Nafisto the Great

Today’s installment of Thomas Friedman’s editorial column raised several interesting issues dealing with the situation in Iraq and with the way that America is viewed throughout the Arab world. Freidman says, “I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority.”

Well, Tom, that’s exactly what Bahá’u'lláh said over a hundred years ago! Several years ago, the Bahá’í International Community published a statement called The Prosperity of Humankind which addresses the very issues that Mr. Friedman mentions:

“The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world’s population in assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular discourse, the concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents fundamental challenges to the way that most of the institutions of contemporary society carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively consolidated itself over the past two centuries…

“Laying the groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation of laws and institutions that are universal in both character and authority. The effort can begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has been wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the responsibility for decision making rests, and when the related principles are propagated through both educational systems and the media of mass communication. Once this threshold is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through which the peoples of the world can be drawn into the task of formulating common goals and committing themselves to their attainment. Only so fundamental a reorientation can protect them, too, from the age-old demons of ethnic and religious strife. Only through the dawning consciousness that they constitute a single people will the inhabitants of the planet be enabled to turn away from the patterns of conflict that have dominated social organization in the past and begin to learn the ways of collaboration and conciliation. ‘The well-being of mankind,’ Bahá’u’lláh writes, ‘its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.’”

You can read the whole statement on the Bahá’í Reference Library.

I lived in Israel for four years, and I didn’t once see a suicide bombing. That’s why I was so excited to read John Tierney’s op-ed piece Bombs Bursting on Air, which appeared in today’s New York Times.

“I’m not advocating official censorship, but there’s no reason the news media can’t reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world’s dangers.”

Amen.

Well, former RIAA chief Hilary Rosen and I finally agree on something! (This comes after her many years fighting piracy in a way which just doesn’t add up.)

In a recent commentary, Ms. Rosen complains about the virtual monopoly that Apple is creating with its iPod and iTunes store. Quite frankly, I too am a bit annoyed with Apple’s refusal to allow the iPod–arguably the best personal music player available today–to play music purchased from any store other than iTunes. Ms. Rosen accuses Steve Jobs of “stealing a page” out of Bill Gates’ playbook by trying to limit the platform choices of iPod users.
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(This will be the first of three entries for today.)

CONGRATULATIONS to my good friends Farshid and Neda who got engaged yesterday. This is a special message to them (and anyone else considering taking the plunge)…
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Google Labs has just released Web Accelerator which promises to make web surfing a whole lot faster. Using thousands of Google’s distributed servers around the world, the Web Accelerator uses a combination of page caching, compression and pre-fetching to reduce the number and time of round-trip HTTP queries.

Like all things Google, Web Accelerator has a lot of well thought-out features which, although present in most other accelerators, are laid out in a way that is extremely clean and easy to use. I’m particularly reassured by the fact that it will leave secure HTTPS requests alone, and that you can specify sites for the program not to touch.

And for those of you that use Firefox on Windows, have no fear: you, too, can use the Accelerator. I won’t hold my breath for a Linux version, but maybe the nice folks that brought us GoogleBar could see what they can do?!

My favorite thing, by far, was the privacy notice that the installation wizard presented. I have yet to see any application be as simple, clear and forthcoming about how it will and will not use my private information. Kudos to the Google crew for a job well done!

After downloading it today, I haven’t seen any noticable increase in speed. In fact, it’s a bit slower for some local and nearby sites, presumably because our proxy server already does a fair amount of caching. But I have a feeling that (again, like all things Google) the utility of this simple yet powerful tool will grow on me in the days and weeks to come. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Jason Fried of 37signals points out the potentially destructive consequences of using Google Web Accelerator with certain web-based applications. Webmasters should become intimately familiar with the FAQ that Google provides on this subject.