Israel and Fundamentalism

You’re probably thinking this post is going to be about fundamentalist Islam and its opposition to Israel.

It’s not.

It’s about fundamentalist Christianity and its support of Israel.

Save Israel, for Jesus?

In the article it mentions a guy who has written several books about the second coming of Christ, put in particular this one titled Jerusalem Countdown.

Hagee explored this from a political standpoint in his interpretation of scripture, “Jerusalem Countdown,” which has sold more than 600,000 copies. The book’s geopolitics are very precise, beginning with an alliance between Russia and the Islamic world.

“Russia is going to get in that position and they are literally, with all that massive military force, going to attack Israel,” Hagee said. “This is recorded in Ezekiel 38 and 39. God himself is literally going to destroy that army. Decimate it.”

And he said that will be followed by a Chinese army of 200 million coming to the city of Armageddon where they will meet British and U.S. forces in the Battle of Armageddon.

This sort of specificity worries me, not because I believe it and immediately start ‘warning’ my friends about this new truth I’ve read, far from it. It’s akin to saying, “Jesus is coming back at midnight, New Year’s Eve 2006! I know it, because my calculations prove it, and we’re going into 2007, seven being a holy number! Everything is aligned!”

The Iranian Blog-error

It was with much media hype that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added Persian Blogger to his résumé back in August.

One tip for blogging I’ve heard is that you should post regularly. Don’t let your readers forget about you by leaving your blog abandoned for weeks on end.

But this is exactly what Mahmoud has done – he has committed blogging suicide by not following up with any more posts. Something tells me he’s none too concerned about that, but we shall see if he re-enters the blogging fray.

Oh, man! It’s been so long since I posted! Sorry everyone, things have been so busy – the EU on my back about nuclear power, apocalypse-talk at the UN, catching up with Chavez.

Ha, speaking of Hugo, I’ve got a great Bush joke for you…

The usual.

internets

Apart from the US senator who is afraid of the internet, the following references to online activity don’t make sense to me. And yes, I’ve seen and/or heard them.

1. internets – how many was that?
2. interweb – I guess it makes as much sense as intraweb, but I don’t like it. Having said that, it reminds me of:
3. WWW page – it’s just a webpage now, brother.

Equally, when someone is giving a web address, things can get weird:

them: Alright, you ready? It’s H-T-T-P-colon-forward slash… are you okay?

me: What? Oh, yes, I’m just weeping for humanity. Please, continue.

All of that gibberish, and the idea for this post, came while writing my assignment for Mass Media in MS-Word. Microsoft says the correct spelling is capital “I”, Internet, as does the World Book Dictionary. To me, that’s on a par with the above-mentioned instances of unfamiliarity. What say you, dear reader?

technorati tags:noun, internet-language, language, internet

Thanks

Two people helped me out today.

Recharge n Copy gave me a free ink cartridge refill for my Lexmark X1170 – just because the last cartridge they refilled (for a price I was already happy with) was scratched and had been printing poorly. The new cartridge is the bee’s knees. Great customer service, thanks. By the way, there’s nothing on their home page, but they’re at Everton Park in Brisbane, if you’re looking for a good deal.

Express Powermac got my 1Gb memory delivered to my front door, two days after ordering it online. Fast and easy, and also helpful on the phone when trying to decide between delivery or pickup. Sweet, 1.25 Gb RAM – DDR SDRAM, that is (like I know the difference).

Thanks guys, for making my day easier. This has been a sales pitch by Dave.

Universal Music to make music universal?

Oh, what a witty, witty post title!

First reported in this Financial Times article, Universal Music (of U2, PJ Harvey, Queens of the Stone Age, Kanye West etc etc) is backing a small company that will offer free music downloads. The story has now grown (and i can’t verify the accuracy or lack thereof) to being reported as Universal Music planning to offer their entire catalogue of music for free download, funded through advertising. There are different reports about the level of annoyance that will likely be experienced by users, since heavy advertising will be required to fund it.

The logic behind the decision is that while iTunes and other stores have improved the ratio of illegal to legal downloads and purchases, there are still 40 illegal downloads for every legal one.

Downside? Probably only initially available in the US and UK. There are also reports the download format will be Microsoft’s WMA, so not compatible with iPods. I don’t like that iTunes song purchases are only compatible with iPods, I neither like the idea that these free downloads won’t be compatible with iPods. Why can’t everyone just get along and use the MP3 format??

Other links:
ilounge
Telegraph – and just because British headlines are an art form, ” Universal plays download variation in concert with eager new player”
New York Times

Snakes Alive

There’s a new movie out, the ad for which alone makes me cringe at the level to which we can stoop in entertainment. It looks like one of the most inane movies ever made and goes by the wonderfully unimaginitive title Snakes on a Plane.

It’s lots of snakes. They’re all on the plane. They’re loose! Could it be so bad it’s good, a la Eight Legged Freaks?

Possibly, since it already had built up a cult following before anyone had even seen the film. Check out the website and send someone a voice message from Samuel L. Jackson.

Okay, Eight Legged Freaks kind of sucked.

