I do not agree with the Dalai Lama that all religious traditions carry basically the same message of love, compassion, and forgiveness. The truth is that there is good and evil in all religious traditions--as there is in every other human institution and every individual human being. Sweeping statements of pro-religious propaganda, even (or especially) when they are made by men as admirable as the Dalai Lama, have the effect of smothering rational discussion about the pros and cons of any and all religion.
...
Religion confers no special nobility on its believers or its leaders, and that goes for Eastern as well as Western religions. Many Americans (including secularists) have all sorts of fantasies, originally spawned in the sixties, about the superior virtue of Eastern religions. Look at the inferior position of women in many societies with a strong Buddhist influence, and tell me that this religion has done any better by the female sex than the monotheistic creeds of the West.

Whether people adhere to secular or religious traditions, the dividing line is always between the merciful and the merciless.

i agree yet revere the Dalai Lama

Susan Jacoby: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

fuck fuck fuck

Plan Would Ease Limits on Media Owners - New York Times

In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls's husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest.

"I forgot," she said later. "They stabbed me in the jaw, too."

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

i really don't understand how a nation that considers itself civilised is so trapped by the lowest common denominator, so punitive, justice isn't about revenge and retribution -- where is the element of redemption -- your policies on the death penalty and imprisonment play to the most base instincts -- you live in such a violent culture (note per capita murder rates by country) but don't blame access to guns just be increasingly punative and in the case of children who have less control over their emotions say well they develop a conscience at age 2 or 3 -- but the ability to control anger and rage comes with maturity -- especially for young men to overcome the early flush of testosterone and in the case cited in the article recommended the girl , the child, had been sexually abused, so is it a surprise she had rage? Of course what she did was truly terrible but beyond redemption? I wonder where a person's humanity is, their understanding that we are flawed creatures that can develop, if they believe such things. It seems to show little understanding of what it is to be human. Morality is founded on surplanting our darkest urges and emotions - lust, greed, anger - with restraint, tolerence, forgiveness and reason. Conscience rides the beast of our animal ancestry. So many millions of years of evolution are not so easily overcome - especially for a child - especially for a damaged child. Your criminal justice policies seem to appeal to and reflect the darkest and most animalistic instincts of the crowd.

Lifers as teenagers, now seeking second chance - International Herald Tribune

PCMAG.com
October 15, 2007
by John C. Dvorak

I mention this only because over the weekend, Uncle Dave posted a rant on my blog by longtime network admin Marc Perkel. He went off on MySQL, Linux, and much of the open-source philosophy. You can read it here. I wasn't surprised that the number of comments immediately rose to over 100. But I was a little surprised at the sheer number of comments that featured that same peculiar whining you'd hear a decade or more ago, when you said something critical about the Amiga.

Among the comments in response to Marc Perkel's rant...

Comment 18.

This is just like arguing over Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge…

the people who are interested in what is going-on under the hood - and like to tinker with the internals - probably love linux & gnu.

the people who just want the damn thing to run - and could give a shit about what is under the hood - are left with the choice of windows or mac.

One side or the other claiming superiority is pointless.

Comment by Mike Voice — 10/14/2007 @ 9:49 am

Comment 20.

Dodge?

Comment by John C Dvorak — 10/14/2007 @ 9:54 am

LOL!

What's Wrong with Open-Source Software?

Aboard the International Space Station, the three Russian computers that control the station's orientation have been happily humming away now for several weeks. And that's proof that the crisis in June that crippled the ISS and bloodied the U.S.-Russian partnership that supports it, has been solved.
...
They also decided to rig a thermal barrier out of a surplus reference book and all-purpose gray tape.

high tech and low tech

IEEE Spectrum: Space Station: Internal NASA Reports Explain Origins of June Computer Crisis

“Blaming white people,” they write, “can be a way for some black people to feel better about themselves, but it doesn’t pay the electric bills. There are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America.”

I couldn’t agree more. Racism disgusts me, and I think it should be fought with much greater ferocity than we see today. But that’s no reason to drop out of school, or take drugs, or refuse to care for one’s children, or shoot somebody.

The most important step toward ending the tragic cycles of violence and poverty among African-Americans also happens to be the heaviest lift — reconnecting black fathers to their children.

Tough, Sad and Smart - New York Times

I didn’t pay anything to download Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” last Wednesday. When the checkout page on the band’s Web site allowed me to type in whatever price I wanted, I put 0.00, the lowest I could go. My economist friends say this makes me a rational being.

Radiohead’s Warm Glow - New York Times

Balloting for Parliament will be held across Russia in December, and this much is already clear: Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, who was first elected in the turbulent yet hopeful days after the Soviet Union’s fall and then blossomed into a fervent advocate for democracy, will lose.

the tale of the boiling frog episode xxiv

With Tight Grip on Ballot, Putin Is Forcing Foes Out - New York Times

Thanks to the Internet, universal access to the printed word and economic globalization, the 21st century is expected to be shaped by the free exchange of ideas. But casting a shadow over this optimistic prediction is the emerging threat of "libel tourism."
...
Until this case came along, American authors and publishers thought that unless their books were actually published in Britain, they would not be subject to its rather draconian libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the plaintiff as American laws do, and greatly restrict what information writers can present as evidence in their defense. Now it appears that wealthy and powerful people who object to a book can simply find a country with sympathetic laws, have a book shipped there and sue.

Bin Mahfouz has a history of challenging those who have accused him of links to terrorism. He has sued or threatened to sue a series of publications and has instituted legal action in the cases of at least four different books. He has won many of these cases by default or through settlements, because authors often cannot marshal the resources to defend themselves. Ehrenfeld herself lost by default, and is relying on the hope that bin Mahfouz's judgment will not be enforced in the United States.

The 'libel tourism' threat - International Herald Tribune

In a thin notebook discovered along with a man’s partly mummified corpse this summer was a detailed account of his last days, recording his hunger pangs, his drop in weight and, above all, his dream of eating a rice ball, a snack sold for about $1 in convenience stores across the country.

“3 a.m. This human being hasn’t eaten in 10 days but is still alive,” he wrote. “I want to eat rice. I want to eat a rice ball.”

These were not the last words of a hiker lost in the wilderness, but those of a 52-year-old urban welfare recipient whose benefits had been cut off. And his case was not the first here.

One man has died in each of the last three years in this city in western Japan, apparently of starvation, after his welfare application was refused or his benefits cut off.

the dark side of prosperity and free market economics

Death Reveals Harsh Side of a ‘Model’ in Japan - New York Times