Abrahamic convergence

Via Street Prophets, comes more information about the convergence of holy observances in the Abrahamic faiths. There's actually a project called The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah that is calling for a interfaith observance on Oct. 13th. Some background:

In other periods of history, this group would have made unlikely bedfellows.

The first is a small Jewish community that has always been against the oppression of Palestinians.

The second is a small group of Muslims who are opposed to the fundamentalist definition of "jihad" as military struggle rather than as the interior struggle to be holy.

The third is a small group of Christians who have no doubts about the sins of Christianity against both these communities and, even more, a memory of Francis of Assisi, who in the midst of a Crusade against Egypt, crossed the battle lines to talk to Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

Francis, to convert the Egyptians, tried to strike a bargain: He would go into a fiery furnace and, if he came out alive, the Egyptians would convert to Christianity. Al-Kamil's answer to Francis was a gentle and a wise one. Gambling with one's life, he argued, is not a valid proof of one's God. Then, both of them wiser, he spared Francis' life and sent him on his way again.

Like Francis, these people have decided to do what their governments won't do. They are stepping across battle lines.

They are reaching out as friends to one another in formal, public ways. They are listening to the spirit in the heart of the other.

They call their project The October Surprise. The surprise is that the Jewish High Holy Days, the Islamic Month of Ramadan and the Christian feast of St. Francis of Assisi who opposed the Crusades and learned from an Islamic teacher, all come in October.

Check out the Tent of Abraham web site for more information. I like "Abrahamic convergence" better than "October Surprise" though :)

Shehrullah il-Moazzam

Ramadan Mubarak! Today is the 1st of Ramadan, 1426 Hijri, by the classical Islamic calendar. My community of Dawoodi Bohras does not rely upon moonsighting but rather on the astronomical cycle to commence Ramadan, so today I commence observance of fasting.

O Allah! This is the month of Ramadan in which descended the Qur'an as a guide to mankind and a criterion to separate truth from falsehood. O Allah! Bless us in the month of Ramadan, and give us Your help and accept our ibadat, for You have power over all things.

There is no god but Allah. We seek Your forgiveness. O Allah! Grant us Paradise and save us from Hellfire.

Mubarak to all on the holy month of Shehrullah il Moazzam. Please remember me and my family in your precious dua during Ramadan.

UPDATE: cool, Abrahamic convergence this year: It's also Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Shana Tova!

I'll be posting about Ramadan at Dean's World, as an effort at outreach to a non-muslim, conservative, and largely pro-war audience. My muslim readers are encouraged to visit DW and participate with respect and decorum in the discussion there. My first post discusses fasting.

laptop fuel cells

ok, this does sound good at first blush:

LG Chem is on the ball when it comes to fuel cell technology. They have developed a fuel cell unit for user in notebooks that can power a 25W unit for up to 10 hours. The only problem is that it is an external unit so that makes yet another accessory that you would have to lug around with you:

Different from the concept announced by Taiwan-based Antig Technology at the CeBIT trade fair earlier this year and other companies before, this product works as an external power supply connected to a notebook through a DC-in jack, LG Chem explained. The device weighs less than 1kg, and one 200cc methanol cartridge is enough to power a 25W notebook for more than 10 hours, LG Chem said. The company expects that cartridges will be priced under US$1. The base unit price will be around US$500.

but think for a moment. How are you going to get through airport security with multiple 200cc vials of methanol? I wouldn't even try.

home

We're home, highway speed from Katy to League City right through downtown. No flood damage, though there were a few shingles strewn about the yard. I will call a roofer to inspect and make sure that there wasn't anything more serious. The power had clearly been out for some time, given the oozed tubes of toothpaste in the bathroom, but was back on when we got home. I unloaded the car and will tackle the plywood later this afternoon when it isn't as insanely hot. My wife is already on shift at UTMB in Galveston and is on call. Back to normal :)

Other Houston bloggers are returning too - Charles had no trouble getting home from Dallas on I-45. We should throw a post-Rita blogger party :)

Khidmat is not a zero-sum game

I have been involved for nearly a decade in the development of a portal site for my religious community, the Dawoodi Bohras. We recently have upgraded servers again, planning to retire our aging boxes. The new server hardware, donated by EZZI.NET of Long Island, is running 64-bit CentOS Linux and will support SMP. One of our long term goals in this is to cultivate a skill set within our community to help leverage technology in service of our religious observance and preservation of our culture (a modernist streak that runs deep in our community, profiled by Jonah Blank in Mullahs on the Mainframe). To that end, we have launched a blog that details the technical side of maintaining our community infrastructure. I encourage anyone (Bohras or otherwise) interested in building a communications infrastructure for their own community to take a look.

Houston reawakens

The Houston chronicle has been superb - they have two Rita-themed blogs, one called The Road Home, which has latest user-supplied information about road conditions as evacuees return to Houston from Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, and also the Rita Blog, which has tons of helpful info about gas stations, supermarket re-openings, power restoration, etc. Everything we need to know.

My home in Dickinson looks like it should have power restored by the time we get back. We plan on leaving Tuesday morning; my wife has to be back at UTMB by wednesday morning.

Also via Eric Berger, a good analysis of why the evacuation - though impressive in scope - was so painful:

Hurricane planners have a little ditty that goes, "run from the water, hide from the wind."

It means evacuate if you are in a coastal surge area, but hunker down if you are in an area that will get hurricane-force winds and rain only.

The biggest problem in Houston's painful evacuation last week was that perhaps a million people, almost half of those who left, ran from the wind. To make matters worse, the regional evacuation plan was missing a key element: pre-planned contraflow lanes that are a part of virtually every other hurricane-prone city's evacuation strategy.

This echoes Taha's comments from two days ago, IMHO. Plus, if the wind is hurricane strength and you have children, who is going to fault anyone for running from the wind?

UPDATE: Mayor White also had a similar critique:

Days after the evacuation that saw tortuous delays on Texas highways, Houston's mayor says the handling of gasoline supplies is "totally unacceptable."

Speaking to reporters, Mayor Bill White says that's a part of the state plan that needs improvement.

People trying to flee north from Houston sat in traffic all day or night, and some ran out of gas. Those who could make their way to gas stations often found the pumps empty.

we need to learn from this for next time. It went amazingly well. But it needs to be done better, especially since today's chronicle did have stories of tragedy (including the death of at least one child from heat exposure, and the infamour exploding bus) directly attributable to the titanic traffic snarls. Contraflow would have helped immeasurably, and MUST be part of the plan next time, period.

The Aggie jokes just write themselves

via Eric Berger, check out this picture of Loupot's bookstore at Texas A&M taken by Andrew McNeel.