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Tuesday August 29, 2006

Superstition

Anglosphere

Reading Ugandan newspapers can be quite funny. A letter published in this morning's edition argued against legalisation of prostitution and focused on the "would you want your daughter to be a whore" argument. Fair enough, that's probably not what anyone wants. On the other hand this is a country with 70% unemployment, so some people will be drawn to work on the streets regardless of morality and public opinion. Legalised prostitution as we know it in the Netherlands might actually be beneficial. It would generate tax income, enable workers to get health care, unions, and so on.. Anyway, that's not what interested me about the letter.

No, it was the argument that sexual intercourse is often used by satanists and witchdoctors to transfer demons and demonic thoughts. Sitting next to one of the many "Jesus Christ is the lord" churches, it's hard to ignore that religion is a major player in Uganda, but I had not expected such superstition even though there are plenty of nutters back home who want to ban rock festivals because of the unsavoury lyrics.

I'm kind of glad I packed my Satanic "God is busy, can I help you" shirt for religioun has a tendency to make me a rebel.

(No, not one for Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, who are ignoring the cease-fire a little bit according to the papers. Think of a Resist the Lord Army instead, using rock music and t-shirt catchphrases instead of torture and rape.)

Avoid eLife products

Software

Quick warning: do not purchase products made by eLife, such as the K8 multimedia keyboard. First of all, these products simply do not work out of the box under Linux:

Aug 29 12:35:08 jadzia kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.1-1, assigned address 6
Aug 29 12:35:08 jadzia kernel: usb.c: USB device not accepting new address=6 (error=-110)

Secondly, they don't work under Windows either. The single keyboard that did work only did so for half of its keys.. pretty useless.

But the real shocker is customer support: the web site advertised on the packaging, www.elife4me.com, is "under construction". Google's cache shows a register-spam page ("universal life etna love quote best term insurance death co.") because the domain has expired. And the manual mentions Windows 98 which confirms my feeling that eLife is bankrupt, for good reasons, and Africa is only finding out right now (as am I).

European Christian Constitution

European Union

Europe started as the EEC, so having an ECC as next step wouldn't be too bad: Angela Merkel wants a Christian constitution for Europe:

Mrs Merkel will take charge of efforts to revive the constitution when Germany assumes the EU's rotating presidency next January. Any attempt to mention Christianity - or simply God - in the text will be met by stiff resistance from secular France, from Britain, which treads carefully in this area, and from northern Protestant countries such as Sweden and Denmark. During the tortuous negotiations on the constitution in 2004 there were concerns that any religious reference could upset Europe's Muslims and Jews.

But Mrs Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, is determined to reopen the debate when she tries to revive the constitution, a controversial move in itself because many EU leaders want a slimmed down document after last year's no votes.

Neil says she wants a new constitution, but this doesn't sound like it at all. Words like "revive" make me uncomfortable. Either way, any new or revived constitution would need to address the many problems I had with the previous constitutional attempt. Furthermore, as much as I prefer Christian traditions over Muslim ones, the constitution should make very clear that freedom of religion only works when said religions acknowledge being merely one viewpoint and not the absolute truth. Otherwise, leave God out of the constitution.

And a small note to potentially offended Jews and Muslims: if our Christian, pagan and enlightened traditions are a problem, stay in Israel or Arabia. Or move there. Europe is European, okay?

Next day: Thursday August 31, 2006 Previous day: Monday August 28, 2006

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