January 2004 – Page 8 – Gavinsblog.com

More on Tom Watson versus Richard Dawkins

A comment left on my entry concerning Tom Watson has sparked my interest:

Says Jerry:

I said that if the extract from Tom Waston’s website is supposed to be ‘sarcastic or ironic’ (and that’s not at all apparent from just reading it)who, exactly, is he satirising or being ironic about? People who actually use this kind of language? Or those who attempt to use it in order to improve their street cred? I’m not at all surprised that Dawkins reacted as he did, or that ‘Tom is irate’: egocentricity is an essential feature of the MP’s job description.

I think I should leave it for Tom to defend himself, but I at least found his young person’s passage very entertaining. 🙂

Censorship in French rap

In a so called land of freedom where people are supposed to have equal rights, rap music is more than censored by an incomprehensive government. French rappers such as NTM:
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William Safire: In space, we're getting along just fine

William Safire comments on the US successes in space. Interesting views i guess.

In the 20th century, stung by the triumph of the Soviet Union in putting the Sputnik into orbit, President John F. Kennedy said America had “tossed its cap over the wall of space” to be first to land a man on the moon. The United States won that competition with communism in space, an augury to America’s later victories in ideology and political power.

Now Americans are stunned by their new successes in space. With the year 2004 still in its diaper, a spacecraft aptly named Stardust, launched five years ago, scooped up a shovelful of dust from the nucleus of the comet Wild 2 a quarter of a billion miles away. If it brings back even a thimbleful of these first materials from deep space two years from now, we may learn if comet dust contains the organic molecules necessary for life – which would be evidence that comets are universal messengers of life-producing chemicals.

Then, a few days later, came America’s robotic visitation of the probe named Spirit to Mars. We have been there before with a small probe but suffered two failures five years ago. Now our $820 million investment paid off as we placed a roving robot the size of a golf cart splat in the middle of a Connecticut-size crater that NASA calls Sleepy Hollow.

American invasion plan stirs fierce Saudi debate

So what does everyone think of this? US plans to invade Saudi Arabia some 50 years ago.

Newly declassified British reports, revealing fears of a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia 30 years ago, are striking a remarkable chord inside the kingdom today.
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Carnegie group says Bush made wrong claims on WMD

Interesting report from the Carnegie Endowment,

The Bush administration will today be accused of “systematically misrepresenting” the threat posed by “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction” in a comprehensive report on post-war findings.
The report, by four experts on weapons proliferation at the respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is likely to reignite calls for acommission to look into the government’s pre-war intelligence claims.

According to the report, the absence of any imminent threat from Saddam Hussein’s chemical or nuclear programmes was “knowable” before the war. There was greater uncertainty over biological weapons but no evidence strong enough to justify war.

Sony's new MiniDisc

So everyone is going crazy about the old iPods and the new smaller iPods. Sony are just releasing the newest versions of their MiniDisc players and recorders. The new ones are backwards compatible with their old 600mb discs, put also have newer 1Gb discs, meaning eash disc can store almost eight hours of music. Woah.

I guess the main difference with iPod is that the media is not removable while MiniDiscs are.

Michael Jackson grounded

“Have passport, will travel” is no longer an option for Michael Jackson.
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To the hater players ( freestyle, by me)

This freestyle came out of my chest when I got insulted on one of the message boards I used to go. One of my haters didn’t even know how to spell and he dared rating my freestyles.
Because I’m a female fan, I often get called names like”groupie slut”,”bitch”. Because I ‘m very supportive to my fave artist, I also got called “Stan” or “stalker”.
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Why I love gangsta rap

Among different styles of rap, gangsta rap is my favorite genre. Although Eminem is my favorite hip hop artist, I do appreciate many old school rappers from the political rap movance, like Ice T , NWA, Public Enemy.
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Blog entries

I’ve been fairly busy of late, so haven’t been posting much. I am very excited about the NASA mission on Mars, I am expecting Bush to make an announcement on a manned mission to Mars as a re-election ploy.

Back to regular posting tomorrow.