17. august 2003

— European Sahara hostages freed Reports from Mail claims the 14 European tourists held hostage by an alleged Islamist group have been freed, but this is not yet confirmed. Earlier on Sunday, Germany's ZDF television reported the 14 were freed after a Malian negotiator gave a ransom to the hostage-takers. It said the money did not come from the German Government. Just brilliant. Remember to send them a note with the money saying "please kidnap more of our tourists." 11:55:51 PM    comment []  trackback []

Man accidentally shot six guests at own birthday party Of course, when a Norwegian makes it into international news, it has to be in the most stupid way imaginable. A 40-year old man were subject to a surprise birthday party at a fishing and hunting cabin in Oppsjø in Skjeberg (eastern Norway! Far east I have to emphasise...), and got the brilliant idea he should give them a surprise back, by hiding with a shotgun. He fired one or two shots in the air, stepped forward, stumbled, and accidentally fired a shot which injured six of the guests, one women badly in the legs, and also (according to local news coverage, but not CNN) himself. Apparently, he was not drunk, only stupid. An Afghan wedding in Norway. That's a great idea. 8:37:32 PM    comment []  trackback []

Blame placed Canada and the US reached a sort of compromise in the blame game yesterday, and decided to agree to blame Ohio for the blackout. 4:25:46 AM    comment []  trackback []

Mail, mail, mail I never delete relevant mail (only spam) from my Outlook mailbox. You never know when you want to know what somebody told you back in '97. Neither do I think the archiving function is very useful. Thus, the mail file has grown and grown for years. Today, when I did a backup, I discovered that my outlook.pst file is 618 Mb. That is a heck of a lot of email. 4:17:59 AM    comment []  trackback []

Addicted again, this time to celebrities The latest "you're all addicted" claim comes from Psychologists Lynn McCutcheon of DeVry University in Florida and James Houran of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, who argues that a fascination with the rich and famous can become a dangerous addiction they have called Celebrity Worship Syndrome. (My regular readers may remember my recent swipe at psychologists and therapists for calling any exaggerated or obsessive behaviour "addiction.") They concluded, not surprisingly, that as many as 10 % of the subjects suffer from such an extreme form of celebrity worship that it can be called an addiction. At this point, celebrity worship is becoming an addiction. Those in this category are often neurotic, tense, emotional and moody. At its most intense, celebrity worship is "borderline-pathological," a condition found in one per cent of interviewees. These include celebrity stalkers and people who are willing to hurtthemselves or others in the name of their idol. They correlate with symptoms of psychosis, such as impulsive, antisocial and egocentric behaviour. However, if you are one of those hapless people who don't have a life, be comforted that not all experts agree that celebrity worship is all bad. In fact, looking up to the successful and trying to imitate them is an important survival trait for humans, and one that can actually bring you success. Evolutionary anthropologist Francesco Gill-White from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia told New Scientist; "It makes sense for you to rank individuals according to how successful they are at the behaviours you are trying to copy, because whoever is getting more of what everybody wants is probably using above-average methods." According to the "experts," celebrity worship can either save you or kill you. Along with darned near everything else. 1:33:59 AM    comment []  trackback []

— Airliners can survive missile attack The recent capture of an arms dealer trying to sell shoulder-fired missiles to what he thought were terrorists has brought the vulnerability of commercial aircraft into focus. Airliners and governments alike are scrambling to come up with ideas for how to protect aircraft against this threat. However, for technical reasons commercial aircraft may well survive a missile attack much better than fighter jets. So far, few commercial jets have been targeted by these missiles (luckily!) so we don't know for certain it will survive the impact, but experts point out there are good reasons to be optimistic. I just don't want to be there to find out. 1:06:34 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 14:08:59.