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25. desember 2004
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Tidings from R'lyeh
The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft's classic horror story, is being made into a silent movie in 20s/30s style, the great era of horror movies. Judging by the teaser trailer, it looks very authentic.
Via BoingBoing, a directory of scary things.
PS: You can read the original Call of Cthulhu story here.
10:04:08 PM 
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Not very surprising xmas greeting
Here's more about the state of Norwegian journalism. TV2 Nettavisen's Mari Bangstad writes a short article about President Bush making calls to ten US soldiers to wish them a Merry Christmas. Yes, it's one of very few news articles that does not put Bush in a bad light, but the research leaves something to be desired, as always. The article begin with these words:
Ten American soldiers received a surprising Christmas greeting from USA's president George W. Bush.
In fact, it was not very surprising. The servicemen and -woman were informed two weeks earlier they would receive the call, and prepared carefully for a few minutes talking to the president.
Stationed on the farthest island in Alaska's Aleutians, Coast Guard Fireman Michael Joseph feels like he's living at the end of the earth. But he wasn't too far away to receive a Christmas Eve greeting from President Bush.
''First thing he said was, 'Michael, Merry Christmas," said Joseph, 24, of Tucson, one of 20 men at the Coast Guard's Loran Station Attu on Attu Island. ''It was great."
Placing calls yesterday from his retreat at Camp David, Md., Bush talked to 10 members of the US military around the world and in the United States to thank them for their service and share holiday greetings.
Joseph said in a telephone interview that his name was among those submitted for the honor of receiving a call from Bush. He said he was surprised and elated to learn two weeks ago that he would be among those talking to the president on Christmas Eve.
Joseph, who has been stationed on the Aleutian island for nearly nine months, awoke at 2:45 a.m. local time to prepare for the call at 4:15 a.m., which at Camp David was 8:15 a.m. EDT. The conversation lasted three or four minutes. He said Bush told him, ''I want to say thanks for your service out there and the sacrifice you're making."
Yes, I'm nitpicking, I know. But when people who do news reporting for a living make no attempt to check out even the most obvious facts about a story, how do we expect them to get the complicated stuff correct? The answer is that they don't, and we shouldn't expect them to.
3:16:29 PM
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The 2004 Google Zeitgeist is in
That was a rather boring report, wasn't it? Britney Spears is still the top query.
The interactive edition is still worth a look, though.
1:52:03 AM
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Maybe we don't have to worry about social security, then
 2004 MN4 may be bad news for all of us. The 440 meter asteroid has according to the latest calculations a 1-in-63 chance of hitting earth on April 13, 2029. It will release energy corresponding to 1,900 Megatons of TNT, which is quite sufficient to ruin our weekend.
Yes, that is Friday the 13th. If you're superstitious. And even if you aren't.
Nasa gives it a four on the Torino Impact Hazard scale (recently upgraded from two). On that scale, 0 means there is no problem and 10 means humanity is not going to be around much longer. A four means there is cause for concern, and it's going to hurt if it hits:
A close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation.
This is the highest score ever given for a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA).
Remember, these calculations are still being fine-tuned, and the probability numbers are very tentative. There is, after all, a 98.4% chance that the sky is not falling.
But it does remind us that sooner or later, a civilisation-ending asteroid will hit earth. The sooner we put serious resources into defending ourselves, the better the chance of survival.
Via Instapundit.
Update: New calculations are being done all the time, and it's now a 1 in 45 chance, or 2.2%, that it will hit us. The numbers are definately moving in the wrong direction.
I've been playing a bit around with this Earth Impacts Effects calculator, and if the recent data about size and velocity is accurate, an impact will cause devastation on an area corresponding to a small country or state, but will not have a truly global impact. What I don't get is a calculation of what effect the tsunami would have if 2004 MN4 hits the oceans (which is, after all, the most likely). A trip into the mountans would probably be a good idea.
Not that I want to scare anyone on a day like this...
Update 2: Yes, the way the odds seem to move in our disfavour reminds me about Larry Niven and Jerry Purnelle's Lucifer's Hammer. Luckily, this is a less dangerous object and it gives us much more time.
Update 3: Arcturus has more details.
Update 4: More updates. Chances of it hitting keeps being adjusted upwards...
12:50:24 AM
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The internet as a counterbalance to al-Jazeera
Donald Rumsfeld may be an insensitive bastard, which probably explains why he's not security of fluffy animals or whatever it's called, but he understands the challenges posed by a hostile media, and so does the soldiers in Iraq:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we're getting beat up more than anybody else. I've been here -- this is my third tour over here, and we have done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy's Web sites and everything else are all over the media, and they love it. But the thing is, is everything we do good, no matter if it's helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn't pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?
RUMSFELD: That does not sound like a question that was planted by the press.
(LAUGHTER)
RUMSFELD: That happens sometimes. It's one of the hardest things we do in our country. We have freedom of the press. We believe in that. We believe that democracy can take that massive misinformation and differing of views, and that free people can synthesize all of that and find their way to right decisions.
Out here, it's particularly tough. Everything we do here is harder, because of television stations like Al Jazeera and al-Arabiya and the constant negative approach. You don't hear about the schools are open and the hospitals are open and the clinics are open, and the fact that the stock markets are open and the Iraqi currency is steady, and the fact that there have been something like 140,000 refugees coming from other countries back into this country. They're voting with their feet, because they believe this is a country of the future.
You don't read about that. You read about every single negative thing that anyone can find to report.
I was talking to a group of congressmen and senators the other day, and there were a couple of them who had negative things to say, and they were in the press in five minutes. There were 15 or 20 that had positive things to say about what's going on in Iraq, and they couldn't get on television. Television just said we're not interested. That's just sorry. So, it is, I guess, what's news has to be bad news to get on the press.
And the truth is, however, it gets through eventually. There are people in the United States who understand what's really going on over here. They do understand that thousands of acts of kindness and compassion and support that are taking place all across this country. They do understand that large portions of this country are relatively peaceful. And something like 14 out of 18 of the problems it's had, incidents of down around five a day as opposed to the ones in certain places like Baghdad that are considerably higher.
And the Internet is helping. More and more people are seeing things that are taking the conventional wisdom and critiquing it and arguing it and debating it. And that's a good thing.
So, we are a great country. And we can benefit from having a free press. And from time to time people will be concerned about it. But in the last analysis, look at where we've come as a country, because we have had a free press.
And we've -- I mean, I've got a great deal of confidence in the center of gravity of the American people. What hurts most is in the region, where the neighboring countries whose help we need are constantly being barraged with truly vicious inaccuracies about what's taking place in this country. And it's conscious. It's consistent. It's persistent. And it makes everything we try to do in neighboring countries, where we're looking for support, vastly more difficult.
And we, as a country, don't do that. We don't go out and hire journalists and propagandize and lie and put people on payroll so that they'll say what you want. We just don't do that. And they do. And that's happening. And Al Jazeera is right there at the top.
These wise words are unlikely to be as widely distributed by the MSM as the "army you have" statement. Wonder why.
12:08:01 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.01.2005; 02:37:53.
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