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Saturday, December 27
Bishops attack 'immoral' and "corrupt" Labour
Oooooo, ahhhhh!!!, that is going to hurt, now 5 bishops have attacked Labour policy. I quote some of the juiciest bits.
They warned the country was suffering from family breakdown, an unhealthy reliance on debt and a growing gap between rich and poor.
The Rt Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, told the Sunday Telegraph ministers had not done enough to help the poor.
"Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them have vanished into thin air," he said.
"We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of hopelessness. While the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer.
"When a big bank or car company goes bankrupt, it gets bailed out, but no one seems to be bailing out the ordinary people who are losing their jobs and seeing their savings diminished."
In a separate interview with the paper, the Right Reverend Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester, accused Labour of being "beguiled by money" and "morally corrupt".
I am sure Gordon Brown will be chewing on the carpet and howling away. By the way, what happens when he goes to confession? does he get chewed out by his confessor?
Religions evolve, are not revealed.
I read this quote couple of weeks ago and it made me go hmmm, makes quite a lot of sense.
Religions are not revealed: they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been a religion that which fulfills those conditions. -Robert Blatchford, author (1851-1943)
I have been variously a Sufi, a Bahai, a Hindu, a Pastafarian, an Atheist, an agnostic, an Eponite, sometimes all of them and sometimes none of them and yes, I would say that that quote makes sense. This idea of being a perfect religion is silly.
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So why is Caroline Kennedy eligible for the US Senate?
I read this interview twice over. I am still very unclear as to why she would be a good senator. Mind you, I wasn't clear why Hillary Clinton was fit for the senate either. But then, now I have found the answer, be married or be the progeny of a famous man. Nepotism? Heaven forbid, not in the land of meritorious achievement. And then they blame the UK for being class conscious! Disappointing, very disappointing indeed.
Friday, December 26
Reading to children - good, not reading - bad
Here's another d'oh finding by the Institute of Education. I quote:
It concluded: "Reading to the child every day and having a mother who thinks it is important to stimulate young children are positively associated with all cognitive outcomes and negatively with problem behaviour." It said that reading to a child every day "appears to lower behavioural problems".
Children who were read to daily did better in the naming vocabulary test, which involved the children being shown a picture and asked to identify the object.
They also performed better in the foundation stage profiles and had higher behaviour scores.
Youngsters whose mothers thought it was important to talk to them and teach them the alphabet did better than their peers in a number of other tests, and also had better foundation stage profiles.
In contrast, on average, children who watch three or more hours of TV a day achieved lower scores on the tests.
What next? that feeding children makes them healthy and not feeding them is bad for their health?
There’s Lots of Tech Help, Yes, on the Internet
First, a few general rules. Many of the below sites require you to register a user name and password before you can post a question. Also, it’s a good idea to check how active a site is. Answerbag.com, for example, has more than 750,000 members. The bigger the site, the more likely you are to get an answer.
Sites with moderators are a plus because they will help weed out irrelevant or duplicate answers and keep the discussion on topic. There are also good fee-based sites like Experts Exchange (secure.experts-exchange.com/), but I’ve limited the below list to free help.
PCs
One of my favorite tech support sites is FixYa.com ( www.fixya.com/). It has a clean design, which makes searching easy. When posing a question, use keywords, hit the search button, and a list of solutions will pop up.
FixYa lets its users rate one another so you can see who has a good solution rating and who doesn’t.
Users can choose among the “post a new problem,” “I can solve this!” and “I have the same problem” tabs. The site also has an alphabetical list of brands so you can search by name.
TechIMO.com (www.techimo.com/) is also a good bet, judging by sheer volume of active users.
The site’s PC hardware and tech general discussion board (www.techimo.com/forum/general-tech-discussion/) had nearly 240,000 posts when I checked it. Fair warning: the site is geared more toward the tech-savvy than the tech-phobic.
Tech publications PC World (tinyurl.com/3q7xm5) and CNet (tinyurl.com/43be5q) also have good discussion forums.
Smartphones
I solved my BlackBerry problem on Crackberry.com’s forums (forums.crackberry.com/). Not only does the site break down problems by model, including Apple’s iPhone 3G, but it also has a section for older BlackBerrys (forums.crackberry.com/f29/), which is helpful because not everyone has the money or desire to switch models every year. You can also search by carrier.
