What craziness is this?

It seems that an English teacher working in the Sudan was threatened with 40 lashes and a year's imprisonment for stirring up religious hatred.

What was her crime?

She had taken a vote among her mostly muslim 6-7 year old pupils on what to call a teddy bear. They ignored her suggestion and voted 20 to 3 to name it Mohammad, after one of the boys in the class.

Two months later a secretary in the school complains to the Education Ministry, and the teacher is arrested, and local Islamic clergy are baying for her blood. Before you know it, she is charged (Wednesday), and tried, convicted and sentenced (Thursday). She got 15 days, not one year and a flogging - but it's still absolutely daft!

I wrote it up for wikinews over here.

To be fair, the Muslim Council of Britain has roundly condemned this insanity:

This case should have required only simple common sense to resolve. It is unfortunate that the Sudanese authorities were found wanting in this most basic of qualities.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission was among Muslim groups to call for her immediate release, and some Sudanese bloggers are not impressed.

Picture by angelathesloth.
Not the real Muhammad.
I don't need a fatwah right now!

A tree has been planted on your behalf

OK, maybe a couple of trees:



Innocent, the nice smoothie people, are planting trees to help rural communities in India and Africa (see how here). There are even virtual images of two of them: one tree, and another tree.

If I keep drinking the smoothies, there may be more.

All your database are belong to, err.... no idea really!

Banking details of all families with kids in the UK, and details of their kids, have gone missing. Lost in the post, apparently. This is exactly why the government cannot be trusted with the enormous interlinked collection of data on its citizens that their ID Card scheme would require.

Mistakes happen in any system, especially if security is not considered at the outset. The bigger the collection of data, the more of a prize it makes for wrongdoers, and the more likely it is that someone, somewhere, will make just such an error. A national ID card scheme, bound as it is to grow and grow, as new and more cunning uses are invented for the data, and more and more people need to access it, is a disaster waiting to happen.

And best of all, it's completely unnecessary. Nobody has explained exactly how it solves any of the excuses being offered for its sorry existence - can't stop illegal immigration unless the police get the powers to make us show our papers on demand, can't prevent employment of illegal immigrants by unscrupulous employers who pay slave wages, can't stop terrorism (Seriously, how could it? The London tube bombers all had valid ID, for goodness sake).

At least it will make a few IT suppliers (who definitely won't have ties to government, right?) very rich indeed.

On a lighter note, it seems the missing CDs have turned up on ebay:

"Cash on collection ONLY please from Portsmouth PO8, since we wouldn't want these to get lost in the post!"

Romance, sarcasm, maths, and language

If you liked Douglas Hofstadter's books, you'll enjoy this!

I just found a rather unusual web cartoon site - check it out at xkcd.com. They even use a creative commons licence, so you can copy their stuff for personal use.

But they warn you: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).


Hello Maithrie!

If you were wondering why clear plastic bags make toothpaste safer...

Anyone who is puzzled by the peculiar EU rules on bringing "liquids" onto planes (you can, as long as they are in a resealable clear plastic bag, and they are in containers less than 100ml) will be pleased that sanity is dawning - in the European Parliament of all places.

They have asked the European Commission to repeal the ban, unless new facts emerge. They also, quite sensibly, ask for information about exactly what you can bring (the real rules, not the cartoons that every airport interprets differently), and the reasons why, to be given to passengers.

Of course the Commission have a record of ignoring the Parliament, so don't hold your breath waiting for the sanity to spread.

Credit to Bruce Schneier's October Crypto-Gram for spotting this.

Art 2 get

Last week I saw something new - door to door art salesmen. Young women actually, but never mind. They seem to roam the world, selling paintings. Some interesting pictures too.

I think it's these people!

(photo by numstead, creative commons licence)

Elephants at Pinnawela elephant orphanage

What I did on my holidays

Some pictures from Sri Lanka...









