18. januar 2004

Suicide/homicide bombs I noticed earlier today that Fox News reported today's Baghdad car bomb attack with the text "Suicide Bomb Rocks Baghdad" earlier today. It even linked a story using "suicide" consistently, a wire article from AP. As you can see, Fox News has now done a search & replace on that text, so its now reads the rightist politically correct term "homicide bomber." I have discussed this politication of language earlier, and why I think "homicide bomber" is a massive misnomer. In addition, note that the term "homocide bomber" only makes sense as a pun on the more known and very similar "suicide bomber." What if we susbtituted a synonym, calling it a "killer bomber"? It would not make sense, as that is the objective of all terrorist bombs to kill. In a language (like Norwegian) where the words for killing others and killing self are not so similar, the new term would not have any meaning at all. If the neologism should actually catch on and substitute the original, future generations will not understand why a bomber where the perpetrators die is called a "homicide bomb" while a remote controlled or timed bomb is not. Indeed, the term can only have meaning when it is used to state a political message by a minority 10:47:04 PM    comment []  trackback []

Green Fried Penis Mark at Fried Green continues to write about the German cannibal Armin Meiwes and his voluntary "victim" Bernd Brandes, and pokes fun at them. You have been warned. I am afraid I am partially responsible for Mark's cannibal-voyourism. 8:40:48 PM    comment []  trackback []

US music downloads on the rise again Illegal music downloading has, after a brief decline over the summer, started increasing again in the US over the autumn. The number of households downloading tracks increased 6% in October and 7% in November, according to an NPD study. NPD vice president Russ Crupnick said the increase - taken from a survey of 10,000 US households - may be a seasonal rise because of the amount of popular albums released in the run-up to Christmas. The RIAA were crowing and stupidly attributed the decline to its policy of suing individual file sharers. No doubt they will come up with some convenient excuse for the opposite result now, since giving up the disastrous hardline policy will make them lose face. 6:20:40 PM    comment []  trackback []

Take your kid to work day I didn't really intend to post this funny picture here, but when I tried to link it to a message board posting I discovered some fascist image referral restrictions. Since I had to upload it, I could just as well post it. Via Dean's World. Ah, heck, it's Sunday. 4:06:49 PM    comment []  trackback []

That was written to me Holt gives good advice to writers in his article Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do). The typical mistakes we all make range from repeats (overused) to commas (underused). Reading about it is one thing, knowing it too, applying it another entirely. Amusingly, there are a quite a few spelling errors in Holt's article. Of course, it doesn't make anything he says wrong, it just distracts the reader. Via Pharyngula. 12:21:09 PM    comment []  trackback []

Conservatives against Bush Conservatives have previously threatened to withdraw support from Republican leaders, but now six conservative groups have broken with the party which controls the presidency and both chambers in parliament, accusing them of "spending like drunken sailors." The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto," Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, said at a news briefing with the other five leaders. "I complained about profligate spending during the Clinton years but never thought I'd have to do so with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling the Congress." They haven't understood that promises to restrain spending is campagn rhetoric for when you are not in power. Winning the election means the cookie jar is open until the next election. And so it goes.  10:01:57 AM    comment []  trackback []

Vindication for prison guard fired for being rude to Bin Laden It is possibly one of the most blatant examples of political correctness taken to the extreme, and it took almost two years for the wrong to be righted. Prison officer Colin Rose was overheard, shortly after the terrorist massacre on around 3000 innocent civilians on Septemebr 11, 2001, to have made an insenstive remark about Osama Bin Laden while at work, and for this infraction he was fired after 21 years of impeccable service. Mr Rose was sacked because, unknown to him, four Muslim visitors to the jail, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, were nearby when he made his "insensitive" comments about the world's most reviled terrorist. An assistant governor overheard the remark as the former Coldstream Guardsman dropped some keys into a chute at the prison gatehouse on Nov 15, 2001, two months after the attacks in New York and Washington. The keys made such a noise that a passer-by suggested they had been thrown with enough force to go through the tray at the bottom. Mr Rose replied: "There's a photo of Osama bin Laden there." An official investigation was opened and in May, 2002, Mr Rose was dismissed for two counts of misconduct. Rather absurdly, the four visiting Asian Muslims had not even heard the remark, and nobody even bothered to ask them if an "insenstive remark" about the mass murderer would offend them (and if it did, why we should care). Now, however, an employment tribunal has gone through the case, and its verdict on the prison service and Jerry Knight, then governor of Blundeston Prison, is scathing, as it bloody well shound be. Knight's conduct is called "reprehensible, totally unjustified" and members of the panel questioned whether he was living in the real world: "He seemed determined to justify a course of action which seemed wholly disproportionate. In so far as there was any evidence of any determined attempt to lie or persuade others to lie, we wondered whether the governor lived in the real world. "Even taking the governor's findings at their highest, there was no conceivable reason why the applicant should have been dismissed. This was a one-off incident: an injudicious remark by a man under stress with a good record over many years with no suggestion that he was other than loyal, conscientious, and who treated prisoners and visitors with respect and politeness." [...] The evidence of Mr Knight, who is now governor of Norwich prison, was regarded as not credible. "Dismissal was so far without the range of responses open to a reasonable employer as to be perverse. "Any reasonable employer presented with a claim for unfair dismissal should have conceded promptly that a gross error of judgment had been made." The work of David Morrison, a Prison Service manager who reviewed the sacking decision, was "intellectually lazy and incompetent". A future hearing will determine the level of compensation to Colin Rose, who has gone through "two years of hell" after being fired for being a racist. The Prison Service incomprehensibly sticks to its version. 9:05:24 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.02.2004; 11:32:41.