The remark by Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and responsible for the Nobel Prize, infuriates literary America. And for good reason, too. American literature is far better than it is given credit for in Europe. Chuck Palahniuk and Joyce Carol Oates are just two American novelists I think are worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Megan McArdle explains.

Iran’s puppet president admits there are a few gays in his country. Only last year he said Iranian gays do not exist. Odd considering Iran has a habit of publicly execute gay men.

I came across this when I browsed through YouTube. It caused immense flashbacks of a youth that seems so distant yet so close.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Let the free market rid itself from the failed investment banks. No tax money should go to save the financial markets—ever.

The Associated Press reports:

The House has defeated the $700 billion bail-out legislation for the financial industry.

More than enough members of the House had cast votes to defeat the Bush administration-pushed bill, but the vote was held open for a while, apparently as efforts were under way to persuade people to change their vote.

On Wall Street, stocks plummeted as investors followed the developments in Congress.

Related 1: Bad news from Britain. (Via Wille Faler.)

Related 2: Bad news from the Low Countries.

Update at 21:28: This interesting graph from the Los Angeles Times gives an idea of the massive size of Bush’s bailout plan.

One of my favourite spots in Malmö is the hill at Lernacken just next to the Öresund Bridge. It’s not far from the city centre, but it’s quiet and deserted and hosts the best view in town. It’s the perfect place for a nice stroll in solitude. But not for long. Next year, this wildly green area will be demolished to leave room for the construction of a new large hotel. The reclusiveness will then be gone and the view reserved for paying customers. It’s sad, really. Now I must find a new place I can escape to when I need to be by myself.

I visited Lernacken after today’s lectures. I snapped this photo of the lighthouse at the top of the hill. I don’t know when it was built, but it has kept ships from running ashore for as long as I can remember.

One of the world’s largest Internet companies goes public with its support of marriage equality.

From Reuters:

Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday it was the capitalist system that had caused the financial crisis in the United States and the country should come up with a new constitution.

Keeping in mind that Chávez wants to change the Venezuelan constitution to allow him lifelong presidentship, I’m not surprised he’s no fan of the US constitution. After all, power sharing is what Chávez hates the most. Thankfully, everyone besides the extreme left consider Chávez a fool. Not without comedian qualities though:

“Let the U.S. empire end and let a great nation and great republic rise from the ruin ... It’s time to shout ‘Liberty!’ again in the United States,” Chavez said, calling for a new government to be free of the “dictatorship of the elite” such as big banks and corporations.

The man who forced the Venezuelan parliament to sign over all powers to his office complains about the American “dictatorship of the elite”. Had I not known Chávez is crazy, I would have thought he was ironic.

Hugo Chávez is the Idi Amin of the twenty-first century.

A hilarious broadcast from Air America.

The woman is in desperate need of media training, I tell you that.

I didn’t take part in the Gay Pride Parade through Malmö earlier today. I’m not much for that kind of activity, to be honest. I prefer Internet activism to street activism.

Taking from these pictures, the parade seems to have been successful.

Later tonight, I join the “Oktoberfest” at SLM Malmö. The show starts at midnight. If you fancy semi-naked sadomasochists mocking Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, this is the night for you. Please note that SLM is a men-only club. No women allowed.

Update: Blogge has posted pictures of parading lesbians on his blog.

It’s been playing in my head all day. Ah, sweet blue mood…

The first presidential debate between Obama and McCain is over. I thought it was dull. Nothing new came out of it. More interesting though is The Economist’s launch of a Global Electoral College, which allow us foreigners to have a say in the US election.

Log on and vote!

I’m looking at the debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. It has been quite dull so far, but McCain caught my attention when he began talking about an international League of Democracies. I have sought that solution in years. The United Nation simply is not working as long as dictatorships are given the same vote and protection as democracies.

About 140 people at the headquarters of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise have fallen seriously ill after a terrorist group plated highly infectious Shigella bacteria in food served at the office cafeteria. The police and the Swedish Security Service are investigating. Meanwhile, the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League is promising roses to the group responsible for the food poisoning. To most people, this appreciation of terrorism is despicable; but to people high on Marxist class-war rhetoric it makes sense to embrace those who harm the bourgeois entrepreneurs.

Be prepared, the Second Cold War is approaching.

