Categories
politics

Freedom Institute

I recently noticed that some comments I made about the war on terror, patriot act and Arafat found their way onto the website of the Irish Freedom Institute. This is an Irish non-profit think-tank founded in 2003 to propose policies which are “pro-freedom, pro-enterprise, less government and strengthened security”. I must admit that I originally thought this organisation would be proposing whacky (i.e. naieve) ideas with a strongly left-leaning idealogy for the resolution of world problems. It’s nothing of the sort. IMHO the FI has many extremely sound and innovative policies with insightful analysis and a predisposition to solve rather than blame. An example is their recent posting about the evolution towards democratic governance in Iraq. A thoughtful and illuminating read rather than the kind of oh-so-trendy and irritating US-bashing polemic that many sections of the media have been feeding us for the past few months. It’s easy to criticise the nature of the political and military analysis that led to the war in Iraq while forgetting that the establishment of a democratic government in place of a despotic dictatorship is a worthy aim. The key issue is oil and the proposed FI solution is to hand over the oil industry to the people of IRAQ through a public share structure is novel and may indeed address the previous issues of having the countries major source of wealth entirely under state control. A few words of caution however.

  1. the US’ unfeasible timetable for democratisation was probably due to worries about the unpopularity of a long stay in Iraq with the vast majority of the Iraqis and the US population, regardless of how either group feels about democracy or the war on terror. This kind of misrepresentation is just a fact of life in democratic systems based on political parties. Politicians lie to protect themselves!
  2. Giving every citizen an inalienable stake in the Iraqis oil industry is as difficult as establishing democratic governance after years of the oppresive Ba’th-ist regime. The difficult is in finding a management and shareholder structure that both the international community and the Iraqis people will respect to facilitate effective operation in a country still riddled with corruption. Oil prices are rising and the US will be under a lot of pressure to stabilise Iraqis production while not appearing to be jeopardising the democratic process through self-interest. No mean feat
Categories
humour

Intelligent design

It’s fascinating to read about the kansas school board’s decision to include greater criticim of the theory of evolution in its school science standards. This has given rise to some harsh criticism from the scientific community and some extremely humorous parodies of Intelligent Design including the compelling theory of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM). FSM is the theory that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created us in HIS infinite wisdom and can alter all scientific experiments and measurements to make it appear that he doesn’t exist using “his noodly appendage”. Like all good religions it’s got a great merchandising department with t-shirts, mugs etc.
What’s really interesting here is that Intelligent Design is being dismissed as “religion” when it probably should correctly be embraced as another valid scientific movement concerned with understanding the deeper questions of origin science. The manner of its inclusion in any school curriculum should be limited as it requires greater scientific study but it’s unfair to say that criticism of evolution shouldn’t be allowed. However, just to upset things further it’s entirely possible that evolution and intelligent design are complimentary theories where evolution is a set of processes initiated by a focussed organism for some as yet unknown purpose. . It’s just a theory, like FSM-ism 🙂
Many of ID’s proponents are religious but it does seem reasonable to explore the possibility of intelligent direction in the creation or evolution of life on this or any other planet. It seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The political tensions in the US between conservatives and moderates, republican and democrat are creating an environment where it is near impossible to engage in a rational and objective discussion of any deeper moral or philisophical issue without being pigeon-holed as right-wing religious zealot or a leftie atheist.

Categories
humour

Eircom daylight robbery

The cost for calling eircom.net technical support is….
1.75 euro/minute. How long can this nefarious organisation be permitted to rob the citizens of Ireland with exorbitant rates? ComReg, our wallets are in your hands…

Categories
technology

Bluetooth tools for XDA-2

I love my XDA-2. Decided not to sell it as the offers weren’t that high and I had lots of programmes for it. However, one thing that did bother me about it was the shortcomings of it’s bluetooth implementation. Well I managed to sort some of these out by installing 2 very useful pieces of software.

Pocket Bluetooth tools is an incredibly useful piece of s/w that enables XDA-II users to effectively use their PDA/phones with the many bluetooth carkits on the market. It supports the Bluetooth headset 1.1 & handsfree 1.0 profiles. It also supports static serial ports (for GPS receivers) and automatic power management which turns bluetooth on or off depending on use. Thank you Tobias.