Because God said so...

Thats seems to be the newest reason for doing things now. People take bits and pieces from religious texts as they choose and let that be the reason. I have some probelems with this reasoning.
a) I am in serious doubt as to whether God actually wrote these books - afterall it was written by other men andmost often after generations of passing down by word of mouth (if you have ever played the game passing round a message from one person to another and comparing what the last person says to what was initially said you know how funny it gets).
b) Ok leaving that aside, why do you think we have free will if we were supposed to do step be born do step 1,2, 3,4, 5 ... then die, we are supposed to interprete these teachings etc not follow blindly - ever heard of your conscience.
c) Ok if you must interprete and follow these to the dot; then do exactly that dont pick and choose as you like and then say Im following it so I'm right. If its your interpretation then it become your interpretation of the text not the text itself.
Anyways these are my problems so this is also my reasoning and mine alone and I dont expect anyone else to see it the same way but similarly if you are one that follows your respective religious text dont force that on others. That is why religion is synonymous with belief, faith and not rule or law. It is there for you to believe in and follow as you want not to use it as rules for the people around you.
Final note; I am not making these observations with relation to any particular religion but with relation to ALL including my own and I state again that this is my opinion to which im entitled to so nobody better get offended :).

Online Hunting -> How sick is this!!

According to a CNN news item http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/16/life.hunting.reut/
there is a internet site being developed which will allow people to aim and kill animals at a ranch in Texas set up for this purpose. If the user shoots an animal it will be stuffed and shipped to him. Aparently his idea came from seeing a similar set up where people could view animals in the wild and he thought if that was a gun i could shoot them!!! Since there are no laws protecting this sort of thing (I guess no one could have seen it coming) as yet there is nothing that can be currently done about the situation. Anyway the reasoning even on the part of authorities seem to be that we've always used better technology to hunt so this is the next step. With this sort of mentality there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do!
Hmm I actually found the site but I will not provide the link here cause I dont want to give it anymore promotion! Also got pretty violent with the last person who saw it and suggested it might be fun - Im all for freedom of choice but this is ridiculous!

Making a difference :)

Well...decide to put up this post cause one my closest friends was reading another blog where she was mentioned as someone who had made a difference in that persons life and said "If you have a blog you put my name". Haha ok well I will say "You have made a difference in mine"... wont mention names cause I dont believe in it but she knows who she is. Oh ya PS not just mentioning this cause she asked me to I truly mean what I said - I guess the most important factor is that she's opened my eyes to a lot of things and taught me a lot of things ;).

Its a rat race

Ya ok this is not the first time ive heard of life being a rat race but I'm seeing it affect kids and thats when it beomes scary. Two things brought this feeling about.
First one; Some of my class mates gave this presentation about the education system here and you know what, kids at primary 3,4 are required to take exams that put them into different streams - whats this based on maths english and mother toungue. And here itself the differentiation begins ... based on these streaming execersises they go into different streams in Secondary school (Olevels) - and if you are stuck in a "lower ability stream" then you get to sit for the normal olevels with which you can only go to polytechnics or vocational institutes!! Only those in the express/special streams go on to Alevels and university. Hmm interesting so your life is decided in class 4!!!. Seriously how many of us can say we knew what were going to do in university at that age...or even did our academics then reflect what we are today? What option does a kid in this system have, just study study study! We see a lot of kids doing the next years work one year ahead in the holidays just to keep up - when did we ever care about that.
Second incident; The lab where im doing my project suddenly had some younger people... so I decided to satisfy my curiosity - turns out they are 1st year ALevel people who have come to do projects in their decmber holidays. I go WHAT! Ok granted its an interesting thing to do and they are lucky to have the oportunity. But think about some of the knowledge required for even the simplest understanding is difficult to get even at fourth year uni level and I am trying to explain the concepts of the project that has "big words" to a student who hasn't got polarization yet - so looks like he has to spend his holidays learning things that are taught at university level at the least. (Ya I was given the task of explaining some stuff to one of them who was to be doing something similar to me.) Asked him how exactly he came to be doing this and he says he wanted to (im thinking is he normal!- ok he'll go far:))