The United States has lived on borrowed money for years. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing money as long as your economy grow and you can afford the interest. The problem for America is that the economy is no longer growing, which means new loans to cover for the old ones. This is an unsustainable situation. And to add further worries to the problematic situation, Chinese banks have decided not to allow any new loans.

However, Reason quotes Market Watch:

China’s government moved to calm financial markets Thursday and denied a report that it had ordered mainland banks to curb lending to U.S. banks, a day after rumors of financial stability led to a run on a Hong Kong institution.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission moved to quash a South China Morning Post report Thursday that said Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions.

“The CBRC has never, through any channel, released a statement or ordered domestic commercial banks not to lend to or borrow from U.S. financial institutions,” the regulator said in a statement on its Web site.

In an earlier entry, I mentioned that some scientists believe religious ideas would one day be curable with medication. A medical scientist I met a while ago explained that preliminary data from an ongoing research project shows that the brain of a deeply religious person shares many features with the brains of people suffering from schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders. “To hear God’s voice when you pray is not that different from hearing voices of people that don’t exist,” he said. “And to believe in heaven and hell is not that different from believing the furniture is out to get you.”

In a comment, a reader wrote that he has heard scientists talk about a future “cure” for homosexuality with the help of similar brain-altering medication. He wanted my thoughts on that. I will try to elaborate on my ideas here.

With future brain-altering medication, it might become possible to change people’s sexual orientation. It is, of course, hypothetical, but it seems reasonable to think that the possibility to alter the brain and mind of people would not stop at religious beliefs and sexual orientation. We can assume—for the sake of the argument at least—that scientists will be able to alter just about every part the human mind. But would that make all possible alterations equally desirable? I think not.

I would argue that religion is what causes homophobia and the problems gay people face in the world. If religion goes, so would the desire to turn gays straight. Furthermore, religion is a far greater threat than homosexuality as it prevents the development of human society; homosexuality only says something about the individual whereas religiosity makes claims about the world. We can see it the news if we pay attention: religious people use violence against gay people, but gay people don’t use violence against religious people. So why cure homosexuality when religion is the root to the problem?

I’m not sure it would be a good idea to try to fix people’s brains. But as we learn more about the human brain, many things about us will be viewed in a different light. Angst-ridden religiosity, severe drug abuse, compulsive sexual predatory, uncontrollable rage, etcetera, might not be different from, say, migraine and psoriasis.

After nearly eight years of irresponsible spending, George Bush realizes that not even the United States is immune to bad finances. Ironically, he blames other people’s irresponsibility but ignore his own. (I’m not saying Mr Bush should be blamed for the ongoing crisis in the financial sector, but he certainly is to blame for America’s overall economic situation.)

This journal will probably not be updated for a few days as I am busy studying metaethics for an important examination. I must pass this test since it’s the last one before I begin working on my dissertation.

I’m not promising anything, but maybe I will post some thoughts on the battle between non-cognitivists and realists later in the week. It’s not as dull as it might seem.

Steven Weinberg:

The problem for religious belief is not just that science has explained a lot of odds and ends about the world. There is a second source of tension: that these explanations have cast increasing doubt on the special role of man, as an actor created by God to play a starring part in a great cosmic drama of sin and salvation. We have had to accept that our home, the earth, is just another planet circling the sun; our sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is just one of billions of visible galaxies; and it may be that the whole expanding cloud of galaxies is just a small part of a much larger multiverse, most of whose parts are utterly inhospitable to life. As Richard Feynman has said, “The theory that it’s all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.”

Most important so far has been the discovery by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace that humans arose from earlier animals through natural selection acting on random heritable variations, with no need for a divine plan to explain the advent of humanity. This discovery led some, including Darwin, to lose their faith. It’s not surprising that of all the discoveries of science, this is the one that continues most to disturb religious conservatives. I can imagine how disturbed they will feel in the future, when at last scientists learn how to understand human behavior in terms of the chemistry and physics of the brain, and nothing is left that needs to be explained by our having an immaterial soul.

