A f**ked part of the planet

Actually, stepping away from coding and technology issues, I would like to raise awareness of some unbelievably ridiculous aspects of Afghan law. Those of you that are worldly, well read or simply interested in other cultures may already understand just how poorly women are getting treated by the Taliban and remaining societies that live along similar lines.

A woman was raped in Afghanistan. Because she was married at the time of the attack she was considered to have had sex out of wedlock, a very serious sin in this backward nation, and so she was sentenced to 12 YEARS IN JAIL! For being a victim, for being raped against her will (ok, so that is part of the definition of raped, lets not quibble) she gets to spend 12 years rotting behind bars.

There was one way for her to avoid this fate however. Something I think is as bad as the sentence in the first place - she can marry her rapist and be set free. Hardly better than life in prison really.

Luckily her sentence was overturned by more liberal minded members of the Afghan population who lobbied for her release. Her sentence was pardoned. That is end of the good news however.

What religious belief system can be so absolutely backward? No one on the planet that agrees with any logical moral code would adhere to such crap. Note I said logical moral code, religious ethics never come anywhere near to logic so they can be left out of the discussion (except as far as using them for bad examples goes).

This is blatant lack of respect for the victim, this complete disregard for common sense, is brought about by a religious society, a supposedly modern civilization, that believes they are better than the West. They consider America to be the greatest evil on the planet and a place where decency is fast retreating (I'm not American but I'm also not saying they're completely wrong about the decency part) yet they uphold such barbaric, dark aged rules in today's world. Are they joking?

I am glad the woman is free and able to continue her live but I wish the smart, ethical, caring people of the world would wake up and move towards removing this kind of harmful group think from the planet. We don't need it, it holds us back and we need to move forward.

I would love to see a world free of religious persecution (free of religion in general but thats another topic), racism, human greed and corruption. I doubt we ever will, the majority of us are to fundamentally flawed to see themselves as part of the problem.

I would love to start a strong debate with people that think I am wrong to pan their religion but if you want to tell me your religion is right you will need to do so WITHOUT quoting from historical works of fiction. Engage me logically and explain why your religion is the way it is. I think without your enforced dogma and ideology to fall back on, forced to deal with logic and reality, your arguments will fade away.

MCTS accrediation - onwards and upwards

I have recently decided to up skill myself with some further accreditation (I already have an MCAD along with my degrees) and have selected the MCTS Server 2008 exams.

Why?

Well, certification in general because I like studying and learning new things. Stagnate and you die. SQL Sever specifically? Because I feel my SQL skills could better. I have used SQL and MySql many times in various projects but haven't pushed myself to DB admin stuff. Now is my chance.

I have read that a lot of people are particularly impressed with the Microsoft press book on the subject. Well, I guess I can also keep you informed on what I think of that too.

So, here we go. My journey, plus other misc .net, HTML and geek stuff in general.