The first couple of items are rants about recent news, reading which seems to get more and more aggravating.

Finland still head in the sand

    And that’s putting is as politely as I can right now. The anger stems from this piece of news. I haven’t heard their arguments behind this braindead decision to be in a small minority in EU against this, but I’m betting it has something to do with appealing to competitive reasons. A little like the US not agreeing to the Kyoto treaty years ago as it would “hurt the economy”. Well that’s just beautiful, because as any enlightened person would know by now, reducing emissions does not need to hurt the economy. Quite the contrary, emissions reduction and fighting climate change creates a vast potential for economic growth! I applaud these companies for sticking to their operations in such a politically hostile country as Finland..

    Meanwhile the world experienced the hottest January ever recorded.

Bird flu a “game”?

    In another case of ignorance on a stupendous level is a comment from Indonesia’s Health Ministry:

    “We cannot share (virus) samples for free. There should be rules of the game for it…“

    Umm, a game? A game?! Sharing the virus samples is crucial for H5N1 research and pandemic prevention worldwide and they’re calling it a game.

    Well actually now that I think of it, a game does come to mind that resembles this. Russian Roulette. With six bullets.

New Orleans on the way to an abyss?

    This is something I have to add to this post after posting; I ran into an interesting article in NY Times about New Orleans. While officials deny the brain-drain, the real story seems to be quite different with many residents having “had enough” and moving away. What’s particularly interesting is that while no official statistics are available, some interesting proxy statistics are telling: the level of mail arriving to the city has leveled of, commercial moving companies are reporting a net loss for New Orleans while U-Haul (the moving method of choice by the less well off people) is reporting slightly more inbound rentals than outbound.

    Perhaps not an outright death of a great city, but a sad transformation anyway. All it takes is another hurricane to wipe it permanently off the map.

    And then we have a mind-boggling quote from Poppy Z. Brite, a New Orleans novelist:

    “If a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.”

    Ehh, umm, oookay.. And that would be what? Maintaining a city even if it kills you? Somehow I don’t quite agree.