Intercultural dialog

Today I read an interesting article in the Solothurner Zeitung (as rarely as this happens). In Grenchen they had an intercultural dialog between the local section of the “Junge SVP” (young Swiss people party) and the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. The discussion was initialized by a JSVP flyer saying “The Qur’an – is it a direction to war or peace” that was meant “to start a discussion”, but it was the Muslim community who took the initiative and invited for talks.

After I have read the article two questions float in my head:

1. Why has it become fashionable lately in Europe to draw/write very provocative content that has the potential (or maybe even the purpose?) to hurt people of a different culture? And once the word spreads and there is an uproar they say “oh we just wanted to trigger a discussion?”. At least in the case of the JSVP I’ve got the bad feeling that they were after the uproar and had to participate in the discussion becausestaying away from it would have hurt them seriously.
2. When are some people on this world going to understand that evils don’t stem from a certain religion, but from certain people who literally refer to a piece of text to the extend where they disrespect other people’s lives?

I strongly believe that we need more of these intercultural discussions. I also strongly believe that we don’t need to throw our cultural values overboard when confronted with a different culture. However, being aware of one’s values and past is not automatically the same as having the right to belittle other people’s culture. I guess it’s this destinction based on the foundations of human respect that supports a good and constructive dialog – if both sides of the table join in.

I am a pheromone

Today I took one of those quizzes again, this time they told me what kind of molecule I would be:

You are a pheromone. You are seductive and you know what you want. You have something about you that permeates the air and draws people to you. You can get what you want almost without fail, like some of the sexiest moths out there.

Sounds like I should be swarmed with ladies leading to the logical conclusion that it is either the ladies’ or the quiz’ mistake I am not. Considering the probability this quiz never underwent treatment based on testing theory I bet it’s the second.

Find your own molecule type here.

Howto reinstall GRUB in Kubuntu the easy way

Okay, here I have my shiny Kubuntu Linux sitting on hdb and the need to reinstall Windows on hda. This will overwrite the MBR, of course, so one will have to reinstall GRUB later. This is how it’s being done:

1. If you haven’t got one already, download the Kubuntu LiveCD.
2. Unplug your harddisks featuring Linux. We know Microsoft doesn’t like other OSs, so we disable physical access to your Linux just to be save.
3. Install Windows as usual.
4. When Windows is all fine, grab a Kubuntu LiveCD and boot from it.
5. Open a shell and do the following

sudo mkdir /media/real_linux
##substitute hdb1 with the root partition of your Linux system
sudo mount /dev/hdb1 /media/real_linux
sudo chroot /media/real_linux
sudo grub
##very important: grub has to probe your drives now
##substitute hd0,1 with the numbers for your root partition
root (hd0,1)
##this will replace the Windows bootloader with GRUB
setup (hd0)


Reboot and enjoy your dual boot again.