Dubai fights back

Gulfnews: Western expats full of praise for Dubai

I'm not sure how close Gulf News is to whatever passes for government in Dubai, but this article sure has the feel of a PR exercise:

Many who spoke to Gulf News said they regard Dubai as one of the most comfortable and tolerant cities in the world and maintained the western media that "unleash mindless criticism on Dubai" is failing to see the real story.

Corrado Chiarentin, 44, who runs a business consultancy in Dubai, said it is "the most tolerant city" he has ever been to.

All depends how you define tolerant, I suppose, as well as how many cities he has been to.

Deserves an award

For the most pretentious photographs you're likely to see for a new range of designer toilets and basins, go here.

(I think it is meant to convey how toilets will look in heaven.)

Capybara revisited

I had a post about this in 2006, but how many of you have been reading since then?

This time it is the BBC with an article about the poor capybara - the red meat you eat in Venezuela when you are not allowed to eat red meat. (We're talking Lent, and perhaps the most opportunistic categorisation of meat ever.)

Not helpful, China

The Tablet - Arrest of bishops loyal to Rome mars Vatican’s China meeting

Old timers of Area 51

The Road to Area 51 - Los Angeles Times

Some former Area 51 test pilots get to talk about their secret OXCART work. All pretty interesting.

More on the project at Wikipedia.

Hard to enforce

As reported in The Australian:

THE Family Court is allowing mothers to leave the country with their children, provided they agree to sign up for the internet-based video telephone service Skype.

A compulsory subscription to Skype, which allows parents to see their children on the computer screen while talking to them, has been a feature of 10 Family Court cases this year.

Um, how likely is it that this is enforceable from the other side of the world?

Still, I suppose that if the court is convinced a parent should be allowed to relocate to another country (especially if they only moved here because of marriage), I guess it is better for them to at least try to promote video chats than not.

Not a good sign

Escaping the Bhagwan | theage.com.au

Here's one aspect of the Orange People cult of which I was not previously aware:

About 87 per cent of residents had a sexually transmitted disease and women who became pregnant were told by the Bhagwan to abort and sterilise, Stork says. She and her teenage daughter were both sterilised.

"Women would write (to the Bhagwan) saying 'I'm pregnant. what should I do?' He would always say 'abort and sterilise'," she says.

"He used to speak so lovingly about children, yet behind the scenes everybody's getting sterilised. There were no children born in the ashram."

Worth reading at Slate

Slate Magazine

Slate is always worth checking, but just in the last few days, there seem to be a remarkable number of stories of particular interest:

* read about what Americans now think of Australian wines (and how aiming for the cheap and cheerful end of the wine spectrum is not always good marketing in the long run)

* Here's a list of professional groups which have the embarrassment of having a subset that have become 9/11 troofers. (As I have suggested before, global warming skeptics who like to cite petitions of generic scientists in their favour should keep this in mind. There is always a subset of any group who will belief fanciful ideas.)

* Meghan O'Rourke's series on the death of her mother continues to be compelling, moving reading.

* For Easter, there's a quick revision on the role of crucifiction, and how peculiar it was to the Romans that a religion should spring up around such an event.

* You can learn that you are not alone if you think Twitter is a ridiculous fad that will pass soon enough. (It reminds me of all the hype over Second Life.) I like this part:

Much of what we do online has obvious analogues in the past: E-mail and IM replace letters and face-to-face chatting. Blogging is personal pamphleteering. Skype is the new landline. ....

Twitter is different. It's not a faster or easier way of doing something you did in the past, unless you were one of those people who wrote short "quips" on bathroom stalls. It's a totally alien form of communication.

* And you can read a lengthy and (to my mind) pretty convincing argument as to why Israel will bomb Iran in the relatively near future. (There are many counter-intuitive propositions involved, but it's a well thought out essay.)

Slate really is the best quality web magazine of its kind, I reckon.

More and more anti-Dubai

The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

A very long article here that puts the boot into Dubai in a very satisfying manner.

32 million brides for 32 million brothers?

Selective sex abortion causes 32 million excess males in China

Some amazing figures in this summary of a BMJ on the massive gender imbalance in China:

...in 2005 alone, China had more than 1.1 million excess male births.

Among Chinese aged below 20, the greatest gender imbalances were among one-to-four-year-olds, where there were 124 male to 100 female births, with 126 to 100 in rural areas, they found.

The gap was especially big in provinces where the one-child policy was strictly enforced and also in rural areas...

Only two provinces -- Tibet and Xinjiang, the most permissive in terms of the one-child policy -- had normal sex ratios.

"Sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males," the paper said. "

For Good Friday

A symbol of the noblest of traditions | theage.com.au

Not a bad attempt here at a response to the modern distaste for the idea of sacrificial atonement.

Broadband skepticism, Part 2

As Michael Stutchbury notes about the proposed $43 billion fibre optic network, the government likes to say:

This is suddenly an "historic nation-building investment" that will "help transform the Australian economy".

And then they talk about how left behind Australia is compared to Japan and Korea, which already have the super high speed fibre to the home.

When is some journalist interviewing a politician going to be bright enough to respond to that line with: "Well, if it's so important to economic success, why is it that Japan has been in an economic slump for 16 years, and it hasn't stopped South Korea from suffering in the current economic meltdown? Apart from its entertainment value, how has high speed internet to every home been an economic boon for those countries?"

