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6. april 2006
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Ah, this is good. I've just now upgraded my DSL connection from 3.5Mbit/s to 20Mbit/s.
I wondered if the speed increase would be noticable while browsing and other normal online activity, and it sure is!
Now I just have to get a new and bigger harddisk.
Update: Yikes. I can't believe I wrote Kbit instead of Mbit, which would be a flashback to old dialup days indeed. That's what I get for early morning blogging.
11:51:58 PM 
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The AIDS rate in many countries in Africa have been greatly overstated.
KIGALI, Rwanda -- Researchers said nearly two decades ago that this tiny country was part of an AIDS Belt stretching across the midsection of Africa, a place so infected with a new, incurable disease that, in the hardest-hit places, one in three working-age adults were already doomed to die of it.
But AIDS deaths on the predicted scale never arrived here, government health officials say. A new national study illustrates why: The rate of HIV infection among Rwandans ages 15 to 49 is 3 percent, according to the study, enough to qualify as a major health problem but not nearly the national catastrophe once predicted.
The new data suggest the rate never reached the 30 percent estimated by some early researchers, nor the nearly 13 percent given by the United Nations in 1998.
The study and similar ones in 15 other countries have shed new light on the disease across Africa. Relying on the latest measurement tools, they portray an epidemic that is more female and more urban than previously believed, one that has begun to ebb in much of East Africa and has failed to take off as predicted in most of West Africa.
That is certainly good news, all the time we have been lead to believe that much of Africa was going more or less extinct. But some serious questions remain about how the infection rate came to be exaggerated so totally out of proportions by the United Nations (and others). It is hard to deny that organisations like UNAIDS had a vested interest in not correcting these very high numbers, and then using the newer, lower numbers only to hail its programmes as successful.
In the place of previous estimates provided by the World Health Organization, outside researchers say, the AIDS agency produced reports that increasingly were subject to political calculations, with the emphasis on raising awareness and money.
It is worth noting that for southern Africa, the rates are still appalling, especially in urban areas. There is, however, growing evidence that the epidemic has peaked.
11:10:14 PM
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Commentators on the right, in particular Mark Steyn, has made much of the low birth-rates and population decline in Europe. Andy Sabl argues, quite convincingly I think, that this is not such a big deal after all.
Even if population decline isn't self-correcting, it has no implications regarding "the looming extinction of Italians." Italy only had 36 million people in 1920 as opposed to 57 million now. Were there no "Italians" in 1920, no Italian art or culture, no Italian cooking? A negative exponential growth rate takes in theory an infinite amount of time to take you to zero. Of course, extrapolating the growth trend forever makes no sense, but the point is that a big country can lose people for a long time and still have plenty enough to sustain any desired level of cultural survival.
Surely, an aging population has its concerns - there will be fewer workers to pay for the pensions and health care of the older - but even a country with a declining population is not dying out by any means. Most central and south European countries are extremely densely populated. For example, Germany has 82 million people squeezed into roughly the same space as Norway's 4.6 million. The Netherlands have 395 persons per square kilometer, the USA has 30.
A slight population decline in central Europe is not necessarily a bad thing, and it's clearly no imminent disaster.
It is also the question of quality of life, as Andy Sabl notes. More specifically, about women's quality of life.
The reason Italian and German women (and educated native-born American women, in fact, whose fertility rate is not too different from Europeans') have fewer kids than they used to is that they have more opportunities and better things to do than change diapers. This is a good thing. I have nothing against kids; in fact, I like being around kids more than most successful men probably do, and love my three-year-old to pieces. But rearing him, which work I split equally with my wife, can be stressful and exhausting, and I don't wonder that few two-career families want to play the replacement game of having more than two. Those who want higher birthrates have the burden of explaining who exactly is supposed to replace the half the population that used to have "involuntary governess" as their only career choice. (Yes, I know that many women both here and in Europe "wish they could have more kids." But this seems to me equivalent to the finding that most voters wish for more services and lower taxes. What we really "wish," tradeoffs and all, is what our life-choices demonstrate. And I'd also like to see more attention to men's preferences in these surveys, including their willingness to take on vastly increased child care responsibilities themselves, something their partners would often like but know they'll rarely get.)
Of course taking a lesson from the population-booming third world, keeping women oppressed and banning or make unavailable contraceptives, would lead to higher birth rates. But it will also deprive society of the collected talents of half the countries' population, who would otherwise be able to contribute to the economy, to the arts, to science, studies and political life. And, yes, this can be combined with giving birth to a few children, at a time of their choosing. Even at the cost of a decline in populations, I know darned well which society I would like to live in.
Via Eugene Volokh.
10:51:34 PM
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South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have famously taken on the Roman Catholic church and the Scientologists, but what about Islam? It's coming.
However, in this week's episode, the duo take on Islamists and the cowardice of the media in confronting their intolerance. The episode begins with the town going insane and stampeding towards the community center for shelter-- because Family Guy is going to depict Mohammed in their cartoon. Fox wimps out at the last moment, but that doesn't stop Family Guy from trying again. In the first installment of a supposed two-parter, the two manage to satirize the ultrasensitive multiculturalists, the scolds of the mainstream media, and Comedy Central for pulling their "Trapped In The Closet" episode from their normal repeat cycle. I suspect that the gag will be that the second half will never air.
Hopefully at least the first part will air.
5:23:16 PM
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The French may be lazy, but if you want to land a plane in Britain, make sure it's not during the tea-break.
Passengers on a jet returning to Britain were told they could not land because an air traffic controller was having a tea break.
The Thomson flight was forced to circle the airport, finally landing 25 minutes late, reports the Daily Mirror.
Ken Jones, 70, said he and fellow passengers though the captain was pulling their legs when he made the announcement as they approached Cardiff Airport.
This was on April 1st, but apparently no joke.
12:21:47 AM
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If you're afraid of going to the dentist, you'll cringe at this:
Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday's journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least nine skulls with 11 drill holes found in a Pakistan graveyard.
That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought — and far older than the useful invention of anesthesia.
Maybe that is what they used the stone axes for.
12:18:31 AM
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Some scientists argue that people should keep their cats indoor to prevent bird flu from spreading to humans through their pets.
People living in areas where bird flu has been found in poultry or wild birds should keep their cats indoors, say scientists who believe the potential role of felines in spreading the virus is being overlooked.
But still, nobody even knows that bird flu can spread to humans from cats!
Cats have been known to become infected with the H5N1 virus and lab experiments show they can give it to other cats, although nobody knows whether they can transmit it to people or poultry, the researchers say in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
I think this is a misunderstanding of risk. There are so many if's and maybe's involved, the risk of anyone actually getting bird flu from a cat is miniscule at this point compared to thousands of other everyday risks. I mean, we don't ban cars, after all. I'd think getting hit by a car is a much higher risk than getting bird flu from a cat. Unless strong new evidence comes in, I think the felines should be able to enjoy themselves outdoors where they belong.
12:14:33 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2006; 13:03:25.
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