Saudis flog 75-year-old widow

Saudi Arabia does it again. Earlier this month, the troglodytes of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, sentenced a 75-year-old widow to 40 lashes, for mingling with two young men, who were not immediate relatives. Khamisa Sawadi had asked one of the men, a nephew, to drop off some bread for her. He and his friend dropped by her place with the bread. They were arrested after delivering the bread. According to the verdict, "Because she said she doesn't have a husband and because she is not a Saudi, conviction of the defendants of illegal mingling has been confirmed." What a bunch of dumb fucks.

What does doodling do?

According to Jackie Andrade of the University of Plymouth's School of Psychology, doodling is good for you -- especially if you're trying to concentrate on some boring speech. In a study Andrade conducted, those that were allowed to doodled, remembered more -- with doodling being credited for engaging enough of the brain to keep the mind from daydreaming off to better places than the boring task at hand.

I'm bringing my sketchbook to all meetings from now on!

They're not all child molesters

Last week, the German police raided Wikileaks related buildings, after the site exposed secret government censorship lists for a bunch of countries, including Thailand, UAE, Australia and Germany. The plans put Australia and Germany in good company -- like China and Saudi Arabia -- who restrict the freedoms of their people.

If all the sites that were censored were those belonging to child molesters, no one would raise an eyebrow. But they're not. You have to wonder about the secret lists as well. Why secret? If the sites are to be blocked to protect the public, then why isn't the public being notified? Why isn't the criteria for blocking sites made public? Why are legitimate and perfectly legal sites also on the list? What legal basis is there for censorship, in free and open democracies?

Most troubling is the fact that in order to censor sites, the government must intercept internet communication -- which allows it to record the surfing habits of its citizens. I can understand this in Thailand and UAE, where the word freedom itself is censored -- but Australia and Germany?

I quote Wikileaks analogy for context, thinking of the blacklists as books in a library:

• Within the libraries and book catalogues of Germany and Australia there are books (web pages) forbidden by the state.
• The government of Australia has compiled a secret list of books it forbids. About 1,200 books are on the list.
• Not even authors or publishers whose books are placed on the list are told their book has been banned.
• Germany plans to adopt and expand a version of the Australian scheme.
• Under the plans of the German and Australian governments, every attempt to borrow a book (read a web page) will be checked against the secret "forbidden books" (forbidden web pages) list.
• If a book is on the list, the attempt to borrow it is noted down in another secret list and permission is refused. If the book is not on the blacklist, permission is granted.
• The list of forbidden books (the blacklist) is a forbidden book.
• The lists of books forbidden in other countries are also forbidden books.
• Any book that mentions the title (URL) of a forbidden book is itself a forbidden book.
• An international investigative newspaper (Wikileaks) reveals key internal documents on the censorship expansion plans for Germany, Australia and other countries. For Australia this expose includes the lists of forbidden books and the presence of clearly political books on the list. The newspaper warns that Australia is acting like a "democratic backwater" and risks following the censorship path of Thailand.
• The article and lists, and then the entire newspaper secretly added to the list of publications banned by Australia.
• The Australian "Minister for censorship", Senator Stephen Conroy, states "Any citizen who distributes [the blacklist] is at serious risk of criminal prosecution". The Minister threatens to refer the leak to the Australian Federal Police.
• That same week, the newspaper releases three more articles on censorship and updates the lists of forbidden books.
• Two buildings related to the newspaper in Germany are then raided by 11 plain clothed police. The police demand the keys (passwords) to a protected room (server) containing the newspaper's printing press so they can disable it. The newspaper staff refuse to comply--both the keys and the press itself have been sent to Sweden, a country with stronger legal protections for journalists.
• The German police then seize what they believe to be the newspaper's archives (a hardrive) and a typewriter (laptop) "for evidence"

Think you're safe here in Canada from this troglodytism? Think again -- although the Canadian voluntary scheme does seem to have merits, there is little available on the Cybertip website in terms of transparency.

AIG pays $165M in bonuses

The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

According to the government appointed chairman of AIG, the bonuses are needed to keep executives around.

Umm ... maybe the losers that caused AIG to arrive at the brink shouldn't be bonused so they can be retained. WTF is wrong with these people?

Not that AIG has any choice in the matter. The bonuses don't seem to be tied to performance and the firm is contractually obligated to pay them. Although, I'd like to see the executives fight for those bonuses in court. AIG should just refuse to payout siting the unusual circumstances they're currently in.

Oops ... forgot Pie day

Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14, 3.14 being the first three digits of pi. It can also be celebrated on March 4 (when 14% of the month of March has elapsed). Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22, due to π being roughly equal to 22/7.

Pi Minute is also sometimes celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second (or sometimes March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m.).

