Tommy Peters' Bicycles

En Kungens Man - Falconer (YouTube download) The screencast depicts doubleTwist downloading a YouTube. John Engelbert, Rainer Brockerhoff and several others are people to thank for offering this gem free of charge under a Creative Commons license. Like iTunes, the media manager presents music, movies and podcasts but unlike it, it presents photos as well. Main value it adds is managing devices other than iPhones and iPods , sharing content by bonjour and downloading / uploading of YouTubes within the wall. Although video compression is built into the device manager, perhaps the next version will see compression and ripper buttons added to the wall. Cheers, Tommy Screencast tools: doubleTwist, YouTube, ScreenFlow, Visual Hub

In Islamic discourses on the perceived impurity of dogs, one tradition suggests that black dogs are evil (*). This tradition, rooted in pre-Islamic mythology, did not impact Islamic law when jurists of the time considered it to be falsely attributed to Islam. Nevertheless, the nexus between the law and contemporary s ocial behavior continues to be an evolving bridge challenging the dynamic between a perceived religious dictum and God’s creation of nature. In Flo, a practicing Muslim, the bridge was never an issue because for her, it never existed. She had always sided with God’s creation rather than subscribe to a religious dictum. Starsky - her lovely companion of 11 years - was simply a testimony of God’s work. In Azura, a typical Muslim girl, the bridge reached its logical conclusion at a young age, when she had the good fortune to meet Starsky. The little fellow first terrified her. He stood there in front of the shrieking girl, gazing at her periphery, won...

A Buddhist parable went like this. Three blind men were asked to describe an elephant by touch. One held its leg and said it was a tree. Another held its trunk and said it was a giraffe. The third held its tail and said it was a snake. The men were not able to identify the mammal by holding it at separate places. Point is, Islam is being explained by people who are familiar with only parts of it. The recent furor in Selangor about the slaughtered cow is a case in point. Several years ago, the Mufti of Perak and a director of Takaful Nasional adopted what was thought as controversial, if not peculiar, positions and as a result of which, they were castigated and ridiculed by the mainstream. Cynics even hoped the ‘no open house’ proposal offered by the mufti and the ‘no deepavali greetings’ memorandum issued ­by the director were a brand of humor peculiar to only them. The mainstream applied pressure and in the context of multiculturalism and the prevailing political ...

The sentiment gaining traction is that the Malaysian government is a regime, not a system in which morality and decency figure as motivating factors and the general science is that the Internal Security Act is a dastardly tool in the regime’s toolkit. Yeo Yang Poh's letter was a welcome rush that justified the weekend’s proceedings whereas Mariette Peters-Goh's response ( re-posted below ) stood alone like a right-wing bystander, a pro-lifer in a pro-choice crowd, but as the day went by, approvals and as many brickbats came in. One consolation though - brickbateers say she is clear enough to disagree with. Clarity over Agreement , a Jewish historian said, is key to a 'linear' rather than a 'cyclical' discourse. The video is a brief by Christopher Hitchens depicting three brutal regimes he 'sampled' in person. It reminds me of R. Sivarasa who said "regimes will eventually confront you, if you do not confront them, usually from a position of ag...

Three Forces - Fundamentalism • Secularism • Anarchy - are jostling for pole position. Walter Fendt's physics experiment  provides an analogy. The Secularist  abhors Anarchy . He avoids it like the plague. His criteria before food, wine and a sit-down for a good movie is Order - good old-fashioned Civil Order . He is prepared to trade his ism for Order  simply because the   Fundamentalist is prepared to edge him out  with Anarchy . Fundamentalism and Anarchy are the leading weights in Fendt's equilibrium and Secularism is the pacifist - the trailing weight. History shows what happens when Secularism sets aside Civil Order , its criteria, and aligns with Anarchy.  Meanwhile, enjoy the Red Bull video. It is dedicated to an avid mountain biker, who cracked his helmet on a downhill run at the Rover Track and plunged into a 20-meter ravine at a Proton Presidential . He broke the bike. He survived. Words - Tommy Peters Illustration: ...

(Continued from Preamble to the Pontiff's speech ) When someone in clergy is seen in a lie, you instinctively protect him, but when he is say, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein , the Grand Mufti of the Palestinians, you expect him to come clean, to explain, to apologise, to recant if necessary. Hussein’s voluble rendition at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem in May 2009, without mentioning the role of his predecessor, prompts me to step into the shoes of his speechwriter and pen a Preamble to the Mufti's speech : - "Dear all, before I talk of the tragedy of the Shoah, let me quote Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann’s deputy, at the Nuremberg Trials. Wisliceny testified :- ("The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan.... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I hear...

'Pacta sunt servanda' is a well-worn tradition that simply means ' Treaties are to be obeyed' but traditional Islamists hold view that when disadvantaged, they may make pacts with non-Muslims for up to ten years, but if they are in a position to breach such pacts to advance their cause, they are entitled to, and should, do so. The tradition is traced to 'Al-Hudaybiyyah' where the Prophet in 628 A.D. made a pact with pagan Meccans not to conquer the city in return for them allowing him and his followers to conduct pilgrimage. The agreement was to last ten years, but eighteen months into the tenure, the Prophet conquered the city. In his book, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (1977) Majid Khadduri said adherents, in propagating the cause, have right to breach such pacts, implying that the Hudaybiyyah model is a tool of jihad laid down by the Prophet himself. Khadduri’s school is shared by traditionalists who portray the Prophet a bri...