24. august 2003

Lowest US crime ever recorded Violent and property crimes in the US dropped to its lowest level since recording began 30 years ago, according to the US Justice Department. Over the last decade, the crime has dropped more than 50 per cent. The rate of violent crimes – rapes, robberies and assaults – was about 23 victims for every 1000 US residents 12 or older last year. That compares with 25 victims per 1000 in 2001 and 50 in 1993. For property crimes such as burglary and car theft, the rate was 159 crimes per 1000 last year, down from 167 the previous year and 319 in 1993. The crime decline was uniform, "crossing all household income, racial and ethnic lines. Crime is down in cities, suburbs and rural areas." Murder, however, is ecxepted from these figures. The murder rate increased by 0.8 per cent. 11:30:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

— Danish soldier killed by friendly fire Danish TV2 says that the it is almost certain that Preben Pedersen, who were killed in a firefight with alleged Iraqi looters near Basra, was shot by his own comrades because he was mistaken for a looter. Even worse, it appears that the alleged looters were unarmed fishermen. Two of them were killed in the incident. Pedersen was the first casualty among the Danish forces in Iraq. Danish military has apologised to the village the fishermen came from, and military authorities have launched an investigation into the incident. (From a Danish article in Berlingske Tidende) 10:13:44 PM    comment []  trackback []

More on creationist education drive Pharyngula is as good name as any other for a blog, and I found it through a link to my below article on creationism in Texas. It also has more good comments on the same topic. 8:54:01 PM    comment []  trackback []

Deaths in France vs Iraq It was just a question of time before somebody was rude enough to rub the French noses in the maybe 10,000 tragic deaths from the recent heat wave. Mark Steyn fits the bill. The French president Jacques Chirac took time off from his vacation to comment on the UN bombing in Baghdad, but he did not, according to this article, find 10,000+ dead countrymen worth any time off his busy schedule enjoying the same hot weather. There's an old, cynical formula for the weight accorded different disasters on American TV news. It runs something like: one dead American = 10 dead Israelis = 100 dead Russians = 1,000 dead Bangladeshis. But 10,000 French can die, and even the French don't seem to care – or not too much, and not with any great urgency. Well, the French fired some very few officials, blamed each other for the disastrous healthcare system, and said c'est la vie. Now, if 10,000 Iraqis had died from a heat wave under American occupation, there would be hell to pay in the European media, and loud condemnations from Chirac, Schröder and Kofi Annan. The streets would be filled with people burning American flags and proclaiming that this was a deliberate genocide orchestrated for the benefit of the funeral division of Haliburton, where, we will be reminded again and again, Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO before returning to politics. 8:27:01 PM    comment []  trackback []

The beef or the chicken? Taco Bell uses the California recall election to make a rather strange online advertising campaign. Buy a beef taco, and they count that as a vote for Schwarzenegger; buy a chicken taco, and that is a vote for Davis. 6:18:32 PM    comment []  trackback []

Can you pick a person's gender from his or her writing? Check out the Gender Genie for yourself, and give it a try. I copied some near-random chunk of text from a number of Salon blogs, and put it to the test. It correctly picked out me as male, and Rayne as female. Good start. Then I let it look at a few paragraphs of Amanda's writing, and rather surprisingly it guessed male. It did the same, again pretty surprising, with a few paragraphs from Susannah. Just to prove itself bunk, it said that Christopher is female. In the end, it was right about Kriselda being female. But from the results submitted to it earlier, it seems to be quite exactly 50% correct, which suggests that for short chunks of texts at least, it is no better than flipping a coin. 5:58:24 AM    comment []  trackback []

Priest predator killed in prison John J. Geoghan, a former Roman Catholic priest who was at the center of the US child abuse scandal, has been killed by another inmate in a Massachusetts state prison. The 68 year old priest served 9-10 years for groping a boy, but with many other cases pending. 4:49:23 AM    comment []  trackback []

Evolution counter-strike Creationists, hiding behind the "intelligent design" label, have been hard at work preventing the teaching of evolutionary science across the US. One of the battlegrounds is Texas, where the Board of Education is being lobbied by creationists to present an "alternative" to evolution, that is, goddidit. Now parents, teachers and religious leaders have launched a counter offensive. "Evolution is the most crucial concept we teach in biology. It is the cornerstone for understanding the living world," said Austin biology teacher Amanda Walker. "Evolution is informing medicine on such diseases as prostate cancer, heart disease, SARS and AIDS, and many others." The campaign, called Stand Up For Science, was unveiled as the state Board of Education prepares to adopt new biology textbooks this fall. Creationism, in its new or old dressing, has been the driving force behind no new understanding of nature. That is of course not its objective to begin with. They want to make sure schools teach outdated religious dogma, or, failing that, to prevent students from learn that Charles Darwin made one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs ever, namely the fact that all species on this planet have evolved from a common ancestor. 4:12:53 AM    comment []  trackback []

Faces prison for writing fiction Brian Robertson wrote a violent and disturbing story when he was 18 years old. As it hit a bit close to home for people worried about school shootings, he is charged with a felony count of planning to cause serious bodily harm or death, for a piece of fiction. Here's the story (in PDF). 3:05:10 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 14:09:22.