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17. januar 2003
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Saddam calls Americans "new mongols"
Saddam has been giving a new war-rallying speech to the Iraqis, saying they are "determined to force the Mongols of our age to commit suicide at its gates."
It is worth noting that the Mongols actually destroyed Baghdad completely, ending the rule of its caliphate and its position as the capital of the Muslim world.
11:53:37 PM 
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This just in: women satisifed with "bad sex"
"A new study suggests sex researchers have been overestimating the prevalence of sexual problems in women for years - perhaps because they have been looking at things from a man's point of view. ... Beverly Whipple, president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, based in Allentown, Pa., said researchers who have studied women in the past based their findings on what is important to men: desire, arousal and orgasm." (CBSNews)
11:25:47 PM
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The Lutefisk Incident — Aftermath
Some of my writings and moods do not fit into the normal content of the Secular Blasphemy blog. Therefore, in a futile attempt to preserve what may be left of my sanity, and to totally ruin yours, I hereby proudly present a new category: The Lutefisk Incident - Aftermath.
10:42:42 PM
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Bush dispatches recordkeeping experts to Baghdad
After the latest recordkeeping gaffe in Iraq, where the country forgot to declare a number of chemical warfare ready missiles, the US administration has decided to send a number of its own experts on recordkeeping to the Gulf state. The expert group is headed by Prof. Thomas Butler, formerly at The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Texas.
10:03:33 PM
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Photographic proof of living dinosaurs
 Good christian scientists, out to prove that evilutionists (sic) are wrong, have been wandering around Africa looking for proof that dinosaurs still exist. God, apparently, would not allow any species to become extinct.
Previous attempts at looking for the elusive behemoths had been less than successful, apparently:
"There have been previous attempts to bring back hard evidence of living dinosaurs from Africa, including an expedition in 1920 by the Smithsonian Institute, during which four of the expedition members died under mysterious circumstances (the Smithsonian officially denies that any evidence of surviving dinosaurs was uncovered). The other attempts weren't much more successful, with only inconclusive results owning to the difficult conditions of the region, dinosaurian wiliness, and God's Will."
After a fanciful ride through the jungle (you have to read this), they finally came up with the photo on the right, obviously (!) an Apatosaurus.
Since true fanaticism is indistinguishable from a good parody, it actually took some time to be fairly certain that this is indeed the latter.
7:10:54 PM
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Baby boys give complicated births
"Mothers who claim that giving birth to a boy is a tougher job than bringing a girl into the world have been backed by statistical evidence in a study published in Saturday's British Medical Journal (BMJ)." (Discovery)
The real trouble with girls only start in their teens.
5:33:35 PM
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Pick one, please
"Baghdad downplayed the discovery of the warheads, saying the items did not constitute weapons of mass destruction and that they were "forgotten" materials." (CNN)
"But the Iraqi authorities say that these weapons were declared in the documents that they sent to the UN last December." (BBC News)
So which one is it?
5:17:22 PM
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US record trade deficit
Imports to the USA exceeded exports by a record $40.1bn in November. This puts increased pressure on the dollar, which continues sliding against the Euro. While this says something positive about American's buying power, it also shows declined domestic production. Some analysts believe the US GDP may even be declining.
Douglas at The Agora has some interesting comments on Bush's economic policy and its impact.
Of course, a weaker dollar, further damaged by the threat of war with Iraq, may go some way in helping the problem, making foreign goods more expensive in the US and making their exports more competitive.
4:00:20 PM
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New dømæin names
Email addresses and domain names on the Net allows only use of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. This means that many people across the world are unable to use their real names as email address, and many local words cannot be used as net addresses. Norway and Denmark, for example, have 3 extra letters at the end of the alphabet: Æ, Ø and Å, and these are used frequently in the language, to great frustration for some net users.
Verisign has now opened for using the local character sets for 350 languages in the .com and .net top-level domains.
To nobody's surprise: One of the first domains to be registered using the new features was Carlsberg registering www.øl.com, the Scandinavian word for beer. It may take some time before it works in people's browsers, though.
(From a Norwegian article in Nettavisen)
2:41:41 PM
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Argentina gets $1bn loan reprieve
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Argentina has reportedly agreed to roll over a $1bn loan repayment due today. The agreements, which details are yet not known, is yet to be approved by the IMF executive board, but few expect any problems there.
The IMF has been demanding serious structural changes in Argentina's financial sectors, and it seems likely that the deal includes some concessions. The deal will reschedule approcimately $5bn of loan repayments which were due ahead of April's presidential elections, leaving a new administration to deal with the unpopular decisions that must be made to satisfy international banking.
5:11:36 AM
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UN weapons inspectors finds missiles for chemical weapons
UN spokesmen say they have discovered about a dozen empty warheads that can be used to carry chemical warheads. It is so far unclear whether the missiles had actually ever been equipped with chemical warheads. Samples have been sent for analysis.
The weapons had not been declared to the UN.
2:12:53 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:36:58.
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