NBA 2006 Dunk Contest

Time for some more fun ^_^

Watch the Time

I was just looking about on the train today and I noticed that perhaps 75% of people had wristwatches on*. That doesn’t sound like anything particularly special, especially given that practically everyone has a watch these days, but what it does signify is that thinking these days is very time-oriented, as opposed to event-oriented. This is not the issue of judging days – that’s calendars – or indeed judging period of day (e.g. Morning, Afternoon, that kinda thing). Having a watch on your wrist signifies that you need to know at the very least the hour of the day, and probably the minute of it. It implies that minutes – completely arbitrary units of time – matter so much that they must be kept track of all day in a very convenient system.

We’re not time poor as individuals^ or as society – we’re just measuring it in a way that makes us think we’re missing out on a lot.

(* One factor which possibly discounts is that these were, after all, public transport users, and they’d need to catch a train running to a timetable. Co-ordination of masses of people invariably needs a level of time management as well, and that’s fair enough. Of course, if you live outside Japan you should know that the timetable isn’t so much a final word, more of a general guideline :P)

(^ Of course, you may actually be time-poor due to way too much work. Sit back and look at your life again, because once you do, you might see that you’re doing some things that are getting in the way of just plain enjoying life.)

More on the cartoons

Fury over the cartoons continues, especially in Pakistan. They’ve burnt down a KFC in Peshawar, presumably because the colouring is red & white. I’m just loving the headlines like “Pakistan cartoon violence continues.” Sounds so harmless, doesn’t it?

More from the BBC – what exactly is the issue? If you can’t portray it, at least talk about it, and they do it pretty sensibly there.

Finally, what I think is a very intelligent response, however controversial – an Iranian newspaper calls for cartoons on the Holocaust. I’m not anti-Semetic by any means, but that really is a test on who the newspapers of Europe are willing to inflame. Curious to see the outcome.

Overstating Much?

Dana Vale this week claimed that, when considering the RU486 abortion pill debate, Australians are “aborting themselves out of existance”, and when you consider that Muslims have larger families it basically means Australia will be a Muslim state in 50 years. (newspaper article here) Vale thinks this in response to a Muslim priest-type person claiming that Australia will be a Muslim state in 50 years. She adds this wild claim to the fact that 100,000 abortions a year over 50 years means 5 million less “Aussies” and when weighed against the larger families of Muslims makes it a sure bet that Christian society as we know it in Australia is doomed.

Is it just me that considers this a pile of ludicrous crap?

I’m not even going to argue on the numbers that Vale claims. It’s very simple maths but it’s also very dangerously stupid, not taking into account a hundred other factors about population growth at the very least. What I want to know is why this is being anything more than a shred of credibility when compared to Pauline Hanson’s statements about 8 years ago when she claimed Australia would soon be overrun by Asians. People laughed loudly in the face of that, and this deserves exactly the same treatment.

Looking at all of this, politics is looking like a very easy career path to get into, should you have the sheer bloody-mindedness to stick to it.

Mohammed’s Molehill Mountain

There’s a confrontation brewing in Europe as Muslims protest about the depiction of Mohammed in newspaper cartoons – the BBC has details here.

What’s truly interesting is the timeline listed there on the BBC page. Go down to the “Cartoon Row” boxout, and you’ll see the original cartoon was published September 30th last year. Official protest was lodged on the 20th of October. Either way, it’s been a very long time since the original issue cropped up – so one can only assume that the reason for the sudden explosion of anger is the reprinting and some followup cartoons in other European newspapers – claimed in the name of freedom of speech.

The first thing any sane observer has to ask here is that are the European newspapers who did the reprinting merely goading the Muslims? Building up the conflict to make it newsworthy?

The second thing that must be asked of the Muslims: how about turning down the sensitivity a notch? No other religion in the world is as touchy about its image and its “integrity” as Islam is. The point must be made that Islam isn’t the only religion in the world, and it has to learn to get on with the other people in the world. Blowing up, if you’ll pardon the pun, at every little imagined slight is not the way to go if you want to show the image of acceptance and co-existence. And finally, why is the whole country of Denmark being blamed for one newspaper’s publications?

Islam is like any other religion in that it preaches peace, but the reactionary nature of its existance in the modern world is proving to be a much broader and visible message which contradicts this. Please, a little sanity if you would.