It seems the obvious question that never gets asked.

A very funny Colbert

I have no idea why politicians agree to do these bits with Colbert, but last night's "Better Know a District" was an extremely funny one:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a District - New York's 25th - Dan Maffei
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

False memories still popping up

Chris French: False memories of sexual abuse | Science | guardian.co.uk

These are still an issue, it seems. Interesting stuff.

Broadband skepticism

The blog with the most skeptical reaction to the Rudd government's plan to spend $20 to $40 billion on a new broadband fibre network is probably Catallaxy. I'm with many of its readers, like John Z:

The only use I can see on the retail end is pornography, piracy and maybe movie rentals.

Of course, nearly everyone at Larvatus P loves the idea, because it's the natural inclination of the Left to love big spending governments to build and own things which are not strictly necessary.

But there is another motive of many in supporting the idea: to get around the Telstra network bottleneck. I have to admit there appears to be some merit in that, but not at any price.

There is some commentary today on the doubtful extent to which private industry will be inclined to invest in it.

But really, from the Left end of politics (and my incredibly small corner of the Right), I haven't seen anyone yet raise the question of what better use could be made of $30 billion in clean energy development in Australia.

Nothing like dealing with the really serious issues first, hey Kevin?

UPDATE: I just heard on ABC radio that Green MPs will support it because they expect it will help reduce greenhouse gases.

Oh yeah, sure. Half the population will work from home, will they? That'll help productivity.

The Greens do not understand human nature as well as Mitchell and Webb. (The audio on the video at the link may not be entirely suitable for work.)

Not alone

Yet another horror film worthy of the flick - Film - Entertainment

Further to my post about Richard Curtis films, it's good to see someone else with strong opinions about him, and British cinema generally:

We have a knack in Britain of making movies which are not only very bad but bad in an odious way, self-indulgent and self-regarding, knowing and cute, all false sentiment and mirthless humour. Bridget Jones's Diary sets the tone...

Even by those standards, Curtis is grim. Anyone who sees a film which dares call itself Love Actually has been warned. Martin Amis described one of the bleakest evenings of his life as watching Four Weddings, desperate to leave but unable to. He had gone to the cinema with Salman Rushdie, who had to stick to the timetable he gave his police guards. And so they were forced to endure every last minute.

Parky speaks his mind

Sir Michael Parkinson: 'Jade Goody was a wretched role model' - Times Online

Of course, like everyone outside of England, I only knew of the Jade Goody story from news reports, and I never saw her on TV at all. However, the coverage given to her illness and death (see the photo in the article - the funeral procession looks like it was for minor royalty) made me suspect it was all ridiculous talentless celebrity worship.

Now Michael Parkinson has confirmed this:

“When we clear the media smoke screen from around her death, what we’re left with is a woman who came to represent all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain today.

“She was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know drugs and crime, was barely educated, ignorant and puerile. Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and became a media chattel to be exploited till the day she died.”

An unusual recommendation

Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Rare is the day that this blog suggests reading a post by the always hyperventilating Glenn Greenwald, but this lengthy one about how Obama's bailout is guided by the same people who got the world into the mess is worth reading.

(It also makes it clear that the need for regulation of the debt swaps that seem to be at the heart of the crisis was first apparent, and dismissed, in the 1990's under the Clinton administration.)

Modern faith

Madeleine Bunting: Real debates about faith are drowned by the New Atheists' foghorn voices

Madeleine Bunting starts her article with this good point:

What other system of belief has collapsed at such spectacular speed as British Christianity?

and goes on to discuss the annoying New Atheists in a way with which I can more or less agree, even if she quotes Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong with approval.

Her article also helpfully mentions a special edition of New Statesman called "God 2009". (I guess that would be the God that communicates via the internet now, instead of burning bushes.) It looks as if most of it is on the 'net. Plenty of Easter reading for all of you pagans out there.

Noted from the PETA website

Green iguanas are some of the most frequently abandoned companion animals, likely because people find out too late what is required to care for them.

Reptiles count as "companion animals"?

The list they then give of potential iguana raising issues is dryly amusing:

A properly cared-for iguana can live for more than 20 years and grow to be more than 6 feet long. The enclosure for a full-grown iguana should be at least 18 feet long, humidified, and maintained at a particular temperature with specific timetables for darkness and ultraviolet light. Common problems for captive iguanas are metabolic bone disease from calcium deficiency, mouth rot, respiratory disease, abscesses, and ulcers. ...

It takes about a year of daily interaction to socialize an iguana, and even then, sexually mature males will be very aggressive six months out of the year if they see their own reflections or if confronted with other iguanas.

They convinced me, at least.

In other PETA pages, 82 year old Cloris Leachman is their pin-up girl:

She chooses to eat vegetarian. Now Cloris is sharing the secret behind her vitality with her fans by posing in a dress made of cabbage for PETA's newest "Let Vegetarianism Grow on You" ad.

And on a seasonal note, if you're Jewish, you can find out how to have a Vegan Passover:

Traditionally, most Jews include an egg on the ritual seder plate—to symbolize spring and life—but many now replace it with a flower. ... In place of the shank bone set on the seder plate to remind us of "the mighty arm of God," many Jews use a beet, as allowed in the Talmud.

A vegetable to remind them of "the mighty arm of God"?