I wish all my readers and friends a Happy New Year.

(Photo of fireworks over the Sydney skyline a few hours ago, by Peter Morris. Via the Sydney Morning Herald.)

New Year in the Netherlands would not be complete without oliebollen, which are sometimes called "Dutch donuts" in English. I had my first two (served with powder sugar) for the evening a few hours ago.

If you're able to read Dutch, here's an article about oliebollen from NRC Handelsblad.

William Saletan of Slate Magazine lists the top ten science-and-technology privacy threats of 2007:

1. Surveillance cameras
2. The war on smoking
3. The war on junk food
4. The war on salt
5. Pedestrian cell-phone use
6. Naked body scanners
7. Phone-surveillance ads
8. Human chip implants
9. Mind-reading
10. Manipulating sexual orientation

I'm leaving for Amsterdam in an hour. My husband and I will spend the New Year with friends who live in the Dutch capital. We have done so almost every year since I left the Netherlands for Sweden in 2003. I don't know how much time I will have for blogging in the week to come, but I will post a New Year message before midnight tomorrow. My blogging will return to its normal pace on 5 January, if not sooner.

(Photo by Mor.)

Just when I thought the dream was smashed for good, I learn there might be a chance for future space travel after all. According to the Guardian, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will soon offer commercial space flights that will take people inside the northern lights:

The operations room of the Esrange space centre near Kiruna in the far north of Sweden is one of a handful of places in the world that perform space launches. The facility, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic circle, is used by the European Space Agency and others to launch rockets and balloons for studying the upper atmosphere and the effects of microgravity. It also serves as a monitoring station for numerous satellites that orbit between the north and south poles.

In three years, if all goes to plan, Esrange will act as mission control for the European outpost of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

The company hopes to begin commercial space flights from a purpose-built spaceport in New Mexico in 2010, but flights from Kiruna should follow soon afterwards. Once they are up and running, Virgin Galactic expects to be flying about 5,000 passengers a year.

Sweden offers one important advantage over the US, though. Passengers paying $200,000 (about £100,000) a ticket for the two-hour flight will be able to fly into the aurora borealis—the northern lights—something that no human has done before.

Hal, I'm on my way!

If you want to buy a 25-million-dollar trip to space you must hurry. Russia's space agency chief says space tourism must end in 2009. "When there is a possibility we agree to flights by space tourists," he tells the Sydney Morning Herald, but adds, "There are so many people who want to make such a trip that we cannot satisfy all requests."

Damn! I was saving for a trip to my friend Hal.

John H. Hinderaker: "If you were one of the mullahs, whom would you like to see as President: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, or Mike Huckabee? That's a question Republican caucus-goers and primary voters should ask themselves."

On Wednesday, George W. Bush signed a bill allowing Washington DC to spend money on programmes that provide clean hypodermic needles to drug users. By signing the bill, President Bush lifted a nine-year ban on city funding for needle-exchange programmes.

If an American conservative like Bush can do it, why not a Swedish liberal like Birgitta Rydberg?

Cyprus and Malta will replace their national currencies with the euro on New Year's Day. The two countries will be the fourteenth and fifteenth European nation to do so. And they couldn't have picked a better time. The euro is strong, and on its last trading day before the New Year, it buys 1.47 US dollars, 0.74 British pounds, 1.66 Swiss francs, or 9.44 Swedish kronor. The graph (from the European Central Bank) shows the euro's development against the US dollar since it was first introduced on 1 January 1999.

"My basic duty is not to cling to office, nor even more so, to obstruct the rise of people much younger, but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived," Fidel Castro said on 17 December.

Nothing is more hilarious than people who are ironic at their own expense without realizing it. And considering Castro—the 81-year-old dictator who ruled Cuba and killed off every opposition since 1959—said the above, this has to be one of the funniest statements of 2007.

(Caricature by John Cox.)

When I browsed the international media for first reactions on the Bhutto assassination, I was surprised to see that The Economist—my favourite newspaper—wrote nothing about it. Now it has. Instead of updating my entry from yesterday, I link to it here.

