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29. januar 2003
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Bloom County and the golden age of American comics
 I was browsing through Berke Breathed's Bloom County Babylon, a massive collection of the absolute best of American comics, and it struck me that there is nobody I know today making a political commentary of comparable quality. Surely there is no lack of material; the Clinton and Bush years have provided raw material for endless stand up comedy acts and newspaper cartoons but not, really, quality comics.
 The last golden age of American comics is definately in the past. Among the best were Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larson's Far Side and Berke Breathed's worlds, Outland and Bloom County. Scott Adams' Dilbert is still doing fairly well. Bill Amend's Foxtrot likewise. But the ranks of successors are thin, indeed.
Berke Breathed's social and political commentary to the Reagan era was brilliant. I think that Breathed himself had a liberal bent, but what made his commentary better than the rest was his daring to question and ridicule both sides. Liberals were stereotyped along with the Moral Majority and the conservatives. Most of all, he told brilliant jokes, and created real characters you could laugh at and with. When I think about it, mostly at.
Frankly, I have no idea what Breathed has done since he wisely decided to end his comics adventures, while they were at their best still (the creator of Garfield: take notice!). I hope life is good for him, and that he still pokes good jokes at the powers that be.
11:44:53 PM 
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Picked apart
The Raven provides a brilliant analysis of Bush's State of the Union address. It's better than any other pundits I have seen dealing with it.
11:04:45 PM
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Patience
Go take a look at zombo.com and see how long it takes before you get it.
Don't blame me, blame Tim at FWTBT.
10:56:20 PM
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— Sect's alleged clone baby in Israel
The court case brought against Raelian owned Clonaid in Florida collapsed when Clonaid representatives asserted that the baby, 'Eve', is in Israel, outside the court's jurisdiction.
Since 'Eve' is almost certainly as fictuous as the woman she is nicknamed after, it is an easy task for Clonaid to 'move' her around the world as dictated by legal necessities.
In fact, this claim pretty much demonstrates that the whole clone story is a hoax. If 'Eve' existed, she could be easily identified on her date of birth and the publicly available information. It can't have been that many babies that moved with parents from the US to Israel in recent weeks. And I bet journalists are already pursuing that line of thought, and coming up with nothing.
PS: In dismissing the case, Circuit Judge John Frusciante warned Clonaid with the following words: ''You cannot pursue human cloning with impunity. All of us must not overlook the weakest among us.'' Can anyone explain me the logic behind those words?
9:43:06 PM
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You googled me: Bad day at work?
As I've said many times, google is a friend of bloggers. Not only is it an indespensable resource for finding news and facts for us when we write our articles, and when we search for illustrations for our articles (shhh!), google also gives blogs a very prominent showing on its search results.
Somebody in Germany, assumably, searched for a specific picture: bad day at work. The picture with that title exists on lots of sites. For some reason, he bumped into my site.
PS: if you haven't seen the picture, you should. It's good for a laugh, and if you like underwater pictures, you'll find a few quality links as well.
8:47:17 PM
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Why do the Arabs hate America?
A guest blogging by Winnie
It would be interested to know why Arabs call America "The Big Satan"? I have asked many friends this question and never got a satisfactory answer. Most answers are based on false accusations and the feelings of religious zealots or corrupt, non democratically elected regimes that like to divert attention away from their own domestic problems.
I think it is funny when people suggest that America wants to control ALL the oil. The arab nations used American technology and "know-how" to extract the oil which makes them very rich. In fact America buys most of the oil which makes them rich.
 America supports Israel! So what? USA also supports Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, OAE, Jordan, Morocco and many more. It supports these countries militarily, economically and with Aid assistance programmes. So the USA bombed and imposed sanctions against Libya because it blew up a Pan Am jet and supported world wide terror networks.
What else? It helped liberate Kuwait, with other Arab countries, against Iraq. It imposed sanctions against Iran after the Iranians held USA embassy staff hostages. Along with other European allies the USA tried peacekeeping in Beruit and suffered heavy casualties because of it. USA tried to bring humanitarian aid into Somalia and stop the Warlords from misusing it, didn't do a very good job but the thought was there.
The Anti-USA trend really kicked off when Iran had their revolution and hated the western, non-Islamic world. After all, the Shah was pro-west. After that it became popular amonst the other Mullahs to blame the west and in particular the USA. The USA supported Israel, it had to. It was being attacked by all its neighbours. The Arabs soon forgot that the USA had just supported Egypt against The British and French over the Suez Crisis. The USA imposed sanctions and threatened war with Britain and France if they didn't pull out of Egypt. The result being the withdrawl of British and French forces from Egypt.
I don't recall the USA having old colonies that abused the Arabs of the Middle East or North Africa. I could mention even more history but I think you get the point.
So can anyone justify to me why the Arabs hate the USA so much?
Winnie
(Mummy's Special Little Soldier)
7:56:39 PM
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Face it: you're an addict too!
Rob Rosenberger's Virus Myths not only laments the anti-virus industry and helps us laugh at it. He makes money selling merchendise about it, too.
4:44:55 PM
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Southern Africa: Malawi
 David Plotz of Slate has been travelling around Africa, taking pictures and commenting on them, and his last installment is about Malawi. The country is, as he observes, and we can see from the picture on the right, green. The country is soaked in water, sitting on Africa's third-largest lake, criss-crossed by rivers, and rain is abundant. So why is 3 of Malawi's 11 million people going hungry this year?
There are many facets to the explanation. The shortest answer is four letters: AIDS. Already, one in six of adult Malawians have HIV, and it will probably hit 30 or even 40 per cent like some of its neighbours. As people are getting weaker from AIDS and malnutrition, Malaria and tuberculosis hits even harder. The proportion of people even able to work in the fields fall lower every year, and the next generation grows up orphans, not even having learned the basics of agriculture needed to sustain their living. Malawi is very poor, unable to avoid the impending doom, and there is simply very little hope of avoiding a total collapse.
4:25:33 PM
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State of the Union
I noticed in particular the following from Bush' address:
"And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country - your enemy is ruling your country.
And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation."
To me, that sounds very much like a promise that this day is coming soon.
5:00:22 AM
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Bush-bashing
 I don't know who was the first to point out certain similarities between Dubya and chimps, but it's surely become a popular pastime to find pictures of Bush and match them to corresponding pictures of primates. Pretty funny too, the first time.
Webdesignlab has gone all the way with this little flash page. After this I think we can proclaim that line of thought over and done with. As if...
Even the joke about how cruel it is to the chimps is getting lame now.
1:42:11 AM
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Sharon and Likud wins crushing victory in Israeli election
 Early TV projections shows Ariel Sharon is the first incumbent prime minister to win an election in Israel since the 80s. Likud looks set to win 35 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and will be able to chose from coaltion partners to form a government.
The big loser is the Labour party and its leader Amram Mitzna (picture), which seems to make the worst election in the party's history. Most observers expect Mitzna will not survive as party leader after this disastrous result. He has ruled out Labour joining Sharon in a unity government, a decision some observers say cost Labour dearly.
Shinui, a populist secular party, looks set to become the election's second winner, becoming the third largest party in Knesset.
Likud's crushing victory is a resounding 'yes' to hardline policies towards the Palestinians. This again indicates we may soon have to write another tragic chapter in the history of the Middle East conflict, as both Israelis and Palestinians are polarised to the right and prefer military confrontation to negotiations.
12:36:49 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.03; 00:38:28.
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