10. juni 2003

How to misuse mobile cameras Some unscrupulous individuals use camera-equipped mobiles to take pictures of the behinds of unsuspecting women (and men) walking on the street, and post it to mobileasses.com for people to vote. 9:08:49 PM    comment []

Mobile labs "not for bioweapons" A number of experts are contradicting the claims by coalition leaders that the two trucks found by the Americans in Iraq were really mobile labs for bioweapons. Increasingly, it looks like the official explanation of the Iraqi government, that these were for producing hydrogen for artillery balloons, is plausible. The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. These trucks were as close to evidence for a current WMD programme as the coaltion has been, and now it appears to be back to square one. 7:24:03 PM    comment []

Female genital mutilation still common A survey of students at the University of Khartoum in Sudan found that female circumcision, more properly called gential mutilation, is still depressingly common. Despite being illegal, the study found that 57% of the women in the study were mutilated. As many as 80 % of both female and male students were opposed to the procedure, and 75 % of men say they would prefer a wife not mutilated. This apparently does away with the argument that unless the girls are mutilated it will be difficult for them to marry. The fact that 40 % of students were unaware of the law against the procedure demonstrates that the law has not been seriously enforced or publicised. A key to abolishing the cruel practice would be to convince religious and social leaders to work against the law. So far, the opposite takes place to a large degree. My first reaction to the study was that I find it unlikely that university students are representative for the population at large, in particular in Sudan. So the situation is likely to be far worse. 6:36:30 PM    comment []

Bush criticises Israel over attack on Hamas leader President Bush is not happy about the failed attempt by the Israeli military to assassinate Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, seeing it as undermining the peace plan. The Hamas leader was wounded, but the attack killed two others, including a child. 'The president is concerned that the strike will undermine efforts by Palestinian authorities and others to bring an end to terrorist attacks and does not contribute to the security of Israel,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.  ''In looking at the progress that must be made for the road map and then looking at this attack the president is deeply troubled by it,'' he said. "Deeply troubled" is diplomatese for seriously angered. Bush is unlikely to have any qualms about having the terrorist leader killed, but the timing makes it look suspiciously like Israeli sabotage. 5:28:32 PM    comment []

— Ban kosher and halal slaughter! Here's something that is likely to rile up both Jews and Muslims at the same time: The British Farm Animal Welfare Council recommends that the ritual slaughter required by both religions, called kosher and halal respectively, causes severe suffering to animals and should be banned immediately. One worshipper at the Central London Mosque told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Everything about the Islamic way of life is under attack so it makes you wonder if this is actually about humanity to animals." In fact, it is a ploy to help Jews and Arabs finally agree about something. 3:11:36 PM    comment []

Sex key to hairy question Why did humans lose the bodily hair of their ancestors? Many scholars have suggested it had to do with climate. Professor Mark Pagel of the University of Reading and Professor Sir Walter Bodmer of Oxford University suggest that it had to do with health, and, like everything else, sex. The loss of hair was made possible by the inventions of fire, clothes and shelter. The advantage of the new hairless look was that it provided less opportunity for dangerous parasites to infect our bodies, and those who were hairless advertised their health advtantage to potential mates. Thus, they argue, genes for less bodily hair spread in the gene pool. The rest is due to the invention of the razor. 12:41:41 PM    comment []

Copyright fraud If you're interested in the battle between fair use and copyright law, you should read this article by George Ziemann: Thomas Edison, Intellectual Property and the Recording Industry (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)  Yeah, a few authors got paraded out to make their statements, supported heavily by the music, literature and movie creating, licensing and publishing communities, to argue that a longer term of protection will provide authors a greater creative incentive. The authors were lying out their asses. To everyone. If they work for a major label, the "copyright interest groups," as you put it, then the authors don't own their copyrights. The labels do. If they don't already have a good contract, you can extend copyright protection for a million years and it won't get that signed artist an extra dime. The authors have been systematically stripped of their copyrights and then forced to tell Congress how extending their copyright life would benefit them. Pure unadulterated bullshit. It all assumes the author owns the copyright, which is the fundamental flaw to all of this arguing in reference to the recording industry. That is exactly the problem. 10:07:10 AM    comment []

Real loss of artifacts Remember the stories about the countless artifacts allegedly lost from the Museum of Baghdad? As I have noted earlier, those news stories were grossly exaggarated. But of course the rebuttals have received far less attention than the original story. However, here is a real story about the loss of priceless artifacts, and it didn't require the chaos of war or looters, just a serious administrative fuckup at the University of Toronto. In late April, workers at the Scarborough campus cleared out a storage area in an underground tunnel that administrators said was unsafe. Several locked cages in the tunnel held 280 boxes of pottery, stone tools and other items once used by native people and colonists in the Markham and Pickering area. The artefacts dated as far back as the 15th century and are the last vestiges of sites that have since been paved over by developers. Several centuries of original remains of lost cultures, all dumped in the garbage. 9:49:50 AM    comment []

UN envoy to see Suu Kyi According to a diplomatic source, UN envoy Razali Ismail will be allowed to meet detained deomcracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi today. 8:02:35 AM    comment []

The article that was deleted Here is a Guardian article explaining why the article containing the Wolfowitz misquote was deleted. It concluded a week in which the Guardian apologised to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, for locating him at a meeting he did not attend. It has not been the best of weeks. No kidding. That is what happens when you're too ideologically eager for something to be true. I preserved the original article here. 6:18:52 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.07.2003; 00:25:13.