And he should remember what happened to his father after Gulf War I.
7:39:36 PM
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F**ks before first date
"A rapist was caught in Chile after he asked for his victim's phone number so they could go on a proper date." (Ananova)
I love it when Darwin is proven right. One down, but many more to go.
5:23:41 PM
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And now for the nutty 2002 round-up...
For those who are sick and tired of "news of 2002" summaries in the normal media, a relief from the mundane and the sane can be found in AlterNet's "Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002."
To nobody's surprise, the 9/11 attacks are a backdrop for a prominent part of the most popular conspiracy theories. It seems that national trauma, like the JFK assassination, simply cannot be expected to pass by conspiracy theorists, no matter how.obvious the real facts are. The must be some hidden truth and agenda behind it, somewhere.
3:32:14 PM
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FBI manhunt for 5 arabs may have been caused by hoax
"Citing unnamed sources, the report said the informant identified as Michael John Hamdani, who was arrested in Canada, made up the story about 19 men who sought false passports in an attempt to get himself off the hook on criminal charges he was facing in the United States." (New York Times)
Deliberate false information by sources looking for favours is a serious problem for law enforcement everywhere, so it is really not easy to pin any blame on FBI for taking this seriously. I wonder, however, how much of the intelligence agencies will be clogged down by false and misleading information picked up by the Total Information Awareness system?
1:42:43 PM
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Kill Bill 
Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman (picture), ninja-style sword fights, snappy comments.
Do I have to say more? Watch the trailer (qt).
To be released: fall 2003.
Official website is kill-bill.com, but beware of fullscreen popup. I hate those, but the flash is rather neat.
And when I first saw the link, I for a minute thought it was another anti-Microsoft site.
11:46:57 AM
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Norwegian DVD 'hacker' acquitted on all charges
 Jon Lech Johansen (picture), the Norwegian teenager charged with breaking DVD encryption and distributing the DeCSS cracking software worldwide, won a total victory in an Oslo court this morning. Norwegian prosecutors acted on behalf of the powerful American entertainment industry, and the decision is a crushing defeat for both the prosecutor, the white-collar crime unit of the police and the entertainment industry. The judge ruled that Jon did nothing illegal.
The court also determined that 'hacking' DVDs legally obtained to watch them on non-authorised equipment is legal in Norway.
This is a massive victory for consumers against narrow industry interests. After lots of blows against the rights of consumers and net users over the last years, this was a rare victory of common sense. There is a limit to copyright law. At least there is in this country.
11:14:34 AM
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Total confused mess
Even in the days before Carnivore, and while Total Information Awareness was only an evil glimmer in the eye of Bush senior, there were rumours that the powers that be monitored Internet traffic for suspicious keywords. And, given the resources available to various government organisations dedicated to know as much as possible, that was a fair guess.
Anarchistic individuals tried to poke fun at it and choke the filters by putting lists of keywords in their email and usenet signatures, typically like this:
cia fbi jfk watergate onassis nsa roswell reagan assassin potatoe
and so on. You get the idea. Today we'd add Dubya, Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, misunderestimated, Saddam and anthrax.
For an extreme example of wannabe filter choke spam, check out this recent Usenet message.
However, anyone with experience in using search engines will also know why attempting to choke filters with spam will not work. The trick for making advanced searches is to exclude matches of some keywords. Choke spam simply gives itself away by using too many hot words (and quite a few quack words). People have a very naive view of what intelligence officers are doing.
Total Information Awareness was either a massive marketing flop or a very clever diversion (I guess the latter).
It is well known that it is often just as signifiacant that something is being said by a certain source than what is being said. It is called signal intelligence. In hindsight, the intelligence agencies knows that there was a clear increase in 'clutter' on suspicious channels before 9/11. Next time, they want to be able to respond before it happens. That is a genuine concern.
And while I am always suspicious of Big Brother-like structures, I actually think the civil liberties groups are overreacting. The fundamental problem in this case is the lack of confidence people have in the good motives of the US government and especially certain three-letter-acronym agencies. And rebuilding public trust in organisations that are and have to be fundamentally secretive would be a challenge for anyone, and one that Bush is unlikely to be up to. But given the alternative is a clueless and toothless intelligence system, what is worse?
11:07:05 AM
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Mean fake reality
As studies show Britain is becoming a more gentle, humane society, less prejudiced and more open-minded, TV games shows and reality TV is getting more and more mean. Stuart Jeffries investigates the phenomenon of mean TV in the Guardian.
9:52:06 AM
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Journalist says that cloning claims may be a hoax
Michael Guillen, the American science journalist who was given the task of confirming the cloning claims of the Raelian-owned research comany Clonaid, now suspends the investigation and says it is possible the claims are "an elaborate hoax". Researchers have had no access to the mother or alleged clone baby, and Gullen now says this may just be an eleborate publicity stunt to draw attention to the UFO sect.
Which is precisely what the Secular Blasphemer has stated all along.
There is one more possible motive here, of course. People are willing to pay big money for a clone. Wonder if they pay in advance?
7:18:59 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:36:33.
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