10. mars 2003

Hawks cooling down Mickey Kaus mentions a number of "hawks" on Iraq that seems to be getting cold feet, but what I find even more interesting is the significant group of what he calls "He's-Botching-It Hawks," that is the pro-war, anti-Bush camp. That is more or less the line I've been on the whole time.  It must be worrisome that so many allies that agree with the Bush administration's basic priorities and security policies nevertheless thinks Bush has done a horrible job, needlessly alienating a lot of potential allies. I'll concede one point to Kaus, though. It is hard to see that diplomatic finesse from the US administration would have brought the French around to the pro-war camp. Neither would it prevent a large showing in anti-war demonstrations around the world. There was, after all, serious opposition on the left even to the Kosovo war, and Clinton was about as popular as a US president can realistically expect to be in Europe. However, a showing of diplomacy and tact from the current administration would make Europeans that are sympathetic to the American policies, like me, less emberrassed about the fact that we have to agree with Bush. 10:41:05 PM    comment []

Sinking of Tamil ship off Sri Lanka threatens peace The Sri Lankan navy sunk a Tamil Tiger merchant ship in international waters off Sri Lanka, and the Tigers protest saying this will have far-reaching consequences for the peace process. Both sides blame the other for the incidents, and the international ceasefire monitors have not yet issued a ruling. This, and a comparable incident last month when three rebel arms smugglers committed suicude when monitors wanted to board their ship, threatens teh fragile peace deal between the longt-ime warring fractions. 9:14:55 PM    comment []

— White House planning terror court case to have Bush reelected The US currently has four top al Qaeda operatives in custody, and possibly more to come. What are the US going to do with them? Officials are hinting that the Bush administration is planning a massive 9/11 terror conspiracy trial, smack in the middle of the '04 presidential election campaign. 8:32:50 PM    comment []

Car lovers see vehicles as faces "Men who are fanatical about cars identify vehicles using the same brain circuitry used to recognise faces, new research shows." (New Scientist) Anyone listening to car lovers have known this to be the case for a long time. 5:46:21 PM    comment []

Russia will veto Russia has stated that it will veto the draft resolution that gives Iraq until March 17 to disarm. I suggest that France, Russia and possibly China have agreed that all three should veto the resolution, to take away the spotlight from either one of them. A veto will at any rate be a serious concern for relationship between that country and the US. 5:15:54 PM    comment []

Study: Children who enjoy violent TV grows up to be aggressive and violent Most news sources carried the story about a recent study published in Developmental Psychology, which concluded that there is a relationship between watching violent TV shows in childhood and being aggressive and violent when adult. Some news sources carried the amusing fact that for the intents of this study, cartoons like Roadrunner were equally violent as Dirty Harry. There has been a large number of such studies, and they all stumble on the same methodological problem: How can we know that exposure to violence in entertainment makes people more aggressive, as opposed to people who are more aggressive choosing to watch violent TV shows? Apparently, the study answers the crucial quation with a bold assertion: ""It is more plausible that exposure to TV violence increases aggression than that aggression increases TV-violence viewing," Huesmann said in a statement." Now, how exactly did he find out that? No answer. What many news stories did pick up, but a few missed, was that the level of violence was not really important. What was the deciding effect was that children liked the violent shows they watched, and that they identified positively with the perpetrator of violence. Now, doesn't that flat-out contradict Rowell Huesmann's claim above? Isn't it possible that children who likes violent shows are prone to be aggressive themselves? If that question isn't answered with facts, the new study really doesn't tell us very much we did not know. The article itself is available from Development Psychology in PDF format here. A cursory reading did not give any further clue to how Huesmann reached his conclusion. What is interesting, however, is that he asserts that a relationship between entertainment violence and real violence has been "established", which was new to me. And to bolster that claim, Huesmann referred to earlier studies by... Huesmann. Ah, that settles it, then. 5:02:58 PM    comment []

