• Welcome back, Palm – “After years in a persistent vegetative state, Palm has come roaring back with a gadget that’s going to prove hard to beat in 2009.” Not sure it’s that good, but competition for Apple and RIM is always going to be a good thing.
• The UK government’s plans to retain email data and rate online content will cost too much, destroy business, liberty and must be stopped – start making placards – The title pretty much says it all (though the rest of the article is also worth reading).
• ‘No God’ campaign draws complaint – “Organisation Christian Voice has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority saying they break rules on substantiation and truthfulness.” Sometimes I read the headlines in my RSS feed and think it must be in NewsBiscuit or The Onion…

I recently went to a BCS talk entitled “Eight Significant Events in Computing.” In the question and answers session at the end, one attendee noted that most innovations were Western in general, from the USA in particular. There are a good number of exceptions but, okay. He continued: the result of a Capitalist system and not Communist or Fascist. Again, I’m not sure that this is entirely true.

But it was his final point that floored me: IT innovations were mostly Christian. A few confused looks made him clarify with the line, “There are no Buddhist Computer Systems.”

• A humanist discussion of… ‘creationism’ – A nice rebuttal of some of the more common “arguments” against evolution.
• Classics in Lego – Famous photographs in Lego. Fantastic!
• A shaming victory on 42 days – The governments absurd law, allowing the Police to detail people for up to 42 days without charge, is not popular. Just hoping the Lords send it back with some rude comments attached.

• London teen orders ‘cab, innit’ – Barely believable but very funny!
• Billy Bragg: Why should songwriters starve so others get rich? – “I never bought that Home Taping Is Killing Music shit in the 1980s that the record companies tried to lay on us. In fact I printed on the front of my fourth album that Capitalism is Killing Music. And that’s what’s happening now. The powerful start-ups a
• What Idiot Wrote These Ten Commandments? – “Where’s the stuff we can use? Where’s ‘No pushing’? Or ‘Bag your leaves so they don’t blow around in your neighbor’s yard?’ And don’t even get me started on right-of-way. Didn’t they have real problems back in Bible days?”

• Everything you ever wanted to know about “Rickrolling”… – The man who sang “Never gonna give you up,” the classic Stock-Aitken-Waterman pop song, makes an unexpected come back. (What’s wrong with Debbie Gibson by the way?!)
• Lies and Statistics – Most people in Britain believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Or do they…?
• Our Bad. Wired Had Some Tips For Apple — We Were Wrong. – Fascinating to see how much things have changed in the last ten years.

• Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report – Good to see that the invasion of Afghanistan has resulted in more freedom for the locals…
• Forget passports – teachers and kids are the new ID card targets – Despite the loss of personal data and despite the fact that they will not (and cannot) do what the Government says they will, the ID Card scheme is still not completely dead.
• The True Cost of SMS Messages – “How come technology, communication, and infrastructure is getting cheaper while the costs of SMS messages are increasing exponentially? My theory: SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold.”

• Are You Better Off than You Were 2,000 Years Ago? – The next president of the United States of America? If only…
• Apple unveil iNvisible iBook – Even more Apple announcements this week. Kind of.
• How to Spot Arial – I never realised that Arial and Helvetica were so different!

• When is a pencil and paper better than a computer? – And here’s another piece about technology and voting in the States. This time (blatant self-promotion alert) it’s one that I wrote last year…
• Follow the Money – Daringfireball links to this “forgotten” Cringely article about the US voting system. He’s right: low technology can be the answer!
• Pointui, the definitive user interface for mobile devices. – Been playing around with this on my HTC P4350. First impressions: great. I love the fact that I am less reliant on the stylus — one of my main problems with Windows Mobile.
• Make the defence of Human Rights your New Year?s Resolution – “We must all try very much harder to support Human Rights from attack, whether that is from religious or cultural forces.”

Today we do the famous parts of Cairo: the pyramids and the Egyptian museum which includes remains from various burials, most famously Tutankhamen. (I always think of a cartoon: a pyramid door with a horn and the sign “toot and come in.”)

The traffic makes itself known again, making the journey across town take some time. But the pyramids appear suddenly behind other much newer and less grand buildings. That’s the first surprising thing: you hear that they stand right next to Giza but you don’t realise just how close.

The alarm call comes much too early at 1am. I head down for some tea and then to the mini-bus for the short ride to the start of the walk up Mount Sinai, the location believed by the three major religions, to be where Moses received the ten commandments from god. No such grand scheme here: by leaving at this ungodly hour I should see the sunrise from the top.