According to Drudge Report, the picture above was taken thirty seconds before Bhutto was killed.

In October, Islamists tried to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in a terrorist attack that killed 130 people. Today they succeed in killing her.

Update at 16:53: More on the assassination here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The first obituary here.

Update at 17:44: The Times on the main suspects.

It's not easy being a heterosexual man in a culture that worships the ideal of perfect families. The pressure of keeping wife and kids happy makes some men wish they would die. I haven't found any statistics for America, but in Europe, suicide is far more common among men. It's two to one. While most women who commit suicide end their life in their teens or early twenties, men tend to be the most vulnerable in their thirties.

I think it has a lot to do with men's inability to keep their friends after marriage. While most women I know have close female friends, the heterosexual men seem far more likely to let their friendships slip away. It's sad really, but I have met quite a few divorced men who say they ended up all by themselves when they no longer had their wife to come home to. They discovered they had absolutely no one to talk to.

Depressing as it is, this entry on Anthony Bradley's blog is refreshing in its straightforward approach to this very male problem:

Families like the Keatons and the Cosbys (like the Cleavers and Nelsons of a previous generation) were presented as the pinnacle and fullest expression of life on earth.This is what you want fellas, a beautiful wife, a few kids, a nice house, a good job ... then comes retirement, grandchildren and you die a fulfilled man. Ahh, what a life!

Guess what? Lots of guys are finding out the hard way that in the real world having the perfect "American family" image is the rare exception. Here's the truth: lots of guys I know are in completely miserable marriages, many (I mean MANY) wives have committed adultery, kids have chronic illnesses, guys hate their jobs are stuck because of debt, divorced (even though they swore they were not going to do what their parents did by splitting up), many wives want to leave their husbands because they don't make enough money, lots of "great guys" never marry, many can't get over addictions because after praying for 12-15 years they've discovered that it "doesn't work," depression, dealing with their own sexual abuse at a late age, mulling over a very long list of regrets, wanting to pack it all up and go "into the wild," your daughter has a reputation for being a "slut," your son's already a pot head, etc. And for guys that I talk to who aren't Christians or part of any religious tradition some of the issues are worse than these.

Or even worse, you could be one of those guys whose wife just cuts him down and emasculates regularly (daily).

I don't always know how to respond to hearing "bro, I want to die," knowing that the guy is serious. Very serious. How were men taught to handle the dreams and expectations that never come true. How much of it is evny, the "grass is greener" syndrome, or mystery?

(Seen in picture are the Keatons from the 1980s sitcom Family Ties.)

The Swedes are losing confidence in their prime minister. Fredrik Reinfeldt has slipped from 52% to 45%. Not an alarming drop considering the next election is three years off.

The Swedes still like their monarch, though. The King's annual Christmas broadcast went down well.

Up in the polls one week, down the next. That seems to be the experience of every presidential hopeful at the moment. The voters in Iowa are undecided. No candidate can be sure of winning. The primary election on 3 January will be a nail-biter.

From CNN's "Political Ticker":

Clinton and Obama were neck-and-neck in last week’s American Research Group poll. But in the new survey, conducted December 20-23, she leads the Illinois senator by 15 percentage points, 34 to 19 percent. Obama is now in a statistical tie for second place with former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who has 20 percent of the vote.

And:

A week ago, an ARG poll placed Mike Huckabee over Mitt Romney by an 11-point margin among likely Republican caucus-goers, but the latest poll by the group puts the two back in a statistical tie, 23 to 21 percent. John McCain has 17 percent of the vote, Rudy Giuliani has 14 percent—and Ron Paul has 10 percent in the latest poll, up from 4 percent last week.

This is not the official Atlas Shrugged movie trailer, but the voice-over is pretty cool.

(Via Martin Lindeskog at Ego.)

Björn Pedersen har listat de nominerade till utmärkelsen Årets politiska blogg. Alla som vill kan vara med och rösta fram vinnaren. Omröstningen pågår till den 2 januari.

Jag är inte med på listan i år. Det är däremot många nykomlingar. Jag blev förvånad över hur många politiska bloggar jag missat. Trodde liksom att jag hade koll.

Andy Carvin of NPR writes about the history of blogs.

Update: Carvin's original draft here.

A friend of mine who studies Art complained about sexism when I talked to her a few weeks ago. She said art critics always assume the observer to be male. This, she said, is the reason art involving the study of males tend to be labelled homoeroticism while the exact same study of female nakedness is simply erotic—if that.

I suggested it might have something to do with the sex of the artist in question. If a man paints other men in their nude, the picture produced could—perhaps unfairly—be seen as homoerotic.

My friend agreed, but added that this would not explain why female artists who devote themselves to female nudity are not labelled homoerotic. "Books on art and aesthetics rarely acknowledge woman sexuality at all," my friend said. "Men, on the other hand, are seen as sexual beings all the time. Whenever a male artist does anything even remotely sexual, it's because of his desires."

I don't know if my friend is right. However, I don't think I have read a single art review that would prove her wrong. In any case, art involving naked men attracts gay interest for obvious reason. So in a way, it's fair to say this type of art is homoerotic. Putting the art critics aside, I guess a libertarian like myself must argue that it's up to the individual to determine the qualities of an artwork. The only true sexist problem I see is that women are treated as if they had no sexuality whereas men are treated as if they had nothing else.

(When I searched the Internet for articles on male nudity in art, I found Dylan Ricci's galleries. The picture above is his "Male Nude 108" from Gallery 7.)

Stephen Colbert:

Nation, have you ever wondered how a cow becomes hamburger? Me neither. I just assumed God did it. But it turns out that food production is actually part of something called Agribusiness. It's this industry that that turns cows into steaks, pigs into bacon and everything else into gelatin.

I bought Colbert's book I Am America (And So Can You!) to my husband this Christmas. If you're familiar with Fox News and the rhetoric of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, the book is hilarious.

At last night's traditional Christmas Mass, the Pope blamed selfishness for the problems of the world. This is ludicrous nonsense from a religious ruler who only a week ago published a "Peace Message" adding more fuel to the bigotry towards minority families. But that is the collectivist altruism in a nutshell—it opposes selfishness only as long as it benefits authority.

People with power—or the ambition to rule over others—fear egoism because it would undermine their status. Like any potentate with unrestrained power ambitions, the Pope knows that if everyone began to act only in his or her self-interest, the need for authorities would diminish. Therefore liberty and egoism must be refuted as evil by any ideology based on authority over people. In that respect, the theology of the Vatican is not very different from communism or fascism.

For a pope, libertarianism is suicide.

Update: Not surprisingly, Britain's very own mini-Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is also blaming people for looking to their own needs. I guess greed is only a virtue when it benefits the clergymen.

In a few hours, my husband and I leave home for a traditional Christmas with my family. I wish all blog readers a Merry Christmas!

It is two days before Christmas, which means that Festivus is today. If you don't know what Festivus is, look at this video clip. Now, bring out the pole and tell your friends how they have disappointed you.

I have received a few emails from readers who want to know what I think about religion. Most of them assume I'm an atheist. I am not. I consider myself an agnostic, i.e. I believe that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.

In short, this is my take on religion.

"The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate," The Economist writes in an interesting article on the benefits of beauty.

Now I know why I fail at some of my job interviews. It's not me, it's my ugly mug.

Dinesh D'Souza:

Many libertarians are basically conservatives who are either gay or druggies or people who generally find the conservative moral agenda too restrictive. So they flee from the conservative to the libertarian camp where much wider parameters of personal behavior are embraced. To the sensible idea of political and economic freedom many libertarians add the more controversial principle of moral freedom, the freedom to live however you want as long as you don't harm others.

I think it's fair to say that conservatism is about the freedom to live however you want as long as you don't differ from others. If minority individuals demand civil liberties, the righteous conservative sees nothing wrong with harming them. D'Souza's conservatism is much like Osama bin Laden's, but with nicer clothes and fewer suicide bombers.