I think this is correct. Few things scare religious people more than science finding answers that would leave no room for supernatural explanations. One example that particularly interested me has to do with the impact on traditional, religion-based sexual ethics whenmore compelling research show that at least some sexual orientations and fetishes are biological. Another interesting research field to follow is the study of the religious mind itself. Some scientists I have talked to suggest religious beliefs might soon be “curable” with medication similar to that used to curb some psychological disorders. I’m not saying such mind-altering medication should be used, but the possibility would certainly put the whole concept of religion in a different light.

I got an email from a man working for a no on Proposition 8 in the Californian referendum on same-sex couples’ right to marry. He somehow found the entry I posted the day before yesterday and asked if I could encourage my readers to donate money. Unfortunately, according to Californian law, only American citizens are allowed to contribute to the campaign. However, the statistics for this blog show that I have quite a number of readers in the US, so I urge you to help support marriage equality in California.

“Gordon Brown is set to lead Labour into an election bloodbath so crushing it could take his party a decade to recover,” the Observer writes today. The paper has read a new mass poll suggesting the Conservatives will win a landslide victory in Britain’s next general election.

The people at Tory Diary are ecstatic.

I must admit I liked Tony Blair when he launched New Labour and swept into power in 1997. He was the sort of fresh and progressive politician Britain and Europe needed at the time. But by the time Mr Blair left office, New Labour felt old. With Mr Brown as prime minister, every remaining hint of that Blairesque freshness has gone stale and bitter. Brown’s face doesn’t help. Not that he should be blamed for his physical appearance and strange tics, but these things do stress the dullness of his politics. The leader of one of Europe’s largest nations must have more to offer than Gordon Brown. And it looks like that man just might be Tory leader David Cameron. Good.

That’s the slogan for European Social Forum. But honestly, who wants to live in a world filled with demolished buildings? However, the rioting commies are not without good ideas. Like the one seen in this picture. I’m all in favour of naked men in the streets. I don’t like that he’s hiding the good bits with his hand though.

(Photo by Åsa Sjöström.)

It’s day three of European Social Forum in Malmö and the city has been taken over by antisocial and violent communists. The authorities seem to do a good job though. Surveillance helicopters are flying over central Malmö and the streets are filled with riot police.

According to the latest opinion poll, 55 per cent of voters oppose Proposition 8, the initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. However, the Yes-camp is mobilizing as church leaders are urging their congregation to raise money for the anti-gay campaign. From the Los Angles Times:

The financial fight over Prop. 8 has been fierce, with gay marriage supporters taking an early fundraising lead. But last month, a $1-million contribution by the Knights of Columbus, followed by infusions of cash from other gay marriage opponents, tipped the balance in favor of those who believe only a man and a woman should be able to marry.

Our own Maloy Moore follows the money in a pair of databases she helped create, which she updates daily. As of today, Prop. 8 opponents have raised $11,119,614.56, while the Prop 8 supporters side has amassed $16,647,476.77.

We’ll have the result on 4 November.

“Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that all the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared,” Allan MacRae writes on the ICECAP blog.

I’m busy with other writing at the moment, but I feel I must say something about the ongoing turmoil in the financial sector since so many socialists are gloating over what they consider proof that the system is not working. In a way, I agree with them. Not that I think the US Federal Reserve’s decision to meddle with the free market shows that capitalism is not working, but because I realize how thin-skinned and morally weak the world’s top bankers and politicians really are. In a free market, bad companies—including privately owned banks and mortgagees—must be allowed to go bankrupt. It’s economic evolution—the “species” that cannot adapt to its environment should die out and give room for new and better ones.

Democratically elected politicians are always inclined to be weak. And for good reason since they have everything to lose on unpopular decisions. However, good leaders should have the guts to refrain from short-term populism in order to secure long-term growth and prosperity. Giving taxpayers’ money to failed banks is the opposite of that political courage. In effect, the American government and Federal Reserve reward bad business and prevent healthier alternatives from flowering when they spend money on market losers. It might seem as a good idea at the time, but to prevent a bank from collapsing really is not.

My advise to central bankers and government ministers everywhere is simple and straightforward: let the sick banks die; don’t meddle with the free market.

The Times lists ten things Darwin said about religious faith. The paper claims they are surprising, but really, they are not to anyone who read Darwin.

Later today, my hometown Malmö will be invaded by 20,000 communists. I know, it’s hard to believe, but this is the figure the organizers of European Social Forum have given the media. And according to Swedish newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet, most hotels in the city are fully booked, so maybe the number of visiting lunatics isn’t that far off.

