Fact: Yesterday, a 23 yo Nigerian man attempted to ignite a flammable substance aboard flight DL253, a short time before landing in Detroit. Other passengers saw a bright light and a sound of fireworks before the man was stopped and the device extinguished.

The plane departed from Amsterdam. The first news reports in the Netherlands described the situation as “failed attempt to light a firecracker on board a plane departed from Schiphol;” “man controlled by other passengers after lighting a piece of fireworks;” and “the perpetrator was injured by fire, no-one else wounded.”

Curious, I used my brains:

• the materials in a plane cabin are fireproof;
• the other passengers heard and saw fire + a combustion device needs containment to become explosive (this is opposed to chemical explosives which do not need containment) + chemical explosives do not burn;
• if there was a deliberate intent to cause heavy flight disruption, the man could have fired his device in the plane's toilets where other passengers could not have controlled him.

In other words, while the motive of the man is not clear and we do not know the exact nature of his device, his actions where not well thought-out, and of limited risk for the plane and the passengers (burns are not deadly) — at least not of any more risk than a heavily drunk passenger breaking his wine bottle and using the glass shards as a weapon.

I would suggest the following exercise: when reading about this event, consider only the first-hand accounts by witness passengers on-board, and try to dismiss entirely any account from ‘US officials’. The contrast between the facts above and what follows is striking.

Soon after the situation was known in the US, the tone of the news reports there became different: “terrorism attack on US-bound plane;” “terrorist attempts to fire a bomb aboard a plane, heroic action from other passengers to stop him;” and “Moslim terrorist declares he was directed by Al-Qaeda”. The news reports in the Netherlands are then modified: “intelligence reports in the US indicate that…” and “US sources report that…”

Also, the plane was isolated upon landing in a remote area of Detroit's airport and all passengers and crew were interrogated by the FBI. Presumably, the perpetrator was subject to “advanced interrogation techniques.” Whether his “admission” that he was acting for Al-Qaeda is true or merely the wishful thinking of his interrogators will be lost with the torture logs, obviously.

Meanwhile, in an opportunistic move the White House declares that terrorism control in airports worldwide must be strengthened.

But this is Christmas. You should be celebrating, so nothing to see there. Move along.

The worst and best of the world wide web packed in three links:

• The father
• The son
• The holy spirit

A few keys: the "pregnant woman" is actually the "unwed mother". Where's Satan? Soldiers have no guns. Han Solo in the background.

Also, why this matters.

The recent months have kept me more busy than usual with work, but meanwhile my position in a University has altogether increased my consumption of news items, both on paper and in bit arrangements. One would assume that the flurry of world events would call for a steady stream of comments from even the least energetic academic; that is, assuming also that said academic should not feel powerless and insignificant next to the intimidating momentum of mass inertia — or, in many cases, hysteria. And I do, more and more often as I get more informed.

Nonetheless, free speech and ideals are like sex performance: they tend to dwindle away when not used for extended periods of time.

So here we are. Today, I read that some sickos on the other side of the Atlantic call for censorship and some for burning the books — burning the f...ing books ! This is no national-socialist germany of the 30's, nor any kind of dystopian government policy attempting to keep its masses inert nor a new leader clearing its kingdom of impure thoughts.

The issue is terribly simple: in a society where the right of “respect of family values” is fundamental but also individual, i.e. where every parent can decide on their own, without checks and balances, what is “best for their children”, even the intellectually challengend and religiously contaminated folk can initiate expensively time-consuming processes to discuss how to hide from children books which, ultimately, only disturb their parents.

We want parents to decide whether they want their children to have access to these books ... and we want the library's help in identifying [them through labeling and moving]," Maziarka said. "It's just common sense."

Slightly more enlightened discussions on the topic were quick to call for Godwin's support, albeit remarkably pointedly:

"All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming. That's not balance," she said.

Yeah and all the books in the History section are anti-Hitler.

And alas, since any ill-driven social tumult operates as a gravity well for the crazy and troublemakers, alternate parties quickly lowered the debate to the sewers of humanity.

But why bother to care about a local phenomenon that will likely quickly dissipate? After all, previous historical records of similar events are widely available, not to mention that fire has often been a convenient way to cleanse populations due to perceived social “issues.”

