9. oktober 2003

The first action politician When I read that occasional blogger Scott Rosenberg bad-mouthed Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero, a movie I absolutely loved, I had to go googling for its hilarious one-liners. The one I was particularly looking for was this one: Danny Madigan: You think you are funny, don't you? Jack Slater [Arnold]: I know I am. I'm the famous comedian Arnold Braunschweiger. Danny Madigan: Schwarzenegger! Jack Slater: Gesundheit. I also found another little dialogue, which is particularly funny in hindsight: Nick: There are lots of things worse than movies: politicians, wars, forest fires, famine, plague, sickness, pain, whores, politicians... Jack Slater: You already mentioned them. Nick: I know I did. They are twice as bad as anything else. Ouch. I think I just broke one of my own rules here. 7:29:00 PM    comment []  trackback []

Meet Razanne, a Muslim Barbie Some time ago, conservative Saudi clerics condemned the Barbie doll as culturally offensive, and it should be no surprise that many Muslims worldwide find the slim, scantily clad (mostly) and curvaceous beauty a bad role model for their children. Enter Razanne (picture, with Jenna Debryn). The doll is created by Ammar Saadeh, a Muslim American woman, to be an good doll for Muslim girls worldwide. Apparently, the sale is picking up. Its creator insists this is a modern Muslim woman (or girl).  Conservatives may prefer praying Razanne, but on the drawing board there is a Dr. Razanne and they're toying with the idea of an Astronaut Razanne. Lest people think that she's all about praying, there's In-Out Razanne, whose wardrobe also includes a short, flowery dress she can wear inside the home, in view only of men in her family. "Razanne represents to Muslim girls that they have options, goals and dreams and the ability to realize them," said Debryn. As long as they never take off their headscarves. 5:38:53 PM    comment []  trackback []

Schwartzman, Schwarzenegger: what's the difference? With Arnold Schwarzenegger winning a rather stunning victory in California's recall election, it's easy to forget there were a whooping 135 people on the ballot, most of which got a handful of votes each. Many of these people, however, is seriously flattered that indeed thousands of fellow Californians wanted them for governor.  And so George B. Schwartzman, 57, an earnest, utterly obscure businessman from Carlsbad, in Southern California, basked in the glory Wednesday of placing ninth in the recall election, with 10,949 votes. That was 3,000 more votes than Bill Simon Jr., a Republican who dropped out of the race in August but who was still listed on the ballot and had some serious name recognition as a California political staple. What was pointed out, however, was that there is a very probable reason for many, possibly the majority, of Schwartzman's votes. His name looks a lot like "Schwarzenegger." Quite a few of those who voted for him probably intended to vote for Arnold. This, a lot of electoral experts point out, shows how unexpected bias work in any such process. The ordering of candidates, their names, the actual ballot shape, colour and form will all play some role, especially when margins are slim. In theory, a candidate can win and lose based on such issues. The arguments are rather elaborate, but the short form is: lots of voters are stupid. That's democracy for you. 2:44:50 PM    comment []  trackback []

Poll: Is US newsmedia too liberal? A Gallup poll has again asked Americans about bias in the newsmedia, and 45 % thinsk the newsmedia is too liberal, while only 14 % says too conservative. This has been quite unchanged over the last three years. Slightly more than half has a great or fair deal of trust in the newsmedia. Thus, Americans trust the branches of government more than the media. It is very difficult to perceive bias. People are naturally more sensitive to bias that goes against their own. It is also difficult to measure bias. A Norwegian study some time back measured airtime as an "objective" metric of bias, which is of course rather useless. Especially in print media (and webpages) bias can be revealed in who is quoted without contradiction, who gets the last word, and a lot of small words ("claims", "asserts" contra "points out", "demonstrates") that can either support or contradict specific points of view. The most objective way to perceive bias is when we see factual errors and exaggarations, and when irrelevant negative information about a person is consistently dragged into stories about different subjects. See Bjørn Stærk for a very clear example. It is also useful to look at which photographs are chosen by the editor to go along with the text. For example, the Norwegian press has been quite creative in finding less than flattering pictures of George Bush. However, perhaps the most (in)famous example of picture bias is the digitally darkened face of O. J. Simpson on the cover of Time magazine. Such tactics are propaganda, not journalism. 12:21:06 PM    comment []  trackback []