There are a few more stuck on my phone... I did say they might have to wait a bit :-/

Hello from Sri Lanka

I'm in Sri Lanka, where it's warmer than at home, and sometimes even wetter. It's not as cheap as it used to be - from a local perspective, things are getting very expensive. But I've got a local SIM for my mobile phone, and call and text charges are better than O2 roaming. Veeeeeerrry much better!

No insightful posts about the state of the country today - it's getting late. And pictures will have to wait till the right connections can get sorted out. But I'm having a good time in Kandy.

And Happy Birthday to my sister, if she's reading this. Your card is in the email, since there seems to be another postal strike back home.

Conspiracy? Or cock-up?

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but when I got round to reading the Times this weekend, I discovered that Gordon Brown is taking an axe to the Ministerial code of conduct that he had said needed to be strengthened.

The sleaze and scandal under previous administrations resulted in a strengthening of the rules in 1997. Ministers were required to obey "the letter and the spirit" of these rules - and one of them was that they were not allowed to be directors of companies while they were government ministers.

The new rule allows ministers to dispose of the interest, or take "alternative steps". So they get to keep the jobs if they can convince themselves and their senior advisers that it's OK. The prospect of conflicts of interest is all too clear.

What is not quite so clear is why Gordon Brown thinks this rule should go. Maybe it was an accidental cut in his rush to simplify the rules - but it's unfortunate that when it was proposed, one of his junior ministers was still on a number of boards of directors.

Fortunately somebody in parliament has noticed, and the Committee for Standards in Public Life is taking a look at the new code of conduct.

The saints go marching out?

The Catholic Church has asked its members to stop giving money to Amnesty International, and the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor has advised that school links with Amnesty should be severed. It's because Amnesty International now supports abortion for rape victims in war zones.

It's fair enough to stop funding organisations that campaign for things you disagree with - indeed, it's a reasonable way to express your opposition. I've done it in the past.

But should all links be cut? In general, is it a good idea to withdraw from organisations we don't agree fully with? Is it even possible?

And what about people who want to remain in such organisations, and express their opposition on the inside? Is it reasonable to ask members of a church to leave an organisation, like AI, that also does a lot of good?

I think the Bishop is confused about the kind of organisation Amnesty International is. The catholic church is (at least in theory) a take-it-or-leave-it-all organisation that exists partly to teach its members what to believe and what to do. "You don't get to pick and choose," as a catholic friend of mine once said.

Amnesty, on the other hand, is not in the business of telling its members what to think. So far as I know, they don't excommunicate their people for differing from the party line. You are allowed to disagree.

So if people want to join in the Amnesty's work against oppression while still holding the Catholic church's absolutist position on abortion, they can. They can even try to overturn Amnesty's policy from within. Amnesty won't excommunicate them, and the Catholic Church shouldn't stigmatise them either.

As Christians, we're supposed to be in the world, but not of the world. We're supposed not just to be different, but also to make a difference.

Anyway, where would such complete withdrawal end? From politics? From employment? From education? From genetic research? From the arts? And how would we pick the supremely important issues that prompt withdrawal? Abortion? Slavery? The death penalty? Social justice? Failure to care for others as we care for ourselves? Failure to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?

Arrrr!

Arrrr! Today be talk like a pirate day! Shiver me timbers!

#*$*% Residents' Association

Bah Humbug! The residents' association has been wittering for ages about getting ramps built on the roads where I live. I thought that idiocy had gone away - but no such luck. There is now a dirty great ramp just down the road.

So now we're going to suffer the inconvenience and wear and tear of driving over ramps, with the increased traffic noise as cars slow down before and speed up afterwards, and the resulting increase in pollution.

It's not as though there were even a problem with speeding, or kids having to play in the street.

It looks like I'm going to have to keep an eye on these witless do-gooders! Who knows what they'll come up with next? Parking permits?

Greenbelt 2007

I wasn't quite prepared for the sun - in fact with the delay in arrival of my luggage I wasn't prepared for very much. But I'm surviving just fine.
More about greenbelt later - have to rush to the next event!