Why care? I would propose at least one reason: public disinterest in this story will be justified by utterances of the form “this is the country of free speech, the crazy have as much right to it as everyone else — although nobody will listen to them, or not for long”; meanwhile, even the casual herbalist or seasoned sociologist will notice that the seeds of intolerance are like those of mistrust and stupidity — of a thousand seeds cast in a fertile ground, only one needs to grow to cover the entire field with a vine of hatred. Social responsibility mandates the outmost care in unrooting the signs of decadence, or at least singling them out.

“It's just common sense.”

Evidence shows clearly that we will not be able to eat fish in the future unless strong global policing action is taken now. We know already that future generations will never enjoy cod as a popular and usual dish. Still, even so-called “developed” countries make irrational political moves about fishing and short-sightedness combined with global disinterest runs rampant.

Overfishing is a canonical example of a tragedy of the commons. In other words, everyone is responsible, and nobody cares.

A topic I was debating the other day with a new colleague was: why should we care? Another I was debating longer ago with an older friend was: should we take responsibility for other people's actions and reduce our demand for fish to induce a decrease in production?

The conclusion was straightforward: any purely rational approach based on a fundamentally individualistic philosophy (where everyone should be only responsible for their own actions) dictates unsustainable behaviors. This is a logical conclusion, leaving choices to be made:

• not be rational: let God dictate what is “good for you,” possibly reducing your environmental footprint. Possibly effective, but unpredictable.
• empathize with fellow humans worldwide and time-wide (of the future), then take responsibility for other people's actions and act. Likely effective, but equally unlikely to happen within current morals and value systems.
• not do anything.

Choose your future.

In a blog entry a professional photographer from Colorado wonders how same-sex weddings impact his business. The author crams his foot in his mouth very effectively:

Put aside for a moment your own values. Would it hurt or help your business to photograph same-sex commitment ceremonies or weddings?

Regardless of the issue at hand, the storm of comments that followed on MeFi attracted my attention by the sheer number of fallacies and ill-chosen analogies:

• “Should a KKK photographer refuse or accept to photograph black commitment ceremonies or weddings?”
• “Should a black photographer refuse or accept to photograph KKK commitment ceremonies or weddings?”
• “Should a vegetarian photographer have the right to refuse to photograph a wedding reception where fois gras is served?”

Some comments sent me giggling, but I admit my patience was not enough to read past this insightful thought: “Should they have to choose between pissing off God and pissing off a potential client?”

Ethics and businesses? With religion in the middle? Makes me giggle. and sad.

But before we go there, a reminder:

stupid, adj

lacking or marked by lack of intellectual acuity

Now, enjoy:

if homosexuality is such a sin, why did god make them that way? believe it or not, sexual orientation is not just a matter of preference, it is biologically proved to be a genetic mutation, and actually, the heterosexual gene is the mutated gene.

(reference not given to protect the anonymity of the idiot)

And another reminder:

idiot, noun

a person of subnormal intelligence

In case someone misses the point: past my opinion that mixing "god" and "genetic mutation" in the same train of thought borders on intellectual incorrectness, I find it interesting to notice here that god would have created homosexual beings initially (with their homosexual genes), intending genetic evolution to take care of introducing heterosexuality later — although homosexuality would prevent reproduction in the first place, and therefore genetic evolution.

Bleh.

A thought emerged from the conjunction of several pieces:

1. reading a study about our expanding digital universe (via UF),
2. considering our daily amount of spam e-mail received and processed by spam filters,
3. decaying a mixture of thoughts about memes, urban legends, and so-called not-for-kinds pranks ,

and the thought was: given the multitude of offers for penis enlargement pills, there must be at least some offers that fool men into absorbing chemicals with unexpected or humorous side-effects, on top of taking their money without any measurable return on investment — and because they are buried in an ever-growing pile of crap, nobody notices.

And so I searched. I looked at the web sites, selecting those that actually advertise the list of chemicals they use, focusing on those that do not also clarify the role of each chemical. I came short of finding anything worth of a laugh, but the following offer caught my attention: "herbal pills" at $200 (for 6 months).

(I will leave the exact brand and web site address undisclosed so as to not bring them more attention than they deserve.)

