All in all the entry isn’t very interesting to me – the way however in which he explains how reporting apparently works today is a gem of a quality you hardly find on the net. I have to add that personally I feel this is definitely not only true for political reporters. The long term repercussions of bad reporting is an uninformed society. Not being informed is the last thing the society will notice before it’ll fall into (probably unnoticed) totalitarianism.

[...]One of the principal functions of political reporters ought to be to dissect and dispense with misleading political sloganeering, but instead, they fulfill the opposite function: they are the most enthusiastic and effective disseminators of these cliches.

Some of them do it consciously and knowingly, for ideological reasons, to curry favor with sources. But many of them are driven by a far more banal dynamic. They “analyze” political disputes this way because most of their impressions are shaped by Beltway political operatives whom they respect and admire, on whom they depend, and this is how they have things explained to them. [...]

[...] What bothers me is the implication that the bare minimum is good enough, that as long as the other half of the conversation can work out the intended message, we’re golden. This disturbs me greatly; when did we stop striving towards excellence in our daily lives? When did we decide that the most minimal of efforts should be good enough? When did we become this lazy? [...]

The entry is basically about the fact that it seems to be socially acceptable to write and publish material online without caring in the least about how things are written or how to formulate sentences. I am by no means implying that I am writing correct English but that I am trying to – which is worth a lot already.

[...] Anyway, the bottom line is that it dismays me that people seem to be content with putting in the least effort possible, and acting as if that’s as far as we ever should go. It dismays me because it indicates a lack of desire to ever excel at anything, to push boundaries and try to better oneself and the world. [...]

Interestingly – there was a fellow called Kip Watson who went ahead an questioned (actually he was quite unfair – his first sentence being: “OK, now you’re just being silly.“)

Anyhow, having not much to do at the moment I went ahead and checked Kips website. I’ll just quote the most probably best collection of examples of flawed logics and factual mistakes I have ever come across in a single blog post.

Does religion cause terrorism?

1) The massive upsurge in terrorism is a post war phenomenon, coinciding with the period of greatest attempted Soviet expansionism.

2) The great majority of terrorists, much greater in number and equal in savagery to Al Qaeda, have been Socialists (usually referred to as ‘Communists’, which is a faction of Socialism).

3) While a backward and violent society during most of the cruel Ottoman domination, the Arabs didn’t learn the particular sadistic effectiveness of modern terrorist tactics until they fell deeply under the Soviet sphere of influence.

4) Sayyid Qutb, the political philosopher behind Al Qaeda, owes at least as much and probably more to Hitler (Nazism — National Socialism — being another faction of Socialism) than to Islam.

5) Socialism is nothing but the logical political consequence of the philosophy of Materialistic Atheism.

Therefore the cause of terrorism is not ‘religion’ but Athesim.

Wow, ey? I kind don’t even know where to start. Then again, he has been so kind as to list his statements with numbers, so I guess that the best way to get over with this is to just take them one by one. I can’t possibly be told that I am taking his statements out of context, as each and everyone is a new entity.

The massive upsurge in terrorism is a post war phenomenon, coinciding with the period of greatest attempted Soviet expansionism.

Wait… post war? Which war? World War 2? Or the soviet war in Afghanistan? Or are we talking about wars where the United States took part? Damn it, I just don’t know which one he is talking about. Or maybe the last Iraq war? Na, that wouldn’t fit. There is no soviet anymore.

Massive upsurge in terrorism? Wait, weren’t the French revolution, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand no terrorism? What about the Russian Revolution of 1905 or 1917? What do you define as terrorism Kip? If it is a fight against an established piece of society, against a government, against oppression, these sure are valid examples. Better yet, they all took place before WW2, which I believe you are talking about.

What about the greatest attempted Soviet expansionism. What do you mean by greatest attempted expansionism? You don’t try expansionism. You either do it, or you don’t. Depending on what exactly you are talking about. Every god damn war is to some extend at least caused by expansionism. And I really mean every war. You could cite the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and I’d say: “Hey look, an interesting example.” You could cite the Russo-Turkish War but that wouldn’t be soviet expansionism anymore, now would it?

The great majority of terrorists, much greater in number and equal in savagery to Al Qaeda, have been Socialists (usually referred to as ‘Communists’, which is a faction of Socialism).

Excuse me, what? First of, please contact your Department of Defense. You seem to know a hell of a lot about those fancy terrorists. Maybe you can be of some value to whatever your country does. Anyhow, let’s get on with this.

