August 2010 Archives

Las Vacas - Beef It Up

No.23, Jalan SS 5A/11, Kelana Jaya

47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor

Tel: 03 78740711 Fax: 03 78740655

Najib said his administration must adopt a "zero-tolerance" policy towards racism and will take immediate action against those found to have made racial slurs.

"Perkasa is hurting us, our chances in gaining non-Malay votes. For Umno, BN to win, we cannot afford to be associated with these people. They are alienating us from a large segment of voters," he said.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Government will pay the RM500 in special payment to civil servants on Wednesday, the Public Service Department (PSD) said.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 27 -- Talk has surfaced in Umno and government circles that Datuk Seri Najib Razak is favouring early polls, as early as the first half of 2011, although the Barisan Nasional's (BN) mandate is until 2013.

The Umno president has bounced the idea with ruling party politicians and believes that it is best to get a new mandate when the economy is still growing at a fast clip. Malaysia posted 10.1 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2010, followed by a slightly slower 8.9 per cent in the second quarter of the current year.

PETALING JAYA: Wanita PKR has endorsed its list of "preferred" nominees to contest top positions at the party's upcoming national elections.

Top on the list is PKR election director Fuziah Salleh, nominated to contest one of the four national vice-presidents' posts.

"Unchecked escalation of the rhetoric of race and religion would have the effect of giving a major push to a greater brain drain from the country instead of pulling back talents from the Malaysian diaspora to return to serve the country," he said.

"With all due respect to Nurul Izzah and the great work she's done, she is not up-to-date with the latest information regarding the submarines. They have recently successfully completed their sea trials and are sea-worthy to perform their duties. The Admiral of the Navy will be releasing a statement shortly to confirm this fact."

"In the future, i hope Nurul Izzah will be more diligent in her research, and speak to the defence experts on the matter of defence before releasing such statements to the public. Thank you."

But the PAP chauvinistic legacy was taken up by the DAP. And the slogan "Malaysian Malaysia" continued to figure in Malaysian politics, evolving into a new catchword, "Meritocracy". If "Malaysian Malaysia" conjures equality between races, "Meritocracy" implies something stronger. It implies dominance by the race with the greatest merit in every field; in education, in business and in all fields of human endeavour. 

Gandhi was the saint who, through his principles of ahimsa (non-violence), brought independence to India in 1947. At least, that's what you've probably heard. But the Indian independence movement was a strong force well before Gandhi entered the scene. The nation's freedom would have happened within a few years of 1947 even if Gandhi had spent his life meditating in a cave. He was a figurehead for the cause, while various other leaders were doing most of the work (and if you say "I've never heard of anyone else," I won't be remotely surprised).

Since August 14, thousands of Beijing-bound trucks have jammed the expressway again, and traffic has stretched for more than 100 kilometers between Beijing and Huai'an in Heibei Province, and Jining in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China National Radio (CNR) reported Sunday.

[Michael] Chong said last year, a foreign beggar had sought his help to recover RM30,000 allegedly owed to him by his "boss" for months of "work".

He said such earnings were shared between the beggars and their syndicates, so the public should refrain from giving any money at all.

"The best method to tackle this problem is by refusing to give beggars money, leaving them with no choice but to return to their own country to earn an honest living," he said.

In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth, as if it were possible to revive it. Its legs were swollen from standing in water, and its chest and torso were covered with deep cuts and scrapes, sheets of raw flesh where branches rushing past must have hit it.

The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end. This was their wealth, but when it died they would tip it into the water and let it float away to the south. Through the past few days they had seen it all, houses collapsed, trees uprooted, grain spoiled, and this was just one more blow.

You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad -- that's one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times -- three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix's streaming service.

You've spent the day on the Internet -- but not on the Web. And you are not alone.

"I don't know what the big deal is," Cassandra said. "It's freedom of religion, you know?"

Chris said she lost eight friends on Sept. 11, 2001 -- firefighters from the Brooklyn firehouse next to her home at the time. "The people who did it are not going to the mosque," she said.

