20. mai 2003

British minister says Tom Cruise lacks balls to fly British film minister Kim Howells is not one to mince his words. His newest targets are American actors who 'lack the balls' to fly to Europe. Dr Howells, known for his outspoken views, told the Financial Times that "tough-guy heroes of the screen" were "too frightened" to take a flight to Europe. "Swashbuckling heroes like Tom Cruise" were more frightened about terrorism than "grannies from New York", he said. Howells is on a mission to convince Americans to travel to Europe. Fear of flying has severely hurt the European tourist industry. The minister obviously believes that the way to convince Americans to come to Europe is to insult them first. That way they get used to it right away, I guess. 11:38:37 PM    comment []

TIA renamed The Total Information Awareness system, Pentagon's massive anti-terror surveillance system has been renamed the Terrorism Information Awareness program. The old name gave some nasty Orwellian associations. The scope of the project, however, remains the same: the largest database on Earth. Privacy activists' fears are not averted by this simple rename. TIA is being developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). You may recall that the Internet was originally called Arpanet. Yes, these were the people who developed what became the Internet. Wonder what TIA will evolve into. Sky-net? 9:38:07 PM    comment []

Einstein online The Einsten Archives Online just opened, providing about 3,000 high-quality scans of Einstein's writings for the public. An amazing resource, and hopefully we're only at the beginning of increased universal access to important historical documents. 8:58:01 PM    comment []

OSI backs IBM against SCO The Open Source Initiative has delivered a scathing attack on SCO related to the legal conflict over intellectual property rights to Unix in the form of a Postion Paper. SCO's complaint is factually defective in that it implies claims about SCO's business and technical capabilities that are untrue. It is, indeed, very cleverly crafted to deceive a reader without intimate knowledge of the technology and history of Unix; it gives false impressions by both the suppression of relevant facts, the ambiguous suggestion of falsehoods, and in a few instances by outright lying. The paper is worth a read for an overview of the history of Unix in all its variants.  8:33:36 PM    comment []

Popular fake It is always emberrassing if a priced gallery possession proves to be a fake, but for Oslo National Gallery the allegedly fake Vincent van Gogh "self-portrait" has proven a massive hit. The artwork was in Italy on loan when allegations of fraud came, but that did not reduce its popularity. It was seen by over 620,000 people in Italy, and now when the painting has returned home museum guards have been swamped by questions about the possible fake, so the museum has been forced to set up a sign in the lobby pointing the way. 5:33:44 PM    comment []

Pets down under Lonely Australians are increasingly ditching cats and dogs for the ultimate in pets: the cockroach. To be sure, it is not the normal sewer pest they bring into their homes. The cockroach believed to be most suited to pet life is the giant burrowing variety - or rhinoceros cockroach - that is native to Australia, and found in the warm, north-eastern state of Queensland. These gigantic cockroaches, officially called Macropanesthia Rhinoceros, grow as big as the palm of a hand, measuring about 80 millimetres (3.15 inches) and weighing 35 grams (1.2 ounces). And if they aren't happy about them as pets, I'm sure they make dinner from them. Crazy Aussies! 4:52:58 PM    comment []

Study: Politicians can't help lying We may all be sick and tired of politicians lying to us, but if we are to believe a recent study of politics and lying, it's our own damn fault. 'Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game,' said author Glen Newey, reader in politics at the University of Strathclyde. 'And there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game.' An open government, where people ask poltiicians all sort of inconvenient questions, can't help producing politicians who lie, he argues. Would you vote for a politician who answered "none of your business" to the 'wrong' questions? Unlikely. But if you vote at all, you almost certainly vote for someone who is, as they say, economical with the truth. 2:40:42 PM    comment []

: ) from Mars The planet Mars is apparently in a good mood these days, at least if judged by the smiling crater Galle. The 230 km wide crater has now been given the informal name "Happy Face." (From a Norwegian article in Nettavisen) 1:00:50 PM    comment []

Study: Humans and chimps 99.4 % identical A study by Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit suggests that humans and chimpanzees are more gentically similar than previously thought. By looking at only those genes that actually code amino acid, the researchers concluded humans and chimps are 99.4 per cent similar. This appears to disagree with a result of 95 % similarities published by California Institute of Technology last year. However, that study looked at all genes, and 98 % of them don't code for proteins, and are thus not important for gene function. This study shows that chimps are more similar to us than to gorillas. Goodman argues that the current classification, where gorillas, chimps and orangutans are classified as Pongidae and humans are alone in Hominidae, is wrong. The chimps should be classified in the same genus as us, he argues. PS 1: I found it interesting that a number of news sources interpreted this study with headlines saying things like "chimps are human." Why not the other way around, "humans are chimps"? PS 2: MSNBS's reporting of this story actually seems to treat evolution as a controversial theory, and even interviews some bozo at the Center for Scientific Creation, the equivalent to bringing a flat-earther into a debate about cartography. Being a conservative news source is one thing, but bringing the opinions of religious nuts into a science news item is way over the top. It would be more honest for MSNBC to just shut down its "technology & science" desk and transfer the material to the church section. 11:02:29 AM    comment []

Shareholders: we don't want to pay for failure When the old boys' club (that is, the board) at British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline decided to give chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier a deal including a £22m ($35.8m) compensation if he lost his job, they forgot the shareholders. After the British government made it compulsory for companies to put their pay policies to the vote, it is no longer that easy for professional board members to play 'spiraling executive salaries' with other people's money. Yesterday a majority of GSK's shareholders dealt a humiliating blow to their own company, and sent a message that they have no intention of rewarding failure with £22 million. There is similar discontent among shareholders in a number of other corporations. 10:32:39 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.06.2003; 03:30:13.