Month: December 2003

Michael Jackson turns Jacko X

Well, well, well, It turns out that rumour i heard about Michael Jackson converting to Islam was not a rumour after all.

New York:
“Michael Jackson became a member of the black group Nation of Islam, the New York Post tabloid reported.
The newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying that Jackson became a member of the black Muslim organisation led by Louis Farrakhan on Wednesday night. “The King of Pop is restyling himself Jacko X”. Farrakhan?s organisation, which is controversial because of its leaders? anti-Jewish declarations, would not comment on the report. Jermaine Jackson, another ex-member of the Jackson Five family group, converted to Islam in 1989.”

Now, even though this would be good news under other circumstances, as Michael has a big fanbase, and his converting to Islam could motivate his fans to learn more about Islam and check it out seriously.
But under the current circumstances in which he’s being charged for child molestation, it’s not really the best of times.

I think it kind of gives Islam a bad reputation that people like Michael Jackson or Mike Tyson convert to Islam when they’re in bad situations like these. Michael when he’s being charged for child molestation and Tyson after he was put in jail.
It could get people thinking that Islam is a religion for bad people which is so very untrue.

I won’t say it’s wrong or bad that Michael is converting, it can only be good news, it’s just that the timing is a bit sticky.

[via Je Blog]

[Update: It seems this information is not entirely true. Michael Jackson did ally himself with the Nation of Islam, but it’s not sure whether he converted to Islam or not.]

Freedom Tower

This is an artist’s rendering of a night view of the Freedom Tower (which is proposed to restore Lower Manhattan’s skyline instead of the Twin Towers), center, as seen from the south. At left are the Empire State Building, and Statue of Liberty.

The Freedom Tower will be the world’s tallest building, according to the architects, who unveiled the revised model Friday.

The tower, designed to be a centerpiece of the rebuilding plan for the World Trade Center site, will rise 1,776 feet — a nod to the year the United States declared its independence.

Looks really cool, huh ?

[via CNN]

Sperm Donors Needed

A free trip to Australia in return for sperm !
Now that’s a pretty interesting offer, lol…

In an advertisement that has been running in Canada’s University of Calgary student newspaper Gauntlet, an Australian fertility clinic is offering men between 18 and 40 a two-week holiday in the rural city of Albury in return for sperm.

And, There’s no catch — the men just have to be healthy, mentally fit, pass a blood test and a semen analysis and undergo counseling.

In return, they have to be prepared to produce semen every second day and be identified as the donor.

Now i think that’s one hell of an offer.
For a trip to Australia, i’d be willing to do a lot more than just donate sperm 😛

[Via CNN]

9/11 Attack Was Preventable

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented.

Thomas Kean, appointed by the Bush administration and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not something that had to happen.”

He also goes on:

“There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed,”

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president’s top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration ? that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.

“How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility,” said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission.

I think that if this report is proven true, the people responsible for this failure should be held accountable for the tradegic events that happened.

Read the whole article here.

Free PC, Nasty Catch

A British company is offering a brand-new computer for free to every UK household and even promising to replace it with a new machine after three years.

The catch ?
London-based Metronomy says that in return for a free IBM personal computer worth 800 pounds ($1,400 U.S.), customers will have to bear with one minute of on-screen advertising for every 20 minutes of computer use.

And each household will have to use the computer for at least 30 hours a month (about an hour a day).

Ouch !
Now that is a true pain in the neck and a bunch of other places.
I don’t think i’d manage to stay sane having to watch a 1 minute ad every 20 minutes. I’d end up throwing the damn thing out the window.
But i imagine a lot of people would be interested in this offer.

A Net of Control

I read this interesting article A Net of Control in Newsweek magazine a few days ago, and i just found it again on the net, so i thought i’d post the link.

It talks about how the freedom we’ve enjoyed on the internet for years may just be stolen from us, and that the Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power because of the updates now in the works.

Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother.

It goes on to state the fact that whatever freedom is left to us is the freedom we stand up and fight for.

Unfortunately, our increasingly Internet-based society will get only the freedom it fights for.

I too see that the internet going in that same direction, and some of it is for the better and some of it for the worse.
And i too think that it’s the responsibility of the people to stand up and put the limits to how much control is exercised over the net to reap the new benefits as well as keep the old ones and the liberties we have now.

Google Print

It seems like Google don’t find it enough to just search information on websites, they want to go further and extend into the offline world, and start searching information that’s in books too.

According to their Google Print FAQ page, they say:

Google’s mission is to provide access to all the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. It turns out that not all the world’s information is already on the Internet, so Google has been experimenting with a number of publishers to test their content online. During this trial, publishers’ content is hosted by Google and is ranked in our search results according to the same technology we use to evaluate websites.

Now this could be bad news for Amazon, which is working on a similar full-text book search effort.

Other movies i saw last weekend

Other movies i rented and saw this weekend are:

Bad Boys II:
This is as much fun as the first one, and with a soundtrack which is as good or even better.
Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are great together and so funny.
I watched the movie twice and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

The Italian Job:
I just love this type of movies. Heists are one of my movie fetishes 😛
So, basically any movie from this genre is a must see for me.
This one was done pretty well, and i really liked it. Not too complicated or as fancy as other heist movies i’ve seen, but pretty good anyways.
I also like the cast that worked in this movie.

I started watching Solaris too, but haven’t finished it yet. First impression though is that it’s a bit stretched out and getting a bit boring.