Oops!

Excerpt from The Star: Constable seeks help from teen, gets beaten up by villagers instead:

KUALA TERENGGANU: A misunderstanding caused a police constable to sustain facial injuries after villagers at Kampung Alor Mak Bah in Dungun, about 98km from here, assaulted him for allegedly trying to solicit a bribe.

The 21-year-old policeman, who was part of a raiding team, was trailing 10 suspects who ran helter-skelter after police ambushed them while an illegal rooster fight was going on at the village.

When the constable lost sight of the suspects, he stopped to ask a 15-year-old villager whether he had seen any of the them.

However, the teenager thought the constable was asking him for money as he was riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

The teenager then told villagers about the attempted bribe, resulting in a group of them confronting the constable and beating him up.

I can see how "Have you seen a bunch of people running away?" can easily have been heard as "Hey, you're not wearing a helmet. If you give me some money, I'll look the other way."

No, totally. They sound so similar it's unbelievable that the mistake doesn't happen more often.

How Much Water Are We Actually Using?

National Geographic has this awesome feature  where it lets you see how much water it takes to produce 1lb of whatever food is on your table. It's terribly enlightening.

For example, did you know (and you clearly didn't) that it takes 1,799 gallons of water to make 0.5kg of beef? That's excluding the extras for feed and drinking water, by the way.

Think that's bad? That's nothing compared to how much water it takes to make chocolate.

Seriously. It's mind-blowing. Here's some single-glance tables of what National Geographic's done up nicely in graphics:

I know what you're thinking. 1 t-shirt? Really? And 1 sheet of paper translates to 10 litres of water. Not to mention the water:milk production ratio is 880:1. And it's 1,008:1 for water:wine. I wonder how Jesus did it.

Food for thought.

Power to the People

Warning: This is a general blog post with no real point and so rambles on for a while. Don't complain if you decide to read it and go, "what the fuck was that?" at the end. 

Has anyone noticed how smoking on TV has become persona non grata? Seriously, try to find a contemporary TV show with someone smoking and it's either a classic bad guy character or it's a main character with a guilty vice trying to hide it from his friends.

It just goes to show how powerful the media can be. They decided that smoking is bad for people. They decided to champion the cause. And look at what's happened. It's like the whole, what I like to call, 'Plastic Bag Incident'. Someone somewhere one day decided to go to war against plastic bags, and now everyone has to pay 10 cents for a bag.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for these movements that help the world (I hope) and try to uphold values for impressionable young children. It's just scary how powerful the media can be when they're harping on an issue. They should support more causes like that.

Which brings me to my next issue - what the hell is up with these 'Community Service Ads' on the radio these days? It's ridiculous. They're out there saying things like, "Don't put your handbags in plain sight - it will get stolen" or "Don't put cushions in your car - thieves will target women's cars". Am I the only one who thinks this is retarded?

Why are women being blamed for having their handbags stolen? Why don't the ads say, "Don't steal. Stealing is wrong. Get a job."? What is wrong with these people? Yes, that's right, 104.9 Red FM. I'm talking about you. Get your head on straight.

All Woman

I've decided to follow up on the I Am Woman blog post. After about 3 weeks of taking the prescribed treatment for my condition (which, by the way, is neither serious nor permanent - rather, it's dependent on conditions like stress, environment, etc), there's actually a difference.

I no longer feel (quite as) aggro when I'm driving (though I still call most people retards on the road). My skin feels and looks better, and though I don't feel the need to dress in pink, I definitely feel more settled. It's amazing the effect that hormones can have on people. 

Actually, it's quite scary. I mean - you go through your whole life thinking, "This is me. This is who I am." Then you find out that you change a little bit after a bit of pills that aren't even prescription and there's a mindfuck right there. That's how much we are dictated by our physiology. Whoa.

On the Dangerous Topics of Islam and Translations

Those whom I follow on Twitter can quite easily be categorised.

1. News sources: @reuterskl, @staronline
2. Humour and merriment: @ichcheezburger, @qdb, @aaronkaro
3. Entertainment: @thesuperficial, @junkonline, @klue
4. Hoping for good deals/freebies: @airasiadotcom, @digi_telco
5. Friends

And then there are those that even I don't know why I follow, like the subject of today's blog post: @EvilBibleQuotes. I want to say that it's a source of humour and merriment, so that I can laugh at those idiot heathens (j/k... or am I?) and their silly ways. Like in this tweet:

American Family Assoc.: Exodus21 demands executing whale and SeaWorld director after whale "murders" its trainer. http://bit.ly/954YOK

Pat Robertson: "Waving those [Gay Day] flags in God's face... will bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." http://bit.ly/58vQry

The last one is fun because it reminds me that it's not only Malaysian dignitaries that make stupid comments.

But the fact is that @EvilBibleQuotes doesn't just quote the Bible. They (quite rightly, I might add) also quote the Koran, the Torah and I assume other bibles of other faiths.

It's actually a bit disturbing, some of the quotes that come up:

Men are in charge of women...for those women who you fear may rebel, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them. Sura 4:34

Gentiles who study the Torah deserve death, for it's written: Moses commanded us
a law for an inheritance-it's ours, not theirs. Sanhedrin59

And the last, the one that prompted this post:

O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him. Bukhari 52:256

That one set me thinking: it's unlikely that the Koran would have propagated such a thing, because in all technicality, Muslims are allowed to marry the people of the 4 bibles - the Koran, the Torah, the Zaboor and the Injil (the original Christian bible) without them converting because all are recognised to be people of God. In fact, in all technicality, a Muslim can marry Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews without them converting.

So how can it be that the Koran advocates the killing of Jews - the people of the same God? Could it be due to a mistranslation due to the current political headwinds of the time? Don't forget, up until a few hundred years ago, reading was not a right - it was a privilege and a hobby for the rich because books were difficult to print and thusly expensive. In fact, it was only in the 1400s that printing books became efficient enough to be cheap and done mechanically.

Most books printed before the invention of movable type were actually copied out by hand, slowly and painstakingly by scribes who played a very important role in civilisations. Obviously, mistakes were made sometimes, though scribes prided themselves on accuracy and speed. And just as obviously, it was easy to subject the translations to the interpretation of the times due to political/religious warfare. And we all know how that ends.

How is it, then, that the Koran advocates the killing of a Jew?

Various Disclaimers:
I've read the Koran in Arabic a few times but I don't speak Arabic so I don't pretend to know what it means. Also, this is pure speculation on the part of someone who's not educated in any of these fields other than everyday Islamic tenets. And also, if you flame illogically, I won't post your comment. And this post was not intended as a flame for @EvilBibleQuotes. I don't think they're doing anything wrong. They could actually be perpetuating mutual understanding.