At work we have a lot of newspapers lying around the office (yeah, I know, ironic seeing as all our business is online, but anyway) and someone had left the paper from Sept 14th open to the comics page.

I noticed that Garfield seems to have definite views on the current firestorm over the Pope’s recent speech about Islam and faith & reason.

(more…)

It’s RMS news week!

Richard Stallman was at the UN World Summit on the Information Society and part of the security was that everyone had to wear an RFID tag to get through the security checks. Stallman’s privacy hackles were raised by this and he proceeded to wrap his tag in tinfoil and encouraged others to do likewise. This really annoyed security, enough that eventually they refused to let him exit a room.

UN Security eventually let him out, and then would not allow him to enter the room where he was appearing on another panel.

I got to the room just as the panel was about to start, at the moment that the problem suddenly evaporated and Richard was allowed to enter. No doubt some of our UN hosts had been dealing with security during those two hours, and eventually got an order from a high-enough officer or something. We’ll probably never know who, but imagine the headlines: Kofi Annan frees Richard Stallman. So, I walk in and Richard relates the entire situation to me in front of the audience present, including more than one government minister, and other folks arriving for the panel. I humorously remind Richard that he and I both have immunity as delegates, and he responds “You mean, I should have shot that guy Kramer?”. Kramer is the CompTIA representative who comes along to these things to relate an pro-software-patenting and generally anti-Free-Software viewpoint which gets Richard very steamed up. There’s a laugh, and I explain that our immunity probably doesn’t go that far. Richard goes on to say that he wouldn’t really kill anyone, but no doubt UN Security has heard this entire exchange too.

In reference to the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq document released yesterday:

"Our mission in Iraq is to win the war. Our troops will return home when that mission is complete." It’s kind of sad in a way that that’s the sort of sentence that has to be spoken out loud. It’s like something you’d say to a child. "We’re at the grocery store to do the shopping. We’re going to stay here until all the shopping is done. We’re going to shop until we’re finished; then and only then will we go get ice cream."

The Shape of Days: Thoughts on the ‘National Strategy’

What’s sad is that I know I’ve uesed that exact phrase with my kids on more than one occasion (the ice cream one, not the Iraq one)

Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor & Nazi hunter has died in Vienna, aged 96. Wiesenthal is most famous for his part in bringing about the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann in 1961.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has given possibly the best summary of Wiesenthal’s life’s work:

When the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the whole world went home to forget, he alone remained behind to remember

There’s nothing quite so devestating to an over-hyped activist message than the cold appliction of facts. Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) takes exeption with the ‘don’t buy petrol on Sept. 1^st‘ email floating around the web today:

If nobody buys gas today, but everybody drives the same amount, then it just means that we either had to buy more gas in anticipation of not buying any on September 1, or that we will buy more a few days later.

… even if it was accompanied by a one day moratorium on all gasoline use … the bottom line impact is a max of $60 million…about 1/100th of the stated number. And from point (1) above, even this is a gross exaggeration of the true impact.

This isn’t even the first time this has been tried (and failed).

We interrupt your programme today with this important announcement:

Pat Robertson is a fruitcake

That is all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.