24. juni 2003

Dangerous for what or who? In the list of comments on the Supreme Court's decision that the library filtering law is constitutional, this opinion piece must be among the most stupid and ignorant: The Internet's greatest moral challenge remains its spread of pornography. How exactly is porn a moral challenge for the Internet, and even more, the "greatest"? Pictures of people having sex is a bigger problem than al-Qaeda communicating using Internet sites and messages, planning mass murder? A bigger problem than hate-messages from neo-nazi groups and all sort of terrorists? Than spam? Than money laundering and fraud? Drug sales? Malicious computer programs causing billions of dollars of damage?  Get real! I realise that people who believe in a big daddy in the sky who is very, very concerned about how people use their pee-pees have a problem with sex. They have a particular problem with the horrible thought of little innocent children browsing web sites with sexual content. Even more sober people are somewhat uneasy about that, even if they think using millions to make a law about it is overreacting a bit. But should this really be "the biggest moral problem" on the Net? Nobody has shown a shred of evidence that exposure of explicit pictures to children, unesthetic as it is to adults, does any damage whatsoever. That is just presumed. The children can see many pictures of people bombed and shot to pieces all over the net. No filtering software is programmed to stop that. 11:59:45 PM    comment []

More embarrassing for the media than Jack Straw British foreign minister Jack Straw has admitted that the Iraq dossier published in February was "embarrassing." That story is covered just about everywhere on this side of the pond today. If you dig a bit deeper, though, you see what was embarrassing: a part of the report was plagiaraised from a "student thesis" without attribution. But it's interesting to see how many newspapers try to turn this into something else. Like the Guardian (of course!) which says: The document, produced in January, contained 12-year-old material which had been lifted from a student's thesis. First, there is an across-the-board attempt to downvalue that plagiarised article by calling it a "student report" or "student thesis." Well, it was, but it was actually taken from a much more recent article in a well-renowed journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs. True, some of the article is based on the author's old thesis (but updated, I hasten to add). More importantly, the copied article was not about WMDs per se, but an overview of Iraqi security and intelligence services. The structure of such agencies do not tend to change overnight, unlike the location of missiles. Calling the author, Ibrahim al-Marashi,  a "student" is also a way to deminish his role and give the impression that the British government were using very primitive sources. Fact is, he was a student when he did the thesis, but the article was considered good enough for publication.Calling him a "student" is not the full story: Ibrahim al-Marashi is a research associate at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, California as well as a lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School. He is currently working on a project on Iraqi intelligence operations in northern Iraq and Kuwait. So, don't get this wrong. What Straw agreed was "embarrassing" was that the article was plagiarised without attribution, not that this article was used. When the story goes through several links, the quality falls even more. Essentially, the Norwegian coverage of this story is pure nonsense. The Norwegian Nettavisen says the whole report "was based on a doctoral thesis." The respected (!) Aftenposten, once a conservative newspaper, says that "the alleged evidence evidence [for WMDs] was among other things obtained from a student thesis that was 12 years old," which is a thorough distortion much worse than anyone can reasonably accuse Tony Blair of having committed. The bottom line is Jack Straw has admitted it was wrong to not give proper references. It was. He says they have learned. I hope so. Straw has also claimed that there was no attempt to distort intelligence evidence to make a better case for the war with Iraq. That, which this is really about in the first place, is elegantly overlooked in the press. 11:30:01 PM    comment []

Google adWords preview Here is a page which claims it can find out what ads Google AdSense would place on your blog or any webpage. For this blog, it placed ads selling a tshirt with tank treads "formerly worn by Saddam" and one site about "understanding Italy." 10:06:00 PM    comment []

American apology t-shirt A guy is selling t-shirts for wary Americans travelling abroad, saying "I'm sorry my president is an idiot. I didn't vote for him." The shirt holds the text in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Russian. Well, being a good patriot, he does something for the economy, right? 10:01:02 PM    comment []