The event, which will last for four days, is funded by the local taxpayers. The socialist mayor has granted the communists €260,000 ($367,000) to burn on propaganda. In pamphlets distributed before tonight’s opening, I read that Cuban totalitarianism is superior to Western liberalism. From the programme, I learn that well-known anti-Semites are invited to re-launch classic conspiracy theories. I understand why the organizers are so ecstatic. It’s all here: the class war, the evil Jews, the bourgeois deviants—all mixed with the classic arguments against the despicable shop owners who dare to charge people for the service they provide.

Hurray, it’s Commie Christmas!

In an article, the organizers explain the purpose of their mass meeting. It’s about opposing liberalism; because, as one retarded spokesperson puts it, “the Forum wants to point to the uneven balance of power in favour of the free-market liberals.”

This quasi-underdog balderdash from a man who gets his political campaigning financed and endorsed by the city officials! What do the free-marketeers and entrepreneurs get? Nothing—except the massive bill for European Social Forum.

I can tolerate that some people act like parasites and hate everything about liberty, but I cannot stand their smugness about it.

From here.

I think 4 November will offer some nail-biting moments for those of us who follow the US election with interest.

By the way, I still don’t know why I care about American politics. I know it shouldn’t concern me, but it fascinates me. Perhaps it’s the lack of political excitement in Europe’s secretive party politics that makes the American democracy seem so interesting.

I feel bad about not participating in Tuesday’s demonstration against Sweden’s new surveillance law (known as “FRA-lagen”). After reading what some of the Malmö-based bloggers have written about the event, I wish I had made a greater effort to join the liberals who were there.

In an earlier entry, I wrote that I wanted to listen to Martin Olsvenne’s speech. Thanks to YouTube, I can. He has also posted a few pictures on his blog. So have my favourite civil libertarian, Blogge Bloggelito.

The Local reports from the demonstration in Stockholm. Henrik Bejke caught it with his camera.

“The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a landmark appeal court ruling that made it legal for a patient with multiple sclerosis to grow cannabis for therapeutic use,” news agency AFP reports.

Good.

(Via Cannabis.se.)

A new controversy over creationism has sparked in Britain and Europe after biologist Michael Reiss suggested creationism should be taught as a “worldview” in science classes. Professor Reiss is not just any conservative Christian, but the Royal Society’s Director of Education.

Columnist Damian Thompson of The Times doesn’t buy it:

The giveaway is that word “worldview”. It implies that, if something is held as a worldview, particularly by people from developing countries, then it deserves a respectful hearing.

Actually, modern creationism doesn’t deserve anything of the sort. That is because it is not sacred scripture or ancient myth, but pseudo-science or counterknowledge.

The 21st century is plagued by wild speculation and fantasies dressed up in graphs and tables and diagrams to look like independently verifiable fact. For example, Muslim lobbyists are currently pouring millions of pounds into producing bogus “atlases of creation”, lavishly decorated with photographs and charts “proving” that every living species was created at the same time.

This material is currently being delivered free of charge to schools all over Europe. If it emanated from fundamentalist Christian America, I suspect it would be dumped in the wastepaper basket. But schools are more wary of offending the views of Muslim or Hindu pupils—and then along comes a useful idiot such as Prof Reiss to suggest that it’s OK to examine this “worldview” in science classes.

I second that. Real science is threatened by a new, aggressive form of counterknowledge all over the world. This past week, we could hear the Pope condemn knowledge in his Paris Mass (he actually did just that). Meanwhile, a growing number of people in Europe and America are taking side against what they see as “science fundamentalism”, claiming gaps in scientific theories justify religious fantasies. Creationism is only a part of this much wider movement. Another frontline I’m fighting every day has to do with sexual ethics based on religious myths.

Creationism should not be dismissed completely. There are a few arguments in regards to the origin of the universe that deserve to be addressed seriously. But this is not what creationism is about generally. Normally, the arguments goes along the lines of those found in William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802), which suggest all organisms are not developed but created by God at one time in the past.

It should be noted that the Royal Society has issued a statement about Professor Reiss:

Some of Professor Michael Reiss’s recent comments, on the issue of creationism in schools, while speaking as the Royal Society’s Director of Education, were open to misinterpretation. While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the Society’s reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the Society, he will step down immediately as Director of Education a part time post he held on secondment. He is to return, full time, to his position as Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education.