According to prominent conservative Christian Pat Robertson, it is not appropriate for legislators to protect gays and lesbians because they make up such a small part of the population. He claims only about 3% of Americans are homosexuals. There are figures suggesting this may be true, but if the small number is an argument for not protecting a minority, what about even smaller minorities? Jews, for example, make up only about 2% of the American population.

Update: Below are some interesting figures from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (not a very flattering source of information, perhaps). Interesting to note is the large number of people identifying themselves as "something else". I suspect most of these are queer. Click on charts to enlarge.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has hidden more than forty billion dollars in secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. How very old-school tsarist of him.

I Dagens Arena skriver Katrine Kielos en saga som egentligen är ett debattinlägg. Syftet är att ännu en gång befästa nidbilden av liberalen som en kärlekslös person som bara bryr sig om att välja elbolag. Sagans pojke är en fin människa som längtar, vilket man ska förstå som en motsats till det mycket fulare efterfråga:

När alla efterfrågade i stället för att längta kunde de som styrde vara säkra på att inga maktförhållanden i samhället skulle förändras i grunden. Det går ju bara att efterfråga i förhållande till den inkomst och de resurser som man redan besitter. Drömmar som dröms av personer utan resurser blir osynliga på marknaden. Folket hade till och med börjat tro att personer utan resurser faktiskt inte hade några drömmar. Att det var därför som de var osynliga.

Pojken längtade, mest av allt efter att sova med armarna runt en väldigt speciell flicka. Men det var förbjudet, det var bara tillåtet att älska personer vars marknadsvärde svarade mot ens eget.

Jag tror citatet säger mer om Katrine Kielos fördomar än om hur marknadsekonomin fungerar. Inte någon enda politiskt aktiv liberal jag träffat har velat förbjuda kärlek eller bedömt människor utifrån ekonomiska tillgångar. Faktum är att själva idén att människan i någon djupare mening definieras av sina materiella resurser är något mycket typiskt socialistiskt. Det är den marxistiska idén om klassintressen som föder förakt för ekonomiskt svaga.

Socialismen vilar på samma mekanismer som karismatisk kristendom. Det är därför den är så populär. Den erbjuder frälsning och ger den invigde känslan av att på ett unikt sätt skilja sig från de oinvigda och oupplysta. Att vara socialist är att ha sett ljuset från Gud i form av en rättvis, allsmäktig statsmakt som i underläge slåss mot djävulen.

Alla missionerande religioner behöver definiera ondskan. Helst bör det vara någon kraft som går att peka ut som övermäktig. I den socialistiska religionen är djävulen liberal. Ett tacksamt offer eftersom liberaler liksom agnostiker drivs av förnuftstro. För vad är tråkiga bevis mot fantasifulla indikationer? Salem brände inte häxor för att barnen presenterat falsifierbara teorier utan för att deras berättelser om kåta kvinnor som knullar med djävulen var så mycket mer engagerande.

Trots att liberaler är hängivna förnuftet så fastnar många i den socialistiska fällan och låter sig dras med i vidskepliga resonemang. Och tyvärr tror jag att Katrine Kielos lyckas med denna fint eftersom ett antal liberaler närmast instinktivt kommer att försöka bestrida följande stycke i sagan:

Pojken kände sig plötsligt fri. Han var en del av det hela och han tänkte att människan ju egentligen var gränslös. Att de hade fel! Att det inte finns någon skärningspunkt där individen slutar och alla andra tar vid. Han tänkte att alla samhällen som söker en sådan skärningspunkt är på fel väg: på väg in i tomhet.

Att bryta sig fri från vidskepelser kan vara mycket svårt. En av dessa vidskepelser som är djupt förankrade i svensk kultur har att göra med synen på människan och medborgaren som en oseperarerbar del av ett större kollektiv. Socialdemokratin har fäst sitt grepp om Sverige just genom att införliva denna tanke i den egna ideologin. Det flitiga användentet av ordet "folk" som prefix är ett synligt resultat. Det finns inga legitima individuella intressen i den socialdemokratiska svenskan; bara folkvilja, folkhälsa, folkomröstning, folkrätt och folkgrupp.

