Here's a bit of modern-day heresy: President Bush actually has some rather sound instincts about the Muslim world. He has visited mosques more often than any of his predecessors, and he frequently talks of winning Muslim hearts and minds. So why are those hearts and minds so estranged today? What went wrong?
The problem is that Bush has relied on ill-informed advisers and out-of-touch experts. By substituting their false expertise for his own sensible intuitions, he has failed to understand the Muslim world -- which means he has failed to understand the arena in which the first post-9/11 presidency will be judged. Instead of seriously explaining Muslim societies that are profoundly split in complex ways, Bush's aides have offered a fatally flawed stereotype of Islam as monolithic and violent. ... In fact, we discovered three broad categories of Muslim responses to the modern world: the mystics, the modernists and the literalists.
BURAIDAH, Saudi Arabia Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther.
This is the belief I've arrived at after a long and painful spiritual journey. It's not a popular conviction -- it has attracted angry criticism, including death threats, from many sides. But it was reinforced by Sept. 11, 2001, and in the years since, I've only become more convinced that it is critical to Islam's future.
Life in the 'red zone' - International Herald Tribune
Topic: Current Events
5:30 am EDT, Jul 19, 2007
"I am Shiite," Ali said. "My uncles and cousins were murdered by Saddam's regime. I wanted desperately to get rid of him. But today, if Saddam's feet appeared in front of me, I would fall to my knees and kiss them!"
Iraqi cleric re-emerges, bolder than ever - International Herald Tribune
Topic: Current Events
5:14 am EDT, Jul 19, 2007
After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd two-tiered strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street and distances him from the increasingly unpopular government.
Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?
The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.
SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM
Topic: Miscellaneous
4:46 am EDT, Jul 19, 2007
SCI FI Channel will revive its popular original show Farscape as a Web-based series of short films on SCIFI.COM's SCI FI Pulse broadband network, part of a slate of new original online programming.
I love Farscape so to me this is cool depending on how short short is
BBC NEWS | England | Kent | Church praises Potter philosophy
Topic: Miscellaneous
7:23 pm EDT, Jul 18, 2007
Harry Potter novels and films have been praised by a church in Kent as a way of promoting Christian values.
an example of how "the church" in Engalnd is far more sane than religion US style edit personally i'm counting down the last few days to the new book which i have on pre-order
131 - US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs « strange maps
Topic: Local Information
7:19 pm EDT, Jul 18, 2007
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:
GDP = consumption investment government spending (exports – imports)
Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13,22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.
The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.
Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.
And yet, wile a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s). Here’s a run-down of the 50 states, plus DC:
This rocks. some Australian guys build a Trojan Horse full of people dressed like Greek solders, and then try to get it past security into various places in Sydney. The only place that denies them access is the Turkish Consulate.
