Sorry, still here. Do you know who Pat Condell is?

Only after a quick wiki. Seems to be another dick.

haha, you kill me man! I don't think he's a dick. Watch this if you get time.

Yeah, definitely a dick. Talking a lot of shit.

Again, he's conflating the actions of people who profess to be Muslims with the religion Islam. He's also using "the news" as evidence for Islamic violence :? News organisations have a vested interest in stirring things up and also are by default representing 'our' (western, non-muslim) perspective. Ask the people of Afghanistan and Iraq whether Muslims or Christians are more violent.

It's valid to criticise Islam (or any other religion), it's valid to criticise Islamic culture (which is separate from but related to the religion of course), it's valid to criticise state actions and it's valid to criticise the actions of individuals. It's invalid to conflate all that into one thing and pretend that one is indicative or representative of the other.

The Muslim world is as varied and as potentially violent as the Christian world. People are varied and, often, violent.

Some people who would identify as culturally or religiously Islamic or both feel, quite understandably, that their culture is under attack from and risks being subsumed by American culture. I think this is more realistic - this fear that global free market economics and the multinational corporations which represent that ideology, along with the governments which are funded by that ideology and happen to be the richest and best-armed nations in the world pose a threat to Islamic culture - than to think that immigrants from Islamic countries will collapse western democratic capitalism by wearing different clothes and building some mosques.

It's just ridiculous.

It's complex, and he's trying to pretend it's simple in order to entertain xenophobes and idiots.

I want to continue this, but I must get to bed.

 

You and I could have some nice drunk discussions on shit like this, that seems to be about the only time I get passionate about much. And most usually it's the only time where I put logic away and follow blind faith in the, "it's always been that way, and I'm sure I'm right" kind of thinking.

 

I remember having those kinds of discussions with friends when I was younger. You never change anyone's mind but it is sometimes good for the soul.

 

But I did rather enjoy listening to that guy. He does make is sound much simpler than it is. Nothing is ever simple, but I think he had a few good points. Anyway there Ice Cube, have a good one. Peace.

(hug) Sleep well.

And when you wake up, let me know what you think his good points were.

I can't. I haven't slept well in 3 nights now. My fucking back is killing me.

 

But I'm ashamed to say that I agreed with most of what he said, but prefacing that again, saying that I only know about Islam and muslims from the news. And I think we can both agree, you only see the bad stuff there.

 

I don't personally know anyone who follows that religion, and I haven't had them come threaten me. So take that for what it's worth. Not much :-/

To use Twitter as the example....

 

#hashtag

 

They're not called pound tags.

Yeah but Twitter is dumb.

Dude, if you think our keyboard is weird (which it isn't) you should check out a German or French keyboard. They have some letters in the wrong a different place!

On a related note, I only recently realised that UK Macs (or at least MacBooks) basically have a US keyboard layout but with a £ instead of a #. Apple's disrespect for our ways displeases me even more than their propensity to manufacture overpriced fashion items for sheep.

same on their full size keyboards too.

Wow, those are funky!

 

Wow, apple finally did something right! :-D

I dislike how they also have an entirely useless § key, too. I remapped mine to #.

<sigh>

I'm all for consistency, but obtusifying an established (albeit localised) standard just smacks of... well, the kind of thing Apple does, I guess, and it's not like Macs are priced such that they need to save a few pennies by using the same physical chassis across territories.

The weird keyboard thing was a driving factor in my spending more than I could have done (if I'd bought from the US) on a new laptop. Although Kobalt had clearly been taking lessons in irony when they then offered to install just about any keyboard layout on the planet anyway. I stuck with UK.

Have you remapped the right mouse button to anything? Oh, right.

But what if you need to tell omeone how much money you have in SimCity?!

:'-D

I use my Steelseries Xai :p

The fact that Apple have bothered to support right-button interactions on third-party mice is a quiet admission that they should have put one on in the first place.

Apple's own mice and trackpads have had a right-click for some years now in fact. Took them too long, but they got there.