2. november 2003

Women like porn, too Before the Net, porn may have been mostly a men's thing, but as the Internet has afforded everybody to watch porn without having to go to shady shows or shops, women are coming to porn sites in force. Nearly one in three visitors to adult Web sites is a woman, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, the industry standard for measuring online audiences. Studying the Internet use of 40,000 panelists at home and work, Nielsen/NetRatings estimates that 9.4 million women in the United States accessed such sites in September. Julie Neff, 29, of Mukwonago, Wis., sees nothing but benefits. Internet pornography "is pretty much an adjunct to my regular sex life," she said. She estimates she views it less than an hour a week, and is open about it with her boyfriend. "We e-mail each other saying, `Ha-ha, look at this,' or, `Hee-hee, look at that,' or, `Ooh, that's good.' It's healthy. If you want to know the mechanics or the logistics of certain things, you can get education and inspiration to do stuff. Plus, I just find it prurient. I like it." I have to remember that expression. "The mechanics or the logistics of certain things." Yup, that's why people watch porn. Sorry, it should be called pr0n these days. 8:18:36 PM    comment []  trackback []

Does prayer heal? There has been earlier reports of alleged scientific evidence that prayer heals. However, the latest large study has failed to find any evidence for this. The biggest scientific experiment on prayer has failed to find any evidence that it helps to heal the sick. Doctors will today disclose that heart patients who were prayed for by groups of strangers recovered from surgery at the same rate as those who were not. The three-year study, led by cardiologists from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, involved 750 patients in nine hospitals and 12 prayer groups around the world, from Christians in England to Buddhists in Nepal. I have been following this debate from some time, and blogged about it earlier. 7:44:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

Ouch, he's in for a beating Douglas Gantenbein says we should stop calling firefighters "heroes." Hope your house doesn't burn anytime soon, mate. 7:11:58 PM    comment []  trackback []

School girls' revenge Angry Catholic girls beat up a man who had exposed himself to them several times. CNN's Anderson Cooper has an interview with Kelly and Jeanine Simone (picture), two very proud schoolgirls. COOPER: What did police say when they first came on the scene, Kelly? KELLY: They were proud of us because they were all girl cops. COOPER: It was all female police officers and they said they were proud of you? KELLY: Yes. COOPER: How badly did this guy get injured? I mean, I guess there were quite a lot of you from this girl's school. What did you do to him? KELLY: Well, we stormed him. Punched him. And then some guy came up. And then he started running and we all caught him and from what I hear, his tooth fell out. COOPER: He is in custody. He's going to be charged apparently with a number of charges. Any regrets, Jeanine. JEANINE: No, no regrets. Perhaps this ties in with the debate over women in military combat roles. 3:46:03 PM    comment []  trackback []

New Mac OS nukes external drive The new Mac OS upgrade, X 10.3, called "Panther," has a serious bug that makes Microsoft's security problems look like a picnic: many users have reported that external FireWire hard disks are erased when they upgrade! This is a particularly nasty surprise, obviously, especially as external hard drives are what people are likely to use to backup date before an OS update. 5:32:37 AM    comment []  trackback []

Iraq is no Viet Nam Thomas L. Friedman tells it like it is. The leftists who compare Iraq to Viet Nam has lost their connection to reality. The first thing is to understand who these people are. There is this notion being peddled by Europeans, the Arab press and the antiwar left that "Iraq" is just Arabic for Vietnam, and we should expect these kinds of attacks from Iraqis wanting to "liberate" their country from "U.S. occupation." These attackers are the Iraqi Vietcong. Hogwash. The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge — a murderous band of Saddam loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis. Have you noticed that these bombers never say what their political agenda is or whom they represent? They don't want Iraqis to know who they really are. A vast majority of Iraqis would reject them, because these bombers either want to restore Baathism or install bin Ladenism. [...] The Qaeda nihilists, the Saddamists, and all the Europeans and the Arab autocrats who had a vested interest in the old status quo are threatened by this. Many liberals oppose this war because they can't believe that someone as radically conservative as George W. Bush could be mounting such a radically liberal war. Some, though, just don't believe the Bush team will do it right. Friedman is not exactly a rightist pro-Bush demagogue. I hope the message gets through, but I am not hopeful. 5:19:11 AM    comment []  trackback []

Mugabe instituting reforms In a clear acknowledgment that Zimbabwe is in deep problems, Robert Mugabe has started to overhaul the government and the central bank. Not realising that he is the problem to begin with. 2:17:18 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.12.2003; 12:11:46.