When looking up its "active ingredients" on other sources we can find:

• Vitamin E : effects not well-known,
• Soya protein concentrate : variable effects effecs on male testosterone, contains a mimicry for estrogens with poorly-understood effects,
• Mucuna pruriens (a tropical legume also called "velvet bean") : increases libido in men and women, cures Parkinson's disease,
• Asteracantha longifolia (= Hygrophila auriculata according to GRIN) : used in India as a diuretics and to cure liver diseases (sometimes also as an ingredient for love potions : If a man mixes the powder of the milk hedge plant, and the Kantaka plant with the excrement of a monkey and the powdered root of the lanjalika plant, and throws this mixture on a woman, she will not love anybody else afterwards ),
• Pueraria tuberosa (a vine also called Kudzu) : reduces both hangovers and alcohol cravings, cures migraine, enjoyed by livestock as forage,
• Withania somnifera : used as aphrodisiacs, diuretics and for treating memory loss, also used as a sedative,
• Tribulus terrestris (also known as "goathead") : used to boost sex drive through mild increases in testosterone levels,
• Albizia Lebbeck (a tree also called "siris") : used as an astringent, to treat boils, cough, to treat the eye, flu, gingivitis, lung problems, pectoral problems, also used as a tonic, to treat abdominal tumors; the bark is used medicinally to treat inflammation and the tree has known psychoactive effects,
• seeds of Argyrerin speciosa (= "Argyrerin nervosa", also known as Hawaiian baby woodrose ) : known psychoactive effects
• Valeriana wallichii (a sub-species of Valeriana) : shares effects with valeriana officinalis as a sedative, can also be used as antispasmodic and tranquilliser (some other usage information is also available).

A long story made short? We can see here psychoactive pills that increase testosterone and libido while decreasing anxiety, and possibly act as sedatives… and that are probably addictive: the ideal love pill for women (and possibly men) who want to transform their male partner in an amenable sex toy.

(warning: humor follows)

Conclusion 1: a group of women fed up with the male focus on the size of the penis created a business profitable to them, profitable to women in general, and that would give them a good laugh about how credulous their customers are.

Conclusion 2: under the cover of a fishy pseudo-pharmaceutical industry that uses a canonical male anxiety to drive its business, the whole "enlargement pill enterprise" may be an initiative of the Global Female Conspiracy to drive the male population under their control.

YMMV, but for sure there is no enlargement.

In decreasing frequency order:

vodka pomme de discorde

that's not what the drink is for!

vodka bad dream nightmare

drink water before sleep, it makes it go down more easily.

vodka comment en faire ?

I wish I'd knew!

manipulations psychologiques milieu professionnel

all managers are doing it.

colocation asocial

advice: move to another place.

climatisation en panne a mon domicile elle fuit l eau d ou vient la panne

turn it off, it's bad for the environment anyway.

dans ma trousse d écolier

there be dragons.

bien que le repas fut frugal

... we had plenty to sleep well.

pourquoi mon chat m excite sexuellement

I'm not sure I want to know

india religion workweek

not sure how they're related

ecrir sur des pomme qui on beaucoup de forme sur image chef

these sentense words incorrect

cirage chaussure python

I know python has many uses, just not this one

people that cant die?

they're called vampires.

le monstre du loch ness porn

wild fantasies, for sure

epita geisha

do they offer any for students?

godemichet de-ma-maman

not sure this deserves to be searched on the internet...

Last wednesday evening, during my Dutch class, I nearly got lynched by the 5 girls who compose the rest of my group.

My biggest mistake was to start describing my pet peeve without starting with the obvious. The obvious being:

• yes, there is a terrifyingly large number of women who are routinely and impunely abused, killed, used, exploited or otherwise mishandled by men worldwide;
• yes, many men and society as a whole psychologically pressure women and give them little freedom over their life, and male/female inequalities are far from resolution everywhere;
• yes, it is a fact that worldwide many men abandon the mother of their children, leaving them with a bleak future;

that said, I want to express my targeted disgust against a very specific category of women: the narrow-minded selfish mother-to-be hunting for male money and sperm.

This species came to my attention a few years ago when I witnessed a very sad happening. The story is as follows: an acquaintance of mine, fellow student with handsome features and a clever mind, was planning a bright future involving a period of self-discovery and enjoyment of life and opportunities, possibly followed a few years later by establishing himself at a place of his choosing and the founding of a family. Being young, clever and handsome, he was (expectedly) seeing someone — a girl met earlier than my knowing him. He would spend a weekend with her every now in a while, and his standing on high moral grounds would make him very involved in his relationship. During the end of his studies, as he was planning to move on with his career and possibly travel abroad, “it happened” that his significant other became pregnant. According to them, she one day “accidentally forgot her pill” and decided that now as well as later was a good time to start a family. His moral grounds standing, as well as a significant family pressure, supported a decision to accept this situation and make the best out of it. They were both under 25 of age when this happened. They are now living in a small city, not far from the grandparents' place, and he wouldn't find any work within 2 hours commute per day.

