australia, oddly enough

Updated: Oddly enough: Mount Isa, Queensland, edition

I’m the last person to deny that demography can be an important variable in social developments. Sex ratios in particular seem to be an important aspect when pondering about East German Hooliganism (75 women per 100 men in some areas) or the recruiting strategies of terrorist organisations in the Middle East (dying as a martyr while hoping to find 72 huris in paradise is could more appealing when the chance of actually meeting a woman while being alive is not just socially low, but also statistically – as in, say, Saudi-Arabia, where there were 100 women for 217 men in 2005, if I remember correctly). Foreign Policy even wondered whether “The Geopolitics of Sexual Frustration” -particularly in Asia where the invention of the sonogramm led to widespread female infanticide – were actually the world’s biggest security issue in the early 21st century. So, well, as Edward Hugh puts it so eloquently – demography matters.

And apparently, demography also matters in Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia.

Mount Isa, Queensland

Mount Isa, Queensland

The town’s mayor, John Molony, was apparently so troubled by the excess testosterone in the city that he did not want to wait for a natural equilibrium to develop. In what may be considered a miner-cover of Emma Lazarus – Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free – according to this BBC article and this one from Reuters oddly enough, he has come under fire after saying that female “ugly ducklings” might benefit from the town’s shortage of women.

“with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa”.

With a gentlemanly mayor like that, I wonder what kept any woman from moving there in the first place…

Update: The Sydney Morning Herald has a follow-up with some more interesting information – “Beauty-Disadvantaged Singles Outcry“. There’s a good chance Mr Molony will be the first mayor worldwide to have caused his constituents to rally for telling them they’re not sufficiently sexually attractive –

“It paints the women here as second rate and suggests that the men will settle for anything. He has put everyone down,” she said. “We’re going to get together to put forward our opinion.” Up to 100 women, carrying banners and placards, were expected to take part in the protest.

The best thing is, though, that he apparently got his numbers wong – the Sydney Morning Herald cites the 2006 census, according to which males apparently made up 52.6 per cent of the town’s population of nearly 20,000.

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intellectual property rights, music

So art can still be subversive…

This is probably the coolest copyright non-infringement performance anyone has come up with yet. Disabling bureaucracies by DOS-style, yet form-based requests is probably not entirely new as a concept, but putting together a 33 second-long piece of music using 70,200 samples, just to demonstrate some of the fundamental problems of today’s copyright and licensing schemes, as artist Johannes Kreidler is planning to do, is quite an achievement. There’s more if you click on the link, but it’s in German.

http://www.nerdcore.de/wp/2008/08/18/johannes-kreidlers-song-aus-70200-samples-den-er-bei-der-gema-anmelden-will/

And here’s a video by the artist himself. Also in German.

hat tip: nerdcore

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Allgemein

Greenwich is everywhere.

Auch wenn man nicht es eigentlich nicht glauben mag, dieser Blödsinn wiederholt sich regelmäßig: Diesmal sind die Briten dran. Spiegel Online: "Britische Parlamentsmitglieder zerbrechen sich den Kopf, wie sie die Insel vor den dunklen Seiten des Internets schützen können." Wie schon – mit einer Zeitschranke für als jugendgefährdend geltende Inhalte im Internet.

Die General Mean Time mag ja in London definiert werden, aber ob sich deswegen Anbieter an der Datumsgrenze an die englischen Regeln halten werden?

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Economics, finance

World Markets: Another One Of Those Days.

It’s another one of those days for global stock markets. To honor the occasion, I thought about linking to one of my favorite management articles of all times, that appeared in the McKinsey Quaterly right before the first dot-com crash in 2000 and is called “Valuing dot-coms” even though the subtitle is far better: “Discounted Cash-Flow Analysis Without Cash-Flow”. Alas, what was available back than without a cash-flow is now only available to premium users, or about USD 150 per annum… now that may be an interesting analogy to the current US housing market.

Be that as it may, here’s a great way to stay updated: the global markets page of the NYT business section makes excellent use of available web technology to visualize a lot of information.

http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/worldmarkets/worldmarkets.asp

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oddly enough

Oddly enough – Brothel offers customers gas rebate

Personally, I hate the whole voucheritis that has infected Germany over the last couple of years. I get why marketing departments love them, and yes, if I worked in one of them, I’d probably be infected as well. But as a customer, I find them as annoying as it gets. Although, apparently, not all vouchers are equal, as today’s Reuter’s “oddly enough” reminds me –

NEW YORK Reuters – A Nevada brothel is trying to stimulate business by offering free gasoline.

Clients of the Shady Lady Ranch will get a $50 gas voucher if they fork out $300 — worth about one hour’s worth of services — at the brothel in Beatty, Nevada, 130 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Owner James Davis said he already has had to order another $1,000 set of gas vouchers because the first $1,000 were spent in one week.

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German Politics, privacy

Noch ein Schäuble-Klassiker

Via netzpolitik.org ein Clip, der wohl heute morgen im ARD-Frühstücksmagazin gelaufen ist. Dort gibt es eine Rubrik names “Kinderreporter”. Heute befragten die Kinderreporter Politiker zum Thema Überwachung. Am Ende des kurzen Beitrags mache ich mir vor allem Sorgen über die technische Kompetenz derjenigen, die für die gegenwärtig anstehehende Kodifizierung grundsätzlicher technischer Fragen des menschlichen Zusammenlebens verantwortlich sind. Und natürlich stelle ich mir die Frage, ob man von der Antwort des Innenministers Wolfgang Schäuble auf die Fragen der mit einer Minikamera spielenden Kinder (“Wir wollten Ihnen mal zeigen, wie es ist, wenn man überwacht wird oder ausspioniert.”) auf sein Menschenbild bzw. Demokratieverständnis schließen kann.

“Wir tun aber die Leute nicht ueberwachen und ausspionieren. Nur wenn es ganz schlimme Boesewichter sind, wo die Polizei hingucken muss, aber so brave Kinder wie ihr ueberwachen wir nicht.”

Hier ist das Video –

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Bürgerrechte, intellectual property rights

What Fuckery Is This?

Over at afoe, Alex has put it more eloquently than I would have. Specifically by asking the question above which I probably would have avoided, but which is more than appropriate in this case –

“What fuckery is this? It looks like the French government, having failed to impose an awful record-industry inspired snooping act at home, is trying to policy-launder it through the European Union. The so-called “3 strikes” law foresaw that ISPs would be required to cut off service to anyone who was found downloading or distributing copyrighted material three times – which of course implied that the ISPs would be expected to filter all traffic by content, a wildly grandiose, authoritarian, and insecure idea. (Wonderfully, Nicolas Sarkozy outsourced his Internet policy to a committee led by the owner of a chain of record shops; a little like putting the manufacturers of candles in charge of street lighting.)

But the legislation failed in France; so here it is, coming straight back via the European Parliament. The odd bit, though, seeing as it’s a French idea chiefly backed by the EPP (=European Conservative group), is that it’s being pushed by the British Tories in Brussels – half of whom don’t believe there even should be a European Parliament. Specifically, according to Heise.de (German link), it’s the Tory MEPs Malcolm Harbour and Sayed Kamal. Kamal is responsible for possibly the most egregious tagnut of a clause in the whole thing, which would permit essentially unrestricted telecoms surveillance for the (naturally undefined) “security of a public or private communications system”, and Harbour for the copyright/content-sniffing bit.”

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