Archive for February 2006
Sharp Profs ?
The failed academic blacklist from last year still exercises people’s mind and two articles came to my attention:
1) Engage have highlighted Sue Blackwell’s rather shoddy methods before and associations. We tend to demand slightly higher standards from academics and with just cause in this case.
2) Prof. Geoffrey Alderman’s “The gesture politics of an Israel boycott” brought up an issue from 2001, the treatment of Egyptian scholars:
“For example, last year, the Egyptian government put 28 scholars on trial for “impugning Egypt’s international reputation.” Many were imprisoned, some with hard labour. Why didn’t the AUT or NATFHE demand a boycott of Egyptian universities? Why did Professors Hilary and Steven Rose, who have taken a leading part in the Israel boycott movement, not demand a cessation of all academic links with Egypt?”
Books II
After ten minutes of data entry I can give my ill informed views of both librarything and www.bibliophil.org
Librarything has been reviewed before here and here and here. It seems that many issues from the early reviews have been ironed out
I had high hopes for www.bibliophil.org, as I am a fan of cooperative software but some of the basic design seems lacking and it seems way too American-centric.
Pros: Free
Cons: Difficult to enter non-US based ISBNs, not possible to manually enter books. Design of indexing needs reworking.
Pros: Ease of data entry, possible to manually enter non-ISBN books. Community of books lovers and browsing of other people’s book catalogues. Free up to 200 books
Con: Costs over 200 books, export should allow for non-CSVs formats. Search of ISBN catalogue should be automated according to user profile.
I shall be looking at Online Library 1.0 from www.creatisoft.com
Book Lovers of the World Unite!
The idea of catalogue all of my books appealed to me, in a strange way
Two sites seem to offer that ability:
Google directory lists a wide range of alternatives
Still to decide which is better tho.
Modern day France
Adloyada highlights kidnappings in France with potentially anti-semitic overtones, and very worrying is the lack of coverage in the main stream media.
Blunders from On High
It is easy to blame US Presidents and deservely so, but what to blame them for? That’s harder, so a group of American scholars have made it easier!
“
The list, from most egregious to least egregious:
1. James Buchanan (1857-1861), for failing to keep the Union together before the Civil War.
2. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869), for failed post-Civil War reconstruction policies.
3. Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969), for letting the Vietnam War escalate.
4. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), for refusing to compromise on the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
5. Richard Nixon (1969-1974), for his involvement in a Watergate cover-up.
6. James Madison (1809-1817), for getting the United States into the War of 1812 with Britain.
7. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), for the Embargo Act of 1807, a self-imposed prohibition on trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.
8. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), for the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
9. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), for the Iran-Contra Affair, an effort to sell arms to Iran and use the money to finance an armed anti-communist group in Nicaragua.
10. Bill Clinton (1993-2001), for his involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.”
Oh Those Placards?
The controversy over placards which were offensive and incited violence some weeks ago in London are now followed up by demonstrations in Pakistan, reported in the German media.
Zen, and the Art of Trade Unions
After generations of earnest middle-class trendies sought enlightenment in Buddhism, so now Buddhist monks are seeking solace in trade union, according to a report in the Times:
“AN AGGRIEVED monk and his band of truculent acolytes have brought Bolshevism to Buddhism and formed the first Japanese trade union for temple workers.
…
Toshio Sugata, the chairman of the Nagano Zenroren, said: “This is the first time that monks have been unionised. We learnt that they were employed by Daikanjin, the main temple of the Tendai sect, under labour regulations in which their payment and working hours were formally laid out. In that sense, monks have the same employment status as salarymen.”
The monk’s flying pickets must be a spectacle to behold!
Gone Forever
I tend to read more blogs than I comment on, and BannedByElf was one of my favourites. “Maven” covered a lot of ground from an interesting perspective.
Sadly, he is hanging up the blog for a while:
I hope he considers joining the team at SimplyJews, should the Elders have any vacancies? As someone needs to keep an eye on these wacked out “anti-Zionists” and he’s proven his wit and worth in this area, many times over.
Modern Protocols
This piece from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee caught my eye:
“As suspected, and claimed on this blog over the weekend, the inflammatory anti-Muslim cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were a deliberate provocation designed to outrage and incite Muslims and thus engender support in Europe and America for the manufactured “clash of civilizations” engineered by the Straussian neocons.
As Christopher Bollyn writes for the American Free Press, the neocon operative behind the cartoon scheme is Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who has “has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons.” Rose “traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares ‘militant Islam’ with fascism and communism,” Bollyn reveals.”
The tone of article reminded me of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Cunning eh? If we were to believe this nonsense, then the Danes are merely pawns of some wider conspiracy of Zionists [codeword for: Jews], Straussian neocons, Freemasons and who knows what else?
No matter the event, this paranoid style of politics invariability sees the hand of the ‘Elders’ behind it, and we know where that leads to ?
Tit for Tat
Iranian government’s ‘tit for tat’ over the Danish cartoons, with the ‘theme’ of the Holocaust, only seeks to confirm many people’s attitudes about the current regime in Tehran.
The work by Michael Leunig is very tasteless
Godly Darwinism?
Charles Darwin would probably enjoy the celebration of his 197th birthday, as reported:
“NEW YORK, NY, United States (UPI) — Nearly 450 Christian churches in the United States are celebrating the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin Sunday.The churches say Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science, the Chicago Tribune reported.”
Googled Privacy
Following on from Google’s kowtowing to China, there are concerns over the Google’s Desktop.
The EFF is recommending that people avoid using it, see Google Copies Your Hard Drive – Government Smiles in Anticipation
Sites for Sore Eyes
With all of the fuss about Danish bacon, etc I’ve been reading more blogs and a few caught my eye:
I like Engage and their recent article on Sue Blackwell brings up some interesting points.
A new blog, bannedbyelf, is monitoring the goings-on amongst the ‘Anti-Zionists’.
AEL’s Motives?
People often question why would the AEL try to escalate the tempo over the Danish cartoons?
The AEL’s thinking, in publishing anti-Semitic cartoons as ‘provocation’, is all too transparent.
AEL probably think that “Jews” control the mass media, including Danish and German newspapers. So, in their minds, retaliation should be aimed back at the “Jews”.
This line of thinking is all too common to those believing in “protocols”, as wikipedia shows:
“Saudi Arabian schoolbooks contain explicit summaries of the Protocols as factual:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: These are secret resolutions, most probably of the aforementioned Basel congress. They were discovered in the nineteenth century. The Jews tried to deny them, but there was ample evidence proving their authenticity and that they were issued by the elders of Zion. The Protocols can be summarized in the following points:
- Upsetting the foundations of the world’s present society and its systems, in order to enable Zionism to have a monopoly of world government.
- Eliminating nationalities and religions, especially the Christian nations.
- Striving to increase corruption among the present regimes in Europe, as Zionism believes in their corruption and [eventual] collapse.
- Controlling the media of publication, propaganda and the press, using gold for stirring up disturbances, seducing people by means of lust and spreading wantonness.”
Cranks and others that accept the “Protocols” will invariably blame Jews for most of the world’s ill, so we should not be entirely surprised by the turn of events.
Cartoon Escalation?
Leaving aside the issue of freedom of speech and the right to insult people, the fuss over the cartoons is escalating unnecessarily.
The Arab European league is now proposing to publish anti-Semitic cartoons.
ModernityBlog 