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8. juni 2005
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A very strong sign some people take online gaming way too seriously:
An online gamer from Shanghai has been given a suspended death sentence for murdering a rival who sold his virtual sword without permission, Chinese state media reported.
Qiu Chengwei stabbed his victim, Zhu Caoyuan, in the chest when he found that he had sold his "dragon sabre" for 7,000 yuan (£473).
Both men were part of the worldwide multi-player game Legend of Mr 3, which features heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords.
Qiu will now instead be playing the real-life game "life behind bars."
10:12:51 PM 
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Der Spiegel has the interesting background story on Germany's possible next, and first female, Chancellor: Angela Merkel The Underestimated.
You know, that headline made me think about somebody else.
10:07:27 PM
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Can electronic banking help bring order to Iraq?
But finance officials eager to move Iraq away from a heavily cash-based society have set their sights on a more ambitious goal: developing banking networks that will allow a shift to an electronic, largely credit-based economy.
Doing away with cash as the main form of payment would reduce the threat of highway robbery, which hinders fund transfers within the country, some bankers say. And in turn, a reliable network for electronic transactions would undercut an insurgency eager to deal in cash and spur reconstruction, finance officials say.
There is obviously some way to go before this can be implemented.
10:01:32 PM
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If she doesn't come, you may not be a bad lover. She might just have 'good' genes!
"Perhaps women who had orgasms too easily weren't very good selectors," Professor Spector said. "It paid women to be more fussy and this is one way of doing it. The simple fact is that it takes women on average 12 minutes and men two and a half minutes to reach orgasm. Adjusting to that imbalance is a test."
If you think about it, this study says something very unflattering about both men and women.
9:34:49 PM
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Google is now the world's largest media company.
After its shares hit an all-time high on the New York markets on Tuesday, Google is now worth $80bn (£44bn).
This takes it ahead of media leviathan Time Warner, which is valued at $78bn.
The valuation comes in spite of the fact that Google's annual sales total just $3.2bn, a fraction of Time Warner's $42bn.
Bubbles, anyone?
8:46:37 PM
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Let me introduce you to the goat Elena (2.5 years). She is one of a group of around 80 demonstrators who met, or rather tried to meet, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he visited Stavanger in western Norway yesterday. The goat, according to one Gunnar Vadla, is a "peace goat" who protests the visit because she doesn't want Rumsfeld in Norway.
The human demonstrators were from Sosialistisk Ungdom (Socialist Youth) and Rød Ungdom (Red Youth), which are the youth organisations of the far left and extreme left, respectively.
A group of counter-demonstrators representing Norwegian Kurds, who wanted to give Rumsfeld flowers for his role in liberating Iraq, and the Conservative party, who wanted to show appreciation for the US role in liberating Norway in WWII, were also present. Without goats.
The normally culturally sensitive leftists had chosen to show their disapproval of Rumsfeld by waving red cards. A red card is used by the referee in a soccer game to signify that a player is being sent off for a grave fault. It is a mystery to me why these peaceniks chose to use a soccer analogy to the defense secretary in one of the few nations on this planet where soccer is a quite small sport. It is thus a country where the symbolics of a red card is very likely to be missed, especially considering the significant presence of red flags among the demonstrators, rarely associated with peace or freedom among saner people.
PS: The redhead petting the goat may be, if I understand the picture caption correctly, 23-year old Elena Albrektsen, whom the "peace goat" is named after.
From a Norwegian article in Aftenbladet.
PS 2: Rumsfeld was in Norway to sign a renewed US-Norwegian defence deal, for those who wondered.
Update: Wow! An instalanche. Thanks, Glenn, and welcome to new readers. Feel free to look around.
6:55:30 PM
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Scrappleface:
Despite Amnesty International's recent statement that the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is a 'gulag', President George Bush today said that Amnesty is "not exactly like" the Soviet-era newspaper Pravda. [...]
"Pravda was the official organ of the Soviet communist party," said Mr. Bush, "Masquerading as a legitimate news organization, Pravda made false and outlandish claims against America to advance the cause of global communism and to give aid and comfort to our enemies. Let's be clear: Amnesty International is not precisely like Pravda. There are some differences between Pravda and Amnesty that would likely come to mind if you sat down and thought about it for a spell."
Of course, Pravda masqueraded as a newspaper. Amnesty International masquerades as a human rights organisation. Big difference!
Back to real news, which sometimes is and sometimes isn't far from parody, we see Amnesty's US chief William Schulz explain the "gulag" gaffe to Fox News' Chris Wallace:
Chris, I don't think I'd be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn't said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven't responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, "Chris, I'd like to go on FOX with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere," I suspect you wouldn't have given me an invitation
Howard Kurtz comments:
Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it's okay to unleash words like "gulag," even if it's not an "exact or literal analogy," because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball?
So while the "gulag" statement was utter bonkers, it's still fake but accurate, since it gets Amnesty some publicity, not to mention donations.
5:38:53 PM
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In the UK, first they came for the guns, then the knives, and now replica guns. Watch your pointed sticks!
And still, violent crime continues to increase. Sooner or later I hope the powers that be realises that it's not about tools, it's about people.
4:41:23 PM
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The border crossing between the US and Canada is apparently a very forgiving one:
On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres. Then they let him into the United States.
The following day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Despres' hometown of Minto, New Brunswick: The decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton was found on Fulton's kitchen floor. His head was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. His common-law wife was discovered stabbed to death in a bedroom.
Despres was arrested in Massachusetts two days later.
Airport security, on the other hand, is not very forgiving. Christopher Hitchens argues it is also pretty worthless when it comes to deterring or stopping terrorists.
5:44:22 AM
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"Paper: Mugabe denies he is dead" (CNN)
1:10:27 AM
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Some upbuilding news from the New York Times:
More than half of Americans will develop a mental illness at some point in their lives, often beginning in childhood or adolescence, researchers have found in a survey that experts say will have wide-ranging implications for the practice of psychiatry.
There you have it!
I'm a compulsive blogger. What is your insanity?
There are, however, some contrary - dare I say sane? - voices:
On the other side are psychiatrists who say they believe that the estimates are inflated. "Fifty percent of Americans mentally impaired - are you kidding me?" said Dr. Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.
While the new survey was carefully done, Dr. McHugh said, "the problem is that the diagnostic manual we are using in psychiatry is like a field guide and it just keeps expanding and expanding."
"Pretty soon," he said, "we'll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I'll be mentally ill."
Of course, some people will say he's just in denial.
12:52:14 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:18:00.
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