Monday 29 January 2001

Pic of the day: Today I got a personal letter in the mail, from an unknown bank. They told me I could borrow up to kr 200,000 (over $20,000) with no security. Hello, do I look that stupid? No, don't answer that...

Stupid, stupid

I'm not the stupidest bloke around; but you gotta start somewhere. Let's start on Thursday.

Late in the workday, I ran a program that picked some data from one database, then another that inserted them in another database. Hey, don't mention it, it's my job. Doing this had the advantage that we could now use the second database (2000). Sadly, it had the downside that we could no longer use the first database in the same way. And the guy who works very hard with that database was not amused. He already has racked up 104 hours of flexi-time which he'll have to take off sometime, because the conditions for overtime pay are very strict and evidently don't apply to him. So, he was miffed.

In my defense, this job was one that was listed in the instructions from our national data center. But I know I had been aware of the side effects either the day before or earlier in the day. Somehow they had not seemed important at the end of the day, but I'll be spanked if I know why. I should definitely have checked this out. Stupid.

***

It is a sad fact of life that stupidity can coexist happily with a high IQ; on the bright side, you're able to make better excuses. Excuses aside, I do my little share of stupid things. Like eating too much snacks, for instance. I'm smart enough to know that I should eat less snacks and more fruit and grain, and drink a lot more water. But somehow there is a steady supply of chocolate and other goodies around for my nibbling needs. It just tastes so good. (The same does the McRoma burger, which is still going strong at our McDonalds in the city.)

Tonight I'm not hungry at all. I just wish I could get rid of this sharp taste in my mouth. Brushing my teeth doesn't help, drinking water doesn't help. It's like it's imprinted on my taste buds. I'm not feeling all that bad overall, so I doubt I'm food poisoned. Probably too much snacks. Stupid.

***

Things don't look much better if we look at today's politics here in Norway. Half a dozen neo-nazists are suspected of killing a 15 year old boy in Oslo. The boy was colored (not sure if that is a politically correct word this year, his father was black) and so when these people were running from the scene of crime, it is a reasonable thought that they killed him because they were nazists.

The government is striking while the corpse is warm, promising to look into prohibiting nazist and racist organizations altogether. Well, there are two things that are horribly wrong here. Firstly, these young people have not yet been tried in court, nor have they confessed. At least one witness implicates them, true enough, but having high-ranking officials cite them as a reason to change the laws is not exactly the highway to a fair trial. That's pretty much telling the jury and the judges what to do. You'd think that someone with a basic understanding of society would understand that without being told, and take care to not unduly influence the process of court. Stupid.

Secondly, the whole idea that you can do something good by restricting the right of free speech and free assembly. Don't people see that this means playing by the nazists's rules? If a nazist kills a man, the killer should be punished according to the laws of the land. If a muslim kills a man, he should be punished according to the laws. If a vegetarian kills a man, he should be punished according to law. The whole concept of higher civilization rests on the fairness of law: As the ancients put it, "the law is equal for Loki and Thor". If nazists are more likely to break the law, well, then they are also more likely to be punished. That's fair. But to persecute people for their ideas, even disgusting ideas, is not fair. It is stupid.

There are groups in our society which are particularly vocal in their demand to outlaw nazism and racism. I'm sure those who live here have a good idea of who. But if you listen to these people for a while, there is this creeping realization that their concept of nazism is much wider than most of ours. In fact, by their definitions, Norwegian policy on immigration is already solidly racist, and a prohibition of all racist groups would apply to most of the existing political parties.

Outlawing disgusting opinions is entering a slippery slope, where there is no clear borders until you have descended into a competing version of totalitarian regime. It is worth noticing that it was the fight against the disgusting and immoral ideology of communism that allowed Hitler's party to rise to power in the first place. It would be really stupid to repeat that error, only with the pieces switched.