As I see it now, they both are very happy with their situation and are making the best out of it. That is undeniable in good faith.

However, as I see it, the girl used him to achieve her plans and he had little choice into the matter. She was not so successful with her studies, not so ambitious, and the work opportunities around her would not allow her to climb the social scale. On his side, he was planning to exercise his freedom, possibly moving and living abroad. For her, it was a very serious opportunity to try and secure her own future and create a high standing and highly recognized moral legitimacy for her existence as a woman by securing both serious revenue generation abilities (preferably from the IT industry) and a father for her children. Whether it was accidental or adequately prepared, getting pregnant at that time was rationnally an excellent outcome to her life concerns as well as a very good lifetime investment.

Now, I will not outline too precisely my opinion on this specific case in writing, but suffice to say that I was very sad to hear from her that “then was a good time to have children” and from him that “later would have been nicer, but then was ok as well.”

Since that time, I have come to meet other similar couples. A pattern became clear: the female is usually between 18 and 27, feels insecure with regard to her social situation, does not consider a career path, speaks fondly of having children, and engages only in commited relationships with men older than she is, with good revenue generation potential. The guy is usually young as well (albeit older than the female), is planning a career path but is currently considering his options, entertains a high morale valuing respect and commitment, and has a limited social circle to support him. What happens is that the female and the male engage into a relationship; the relationship becomes exclusive; the woman pressures the man to have children and “becomes” pregnant as soon as the man shows signs that he would be responsible and not abandon her immediately; then she tries to make the situation look better and he gradually accepts his new life path (decided by her), although he did not really expect children… that early.

So, I presented my conclusions to my language class. They (all females) charged me with anger and despise. They would accuse me of ignoring all those cases where the opposite situation holds (man using the woman), which are much more common — not even realizing that (some) men abusing (some) women is no rational justification for (some) women to abuse (some) men. They would not acknowledge that the indivudal freedom of the father-to-be as a single and childless man is extremely valuable and deserves as much respect as the urge to pin him down and steal his fatherhood. A serious case of denial at hand — I felt relatively powerless and I eventually dropped the conversation.

What I did not explain to them is that a female friend of mine and I have been talking extensively over the subject. She is now about 30 and she recalls an earlier period of her life when she was ready to do exactly that : find the “right” man and use him to provide her with a social situation — as a mother, accomplished woman through having children. She knows several other females in a similar situation, and she supports the idea that the female body is in its 20s subject to a large quantity of hormones which are subtly telling to the brain that now and not later is the right time to carry offprings. As time passes, the urge recedes and an intuitive respect for the man as an individual — rather than sperm carrier and revenue generator — starts to reappear. Relationships built after this period, as they say, are much more mature, honest and fulfilling — in other words, way more “loving.”

That said, in my opinion, the idea that the responsibility of the woman in the destruction of the originally-planned future of the man is somewhat lowered by the impulse of her hormones only provides a very superficial excuse to her behavior. This sort of woman deserves to be kept cloistered safely from 14 until their age of reason, at least later than 35.

Having a meaning related to well-being, the swastika is widely-used sacred symbol in Dharmic religions. As such, it gained adoption by the Unicode standard and has several computer-recognized Unicode encodings: the Han characters 卍 (code 0x534D) and 卐 (code 0x5350), and the Tibetan character ࿌ (code 0xFCC).

On the Windows platform, a font called “Bookshelf Symbol 7” gathers a number of symbols that can be found in printed works although they rarely are used to write occidental languages. Until recently, this font included two variants of the Han character in positions 0x7E and 0x86:

Last Friday, I was working on a Windows system and the following dialog opened:

The message “The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols” was suspicious, and I knew what to expect when I applied the upgrade and restarted the system:

Et voilà, no more swastika. Corporate censorship at work, in the name of political correctness. Damn their stupidity.

Theory: command officers on a war ship often operate from their desk with no visibility on the outside of the ship.

I believe this theory is true. Otherwise I could not explain this:

Theory: people without education are perfect material for dictatorship.