[L]et's be clear, the subject of the highest profile Muslim structure, 51 Park in New York City, will have a basketball court and a culinary school. Two floors will have a prayer room. The other eleven will host movie nights, performances, group dinners, etc -- it's basically a Muslim YMCA, open to everyone. These moderate Muslims are doing everything we could ask of them. They're trying to build a bridge in the communities they live in, trying to show the world that Muslims are cool and interesting and diverse, and proving that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.

What Perkasa's actions boil down to in Shah Alam is this. It's saying that because it's Ramadan and because Shah Alam is a Muslim-majority suburb, no other faith group is allowed to practise freedom of religion, expression or association. If they do, they can be cited for sedition, insulting the Malay ruler, and the crime of proselytising to Muslims.

[...]what the party (PAS) is saying is that the lifestyle of all non-Muslims must be subservient to those of some Muslims.

[...]It doesn't matter if nothing in Islam actually prohibits non-Muslims from staging a Christian play during Ramadan, drinking alcohol, eating pork and watching a pig character in the movies.

[...]At the rate Muslim "sensitivities" are paraded about, one would think Muslims lived their lives like exposed nipples, ever excitable. When the truth is, we know that Muslims are thinking, rational human beings who belonged to one of the most historically advanced civilisations.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 20 -- This Ramadan, many Christians are fasting without churches making it compulsory. The National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF) is organising a 40-day fast and prayer which started on August 8, with many of NECF's 2,800 member churches participating.

• Mayor Bloomberg is a Jew, yet he champions the rights of Muslims and a mosque.
• Park51 is a stone's throw away from where Muslims killed thousands of Americans. Yet, every single regulatory body in NYC (presided over by New Yorkers, mind you), have approved the project. 
• Islam-phobia has never been higher in America, yet the President of the United States weighed in on the issue on the side of Muslims (well, he did later clarify that he was on the "side" of the American Constitution, and not Muslims per se)

• If you want to build a church or a temple, its got to be in a place where the Muslim community is a hugely significant minority. Forget about it if you want to build a synagogue.
• A local church wants to hold a Christian play in a public auditorium during Ramadhan. Nope, you can't do that either because it hurts our sensitivities. 
• You can't publish the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia. Can't have you trying to convert people to Christianity. The reverse, of course, isn't true.

On Aug 13, The Star, quoting Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, reported that the Cabinet had decided to classify baby dumping that led to the death of babies as a crime that warranted the death sentence.

She said this was needed to nail those responsible for the deaths.

"The Cabinet has decided that the Home Ministry, through the police, investigates these cases as murder when a baby dies. The police would be asked to conduct DNA tests to identify the parents of dead babies," she said in a statement.

Although the erratic behaviour of mothers during pregnancy - and occasionally even bizarre behaviour after childbirth - has been observed throughout human history, this syndrome was not clearly understood until advanced endocrinological studies identified the existence and impact of hormones like estrogen, progesterone and testosterone on human behaviour.

It is now well documented that post-partum psychosis has complex causes and does not spring from incipient criminal tendencies.

Far from punishing maternal victims of this disease they are more deserving of rehabilitation.

Says Stephen Moyer -- who plays Bill Compton, the undead Southern Civil War Veteran -- "If we go from a base level, vampires create a hole in the neck where there wasn't one before. It's a de-virginization -- breaking the hymen, creating blood and then drinking the virginal blood. And there's something sharp, the fang, which is probing and penetrating and moving into it. So that's pretty sexy. I think that makes vampires attractive." He laughs a little. "Plus, Robert Pattinson is just hot, right?"

But at Gettysburg, just south of the town and west of the Emmitsburg Road near the tree-line from which 12-15,000 Confederate soldiers emerged on the third day of battle to attack the United States army on Cemetery Ridge, stands a tall marble and bronze statue of General Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. It's not the only Confederate monument on the actual battlefield, but it's certainly the most striking and the most famous. At the peak of the obelisk is Lee mounted atop his horse, Traveler, staring out at the battlefield. Just below him are heroic bronze representations of random Virginia Confederates.

This general committed treason against the United States. By definition, he was a traitor who commanded a rebel army against the U.S. and inflicted unprecedented casualties. Specifically, General Lee's invasion of the north and advance into Gettysburg was responsible for the aforementioned 23,040 United States military casualties, and, of those 23,040 casualties, 3,155 were killed on that ground.