Cinq

It’s Ekka Holiday tomorrow in Brisbane, otherwise known as the Royal Exhibition. Kate and I are off to the coast right now to see my new niece. My sister-in-law had baby number five on Sunday, Gemma.

I’m coming back tomorrow for our must-win rescheduled soccer game. With only three games left in the season we may not make the finals. Shock!

To keep you all occupied until such time as we meet again, here is a little online game that was sent to me after the World Cup final. I put together a big long post about Zidane’s sending off for a headbutt, but never bothered finishing it. This link was down for a while because of huge traffic, but it’s up again now.

You’re Zidane, see how many Materazzi’s you can headbutt before being shown the red card.

Play here.

Iranian Revolution

Everyone loves to blog, including Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! In one of the most information-repressive countries in the world, Iran’s president has entered the online media battlefield. Will he win hearts and minds? Probably not, but it’s يادداشت هاي شخصي احمدي نژاد Ahmadinejad Online .

Let me know in comments whether or not the Arabic text in that link shows correctly on your browser – it’s the only reason I left it in there. If it does, and you can read it, let me know what it says as well.

Less is More

Bren mentioned that he didn’t read my posts when I used the read more links.

I asked why not, and considered focusing on the post intro to make people think, “Actually, yes I do want to read more!”

I was going to conduct a poll asking what other people thought of the use of read more links, but then realised 50% of the vote was already in.

I didn’t think my wife really read the comments, but she told me last night she agreed with Bren – she never reads more.

This shocking revelation has led to the immediate canning of the read more feature.

HELP

Back from holiday. Just quickly throwing these things out there because I need some help

1. Skype – I’m trying to configure Skype to record straight into Garageband (or other similar/better audio recording software for the purpose of online voice interviews. I’ve seen some stuff but am yet to get it to work. Specifically, I can’t find a step-by-step guide I saw a few months ago that dealt with Skype to Garageband specifically.
2. Does anyone know how to make an iPod function as a storage device that will work in both Macs and Windows-based computers? I thought I had enabled it on my mac, but when I went and tried to use it on PCs at university it wasn’t recognised, and asked if I wanted to format my external storage device in FAT32 format or something. I didn’t because I didn’t know whether or not that would end up being a bad thing for the iPod as a whole, and didn’t want to lose the files I HAD transferred onto it.
3. Quick links. Because I hardly have time to read these, but I really want to, maybe after putting these links here I can shut all the tabs and unclutter my desktop. These are all the websites I have open in tabs at the moment, with plans to read in full. Some are read and awaiting posting here, but this will have to do.
   • Skype on a USB drive
   • Portable Firefox 1.0.7 (USB Drive-Friendly)
   • Advanced Podcast studio setup with Skype and Audio Hijack Pro (not quite doing what I want yet, although getting close!
   • The True Face of War – I hesitated putting this one in, but I was reading it, more for the shock value of the line
     

     American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.

     It’s really bad. I would recommend you DON’T follow any of the links to pictures if you go to read the thread.

   • PR Newswire.com – now has RSS feeds.
   • Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?
   • Suppression of dissent – this one was just reading up on stuff for a story.
   • Podcasting from Mac OS X – A Recipe – I actually haven’t read all through this one – it could be a winner.

Alright, there’s a big storm rumbling through, and I’ve been trying to rush this post so I can unplug everything. Take care, see you soon. Oh yes, and help with 1. and 2. above would be appreciated.

I’ve just spent…who knows how much time…cleaning my keyboard. Yes, that’s right, I took off every key on the keyboard, cleaned them to remove any of those sweat&dirt-smudge buildups, and put them back on.

Slightly obsessive compuslive, I realise, but I noticed some ‘dust’ under the keys and what I noticed was fairly significant. Once I had finished popping off the keys and chasing them across the floor, the piles of hair, dead skin cells, bits of food and unidentified objects was quite impressive, I really should have taken a picture of it.

The fun part is when I tell you that this is a second hand keyboard from the newspaper where I did work experience in Jan/Feb, where it spent an unknown number of years collecting lunch scraps, hairs and trace elements of all the nasty things people touch… and not just any nasty people, but journalists… I shudder at the thought. haha, no offence Charlesworth! :)

Today I went and sat in the courts to get my journalism story that I have to write by next Monday. Great action! Not really, but the drug-addled defendant had an amusing ramble about ‘thanks for letting me off lightly’ while the judge was trying to explain his probation and community service order to him.

Actually, I’ve noticed in my court visits the judges are quite sympathetic to offenders when sentencing them, commenting that the harshest sentence would likely do more harm than good… kudos to you Judges who are looking for the best in people.

I’m actually going to write something related to media as well!! go figure.

I love The Australian’s ‘Editor’ section on the weekend, which covers editorial pieces from all over the globe and editorial cartoons (from Israel, Canada, Jordan and France last week). Although I don’t think they put any of this stuff specifically up on their website, so no direct link for you.

Another good part of the site is a whole raft of links for those interested in international news. Some of the links don’t work (like Kuwait Times) but it doesn’t take too much to figure it out. My link there is the ‘fixed’ one.

Anyway, enough of that, there was actually some stuff written in last week’s Editor that I was interested in talking about some-some. I’ll put that in a new post.

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