The Vatican's fight against AIDS preventation BBC's Panorama has investigated how the Vatican is fighting tooth and nail to dissuade people in the third world from using condoms. The president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told the programme: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom. "These margins of uncertainty... should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger." These claims, that the BBC documents are repeated by Catholic representatives all across the world, are factually wrong and totally irresponsible. There is a strong scientific consensus that condoms reduce the chance of transmission by 90%. The claim that the HIV virus makes it through "tiny holes" in condoms is pure and utter nonsense. Yet, the RCC still enjoys high credibility in many poor countries, exactly those countries where AIDS is a massive threat to millions of lives. The Pope and his Vatican obviously thinks that the medieval anti-contraception dogma is more important than people's lives, and that promoting lies to support these ideas are acceptable. It was, after all, the Church that invented the saying "the ends justify the means," even if the result in this case can be genocide with a Papal blessing. 9:52:08 AM    comment []  trackback []

Waiting for the Nobel Peace Prize I have no high expectations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The committee, appointed by the Norwegian parliament but working independently, has already made the decision, and it will be announced tomorrow Friday. There are no obvious candidates. Tips for the 2003 prize include Pope John Paul, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese or Iranian dissidents, the European Union and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Pundits seem to think pope John Paul II is the top of the list of candidates. True, his opposition to the Iraq war will have endeared him to the committee (or most of it). But the Pope is also shamelessly reactionary, in strong oppisition to women's reproductive rights and an outspoken homophobe. I simply cannot believe he has a chance. The most likely candidates are probably jailed or persecuted dissidents in China or Iran. Many tipsters suspect a Muslim will win. Vaclav Havel would surely be a popular choice, a hero of the quiet revolution that brought down the iron curtain, and also one who has fought against oppression and for human rights ever since. His recent criticism of Cuba's Castro will probably not be that popular among the Norwegian leftists, even though they are not as much pro-Castro as anti-US. I can't possibly see the EU receiving the prize, but the Nobel committee has done many outragously stupid things in the past. We can safely conclude that George Bush and Tony Blair is not going to get the prize. After the Iraq war, I fear the committee will feel the need to make some sort of stupid "statement" about it. It is unlikely that the UN gets it again, so what about Chancellor Schröder and President Chirac? That would be a new low in the prize's history.  8:42:26 AM    comment []  trackback []

Press guidelines After Arnold Schwarzenegger made Governor of California, and the LA Times have finished washing all the eggs from their faces, I hope for the end of the endless amount of stupid puns on his countless movie titles. Yeah right. Well, I still hope it is made into law that anyone who uses the word "terminate" in relation to Arnie's budget cuts or whatever is scolded and abused by random passers-bys, and that anyone using the phrase "governator" is up for a public caning. Dream on. This is the year of the very bad puns. 5:46:39 AM    comment []  trackback []

How to make a police officer cry Norwegian police officers are not ordinarily carrying guns, and these days they add another non-lethal weapon to their arsenal: pepper spray. Every police officer who wants to carry and use this weapon have to go through training, including being sprayed with the chili-based spray to know how it feels (see pictures and movie!). Police sergeant Ase Marit Vika wasn't too worried before facing the pepper spray. "I'm not particularly worried. We have been told it takes about 30 minutes before you recover from being sprayed. I've been through worse. It looks like it hurts, but I'll survive. Some of the women say childbirth is worse," Vika said. Afterwards she put on a brave, if a bit burnt, face: "I don't really think it was so bad. When I got to open my eyes in the water bucket and rinsed off the spray it only burns in the face, where I have thin skin," Vika said. She swears that she will think twice before using the spray in the line of duty, they runs off to get a saline solution to reduce the swelling in her eyes. However, one of the officers actually had to be rushed to hospital with internal bleeding in the brain after experiencing the pepper spray. 4:05:17 AM    comment []  trackback []

How to break copy-protected CDs It hardly takes the skills of an expert in cryptography to break the copy protection software built into MediaMax CD3 software. Juts hold down the shift key. 3:25:21 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.11.2003; 03:18:58.