20. august 2003

I feel left out It seems email-transmitted computer viruses, or worms, are flying high and low over the Net this week. Most people I talk to have had their mailboxes filled with trash and their screens filled with virus warnings. Except me. Apparently everybody who have my primary email in their Outlook address books are clever enough to have a decent anti-virus installed, or at least they don't click blindly on every attachment they see. Knock on wood. 10:47:00 PM    comment []  trackback []

'Gay initiation' course and all hell is loose I guess the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor shot itself in the foot by giving a course in contemporary male gay culture the title "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation."  If you're a fundie-nut who have never stepped inside a university except to clean its toilets, I guess you can interprete this as a sinister course trying to turn unsuspecting poor students into militant gays. A family-values lobbyist is leading public opposition to the self-proclaimed "uncompromising political militancy" of the professor who teaches "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender." The lobbyist, Gary Glenn, says professor David M. Halperin and the university "are guilty of perpetrating a fraud against UM students and the people of Michigan [with] propaganda statements about so-called cultural studies and academic freedom" as they promote "queer studies" at taxpayer expense. Gary Glenn is the president of the Michigan affiliate of the conservative American Family Association (rule of thumb: if an organisation has word 'family' in name, it is primarly about hating somebody). Now look at how these nuts think (or, rather, don't), when faced with some technical terms from sociology and anthropology they have no clue what means: The course description says students "will examine a number of cultural artifacts and activities" including "camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, taste, style and political activism." Mr. Halperin's class explores "the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity."  The emphasis on "initiation" into homosexuality is what appears to be most offensive to conservatives like Mr. Glenn. "We don't know what [Mr. Halperin] does in the classroom," the state AFA president says in an interview. "It is outrageous that Michigan taxpayers are forced to pay for a class whose stated purpose is to 'experiment' with the 'initiation' of young men into a self-destructive homosexual lifestyle." I can only guess what Gary Glenn thinks Professor David M. Halperin does in the classroom, but am pretty convinced those fantasies result in wet spots on his bedsheet. There are a lot of stupid courses in humanities these days, but this doesn't sound like one of them to me. Fundamentalism is a disease. Education is the cure. 9:15:04 PM    comment []  trackback []

Lice may give clue to invention of clothing The body louse, which lives in human clothes, once evolved from the head louse. A recent DNA analysis suggests the two species separated 70,000 years ago, which again gives a good indication to when humans invented clothes. This corresponds well with the first human migrations into colder climates. 7:59:05 PM    comment []  trackback []

Would you spot the difference? There has been a massive condemnation from press organisations and others of US troops mistakenly killing Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana. He was filming the troops outside a prison that had been recently under morter attack. It has been pointed out, however, that a camera looks scaringly like a rocket propelled grenade launcher when it is pointed at you. Look at this example. Could you spot the difference in the split second before you had to take the decision? 3:37:26 PM    comment []  trackback []

The bride from hell! Adrienne Samen, an 18-year old North Haven girl, made the wedding reception an occasion to remember for the poor groom, the staff, the guests, and the local police. She began by cursing at the staff at the restaurant holding the reception. Shortly later, she was heard shouting "I hate you!" to her groom in the parking lot outside, and soon after she "started throwing wedding cake and smashed vases of flowers." It went rapidly downhill from there. Eventually, the police arrived, and since throwing a bride in jail at her wedding night is a decision not easily taken, they made a futile attempt to calm her down. When she started running into the traffic, in her wedding dress, they gave up and put the woman under arrest. Her last recorded escapade of the night was to attempt to kick out the window in the police cruiser, and attempting to bite a police officer when he wanted to fasten her seat belt. Samen was taken to police headquarters, where she was charged with breach of peace and third-degree criminal mischief. She was released about 10:30 p.m. after posting $1,000 bail. She could not be reached Monday. Nobody's heard anything from the poor groom. Did we hear "annulment"? 2:50:09 PM    comment []  trackback []

Again! The shitty Salon blog server, hosted by the absent folks at Radio Luserland, has been down for hours again. The word "angry" doesn't even begin to touch on the vicinity of what I am feeling about them at the moment. 7:39:09 AM    comment []  trackback []

How to anti-Americanise good news I have previously given you some tasters of what I struggle with in the Norwegian press, basically the only source of news from the rest of the world for most Norwegians, so regular readers will know what I have to deal with. Most journalists in Norway think investigative journalism about the world is reading the Guardian and watching BBC, and those are the good sources. When they try to add their own "insights", it gets really bad. I wouldn't think the recent capture of Saddam's senior vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan by fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) could be spun into rabid anti-Americanism, but I had underestimated (if that is the word) Eugene Brandal Laran in Dagbladet (a tabloid, but Norway's second largest paper). The headline proclaims "Snapped Saddam-top before the CIA" (sorry for bad English here, the original is bad Norwegian). The introduction for the article reads This afternoon it was confirmed that Saddam's former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, has been apprehended in Iraq. But the arrest does not put the US in a favourable light. One can wonder why. Later in the article we find this "explanation" for the convoluted logic: But the arrest, which should have been a bonus for the American forces, will rather lead to American intelligence having to answer some embarrassing questions. When Uday and Qusay was killed by American forces, it was after a tipoff from an Iraqi, not as a result of the American's own intelligence. When the Kurds now get the honour of arresting Ramadan, people will start wondering how little information the Americans really have access to. [bold in orginal] Such stupidity leaves me almost speechless. The journalist obviously doesn't understand that politically, it is very convenient that the Iraqis themselves have a large a role as possible in weeding out the Baathists. More importantly, the article betrays massive ignorance about how intelligence services works. In foreign countries, they mostly have to rely on insiders. Human sources in foreign, especially hostile, countries are vitally important for any intelligence service. Contrary to being embarrassing for the US, being able to rely on allies and Iraqi sources for intelligence and security is a valuable resource. 1:40:23 AM    comment []  trackback []

Waste time! Crisp has implemented the massively popular game classic Lemmings in JavaScript (or, to be more fancy, DHTML). It looks like the original, plays like the original (on a reasonably fast machine anyway) and unfortunately sounds like the original. But you can, and should, turn the sound off. 12:57:19 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 14:09:08.