7. juli 2003

Ask the crook William Saffire has reached Richard Nixon, who still hangs around in purgatory, and asked him why George Bush is doing so well. 10:08:43 PM    comment []

Today's metablogging Susan shares her lesson from borrowing money for an apartment. She has learned, as the rest of us once did, that money lenders are evil sociopaths. But at least she's gotten a very funny blog entry out of her ordeal. 8:32:20 PM    comment []

Name a key to US presidency I have noticed one thing that all the men elected President of the United States have in common. Look at the names: John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush jr. They are all English-language names. There are a significant number of Americans of e.g. Spanish, German or Italian descent, but none of them have become president since mastering television became imperative to winning the election. It seems that you need to have a name from the British isles or Ireland to be electable. (In fact, through all US history, I only find four exceptions to this rule: The Roosevelts, Eisenhower and Van Buren; the latter being president 1837-41). Dukakis, who ran against Bush Sr, was doomed even by his birth name. What does this mean for the current Democratic hopefuls? It means Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and Joseph Lieberman doesn't have a chance. 7:06:12 PM    comment []

Light diet scam can be deadly I have written a bit earlier about the recent media scam claiming that Hira Ratan Manek survived on a diet consisting entirely of liquid and sunlight, and that NASA had verified the claim. The Indian is not the first to make such claims. Other fraudsters have claimed to live on air alone, so-called breatharianists, and even made a nice buck from selling books about it while sneaking down to McDonald's for their real lunch. These aren't just harmless hoaxes designed to earn a penny on the gullible; at least one person is known ot have starved herself to death while trying to become a breatharian. I wonder how many seriously injure their vision trying to mimic Hira Ratan Manek. 5:23:47 PM    comment []

Mimicry key to more tip A group of Dutch psychologists at the University of Nijmegen have confirmed that mimicry is the most well-received form of flattery, and it can even earn you extra money. Van Baaren's team studied staff in an American-style restaurant in southern Holland. In half of the tests, they primed a waitress to repeat customers' orders back to them. In the other half, she said something else positive, such as "Coming right up!" When copycatting, the waitresses' average tip almost doubled, to nearly 3 guilders (US$1.20). Service charge is included in Dutch restaurant bills, tips are a small additional gift. It is worth noting that in her book The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore argued that mimicry is the very key to major developments of the human brain, as well as our society. 4:28:12 PM    comment []

Toner ripoff The British Consumers Association (CA) report into colour printers (inkjet and laser) says that printers frequently lie when they claim to be out of toner. By overriding the printer's (or the driver's) claim that the toner cartridge is empty, it was possible to get up to 100% more output! This wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that printer cartridges are also ridiculously overpriced. Consumers look at the sales price of the printer, not the cartridges. But two sets of cartridges (colour and black & white) can actually cost as much as a new printer! In fact, printer toner is worth more than the same amount of vintage Champagne. And printer manufacturers try different methods, legal or technical, to prevent users from using cheaper third-party toner. The CA test looked at printers from Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, Minolta and Oki, and the criticism applied to all of them. Particular scorn, however, was due for Epson, which has installed a chip in the cartridges to prevent consumers from printing at all after it falsely claims to be empty. Now, guess which printer I have just ordered? Bingo. An Epson. 4:00:38 PM    comment []

Virtual Occoquan #35 A fresh, new edition of the Occoquan Inquirer is out, with some of the best of the past week in Salon blogging: writings, art and even some weird sounds. This week's guest editor is Paul Hinrichs who along with Mark Hoback has done a brilliant job. Bet that doesn't surprise you. I am also glad that my article about the shocking private youth prison at Tranquility Bay got some more coverage. 1:50:34 PM    comment []

Bali bomber suspect had porn on his laptop "Alleged Bali bombing mastermind Imam Samudra carried pornography on his laptop computer and had a website that claimed responsibility for the October 12 attack, an Indonesian court heard today." (Sydney Morning Herald)  Wasn't one of the "arguments" for slaughtering 202 innocent people that westerners were so "immoral" since they went to clubs and such? 10:32:00 AM    comment []

Fried tongue English Becky Nyang barely survived when a lightning bolt struck her metal tongue stud. Miss Nyang, an airport worker from Reading, was unfortunate enough to be caught up in an electrical storm while holidaying in Corfu. Her tongue-stud acted as a conductor, briefly subjecting her to an estimated temperature of 15,000ºC, and rendering her mute for three days. Had she too asked for a sign from God? A woman being mute for three days is pretty impressive all by itself. 9:10:51 AM    comment []

Who armed Saddam? Some leftists have made the claim that the US originally armed Saddam Hussein's regime, which is surprising considering all the old Soviet equipment he fielded. The dissident frogman has obtained the statistics and a nifty graph. Top arms suppliers to Iraq 1973-2002 were the Soviet Union (57%), France (13%) and China (12%). The US, otherwise the world's largest arms supplier, supplied no more than 1% of Saddam's arms, a bit less than little Denmark did. 8:08:48 AM    comment []

— Bush administration ignored inconvenient evidence on Iraq Joseph C. Wilson writes in the New York Times, telling he was the former envoy sent by the CIA to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from the country. His investigations concurred what the US Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick had already conveyed to the state department: that the claims were implausible. He talked to a significiant number of government officials and others, and came to the same conclusion. Yet, the old claims resurfaced in both statements to the press from Vice President Cheney and the British government's "white paper" on Iraq. The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. The charge that the evidence was not used because it was politically inconvenient is a serious one. Wilson was also interviewed on "meet the press" and went even further in alleging the administration 'twisted' the evidence. 6:40:08 AM    comment []

Rumours after war Rumours and consrpiracy theories are flying around Baghdad. Some say that the Americans are punishing the Iraqis for the attacks by not putting the electricity back on. Another rumour says that night vision goggles can see through women's clothes. The more time passes, the more extreme the stories. Why should the Iraqis be better than war opponents in the west? 5:47:44 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.08.2003; 01:51:35.