Wired’s Noah Schachtman is rightly concerned with the Bush administration’s proposal to create a Total Information Awareness System (TIA) and can’t help to draw the conclusion that recent attempts of the US administration
“… to peer into the lives of Americans were more than a little similar to the exploits of Middle Earth’s would-be rulers.”
Hmm, maybe the world should pay more attention to W’s wedding ring or the gold on Condi’s fingers…
I wanted to write something about the appropriate perspective concerning Kraut-bashing in the UK, following some recent reports in German and British newspapers. But I am too tired to finish it now. So I will do that tomorrow and leave you for tonight with this link to The German Theory that a google search for Ze Tschermans provided.
Turkey in the EU?
Following the EU’s recent de facto decision to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005, those fiercly opposed to Turkish membership will probably be very interested in funding field research of the country’s social reality now. Such research will certainly produce a picture quite different from the one painted by Turkish diplomats.
Tonight, AFP tells us about a study conducted by the Turkish chamber of medical doctors (link in German) revealing that at least 58% of women in Turkey are subject to domestic violence. Now I don’t know whether the study is reliable or the comparable figures for Western Europe – but I am quite confident they will be a tiny fraction of the Turkish figure.
And there’s one more thing – definitions. While there’s no justification for any kind of domestic violence, I suspect that those interviewed do have a more relaxed understanding of the term “violence” than most people over here. Thus, the figure is likely a lot higher from a western point of view than even the 58% revealed now.
Such firmly socialised behavior will not easily change, even if Europe would agree to make “real”, as opposed to “formal”, social change a prerequisite of Turkish membership (which it certainly won’t). Paper is patient. On paper, Turkish women and men have the same legal status since 1923.
But apart from geo-strategic arguments, the most important argument of those promoting Turkish membership is that of membership as “change-agent”, of importing “real” modern governance and modern social institutions through economic and political integration. It is an argument that certainly deserves to be taken seriously.
But I have to say that I have serious doubts about its actual validity in the Turkish case. EU membership would probably help to reduce culturally induced problems like domestic violence a little bit (well, changing statistical methods and perception might also cause it to rise statistically), especially through extended economic exchange. But such change would certainly take much longer than the time horizon of any European politician can possibly be.
So, geo-strategy aside for the moment, the big question behind the Turkish entry is whether the EU want to either embark on a huge benevolent neo-colonialist adventure to prove that it is not a “Christian Club” or simply ignore such cultural practices in a member state. Both alternatives cannot be appealing to a community that considers itself a ommunity of values, not just treaties. It’s a big catch 22, that Turkish membership application.
Currently, I am against the adventure. But the debate has only just begun. And I am always open to suggestions.
I just realised to which extent the ever increasing amount of spam has already led me to develop instant deletion reflexes.
I just deleted today’s Wired News without even looking at the sender, because the subject line begins with “Korean Housewives want…”. Housewives has definitely become a keyword for instant deletion. Just like the the three daily emails trying to tell me that “someone has a crush on me” or those from, eg Mrs. Mariam Mobutu Seseseko with subjects like – Urgent Assistance Needed PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL / Amount: US$ 18 MILLION.
This so called 419-spam, where a complete stranger who received your email address “through a mutual firend” tells you that he/she is a relative/close friend/doctor/pet of the now dead previous strong man of [put sub-saharan country of choice here] who was able to steal zillions of development aid and now needs your account as a laundry shop, seems to have some sort of celebrity status, as this Belgian collector’s website indicates – Google did not find a single collection of spam concerned with erectile dyfunction or breast enlargement.
I wonder if this kind of communication should actually be collected somewhere, if only to document for future generations what happened in our mailboxes in the post-millenium-years. An all-spam-encompassing collection could also help answer the ultimate question behind the phenomenon – how many people do actually react to spam? And why? Sending spam is certainly cheap, but it clearly does cost something: Someone has to be paid for collecting all those email addresses and then handling the sending process. Given the amount of spam I receive every day I have to draw the conclusion that it must somehow be profitable.
Thus, there must be people who pay money for the services promoted by spam.
