Tuesday, August 30, 2005
The Australian government has told immigrants that people thinking of coming to Australia who did not like Australian values and preferred a society that practised sharia law should go elsewhere. A day after a Prime Ministerial summit with Muslim leaders, the Government stepped up its push to get "Australian values" — epitomised, it says, by the Anzac story of Simpson and his donkey — taught comprehensively to Muslim children. Education Minister Brendan Nelson said he would soon meet the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils to discuss programs to ensure those in Islamic schools and all other children fully understood Australian history and values. "We don't care where people come from; we don't mind what religion they've got or what their particular view of the world is. But if you want to be in Australia, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs," he said. "We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a hand up and a fair go. And basically, if people don't want to be Australians and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well basically they can clear off."
The UK Home Secretary faces accusations that moves to expel radical preachers could backfire by turning extremists into martyrs and increasing prejudice against law-abiding Muslims. Charles Clarke set out a series of "unacceptable behaviours" yesterday that would be used to exclude foreign extremists from Britain and remove those already in the country.
After decades of promoting smaller families, South Korea - like several other affluent Asian countries facing plummeting birthrates - is desperately seeking ways to get people to have more babies. In South Korea, the decline has been so precipitous that it caught the government off guard. Medical treatments like vasectomies and tubal ligations were covered under the national health plan until last year, as part of policies devised to discourage more than two children. This year, the plan began covering reverse procedures for those two operations, as well as care for a couple's third or fourth child.
Telling underage kids not to have sex is surprisingly controversial. "Can we be good without God? The question seems somehow abstract, a topic for Atlantic Monthly cover stories and college seminars more than practical applications. So here's another question: Can we keep our pants on? Ironically, the group that often answers "yes" to the first question says "no" to the second. And some believe that not only can't we stay chaste, but we should not. 'An abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible,' U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said last year. 'It's really inhumane.' Many others agree " - virulently so.
Saying homo sapiens are a "plague species," the London Zoo has opened a new exhibit featuring eight humans frolicking around in nothing but mock fig leaves. The "Human Zoo" is intended to show the basic nature of human beings, reported Agence France-Presse. "We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," a statement from London Zoo said.
The American home is getting bigger. And fatter. And, to some, uglier. Now, towns are fighting back. Chevy Chase, Md., an upscale suburb of Washington, recently announced a six-month moratorium on home construction to make time to examine how to deal with the proliferation of oversized single-family houses. Call them what you will -- starter castles, McMansions, monster homes -- these houses have become increasingly visible in metropolitan landscapes. Back in 1950, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the average new house clocked in at 963 square feet. By 1970, that figure had swollen to 1,500 square feet. Today's average: 2,400 square feet. One in five are more than 3,000 square feet. Oddly, as houses expanded, the number of household members shrank, from 3.1 people in 1971 to 2.6 people today.
You've heard of urban myths - how about eco-myths? Here's one that has gained great popularity: "Lord May, the President of Britain’s Royal Society, recently condensed Diamond’s theory of environmental suicide in this way: “In a lecture at the Royal Society last week, Jared Diamond drew attention to populations, such as those on Easter Island, who denied they were having a catastrophic impact on the environment and were eventually wiped out, a phenomenon he called ‘ecocide’”. While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island’s selfdestruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui’s indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists – and not by themselves!
The controversy over whether Shakespeare wrote all those plays never seems to go away. A new book, "The Shakespeare Enigma" rehashes all the old ground, but this detailed review makes it plain that there is no substance to the claims.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab have developed voice-analyzing software that works with cell phones and can tell when users are disinterested, empathetic — even when they are attracted to the speaker. The revolutionary application was developed as part of project conducted by Anmol Madan, an MIT Master’s degree student, and was nicknamed the “Jerk-O-Meter,” for its ability to spot inattentiveness and to send a “don’t be a jerk,” message to the speaker. But it can also tell when things are going well. In a dating study, the software predicted with near 100 percent accuracy whether a couple would exchange phone numbers. Besides providing relationship-altering ammunition for the old “You never listen to me!” accusation, the program could be a powerful marketing tool giving companies data about which sales techniques work and which products generate interest.
The neo-Communist authorities of Macedonia have imprisoned the head of Macedonian church, in a move which has shocked global Orthodox leaders. "It has been 28 days since His Beatitude the Archbishop of Ohrid and Metropolitan of Skopje Jovan (John) is imprisoned in the prison Idrizovo, near Skopje." The website of the ancient Christian Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, ticks away the days of the imprisonment of its head, "the only confessor of the faith who, in modern Europe, has been convicted and put in prison because of his religious beliefs."
Web sites in China are being used heavily to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks, according to several U.S. officials. Classified systems have not been compromised, the officials added. But U.S. authorities remain concerned because, as one official said, even seemingly innocuous information, when pulled together from various sources, can yield useful intelligence to an adversary. "The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," said one of four government officials who spoke separately about the incidents, which stretch back as far as two or three years.
If you want a glimpse of Hollywood's near future, you need only watch a single scene in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia on the split screen at the ground-floor showroom of Sony's New York headquarters. On the 70-inch TV, you see swarms of Arab camel-riders racing across the blazing desert. On the screen's left half, the Arabs are so blurred together that they can hardly be distinguished from the swirling sands. When they cross over to the screen's right half—presto!—they pop into such sharp focus that their facial features are recognizable. It's the same screen and the same Lawrence of Arabia. The difference is that the source for the left half of the screen is a conventional DVD, and the source for the right half is a Blu-Ray DVD, which, although identical in size and shape to the conventional DVD, holds at least five times as many color pixels, or picture elements. The left half of the screen is composed from approximately 87,000 color pixels—the maximum that a conventional DVD can hold—while the right half is composed from more than 490,000 color pixels. The 400,000 or so additional color pixels, by providing more details, nuance, and depth, create a high-definition picture.
