A Candle in the Dark

Sigh…

Exiled Muslim writer hits “house arrest” in India

An exiled Bangladeshi Muslim woman writer whose presence in India sparked riots said on Thursday that New Delhi was forcing her to live under virtual house arrest, and appealed for more freedom.
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“I haven’t done anything wrong. I wrote for human rights, women’s rights and secular humanism and I am not a criminal,” she said. “Why should I be punished in this way, why shouldn’t I be able to meet my friends and relatives?”
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If the government has evidence about threats to her life, which is presumably why they’ve put her in a safe house, they should act and put the conspiring fundamentalists in prison. That’s what the police, intelligence agencies and prisons are there for. Instead, they let lunatics who openly issue physical threats and actually incite violence walk free, while ditching her in a safe house and trying to forget the whole issue.

An excerpt from the message that the pope released and is going to convey during New Year’s Day,

The family, the human community and the environment

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Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions

Delicious irony.

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a “very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer’s“.

Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.
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Damn.

The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true – Daniel Okrent