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2. mai 2005
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There is a conspiracy to force Spanish men to do more household chores. First, the law that threatened to punish men economically and with reduced visitation rights after a divorce if they had not shared in the housework. Now, Spanish designer Pep Torres has created a washing machine refusing to work if the same person uses it twice in a row.
It is a washing machine called "Your Turn", which will not let the same person use it twice in a row.
It uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the job of loading is not dumped on just one individual.
Pep Torres was approached by a Spanish white goods manufacturer to come up with an innovative Father's Day gift.
"I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn't do anything around the house except drink beers," said Torres, from DeBuenaTinta in Barcelona.
"Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home."
Somehow I doubt this would be well received on Father's Day.
8:28:54 PM 
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The not-so-secret idea behind Google's success is pagerank. Instead of ranking sites which meet your search criteria based on the prominence of the words, metatags or whatnot, Google assumes you're more likely to find what you need on sites which are actually linked most frequently, and especially those linked using the keyword you use. Check what happens when you Google for "here" to illustrate how it works.
Google News is not based on rank, thus a pretty obscure quasi-news site or even a press release can get as prominent a showing as a top newspaper. This may be about to change:
Google Plans to Rank News By Quality - Patents recently filed by search giant Google reveal that it plans to soon rank news stories by the quality and credibility of the source, rather than just by date or relevance. The patent calls for the building of a database that will track certain aspects of news organizations to determine a ranking.
It will be very interesting to see how this is implemented.
4:38:36 PM
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Sue Blackwell, the Birmingham lecturer who was a driving force behind the British teacher's union AUT deciding to boycott two Israeli universities, has links to anti-Semitic sites on her personal website, writes the Jerusalem Post.
The Web site of Sue Blackwell, the Birmingham lecturer who presented motions calling for boycotts of Israeli universities, contains a recommended link to a Web site owned by an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi activist. Wendy Campbell, who owns the MarWen Media Web site, has promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories discussing "unrivaled Jewish power," and maintains an additional Web site entitled "Exposing Israeli Apartheid," which is also linked by Blackwell.
MarWen Media, which is linked directly from Blackwell's Web site, advocates the views of Kevin Macdonald, an anti-Semitic pro-Nazi author, who has claimed Jews are responsible for a "breeding program" to conquer other "races."
Under the heading "Sue Blackwell's links on Israel and Palestine," Blackwell provides a link to the MarWen site, along with the following description: "MarWen Media offers the latest in groundbreaking documentaries, breaking through barriers and taboos that mainstream media – and even most alternative media do not venture." Blackwell writes that "the documentaries, mostly about Israel, Zionism, and Palestine, are by Wendy Campbell; see her other site, Exposing Israeli Apartheid."
Combining anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and vilification of Israel, Campbell writes: "It is no accident that Israeli 'security' is now the centerpiece of US foreign policy. How are the highly placed "friends of Israel" able to bamboozle so much of the world?"
Sue Blackwell's amateurish website (she was earlier forced to remove her activist site from Birmingham University servers) certainly reveals that anti-Israelism is her overriding interest in life. Not unexpectedly, she crosses the thin line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism frequently.
Quite correctly, on her links page you can find, among a large selection of nutcase sites, this link to Wendy Campbell:
Truth: Exposing Israeli Apartheid
A documentary film by Oakland film director & producer Wendy W. Campbell. You can buy other films by Campbell on related topics; and there is a nice prototype flag for a united Palestine-Israel along with other useful links.
Blackwell actually warns against using neo-nazi propaganda against Israel, but Wendy W. Campbell obviously represents a form of "soft" neo-nazism acceptable to British trade unionists. Never mind the anti-Semitic propaganda arguing that Jews control the world and uses Hollywood's "mind control" to bamoozle the world into supporting Israel. This form of propaganda is obviously, if you'll excuse the horrible pun, kosher for Blackwell, Campbell and their friends. They still haven't advanced to adopt the swastika, and probably never will, but the distinction between the anti-Semitic propaganda on the far right and far left seems mostly limited to symbolics and favourite attire these days.
PS: Sue Blackwell also hosts "The Boycott Israel Song", sung to the tune of "Bye Bye Love" and demonstrating that this English teacher can't spell "avocados."
Check sweet potatoes, avocadoes too
If it says Israel, you know what to do
Just read the bar codes - those little lines
Things made in Israel start 7 2 9.
Is I noted earlier, Norway's Socialist Left (SV) party encourages a consumer boycott of Israeli goods.
