Under The Sun

Some 1.8bn people smoke around the world. Each day about 13,500 people worldwide die from smoking-related diseases. By 2020 the mortality rate will have doubled - the equivalent of 10 million a year. Most of these are in developing countries. Most of the profits go to the USA and EU.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control comes into force today. Ratified by 57 countries, including the UK, the document sets out a programme to reduce the number of people smoking across the world.

No prizes for guessing which major country has so far refused to ratify the treaty.

Iraq, 9/11, Al Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What the Public Believes Now, According to Latest Harris Poll

More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

• 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
• 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
• 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

Another interesting finding is that only 46 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors, a fact which most reports now support.

From Ian McKenzie: Lessons from a dog

CNET News.com: Spyware infiltrates blogs

The problem involves the use of JavaScript and ActiveX, two common
methods used to launch programs on a Web page. Security experts said
malicious programmers can use JavaScript and ActiveX to automatically
deliver spyware from a blog to people who visit the site with a
vulnerable Web browser.

The problem seems to be mainly with blogs on BlogSpot.com, whose owners are often not technically savvy enough to be aware of vulnerabilities in javascript add-on features. As usual, the advice is to use Firefox to view blogs.

Imago Dei: Human Rights: Are They Best Grounded by Theism or Humanism?

CNET News.com: The man with the RFID arm

From the researching-the-bleeding-obvious department: Child aggression linked to violent media

Wired News: U.N. Calls for Clone Ban

Nations including Singapore, South Korea, Belgium and the United Kingdom blasted the declaration by the divided U.N. committee, calling it political posturing. … Politics in America, they say, have inappropriately influenced not only stem cell research and cloning science, but also reports on climate change, endangered species policies, fisheries energy and many others.

It’s simply wrong to bracket the issue of stem cell research using human embryos with other contentious issues such as climate change. The latter is an issue of scientific evidence (which overwhelmingly supports human-induced warming, despite the protestations of sceptics). The former is a matter of ethics, and very much within the remit of politics and religion.

I’m upgrading to WordPress 1.5, so things might look a little wierd for a while.

done! normal service is now resumed…

If we describe something or someone as “pure evil” we are misunderstanding the nature of evil.

When confronted with particularly horrifying manifestations of the wickedness of the human race — things like the Holocaust, or child sex traffickers, we use phrases like “pure evil” to demonise the perpetrators and so break the connection between such acts and ourselves. We want to maintain that there is a difference not simply in degree but in kind between the worst people and ourselves. The Bible agrees that there are degrees of wickeness, but allows no distinction between “bad” people (them) and the rest (us):

There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [Rom 3:23]

Thinklings Weblog has a useful post on the nature of evil:

There is no such thing as pure evil. Evil is not an equal independent force, opposite of good. God existed before evil did, and he will exist after it ceases. Goodness is rooted in God. Evil, however, is simply a corruption of good. Biblical images of evil, point us back to good. Evil cannot exist independently of good. It only exists, by limiting or corrupting goodness.

The corruption of evil is so pervasive in our nature — what theologians call “total depravity” — that we are helpless to overcome it, and hopelessly estranged from God.

The good news is that through his death on the Cross, Christ Jesus has broken the power of evil over those who trust in him as their Lord and saviour:

if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! [2 Cor 5:17]