Om Katrine Kielos saga resulterar i några liberala reaktioner så lär de tyvärr gå ut på att förneka det förnuftiga i att individen är en autonom enhet som börjar och slutar med den egna kroppen. Risken finns – jag har sett det förr – att liberaler kommer att bekräfta socialisternas vidskepliga antaganden om att det finns ett kollektivt medvetande som likt en osynlig gud ligger på en abstrakt nivå över och mellan individer.

Jag har full försåelse för att liberaler gärna förnekar tanken att "varje människa är en ö". Men jag tror det beror på ett fundamentalt missförstånd. Egentligen är det samma missförstånd som får många tvivalande kristna att anta att valet står mellan Gud och nihilism. Medvetet eller omedvetet har man förbisett människornas egna förmågor.

Att individer kommunicerar med varandra och skapar kulturer och gemensamma uttrycksätt bevisar inte på något sätt att det finns någonting bortom individen. Det bevisar bara att vi är kapabla att göra bra saker tillsammans när alla inblandade är personligt motiverade.

För den logiske och rationella förnuftsvarelsen är alla idéer om kollektiva, övernaturliga medvetanden ingenting annat än religion. Allt snack om klassintressen och utraderade skärningspunkter mellan individ och kollektiv är resultat av ovetenskapliga fantasier. Jag hoppas därför att liberaler inte låter sig luras av Katrine Kielos utan beklagar att sagans pojke fallit offer för vidskepelse.

Tänk så mycket mer romantiskt det vore om pojken i sagan berättade för flickan att han medveten om sin egen autonomi valt henne framför alla andra flickor i världen!

Mike Huckabee: "What's wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can't say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk."

To people viewing America from a European perspective, the problem is the opposite. American politicians seem unable to talk about anything but Jesus Christ. Personally, I think politicized Christianity plays a far too big a role in American culture.

On 21 March 2007, Al Gore said, "First of all, there is no longer any serious debate over the basic points that make up the consensus on global warming."

On 20 December 2007, the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released a report that revealed more than 400 scientists disputing human-made global warming.

Bloggaren Redundans skriver apropå Johan Norbergs recension av Naomi Kleins bok Chockdoktrinen:

Vänstern diskuterar abstrakta materiella rörelser eller diskursanalys och högern svarar med att anmärka på enstaka konkreta motsättningar. Naomi säger att nyliberalismen i stort och på ett abstrakt plan leder till ekonomiska totalitära system. Högern svarar med ett citat ifrån valfri nyliberal, där denna påstår sig motsätta sig totalitära system. Bevisningen är vattentät – om än helt irrelevant, då den befinner sig på helt olika abstraktionsnivåer.

Ja, vattentäta bevis är alltid irrelevanta för extremvänstern.

A dog named "Bear" had anal sex with a toddler in Lockport, New York. Local police is "looking into calls that the dog may have been trained, but they don't know by whom." Police Chief Neil Merritt says, "Some experts are saying that it's not possible for a dog to do that without being trained, and then we have experts that say it's very possible, that it could happen, the dog just being exposed to the scent of a female dog in heat."

Oh, please! Anyone who ever owned a dog knows they don't care about gender the way humans do. The heteronormative culture is distinct human. Dogs are, well, dogs.

(Via Slog.)

The Local:

Andreas Lundstedt, 35, who achieved international success as a member of Swedish disco foursome Alcazar told gay lifestyle magazine QX that he had tested positive for the virus several years ago.

Sweden knows few people living openly with HIV. To come out publicly about HIV takes a lot of courage. Andreas Lundstedt deserves credit for his bravery.

More in Swedish here.

John Swedenmark i LO-Tidningen:

Förmodligen gör [Naomi] Klein ett tankefel när hon ser kapitalismen (eller dess representanter) som uppsåtlig anstiftare av politiska kriser. Det är snarare en evig sanning att den som sitter inne med resurserna till slut kan sko sig på andras olycka. Och det var därför statsmakten uppstod, som fördelare av rättvisa.

Kanske kommer en Swedenmark i nästa nummer att beskriva Romersk rätt som resultatet av facklig kamp?

