Latest religious insanity: Apple can't use logo

Via Ed Brayton:

A group of Christians in Russia says the ubiquitous bitten apple is too symbolic of the idea of original sin and should be replaced with the symbol of Jesus Christ. And they may have the law on their side.

Technology website xbitlabs.com says Apple “may run into problems” if Russian parliament passes a set of laws designed to protect citizens’ religious and spiritual values from “blasphemy and insult.”

Blasphemy laws are a huge problem. They always signal the end of democracy and freedom. Haven't these people ever heard of the Inquisition?

Egypt is a bit confused

Egypt doesn't seem to understand this whole democracy thing. The following lead paragraphs are from two different stories in the news this evening:

Egyptian prosecutors referred to trial Tuesday a well-known radical Islamist who tore up an English copy of the Bible during a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam film produced in the United States.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said freedom of expression must be used responsibly in a speech Tuesday to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York that hinted at looming tensions in the newly-democratic nation.

Yup, they're going to have to learn how to drive this bus. Mind you, I like Morsi. He's not a dunce and he's made some smart statements along the way. Besides, he's new at his job. I'm willing to cut him some slack. Who knows, with a little practice he might figure it out. But for the moment, the poor man's not even in the ballpark.

Blasphemy laws are really muddying the democratic waters in Egypt and other Middle east nations. Such laws cannot co-exist with democracy -- but the Egyptian people don't know this yet. I feel empathy for them, especially since so many Americans are slavering for an opportunity to establish a Christian theocracy here. If this ever happened, we'd have blasphemy laws within minutes.

The answer is always the same. Religion has to go if the world is ever to know peace.

News sources dry up. Scary stuff.

I read an article recently (no link, sorry) about how local TV news has become homogenous. In the old days, the news shows would try to outdo one another by coming up with the hot stories. They actually investigated things. Not anymore.

The article said there is a central source that feeds the stories to a city's news shows. They -- the central source -- determine what stories will air, how they'll be told, and what visuals they'll include. Then the stations take this home, insert their own reporters into the feed, and regurgitate the exact same stories on every news station.

This didn't come as a surprise to me. I've long noted that NYC's three main news stations presented identical stories, in the same order, and often using the same video footage. In my mind, the newsrooms were all in one building, on one floor. They met in the morning, where they were handed the stories, and then presented them on their own stations as "unique". The subsidiary stations (in NYC, 5, 9 and 11, as opposed to the "main" stations, 2, 4 and 7) are really offshoots of the main stations. You'll see a different "anchor" and the same stories -- but on these stations, the stories are often presented the next day. ) I assume this is a sort of contractual hobbling of the secondary stations.)

This is not healthy for our democracy. And the fact that most papers are about to fold, probably within five years, max, is another ominous sign for our country. Already, we have AP providing a unified news source from which the papers and electronic media feed. Take away the papers and there will be less profit for AP (Reuters doesn't count; let's face it), which will mean less resources within AP.

No matter how you look at it, we will soon be fed through one news source. And whoever controls that source, controls us. These are interesting times.