17. september 2003

You searched me In our irregular feature "you google'd me," this time by Yahoo search, here is one that hit my blog three times today: wedding august 2003 david marine. I sincerely hope this wasn't friends of the groom who married the infamous bridezilla! 11:37:45 PM    comment []  trackback []

They found a new virus, and you already got it A new bug has just been discovered, even though most people probably have it. The metapneumovirus is one of the causes of the common cold, among other unpleasant things. 9:20:56 PM    comment []  trackback []

The Bible as 'hate literature' Canada's lawmakers are debating to extend the country's hate propaganda law bill C-250,  which makes it a crime to incite hatred against an "identifiable" group, to cover sexual orientation. Religious groups fear that new legislation, and some of them even claim it will make the Bible itself "hate literature"  "We think that it will threaten scriptures. We think it has the potential of making the Bible an illegal document ...," said Charles McVety, president of Canadian Christian College. "In the worst-case scenario, those who stand in their pulpits and preach a message against sex outside of marriage could be imprisoned." It is interesting that they actually recognise parts of the Bible as hate literature. 8:54:27 PM    comment []  trackback []

A rush to democracy in Iraq is a rush to disaster France and Germany is suddenly warm and fussy over the idea that Iraq should become a democracy, but it has to happen fast, fast, fast! They have gotten the UN on board, obviously taking heart from the latest diplomatic advaces to the UN from the US. WaPo's Fareed Zakaria points out that it is suspicious that the UN suddenly thinks a democracy can be built from scratch in one year. It is strange that U.N. officials argue that we must quickly move, in Kofi Annan's phrase, from "the logic of occupation" to that of Iraqi sovereignty. The United Nations has blessed and assisted in the occupation of Bosnia, where it took seven years to transfer power to the locals. It boasts of "the logic of occupation" in Kosovo, which has gone smoothly for the past four years, with no prospect of ending anytime soon. It administered tiny East Timor for two years before handing over power. Does Kofi Annan really think that what took seven years in Bosnia can take one year in Iraq, with six times as many people? France, with its troubled history, should certainly know that there are quite a few pitfalls on the way from dictature to democracy: Popular sovereignty is a great thing, but a constitutional process is greater still. The French know this. The French Revolution emphasized popular sovereignty with little regard to limitations on state power. The American founding, by contrast, was obsessed with constitution-making. Both countries got to genuine democracy. But in France it took two centuries, five republics, two empires and one dictatorship to get there. Surely we want to do it better in Iraq. And we haven't even mentioned Germany's history. Of course the UN, Germany and France know very well that a tight timetable for transition to democracy in Iraq will be disastrous. The last thing they want is a viable democratic Iraq that will serve as a monument to the success of American unilateralism. The countries that strongly opposed the war in Iraq (with the possible exception of Russia; I am not too sure about them) have every interest in sabotaging the US, and thereby the Iraqi people, all the way. This is doubly true about the Arab thugocracies in the neighbourhood; the last thing they want to see is a successful, powerful Arab democracy, which surely would give their own oppressed people strange, western ideas. Bringing in the UN to Iraq, no matter how much "legitimacy" that comes along with it, will also bring in a bureaucracy whose primary goal is to sustain its own existence in Iraq indefinately, and a lot of nations who are hell-bent on sabotaging the whole democratic process in Iraq. 7:40:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

Want a job in science? Popular Science has a list of science jobs you definately don't want, including dysentery stool-sample analyser (though you may get a t-shirt saying "Pardon me, is this stool taken?"), barnyard masturbator, postdoc in limbo, or even metric system advocate in the US, a job that can be compared to selling copies of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic verses" on the streets of Tehran. Perhaps more surprising, astronaut makes this list of the worst jobs in science. Here is why: Shuttle and Mir veteran Norm Thagard once objected to a study designed to make him wretchedly sick. NASA's response? "They said I could be fired for good cause, bad cause or no cause," says Thagard, "but I was required to participate as a condition of employment." Thagard also had the distinction of being the first person ever to clean out animal cages in orbit, on the Spacelab 3 in 1985. Engineers promised him that the cages would be at negative pressure, so none of the weightless waste of 24 rats and 2 squirrel monkeys would escape. But when Thagard opened the cages, air rushed outward, leading to a frantic floating-feces chase scene. A day later, at the other end of the craft, commander Bob Overmeyer was accosted by a truant turd. Sorry for spoiling your breakfast. But I could have chosen worse quotations from that article. 5:30:09 PM    comment []  trackback []

Not a good day for Andrew Gilligan Gilligan, the BBC journalist who accused the Blair government of "sexing up" the Iraq dossier, was put under serious pressure during the Hutton inquiry today. He was forced to apologise for two errors: an email to a Liberal Democrat member of the Common Foreign Affairs Committee where he named Dr Kelly as the source, and for saying the government knew the dossier was not based on sound intelligence in a live broadcast. 3:00:02 PM    comment []  trackback []

Most movie rips 'an inside job' The motion picture industry has been complaining loudly about file sharing of movies, and in particular it has launched a number of lawsuits to prevent code-cracking algorithms for DVDs to be made public. However, as prevalent as movie rips are on peer-to-peer networks, it appears that most of them come from another source: the movie studios themselves. According to a new study published by AT&T Labs, the prime source of unauthorized copies of new movies on file-sharing networks appears to be movie industry insiders, not consumers. The study is "the first publicly available assessment of the source of leaks of popular movies," according to its authors. Nearly 80 percent of some 300 copies of popular movies found by the researchers on online file sharing networks "appeared to have been leaked by industry insiders," and nearly all showed up online before their official consumer DVD release date, suggesting that consumer DVD copying represents a relatively minor factor compared with insider leaks. Which is a serious threat to the studios, because the audience will find out in advance how bad the movies are. 3:02:04 AM    comment []  trackback []

France denies airline to fly British troops to Iraq A Corsair Airbus A330, chartered by the British defense to transport troops to Basra in Iraq, has been grounded by the French transport ministry, citing unspecified "security concerns." Transport ministry officials were reported yesterday as saying the move had nothing to do with safety but was a result of the intervention of the foreign ministry. The foreign ministry denied the report, saying there was "no political motive". But British defence officials appeared to confirm that the ban was political and not technical. So very... French. 12:54:37 AM    comment []  trackback []

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