Proof:

It is taking more than fifteen hours to my ears to recover from the trauma they experienced yesterday evening. That is already eight hours more than usual, although I stayed there for only three hours. I spent the whole morning brooding over whether I should attend Trance Energy next month or not, given my increased hearing sensitivity — depending on how I feel tonight, I may also consider taking an appointment with my doctor.

I guess that's what it takes to grow older.

Now, despite my hearing disability, I indulged myself in listening to a nearby conversation from my cubicle a few hours ago. The conversation involved my manager, some colleagues and someone I did not know who paid our office a visit together with his wife and baby. Although it strikes me that the only colleagues actually moving from their cubicle to join the group were those with newly born children (herd behavior?), I will not comment that part and rather focus on the part of the conversation where one participant warns the parents of the future they are facing.

In short, he was describing how his teenage girl (early teens) already asked him if she could sleep over at her boyfriend's; a request that he denied, of course.

The absence of additional comments from his part or any questions from the group left me wondering what was so obvious and commonly agreed that could justify denying the request. Many explanations started to grow in my fertile imagination, and unfortunately they were prematurely aborted. Here are samples:

• he fears that the she would become pregnant. That would be only if he think she's stupid, and if he didn't already take care of explaining to her how to use pills. Quite unlikely.
• he fears that she would have sex. I'm quite sure he's not naive. That couldn't be it.
• he fears that she would lose her virginity. The culture does not match.

That made me wonder what would happen if she asked him if she could sleep over at her girlfriend's instead. Or with clothes on.

The most likely reasons I could find were that:

• he thinks that letting her would be socially unacceptable.
• he wants to control her life.
• he does not like her boyfriend.

I am not sure I like the impression these possible explanations give me of the beliefs and value sytems of the people attending that conversation. I hope I'm wrong and I'm missing something.

Retour de week-end et découverte d'une vidéo sur WebJunkie : « Jésus, c'est ouf ! »

Citations au hasard :

À chaque fois que je fume pas une cigarette, il y a une âme du purgatoire qui va au paradis.

Quelqu'un m'a dit, « Anne-Laure quand tu arriveras au paradis, il y aura plein de petits chinois qui courront vers toi et qui te diront, merci Anne-Laure, c'est grâce à toi que je suis ici »

Seigneur je veux pouvoir recevoir mes frères et sœeurs de toi ce soir. Je veux pouvoir les considérer comme des tabernacles. Des tabernacles, des fois vides et des fois pleins, mais des tabernacles.

Le seigneur passe en ce moment, il vient de libérer un garçon de la masturbation.

Pour un mec, [la chasteté] ça lui demande vraiment d'être maître de ses pulsions.

Cette vidéo montre des choses horribles.

Que les lecteurs ne s'y méprennent pas, je ne suis pas méprisant et je m'associe à un des commentateurs de la vidéo dans l'idée que pour un chrétien authentique « la vrai foi n’obéit à aucune logique, à aucune raison ; je considère [l'action catholique de sauver les autres pour se sauver] comme une manipulation avec soi-même. Le vrai chrétien n’obéit pas à des lois pour le salut de son âme. La vrai foi est dans le coeur. » (je ne suis pas chrétien moi-même, mais je comprends cette valeur)

Cependant, même avec cette état de pensée on ne peut s'empêcher de voir en filigrane (vers la fin du film notamment) la souffrance extrême imposée à ces jeunes par leurs croyances, sans aucune utilité ou bénéfice en retour. Le temps qu'ils devront passer plus tard à réfléchir sur eux-même et sur le monde pour trouver une forme de paix intérieure est un gâchi ; sans cet amas d'idées glauques et malsaines, ils pourraient construire des bases de philosophie personnelle plus solides et qui leurs permettraient d'aller vers les autres, mieux et plus rapidement.

Je suis triste pour ce garçon malheureux qui ne l'est que par une foi mal exprimée et mal guidée. Et je ressens de la colère contre l'institution qui continue encore aujourd'hui à créer ces situations.

In an online news report I can read today how the traditional practice of firing a cannon during american football games in Snohomish, USA has cost a boy's leg due to the cannon exploding.

The un-funny part of the article is that members of the community are threatening the boy and his family against investigating the cause-to-effect relationship between the cannon and his maimed leg; for the tradition is so important for them that they would rather have the boy's other leg maimed than be prevented from firing the cannon again.

Not only I'm disgusted, but I can't help thinking that this kind of situation would never happen in any of the kingdoms of mainland Europe.