Asexuality: Is this for real? Here's an, eh, interesting message board for asexuals. That is, apparently, people who think sex is yucky and horrible. Like, here is a thread where a poster complains about the horrible smell after somebody had sex in a room they had entered. I mean, how anyone could do THAT anyway is beyond me but the smell was just horrible. My first reaction: Sex actually has a smell? Huh. And all this time I thought authors were just making things up. ... well, just reading about that was unpleasent [SIC]. I'm glad I wasn't there and sorry for you that you were. You think that's gross, imagine oral sex. I think somebody is just pulling everybody's legs, but you can never know for sure. 8:39:59 PM    comment []

Googleslut of the century That has to be David Harris' science and literature blog, for the occasion renamed to Harry Potter 5 Summaries and News. With solid pre-release information and summaries of the massively hyped book, the google hits are coming in thousands. Way to go! 5:48:28 PM    comment []

Unfair boss leads to higher blood pressure People who feel their supervisor treats them unfairly have higher blood pressure than those who have better opinions of their bosses, according to UK researchers. Also, those who disliked interactions with their bosses had higher blood pressure at work days than at their days off. These findings suggest that subtle workplace behaviors, beyond overt bullying and harassment, can have a significant impact on others, and may even endanger their health, Wager, based at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, told Reuters Health. The study demonstrates "that persons in supervisory roles need to be aware of the effects that even trivial incivilities and acts of unfairness can have on those they supervise," Wager said. They are aware of it. They just don't care. 5:15:23 PM    comment []

Man waited 27 year for a phone line Bangladeshi Mohammad Ismail applied and paid for a phone line in May 1976. The Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, state-run of course, have ignored all his further requests on the line. Then, recently, after a Bengali tabloid wrote about this crazy delay, the phone company finally "found" his application, installed a line, and threw in a free telephone as a sort of compensation. Telecom companies are the same everywhere! 5:46:30 AM    comment []

The biggest riddle in paleontology How the heck did stegosauruses have sex? Believe it or not, somebody have actually tried to answer the question that has been perplexing dinosaur fans for a long time, but which might have been even more troublesome for the poor male stegosaur. PS: If you wonder how I started wondering about that now, blame the legendary Sergio Aragones of Mad magazine, more specifically a drawing in issue #300, January 1991. 3:35:11 AM    comment []

Bali suspect alleges he was tortured Ali Ghufron, accused of being the mastermind behind the deadly Bali bomb attack, has asked the court to ignore his confession because it was obtained after "brutal and inhuman physical torture." The police has not commented on the allegations. Of course, there is no particular reason to believe these allegations on his word. Neither do I have any particular faith in the due process of Indonesia's legal system. Torture is immoral, and also ineffective. A defendent will say whatever he thinks the interrogators want to hear under torture, not necessarily the truth. 3:11:36 AM    comment []

The really frivolious lawsuits I am happy to see that Glenn Reynolds, who unlike me is a real expert at law, is able to explain my position on the tobacco lawsuits very well: The real problem, in my opinion, isn't garden-variety frivolous lawsuits, but the use of the tort system to end-run the regulatory process, as in tobacco -- and as has been attempted with firearms and fast food. Doing that is an effort by people in the government to subcontract the legislation process to private interests, without democratic safeguards. I think it is unfortunate that people have been distracted from this concern by bogus stories of slip-and-fall chicanery. Exactly. If tobacco should be banned, the parliaments and congresses of the world could have done it. Countries have permitted the production of tobacco despite evidence of it being harmful, and in most cases, made huge profits from it by taxing it. The lawsuits is a way to avoid taking the political responsibility for anti-tobacco legislation by moving it outside democratic control. 2:03:42 AM    comment []

Russia shuts down critical TV station Those who worry about Russia slipping back into dictature have one more reason to be concerned, as the government has pulled the plug on TVS, the country's last independent nationwide TV channel. The editor-in-chief at TVS, veteran broadcaster Yevgeni Kiselyov, noted ironically that the channel had been cut off at 0400 on 22 June - the exact hour and date when Hitler launched his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Sure, the channel has been hurt by endless quarrels and economic mess, so it is not a clear-cut case that this is an act of censorship. It is notable, however, that the channel has been one of the few nationawide dissenting voices. Russia is certainly not a stable democracy by any stretch. 1:29:52 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.07.2003; 00:25:42.