Looks like Vista may be more designed for Hollywood than you. Comments about graphics card drivers are a little out of date, but overall an excellent article about what happens when companies decide that money is better made by serving themselves rather than serving customers.

Labels: computers, economics

"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?" Falk wrote in the piece. "I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy."

I'm not sure that I would describe gas chambers as subjecting "an entire human community to life-endangering conditions", nor would I describe cutting off fuel delivery that way. The gentleman both exaggerates and plays down, depending on who's doing the subjecting. A parallel example might be comparing a mafia type of body disposal of a rival black gang leader with cement shoes to Foot Locker closing the only shoe store in a minority neighborhood. It's all the same, right? Both are engaging in methodical deprevation of adaquate access to a minimum standard of footware.

Labels: jewish, social justice

A coworker reports catching her child praying to Santa Claus. While I commend the kid for original thinking, it's a pretty grim scenario theologically. Unless, of course, you make the argument that it's some sort of saintly intercession thing. Though Santa Claus isn't a saint.

Labels: religion

Small business grouping, Confesercenti, says the mafia has a combined turnover of some 130bn euro (£106bn) a year - 6% of the country's GDP.

It says the credit crunch has forced about 180,000 hard-up businessmen to turn to ruthless mafia money-lenders.

Mafia bosses are also investing in well-known Italian companies, it says.

The 35 years since Roe v. Wade have left millions of men and women with the psychological scars of having aborted their children. This is an additional terrible price to pay for the violence done by abortion. It is also a factor in the public discourse. Millions of people have been co-opted in by the abortion lobby in the most chilling way. By becoming accomplices to abortion they are now caught in a dilemma. If they recognize that abortion stops a human heart, then they are forced to reconcile themselves with the terrible act to which they have been party. Of course, the painful repentance this entails is the first step toward reconciliation. But it is a difficult step, and many people prefer the anesthesia offered by their awkward arguments in favor of abortion to a painful awakening to what abortion has done in their lives.

Labels: prolife

Liturgically speaking, of course.

Labels: catholic, liturgical calendar