Foreign Dispatches

Wikipedia Starts to Grow Up

It's now been over 2 years since I explained why I thought Wikipedia's editing process to be hopelessly broken, so it is with obvious satisfaction that I read this news report essentially acknowledging what I was getting at: that Wikipedia's "allow anybody to edit anything" paradigm sets the bar too low for vandals, trolls and fanatics with personal agendas, while discouraging anyone with expertise whose time is too valuable to be spent in drawn-out edit wars.

How NOT to Oppose Health Care Reform

Watch and weep for the lunacy on display by this Pamela Pilger character.

Putting aside the childish emptiness of the woman's response to the statements by the man she's just insulted, it is interesting that a person wearing a shirt indicating support for the Israeli Defense Forces should show be so disrespectful of a real, live Israeli standing in front of her, interesting but not unexpected: this sort of attitude is par for the course with much of America's "Christian" right - a faction to which this crazy clearly belongs.

Friends of Evil

I've never made a secret of the fact that I detest The Guardian newspaper, and this article on the Lockerbie bomber illustrates why.

Lady GaGa - Butterface

Finally, someone has the courage to tell it like it is. Lady GaGa makes me gag-gag.

How is it that someone so fundamentally uninteresting - unworthy of note as a singer or a dancer, incapable of any creativity beyond rehashing Madonna-style "outrageousness", and not even pleasing to look at with the sound turned off* - could have risen so high in the public consciousness? I blame Perez Hilton and his relentless plugging of the derivative little troll ...

*At least Britney Spears originally had that going for her.

Exams Kill Grandmothers!

Here's some hard proof if you don't believe me. Also, dogs are disproportionately likely to eat the homework of struggling students ...

Who's Afraid of Mohammed?

Yale University Press, that's who.

It’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images — which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb — blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.

So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005 (emphasis added).

As Easy as Norwegian

As one or two long-standing readers of this blog may know, I have more than a passing interest in learning new languages, particularly those of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. As it so happens, I've had the opportunity over the last year to put my studies to some use in situ, and no such experience has been more interesting than the one I underwent in Denmark, where all I had to do was switch on the TV to see not just Danish programming, but shows in Swedish, Norwegian and even German as well.

What Makes the Birthers Tick?

Reason's Jesse Walker gives a go at understanding the psychological underpinnings of birtherism, and his findings can be summarized as follows: