30. april 2003

Road map presented Just hours after a new Palestinian administration was in place, and a group of Palestinian terrorists launched their protest by blowing up some Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv, the long-awaited roadmap to peace was presented. Reactions are, to put not too fine a point on it, mixed. Hamas rejected the plan outright, without even seeing it. They were one of two groups claiming responsibility for the bomb attack. The sticking point of the plan is that the Palestinian Authority has to crack down on these militants. Abu Mazen has promised to do so, but it's very unclear exactly how. 7:59:18 PM    comment []

Study says male circumcision does not reduce sensitivity Contrary to popular opinion, a new study says that penis sensitivity in circumcised and uncircumcised males are the same. Dr. Arnold Melman and his team performed tests (ouch!) on 43 uncircumcised men and 36 circumcised men, including some in both groups who had erectile dysfunction, to measure sensitivity. The difference was not statistically significant. Circumcision is performed on around three quarters of all American-born boys, while it is rare on this side of the Atlantic. 5:15:08 PM    comment []

Mayor will ban tall tales Jo Hamlett is mayor of Mount Sterling, a town in the middle of Iowa's fishing and hunting regions, and he's sick and tired of all the tall tales told. If he gets his will, the city council will ban lies and inflict a fine on whoever tells an untruth. Problem is, of course, that the town has no marshall or prison, so what to do if somebody refuses to pay? Charles Brewer, a man of 62 described as "one of the town's biggest liars," says: "If Jo had to pay a quarter for each lie he told, we wouldn't have to be looking for money for a bathroom for our church down here." 3:35:38 PM    comment []

It had to happen The Uggabugga blog has made a deck of Bush regime playing cards, all the way from Dick Cheney as the ace of spades (heh) down to Ann Coulter the airhead republican rabid attack dog as the two of clubs. 2:50:58 PM    comment []

True to scale If you want to compare the scales of, say, the Empire State Building and various Star Trek or Babylon 5 vessels, here is your chance. A large number of real and imagined vessels and creatures are put on a large page for you to move around, all made to the same scale: one pixel is one meter. I'm just a little bit worried that the guy who made it lists King Kong and Gozilla among the real ships/buildings he put in for comparison... 2:42:13 PM    comment []

RIAA will IM you The recording industry, just handed a defeat in court over file sharing, has started to use the file sharing tools themselves. The RIAA has begun sending thousands of instant messages to Kazaa and Grokster users to warn them against sharing files. Ironically, this was suggested to them by their opponents in the Verizon lawsuit. 2:06:54 PM    comment []

Newspaper:  Iraqi information minister tried and failed to surrender According to the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Iraq's former information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf has been trying to negotiate his surrender to US forces, but they have refused. Apparently Saddam's spokesman, who got a massive cult following in the west after telling lies so outragous they were comical, now fears for his life in Iraq. US forces, supposedly, have no interest in arresting him as he is not in the most-wanted deck of cards. The information minister, nicknamed "comical Ali" or "Baghdad Bob" by some western commentators, counts even the US president among his fans. Bush said to NBC: "He's my man, he was great. Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic." Ari Fleischer, your time is up! You may have sold the war, but Dubya needs a real pro to explain away the record deficit and an economy left in shambles. 2:58:40 AM    comment []

Bush not to Norway George Bush has cancelled his plans for a brief visit to Oslo next month. The visit was never officially announced, but some preparations were still in the works. The Oslo police is probably happy, as the security measures would break their budget. Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik emphasises that the visit was canceled over 'practical changes' in the president's schedule, and not as a form of retaliation over Norway's 'neutrality' to the Iraq question. Neither is it worries about demonstrations from the overwhelingly anti-war population in this country. As a compensation, the Norwegian prime minister is invited to meet the US president and vice-president Cheney in the White House on May 16th, the day before he will attend Norwegian-Americans celebrating the Norwegian constitution day. Thus, Bill Clinton remains the only sitting US president ever to have visited Norway. 2:23:50 AM    comment []

Where are you? Where I am Blogspace is only vaguely releated to geographic location, often jokingly referred to as 'meatspace.' The blogs have their own orientiation that is much more interesting than street address, like its topics, philosophy, political orientation and of course which server family you are on (e.g. Salon blogs, like me). Yet, it's not entirely uninteresting where in the world we are. GeoURL has an interesting project: mapping web sites to geographic address. By doing some near-geek tweaking of your blog software (carefully described) you can add meta tags to your blog which tells everybody where in the world you are. Again, as a result of geek humour, it is called ICBM address (or missile address), presumably what Pentagon would have to plot into some computers to send a missile your way. To find out my coordinates, I used this site. I am apparently at Longitude: 5.32976 Latitude: 60.3951 which can be useful knowledge if you want to send a Tomahawk my way. Or just drop by to say hi (yeah, I am that far north) . If you click the icon at the start of this entry, you'll get a list of my physical neighbours in cyberspace, including some other bloggers located in Norway. Hopefully more people start to use ICBM addresses on their blog, and maybe you can find some blogging neighbours too. 1:20:02 AM    comment []

"Anti-war four" holds Brussels summit The four anti-war EU nations France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg has held a seperate summit where they discuss the creation of a 'rapid reaction force' independent from NATO. The summit has drawn some criticism from other countries, most notably the UK and Italy. While the 'EU rebels' emphasise that NATO remains a cornerstone of European security (yeah, right, that's why France is not in its military structure?), they emphasise the need for strengthening Europe's capabilities. A European defense initiative without EU's most powerful military power, Britain, indeed sounds futile. The rift over the Iraq war, which is really not easy to mend as it betrayed that European nations have chosen widely different long-term strategies for defense, also highlighted the most crucial problem: without a joint foreign policy, it is never going to make sense to have a common 'rapid reaction force' that goes beyond purely defensive functions. And it's becoming increasingly clear that the UK and France will simply not agree on a common foreign policy, as their long-term strategies and goals are widely different. Of course, the strategic picture could change if Germany and France seriously boosted their defense spending. With the economic climate being what it is, that is not very likely, especially not in Germany. And who can guarantee that Germany and France will have common goals in its foreign policy in the next big conflict? 12:31:54 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.05.2003; 14:22:58.