Thoughts filed in: Morality

The Torah — also known as the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses — is the foundation document of the Jewish religion (among others), and it's regarded by Orthodox Jews (among others) as the infallible Word of G-d. It's generally believed that the Torah in its entirety was conveyed orally to Moses on Mount Sinai, approximately 3,300 years ago; and that Moses transcribed the Torah exactly as it was revealed to him.

Most of the Torah is rock solid: sensible laws; moralistic stories; clear presentation of history; and other important information, such as geneaologies, rituals, and territorial boundaries. However, sometimes them five books throw some serious curve balls. I've selected here a few sections from the wonderful O.T, that in my opinion are so outrageously messed up, that they cannot possibly be the Divine Word. I believe in G-d, one hundred percent. But I see no reason to believe that these particular passages have a Divine source.

I was recently reading about how OpenStreetMap has been helping the Haiti relief effort, in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti's capital back in January. Being one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, Haiti's map coverage is very poor. However, a group of volunteers have radically changed that, and this has directly helped the aid effort on the ground in Haiti.

To see just how effective this volunteer mapping effort has been, I decided to do a quick visual comparison experiment. As of today, here's what downtown Port-au-Prince looks like in Google Maps:

Port-au-Prince in Google Maps

And here it is in OpenStreetMap:

Port-au-Prince in OpenStreetMap

One of life's greatest dilemnas is that you can't drop a coin to every busker that you pass in the street. So how do you decide which ones are worthy of your charity? Those with the least money? Those with the most talent? How can busker bigotry be minimised?