The UK Home Secretary faces accusations that moves to expel radical preachers could backfire by turning extremists into martyrs and increasing prejudice against law-abiding Muslims. Charles Clarke set out a series of "unacceptable behaviours" yesterday that would be used to exclude foreign extremists from Britain and remove those already in the country.
After decades of promoting smaller families, South Korea - like several other affluent Asian countries facing plummeting birthrates - is desperately seeking ways to get people to have more babies. In South Korea, the decline has been so precipitous that it caught the government off guard. Medical treatments like vasectomies and tubal ligations were covered under the national health plan until last year, as part of policies devised to discourage more than two children. This year, the plan began covering reverse procedures for those two operations, as well as care for a couple's third or fourth child.
Telling underage kids not to have sex is surprisingly controversial. "Can we be good without God? The question seems somehow abstract, a topic for Atlantic Monthly cover stories and college seminars more than practical applications. So here's another question: Can we keep our pants on? Ironically, the group that often answers "yes" to the first question says "no" to the second. And some believe that not only can't we stay chaste, but we should not. 'An abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible,' U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said last year. 'It's really inhumane.' Many others agree " - virulently so.
Saying homo sapiens are a "plague species," the London Zoo has opened a new exhibit featuring eight humans frolicking around in nothing but mock fig leaves. The "Human Zoo" is intended to show the basic nature of human beings, reported Agence France-Presse. "We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," a statement from London Zoo said.
The American home is getting bigger. And fatter. And, to some, uglier. Now, towns are fighting back. Chevy Chase, Md., an upscale suburb of Washington, recently announced a six-month moratorium on home construction to make time to examine how to deal with the proliferation of oversized single-family houses. Call them what you will -- starter castles, McMansions, monster homes -- these houses have become increasingly visible in metropolitan landscapes. Back in 1950, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the average new house clocked in at 963 square feet. By 1970, that figure had swollen to 1,500 square feet. Today's average: 2,400 square feet. One in five are more than 3,000 square feet. Oddly, as houses expanded, the number of household members shrank, from 3.1 people in 1971 to 2.6 people today.
You've heard of urban myths - how about eco-myths? Here's one that has gained great popularity: "Lord May, the President of Britain’s Royal Society, recently condensed Diamond’s theory of environmental suicide in this way: “In a lecture at the Royal Society last week, Jared Diamond drew attention to populations, such as those on Easter Island, who denied they were having a catastrophic impact on the environment and were eventually wiped out, a phenomenon he called ‘ecocide’”. While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island’s selfdestruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui’s indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists – and not by themselves!
The controversy over whether Shakespeare wrote all those plays never seems to go away. A new book, "The Shakespeare Enigma" rehashes all the old ground, but this detailed review makes it plain that there is no substance to the claims.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab have developed voice-analyzing software that works with cell phones and can tell when users are disinterested, empathetic — even when they are attracted to the speaker. The revolutionary application was developed as part of project conducted by Anmol Madan, an MIT Master’s degree student, and was nicknamed the “Jerk-O-Meter,” for its ability to spot inattentiveness and to send a “don’t be a jerk,” message to the speaker. But it can also tell when things are going well. In a dating study, the software predicted with near 100 percent accuracy whether a couple would exchange phone numbers. Besides providing relationship-altering ammunition for the old “You never listen to me!” accusation, the program could be a powerful marketing tool giving companies data about which sales techniques work and which products generate interest.
The neo-Communist authorities of Macedonia have imprisoned the head of Macedonian church, in a move which has shocked global Orthodox leaders. "It has been 28 days since His Beatitude the Archbishop of Ohrid and Metropolitan of Skopje Jovan (John) is imprisoned in the prison Idrizovo, near Skopje." The website of the ancient Christian Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, ticks away the days of the imprisonment of its head, "the only confessor of the faith who, in modern Europe, has been convicted and put in prison because of his religious beliefs."
Web sites in China are being used heavily to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks, according to several U.S. officials. Classified systems have not been compromised, the officials added. But U.S. authorities remain concerned because, as one official said, even seemingly innocuous information, when pulled together from various sources, can yield useful intelligence to an adversary. "The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," said one of four government officials who spoke separately about the incidents, which stretch back as far as two or three years.
If you want a glimpse of Hollywood's near future, you need only watch a single scene in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia on the split screen at the ground-floor showroom of Sony's New York headquarters. On the 70-inch TV, you see swarms of Arab camel-riders racing across the blazing desert. On the screen's left half, the Arabs are so blurred together that they can hardly be distinguished from the swirling sands. When they cross over to the screen's right half—presto!—they pop into such sharp focus that their facial features are recognizable. It's the same screen and the same Lawrence of Arabia. The difference is that the source for the left half of the screen is a conventional DVD, and the source for the right half is a Blu-Ray DVD, which, although identical in size and shape to the conventional DVD, holds at least five times as many color pixels, or picture elements. The left half of the screen is composed from approximately 87,000 color pixels—the maximum that a conventional DVD can hold—while the right half is composed from more than 490,000 color pixels. The 400,000 or so additional color pixels, by providing more details, nuance, and depth, create a high-definition picture.
