The websites is also undergoing some maintenance.

The news just came from Venezuela.

Sometimes I don’t know why I do thing. As currently I’m a manually removing about 1,500 blog entries from 2005 and 2006. It’s so boring you can’t even begin to comprehend. Back then; I used a blogging device whose list of entries cannot be properly imported into modern-day weblog publishing system. As a result, I have to do it by hand. It’s unbelievably dull work, but when it’s been done, I have a perfect feed with all blog entries going back to 2005.

But one thing that is fun about it to read what I wrote in the journal in those days. It’s both fun and scary, I should say. There seem to have been endless quarrel with completely insignificant bloggers and I spent far too much energy bashing the Left and the Religious Right. Some blog entries are so embarrassing; I would rather see them be lost. But I have have made the decision to keep my journal the way it is. I change my mind and my opinions, but not the journal itself. This journal will—and is already—a document of my life and the times I live in.

There will be few updates in the next week or two. Migrating the old blog takes a lot more time than I had first anticipated. Unless some other major figure dies, the journal will be close to silent until next week.

This entry is a test to see how well it works.

“The appeal of populist autocracy has been weakened but not extinguished,” writes The Economist.

Who is being asked to work for free on the business side?

When people write for free, who pays?

A collection of charts by The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan. Apparently, New Zealand is the best country for women.

“The New York Stock Exchange is readying plans to be able to operate without human traders,” Reuters reports.

Mark Seal has written an interesting article about the making of one of my absolute favourite films of all time—Pulp Fiction. From Vanity Fair:

In late 1992, Quentin Tarantino left Amsterdam, where he had spent three months, off and on, in a one-room apartment with no phone or fax, writing the script that would become Pulp Fiction, about a community of criminals on the fringe of Los Angeles. Written in a dozen school notebooks, which the 30-year-old Tarantino took on the plane to Los Angeles, the screenplay was a mess—hundreds of pages of indecipherable handwriting.

“Monarch makes historic pledge on discrimination,” Mail Online writes.

Seth Borenstein on a new study:

Marcott’s data indicates that it took 4,000 years for the world to warm about 1.25 degrees from the end of the ice age to about 7,000 years ago. The same fossil-based data suggest a similar level of warming occurring in just one generation: from the 1920s to the 1940s.

From the Guardian:

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections pose “a catastrophic threat” to the population, the chief medical officer for Britain warns in a report calling for urgent action worldwide.

If tough measures are not taken to restrict the use of antibiotics and no new ones are discovered, said Dame Sally Davies, “we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th century at some point”

The news reading so far this morning has been doom and gloom. Either global warming or new superbugs will kill us off.

“A new party led by economists, jurists, and Christian Democrat rebels will kick off this week, calling for the break-up of monetary union before it can do any more damage,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in a typical British anti-European prose. The people ate the Telegraph so desperately want the euro to fail.

The Local on the miner’s daughter who became Swedish royalty’s grand old lady.

You must love the Independent for reporting this story.

A new study says Facebook knows more about you than you might know they know.

Update: Financial Times hides their article behind a pay wall, but the same story can be read freely at Cambridge News.

Some useful advice here. Come to think of it, I probably make most of the mistakes myself.

Perfect for people who hate people.

Does this confirm extraterrestrial life?

Your eyes may deceit you.

Andrew Sullivan:

What if the libertarian right begins more and more to realise that the neoconservative vision is incompatible with constitutional freedoms? What if this stops being a “fringe” idea and starts to reintegrate into its natural home: American conservatism. The wild card? Israel, of course, where Christianists believe theology should dictate foreign policy. But we could end military aid, couldn’t we? And I’m beginning to see the strong chance that if the neocons get close to their next war on Iran, the GOP might not be unanimously behind it.

So Sullivan’s libertarianism equates not giving a damn about fascism attacking liberty and democracy in Israel? If so, this is precisely it’s exactly as weak as the neo-conservatives said it were—incapable of defending liberty when it’s attacked. Sullivan hates the Jewish State, and that gets the better of him, but hopefully most Americans see that fighting Iran is no different from fighting Nazi-Germany back in the days. We now have a leader who boosts terrorism and genocide building nuclear weaponry.

“Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has greeted crowds in Rome’s St Peter’s Square after his election as the Catholic Church’s new Pope,” BBC News reports. I don’t know much about him, but don’t expect any changes on important civil liberty issues as same-sex marriage.

José de Ribera (1591–1652), Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, 1642.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin called Wednesday for the revival of a Soviet-era physical evaluation program that required all schoolchildren to pass fitness tests,” Fox reports. How not surprising of Putin.

Researchers in France say rapid treatment after HIV infection may be enough to functionally cure about a tenth of those diagnosed early, BBC News reports. Good news! This confirms earlier studies suggesting frequent tests in combination with effective medication may be the “cure” of HIV.

Blogging has been sparsely over the past couple of weeks for two reasons: I have been ill and I have manually migrated my oldest blog entries into modern form. In doing this, I tried to restore all internal links to make the journal easier to follow. All internal links should no contain the new permalinks. I’m not sure of the result, but as far as I know now, the work is done.

