The Times reports on a study published in the Journal of Religion and Society, which concludes that predominantly religious countries may actually be worse off than their secular neighbours.
The Times article quotes from the study:
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.
Of course, religion is only one of several social factors determining the socio-economic make-up of a country, but the study does prove that a religious society is no magical gateway to a stable society.
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The beginning of the end? Or at least the beginning of the end of the Google we used to know? What made Google great is that it was a search engine for geeks as well as dummies. It was usable, it was functional, it anticipated the user’s every move without second-guessing the next user action.
Lately, I’ve been setting Google’s startup page as the default startup page on every computer I use. It’s a handy mix of links I use a lot, plus news headlines plucked from RSS feeds. It’s similar to what I’ve been doing myself for several years, but handy because it’s got some Google goodies on there as well. Like a link to Google News.
Then Google News started “forgetting” my customized news pages. I prefer British news to American news, I like the technology headlines instead of sports, and I’ve got some custom searches for news in Belgium and South Africa. It takes ten minutes or so to set up, so I prefer not to redo it. But I open it up, and suddenly it’s all Republican politics and ice hockey scores, neither of which interest me.
Then, even worse, Google starts logging me out of my default startup page every two weeks. A handy security option for other Google projects like Gmail, perhaps, but not really applicable to the default startup page on my home computer. Google does ask whether I want my login remembered when I log into my Google account, and I do say yes. So why limit this to two weeks, and second-guess my ability to set my own security level? If the binary option of remember/don’t remember is too draconian for some, why not add a third option of “remember permanently”?
What do I care if Google now searches blogs? I would not expect anything less from my preferred search engine. But second-guessing the user is the Microsoft way. And once an IT company goes down the dark avenue of the Microsoft way, there’s no turning back.
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Not being a big fan of gratuitous Flash, I have to say I love the Canadian Leo Burnett website. More proof that corporate websites need not be corporate at all, as long as they exhude creativity and talent. Leo would have been proud, I’m sure.
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Roger Ebert—actually one of my favourite movie critics—sometimes takes great pleasure in demolishing the worst movies he gets exposed to. A collection of the better excerpts on the worst productions are available on his site.
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I’ve launched a new blog, The Open Source Windmill, focused on my buying a (you’ll never guess) windmill. The idea is to “open source” it, make information available as and when I get it, and generally allow the world a peek through my windows. Watch this space for more info.
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