Just another nerd.
The government of Bangladesh was not happy at all that an article in the latest issue of Far Eastern Economic Review described the Asian nation as a site of increasing religious intolerance and militant Islamist movements.
To prove just how wrong the magazine was, Bangladesh promptly banned the offending issue of the Hong Kong-based journal.
For some reason, I find tear myself away from They Fight Crime.
Imagine Dave Winer’s reaction if this press release read,
“We are pleased to offer Weblog creators the ability to post headlines from NYTimes.com with Pyra’s software,” said Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital. “Weblogs are an increasingly popular form of self-publishing within a highly influential community, and are therefore an important distribution channel for our high-quality content.”
I’m sure you can come up with a rant about dinosaurs, clueless old media, lockin and lockout, the importance of standards, yada yada yada.
I should add that I have nothing at all against exclusive deals. If I could arrange for an exclusive arrangement where only I got to run New York Times headlines I would do it in a second. It is not an issue of a particular business deal but rather about hypocrisy about the way to do business in general.
Tori Bergquist posted a thorough review of Call of Cthulhu D20 which was released earlier this month. According to Bergquist,
Well, now I have it, and I have to say I am most impressed. The D20 system still necessitates some changes in approach, and that’s what I’ll emphasize here, but overall, CoC D20 is going to make a lot of people happy.
…Even at $39.95, Call of Cthulhu D20 is worth investing in if you are a hardened D20 fanatic and want some real meat to add to your D20 games. If you have never been fond of the D100 system from Chaosium, you might find this book preferable to their system.
I haven’t bought a copy yet, but the book looked very slick and professional, though the audience is clearly limited by the almost $40 price tag.
The basic debate over population is not one over facts but rather interpretation of facts. Nowhere is this more obvious than when the United Nations hold a conference on aging.
According to UN statistics, by 2050, there will be more than two billion people over the age of 60. For the first time in human history, there will be more people over 60 than there are under 15. That will represent an enormous social and cultural shift.
In 1950, the average life expectancy for the world was a mere 44 years. By 2050 it is expected to be 77 years.
But few people, especially in government, seem to take the time to stop and marvel at what an amazing feat increasing average life expectancy by almost more than 40 percent in a hundred years is.
Instead, of course, the stories in the BBC and elsewhere focus on what a problem this is going to be. Health care costs are rising, people in developing countries who suffer from diseases early in life have a much lower quality of life after they reach 60, etc.
Some days I suspect medical researchers could announce the discovery of a wonder drug that cures all disease and triples life expectancy and the United Nations would rush out a report within a month on the horrible challenges such an advance would impose on the nations of the world.
So let me say it for them — there are today more people alive who are living longer at a higher standard of living than at any time in human history. It is a great time to be alive.
Source:
Ageing ‘is an international problem’. The BBC, April 8,
Norway’s Hanna Kvanmo, who sits on the Nobel Peace Prize committee sparked a controversy when she said that she and other committee members regretted awarding Shimon Peres the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 and wished they could take that decision back. Of course, Kvanmo apparently thinks Yasser Arafat has done a standup job of upholding the prize’s values and said nothing about Palestinian terrorism.
What’s going on here? Fredrik Norman fills in the details. Ms. Kvanmo’s position is a bit easier to understand in light of her activities during World War II.
On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway and conquered it in about two months. Kvanmo was one of about 1,000 young Norwegian women who subsequently joined the German Red Cross and went to work on the Eastern front taking care of Nazi soldiers.
While the Nazis were rampaging across Europe, leaving death and destruction in their wake, Kvanmo chose to spend the war helping to treat war criminals (among other things, Kvanmo and others treated the wounds of members of the SS).
At the end of the war, many of these nurses were returned to Norway where they were sentenced to varying terms of prison for aiding the enemy.
Leave it to a woman who aided the Nazi war effort to lecture the rest of the world about peace.
Source:
The 9th of April. Fredrik Norman, April 9, 2002.