[nobel prizes] de-journalized list of winners

I’ve painstakingly extracted the journo-speak from this list, removed the camouflage and this is as simply as I can present it:

Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank;

Literature Prize went to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose recent trial for "insulting Turkishness" made headlines worldwide, accepted the for a body of work that illustrates the struggle to find a balance between East and West;

Medicine Prize in went to Andrew Z Fire and Craig C Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes;

Chemistry Prize went to Roger D Kornberg, for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins, a process that could provide insight into defeating cancer and advancing stem cell research;

Physics Prize was won by John C Mather and George F Smoot for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created;

Economics Prize [began in 1968] went to Edmund S Phelps, who was cited for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy.

[christmas trees] pc and the insanity of overreaction

According to misleading news stories featured prominently in newspapers and on TV: “All 15 Christmas trees inside the main terminal at Sea Tac Airport (Seattle-Tacoma International) have been removed in response to a complaint by a rabbi. A rabbi wanted to install an eight-foot menorah and have a public lighting ceremony. He threatened to sue if the menorah wasn’t put up and gave a two day deadline to remove the trees.”

The airport panicked and ordered the removal of all trees in the dead of night. “We’re not in the business of offending anyone and we’re not eager to get into a federal lawsuit with anyone,” said Craig Watson, chief lawyer for the Port of Seattle. Patricia Davis, head of the Port Commission said, “We didn’t have other cultures represented and rather than scramble around to find representations of other cultures at this late date, we decided to take them down and consider it later.”

In fact the rabbi told the Seattle Times that he felt “appalled” by the airport’s decision to remove all its Christmas trees without warning on Saturday night. According to Rabbi Bogomilsky, “Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season.” According to the rabbi’s lawyer, Harvey Grad, “They’ve darkened the hall rather than turning the lights up.”

Michael Medved says: Though some of my fellow Jews may howl in protest when I say so, there are strong arguments to be made against public menorahs that can’t be made against Christmas trees. It’s not just that Christians outnumber us in this society by about 40 to 1; it’s that Christmas trees reasonably can be construed as a secular symbol but a menorah (despite some prior court decisions) emphatically cannot.

The phrases remaining with me are:

1] ‘didn’t have other cultures represented’ Come again? It’s Christmas for goodness sake. It’s not Confucian New Year or some other religion’s high day.

2] ‘take them down and consider it later’ Oh yes? When? After New Year?

[blogpower] how to upload the banner

This all started when I made a comment that it annoys the hell out of me to see some big names promoting themselves shamelessly [I wasn't thinking of those on my blogroll], getting major traffic and they’re truly neither quality nor well laid out.

I'm not shutting anyone out here but I'm most concerned with the good blogger who's been at it a few months maybe; he or she's known in the sphere but still only gets small traffic. It might be the quality of the blog but it's more likely to be lack of 'brand recognition' and no great expertise in self-promotion, in advertising oneself; nor does he or she want to have to 'join' anything, to sign up.

Everyone knows that if a big name links to us [and I've had a few in my sidebar who've been gracious enough to do that], the traffic leaps on that day. But we can't rely on a bone thrown to us all the time and I'm certainly not knocking these powerful lads and lasses in any way when I say that. But if 50 of us little people clicked twice a day on someone's blog, there's a day's traffic. If we linked to a story now and then, it doubles or triples.

Notsaussure has a slightly different take: [We] can co-operate to increase our traffic, not for its own sake — gratifying though it certainly is to think that folks are reading you, I certainly do this primarily for my own amusement, and I assume that’s what the writers of the other blogs I like are doing, too — but to share and direct others to articles and discussions we find interesting.

There's no compulsion in this. But if a lot of people carried the banner above in the sidebar, it would cause others to ask about it and something could develop. If you see yourself as benefitting from the idea, please click here and read the post and comments, then maybe read the comments on this post here, just to be sure, then why not upload the Banner for your sidebar?

Not Saussure has very kindly put together the html for the Banner and it can be copied from his comment on this post. Now, what you should do, if you are technically challenged like me, is:

1] paste it to a blank MS Word page;

2] go through and being careful not to touch any other symbol, wherever you see \ you should delete it [don't touch the slash pointing the other way];

3] now you're ready to copy and paste to your template, keeping the Word doc as a back up copy.

[holocaust denial] iran kindly hosts conference on השואה

Khaled Kasab Mahameed, a Palestinian lawyer who has established the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education in Nazareth, the Arab world’s first Holocaust museum, learnt from the Iranian Foreign Ministry - which had invited him to speak during a conference that opens in Iran today on whether the Holocaust ever happened - that he would not receive a visa. No reason was given.