On what information do you base what you just said? In which way do the terrorists you know behave like, or remind you of Socialists? I suppose you are talking about Muslims here – as you are naming Al Qaeda. I fail to see how you can say that those people or there entourage is socialistic. Most of the Arabic countries have very conservative politics, and nothing at all in common with socialism. Whomever you talking about that, that’s not the main point here.

The point is: Saying that socialists are often referred to as communists shows that you have no idea at all about what socialism is in the first place. Even then: saying that communism is a part of socialism is in my eyes the same as saying that nationalism is a part of republicanism (or conservatism if you want).

While a backward and violent society during most of the cruel Ottoman domination, the Arabs didn’t learn the particular sadistic effectiveness of modern terrorist tactics until they fell deeply under the Soviet sphere of influence.

Well mate, I come to think that you just don’t have a fucking clue what you are talking about. Truly amazing and fascinating stuff. No offense, but perhaps you should go back to comic books. It’s unbelievable through which amount of pain certain people go to publish some crap like that. Astonishing I say.

Are you really comparing modern terrorist tactics with the things people learned from each other about 350 years ago? That’s when the Ottoman Empire was at the verge of it’s geographical size.

Let’s ignore the subtle placement of the pleonasm – cruel domination – and get on to other things. When exactly were the states who formed after the ottoman empire shrank in size over the years in the soviet sphere of influence? I mean, we are not talking about the Greece, Austria, and the like, are we? Otherwise your reference earlier on to “Al Quada” wouldn’t really make any sense. We can’t be talking about the Mahgreb either.

Let’s see what we’ve got left over.

Egypt? Hm, was quite conservative and nationalistic at the time. You surely remember Nasser, don’t you? Suez crisis and the like? No worries if you don’t, just trust me, that wasn’t really socialism.

Iraq? Was ruled by the Hashemite until 1958. It then was – yes, I acknowledge you this one – for 5 whopping years in quite good standings with the Soviets. Saudi Arabia never even got close to a similar situation.

And Iran was for the majority of the 20th century a close ally to the U.K. and the U.S. We certainly aren’t talking about the post revolution area, or are we?

So, which country have you been talking about? Or which regions?

Sayyid Qutb, the political philosopher behind Al Qaeda, owes at least as much and probably more to Hitler (Nazism — National Socialism — being another faction of Socialism) than to Islam.

Excuse me – what? You certainly know that Sayyid has been dead for about 40 years? Nevertheless, I give you the point that his writings might have inspired one or the other. The relation to Hitler however…

And what on earth allows you to state that Hitler had anything to do with socialism? Or that his movement was a part of socialism? Are you mad? I mean seriously… claiming that his regime was a socialistic one is utter nonsense. If anything he was rather a pure anti-socialist or anti-communist if you want.

Socialism is nothing but the logical political consequence of the philosophy of Materialistic Atheism.

Ya, right. Using a lot of words which sound intelligent doesn’t always end up forming an intelligent sentence. In this case, it definitely didn’t. Would you please be so kind as to illustrate on how socialism and atheism are linked? You claim that it’s a logical consequence; but why would that be so? Where is the consequence, where is the logics behind such a statement?

Therefore the cause of terrorism is not ‘religion’ but Athesim

Brilliance. You actually went through the pain of posting 5 different statements but use only one to base your conclusion on? Nice.

I can’t even be bothered to reply to the conclusion in the first place. Just let me give you a hint on what to do next time.

Read about what you are writing (and I really mean something else then the Bible) before you go ahead and publish something.

Ahoy

The links to in the quote have been added by me so as to allow those of you who do not know what Oblivion or an RPG is know how the reasoning started.

Oh, I agree completely. No game has ever let me down the way Oblivion did. I’m still hoping mods and expansions will fix it but there’s no way I’m pre-ordering the next one. I’m afraid it really will be a first person shooter.

The really scary thing is that it’s not just video games. Book sales were done last year because people just don’t read as much anymore. I’m having to dumb down my newspaper editorials because people used to want analysis they could use to make their own opinions, now they seem to just want opinions they can quote without having to think for themselves. McDonalds puts pictures of the food on the cash register instead of numbers.

Face it. The human race is devolving. In 500 years the best selling RPG in the universe will be a console game where you roleplay an ape named Fred, swing on vines and throw your own excrement. You’ll have one stat, apeness. It will effect everything you do in a subtle, yet unexplained way.

And Bethesda fan boys will be screaming “TES 504: Monkeypoo good. You go bak cave, no good rpger. Two stats bad. Made feces throw too hard. Shiney key graphic good. Make me happy.”

