This story really amazes me. The Afghan government is seriously discussing the execution of a man for the crime of accepting Christ as his savior. I’m amazed at the bravery of the man to declare his faith proudly and openly knowing it might be his death sentence. I’m enraged by the idea that a government that depends on our goodwill would consider this at all.

I really don’t know if Islam as a faith is fundamentally broken. However, this situation sure makes it look like there are some deep problems with the idea of Islam living in peace alongside other faiths.

Eugene Volokh made at great point in his recent post on this issue. The key point is here:

The striking thing about the Abdul Rahman prosecution — in which an Afghanistan court is considering whether to execute Rahman because he converted from Islam to Christianity — is how Establishment the prosecution is. The case is before an official Afghani court. The death sentence is, to my knowlege, authorized by official Afghani law. The New York Times reports that the prosecutor, an Afghan government official, “called Mr. Rahman ‘a microbe’ who ’should be killed.’” The case is in a country which is close to the West, and is presumably under at least some special influence from Western principles (whether as a matter of conviction or of governmental self-interest).
We’re not talking about some rogue terrorist group, or even the government of Iran, which is deliberately and strongly oppositional to the West. We’re talking about a country that we’re trying to set up as something of a model of democracy and liberty for the Islamic world. And yet the legal system is apparently seriously considering executing someone for nothing more than changing his religion.

This is telling evidence, it seems to me, that there is something very wrong in Islam today, and not just in some lunatic terrorist fringe. Doubtless many, I would hope most, Muslims would not endorse executing converts. But a strand of the religion, and a strand that is not far from the levers of political power in at least some countries, does seem to endorse such a position. This is deeply dangerous, most obviously to residents of countries in which radical Islamism has broad support, but also to residents of Western countries as well.

We cannot afford to ignore this issue as we go about rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. This is antithetical to the very foundations of our republic.

Having been great fans of Blizzard fare like Starcraft and Warcraft, David and I were waiting for a first-person shooter based on the Starcraft universe called Starcraft: Ghost. It has been delayed a couple of times after being announced almost four years ago.

This latest story seems to confirm our worst fears. They claim they are waiting once again to evaluate the new consoles. I suspect it is more likely that this game will never see the light of day. A great idea that got reworked to death.

Bummer.

No, you haven’t misread that headline. No, I’m not going to try to claim that chess is a sport (we can have that argument later).

I’m talking about Mike D’Auria. One of many legitimate athletes from my alma mater.

I have to admit that I’m still amazed anyone could put that much time into a sport and still do well in classes there. I was up to my ears in it and had a hard time just keeping up Star Trek. Way to go, Mike!

So Microsoft announces the next version of Windows to ship in 2005. That wasn’t going to happen, so they scale back the feature set and aim for 2006. Well, true to form, that’s not going to happen either. Vista is going to be delayed.

This means that they’ll miss another holiday season. It also means that the next version of Mac OS X will ship before they do. OS X 10.5 (codename Leopard) is due near the end of 2006. I suspect Apple won’t miss that date.

Just one more reason to move to the more cultured platform.

What’s the point of having the ability to post on the Internet if you can’t issue a shameless plug once in a while?

Last year, my dad finished a novella and had it published. It’s a great adventure story with a Biblical foundation and powerful message. I encourage you to buy a copy or borrow mine. Clicking the image will take you to Amazon:

Enjoy!

If you need any more evidence that our society is lawsuit happy, then look no further than this story. It’s about a man driving a city truck who hit his own car in his own driveway and then proceeded to sue the city for the damage. Since the judge found it silly that he was effectively suing himself, the man dropped the suit and his wife filed a new one!

This is the ultimate reach for deep pockets of a faceless institution. Really unbelievable.

There’s nothing more frustrating to me as a consumer of news than when an outlet purporting to be delivering hard news injects opinion into the story. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of this to find, but this one jumped out at me today.

This article from Reuters discusses a new offensive launched against terrorists in Iraq. There is hard data here like the number of aircraft and troops involved. That’s fine. But the writer has to leave with this little comment near the end:

Security crackdowns were also carried out near Samarra, the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shi’ite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war.

Now, the unaware would be worried about a possible civil war. Those in the know would dismiss this line as misleading. The bombing attack referred to was executed by foreign terrorists for the express purpose of trying to start a civil war. And, in fact, the so-called “reprisals” were very few and only carried out by fringe elements. The large majority of folks in that area have encouraged peace and calm because they recognize that a third party is trying to incite conflict.

So, give credit to the Iraqi people for recognizing what’s going on and not be suckered. Furthermore, shake your head in bewilderment at how the press continues to write what they hope and not what’s happening.

David has been eagerly awaiting his next game system. He has restrained himself from demanding an Xbox 360 with the hope of a PlayStation 3 coming this year. That’s now looking a little less like a sure thing.

Sony Delays PlayStation 3 Launch

They say they’ll still be out by November of this year, but they aren’t clear whether that’s true for the US. Japan is always their first market, but they may attempt a global rollout at the same time. Missing Christmas would be a pretty big deal so I’m sure they’re aiming for November here, too.

The good news in this article was this bit referring to the use of Blu-ray DVD technology:

So with the new PlayStation 3, consumers would get not only the latest game console, but also the latest DVD technology, for a price that Sony has said will not exceed $500.

There has been much speculation as to the final price of the Sony unit. If they can actually keep to this range, they’ll be in good shape. This will also keep alive the chance that David might actually see one in the next two years.

MAME is a very cool project that’s been going on for some years. It allows those who have ROM images of upright arcade games to play those games on their computer under Windows, MacOS, and LINUX. I’ve toyed with it on and off with my Mac over the years. This is a fairly geeky project all by itself, but it gets better.

A separate group of folks are porting LINUX to run on an iPod. (Because what everyone really wants is an open source operating system on their MP3 player.)

Now, take a couple of geeks who are fans of both and you get iPodMAME. Here’s the original arcade Pac-Man running on an iPod Nano:

And for those who want the whole experience, someone is even working on a miniature arcade cabinet.

I love it!

He was one of my favorites when I was growing up and always seemed like a class act. This story just makes him all the more loveable to me.

truehoop.com pointed to some research on political donations of famous sports stars. Clyde Drexler is listed as donating $2000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004.

Way to go, Clyde.