As I have written before, some of the oldest entries are embarrassing to read now. I don’t know what I was thinking when I spent so much time bashing other bloggers and arguing with people that have no impact on my life nor the society I live in. I can’t really blame youth either—I was 33 years old when I began my current life as an online diarist. I suppose I felt a need to write what I did. Oh, well…

Depositors will lose up to 10 percent of their savings as part of a €10 billion bailout for Cyprus agreed on 15 March. This can’t go on. Europe needs a federal solution presently.

From The Economist’s Schumpeter:

The bail-out appears to move Europe further away from the institutional reforms that are needed to resolve the crisis once and for all. Rather than using the European Stability Mechanism to recapitalise banks, and thereby weaken the link between banks and their governments, the euro zone continues to equate bank bail-outs with sovereign bail-outs. As for debt mutualisation, after imposing losses on local depositors, the price of support from the rest of Europe is arguably costlier now than it ever has been.

On Friday, about 150 attendees gathered at Copenhagen’s City Hall to hear the City Council’s plan for legalisation. I welcome the move as I cannot see anything good come from criminalisation.

I’m not a fan of the Pope, but his way of working a crowd is cool.

I bet there are plenty of men who would be happy to help the prince if he wanted to.

Art by Dave Gorum. Hypnotizing.

It seems the bigots are losing the battle at home. This is good news. The very idea that gay rights is a left-vs-right issue is a mistake. Conservatives should be happy to welcome more people forming lasting, healthy relationships.

This is good, but it’s also about time!

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Since 2002, the tyrant is banned from entering the European Union. Arrest him now and put him in prison for the many killings he has ordered over the years!

The Green Street United Methodist Church in North Carolina takes a stand:

Because the United Methodist Church prohibits its pastors from conducting same-sex weddings, excluding gay and lesbian couples from the holy sacrament of marriage, the Leadership Council has asked the pastor to refrain from conducting wedding ceremonies in our sanctuary for straight couples, until the denomination lifts its ban for same-sex couples.

Love it!

Cyprus’s parliament has overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits. This is good news, but it puts the bailout in disarray.

The universe is older then previously thought.

So much for peace… But I guess it’s Israel’s fault somehow.

“Iran’s Supreme Leader says Islamic Republic would destroy Tel Aviv, Haifa if Israel launches a military attack against it,” Jerusalem Post reports. Well, the thing is that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007 promised destroy Israel and the United States. It seems that Iran is set on destruction regardless of whom making the first move. Therefor it makes more sense to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons now rather than wait for it to have these weapons.

Cute story about the gossip king in Los Angles Times.

Michelangelo Signorile’s wishful thinking?

Judith Leyster (1609–1660), A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel.

Horrific news. Don’t get me wrong, having sex with a 13-year-old is wrong, but the reason for stoning the man is all about homophobia.

Poor Moe.

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Things are not good in Cyprus at the moment.

Cyprus is on the brink of bankruptcy and of becoming the first-ever country to leave the euro. This is bad news for everybody.

The Social Democratic Party—which rules Malmö—has appointed a new leader who will now act as the city’s mayor. Her name is Stjernfeldt Jammeh, and she is one of the few local Social Democrats to have openly criticised Ilmar Reepalu’s anti-Semitic statements about Jews and in Malmö. Good for her—and good for the Social Democrats to elect someone who is not a racist.

This is good news.

For the second time, tens of thousands of homophobes march through Paris against equal rights for all citizens.

Liz Goodwin:

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in two cases that have the potential to transform American society and the status of gays and lesbians in it.

In oral arguments on Tuesday morning the 9 justices will consider whether California’s voter approved ban on gay marriage, Proposition 8, unfairly discriminates against gay people. On Wednesday, they’ll consider whether the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act barring the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex marriages, even in states that allow them, constitutes federal overreach.

Exciting times.

“Observant Jews in Israel craving a smoke during the week-long Passover holiday that starts at sundown on Monday can now enjoy a rabbi-approved puff,” the Guardian reports.

Adam Winkler reports on a case of judges trying to avoid what are obvious.

Kurt Eichenwald of Vanity Fair takes on some marital myths.

Jesus of Nazareth at his crucifixion, by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez (1599–1660).

Today is Good Friday, a day on which the Crucifixion of Christ is commemorated in the Christian Church.

The Crucifixion is perhaps the most macabre element of Christianity. The torture and subsequent death of Jesus is the very core of the religion as it symbolises the loving God. To me, this is very bizarre. But I also realise that the idea of a man dying for his beliefs is very strong. What, I ask myself, would we know about Socrates had it not been for the impact his public death had on his followers. As is the case with Jesus, the fame came not from Socrates himself, but from admiring writers.

“The kingdom’s interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death,” Daily Mail reports.

I’m not sure about these accusations. Saudi Arabia has a tendency to camouflage Persecution of gay men with accusations of rape and murder.

Nate Silver explains.

As always with bigots, it is for the sake of the children. Children can be used to legitimise just about every kind of discrimination.