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Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases
Tsalg writes "Interesting to see what scientists can uncover from watching one of the silliest TV shows in Europe, where singers represent countries in a contest, and then countries vote for.. for what exactly? Well it was reported in a Nature article where the show was used as a barometer of European nations' feelings about their neighbours, that
Britain is in harmony with Europe, Nordic countries fancy each others' stars, and France is out on a limb."
GNAA !rules.
You should offer to contract with them. Clearly their in-house IT is too expensive. Yet another opportunity for corporate outsourcing...
You're must be joking. I've been to Cuba too and I found it a horribly backward country suffering under a terrible and corrupt dictatorship.
The country is full of murals saying how wonderful they are and how they defeated the US. The people are piss poor and you see disabled people walking around on improvised crutches made out of branches. Everything is a lie in Cuba...
If only the US would understand it's their embargo that's keeping Fidel in the saddle.
Its funny listening to Americans comment on a country that the vast majority have never been to. Not to mention countries that they are not free to visit should they want to.
Not being American, and therefor being FREE to go where I please, I can tell you that a rum and COKE is not hard to come by. Funny, I thought Coke was an American company?
Looks like the US has a much larger problem with Coke smuggling than they thought.
Haven't any of you sheeple figured it out yet, it is only illegal if you are not a giant corporation. If you have 30 employees and you trade with Cuba, look out, those Southern redneck senators will hunt you down like dogs. If you employ 30,000 employees, and pay of the douchbags on the hill, you can do as you please.
The US policies against Cuba are bad for Cuba, but great for the rest of the world. It has left a Carribean island with great weather, great beaches, great cigars, affordable accomodations and best of all, NO Americans. It's like vacation heaven. Besides, none of you would like it there. Really.
Wow, and if they were AMERICAN CITIZENS you might have a point!
As it is, they are foreign enemy irregular forces (unless cleared) and have very few "rights".
On the whole, I agree with your other points about domestic developments here in the US, those are just natural knee-jerk reactions to 9/11 in a nanny state like the current US. Clinton would have been as bad or worse.
The key is to turn around the many legal and governmental decisions that have led us to nanny-statedom in the first place. No easy task, that.
Overall, Cuba has a national GDP of $33.92 billion,
The reality simply is that Cuba is run by a corrupt and incompetant military dictator whose only prior qualification was being a spoiled rich kid and lawyer.
It sounds to me like Big Bill would be quite comfortable here, when he decides to retire. At only $33 Billion, he could just buy the whole place. Imagine him growing out his hair and having his image replacing all those of Che.
He could be just as corrupt and incompetent as he wants to be and no one would notice the difference. He'd have to get used to making eight hour speeches about the evil imperialist Linux worms, but we got pills now that make that no problem.
As for the rest of us, we'd finally get a real high quality English/Spanish translator built into
Windows!
FYI, I'm not an American, and the page about Cuban human rights abuses which I linked to is a European/international human rights group. So I don't think your generalization about other countries is particularly relevant. It's true that many Europeans seem particularly insensitive to issues of political repression, but that's perhaps why they keep getting into trouble along those lines.
I have lived for a number of years in America, though, and my experience is that ordinary citizens there aren't afraid of their government(s) in the same way that they are in Cuba. Any comparison in terms of repressiveness between the two countries is largely silly, even despite the current overreaction to terrorism. There's a spectrum of human rights issues, and no country on Earth is perfect, and particularly no English-speaking country (if there was one, I would live there). Smooshing the spectrum to make all violations equal to each other is only useful as an extremist rhetorical tactic.
I don't buy the pot smoker comparison, either: show me the pot smoker (not dealer) who is in jail for one to four years for mere possession of single-person quantities. At least such a person committed a crime, though, even if it shouldn't be a crime: they get due process under the law, unlike Cubans imprisoned for pre-crimes. You can't have due process when you don't know what actions might trigger your arrest and imprisonment.
Regarding US imprisonment rates, that seems to be largely a racial thing. Amazing how long the legacy of slavery has lasted. So yes, it can suck to be black in America. In Cuba, it sucks to be Cuban.
Funny, I think the same thing when I see someone with a Bush/Cheney bumpersticker.
I know you're a troll, but I'll bite.
Cuba had the lowest malnutrition rate in Latin America from 1979-1992, before the US intensified sanctions. Its estimated number of malnourished as of the report date (2000) was 1.8 million, i.e. ~5%. This is almost completely due to the increased embargo; not being able to buy from the US (its nearest potential supplier) increases costs by about 30%; caloric intake during the time dropped 38%. Even still, for comparison, about 30 million Mexicans (~%28) are malnourished. Who is crying them a river?
As for your "ex-cuban" relatives, you are staring in the face the classic example of "selection bias". If they weren't anti-castro/anti-communist, they wouldn't have fled to the US, now would they?
Castro was a rich kid and lawyer, but he only took from that his education, if you knew anything about the revolution you'd know he lived in poverty in the revolutionary camps out in the boonies. You'd also know that the rich folks like his family tended to support the corrupt Batista regime, and that Castro had the courage to fight against the inequality, while nearly ALL other rich families supported Batista.
You complain about the average Cuban living in poverty but you miss the following - ALL Cubans have access to government-issued food, education, and medical care. That's EVERYBODY, from the chauffer who drives Castro around to a dentist in Havana to a farmer in la Isla de Juventud.
You also complain about poverty but neglect to mention 90% of that poverty is due to the trade embargo by the USA. Cuba is a third-world country, that is definitely true. Now if you look at its income and compare to other countries of similar income you'll see that Cuba is far far ahead of other countries. Many residents of Latin America admire Castro for what he has done for Cuba, especially in light of all the aggression the USA has against them.
The way America has bullied Cuba for years, simply because they disagree with it's political system is appaling.
But keep in mind, America also disagrees with China's political system, and look how much business we do with them. It's not about politics, it's that the only thing worth importing from Cuba is the cigars. Without China, we wouldn't have most of the products that support our digital lifestyles.
That doesn't change the fact that food prices are 30% higher due to the sanctions, which means that being allowed to import from the US would provide 30% more food for the same amount of money, almost eliminating the change in caloric consumption - *and* the fact that even in their present state, Cubans are better off than many, if not most, Latin American nations when it comes to malnutrition.
As an example: Cubans eat a large portion of their calories from rice. Currently, they import most of their rice from Europe, which has to be shipped across the Atlantic. Yet, some of the cheapest rice in the world is grown in Texas, right nearby. It's things like this that make food have an effective "embargo surcharge" in Cuba. Incidentally, it hurts US farmers at the same time.
What does that have to do with my point? Which was that France is not on the cutting edge of progress in the world, nor does it have a history of being so. It sometimes is, sometimes is not. It sometimes is successful and sometimes missteps. Every nation has in its history abundant examples of bad decisions, poor leadership, and difficult periods. To imply that any nation is and always has been the example that the rest of the world is trying to catch up to is asinine. I can pretty much cut and paste this comment to every response to my post, since it's typical Slashdot fare of attacking ancillary data in a manner that does not invalidate my point.
If somebody disagrees with me point, provide counter-arguments.
didn't scratch the British monarchy in the slightest?
This statement is laughable. Provide some support for this?
Maybe you take your little uprising in the backwoods a tad too seriously?
Well, it did lead to the founding of the country that I live in, so, yeah, I don't feel compelled to wave my hand dismissively at it. I'm puzzled as to why you seem to cavalier in doing so. Do you really think that the United States and its impact on the world can be summed up as a negligable wave in the history of humanity, summed up as a "backwoods uprising" in an empire? Your post is indeed interesting in its blind naivete.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib