Magic Statistics

A textbook example of blind religious fanaticism.  A Christian businessman in India who accidentally damaged a mud idol on his own premises was beaten by a mob and arrested.  Incredible.

On 22nd August 07 at around 9 pm Bro. Justin , a Christian business man was attacked by neighbours and RSS/BJP activists and was taken to the nearby #1 Town police station in Medak, Andhra Pradesh.

He had bought a shop for lease to establish his business in Medak. When he was cleaning and setting the place, he inadvertently tripped and fallen on a mud idol installed in front of the shop and a part of it was broken. On seeing this all the neighbours gathered along with the RSS/BJP radicals around him and beaten him badly.  They accused him of converting people and of destroying the idol and insulting the Hindu religion.

The man dented a Hindu idol and is accused of converting people?  Yah, that makes perfect sense.

He was taken to a police station where, at last report, he had been held in custody for two days.  Brother Justin needs prayer for justice and the people in the mob need prayer for sanity.

(Note: Typographical errors have been corrected in the blockquote.)

Previous related posts:

• Indian Christians carry a heavy cross
• Victims of religious persecution gather in Bangalore, India
• Nationalist Hindus want Christian missionaries arrested

Yahoo and Microsoft-owned MSN are co-operating with new efforts to restrain online speech in China.  The two internet multinationals have agreed to sign the Chinese government’s "Public Pledge of Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry", a "self-regulation" agreement that calls for storing information on users and deleting "illegal or bad messages".

[Yahoo and MSN] have to conform to strict Chinese laws controlling freedom of speech, which include employing their own “monitors” to carry out government censorship orders and committing to remove any web pages that are considered politically sensitive.

In addition, along with domestic firms they have now both had to sign up to a new government code on blogging, which both companies admitted in statements without giving further details.

Information obtained on users must be stored in case the authorities should seek to obtain it - as they did with Shi Tao, a journalist jailed for ten years two years ago for sending information to a human rights group by email after his details were passed on to police by Yahoo.

Only ten days ago, a Chinese court jailed dissident writer Chen Shuqing for four years on charges of subversion for his online postings.  It is supremely—and tragically—ironic that the source of that last tidbit is Yahoo News.

Previous related posts:

• Yahoo sued for assisting Chinese oppression
• The Great Firewall of China
• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft facilitate Chinese censorship and repression

This seduction technique wouldn’t go over too well today.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine that it ever worked.

I love the smell of carcinogens in the morning!

Based on the hairstyles, I’d date this ad to the early 70s or very late 60s.  If a guy tried that today, the lady could sue for exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.

I wonder what Alice the Camel thinks of that ad.

h/t: Vintage Photographs

The UN report World Population Ageing 2007 says that the increasing age of populations now evident around the world is unique in human history.

Population ageing is unprecedented, a process without parallel in the history of humanity. A population ages when increases in the proportion of older persons (that is, those aged 60 years or over) are accompanied by reductions in the proportion of children (persons under age 15) and then by declines in the proportions of persons in the working ages (15 to 59). At the world level, the number of older persons is expected to exceed the number of children for the first time in 2047.

The report also says that population aging is pervasive—occurring in virtually every country in the world—enduring, and irreversible.

Because fertility levels are unlikely to rise again to the high levels common in the past, population ageing is irreversible and the young populations that were common until recently are likely to become rare over the course of the twenty-first century.

This will have major impacts on social welfare programmes, especially for the elderly, as the number of potential workers per retiree shrinks from the present 9 to 4 by mid-century.

Previous related posts:

• More seniors, fewer children in Canada
• Europe soon to run short of able-bodied workers?
• Eastern Europe threatened by aging, shrinking populations

The collect for today, the 12th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, thou art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than we desire, or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, Our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:4-9
The Gospel: St Mark 7:31-37