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21. april 2005
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You can apparently legislate anything:
Spanish men will have to learn to change nappies and don washing-up gloves under the terms of a new law designed to strike a blow at centuries of Latin machismo.
The law, due to be passed this month, is likely to provoke a revolution in family affairs in a country where 40% of men reportedly do no housework at all. It will oblige men to "share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention" of children and elderly family members, according to the draft approved by the Spanish parliament's justice commission.
This will become part of the marriage contract at civil wedding ceremonies later this year.
"The idea of equality within marriage always stumbles over the problem of work in the house and caring for dependent people," said Margarita Uría, of the Basque Nationalist party, who was behind what is an amendment to a new divorce law.
"This will be a good way of reminding people what their duties are. It is something feminists have been wanting for a long time."
Failure to meet the obligations will be taken into consideration by judges when determining the terms of divorces. Men who refuse to do their part may be given less frequent contact with their children.
There was actually bipartisan support for the law. Apparently that means that some men in parliament wouldn't admit their own machismo:
Only 19% of Spanish men thought it was right for mothers of school age children to have a full-time job. More than a third thought mothers should not work outside the home at all.
Maybe they need this law.
10:35:34 PM 
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It's a major scientific breakthrough:
Eat your way to the bottom of almost any bag of popcorn and there they are: the rock-hard, jaw-rattling unpopped kernels known as old maids.
The nuisance kernels have kept many a dentist busy, but their days could be numbered: Scientists say they now know why some popcorn kernels resist popping into puffy white globes.
It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center -- about 15 percent -- to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.
Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
"They're sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point," said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. "But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there."
Thanks to this, we may one day be able to eat totally poppable popcorn.
PS: For some arcane reason, this reminds me about the wonderful Aussie comedy Young Einstein, where the whole reason Einstein developed the theory of relativity was to put bubbles into beer.
7:32:21 PM
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France supports China's anti-cessation law, which threatens war against Taiwan if the island should declare independence. This is not exactly in accordance with EU foreign policy.
During a state visit to China, French Premier Raffarin threw support behind a law allowing China to attack Taiwan and continued to push for a lift of the EU arms embargo.
At the outset of a three-day visit to China, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he supported Beijing's "anti-secession" law on Taiwan, and vowed to keep pushing for an end to an EU arms embargo that could open the door for Paris to sell weapons to the Asian giant.
Raffarin also signed or finalized major business deals with Beijing valued at around $3.2 billion (2.4 billion euros).
The last paragraph of course explained the previous ones. Glenn Reynolds has a point:
You know, we should have just bribed Chirac et al. It's clearly the way these things are done.
On the other hand, the US has tried bribery as foreign policy before, and the results have been, shall we say, mixed.
6:24:33 PM
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The big news in Norway right now, barely saving our news-media from total irrelevance, is the release yesterday of a very negative report into how the Norwegian authorities handled the fallout of the boxing day tsunami. Thousands of Norwegians were in the affected area, in particular Thailand, and at some time we feared there may have been a thousand dead Norwegians. Eventually, it turned out to be around 80 dead and missing.
The report, ordered by the government and written by a committee lead by Jan Reinås, was scathing. The Foreign Office was sleeping on the job (though not literally), meaning worried relatives and survivors had nowhere to go and nobody to ask. This improved drastically when health authorities and especially the police took over responsibility. The Foreign Office (UD) was totally unprepared for the job, and for the first few precious days, it fumbled.
Unclear organization, a lack of information, delayed contact with relevant collaborators like the police and Ministry of Health and Care Services, lack of comprehension of the scope of the catastrophe, insufficient telephone capacity, poor registration systems and insufficient planning mechanisms were just the most important points of the report's criticism.
"The UD was the most poorly prepared," Reinås said, and pointed out that Norwegian authorities failed to match the crisis management mobilized in other nations.
"Germany and Italy handled this in a good and professional way, and the tsunami was just as surprising for them," Reinås said.
"Very many things failed in Thailand. The UD should have understood quickly that the burden on their staff there was far heavier than what they were trained for. Support from Norway came too late, and it was random," Reinås said.
Not good. But let's be serious. The Foreign Office is the department of diplomacy. And for a small nation like Norway, that means polite and silent diplomacy, a bureaucracy staffed by people who know the rules, follow the rules and don't like surprises. The boxing day tsunami was a massive surprise. Even when the scope of the disaster started to become apparent, politicians seemed unaware of exactly how many Scandinavians forgo a white Christmas for palms, beaches and a very cheap gin & tonic.
No organisation will be prepared to deal with a disaster unless it is specifically trained for it. The police, the military and health authorities are flexible, since accidents and disasters are their area of expertise. A "crisis" for the Foreign Office is typically that the EU signals its intentions to curb our export of salmon. Or, even worse, when some hideous breach of etiquette occurs at a cocktail party.
It is obviously correct to chastise the Foreign Office and the government for not having prepared for this, but the opposition should tread carefully around this topic. Foreign Minister Jan Petersen may not have had his best two days on his job last xmas, but nobody seriously thinks it would have made much of a difference whoever was in charge. The rigid organisation he lead was unprepared. Those who want to throw the first stone, as they say, should show us exactly where and when they urged a dramatic organisational change before the tsunami.
6:07:07 PM
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Serious UNSCAM update:
Investigators Robert Parton (senior investigative counsel) and Miranda Duncan (deputy counsel) have resigned because information was not being followed up by the Volcker Committee!!! These are two of the top three field investigators for the committtee. Only Michael Cornacchia remains.
If not a whitewash, at least a serious glossing over.
PS: AP has the story.
10:57:06 AM
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Some Christians have set up a page with atheists to pray for. How thoughtful. P Z Myers is deeply worried that since his name is misspelled on the list, God may fail to find him, and the prayer will end up in the big bit bucket in the sky.
12:48:49 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2005; 01:55:52.
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