6. januar 2005

UN: 'US relief fails to coordinate with us' The UN is now officially coordinating the relief effort in South-East Asia, and are whining to high heaven that the US military, who actually brings the supplies to the most needy people, doesn't fill in the necessary forms: The U.N. official coordinating relief efforts on Sumatra island complained Thursday that the U.S. military's aid mission was failing to coordinate and provide critical information to other relief organizations struggling to help survivors of the tsunami. Michael Elmquist said that while American helicopters were speeding relief supplies to villages isolated by the Dec. 26 disaster, their crews were not spending enough time on the ground to assess survivors' needs. "They don't stop their engines. They're on the ground for five minutes," Elmquist told reporters in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, on the hard-hit northern tip of Sumatra. One could be tempted to believe the whole objective of the UN is anti-American to the core. This is actually the top story of CBS News' website now. Go figure. 9:26:54 PM    comment []  trackback []

'Tsunami a punishment from God' Fred Phelps little inbred congregation of hateful bigots, Westboro Baptist Church, has sent out a news release thanking God for the tsunami that killed 2000 Swedes, and say they hope 20,000 of them are dead. If you can stomack it, you can read their insane "reasoning" here. It is almost inconceivable that such hateful and evil human beings can exist. This actually made the top news story in Norwegian daily Dagbladet this morning. 10:49:45 AM    comment []  trackback []

Belief without hard evidence Edge has many interesting feautures, and the annual question for 2005 is thought-provoking: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Reading the answers from some clever people in diverse fields is both very entertaining and educational. Personally, I believe there will not be any new scientific revolutions (as in those initiated by Darwin, Einstein or Bohr) in the future, just refinement of existing theoretical frameworks. I honestly believe we have found out all "big things" that we can seriously find out. Yes, there may one day be a grand unified theory, and it will be important, but I don't think it will be a revolution. And, yes, the application of existing theories will produce technology we can't even dream about, and they will be as revolutionary as the PC or the mobile phone, but it will not be a scientific revolution, but a technological one. This means I also think that human beings may never truly understand the one remaining big unknown: what human consciousness is. We may find out it is just an illusion, and in which case we can't really believe it, so we don't. We'll probably one day create artificial intelligence worthy of its name, but I suspect at that time we will still not understand what made that machine conscious or truly intelligent.  But then, I also believe I may be wrong. 8:18:37 AM    comment []  trackback []

Putin critic demoted I thought it was a good sign that Vladimir Putin kept very outspoken critic Andrei N. Illarionov as a close adviser. Now Illarionov is being demoted from one of his top posts, envoy to the Group of 8, while still officially retaining his main post as economics adviser. It's hard to interpret this as anything but a rebuke. It will be interesting to see if Illarionov is soon out in the cold completely. 8:09:05 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.02.2005; 02:16:37.