3:45:49 PM
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The parents of a 14 year old girl with cancer have taken her into hiding to avoid a blood transfusion. The family is Jehovah's Witnesses.
Police in Canada say they are looking for a girl who has disappeared with her parents after a court ruled she must accept a possible blood transfusion after receiving chemotherapy. The girl is 14 and has cancer (a cancerous tumour in her leg). She is a Jehovah's Witness, as are her parents. The girl does not want a blood transfusion. People who follow the Jehovah's Witness faith oppose blood transfusions.
The girl, who cannot be named, is part of an ongoing legal battle.
When a cancer patient has chemotherapy, the body is often unable to produce enough red blood cells - a blood transfusion is a common part of treatment.
The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that doctors are authorised to give the girl a blood transfusion if her life is under threat.
The Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrine to refuse blood transfusions has cost the movement many lives, and also provided it with many martyrs for the faith. When JWs are in conflict with the authorities over minors refusing blood, they see it as a form of Satanic persecution. JWs are subject to intense propaganda against blood transfusions, and young members will typically tell doctors and courts that being forced to receive blood, even to save their lives, will feel like "rape." In JW meetings, young ones are instructed to say that. I know; I have been part of the indoctrination programme. Yet, it often impresses judges that minors defend their faith in such a "mature" way.
Religious objections to medical treatment is a quagmire for medical ethics. In principle, doctors should accept the decision of the patient, and if we start distingushing between informed and not-so-informed consent, we open up all cans of worms. The decision may be ethically easier when it affects children, who obviously are not mature enough to take an informed decision. The rights of the parents only go so far.
2:57:24 PM
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The Indy is writing about the startling revelation (let the puns flow!) that a very old manuscript of the Book of Revelation has now been read, and the number of the beast is 616 not 666.
The document is a fragment from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (which I blogged about recently).
Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula."
The journalist obviously didn't know, but I'd be surprised if this is new to Professor Parker. It has been widely known for centuries that church father Irenaeus from his Bible manuscripts knew the number of the beast as 616. This, in part, has been seen as a strong confirmation of the belief among serious Bible scholars (as opposed to fundamentalists who try to pin the number to the pope or someone else they don't like) that the number referred to Emperor Nero. Based on a Greek spelling transliterated into Hebrew, the emperor's name forms the numberical value 666. If you transliterated it from Latin, you get 616.
I have never, before now, heard anyone seriously suggest the name should refer to Emperor Caligula. It would not surprise me if this is a mistake in the article.
PS: The Free Republic wrote about this new manuscript find on April 16, and elaborated in a serious article about the subject.
Of some interest is the early support given by this manuscript to the number of the beast (Rev. 13:18) being 616 (here given in alpha-numeric form as XIV [with bar], the other early witness C has it written in full: ecakosiai deka ec).[37] Manuscripts bearing this reading were known to Irenaeus. He affirmed that 666 stood ‘in all the most approved and ancient copies’ (e0n pa=si toi=v spoudai/oiv kai a0rxai/oiv a0ntigra/foiv, Against Heresies V.30.1), and argued that 616 arose as a scribal error. The reading of P115 does not actually add much to the available evidence, except to confirm one side of Irenaeus’ account, and to add some early weight to the 616 reading. Recent studies suggest that there may not be any significant exegetical difference between 616 and 666. The consensus is firmly in favour of viewing this number as an example of gematria, in which the number stands for the name of a person (‘the number of his name’, Rev. 13:17; 15:2), and the person in mind would be Nero. It is likely that 666 arose from a Hebrew transliteration of Neron Caesar from Greek into Hebrew (rsq Nwrn).[38] It is notable that an equivalent transliteration from Latin into Hebrew results in 616 (rsq wrn). We might also note that two possible transliterations of ‘beast’ into Hebrew could produce either 616 or 666.[39]
It adds up to a funny newspaper story not really saying anything new.
PS 2: Apparently, these manuscripts were not among those only read recently through new technology. The article above was written in 2000 and only reposted. It is of course possible that new NT manuscripts with the same reading have now been revealed, but in case it would not be anything new, and hardly anything for the Indy to write about.
12:59:31 AM
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Just listening to the BBC world radio right now, and was more than surprised to hear Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh, who I have linked in the past, talking about democracy in Egypt. He sounded, as we say, cautiously optimistic. He rejected the idea that democracy was imposed from abroad. He drew pointed comparisons to Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, showing that people want democracy, once the thugs in change are removed, one way or another.
12:27:59 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.06.2005; 06:43:58.
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