While I can imagine people being interested in breast or penis enlargments, I have serious difficulties to understand how their interest could be sparked by a spam email or why they would believe that a product/service which is advertised in the cheapest way available could solve their problems. Remember my previous entry about covers that reveal something about the content of a book? Doesn’t a spam cover scream “click on me and I’ll rip you off”? However, its mere existence reveals that demand for those products and services promoted must be attributable to the emails sent out.
One more entry on my list of things that I will never understand.
PS: The Korean housewives simply wanted “a speedy net”. Sometimes looks do deceive, even with respect to spam – but it’s luckily rare.
I love the pseudo-should-auld-aquaintance-be-forgot-melancholy a day like New Year’s Eve is providing en masse. That may also have something to do with me being German. And while the rest of the world has slowly come to grasp the national German obsession with melancholy, you can believe me if I tell you that things have changed. In 2002, many people in this country no longer believed in mere melancholy but have instead turned to outright depression. Thus, they’re clearly not too unhappy to ring out the Old, even though they are not too confident about the New either.
I am not quite sure yet, but I sense the national depression is actually about to end. Maybe 2003 will finally be the year in which people as well as the country leave the decade of post unification paralysis behind and finally get going. A Chancellor’s New Year’s Eve speech usually will not be a useful indicator for political developments, but in conjunction with some reform papers the government floated recently, some of Schroeder’s words could actually mean something this time. The gist of his speech is: We have finally accepted reality and and we will therefore implement the necessary changes. Some will scream. But we will all benefit in the end.
C’mon, 2003, let’s roll. I will certainly see to it.
And now, let me close this blog’s first year by wishing all of you, my gentle readers, a very pleasant New Year’s Eve and a happy 2003!
Could it actually be telling that the first press statement about a cloned human baby comes from a company, Clonaid, founded by a strange sect, the Raelians, and headquartered in Hollywood (although, Hollywood, Florida)? Currently, 62% of the people voting in a CNN online poll believe it is. They do not think a cloned baby has been born yesterday. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we have been saved from making up our minds for the time being.
But let’s face it. If it has happened already or is about to happen in the near future does not really matter. But it does matter that it will happen. It does matter a lot. The successful cloning of a human being is announcing the end of the era of sexual reproduction of mankind. Here, genetical variation will be planned or a technical mistake. It could, in some sense, mark the end of evolution. I am not going to sketch possble consequence just now, but personally, I am convinced this is bad for mankind. Very bad.
The baby that has or will eventually be born clearly is no monster. But we will all – globally – have to answer the questions if those who (will have) created her/him are. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s “The Physicists” gives some useful ideas about how to handle the fundamentals behind the question. I feel I should reread it, too.
There were times when a lot of people on this planet thought that human beings would have all been replaced by intelligent robots by the year 2000. But the operating system you are using right now as well as state of the art research in artificial intelligence (check these MIT media lab resources, for instance) are both demonstrating clearly enough that the complexity of human intelligence has not yet been sufficiently understood in order to technically reproduce it or even go beyond our biological limitations.
Some researchers doubt we will ever be able to understand just why we ‘understand’. And the advances that have been made promptly led to even more complicated ethical questions. Steven Spielberg’s A.I. may not be his masterpiece, but it is a film posing a useful question about the interrelation of artificial life and intelligence. However, those predicting a world run by intelligent robots and androids have been proven wrong until today. The man-machine gap is still huge – usually.
One interesting thing about robots and artificial intelligence is that those creating them always aim at making their machines ‘think’ better, faster and more human-like in order to close the gap with the supposedly superior human brain from “below”. And, usually, this approach clearly makes sense.
But there could be exceptions to that rule. Could the gap be possibly closed from “above”? This is what – I suppose – the producers of the “talking presidents” dolls are intending to demonstrate with their recent release of a talking “George W. Bush – Doll” which is able to utter 17 different phrases. I wonder how many people (certainly in Europe) believe this is the actual number of distinct statements made by the original.
To those in doubt and calculating, it is not. I listened to the samples on their website. And, as just one example, his remarkable confusion of “devaluation” and “deflation” is missing, just as a lot of other famous Bushims…
And while the “patriotic” selection of soundbites (“I come from Texas.”) thus proves that the leader of the free world is not entirely replacable by a 12.5″ doll with a loudspeaker worth US$ 29,99 ex. shipping – which is reassuring to a certain extent – I am still wondering just why I keep thinking the doll actually does have some gap-closing character…
Sorry for the lack of updates, but some mean little virus has apparently chosen to celebrate Christmas in my stomach this year. So I am not particularly communicative these days.
