Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Lies in your living room

The pervasive influence of the advertising industry cannot be denied. That they can have a seriously deleterious effect on the ability of a kid to distinguish between a reliable source of information and something that is a lot of just nicely packaged lies is also obvious. But what is to be done, especially now that very few parents have the time to attend to their kids properly and use the TV as a parent/babysitter surrogate? This article talks about a parent who tried something different.. and it worked!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

yeah, amongst other things

I was going to blog about our Pittsburgh trip over the weekend, but this caught my attenshun and I don't have too much time. Let me summarise this: Islamic law (Sharia) reportedly frowns upon interest gained from money in a bank account. So, Lloyds TSB provides 'Islamic banking' services which include zero interest savings accounts. The BBC reports here. For comparison, here is the webpage of the Islamic Bank of Britain. I just want Terry Pratchett to incorporate this into his next work. Something is fundamentally skewed with this turn of events. If I may make a suggestion, there are many people in the world who can use some largesse: why not directly send the income derived from capital belonging to our Muslim brethren who would wish to abide strictly by the 'no interest rule' to Muhammad Yunis' Gramin Bank?