*shrugs* But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Note: I fixed some typos in the quote. Which means this isn’t a (sic).

Quoting Reuters:

“The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it,” she said, referring to the Soviet Union in a slip of the tongue, even as she urged Russia to abandon Cold War thinking.

For those that shouldn’t have gotten it right – I am obviously joking. Though she probably wasn’t. Have it this or that way, but such a slip of tongue in that situation is quite impressive.

“Während sich die Experten des Weltklimarates den Kopf über Maßnahmen gegen den Klimawandel zerbrechen, leistet sich Deutschland als einziges Industrieland der Welt weiterhin unbeschränkte und CO2-treibende Raserei”, sagte Wolfgang Lohbeck, Verkehrsexperte von Greenpeace. Es sei ein ungeheurer Zynismus, dass Minister Tiefensee ein Tempolimit blockiere. “Er verantwortet damit Jahr für Jahr Hunderte von zusätzlichen Verkehrstoten, Tausende von Verletzten und mehrere Millionen Tonnen Treibhausgase. Da die zuständigen Politiker bisher immer nur reden, wird Greenpeace jetzt handeln!”

and

Laut Greenpeace würde ein Tempolimit eine unmittelbare Verringerung des CO2-Ausstoßes um etwa neun Prozent auf deutschen Straßen mit sich bringen. Greenpeace setzt sich dafür ein, dass Hersteller Autos auf den Markt bringen, die weniger Sprit verbrauchen – wenn keine hohen Geschwindigkeiten mehr erlaubt seien, steige auch der Anreiz bei den Herstellern, weniger auf umweltschädigende Autos zu setzen, hieß es bei der Umweltorganisation.

In essence, Greenpeace doesn’t like politicians discussing matters to long – in this instance – speed limitations and has decided to put up their own road signs limiting the maximum speed on the famous German Autobahns to 120km/h. Now, am I missing something or, are they trying to abolish democracy (and freedom while we are at it?).

Reason, CO2 emissions could be reduced by a whopping 9% on the road (note: in my opinion that’s far, far less then a 1% overall reduction) and if there are low speed limits car manufacturers can concentrate on low emissions and low fuel consumption rather then speed. Nice thinking overall, I’ve got to admit. Oh wait, it might not be that good after all. What about American Cars? In the US the speed limits are quite low, actually a good deal lower then in good old Europe and yet they are fuel guzzling monsters.

So here are some quotes from the article.

The theory of nullity is set to make all kinds of sums possible that, previously, scientists and computers couldn’t work around.

“We’ve just solved a problem that hasn’t been solved for twelve hundred years – and it’s that easy,” proclaims Dr Anderson having demonstrated his solution on a whiteboard at Highdown School, in Emmer Green.
– Quote 1 from the article

Computers simply cannot divide by zero. Try it on your calculator and you’ll get an error message.

But Dr Anderson has come up with a theory that proposes a new number – ‘nullity’ – which sits outside the conventional number line (stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity).
– Quote 2 from the article

The only valuable thing about all this is one comment, although poorly formatted, by Kurt Fitzner – in my opinion at least.

The “problem” of a computer with divide-by-zero errors is not a problem, it’s a feature. It’s not something you need to or even want to fix. You could easily design a computer that doesn’t have an error in that situation if that’s what you want. Replacing the error condition with a new symbol accomplishes nothing. The program still has to deal with the issue in order to present a real-world result to the user. A divide-by-zero error is the way programs do that. It’s easy to solve a “problem” when you’re the architect of the definition of the problem in the first case. Dr. Anderson first defines a problem: calculators and computers throw an error when you try to divice by zero, and then defines an artificial solution – but the problem was artificial in the first place. We’ve all run into poorly designed programs that don’t handle divide-by-zero errors properly and crash. This isn’t a problem of dividing by zero, this is a problem of a computer program not handling its data properly. We’ve also all run into programs that attempt to reference a null pointer. By the same reasoning, we could define the memory that a “null pointer” points to as some new type of virtual space called “nullspace” (trekies should appreciate my resistance to the temptation to call it “subspace”), and call it valid. Make the computer such that reading from “nullspace” always returns a null. Suddenly no programs crash from dereferencing a null pointer any more. It doesn’t mean that the program is going to now do something useful. It probably means it will end up displaying garbage to the user, hanging in an infinite loop, or branching off to never never land. As far as it goes mathematically, there’s nothing you can do with nullity on paper that you can’t do by simply leaving it as (0/0) in the equation. So from either approach (mathematically or from a computer science perspective), it’s nonsense. The author’s own response to some of the critics (or, I should say, alleged response) doesn’t help my opinion. Tossing out the names of two other Ph.Ds and offering vague references to undescribed “axioms” built around this new symbol all reinforce my opinion that Doctor Anderson sounds precisely like the character Robert from the movie “Proof”.
– Kurt Fitzner

N.B. I noticed to late that you can do whatever you want to the formatting of the comments on BBC, the cut the newlines out of it. In that regard – sorry Kurt.