Users of the iPhone can turn to the iPhone Blog (www.theiphoneblog.com/iphone-help-and-how-to-guides/), which is helpful because it uses screen images and other visual aids instead of dizzying amounts of text. Even better are video tutorials. Instead of wasting time trying to locate your SIM card tray, just mimic the video’s step-by step instructions and pause and replay as needed.
If you’re short on patience, CNet’s video tutorials (cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-28619.html) are better organized and are presented by the site’s editors who, generally speaking, should be qualified to solve your problems. The site’s Quick Tips section is good to browse if you’re looking to better navigate your gadget. In one video, CNet’s editor at large, Brian Cooley, gives some BlackBerry navigation tips, which is infinitely more colorful than reading your phone’s instruction manual.
And if you still insist on speaking to a human being, go to gethuman.com (www.gethuman.com/) first — it will tell you the fastest, most direct number to use to reach a living, breathing technician on the line.
See, even when you don’t want its help, the Internet is there for you.
Yet another Jew good/Muslim bad article
I do not know about why this thesis is so prevalent amongst a certain class of Muslims. It goes something like this. Jews have come up with so many Nobel prizes, inventions and discoveries while the Muslims have not. So Muslims should do the same and hark back to some mythical golden age. I am sure you must have read this before. What these frankly silly people do not understand is that if they are identifying excellence with a particular religion, then they are also identifying mediocrity or failure with another religion. If just belonging to Judaism was sufficient to start punching out Nobel Prizes and inventions, then is belonging to Islam sufficient reason for not getting Nobel Prizes and inventions? What follows is that the Muslims should convert to Judaism and viola', Nobel Prizes and inventions galore will come tumbling out of the sky. Or else there is something wrong with the religion. See what I mean? This is why this argument is so fallacious and the worrying thing is that this argument is usually made by quite highly educated people. Frightening, if this is what the educated masses are thinking. Stop beating yourself up for a made up argument.
Here's the latest epistle which got me moaning and whining. See how the issue is confused between religion, public policy, education, innovation and the rest? I quote some rather interesting snippets from this article:
The attitude explained above speaks volumes about love and care Muslims have for knowledge and research. Even in the 21st Century, in Pakistan millions of people have no access to education, and where schools are built they are systematically burnt down or blown out by bombs. Muslims are fast losing interest in education and benefits it could provide because they think they can become rich by other means which might not be legal. Also value of our education is constantly declining; and our ability to provide quality training and produce knowledge is shrinking. As a result of this Muslims are becoming less competitive in every field.
There are 57 Muslim Countries in the world with enormous resources, and yet there are only 500 universities in the Muslim World; and none of the universities in the entire Islamic World rank in the top 500 universities of the world. On the other hand the USA alone has 5,758 universities. In Christian countries 40% of population attend university; and in Muslim countries only 2% make to universities.
Even Pakistan's neighbour and Third World country, India has 8,407 universities; and Indian scientists, doctors and engineers are performing crucial role in advanced societies of the world. It is on strength of this, after the Mumbai carnage one USA based Indian wrote to me that India has softwere engineers, scientists and doctors to 'export', and Pakistan can only 'export drugs and terrorists'.
So problem is lack of educational and high tech training facilities, our failure to learn new knowledge; and our wrong priorities and failure to provide resources for education and research has put us where we are today. And instead of learning from our past mistakes and sorting out our priorities we Muslims, especially Muslims of South Asia like to shift blame to others by saying that it is Jewish, Hindu or American conspiracy.
A prominent Kashmiri journalist, Sardar Zia Mahmood who has kindly provided me this data, while talking to me said, 'One cause of extremism and terrorism is our inability to educate our young people and provide adequate opportunities for those who worked hard to get qualifications'. He further said, 'If we want to combat terrorism and extremism then we have to divert resources to educate and train people and promote culture of tolerance and democratic values'.
Not good, Dr. Shabir Choudhry, if you do have a doctorate or a medical degree, this kind of pap was not expected from you. Science and innovation is not driven by God or religion, but by human beings.
Thursday, December 25
Mother worse off after getting married
This is simply very stupid and also provides more evidence that the state discriminates against married couples and marriage. Time after time, we have proof that society is much better off with couples in marriage, the children are better behaved and educated, the crime levels are lower, tax takes are higher, educational levels are higher and and and. But simply because of the stupidity of the governments, it simply makes sense for you not to marry. Read and weep.
