Who said this? “The Church in its own bubble has become, at best the guardian of the value system of the nation’s grandparents, and at worst a den of religious anoraks defined by defensiveness, esoteric logic and discrimination.” No, it wasn’t Richard Dawkins or indeed any other spokesman for atheism. It was the Bishop of […]
Filed under: Spirituality | Tagged: Christianity | 5 Comments »
Today is Document Freedom Day. It’s not the easiest subject to explain. It’s easy to explain why being free to video a police encounter in the USA is important, or why it’s wrong for your eBook to be remotely controlled by a vendor, but many people fail to understand the subtlety of why a document […]
Filed under: LibreOffice, Links, ODF, Standards, Zeitgeist | 6 Comments »
Kiva are giving away $25 to anyone who asks today. It’s true. The catch? You have to loan the money to someone who has far, far less money than you do and who will use it to bootstrap their business. Like everything, Kiva has a deeper story, but I am an enthusiastic supporter as I […]
Filed under: Zeitgeist | Tagged: Charity | Comments Off on ☆ Free Money!
As a child, my parents used to regularly take me point-to-point racing. I wasn’t very interested in the horses, but there were often trees to climb and always a picnic and friends in droves. My parents used to “have a flutter” on the races but of course I never gambled – too young. We had […]
Filed under: Zeitgeist | Tagged: Horse, Personal, Sport | Comments Off on ☆ A Day At The Races
This post is a bit unusual for me – apologies if it offends you – but I found my mind wandering after I re-read this letter that the Archbishop Of Canterbury sent in reply to a letter from a six-year-old asking “To God, How did you get invented?” I do recommend reading it. There are so many […]
Filed under: Spirituality | Tagged: Reductionism | Comments Off on ☆ Leaving Room For Mystery
Each time I am told I should unreservedly respect decisions made by authorities in secret, I remember this song by Chris Wood. I always cry when I play it. [youtube http://youtu.be/tI2YdHt_V7s] In case you don’t recognise the story, it’s about Jean Charles de Menezes and his killing by British police whose certainty he was an Islamic […]
Filed under: ACTA, Music, Zeitgeist | Tagged: Brazil, Video | Comments Off on ☆ Hollow Point
My attention was drawn to a new direction that fantasy author Terry Pratchett is taking. His Discworld series has been a huge success among a wide circle of people who find the Tolkien-informed, politically-aware stories clothed in a rambling fantasy universe compellingly funny. He’s now working on a collaboration with serious sci-fi author Stephen Baxter. The […]
Filed under: Books | Comments Off on ☆ Pratchett Does Sci-Fi
A historical post, for a change. A comment on a mailing list tonight – that something was “rather like blaming Windows for getting viruses” – sent me exploring my recollections of CPU security on Intel chips from my days at IBM. I went scurrying to find a half-remembered explanation from the past of why, in […]
Filed under: History, Security | Tagged: DOS, Exploit, Malware, Windows | 9 Comments »
Dubbed “the world’s most popular new tax”, this proposal has gathered an amazing breadth of support globally, including world political and business leaders. Indeed, France and Germany are both committed to implement it during 2012 (although we need to scrutinise their commitments carefully looking for loopholes). It sounds like one of the things that should […]
Filed under: Zeitgeist | Tagged: Tax | Comments Off on ☆ A Tax Whose Time Has Come
LibreOffice Xmas, originally uploaded by elianedomingos. A very happy Christmas to everyone who reads Wild Webmink. May you find software freedom waiting for you in the coming year! If you need a last-minute gift for someone, maybe a CD of LibreOffice is the answer – you can make and decorate it yourself, and use this […]
Filed under: Open Source, Zeitgeist | Tagged: Christmas, LibreOffice | 1 Comment »
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