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14602 ª February 8 8:05 AM. The Kansas State Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling sentencing an 18-year-old man to 17 years in prison. His crime was performing consensual fellatio on a 15-year-old boy. Had this been a heterosexual act, his sentence would have been a year and three months maximum. [MetaFilter]

I got an envelope from

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A picture named jololi.jpg

I got an envelope from Senegal in the mail today. When I opened it, it was Youssou N’dour’s new CD, “Ba Tey”. I’m listening to it now 🙂

CPunch: Loooong, conversational history of

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CPunch: Loooong, conversational history of Islam [Robot Wisdom] A realy good read… I plan to go back to it when I have more time.

My parents, too, were non–believers. So were most of their close friends. Religion played a tiny part in our Lahore household. In the second half of the last century, a large proportion of educated Muslims had embraced modernity. Old habits persisted, nonetheless: the would–be virtuous made their ablutions and sloped off to Friday prayers. Some fasted for a few days each year, usually just before the new moon marking the end of Ramadan. I doubt whether more than a quarter of the population in the cities fasted for a whole month. Cafe life continued unabated. Many claimed that they had fasted so as to take advantage of the free food doled out at the end of each fasting day by the mosques or the kitchens of the wealthy. In the countryside fewer still fasted, since outdoor work was difficult without sustenance, and especially without water when Ramadan fell during the summer months. Eid, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, was celebrated by everyone.

Testing Technology on a Veritable

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Testing Technology on a Veritable Army of Children? [Slashdot]

An example project that is being seriously discussed is to equip each child with a PDA that we will design from scratch, implement, and manufacture in quantity. (Think Neil Stephenson’s ‘Diamond Age’) The organizers/funders (to remain unnamed until the event is publicly unveiled) have every intention of ‘changing the world’…The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica. The children will congregate at these centers for two days in 2005 to participate in creative technology workshops both virtually between centers and hands-on at their particular center. There will be a heavy emphasis on community building and shared information, in many ways similar to Slashdot. The entire event and all the projects it entails are designed to live on after the kids go home when the two days are up. How this will be done is as of yet uncertain, but will most definitely involve net connectivity to some extent (whether through the village kiosk’s 28.8kbaud line in Cambodia or the living room broadband line in NYC).

Could something like this actually change the world? Imagine a dialog between a kid in a Joko club in Dakar and a suburban American kid with a fast computer & cable modem at home.

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14559 ª February 7 9:18 AM. Attempted hijack of United Airlines flight to Argentina…

A passenger was seized by cabin crew today as he attempted to enter the cockpit on an American Airlines flight from the US to Argentina today…

I don’t think this is anything al-Quaida related, but I thought it was worth the post. [MetaFilter]

This points out exactly how everyone has gone nuts since 9-11. The same kind of incidents have always happend, but before now they weren’t considered newsworthy. I really don’t believe that things are more dangerous now than they were before 9-11. All it did was wake us up to dangers that were there all along but we chose to ignore.

Falwell tells West Palm Baptists

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Falwell tells West Palm Baptists that God loves the Taliban.

“You know, God even loves the Taliban and today, if we’re going to impress God, we’ve got to get the Gospel out to everyone,” Falwell told about 800 people Wednesday at Berean Baptist Church in suburban West Palm Beach.

“If the church had been awake and performing that duty, I can tell you that we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today,” he said.

Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Falwell publicly blamed the tragedy on pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way because he said they tried to secularize America.

On Wednesday night, Falwell also encouraged parents to send their children to Liberty University, the Christian school he founded in Lynchburg, Va., to protect them from a “godless university where the professors don’t believe in the Bible.”

Proving once again that he truly is America’s Taliban