Do not allow yourself to believe me straight on. Go and read a bit about how they deal with certain problems and you’ll see. I’d like to quote “Hermann Göring” right here and now:

Once in German and once in English (both quotes “reading” the same).

“Natürlich, das einfache Volk will keinen Krieg […] Aber schließlich sind es die Führer eines Landes, die die Politik bestimmen, und es ist immer leicht, das Volk zum Mitmachen zu bringen, ob es sich nun um eine Demokratie, eine faschistische Diktatur, um ein Parlament oder eine kommunistische Diktatur handelt. […] das Volk kann mit oder ohne Stimmrecht immer dazu gebracht werden, den Befehlen der Führer zu folgen. Das ist ganz einfach. Man braucht nichts zu tun, als dem Volk zu sagen, es würde angegriffen, und den Pazifisten ihren Mangel an Patriotismus vorzuwerfen und zu behaupten, sie brächten das Land in Gefahr. Diese Methode funktioniert in jedem Land.” – in einem Interview mit Gustave Gilbert in seiner Gefängniszelle, 18. April 1946 –

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
Gilbert: “There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
Göring “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Now, back to the topic. So technically there are 2 points of criticism. And while I do not try to protect Ahmadinejad, I have to say that the way in which Knoblauch made her points is strictly unacceptable. First of, being positioned at a somewhat higher and by there important rank, saying whatever goes through your head without thinking first of what accusations you are actually going to make, is a very bad thing. Acting in such a way proves, in my opinion only of course, that such a person has no right to be in the position he or she may be in.

How come, first of all, that it still isn’t allowed to say that the Holocaust did never take place? Sure, to me and I’d say most of the world it did. And sure enough it was a tremendously bad thing, horrible not to say. But still. What on earth is the problem if somebody goes ahead and says that it didn’t exist, take place, and whatnot? I just can’t understand the problem the German governement and society seems to have with this situation.

Not allowing to speak once mind is a crime. Speaking something unrightful isn’t – and it will never be. At least to me.

Now then. Next point. Apparently – and I am quoting the BBC here – Mr Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as a “myth” and said Israel should be “wiped off the map”.. Again, I can not protect or respect his reasoning. But why oh why is saying something similar to that sentence a problem? Of course the idea of somebody speaking rubbish – which applied to Knoblauch – applies to Ahmadinejad as well – no doubt about that. But again, why is it a problem if somebody makes such a statement?

I can not grok it – I’d like to say.

The main problem to me however, isn’t the remarks both of those people made. No. It is the way some of the German politician answer and reacted. I’ll quote the BBC again: “Several groups plan to participate in a demonstration against Mr Ahmadinejad on Sunday, including the Israeli cultural organisation and exiled Iranian dissident groups. [...] Bavaria’s Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein plans to join the demonstration. [...] “If he were to come, we, as Germans, must make it very clear that he is not wanted here,” Mr Beckstein said.

First of – who is he (Mr. Beckstein) to tell the people who most probably voted for him, what they have to do? Is he a part of the executive and the legislatural force of the country? Who is he, to assume that his view of the situation was to be mirrored by all of his people?

Then there is the demonstration. I have no problems with the Israeli organisation protesting, or the Iranian dissident groups, and whoever would like to be a part of it. I have a problem with the sentence “Bavaria’s Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein plans to join the demonstration. That hurts. If Beckstein plans to join the demonstration he shall very well do so – as a private citizen. Using his position in the political and social ladder to accentuate his position should – in my opinion again – be outlawed.

Ah well. What shall I say…

Anyhow. My question is as follows. Is it a good thing to promote Google Talk or is it not? I mean, even though Google is definitely on the way to gain a huge amount of power – they are relying on an open standard, even if at the moment it still isn’t possible to sent a message from the “normal” Jabber network to Google Talk – isn’t is better to promote a “by standard” open network as Google Talk over the closed ones like for instance OSCAR2 (AOL and ICQ) or MSN?

Do you think that using Google Talk is any better than ICQ, AIM or MSN?

At the moment I still do not know. I think however that I tend towards the alternative of recommending Google Talk. We’ll see…