Words’ End

Meant to write a mini-news-update on Denmark and Norway, who’ve had a particularly productive news day today. Behold:

Denmark leads social justice rankings, says a German think tank. *wistful sigh* Color me transplant-wannabe, and that’s just the first link.

Over 7000 Swedes commute to Denmark daily for work, and a new EU directive may relieve the tax burden on Danish employers, who at the moment are technically supposed to pay a sizeable chunk of cash in taxes to the Swedish government in addition to what they already pay to the Danish one. I’m not sure how it is that Sweden wins, here; it’s likely to be a touch-and-go process. But if they do succeed in working something out to everyone’s benefit, great.

Denmark, the brand name. They’re putting forth a serious effort to promote their country, presumably to drum up tourism and improve the country’s image (as if it needs to be improved, much). Go go Denmark gadget; given funds availability, I’d go there again in a heartbeat. Then again, see transplant above.

Compare and contrast to Norway, whose chief profits are still coing from oil. From conversations with Jill a few years ago, Norway at least seems to be going about oil production more responsibly than most other countries that have access to this resource.

“High consumption lands Norway among world’s worst: Norway, which generally prides itself on maintaining high environmental standards, seems to actually be using way more than it should of the world’s natural resources.” Oh yeah, Norway? Well, the good ol’ USA is second in the worst-offenders list, compared to your paltry 11th! We sure showed you!

Oy.

Finally, the young Norwegian who cracked DVD protection a few years ago claims to have done the same with the dread iTunes/iPod combo. “Johansen claims he’s mastered the inner workings of the iPod and its FairPlay encryption technology, allowing him to remove many of the restrictions Apple places on its users. Today, songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes store can’t be played on non-iPod devices, and, if you’ve bought songs from other music stores, the chances are you won’t be able to play them on the iPod either since they use a form of copy protection that Apple doesn’t support. [...] Johansen’s driving force is his belief that users have the right to listen to songs they have bought legally on any device they own. [...] Unlocking the iPod-iTunes ecosystem is seen by many as a good thing for consumers, as it will most likely result in increased competition to the iTunes Store, possibly resulting in lower prices and a higher quality service.” No particular comment here, except that I’m pleased: the iTunes/iPod black box has gotten on my nerves more than once.

Via the inimitable Ms. Bitch comes a link to a Washington Post article (free registration required, I believe): “As Europe Grows Grayer, France Devises a Baby Boom.”

France has woken up to a bit of population crisis going around Europe: all of Europe is below replacement rate, meaning the population count is going down. In addition, they like families. You know, have family values. I remember hearing something about that in the U.S., vaguely and only once or twice.

Some excerpts from the article:

When the municipal day-care center ran out of space because of a local baby boom, the town government gave Maylis Staub and her husband $200 a month to defray the cost of a “maternal assistant” to care for their two children.

When Staub delivered twins last December — her third and fourth children — the nation not only increased their tax deductions and child allowances, the government-owned French train system offered 40 percent discounts off tickets for the parents and the children until they reach their 18th birthdays.[...]

France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping. [...]

A century ago, France was one of the first European countries to face a declining population. Since then, almost every elected French government — regardless of party — has instituted laws that encourage bigger families and make it easier for women to keep their jobs while raising children.

Now that’s family values.

This is mostly a reminder to self, as I’m running out of said patience.

BBC, today: “Man ‘took 40,000 ecstasy tablets’”.

For two years, he took five tablets every weekend, rising to an average of 3.5 tablets per day for the next three years, then soaring to 25 tablets a day over the next four years.[...]

When he saw doctors at the addiction centre at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, south London, he was still using cannabis, and said he had previously taken solvents, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, and heroin. [...]

[Dr Kouimtsidis] told the Guardian: “This is probably an extreme case so we should not blow any observations out of proportion. But if this is what is happening to very heavy users, it might be an indication that daily use of ecstasy over a long period of time can lead to irreversible memory problems and other cognitive defects.”

Stop with that, already! “Might be an indication”? The guy’s use surpassed the previous known lifetime-use record twenty times over; he’s used a bunch of other substances; so spare me singling out MDMA for scaremongering. If I drank 25 cups of drip coffee a day for years, I’d have paranoid delusions too.

I love it how they take an extreme case and do a News Story on it, without putting it into perspective.

(Edited to add: The Guardian reported this as well; and Mindhacks has a response to the Guardian article much along the lines of mine, only more substantiated and less sputtering.)

