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17. mars 2003
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The poetry of stuff
Poetry and hard science meets in the Periodic Table of Haiku, where each element has a haiku attributed to it. This is, for example, lucien's haiku about chromium:
nose ring shine
the cyberpunk smiles-
chromium
If you think this is a bit short for a haiku, feel perfectly free to get yourself involved in a debate about how to properly translate the rulesets of haikus from Japanese to English (and leave me out of it).
9:40:17 PM 
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Superstition stuns this blogger
"'Talking fish' stuns New York" (BBC News headline)
I laughted so much when I first read this story I forgot to blog about it. By now, of course, everybody has heard it already.
9:12:05 PM
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The secret of Google's success
A very interesting article about Google, the company that managed to avoid the dot-com bubble bursting and keep growing. The secrets are to remain customer-focused, be open and share ideas with the world, learn from failures and move on, people can manage themselves and users translates into money.
That simple, eh? Well, you need a brilliant idea at first too, I guess.
9:01:04 PM
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Arafat tried to water down prime minister post
Yassir Arafat tried to add amandments to the Palestinian Prime Minister bill, but his changes were rejected by the parliament. The proposed changes would apparently give the president veto powers over cabinet members.
The US has put the appointment of a real PM as a prerequisite for unveiling the long-expected "road map" for peace.
8:20:18 PM
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McDeath
"The number of obese people in the world may be as high as 1.7bn, experts have calculated. ...
The World Health Report 2002 estimated that more than 2.5 million deaths annually are weight related and forecast this could rise to 5 million by 2020." (BBC News)
5:31:08 PM
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Most expensive beer!
 To the surprise of none of us who live here: Norway has the most expensive beer in the world. A pint costs an average of £3.52 (~$5.60) in a Norwegian pub, ahead of Malaysia (£3.29) and Japan (£2.84). Britain was #8 with a pint hovering at £1.87.
Yet, Norwegians are not discouraged from drinking beer, using on average £417 per person per year on the beautiful drink, only beaten by (of course) the Irish and the Briitish in expenditure.
Then again, they get far more beer for their money than we do. If you compare consume, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Belgium all come out ahead of the British.
In Britain, as tradition dictates, beer is mostly drunk in pubs and bars (73%), compared to 40% in France and only 27% in the US.
4:19:03 PM
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French MP urges Pope to become 'human shield' in Baghdad
Didier Julia, a maverick conservative deputy to the French parliament, has suggested that Pope John Paul II rush to Baghdad to become "the protector of humanity's values." He sees such a move as the only chance to stop the war. The Pope has been outspoken in urging the sides to avoid war.
Then again, it may be a chance to strike two birds with one stone...
3:16:31 PM
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The park of fools
One of the all-time-greatest crackpots, author Erich von Däniken, is to open a theme park in Switzerland, where visitors can see ancient wonders like Stonehenge and the Pyramids through the deluded mind of someone who believes those wonders were built by extra-terrestrials.
That there is interest for pseudo-science is not in doubt; Däniken's two-dozen books filled with nonsense and fraudulent claims have sold more than 56 million copies worldwide without contribuiting any new knowledge whatsoever to the human family, except another lesson in human credulity.
2:58:41 PM
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The age of fear
Cough in an airport these days, and you are likely to be rushed away into quarantaine. The mystery disease SARS are threatening to scare away those people not already discouraged from travelling by the looming war against Iraq.
Perhaps I have a somewhat rosy-eyed view of the world between the end of the cold war and 9/11, but I don't doubt that pessimism and fear is actually more prevalent these days than it was a few years back.
Yet life is actually not bad for most of us. Life expectancy hit a all-time high of 77.2 years in the US in 2001. The reasons are many, most important probably a reduction in smoking, less violent crimes and working treatment programmes for AIDS.
Yet, people are more scared and pessimistic than ever.
The media shares its blame for spreading the bad news much more rapidly and effectively than ever, leading to a scared population. But what are bloggers doing? We do the same. We concentrate on war, death and destruction, propagating the negative vibes and the memes for pessimism throughout the world.
2:21:50 PM
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New Virtual Occoquan
A smoking new issue of the Occoquan Inquirer is out, with some of the best writing of the past week on Salon blogs. Don't miss this!
12:57:13 PM
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The French-bashers' thundering silence...
The French-bashers in the US has made it to french toast and french fries, but I have failed to see any mention of the Statue of Liberty, given from the French Republic to the United States in honour of its first centennial.
There was a specific reason why France, of all countries, decided to give this great landmark as a gift to the young nation. In the war of American independence, French forces played a decisive role. In fact, in the Battle of Yorktown, which decisive result lead to the United Kingdom finally recognising the independence of its former colony, the French lost more men than the American patriots did. The official British recognition of the USA was the Treaty of Paris, in 1782.
The American French-bashers refuse, for some reason, to look further back in history than to World War II.
2:06:51 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.04.2003; 01:33:13.
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