The Royal Society’s position is that creationism has no scientific basis and should not be part of the science curriculum. However, if a young person raises creationism in a science class, teachers should be in a position to explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism is not, in any way, scientific.

The Royal Society greatly appreciates Professor Reiss’s efforts in furthering the Society’s work in the important field of science education over the past two years. The Society wishes him well for the future.

Childish, I know, but I think this is funny.

The New York Times presents the political cartoonists’ take on the vice-presidential candidates. Not hilarious, but amusing.

Signe Wilkinson’s Sarah Palin for the Philadelphia Daily News is my favourite.

Autoblog stresses that this picture isn’t funny. Sorry guys, it is.

Fascinating statements from the church that worked so hard at discrediting the world’s foremost evolutionist.

Tomorrow, thousands of people will demonstrate against Sweden’s controversial surveillance law, which allows the government to read and store all emails, phone calls, and Internet traffic. Demonstrations are being organized in the three major cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. I’m still not sure if I’m able to participate, but I will do my best to get back to Malmö in time for liberal activist Martin Olsvenne’s speech.

Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live. Hilarious.

“Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance,” the New York Times writes of Sarah Palin.

Don’t worry about it. Sweden survived ten years of a malicious prime minister who was just like that.

During an outdoor Mass in Paris yesterday, the Pope condemned love of money and power. “Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true destiny?” the powerful, mega-rich, self-proclaimed infallible stand-in for Christ asked the crowd.

I have just read a bizarre article by Björn Elmbrant, who might very well be Sweden’s most nostalgic socialist journalist. In an online leader, he writes that the Swedish blogosphere must establish ethical rules about the publication of public material. Not because the blogosphere itself has violated any ethical rules or mishandled any public material, but because it defends current rules and regulations.

The background is that a district court granted an individual access to autopsy pictures of a murdered child. The pictures came from the public prosecutor’s preliminary investigation, and like most material of the sort, they are available to anyone under Sweden’s open-records policy. What made this case special was that the person who was given the pictures decided to share these with others online via the well-known file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. Perhaps an act of poor taste and questionable ethics, but not an illegal one.

As an established journalist, Mr Elmbrant knows all this. So, in the debate sparked by the mass-duplication of these gruesome pictures on the Internet, he blames bloggers for defending legal file sharing and The Pirate Bay against those who wish censorship. By this libertarian approach, bloggers are somehow collectively responsible for any future laws that might threaten the open-records policy.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, I don’t know of a single blogger who doesn’t sympathize with those who are upset over the publication in the particular case. It’s easy to get very emotional about the whole thing. No one would want pictures of their dead loved ones online. But to defend the websites that make file sharing possible has nothing to do with this. It’s not even a matter of violated copyright. Weirdly enough, Mr Elmbrant depicts the blogosphere a threat to the current legislation because it defends the law against an angry mob that demand the law to be changed. This makes me wonder if the table has turned; is being a conservative now the utmost radical position in this country?

A number of other Swedish bloggers have commented on the article. I link to a few of them:

• Mattias Axelsson
• Charlotte Wiberg
• Erik Laakso
• Louise Persson
• Dennis Josefsson
• Rosemari Södergren
• Niklas “Blogge” Dougherty
• Stefan Mårtensson

Jay Leno: “Well, it’s a very strange political campaign. I mean, out on the campaign trail, John McCain and Sarah Palin are talking about how they stood up to the Republican Party, they fought the Republican establishment, and they battled Republicans. Their message: vote Republican.”

Another reason to prefer the urban landscape to nature.

In a new televised advertisement campaign, Barack Obama mocks John McCain as computer illiterate. In the advertisement, an announcer says,

“Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t. He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an email, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favours two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

Now it turns out there’s a reason McCain doesn’t use computers:

The reason he doesn’t send email is that he can’t use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country… McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

Oops.

In a free market every interest can be met and every fantasy fulfilled. For those who wish to have a secret cave like Batman, there’s a company in Phoenix devoted entirely to hidden rooms and passages. I wonder if any of my socialist antagonists honestly believe an entrepreneur would ever be allowed to develop an idea like this in a state-run economy.