Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Why I agree with Snowden’s actions


The leaks didn’t cause harm, in fact the served the public good”. These are only some of the words that Edward Snowden, the man known for his work both for and against the NSA, said while he was being interviewed by a German television broadcast. During the interview, both interesting and frightening subjects were discussed between the German interviewer and Snowden, who claims he sleeps well at nights in Russia even though he has received several threats from his home country. He also claimed that NSA would love to either poison him or put a bullet through his head as a punishment for the things he’d done. However, not everyone has the same opinion about Snowden’s actions. I am one of those who supports him for his work and his proof that NSA is as sensitive to information as any other company, website or individual.

In the interview, Snowden also said that he felt he did the right thing and that no matter how faithful one is to the government and its country, one can still judge whether the things the government is doing are wrong or right. What he was trying to say was that there has to be a limit for what’s appropriate and what’s not, and the actions the NSA did against the American citizens is one of the things that is inappropriate. If you aren’t familiar with NSA actions, a short explanation to it would be that every phone call you make, or every website you surf on, can be traced by the NSA and be used against you if the information is reliable enough.
What Edward Snowden did is basically to inform the society about this. Thanks to him, people not only in USA, but also the rest of the world are aware of what kind of consequences their actions on the internet might lead to.

A topic that was discussed in the interview that I personally found quite interesting is the fact that NSA isn’t allowed to monitor American citizens. It is however allowed to monitor other countries’ citizens and their actions. The German interviewer asked Snowden if it was true that UK spied on American citizens and that USA spied on British citizens, and if these countries later on exchanged the information so that USA got their own people’s actions from Britain and opposite. Snowden replied that this could be possible and that even if NSA isn’t allowed to spy on American people, they did it anyway.  


Here’s a link to the interview: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_1390833151

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

April Fool’s Day

Introduction
April Fool’s Day, or All Fool’s Day as it is also called, is a holiday recognized worldwide as a day on which people play different jokes, prank and/ or hoaxes on each other. These may be everything from jokes like telling your boyfriend that you’re pregnant or telling your parents that you crashed their car, to larger pranks like your local supermarket telling you that you’ll get free beer in exchange of your


Brief history
How and where this holiday started is and will probably remain a mystery. However, there are actually several theories about its origins and history. One of the most popular theories that I found on the National Geographic’s website, is that when France changed its calendar in the 1500s so that the New Year started in January instead of April, some rural areas in France were still celebrating after the old calendar, and these were called the April Fools.
Further in the article, Boese, a man who has studied the origins of the April Fool’s Day said that the this theory if wrong because the French celebrated the New Year on the Easter Day, and therefore this day was never associated with April 1st.
Another theory about this holiday is that it originated from the medieval festivals called the Feast of Fools, where people probably ate, drank and made jokes.


The best hoaxes ever
As mentioned before, there are a variety of jokes people pull out on each other on the 1
st of April. The best of the best hoaxes that have ever been pulled can be found on various websites out there on the internet. However, here’s a site that I find quite interesting:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/