Annoyances

Islandic Terrorists

This is something I missed. Apparently the British Prime Minister has declared that the Icelandic people are terrorists.

The UK has used anti-terrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by a troubled Icelandic bank. This is an awful example of how legislation is abused to enable it to do something it was never intended. It has also worsened the effects of the economic breakdown on ordinary Icelandic people.

In order to “help” him to see his mistake (which is costing them dearly in this time of economic turmoil) there is a website with a petition and lots of pictures of non-terrifying Islanders.

On Wednesday October 8th, the British Government invoked anti-terrorist legislation, which was in effect aimed at the people of Iceland. This devastating attack on our society was received with disbelief here in Iceland, where it turned a grave economic situation into a national disaster. The people of Iceland have always considered themselves great friends of the United Kingdom. Our nations have a long history of mutually beneficial trade and have been close allies in NATO and Europe.

Read more, sign the petition and check out the pictures. But above all point out to Mr Brown that he must be off his nut.

Posted on by mklang

Spineless Academy

In 1786 King Gustav III founded the Swedish Academy to preserve the purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language” (Svenska Språkets renhet, styrka och höghet). The Swedish Academy is most famous for decideding who will be the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel. A task it has been carrying out since 1901.

The motto of the Academy is “Talent and Taste” (Snille och Smak) and apparently neither talent nor taste have anything to do with any form of courage.

In connection with the Rushdie affair when the Iranian mullahs pronounced the fatwa against him. The Swedish academy decided not to make a statement in favor of Rushdie and denouncing the death threat he now faced. The academy naturally could comfortably rely on old principles that they should not make political statements. Two of the members of the academy left in protest (Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten).

So now when the Italian author Roberto Saviano is revieving death threats for writing a book about the Camorra and several notables (amongst others: Michail Gorbatjov, Desmond Tutu, Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Günter Grass & Salman Rushdie) have shown their support, the academy when asked formally to show support replies (my translation)

It is extremely sad that a writer in an European country is in mortal danger because of something he published but it seems to me [Horace Engdahl the academy secretary] to be a police errand and not a question of protecting principles of freedom of expression.

The people of talent and taste are hiding behind their non-political stance to avoid taking formal moral stances. Everything a body like the Swedish Academy does is political. Every time they make a choice in litterature concerning the most author most deserving of the Nobel prize – it is a political choice.

Therefore the decision not to stand up for freedom of expression or, at the very least, to condem death threats is moral cowardice.

Posted on by mklang

Dibley, terrorism, dvds & other annoyances

Recently I bought the a box collection of BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley after enjoying the content I did not turn off the DVD in time and I caught the advert against piracy which included the amazing news that “piracy supports organized crime” and “piracy supports terrorism”

This type of false propaganda annoys me on several levels. So ok I can accept that there may be a link between organized crime and piracy but terrorism???

So what between planning to fly an airplane into a building and bombing innocent civilians, terrorists sitting in caves mass pirate dvds and upload films on the Internet? What a load of bull!

Actually another thing that annoys me about dvd’s is the compulsory and very annoying copyright and piracy infomercials in the begining. It almost makes you want to be a pirate – at least they cut away that crap. If I buy a dvd I actually think it should be my right to be able to jump past the annoying useless stuff in the begining.

Posted on by mklang

Is the web really wild

The paper University Affairs has an interesting article on the ills of Web 2.0. The article gives examples of identity theft, harrassment, unethical behaviour, lies and racism (just to mention a few things). The article illustration is a huge evil spider standing ominously behind three users surfing innocently while caught in a web.

My first annoyance is that this has nothing to do with Web 2.0 and the term is simply used to modernize the old gripe about the evils of web technology. But let me just get over that.

The real problem is that all the examples in the article are part of what is to be expected as part and parcel of the “new” technology. The article begins with an example of a Facebook group falsely accusing a university of using puppies in medical research. Nobody listens to the university and the group grows. The rest of the examples are even worse, potentially damaging and some show that people will be hurt in the offline world as well.

Popular beliefs, fooling the masses and common delusions are common throughout history. So what is the article really about? Well it’s a typical article showing technology as being dangerous and uncontrolable – it is simple fearmongering based on anecdotal (but most probably true) evidence.

This is journalism selling itself on sex and horror stories not with the intention of achieving anything and barely with enough material to be considered news. It is journalism profiteering on sex and horror which of course means it is not journalism but rather a profiteering on the same sex and horror it is pretending to be concerned about.

Posted on by mklang

42 days

This autumn the Government wants to push through a bill allowing police to lock people up for 42 days without charge if they are suspected of a “terrorism-related offence”.

What about the old argument that “if you are innocent then you have nothing to fear”? Well thats false and you should know better. Take the example of Hicham Yezza

Hicham Yezza, an employee of the University of Nottingham, was arrested and detained without charge for saving a declassified, freely available document entitled ‘al Qaida Training Manual’ onto his computer. Hicham was sent the document by his friend Rizwaan Sabir, who he was helping with his research into terrorism for a Politics PhD. Hicham never opened the document, it sat forgotten and unread on his computer.

On May 14, Hicham and Rizwaan were arrested; it was 48 hours before Hicham was told why he was being held. He was detained without charge for 6 days.

The proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill would allow the police to lock you suspects not for 6, but for 42 days.

Support the Amnesty campaign & Encourage the Brits to sign a no to 42 days petition.

Posted on by mklang

Trusting the professionals

Here is another examples why trusting professionals to actually know what they are doing is scary. It concerns the 700 billion dolllars needed to survive the bank crisis. The number is repeated with absolut confidence and the decision is being reviewed before a final decision is taken. But who sat down and worked out that they actually needed 700 000 000 000 dollars?

Here is a quote from Forbes Magazine:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

“We just wanted to choose a really large number” – seriously this is an early April fools joke? It must be. This cannot be the way in which trained professionals resolve a crisis? If it is then either we need to fire the professionals and hire some real professionals, or maybe just replace them with monkeys? To rephrase the old adage: Give enough monkeys enough money they will eventually resolve the crisis.

The illusion of order and control is vital to a government. It is for the most part based upon a reality and not an illusion but in this case, maybe not.

(via Neatorama)

Posted on by mklang

On my way

So it’s flying day. Starting at 1pm local time and landing at 3.30 pm (with a brief stop in Copenhagen) I will be flying over 7000 km to get far far away. So I am looking forward to the trip but as usual the idea of sitting cramped into an airplane seat is not my idea of sunshine. But that’s a petty complaint.


Biplane Circles Wright Brothers Memorial Monument by betancourt

I wonder what the Wright brothers would have thought about flying economy? or being stuck in airports waiting or missing connections?

Posted on by mklang

Greener Grass

Sitting indoors typing stupid stupid stupid work stuff. When I take a break and look out the window I see a neighbor sitting on her balcony reading a book in the sunshine. This is totally envious, I want to sit and read a book, stroll in the park and do non-work related things on weekends. So sitting writing a major report makes me really annoyed.

Posted on by mklang

Dawkins site censored

Technollama point to an article in the Guardian that Richard Dawkins, has had his website banned in Turkey because a Creationist has found it “defamatory and blasphemous”.

Apparently the whole thing blew up when Dawkins commented on a the book of a Muslim Creationist (that had been sent to him by the creationist) and called it preposterous and wrote on his website that he was at “a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the ‘breathtaking inanity’ of the content.”.

Some comments from the Creationists office say it all:

We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people.

We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed.

And I thought mindless creationists were a particularly american thing but apparently they, as with all stupidity, are international.

Posted on by mklang

Grapes with licensing agreement

Via Boing Boing comes this marvel of legal wackiness. The plastic bag containing grapes has the text:

The recipient of the produce contained in this package agrees not to propagate or reproduce any portion of the produce, including (but not limited to) seeds, stems, tissue and fruit.

I suppose that the sellers are trying to make an analogy with shrinkwrap licenses. The result, if the text on the bag is upheld in court, would mean that any attempt to grow new grapes from the content of the bag is in violation of the “license” (for the want of a better word). Violating a contract does not mean automatically that the seller or producer can recieve damages so what is left? If you manage to grow something from this bag you will have to give back the original grapes? Its all too confusing.

photo: Grapes with an EULA by dasmart (CC by-nc-nd)

Posted on by mklang