Irving was understood to be on the original invitation list to the Tehran conference when Ahmadinejad first proposed the gathering last January but a month later was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Austria after disputing the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as a myth, calling Israel a “tumour” that should be either “wiped off the map” or moved to Europe or Alaska.

There are two entirely separate issues here:

1] Look, there’s been film footage [I’ve seen it with my own eyes], photographs abound, there were reports by liberating armies, there were eyewitness accounts of this total abomination and descent to bestiality. There is not the least doubt that the holocaust occurred. Hitler and Himmler’s notes confirm it. So what’s with this ridiculous denial? What on earth are they trying to do? And why now, after so many years?

Denial of this nature is either political, psychological or both. To translate it into real-speak, it has to be either evil, insane or both. Calling for Israel to be wiped off the map is not strictly insane – it shows dislike only. But to blindly deny, to refuse to look at the photographic and documentary evidence – this is beyond normal and shows how deeply entrenched in their positions humans can become.

Another example of this is that yesterday, a day with many visitors to this site, I wrote to readers and gave eleven linked sources to look at. There were reader comments on posts further up, there were comments on posts below but on that challenging post – Nil. Nothing. Zilch. Not a sausage. So what hope is there?

2] The second issue is throwing people in prison for this evil insanity. Whatever happened to the Voltaire maxim about defending to the death the right to say something? The same people who are up in arms about Putin restricting freedom of speech happily go along with Irving being thrown into prison. Say something against Putin – you’re incarcerated. Say something against the Holocaust – you’re incarcerated. Same thing in my book.

[rumsfeld in iraq] why - for what purpose

Ex- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in a surprise farewell visit to U.S. troops in Iraq this weekend, said the consequences of the war's failure would be "unacceptable." Meanwhile, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and one of the staunchest U.S. supporters in the Iraqi leadership, also said that U.S. training of Iraq's army and police had gone "from failure to failure."

Talabani said: "If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on," Talabani said. "We are a sovereign country." He also pointed to the report's call for the approval of a law that would allow thousands of officials from Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party to return to their jobs.

Rumsfeld said the consequences of the war's failure would be "unacceptable." He said to more than 1,200 troops at al-Asad "For the past six years, I have had the opportunity and, I would say, the privilege, to serve with the greatest military on the face of the Earth,", an air base in western Anbar province. Rumsfeld did not meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He returned to Washington late Sunday.

1] Why was he allowed to go there to stir up the troops when he has no official position?

2] Note his words ‘serve with’. He really does believe he’s a military man, doesn’t he? He sees himself as some sort of general. This is what the generals were complaining about.

3] What else was he there for?

[stats] eternal delight or bane of our existence

Don’t know about you but sitemeter country stats are fascinating. Typical for this site is UK 35% US 25% Rus/Unkn [same thing] 15% Rest 25%.

Homeland UK wildly fluctuates and that can become frustrating – they’re very choosy people on the whole and on a day they decide to dump you, stats slump. I remember one Sunday I had 2 Brits for the day – 2! One Tuesday, there were 120 Brits alone in three hours. The US is far more consistent and almost never varies from 25% to 35%. They usually come in hard after I’ve gone to sleep but are scattered throughout the day. The Americans are important.

I try to weight UK friendly material in the morning and US material for their morning. I’ve tried to get a line on the other 25% from the other countries, the three most consistent being Russia, Canada and Australia, but there are regulars from about a dozen other countries and I don’t know what they see in the site. Perhaps they’re expats but who knows, as they don’t usually comment. Sicily is a very sweet recent country.

On overall visitors, my best days are usually but not always, Mon – Wed and then there’s a decline with Fri/Sat usually my worst. My order of quick viewing, at the beginning and end of the day, is Unique Visitors [almost never look at hits], Location [love the little flags], Country Share pie graph mainly to see which exotic countries might have visited and then I do tend to study the Entry Page Order to see the type of article which is popular with people.

Very surprised at some of the older articles still bringing in visitors but I suppose the Blogfocus is the main one and a lot of non-Brits come in for that as well. Regular and speculative visitors are hard to estimate and I don’t have time to check out individuals but I’d guess maybe it runs at 50-50. So I don’t know how all that compares to you.

One last thing – this time recently has been rewarding because there’s been communication and I’ve come to realize that though I do have a point of view to push [it comes through, doesn’t it] it’s far more important to have interaction on vital and other interesting issues – most opting for the e-mail and my e-mail provider has just increased my quota x10 to cope.

I think this is what blogging is about for me. How anyone can just post his wisdom with a 'here it is - take it or leave it' attitude is beyond me. Also beyond me is the mad scramble for hits and trumpeting it to the world. True - the Blogpower initiative [and please feel free to upload the banner] is designed to boost us all but the rest of it there's no time for. So, off to work now.