In a desperate bid to claw back the monetary help that was withdrawn when they married, mum-of-one Kayleigh Tidswell-Brown, 22, and her husband Leigh, 25, are considering separating. If they do then her council will once more pay to help to look after her baby as the young mum strives to become a teacher.
The grant used to pay for her 24-month-old son Taylor's day care and upkeep while she studied for her degree....However, she has now been told that following her wedding in August, she is no longer eligible for any funding.
Final year student Mrs Tidswell-Brown said: "We've talked through the options and the only realistic solution seems to be a divorce. We will stay together of course but if our marital status is the only reason we lost our grant then we have to seriously consider it."
She added: "Nothing financially has changed in terms of our income. It's like being discriminated against because we're married.
"Before we planned to get married we were told it wouldn't affect anything. On that knowledge we decided to get married. All of a sudden we're told it does. "It seems we can't afford to live together."
Mugabe Backers operating freely in UK
Simply do not understand this government. The fact that it lies and is hypocritical is not surprising at all. But then, for Gordon Brown to say, "enough is enough" for Zimbabwe and then not doing anything about the fact that businessmen who are supporting Mugabe are allowed to do so freely is absolutely shocking. Perhaps not, it runs in his political philosophy to say one thing and mean something else. Very economical with the truth, is our Gordon. Blowhard git. I quote:
Of 21 companies put on a US blacklist by President Bush last month, 14 are based in Britain, two in the Isle of Man, one in Jersey and one in the British Virgin Islands. The other three are based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Florida and Zimbabwe itself.
The operations of some British or British-owned companies have also caused concern. It was reported this year that Foreign Office officials were worried that the Zimbabwean subsidiary of the London-based Standard Chartered Bank was violating European Union sanctions. According to inside sources, the Foreign Office asked the Treasury to make “discreet inquiries” as to whether Standard Chartered loans to the Zimbabwean Government breached the sanctions.
Standard Chartered Zimbabwe is a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Plc of Britain. A Foreign Office official was quoted as saying: “I'm still nervous about the position of other [British-owned] banks [in Zimbabwe], and in particular Standard Chartered.”
Britain has failed to take action against individuals and companies while calling for Mr Mugabe to go. By contrast, the US Treasury last month named four financier “cronies” - Mr Bredenkamp, Muller Conrad “Billy” Rautenbach, Nalinee Joy Taveesin and Mahmood Awang Kechik - of Mr Mugabe and put them on a blacklist, freezing their US assets and banning American citizens from doing business with them.
On the US blacklist
John Bredenkamp “A close ally of Mugabe’s”, according to the US Treasury. It lists the following entities, owned or controlled by him: Alpha International (Private) Ltd; Breco (Asia Pacific) Ltd, also Breco (Eastern Europe) Ltd, (SA) Ltd, (UK) Ltd, Breco Group, Breco International, Breco Nominees Ltd, Breco Services Ltd; Corybantes Ltd; Echo Delta Holdings Ltd; Kababankola Mining Company; Masters Int Ltd; Masters Int Inc; Piedmont (UK) Ltd; Raceview Enterprises; Scottlee Holdings (Pvt) Ltd; Scottlee Resorts; Timpani Ltd; and Tremalt Ltd
Muller Conrad Rautenbach (aka Billy Rautenback) Zimbabwean businessman “with close ties to the regime”. Supported Zanu (PF) individuals during the conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo and “provided logistical support” for mining projects that “benefit a small number of corrupt senior officials”. One entity designated is owned by him — Ridgepoint Overseas Developments Ltd
Nalinee Taveesin A Thai businesswoman who has organised “a number of financial, real-estate and gem-related transactions” for Grace Mugabe and others on the US blacklist
Mahmood Awang Kechik A Malaysian urologist. Alleged to have used his clinic to hide the destination of medical equipment coming into the country. Also implicated in schemes to “generate wealth for these regime officials” and the Zimbabwe Government”
Source: US Treasury Department
Compare this with the issue around Muslim charities here in the UK. Here's another story about this issue. The point that I am making is that the British Government, (its protests notwithstanding) goes after Muslim charities because they are proscribed by the USA, but not when it has to do with Mugabe's thugs. Quite an interesting dichotomy, no? But then, I suppose Gordon Brown does not have the bottle to take despots or terrorists on. It simply whines, moans and ruins the economy in its selfish stupid desire to hang on to power. What an incompetent git.
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