Interesting World Perspectives

Today I visited weblogs.com, to view the list of recently updated blogs. 1,650 blogs have been updated in the last hour.

As an adventure, I decided it would be nice to visit a few blogs I've never been to before. This is one way of finding someone interesting to read that is outside your normal circle of blogs.

I stumbled across a blog called Missy In France. The blog has several good things going for it. First, it's written by an American woman named Missy, who now lives in Toulouse, France. I don't have to tell you, that people who move to a new part of the world often have different perspectives on things.

It's also a beautiful looking blog. I'm not sure if Missy did the graphic design, but it is amazing. Missy also likes to post photos. The photo's add a lot to the site's personality.

The Iraq Debt Situation

Reuters is reporting that Russia is now willing to help Iraq reduce it's debt:

Russia has offered to write off 65 percent of Iraq's $8 billion debt to Moscow but the offer is conditional on approval by the Paris Club of creditor nations, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council has said.

The situation with Iraq's debt is tough. It's hard to choose the right course of action for creditor nations.

Creditors are right in that they did not support the war against Saddam, and now they are being forced to pay part of the financial cost of the reconstruction. Iraq is a rich country, they say, and will be able to pay their debts off using future oil revenues.

The United States is right is asking others to share in the financial cost, as they are giving $20 billion or so towards reconstruction. Why should others in the world reap financial reward (i.e. the payback of the loans with interest) from the U.S. treasury?

The people of Iraq of course would like to be a strong country again. With hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, they would find it hard to stand on their feet. Even if oil revenues could pay back most of this debt, they need money for rebuilding roads, fixing buildings, paying salaries, and all of the day-to-day needs.

If not a debt relief, Iraq certainly needs a debt vacation. Creditor nations should perhaps consider (a) giving up any interest they feel they are owed - turn all loans into 0% loans retroactively, and (b) give Iraq 5 years of no payments, so that it can spend its money on its people.

I feel the creditors deserve to get their money back, but there should be some relief for the people of Iraq. Noone (not even the United States) should benefit from the situation they are in.

100 Years Of Flight.... Almost

The Wright Brothers must be having a good laugh at this. 100 years after the two flight pioneers became the first to fly, we still don't know how to do it. An attempt today to recreate their flight failed, as the craft just stopped dead in a muddy puddle and never got off the ground.

Blame Canada

I don't know why the new Prime Minister of Canada is upset the Americans are excluding Canadian companies from bidding on Iraq reconstruction contracts. Do Canadian companies really have a shot at winning those contracts? I mean, these contract usually go to reliable U.S. Department of Defense suppliers, people who donate lots of money towards the President's reelection, that sort of thing. We should just shrug our shoulders and say, "So what?".

I guess I understand the reasons why the Prime Minister had to "pretend" to be upset:
(1) If somebody insults Canada, the Prime Minister cannot say "That's ok. We deserved it". They have to be offended, even if we deserved it.
(2) Canada is contributing MONEY to the Iraq reconstruction project, even if we're not involved in the actual war. So shouldn't the "moral support" count for something?

In other Iraqi news, it looks like the U.S. government is paying $2.50 a gallon for gas in a country in which the average street price is $0.15 a gallon. Those are the type of government contracts companies are bidding for? That's a sweet deal for the Kuwati company who got the government to agree to that!

The American Voting System

Bob Cringely gives props to Elections Canada in his latest column for our efficient and fair election process. Here is my 2 cents on the issue:

In the last City of Toronto election (last month), I filled out the traditional paper ballot where you "fill-in" a line next to the candidate you select. But what I really liked about their technique is that you, the voter, had to run it through a scanner before you were allowed to leave. If the machine couldn't read your vote... well, I don't know what they would do but I assume they would give you a new ballot and destroy the old one. Basically, there will never be spoiled ballots. Of course, the machine didn't tell the operator who the vote was for. And if an election was close in a particular riding, the ballots can still be hand counted.

When the election was over, we had the official results in less than 30 minutes. For a city of 3 million people, not too bad.

Steve Jobs, Musical Genius?

Steve Jobs sounds amazingly smart in this interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Of course, I've been saying the record companies need to give consumers what they want for years:

Allow consumers to purchase current songs to make their own compilation. $5 for 15 songs that you can burn to a CD yourself, or download to an MP3 player -- no restrictions.

Jackson Case Imploding

The Michael Jackson case doesn't look to be a solid as prosecutors are making it out to be. It looks like these same allegations have been previously investigated and dismissed by child welfare authorities before:

Both the boy and his brother told investigators Jackson had not sexually abused them, according to the memo. Their older sister said she had never witnessed anything sexually inappropriate between her brothers and the entertainer.

And this:

The boy's mother told investigators in February that "she believed the media had taken everything out of context," the memo said. The mother said that the children were never left alone with Jackson and that her son slept in the same room with Jackson but never shared his bed. She said Jackson would sleep on the floor.

I wonder what the mother's excuse will be for those statements?

This case is starting to get sad. I mean, this poor boy is apparently dying of cancer. Apparently his condition is quite bad. And Michael Jackson's life and reputation has been forever destroyed. And the truth is, nobody knows what really happened. Maybe Jackson did do something, and was able to convince the family to overlook it for a while. Or maybe nothing happened, and the family is now exaggerating things to get back at him.

Only two people know for sure what happened - Jackson and the boy. Jackson tells his side (and nobody believes him). The boy cannot tell his side, since he is protected (and rightly so) by our system of justice. The mother can tell her side, but her story is full of holes. So what's this all about?

Where Is The United States In All This?

The U.N. has referred the question of the legality of the wall Israel is building to divide itself from Palestine to the international court at The Hague.

The [U.N.] General Assembly passed a resolution in October calling on Israel to halt construction of the barrier and dismantle the completed section.

Israel has ignored the resolution.

When Iraq was in violation of several United Nations resoltions, the United States acted swiftly to force Iraq, one way or another, into compliance. Ultimately, the U.S. claims it invaded Iraq due to this non-compliance. So the question is this: where is the United States now? Israel is in violation of many U.N. resolutions (just like Iraq), and the resolution calling for the dismantling of the wall is just the latest example. Why isn't the U.S. using its influence on Israel now? Surely it should have more success getting Israel to comply than it did with Iraq, right?

Russia World's Largest Oil Producer

I didn't know this. Russia has recently become the world's largest oil producer:

Russia is pumping some 8.6 million barrels of oil a day, compared to 7.96 million for Saudi Arabia.

Russia is not part of OPEC either. Perhaps the Russian situation may also lead to the destruction of OPEC.

See "OPEC's Swan Song".

The Oil War? Not As Farfetched As I Once Thought...

From this AP story, Iraq reports record oil exports from Gulf:

Iraq boosted oil production to 2.1 million barrels a day last month...

A thought just occurred to me. What if one of the major reasons for invading Iraq was to break up the OPEC oligarchy? I mean, a handful of the major oil producing countries conspire to fix oil prices every month, keeping supply lower and prices higher. What if Iraq quits OPEC? Iraq could then produce as much oil as they want, and sell it as cheaply as they want. It would seem to me that other oil giants, like Saudi Arabia, would be forced to lower prices (and thus increase production) just to keep their income level steady.

I know 2 million barrels a day will not automatically mean the death of OPEC -- countries like Canada already produce oil without being a member. But it would be another brick on the camels back and could someday lead to the end of fixed oil prices. The U.S. will save billions every year just on lower oil prices.

Something to think about.

Jerry Lewis And The Nazi's: A Hilarious Combination?

Film Threat has an interesting synopsis of a film Jerry Lewis made in 1972. It's (supposedly) a dark comedy, about a clown who is forced to lead children into the Nazi gas chambers. "The Day The Clown Cried". It should have been called "The Day The Clown Helped The Nazis Murder Dozens Of Children". It has all the markings of a film that could have been something, but has missed the mark so widely. In fact, some are even calling it the worst film ever made -- which is surprising since noone has actually seen it since it was never released.

I have never been a fan of Jerry Lewis' comedy, and I suspect his personality would irritate me so we could never become friends, but now I don't know what to think. The Film Threat article follows my point of view on this fairly closely.

Perhaps the wisest thing Lewis did was destroy the film. If it ever got out, it would ruin him for sure.

New Phone

I am the proud new owner of a Kyocera Slider. This is a beautiful phone.



It only cost* $99 Canadian (with a plan). Not too shabby.


*Note: This was a Christmas gift, so I didn't even have to pay for it although I got to pick it out. Sweet deal.

** Also note: Those are not my hands in the picture. Those are nice hands though. I bet this guy is a professional hand model. Look at that manicure. Those nails are the perfect length. And the nail itself is shiny. Geez, those hands don't look anywhere close to what my hands look like. In fact, my hands are developing a bit of a inferiority complex just looking at them.

Canned Luncheon Meat, Delivered Fresh

I've reached a new milestone in my life, that I am dying to tell you about. I've recently discovered that 89% of all email I receive is SPAM™. That's right... out of the 1,688 messages I have received over the last three weeks, 1,503 are of absolutely no use to me. That's astounding.

The main reason I am writing with awe and amazement, and not frustration, is that I have a very effective spam filter. POPFile absolutely rocks. POPFile is able to detect spam before I see it, and move it to a separate folder. It is 98.99% effective in doing this, which is amazing.

I could set POPFile up to delete the spam automatically, but I am still interested in seeing the spam before it's deleted. That's because (every once and a while) POPFile mistakenly classifies a good email as spam. I still care about finding the 0.2% of all messages this happens to, even though 99.8% makes it through.

Outlook 2003 has a built-in spam filter as well, but I haven't had a chance to try it.

The best solution for stopping spam in its tracks is to change your email address. I own a number of domains, so switching would be fairly easy for me to do technically. But there are so many reasons why it would be hard to do logistically that it's impractical.

A year ago, I was in favor of changing the SMTP specification so that it would be nearly impossible to send anonymous emails. If you get rid of anonymous emails, you get rid of spam. But now, with spam filters in place, I am content to leave things the way they are. The only problem becomes, I suppose, the financial cost of spam is still not covered by the spammers. That's a problem for the ISPs to deal with though.

