And now for something inflammatory

Well, you can't be inflammatory if no one's reading. So what the heck?

Another tidbit that caught my eye is from Barry Gewen in the NYT's Week in Review, giving a quick rundown on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji. Both women are "two of the most prominent and outspoken critics of what they and others see as “mainstream Islam.”" (copied that straight from the article). They're both copping threats and other sorts of crap for standing up and calling shenanigans; one as an atheist and one as a practicing Muslim.

I am nowhere near anything resembling familiar and involved with the multilayered issues that are no doubt at play. But come on, folks: just 'cos someone is arguing with you and, goodness me, thinks you're wrong, doesn't mean you go around threatening to whack them! Be nice, listen to what they say, make your point and if neither of you convinces the other in the end, have a cup of tea after a stimulating discussion. By all means, go hang out with people who agree with you, and certainly revel in feeling right about your point of view together. But you don't go putting together a posse so that the person you were arguing with needs round-the-clock protection.

That's just bullying. So: good on these women (and everyone else who stands up and says "Hang on a second, let's think a little bit differently about something") for hanging tough.

And this reminds me of a third thing that got my attention today from the IHT by Andrea Elliott. Long (6 page) story short: great idea for a school in NYC where Arab or Arab descended kids go with kids from other ethnicities, learn all the normal school stuff plus become fluent in Arabic, and on graduation are ready to apply for elite colleges (borrowing heavily from the first paragraph). But then the nutters (all around the table, from what I can make of it - not just the right wing paranoics or the lefty bleeding hearts) got hold of it, and the whole thing fell down into a stupid mess of ideologically motivated screwing around with and cherry picked soundbites, all carried along by reactive fear. Think maybe if everyone, instead of running around calling each other names, had sat down, said "You know, I'm scared of x because of y. Can you put my mind at ease here?"

Now the place has been open since September, and apparently is an absolutely useless environment for kids to learn anything - it sounds more like an understaffed juvenile detention centre.

Bloody people. Novel ideas are a little too scary, aren't they? I guess education looks like indoctrination, if people you're scared of are doing it.

Dudes around the world: Chill out, wouldja? Notice that the people who aren't scrapping all the time normally are in a little better shape - more teeth, less bruising?

Counting backwards

A while back, a certain very good professor friend put me on this blog. I had a read and promptly chucked into my Google Reader feed list, and every now again I thrilled to tales of HLS, the Brownie, the Eclaire, BB, Blaze and the humble author himself.

Ordinarily, the tales are entertainingly perceptive. Today, waiting for a bus in the biting Sydney winter cold, the story nearly moved me to tears. I'm not going to tell you the story; I wouldn't do it justice.

He's taken a profoundly personal story, and shared it completely freely. I have no idea how long it took to write, perhaps a couple of days. But it reads like it was just meant to be - so smoothly that about a third of the way through I realised I was cruising through the prose and had to stop, go back to the start and really read it.

It's not often something in the thousand or so items that dribble through my newsriver makes me do that.

Thank you, Magazine Man.

To the three people left who look at this...

September 14, 2007 marks my last post. More than seven months have passed, and now I wonder if I can recapture some of the fun I experienced tossing bits and bobs into the WWW.

And I would have been writing for four, but we have farewelled probably my most loyal reader. Fair winds.

Well, here goes. I came across a couple of things today that caught my attention.