3. november 2003

Student suspended for safe sex Halloween costume Sixteen year old Lanessa Riobe, a student at Osceola High School in Florida, thought it would be a good idea to use a safe sex theme for Halloween, so she and her mother decorated a t-shirt with condoms. Riobe taped condoms to a white T-shirt and began passing them out to her classmates. Her first-period teacher alerted school administrators, who sent her home with a three-day suspension for class disruption. They also said she had an insolent attitude. Osceola High principal Chuck Paradiso later reduced the suspension to one day. "This is not acceptable," he said. "This is something you don't do in a public school." Backwards. 10:02:54 PM    comment []  trackback []

Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and currently an Israeli minister, writes an interesting article on the history of anti-Semtism, and towards the end he draws a comparison between anti-Semtisim and anti-Americanism throughout the world. Despite the differences between them, however, anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked, and both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism. It is, after all, with some reason that the United States is loathed and feared by the despots and fundamentalists of the Islamic world as well as by many Europeans. Like Israel, but in a much more powerful way, America embodies a different--a nonconforming--idea of the good, and refuses to abandon its moral clarity about the objective worth of that idea or of the free habits and institutions to which it has given birth. To the contrary, in undertaking their war against the evil of terrorism, the American people have demonstrated their determination not only to fight to preserve the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, but to carry them to regions of the world that have proved most resistant to their benign influence. A thought worth pondering on. 9:00:26 PM    comment []  trackback []

Truth? "What is truth?" is one of those questions normally deemed too large or philosophical for blogs, but Bjørn Stærk has a few interesting comments. It is, ironically, inspired by a rather ridiculous attempt to prove God's existence. 7:08:37 PM    comment []  trackback []

Ode (?) to lutefisk Since we're in season for lutefisk (or lutefish) very soon, in this part of the world anyway, I have to point out this classic piece posted on Usenet in 1994, describing Clay Shirky's experience with the infamous Norwegian dish. Enjoy! PS: I wrote a piece of my own, far less funny, about the dish last year, and I even named my irreverent blog category after the dish. 8:29:34 AM    comment []  trackback []

Norwegian newspaper 'cheers' downed helicopter This is how Norway's largest newspaper VG reported the helicopter crash in Iraq on its web front page Sunday  Cheered after helicopter crash — The Americans are pigs. We will celebrate because the helicopter crashed - a big celebration. The Americans are the enemy of humanity, said the farmer Saadoun Jaralla who was close to the crash site. The article itself, based on the AP wire, contained these quotations around mid-way down, alongside the words of another Iraqi, Thaer Ali, who made no negative remarks about Americans and said he had intended to help the survivors (oddly, other sources attribute the exact same words to Mohammed al-Qubaisi, or Yassin Mohamed, depending on which article you read. So we know how much to trust these statements!).   It is no surprise that journalists managed to find anti-American sentiment among Sunnis (the Norwegian VG article calls them 'radical Sunnis' but I doubt that) in the stronghold of Saddam Hussein, even as opinion polls show them to be a minority. However, it is very telling that the newspaper's editors chose to put these words on the front page when Norway's most important ally through almost 60 years suffers a tragic loss of sixteen of its servicemen. 7:17:43 AM    comment []  trackback []

Allegations of links between Nazi Germany and Ford Motor It has been known for a long time that Henry Ford, like Charles Lindbergh, held anti-semitic views, but a new book brings old allegations about collaboration with Nazi Germany to light again and brings forth some new ones. Max Wallace, in his new book The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich, discusses new evidence indicating that Henry Ford's son Edsel collaborated with the German government during WWII to such an extent he would have risked prosecution if he hadn't died in 1943. The evidence included 11 letters between Edsel and the head of Ford's French division in 1942 which suggest that the parent company knew and approved of the manufacturing efforts being undertaken on behalf of the German military. The Justice Department concluded that there was "a basis for a case" Edsel Ford. Before America entered the war Ford supplied Germany with military equipment, while declining to make engines for the RAF, calling into question Ford's claims to have been "strictly neutral", says Mr Wallace. Also, Ford Motor knowingly allowed forced slave labour in its German factories, even before the US entered the war and US headquarters lost control of the subsiduaries. It is also pointed out that Adolf Hitler greatly admired Henry Ford, and even mentioned him in Mein Kampf. How much of the admiration was mutual is still subject to debate. 4:46:04 AM    comment []  trackback []

Gay bishop consecrated Rev. Gene Robinson has been consecrated as bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, amids both support and fierce opposition from the church's traditionalists. I wonder if such an event ever becomes as normal as a female priest or bishop has become in other modern churches? It is interesting to see how religious organisations come limping after secular society in extending human rights, some decades delayed, and yet they somehow think they have any right to a moral high ground. 3:30:52 AM    comment []  trackback []

Evelyne Thomas, the new Marianne It's refreshing to see the Beeb engaging in a bit of good old fashioned French bashing. 12:29:12 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.12.2003; 12:11:48.