Want to have a front row seat for the start of a new religion? In a thousand years, do you want them to be writing your name in the histories?
Well tonight is your chance. I’m holding the first ever church service for LOTU. As befitting a 21st century religion, the meeting will be held in Second Life at TPN’s virtual HQ. Starting 9pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time.
… proof!
I just heard about this poll today via @bronwen. I’m not going to tell you how to vote or anything cheesy like that. I want to comment on the list itself. I don’t think any of the people on the list, except maybe Marty Wells from Tangler and Duncan Riley, who was probably running the Blog Herald back then, would have had any kind of public profile 5 years ago. Who were the OzWebCelebs five years ago and where are they now? Frank Arrigo should have garnered more votes and I’m sure if he’d blogged about it he would have. I just think it’s cool that there are a whole bunch of new people on the scene in Australia, most of whom I consider mates. I know most of the people on that list and I consider them a terrific bunch of people. They are people I love to talk to and hang out with. They inspire me, challenge me, and keep me on my toes. Most importantly, they are people who have chosen to make a difference. They are stepping up, putting their ideas and energy on the line, trying to create something, build something. I respect each and every one of them.
Join Techcrunch’s Duncan Riley, Norg’s Bronwen Clune, World Communities’ Laurel Papworth and TPN’s Cameron Reilly for a round up of the apps and services that rocked our world in 2007. (link)
This post “I Don’t Respect Your Religion” by Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks is right on the money.
Here’s an excerpt:
Read the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. They are all full of violent, bloody fantasies that teach you over and over to kill your enemies. Christians love to think they are the exception to this rule. They’ll say the Old Testament doesn’t really apply anymore because the New Testament overruled all the gory, masochistic violence of the earlier book. So, then I guess Genesis isn’t true either since that’s in the Old Testament? Oops.
Then, you’ll get the excuse that Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Yeah, I know, that’s why in Matthew 10:34 he says, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Sounds down right Christian of him.
But even if you can make up pathetic excuses for this obvious blood-lust and call to violence, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end Jesus murders almost all of us anyway. Jesus doesn’t just kill the “liars” and the “sexually immoral” and the eight other categories of people who get thrown in “fiery lake of burning sulfur.” He kills all of the “unbelieving” folks as well. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you get the lake of fire! What a swell guy.
Personally, though, I’m not convinced that Bhutto’s assassination had anything to do with religious fundamentalism. It seems to me to be a clean hit. I am amazed, though, at this video of her interview with Sir David Frost in early November, where, around the 6 minute mark, she clearly says that Osama Bin Laden was murdered, names his murderer, and Frost doesn’t even ask her to clarify the statement. She mentions it almost in passing. But then, according to Wikipedia, a week later, when she was placed under house arrest, she asked one of the policeman “Shouldn’t you be looking for Osama bin Laden?”
I’ve also been reading about the list of corruption charges again her and her husband on Wikipedia. Were they trumped up? Why did Musharraf drop the charges upon her recent return to the country? I would love to get some decent analysis of the situation.
Al-qaida has supposedly claimed responsibility for the assassination but it still isn’t clear to me WHO is behind Al-qaida. We know for a fact that the Afghani mujahideen were armed, trained and funded by the USA in the 80s. Hell, evenRambo liked them. It isn’t clear to me if or when the USA actually stopped funding them. And if it isn’t the USA, then what is the involvement of the USA’s ally, Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban?
The only thing I know is that when I read simplistic descriptions of her assassination thrown about in the media with the propaganda words “terrorism” and “al-qaida” I am drawn into looking deeper. Superficial explanations don’t seem to do her or her legacy justice.
UPDATE 31 December, 2007: There are now reports that the BBC edited out Bhutto’s comments about Bin Laden’s murder. What I don’t understand though is where the original video, the one where Bhutto names the murderer, comes from if the BBC edited it out before broadcast?
Over the last few months I’ve been wrestling with the notion that there should be some kind of framework for geeks to do something positive in their local community. Something that isn’t tied to any particular religious, political or social agenda. Something that plays on the strengths of geeks and doesn’t require a full-time commitment but also involves more than just writing a cheque or a blog.
After a chat with Father Bob Maguire (from TPN’s Father Bob Show and the guy who has been the inspiration for much of my thinking in this area), his co-host Michaela and Michael Leone from Gnoos a month or so ago, I realized that perhaps we should pull together a group of people together and workshop ideas on what we could do, together, to make a difference in our local communities. I don’t have the answers. Hell, I don’t even know most of the right questions to ask. But I do feel that I could be, should be, doing more. I just need to work out what kinds of things I, we, can do. And I think it might be easier if we were to try to accomplish it in a group.
So, with that in mind, I’m kicking off “Geeks Who Care” with a meeting at Bob’s place (Cnr Dorcas and Montague Sts, South Melbourne) on January 27th. I’m hoping we’ll get a small group of like-minded individuals to come together to workshop ideas. From there we can put together a framework, steps forward (kind of like how we started MODM early last year). I’m sure most of you will have more of an idea about what we should be doing that I do. I’m an idiot. I’ve already had a few great ideas given to me and I’m sure between now and Jan 27 I’ll get a lot more. There is a Facebook event set up for the meetup. Get to it here (link) and the main domain, GeeksWhoCare.com, currently re-directs to a Facebook group for general discussion. For those of you itching to tell me how much you hate Facebook – save it, I’m not interested.
Perhaps, if this one works out, we can set up similar groups around the country, around the world even… hell, let’s put one on Mars. Those poor little green guys needs our help too. Martians are humans too you know.