Yet there's a statue at Gettysburg honoring the fiercest enemy of the United States at that time. Had Lee been victorious, the United States as we know it today would not exist. But he gets a statue on Pennsylvania soil -- a statue which, by the way, stands at the exact same height as the statue to U.S. General George Gordon Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac (and a Pennsylvanian).

If there is laziness in the English game it is that some of the best players are not as interested in the intricacies of football, of how a match unfolds, as they should be and so are easily outwitted, as they were against Germany in Bloemfontein. They care mightily about winning, and will run all day for the cause, but are weak on learning and cannot recognise that success and contemplation are linked. 

It would be the first step toward creating machines that are more powerful than the human brain. These supercomputers could be networked into a cloud computing architecture to amplify their processing capabilities. Meanwhile, algorithms that power them could get more intelligent. Together these could create the ultimate machine that can help us handle the challenges of the future, says Kurzweil.

Legend has it that she was found one day running on the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a pail of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she replied, "I want to put out the fires of Hell and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God."

NICOSIA -- Gather 29 devout Jews, Muslims, Christians and radical secularists from 15 countries in the divided capital of a war-wounded island, in the heat of summer, miles in any direction from the nearest sea coast, and what do you get?

The answer, hard though it may be to believe, is something like a happy family. 

[...]

"There are only two rules," Mr. Seligman explained to the fellows at the first session, in an air-conditioned lecture hall at the University of Nicosia. "You have to attend every event, and you have to behave as if your group does not have a monopoly on suffering."

And for years he [Mayor Bloomberg] has, with a mix of care and impatience, been encouraging New Yorkers, including the families of 9/11 victims, to emotionally move beyond the tragedy of nine years ago.

"We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights -- and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked."

Steve Jobs at his brilliant best. Disarming a roomful of journalists who, like sharks surrounding a wounded beast, thought that the iPhone "antennagate" was their best chance to get Jobs to cry "uncle".

Boy, were they wrong.

Seems that the troubles in New York are happening all over America too.

Many Americans do not trust Islam, and think of the religion in very negative ways. They aren't ignorant Americans either -- they are able to quote the Quran and point out (selectively and almost always taken out of context) specific verses that apparently promote violence.

Its interesting to note that some of Islam's staunchest allies in America are the interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members. Does it take a person of faith to understand another person of faith?

Its a particularly dicey situation in America where civil and personal liberties guarantee freedom of religion (and the right of those in opposition to freely oppose Islam). We're lucky here in Malaysia, we have a Government that love us and protect us from all this absurdity.

I'm not saying any of this is a good thing, btw. Its just an observation.

9/11 - a couple of Muslims fly a few big-assed planes into the NYC World Trade Center. It blows up. A few thousand Americans are killed.

Since 2003, Americans have killed civilians in Afghanistan as it futilely chases the ghost that is the Taliban (dejavu Vietnam?). Collateral damage, says the USA. It happens.

People kill people. Whether you're the terrorist or the hero, the only difference is which side of the bullet you're on.

Perhaps there is no altruistic greater good. Its just war.

This is way cool. A virgins-only dating site!

But you just gotta wonder, how do you test someone's virginity online?

Seems like just another website for a sexual predator to find his prey; you put all the innocent bambis into the same barrel and hand it over to the slurping wolf. He doesn't even need to leave his keyboard.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of Masjid Al-Farah of New York, and a proponent of positive ties between the West and Islam, wants to open a new mosque in New York.

New York is a big place, with 30 mosques currently serving the Muslim community there. The learned imam is hoping to open mosque #31 next to Ground Zero.

The exact spot where a few Muslims murdered thousands of Americans. Not just on the exact spot, but on the marking of the attack's 10th anniversary.

How would the Muslim community react if a Serbian Orthodox church opened its doors near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 10,000 Muslims were slaughtered?

Exactly.

If God ever takes some time off to doodle, He would do it shaping Earth's glaciers. The results, looking at them as images from space, are breathtaking.