Keys Corner

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You have two cows is the philosophical truth of the entire world…

US Democracy

You have two cows. People with funny hats from 1000 miles away in distant towns whom you’ve never met elect the leader, who takes your cows away and then gets impeached for having sex with them. Then one of your cows in custody is killed by terrorists, and the government taxes you and bans your kids from school to finance war against cow-hating foreigners. Your other cow is being tortured at the Guantanamo Bay. Now you have no cows, and people with funny accents from 800 miles away accuse you of being unpatriotic for complaining.

British Democracy

You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.

...and so on, you get the idea…

(Seen at Uncyclopedia)

Sunday 13th of March 2005 and Monday 14th March, BBC One 21:00 hrs – if you are in the UK, or can receive BBC One TV, mark your calendar or program your video recorder. This looks like a 2-part dramatisation which will be worth watching. Each program is followed by a documentary on the same subject at 22:00 hrs on BBC Two.

The programs look at what is likely to happen when Yellowstone next erupts – an event which appears to be overdue. The crater from the last super-eruption, 640,000 years ago, is large enough to fit Tokyo – the world’s biggest city – inside it.

The effects, say the authors, “could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilisation” – putting events such as the Asian tsunami into the shade.

The fallout from a super-eruption could cause a “volcanic winter”, devastating global agriculture and causing mass starvation. It would have a similar effect to a 1.5km-diameter space rock striking Earth, they claim…

The TV drama, called Supervolcano, sticks closely to scientific understanding of these events. The plot revolves around a series of violent eruptions at Yellowstone in Wyoming that send thousands of cubic metres of rock, gas and ash spiralling up in cloud that rains down over three-quarters of the United States…

More >

Kaydee told us that spam karma was eating his comments and generally being unsociable – naughty spam karma! Since I wasn’t actually having any real problem with spam previously, I have removed it without looking into why the comments were getting eaten. It may well be how I set it up, rather than a fundamental flaw in the program. I had a similar experience a couple of days ago when I commented on someone else’s blog, also with spam karma: the default settings may be a little too agressive…

While waiting, this morning, for the T-Com engineers to find out why we can’t connect our broadband (DSL) connection, which we should have had for a week now, we watched the birds feeding in the garden. (Don’t talk to me about DSL or T-Com – it has taken them a week, so far, to decide they need to replace a circuit board in the local telephone exchange – which now is planned to be done tomorrow).

Update (2005-03-08 21:00 hrs):
Hurrah! DSL and VoIP are both now working (VoIP Tel No. is +49 6084 9519013, provider is 1&1, which means you can call us free of charge if you also use 1&1).

A handy table which gives the optimal treatment of different types of rechargable battery. In fact, there’s a lot of good information about batteries on this site, as you might expect from the name (Battery University), so it’s worth visiting some of the other pages too.

So who’s telling the truth? Based on their past record, I wouldn’t put any money on the US troops. And we won’t start a discussion on whether warning shots were fired and hand signals given by the army:

US Marines (via BBC):

US military officials in Baghdad say they tried to stop the car – making hand signals, flashing lights and firing warning shots – before firing at the vehicle’s engine.

(and via Bloomberg):

The convoy carrying Sgrena and Calipari was approaching the checkpoint at a “high rate of speed’’ about 8:55 p.m. yesterday, said Marine Sergeant Salju Thomas by telephone from Baghdad. “It’s an extremely threatening act,’’ Thomas said. “That’s the exact same thing that car bombers do.’‘

Giuliana Sgrena (via the BBC):

“There was suddenly this shooting, we were hit by a hail of gunfire, and I was speaking with Nicola, who was telling me about what had been happening in Italy in the meantime, when he leaned towards me, probably also to protect me,” Ms Sgrena told Rai radio… ...Asked if the car was going too fast when the US troops opened fire, she said: “We weren’t going particularly fast given that type of situation.”

Update (2005-03-06):
The Observer reports that acording to the Italians, not only was the vehicle travelling slowly due to the road conditions, but that it had already passed several checkpoints on the way to the airport, and that despite the injuries to the occupants, the marines first confiscated their weapons and mobile phones, preventing them from contacting their colleagues in Rome for an hour, before organising medical aid:

...Italian reconstruction of the incident is significantly different. Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers’ first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour

Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy’s secret services, described the American account as unbelievable. ‘They talk of a car travelling at high speed, and that is not possible because there was heavy rain in Baghdad and you can’t travel at speed on that road,’ Bianco said. ‘They speak of an order to stop, but we’re not sure that happened.’...

It is snowing again today (what’s new?), and we have icicles in all sizes in the neigbourhood. The picture of the icicles from the roof is taken from our home office window, the other two were taken nearby on a short walk this afternoon.

Having just read this on Wired:

The U.S. Commerce Department has ordered companies that administer internet addresses to stop allowing customers to register .us domain names anonymously using proxy services. The move does not affect owners of .com and .net domains. But it means website owners with .us domains will no longer be able to shield their name and contact information from public eyes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said the move violates First Amendment rights to anonymous free speech… [my emphasis]

I thought I’d look up the First Amendment, since I have read the American Constitution and didn’t recall anything on anonymous free speech being protected. Here’s the text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I don’t see anything there about anonymous free speech, nor did I notice anything in this summary of case law. So perhaps the Electronic Privacy Information Center is stretching a point… rather a lot?

And should the registration of domains, any domain world wide, be allowed anonymously? Well, given the number of scams and illegal activities dodgy operaters on the web get up to, I think that complete anonymity is a bad thing, although some protection to prevent stalking of domain owners should be available – for example, by only making the domain-owner information available via a court application, if the owner requests her name is not published. I personally don’t have any problem with publishing my name and address for my domain registration, in fact it is also available on this site as well.

This is really going to improve Italian public opinion about being involved in the Coalition of the Willing:

March 4 (Bloomberg)—Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded the U.S. explain the shooting death of an Italian officer at a U.S.-controlled Baghdad checkpoint who was escorting a journalist freed in Iraq after a month in captivity.

The shooting occurred after a convoy accompanying Giuliana Sgrena to the airport for her return trip to Italy was stopped at the checkpoint and shooting broke out, Berlusconi said at a press conference in Rome. The Italian intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari, saved Sgrena’s life by using his body to shield her from the gunfire. Sgrena was also shot in the incident, Berlusconi said…

And what a horrific experience, having survived her kidnapping, for Giuliana Sgrena.

(Full article on Bloomberg)