Babri mosque ruling: everyone wins (and everyone loses).

October 4, 2010

Perhaps unsurprisingly the Allahabad High Court struck a compromise between Hindu and Muslim interests last Thursday, ruling that the site be divided between all three parties: beside Muslims and “Hindus” are the Nirmohi Akhara sect, devotees of the Hindu god Hanuman. Text of the judges’ rulings can be read here (thanks to DavidP for this), [...]

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Babri mosque update

September 28, 2010

It has been confirmed that the verdict will be handed down on the 30th of September, as I previously speculated the dating of the texting ban extension indicated. ‘Indian court to rule on Ayodhya mosque row on Thursday‘, Reuters.com (28/9/10)

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Queensland University of Technology lawyer back at work after Bible and Qur’an burning

September 24, 2010

Presumably in honour of ‘Burn a Koran Day’ on the 11th of September QUT employee Alex Stewart, who works in the university’s legal services department, posted a video to YouTube (since removed) that featured him rolling ‘joints’ with pages from the Qur’an, then the Bible. Stewart started to suspect things may have gotten out of [...]

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No bulk texting in India until Babri mosque verdict

September 23, 2010

The Indian government has banned bulk texting for three days until the publication by the High Court as to whether the Babri mosque is on Muslim or Hindu land. The poor Jains don’t even get a look-in. Built in the 16th century on land that Hindus believe to be the birthplace of Rama, antipathy about [...]

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Divine Play – Press X for wisdom

September 19, 2010

Over at the ever-intriguing webcomic The Secret Knots, Juan Santapau has posted ‘Walkthrough‘, his latest effort – click through for greater vistas: ‘He gained enlightenment while sitting an indefinite amount of time playing a single video game …’ – that’s the line I find difficult to shake. Could gaming ever lead to enlightenment? More importantly, [...]

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Yom Kippurrr and repairing the virtual world

September 19, 2010

In honour of the Pope’s highly successful tour of England (a.k.a the Roman Invasion) and in the spirit of complete bias in reporting, I’ve decided to play advocatus diaboli to Andrew’s advocatus Dei. It’s amazing what you find by being literal with Google: who would have thought that there was a Jewish iPhone Community website: [...]

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Offlining for Yom Kippur

September 18, 2010

Jewish ad execs Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum have created a campaign for people to disconnect from social media for Yom Kippur. The pair have a co-opted an old series of posters for Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread to create a number of cautionary tales involving celebrities. via ‘Try the OffLining Pledge for Yom Kippur?‘, Read [...]

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App Store guidelines state religious criticism not welcome

September 11, 2010

Apple’s App Store have, to the initial relief of developers, finally released guidelines for app development. Previously devs were left in the dark as to what was and wasn’t kosher, and were often given no idea as to why apps were rejected for hosting in the App Store. They aren’t supposed to be publicly available, [...]

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Good morning, LaserMonks! Greetings and peace!

September 10, 2010

Now that I have your attention: it’s been almost a year but I can now finally call myself a contributor. I’ll eventually have something current to say but I thought I’d first clear some backlog – it’s just too hard to pass up an opportunity to write those two words  in the same sentence. Monks [...]

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Austrian anti-mosque game taken down

September 8, 2010

Austrian nationalists the Freedom Party recently hosted flash game Moschee Ba Ba (Bye Bye, Mosque) on their website. It has since been taken down, but the site still shows the basis of the game: a stylised skyline of Styria province. Apparently minarets (some complete with muezzins) would periodically bob up for the player to shoot [...]

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