2 ENTER 2 + I try to always keep my HP48GX calculator within reach. These days, I admittedly use it more for simple artithemtics and unit conversion (very useful when you talk to Americans a lot, who have a perverted measurement system, or lack thereof) than for matrix math. MY 48GX was the friend that saw me through math at business school. During exams, I just put it on the desk, and it rolled over to my test paper and solved it all by itself. Almost. It was for a long time been the most powerful calculator in the world. Naturally, when it was overtook, it was by the HP 49 series. What reminded me about how powerful this little thing is was a browsing through the HP48 Software Archive (which also contains software for other HP calculators). Of course you find programs for every mathematical or engineering problem on this side of the universe. That is what you expect. The cool thing is that these calculators also have a vast number of non-math programs, including games. It really blew me away back then to find someone had implemented the classic Lemmings for it. 3:28:09 PM    comment []

History of the UN veto BBC News has an informative overview of how the five permanent members of the UN Security Council has historically used their veto powers. The far most frequent user of the veto by far, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Russia has not used the veto more than twice. The UK and France has historically used its veto powers along with the US, and then in relation to former colonies. China used its powers only five times, and one of them was when Taiwan occupied its chair. The United States has used the veto 76 times, 35 of them to block criticism of Israel. The last time was a condemantion of Israel's killing of UN employees and destruction of a World Food Programme warehouse. The US has also vetoed 10 resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa. 3:08:45 PM    comment []

Picasso metamorphosis Picasso's famous distorted faces is the topic of a large exhibit through May 18 in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain. The exhibit "Picasso: From Caricature to the Metamorphosis of Style" allows the public to view more than 400 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs all through Picasso's career. Picasso's well-known distorted faces and other body parts has been controversial from the start, and art experts are still debating the significance of Picasso's "simple" caricature style. The master's use of humour and horror still has the ability to captivate an audience. 2:17:07 PM    comment []

Iraqis tried to surrender before war started Hardened British paras out on routine exercise in Kuwait could hardly believe their eyes, as around a dozen Iraqis suddenly turned up waving white flags, with their arms in the air. The British troups had to inform them that they had to go back, as the war had not started yet. "The Paras are a tough, battle-hardened lot but were moved by the plight of the Iraqis. There was nothing they could do other than send them back. They were a motley bunch and you could barely describe them as soldiers - they were poorly equipped and didn't even have proper boots. Their physical condition was dreadful and they had obviously not had a square meal for ages. No one has ever known a group of so-called soldiers surrender before a shot has been fired in anger." The incident has been "officially" denied by the British Ministry of Defence, but it was corraborated by intelligence sources as well as an Army source. Let's hope these poor lads get a chance to surrender before they are bombed to bits when the action starts proper. 12:10:30 PM    comment []

Welcome .af to the Net It may not seem crucially important for a nation that struggles with the basic necessities like water, food and healthcare to connect to the Internet with its own domain, but the forward looking Afghans want to have their own slice of the Internet to help pull Afghanistan from the 7th to the 21st century. Marc Lepage with the UN fought for a year to wrestle the domain away from an elusive individual with ties to the ousted Taliban regime. Then, last month, he finally got permission from Internet powers that be to bring the .af top level domain to life, and could proudly present the first real Afghan email to telecommunications minister Masoom Stanakzai. 10:12:43 AM    comment []

The Occoquan Inquirer A new edition of The Occoquan Inquirer is out, with some of the highlights of last week in Salon blogging. You should not miss this! From this blog, Mark picked out the article about the Chinese fossil find with its feathered dinosaurs. 8:42:41 AM    comment []

Ostriches  farmers Ostriches raised on farms are developing a strange case of species confusion, and frequently fall for humans, according to Dr Charles Paxton, who has studied the phenomenon. The large birds were directing their courtship rituals at the farmers, who knows better than venturing into the pen of an amorous ostrich. The large birds are strong and have sharp claws, and can be a real danger to humans, apparently even if they have the hots for them. Dr Paxton's research has been "rewarded" with an Ig Nobel Prize, given annually to scientific work that "cannot or should not be reproduced." 1:29:00 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.04.2003; 01:33:01.