| |
|
14. januar 2003
|
|
Picture of the Day
Hmm, I don't really need to comment on this, do I?
9:47:33 PM 
|
|
State of Education
Somebody at a message board took a genuine college level paper in biology and put it on the web (in acrobat format) so we could despair at the level of education. The topic is evolution, the instrument is very bad English.
Some favourite quotations:
If man evolved from apes where did the apes come from, and why are they still here?
and
If the climate is cold the parent will pass on mutated genes so that the offspring will have more fur, or if the climate is hot the parent will pass on genes so the offspring will have less fur.
and
I cannot see how mountains can just rise up from earthquakes, if that is true why aren't any mountains forming right now.
Good grief.
I assume this paper did not pass. I really wonder how this person passed high school to be allowed to take biology in college.
9:41:02 PM
|
|
The end was at hand!
 I suspect it was our own fault, for not paying attention to the warnings, and not even paying enough attention to notice it actually happening. I refer to the total collapse of the Internet last Saturday, on 01/11, thanks to a terrorist attack from Bin Laden's online suicide squads. It was the impeccable and accurate news source The Weekly World News that warned us, and I guess it's our own fault for not picking the tabloid up at the supermarket counter.
At least Rob Rosenberger at Virus Myths warned us on the day, and it was only my fault for picking it up from his mailing list this late. We are back to the stone age, folks. If you think you are reading this, you are hallucinating.
You see, this tabloid is not at all alone. Distiguished net.security experts agree: terrorists will destroy the internet, as Rob Rosenberger shows. Through massive distrubuted Denial of Service attacks, the terrorists will bring down our servers, our networks, our systems, and ping us back to the stone age. Health services, communications, food supply, the military, it will all collapse, thanks to Bin Laden's onslaught of mischievious tcp/ip packets.
If I don't sound like I am panicking, it is because I have heard it before. First time as a pre-schooler, growing up in a sect that predicted the fall of the world in 1975. My upbringing was basically founded on the premise of the imminent collapse of the world. When I left, and educated myself on the history of the world and in particular religion, I found out that there is a long history of imminent world collapses going back to and beyond the founders of Christianity, and while the technology has changed, two things have not: 1) the world will end very, very shortly; and 2) the predictions always failed.
And I discovered soon that doomsayers were not limited to the religious world. Economists, environmentalists and of course computer experts have adapted this curse of our civilisation to their cause: the world is ending! That is our Christian heritage, I guess: Both a fetish for the ending of the world, and a very short memory coupled with a willingness to rationalise the false predictions and buy into the next scare.
The last major installment of technical doom & gloom, eerily similar to the 'experts' just quoted by Rosenberger, was Y2K. You remember? Every electronical component from your PC's CPU down to the bits of silicon that runs your dishwasher and your car would cease to function as Dec 31, 1999 became Jan 1, 2000. Except it didn't.
Alas, doomsaying is safe. People have amazingly short memories, and, there is always an escape for the doomsayer: For example: "the end has not come yet but just you wait, it will come Very Soon Now." Or, "because we warned people, the disaster was averted. We are the heroes!"
Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
9:09:07 PM
|
|
Wife, 2 kids, for sale on EBay
A man who read the story about a town going on sale on the Net auction site EBay decided to go one better: after consulting with them, he tried to sell his family, wife and two children, for $5 million. He received no offers, but quite a bit of interest. Ebay officials eventually pulled the ad, saying "it is against company policy to sell human beings."
If you don't want to keep yours, why should anybody else want it?
7:23:25 PM
|
|
Iraq vs North Korea
 The nuclear standoff with North Korea has provided opponents to war with Iraq with a lot of new arguments. They point out that while Iraq may have a nuclear programme, NK actually has nukes, and have openly declared they want to make more. Iraq has readmitted weapons inspectors; NK has just expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and removed surveillance equipment.
On the face of it, however, this is simply the faulty argument of a criminal caught by the police, complaining that the police does not catch all criminals, and thus prosecution of him is unfair.
There are hard realities making a military response to NK infeasible. NK's massive army, long range missiles and artillery can wreak serious havoc on its neighbours, particularly South Korea. And China is always a wildcard. While being no friend of NK, China is unlikely to want to see the US attacking its neighbour and establish American supremacy on the Korean peninsula.
The US policy is not really inconsistent. Iraq is a feasible target for forced disarmament, with NK a military approach is far more risky.
There is also one major difference between Iraq and NK. Saddam Hussein (picture) demonstrated during the war with Iran and against the Kurds that he is an absolute believer in weapons of mass destruction as an active weapon. Experience has told that Iraq would be using any weapon at its disposal. Saddam Hussein has been absolutely ruthless in attacking any neighbourhood country it thinks it can take on. The same can not be said about the rulers of NK, whose chief ambition seems to be survival.
Only Gulf War I prevented the whole of the Arab peninsula to fall under Saddam Hussein's rule. Nothing suggests his ambitions have diminished, even though the hard realities may have dawned on him. He is actively, desperately pursuing nuclear capability and will have no qualms whatsoever about using such weapons. If he is willing to go down in flames, and he very well may be, he would want to be remembered as the great Arab hero, the man who nuked Israel.
4:16:18 PM
|
|
Apple whines about Microsoft settlement offer
Apple is complaining about Microsoft's $1.1 billion settlement of a California class-action case, alleging the plan to allow two-thirds of the unclaimed vouchers to go to schools is a sneaky way to get schools to obtain Microsoft products. Apple says Microsoft "should make the entire pool of unclaimed voucher funds available to our schools to purchase any technology products that best meet their needs."
It is a bit unclear what exactly Apple is whining about, as that is precisely what the settlement is about: both the claimants and the schools that get the unclaimed vouchers can use them for whatever computer products they want, also Apple's.
Inconsistently, Apple is also complaining that a third of the unclaimed vouchers are returned to Microsoft, insisting the whole unclaimed amount should go to schools. Now, which is it, Apple? You seem to dislike the idea of the vouchers going to schools in the first place, and now you want more for the schools?
It's always easy to be generous with other people's money.
3:49:57 PM
|
|
Venezuela spotlight
I am happy to see that Miguel's Devil's Excrement blog, reporting live from the streets in Venezuela, is getting some of the large audience it deserves. It's been almost an intimate secret of us Salon bloggers, but that is changing as Glenn Reynold's InstaPundit has discovered and written about it.
2:58:57 PM
|
|
Secret Zanu plan to oust Mugabe denied
Zanu-PF, the ruling party in Zimbabwe, is frantically denying opposition claims that a number of top officials had secret meetings with the opposition to secure a sefe retirement for President Robert Mugabe.
If the claim was correct, it shows that even leaders in Mugabe's own party realises he has "lost it" and is taking the country down a path of destruction. Considering that this plan, if it existed, broke through, one can wonder what plan B will be.
5:36:15 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:36:50.
|
|
|