Dinesh D'Souza:

Either we can believe that people are choosing to be gay as an alternative lifestyle, or we can acknowledge that we don't know and maybe they don't have a choice. If we believe the former and are wrong, then we have treated people very unfairly when they simply couldn't help being the way they are. If we believe the latter and are wrong, then we are guilty of treating people with greater respect and dignity than perhaps they deserve. Clearly the downside risk in the first case is much worse than in the second case. Doesn't it make sense, under these circumstances, to wager that gays don't have a choice and therefore should be treated with equal dignity and respect?

This is an attempt by a Christian apologist to apply Pascal's Wager on the issue of homosexuality. Read it quickly and it might appear sympathetic. Read it carefully and it is an utter insult to any rational being. But lets begin the examination by another quotation from D'Souza's article:

When I arrived at Dartmouth as a freshman, a fellow down my hall told me he would pay me $50 to go to a meeting of the Gay Students' Association. "I want you to tell me if my room mate is a homo," he said. I asked him, "Why don't you go and find out?" He replied, "Are you crazy? I don't want people to think that I'm one of them." I don't know if homosexuality is "natural" but it seems quite possible that resistance to homosexuality is also natural.

Even if anti-gay sentiments are natural, however, people can be persuaded to be more accepting toward gays.

This is a smart move. By making homophobia the default emotion, everything but dislike of gays becomes the result of optional change. However, this rhetoric is faulty. If homophobia were natural, it would appear in every culture at all times. It does not. In fact, homophobia did not become an integrated part of European culture until the Church decided to preach it. Unlike homosexuality, homophobia is a social construction; deliberately made by humans and kept alive through indoctrination. Contemporary Christians are taught to fear gay people just as previous generations were taught to fear black people. The irrational hostility towards the others is labelled natural in order to liberate the hatemonger from guilt and blame.

Pascal's Wager is a silly argument for believing in God. In short, it says that we better believe in God no matter what reason tells us because religion might be right. If religious claims are wrong, we have lost nothing. If, on the other hand, religious claims are sound, we have to face the rage of God in the afterlife.

The argument is ridiculous because it has no limitation. It could be applied to just about anything. I mean, how could any of us know what religious claims we ought to subscribe to? What if the afterlife proves the Muslims right and we have spent our lives worshipping Jesus? What if paganism would turn out to be true? Pascal's Wager gives us nothing, which, I guess, is why it is so popular. Unfalsifiable theories usually are.

According to NASA, this is a picture of the jet from a black hole at the centre of a galaxy striking the edge of another galaxy.

Ron Paul: "When fascism comes it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

David Corn of Mother Jones magazine writes:

The candidate [Mike Huckabee] says he wants to unite the country. But in a 1998 book, Huckabee was a fierce culture warrior, equating environmentalism with pornography, homosexuality with necrophilia, and nonbelievers with evildoers.

So making love to someone of the same sex is like molesting a corpse? That's the message from what might be the next president of the United States? Well, I'm not really surprised considering some of the other things he has said.

Just when some US intelligence suggested the fear was exaggerated, Iran is building another nuclear plant.

According to New Zealand Herald, Royal Guardsman's Snoopy's Christmas is the worst Christmas song of all time. Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is the best.

I have noticed some worried comments in the blogosphere lately, so this might interest bloggers in Europe and beyond:

European lawmakers plan to take the unusual step of pressing anti-trust regulators next month to look at privacy concerns raised by Google's intended takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick.

The $US3.1 billion deal has spurred rivals and consumer advocates to complain about the control they say it would give Google, the world's most popular search engine, over internet advertising and personal information.

Both the European Commission and the US Federal Trade Commission are scrutinising the sale, with the US looking mainly at privacy and EU officials focusing on how the deal could affect the internet ad market. They plan to complete their inquiry by April 2.

Prominent blogger Andrew Sullivan has expressed his formal endorsement of Ron Paul:

He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds. And in a primary campaign where the very future of conservatism is at stake, that cannot be ignored. In fact, it demands support.