So let me just wish all of you happy holidays in case I won’t be able/willing to write more until tomorrow evening.
Today I did the bulk of my Christmas shopping and discovered three interesting things.
Firstly, age compression, big time: when did it become fashionable among 13 year old guys to be knowledgeable about Eau de Toilettes? I was slightly stunned while listening to three youngsters’ conversation about the intricacies of three different types of Jil Sander Eau de Toilette. Not that I mind EdTs. That is, these days.
When I was thirteen, my friends and I were interested in fighter jets, racing cars, and handling advice for the first hangover – not in the amount of alcohol in EdTs. We eventually all learned to give our appearance the finishing touches (well, in our opinion…) by applying olfactory aids. But that was not until a few years later. And I did not learn more about the inner workings of EdTs until I did a luxury industry case study in Business School. I am confused. We got more sophisticated in the olfactory sense because girls told us to (well, they never actually told us to, that would have made things a lot easier…). So I can’t help but wonder – is the episode also telling me something about today’s pre-teen girls’ behavior? Or have guys changed so much without being obliged to by young Lysistrata?
Secondly, there are still some guys who really don’t know how to improve their appearance using olfactory aids. While listening to the three kids, some 45 year old guy grabbed one of the test flacons and quasi-emptied it over his head and coat. And I am not kidding. I wonder what the boys thought of that ;-).
Thirdly, baggy trousers that are literally so baggy they sweep the streets. The ones I saw today were soaked in water (it was raining) up to their proprietors calfs. I think that local governments have not yet realised how much public cleaning costs can be privatised to these fashion victim’s families, and will be, moreover, (more or less) willingly borne by their parents to avoid noisy fights…
In other news, I actually managed to get most of my presents today. But that’s not too difficult. I am none of the people who spend months figuring out the perfect present. Most of the people I am giving presents to already have most of the stuff I believe they could possibly want (well, within reasonable German-definition-upper-middle- class-limits… I believe, most would not mind a free Porsche.)
So giving presents is theoretcially complicated. I realise I am generalising a bit, but I think there are usually roughly two and half alternatives when it comes to buying Christmas presents. Either you’re giving something that is admired on the coffee table during Christmas and then stuffed into a cardbord box on the attic on December 30th. Or you’re giving something not quite as exciting but with a longer lasting appeal. Most of the times I tend to stick with the second alternative and give books which, if nothing else, are a good pass-time and sophisticated sedative during the sudden urges to decapitate a distant aunt on Boxing Day for her remarks about the beautiful socks she gave us, or in case the tv programme does again become all too dreadful.
The last semi-alternative is the theoretical possibility of the above mentioned perfect present – something that clearly exhibits that one knows enough about a person to figure out her/his underlying interests, needs or emotions and devoted enough time on brainstorming and then getting or creating this perfect, most of the times material, incarnation thereof. But that’s probably as likely to happen as winning a million in a lottery.
Do I need to mention that I don’t participate in lotteries?
You certainly know that the idea of not judging something/someone based on appearance is only partly useful.
Covers usually do transmit a significant amount of information about the book’s content. But we also know that looks can deceive, especially concerning human beings. That’s why the headline of this entry can be quite handy: it reminds us to remain open to the fact that the information we receive by decoding the cover does not necessarily convey the correct social rules of interaction. So we have to remain vigilant.
In Amsterdam looks are sometimes almost as deceptive as the fly-over-country-bank featured in Michael Moore’s latest film, Bowling for Columbine. You think it’s just a bank. But it’s actually a bank – and a licensed gun store. In Amsterdam, where a large portion of GDP is made by directly following the idea of making love, not war, people don’t buy guns. They buy porn.
And that’s exactly why you should be careful about looks. A lot of souvenir shops in Amsterdam are conventional souvenir shops only on the outside, featuring the usual displays of postcards, t-shirts and disposable cameras. Inside, their range of products features a slightly different kind of ‘typical’ Amsterdam memorabila.
The kind labelled with a significant number of Xs…