The Effects of PCP

The Washington Post has a fairly balanced view of the Nathaniel Jones case. I'm glad not all media outlets are buying into the "police brutality" angle, nor the "police racism" angle.

Apparently, the statistics for PCP use are on the rise. This means the number of people who will resist arrest, and thus require police force to subdue, will increase as well. I, for one, am glad that officers put themselves in harm's way to try to help these people and protect us all. Thank you.

How To Develop Scandal Immunity

I read this post over at Josh Cagan's blog. I'll have to subscribe to that blog by the way, because Josh is quite funny and interesting to read.

Josh is looking for a good celebrity scandal for 2003. So far, what Hollywood has given us has not been much in his book. His essential point is this:

Is it a scandal when a short order chef makes a stack of pancakes? No. And it is not a scandal when a professional-grade boy toucher touches a boy. He's just following his job description. Get him out of here.

In Josh's eyes, Michael Jackson's latest legal problems are not a scandal because they are not shocking. Why? Because many, many people already believe that Michael Jackson is a pedophile, even before the current story surfaced. So, in general, most people's opinion of Jackson have not changed much over the last month or two.

To take this theory into the arena of politics, why didn't the country get into a great uproar when story after story came out about Bill Clinton's multiple infidelities? Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky. Only the Republicans cared about those things, and they only cared in order to gain more political power. Why wasn't Clinton forced to step down by some great public outcry? Because, everyone KNEW he was a filanderer when they elected him. One more allegation? Big deal. Take a number. Tell me something I don't know. If you recall, what almost got him impeached was not the infidelity, but the lie about the infidelity. Clinton was not immune from lying scandals, he was immune from sex scandals.

What about George Bush? In the last month or so, it looks like he's earned a similar "scandal immunity". George Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. Yes, we know. He lied about the reasons for the war. Yep. He lied about the timetable for the war. Check. He lied about the cost of war. Sure. He lied when he said the war was over back in May. You got it, Pontiac. He keeps blaming Iraq for September 11th - another clear lie. Yawn...

I think George Bush can now lie about anything, and it won't make front page news. The same way Clinton (and Schwarzenegger, I suppose) could grope women and get away with it, George Bush can now boldly lie without apology. So Bush lied about encountering a British Airways jet on his way to Iraq? No one cares. Bush lies - everyone in the country accepts this as a fact. His popularity ratings are up.

Now if you catch Bush in a sex scandal, or a money scandal, or something other than a lie, you might be able to stir the pot. But Jeff Probst has already handed him the Immunity Idol for Lying, and so he won't get voted out for that in 2004.

For Democrats, I can only offer this opinion. I don't think he has immunity for the war yet. If the war turns bad, or does not improve considerably, he might be weak there. But don't bother reading Al Franken's or Michael Moore's books -- the lies (and the lying liars that tell them) are old news.

Would You Like Fries With That Whopper?

British Airways refutes one of the most frequently told tales about the President's secret flight to Baghdad:

British Airways said on Monday that none of its pilots made contact with President Bush's plane during its secret flight to Baghdad, contradicting White House reports of a mid-air exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip.

Aha! I KNEW something was fishy with that story! It was just too cute, you know? Like a professional pilot (with tens of thousands of hours of flying experience) flying for one of the world's largest airlines would be dumb enough to ask, "Did I just see Air Force One?" over the radio? It sounded like a scene from a crappy Steven Segal movie.

Cincinnati Arrest Results in Death

I think police definitely followed proper procedures when they attempted to arrest 350-pound Nathaniel Jones. Fox News, of course, is trying to play the race angle for maximum ratings effect. But the sad fact is that Mr. Jones was clearly fighting the police, was high on cocaine and PCP, and could easily have harmed these officers if he had a chance to get close to them.

The people of Cincinnati should just accept that Mr. Jones got what he was looking for, and get back to normal. I can't believe the leader of the NAACP standing up for him though. The police were so clearly in the right on this -- it's not even close.

President Bush -- Humble?

Some in the Republican Party honestly believe President Bush consistently demonstrates humility. Hmmm.... they must be using a different dictionary than I.

Humility (n): Freedom from pride and arrogance

Was it humility that made George Bush tell Iraqi insurgents to "bring it on"? (Hundreds of American soldiers have been killed since then.) Was it humility that made George Bush tell the world "you're either with us or against us"? Was it humility that made George Bush tell the United Nations "we're going into Iraq with or without your support"? Those are all very arrogant statements. This administration has pretty consistently shown it's inability to listen to other points of view, or accept that it might, just this once, be wrong. Wipe that smirk off your face Mr. President.

They also give the President a lot of credit for flying into Iraq at a time of active hostilities, as if President Bush is one of the bravest men alive. I'll give the President credit for going there. But give me a break. He flew in, in the dead of night with the lights off. He was there for 3 hours, and then left.

I'm sure his visit inspired some of the troops, and that is a good thing. But let's put his action into perspective. He was probably in more danger while he was in Britain last week than while he visited Iraq. I mean, almost anybody can get a job serving food to the President and the Queen. And nobody is giving him credit for his brave trip to Buckingham Palace.