Islam: The Way of Strangers - Graeme Wood

By Wayne Brown
"Plenty of ... Islamic State recruits, like plenty of normal people, are dullards and goofballs, incapable of articulating the beliefs that rule their lives. At best they are proficient at parroting them, with the same brain shrinking effects apparent in Hare Kristna ... They know these things because they have been taught them, and not because they have crafted their ideologies or studied classical Arabic... [they] are easily lead"

Graeme Wood is no friend of Islam. But he went to amazing lengths to find any kind of logic in the world view of ISIS. More specifically, is there any light at all between what ISIS believes and those who claim Islam is a "religion of peace"? "The Way" is a long series of interviews with "true believers, ISIS "scholars" and the learned lights of Islam who claim that ISIS has somehow got it wrong in their interpretation of the supposedly infallible Koran and sayings of the Prophet.
It is a case study of how religion works and how dangerous it can become.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Facebook and Bing - A Killer Combination

By Wayne Brown
Image
 This is a partial list of groups I belong to that focus on Generative AI art: Facebook creates community. I use BING as a kind of Generative AI university: BING U.  I prefer the role of student, so my job is to find good teachers. Think of me as the guy who shows you around the campus and knows his way around, but he's a student himself. Microsoft BING is free and very powerful. It's an excellent way to learn Generative AI and a standard tool that everyone in my imaginary school has. The way to find a teacher is to see their work in a Facebook group. Then, save the picture that caught your eye in a Word document (or document editor of your choice). For example ... Joe McIntosh What we have found here is not only the prompt for the picture but a teacher who shares the prompts for all his pictures. Look for artists who work primarily with BING. Don't get distracted by other platforms or techniques. Learn to do one thing well before shopping for better tools. The best Facebo
Read more

A Process ...

By Wayne Brown
Image
She will be 105 in September. She struggles to recognize her four children, let alone her countless grandchildren. Today, she said, "Nobody told me how to die." She has always wanted to die in her own home, an oversized place that has always had room for an endless parade of visitors. She has always been very "social." Although she struggles to remember the old friends dropping by, she chats happily "on automatic." There are a lot of relatives. She was raised on a farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where her Russian parents raised 16 children. I asked "AI" - specifically Claude 3 Sonnet , to describe this situation in a short essay. I have taken the liberty of letting Grammarly , my AI writing assistant, make a few corrections to Sonnet's purple prose. This is the slightly edited version: She sits in  the twilight of her extraordinary life, a living embodiment of resilience and grace. At 105 years old, her eyes, dimmed by time, still h
Read more

Warp Speed Generative AI

By Wayne Brown
Image
Jump to Warp Speed Warp 2 Warp 3 Warp 4 "Warp Speed"  Illustration of " Language is a Virus " Laurie Anderson Completed in the time it takes to perform the song For a very long time, I have tried to master information processing tools and "wire" them together into a "machine" that suits my purpose. "Warp Speed Generative AI" combines several powerful families of AI tools to turn an idea into one or more pictures. Along the way, we get an explanation of the original idea, references and a detailed explanation of the style. I call it "Warp speed" because AI seems to give me whiplash as it takes my idea and runs with it. I just hang on and enjoy the ride. "Warp Speed" is a response to the current obsession with prompts: how to write them, when to share them, how to monetize them, what books to read, what courses to take and so forth. AI can write pretty good prompts. "Prompt Engineering" is an endangered speci
Read more