2006 has been decidedly a mixed bag so far. An extended family visit was emotionally draining, despite its many shining moments. Driving home through sleet was about as much fun as it sounds, and when we got home we were so exhausted that there was immediately a vicious fight and subsequent bad feelings lasting well over half an hour.

…I’m pretty lucky, huh? E. and I have our problems, and it’s been a difficult couple of weeks, and there are issues to work on, but I have never experienced a long-term relationship in which love truly does conquer all. Quickly, even.

Today, I am sick; mostly, it seems, from allergies to Aki the Cat Who Charmed The World (Including His Catsitter). Muscle pain too, though, so it might still be a cold caught from Tesher the Nephew Who Couldn’t Stop Coughing (But Who Is Still Charming As Hell). See lucky, above: Ethan has been cleaning the house for the past hour or so, while I’m sequestered in the living room.

But none of this matters. Yesterday, Rhode Island became the eleventh state in the Union with a medical marijuana law on the books. The bill was first passed last summer, and in his infinite scientific good judgment, Governor Carcieri vetoed it immediately. State Senate overrode his veto a while back; yesterday, the House did the same. HELL YES. Finally.

The document can be found here. It provides the opportunity to use marijuana for medical purposes, and protections that go therewith, to patients suffering from AIDS, multiple sclerosis, cancer and other debilitating diseases. Here are some excerpts:

Modern medical research has discovered beneficial uses for marijuana in treating or alleviating pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with certain debilitating medical conditions, as found by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in March 1999 [...]

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ninety-nine (99) out of every one hundred (100) marijuana arrests in the United States are made under state law, rather than under federal law. Consequently, changing state law will have the practical effect of protecting from arrest the vast majority of seriously ill people who have a medical need to use marijuana.[...]

States are not required to enforce federal law or prosecute people for engaging in activities prohibited by federal law. Therefore, compliance with this chapter does not put the state of Rhode Island in violation of federal law. [...]

Boo yah. The distinction between medical and non-medical use is made loud and clear, and the lawmakers were careful not to include any politically inflammatory language regarding the war on drugs in general. Damaging and senseless as the marijuana prohibition has been in general over the past… oh, eight decades or so, this isn’t the place to fight it. The point is, people in Rhode Island who spend their days in pain and misery can now alleviate that pain without being considered criminals when no other pain reliever works.

Thank you, Rhode Island legislature. This step toward sanity is courageous in the current political climate.

[The subject of this post has nothing to do with this awesome site, and I hope that by advertising them I get to use their name in my lowly post without fear of wrath.]

Well, this is something to look forward to when we’re biking around Denmark.

Straight out of a Greek myth, this one. “And the birds pecked out his liver over and over and over again until the END OF TIME.”

Thanks to Wil for the midday injection of surreality.

We bomb an Iraqi house by mistake, fourteen people reportedly die including seven children, and we apologize for the loss of “possibly innocent lives”??

Un. believable.

Good weekend. No, great weekend, thanks to the kindness and all-around coolness of a friend and his stunning video art. More later.

I am looking to start a small project, for which I’d like to find a few reputable sources of information. By reputable I mean written by decent people whose main interest is the truth, with as little spin as possible. I’d like to get to points of view that aren’t normally in my field of vision, so I need a conservative publication or two (besides Andrew Sullivan’s blog, which I haven’t been reading until now, but will) and a publication that is sympathetic to the Republican party. They don’t need to be separate publications necessarily, but I’d like to find a total of at least a couple. Syndication feed availability for their news articles would be a big plus. If they’re local or regional, that’s at least as good as national. Too much liberal- and/or Democrat-bashing would be a minus. I don’t care for partisanship, I want their point of view.

Suggestions, anyone?

Not bad, as reading goes. This LA Weekly article summarizes pretty well why I admire Earth and Fire’s work so much.

Rob Wittig, one of my favorite contemporary writers and artists, appears in a New York Times article today: “Call me Email: The Novel Unfolds Digitally.” (Subscription required, sorry. Look to NikkiNewsNet for a login cheat, if you will; and NNN is wonderful reading in its own right as well.)

And after you read the article, run do not walk to Wittigwords.

So, the Mac OS X Trojan scare was just that. A PLOY by a virus protection software company to FURTHER its own ECONOMIC INERESTS.

Well, I never.