It has often been argued that one of the differences with Islam (compared to western christianity) is that it has not gone through a reformation, as the christian world has, and this is one of the causes of the existence of Islamic extremism. See for example this Washington Post article. The argument is that without a reformation, Muslims still treat their holy works as the word of god in a way that christians in the West no longer do. For example, in the above article it is argued that:
However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible.
To my mind this seems to misunderstand the nature of the reformation. The reformation was not some challenge to the central role of the bible in religion, instead it was an attempt to return to it, against the perceived corruption of the catholic church and its top down interpretation of the bible. The first group to break away from the Catholics were the Lutherans, and in wikipedia we have this description:
Lutherans believe that the Bible, as a divinely inspired book, is the source of all revealed divine knowledge. Scripture alone (Sola scriptura) is the formal principle of the faith, the final authority for all matters of faith and doctrine.
Thus the reformation, to some extent, was the attempt to return to the scriptures and away form the interpretations of the Catholic Church. This does not seem to me a useful to think about Islam. A more appropriate example might be the Enlightenment.
Shopping for rice in Australia can be a bit of a pain sometimes. When at the supermarket, and your basic desire is for imported rice, it can be difficult to find it! Everything seems to be sunrice, even when looking for Jasmine rice, a lot of it seems to be sunrice, an Australian grown rice. However I finally found an imported rice, the Home Brand of the supermarket, reliably made from imported rice.
I guess it is a somewhat meaningless gesture, but it seems a bit crazy tome to grow rice, a water intensive product in otherwise dry irrigated areas of Australia when we seem to be in the grip of a water crisis. Of course the Rice Growers see it differently.
I must admit that I have found the argument around the US governments sanction of “torture” to be a bit, well, tortuous. At least to me it has never been quite clear what was considered in and what was considered out (helped by the fact that the US government would not state what was in and out). But the discussions in the blogoshere recently have lead me to a more refined conception of the torture debate. We now know the rough outlines of the issue. We know just interviewing someone is not torture. And we know the physical cutting, damaging and physically harming a person is torture. But this seems to leave a whole pile of activities in the middle. For example:
– Water-boarding. Placing a cloth over a persons head and poring water over you so that it feels as if you are drowning.
– Sleep depravation.
– Extremes of temperature.
– Prolonged exposure to loud noises.
– Threats of violence against you or your family (which the interrogator does not actually intend to commit, but appears as if they would).
One blogger provides a useful overview of some of these techniques here. Commenting on this I think Matthew Yglesias gets it right when he says:
“Count me as standing with Djerejian in the view that if you can read accounts of the KGB using the technique that clearly paint it as torture, that it’s probably torture when the CIA does it, too.”
The defining feature of torture is using pain and suffering to extract confessions, it surely does not matter how the pain and suffering is inflicted, or whether it leaves any permanent marks or damage.
I am a big fan of Katsu Curry when going out for Japanese, and have sought how to recreate it at home. I finally discovered it in the local Asian supermarket. Its called Golden Curry!! The great thing about it is that it comes in these block just like a block of chocolate, and you just break off a block and put it in a pan with some water and boiled carrots and you have a curry! Those Japanese, they are so clever!
News.com.au is reporting that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is suing Google. According to the article:
“The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleges Trading Post Australia, Google Ireland, Google Australia and Google Inc. were misleading in the search engine’s ‘sponsored links’ section.The ACCC said that in 2005, sponsored links titled ‘Kloster Ford’ and ‘Charlestown Toyota’ allegedly appeared on Google, but the links allegedly directed users to the Trading Post website.Both dealerships compete with the Trading Post. The ACCC said by publishing the links, Google allegedly engaged in ‘misleading and deceptive conduct’.”
It is somewhat difficult to figure out the exact nature of the complaint against Google from this report. While a search for Kloster Ford in Google does not seem to pull up an appropraite link style, if you search for President Ford, a major Ford dealership in Melbourne you get this search result:
Obviously, we don’t know if this is the actually type of web search result that the ACCC is complaining about, although one would imagine that if the behaviour was not continuing that the ACCC would not have initiated court proceedings. There is a little more detail on the ACCC web site, in the ACCC press release they state:
“The ACCC is alleging that Trading Post contravened sections 52 and 53(d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in 2005 when the business names ‘Kloster Ford’ and ‘Charlestown Toyota’ appeared in the title of Google sponsored links to Trading Post’s website. Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota are Newcastle car dealerships who compete against Trading Post in automotive sales.The ACCC is also alleging that Google, by causing the Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota links to be published on its website, engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act.Further, the ACCC is alleging that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from ‘organic’ search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act.”
On the above search the actual website of President Ford actually comes up at the top of the list, but the link to the side is for “President Ford” but with the link going to www.carsguide.com.au (with that kind of disclosed below and with “sponsored links” above. This would seem to be the misleading and deceptive conduct referred to: providing a link to “President Ford” but the link not going to that site, but rather to an unrelated site (although still about cars).
Technically this might be ‘misleading’, it says ‘President Ford’, but links elsewhere, it says ‘sponsored link’, but does not make it clear that it is not in fact sponsored by ‘President Ford’. But at the same time seems pretty trivial, what is the consumer detriment that is occurring? Surely there are better uses of the ACCC’s finite resources?
If you are looking for something frivolous to distract you when you should be doing things that are more important then I can recommend to you the online game Desktop Tower Defence (http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/game.asp). This is a little flash game where you place towers on a board in order to stop little aliens. you do not control the towers, they aim and fire automatically. The fun of the game is the choosing and placement of towers, and their is an impressive learning experience as you gain knowledge of the best choices and placement.