International Women's Day

I'm belatedly marking International Women's Day (IWD). Work has just been way too busy in the past few weeks, and I've been negligent with the blog. I did make a post internally at work, and marked the day with my team, but I'm only now getting around to posting something here.

Women and men united to end violence against women and girls.

In commenting to peers about IWD, I was surprise how many knew of the day -- and what the recognition of the day meant. Folks from some cultures recognized the day as something that was celebrated back in the old country like Mother's Day is celebrated in Canada. Those unfortunate to be enlightened carried the burdensome knowledge of how much further we need to go to bring equality and freedom to half of our species. They recognized the day and as a whole, were not in a celebratory mood.

This post by no means intends to do justice to the insurmountable task before us. It's not intended for the converted. You, the converted, already know. This post is for those who don't know and don't want to know. I want to pry your senses open so you too become aware, so you too will be enraged.

In conflict zones around the world -- from Sierra Leone, Congo, the Central African Republic, Darfur [PDF] (Sudan) -- women and girls (children) suffer the most. They are raped at gun or knife point, and then the weapons are used to inflict mutilation on their bodies. Young girls are serially raped and taken as wives by commanders. In conflicts, rape is a weapon that is used with increasing regularity.

In the Middle East, and increasingly in South-East Asian countries, where increasingly fundamentalist Islam is practiced, girls and women lose what little rights and freedoms they previously held. Not only is it becoming dangerous for females to seek an education, but their very sex is mutilated so they become nothing more than cattle to be bred. Elsewhere in the world, fundamentalism is on the rise in Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism. Wherever religion raises its ugly head, women and girls are the first to feel the whip.

Even in the developed nations, we're not immune. Women continue to earn less than men for equal work. Women continue to contend with domestic violence. Women continue to have legal challenges brought against their right to make decisions governing their own bodies. Women continue to fight for equality -- not just with men, but disturbingly, with other women, who do not see inequality as a problem.



We shouldn't forget, that not too long ago, women had no rights. They were the property of men. And not too far away from where we are, that is very much a fact. We should all be enraged at this injustice.

Related reports

• HIV Vulnerabilities of Migrant Women: from Asia to the Arab States [PDF]
• Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation [PDF]
• Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009: Who Answers to Women [PDF]
• The State of the World's Children 2009 [PDF]
• Women's economic empowerment [PDF]
• Women's employment, empowerment and globalization: an economic perspective [PDF]
• 2009 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development [PDF]
• The Millennium Development Goals Report [PDF]
• Hit or miss? Women's rights and the Millennium Development Goals [PDF]
• The Costs of Missing the Millennium Development Goals on Gender Equity [PDF]
• The World Health Report: 2005 - make every mother and child count [PDF]
• The Millennium Development Goals Report 2008 [PDF]
• The Second FundHer Report: Financial Sustainability for Women's Movements Worldwide [PDF]

Venti Via ... hopefully

After picking pockets of willing customers for years, Starbucks now finds itself threading troubled waters. Let's face it, there is a glut of Starbucks. Just by my workplace, there are about 5 Starbucks retail outlets within a 5-minute walk. Same-store sales are dropping, and HQ is culling low performers to contain the damage of over abundance. Now with a recession and people being more cost conscious -- $4 for every coffee adds up pretty quickly for wallets running low on caffeine. What to do? Go instant. Yes, Starbucks has created an instant coffee, named Via, and like everything else Starbucks, it will be more expensive than other instant coffees. Surprisingly, Starbucks has decided not to give it a pretentious, multi-syllable name.

They're putting a good spin on marketing it -- it's the holy grail of coffee, apparently -- but I'm just not buying it -- especially if it tastes like Starbucks coffee. I can't stand the stuff.

pa⋅tri⋅ot⋅ism

pa-tri-ot-ism
[pey-tree-uh-tiz-uhm or, especially Brit., pa-]
–noun
devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty.

Canadians who attend NHL games (and some watching at home) unabashedly display patriotism. It comes with the warbling of the national anthem -- anticipating the ceremonial dropping of the puck to start a game. The same can't be said about other sports games -- and can't be found with such predictability outside of armed forces ceremonies.

I therefore invite the following for consideration: Every Canadian should attend one NHL game every year -- and a hockey game a month, for at least one year, should be a prerequisite for citizenship.

It's probably OK to cheer for American teams too ... since wherever hockey is played, Canada is present.

The first chef

First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe.

Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort. Wrangham suggests that the obesity epidemic probably has more to do with the fact that we're eating more processed foods than overeating.

By simple extension, you can see how important cooking has been for the evolution of the human species. Being able to get more calories from our food via cooking, has allowed us to free up more time for other pursuits. No longer needing to spend tonnes of time obtaining food, humans probably got bored, restless, and left Africa, traveling the world building cities and causing no end of trouble for life everywhere.

Slightly related ... here's Wrangham speaking on his other work on primate study: