Word: versions
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...TIME's Alex Perry wrote in July 2009, over the past few years, young Nigerian Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle class, have aggressively embraced a stricter version of Islam, rejecting anything Western and Christian. In the middle of 2009, the government cracked down hard on one group nicknamed the Nigerian Taliban - officially called Boko Haram - killing its leader and scores of his followers. Boko Haram had begun life in 2001 as a peaceful group focused on the study of the Koran, according to Abdulmumin Sa'ad, a Muslim scholar and professor of sociology...
...director Guy Ritchie is trying hard to correct our mistake with his populist version of Sherlock Holmes, which features Robert Downey Jr.'s six-pack in a starring role and Jude Law as his partner more in bromance than crime solving. Ritchie's Holmes is smart, to be sure, as he's been in dozens of movies and television series, but his legendary embarrassment of mental riches isn't going to embarrass anyone. In this movie, his ability to throw a right hook or dodge a flying fist matters just as much as his brain. Our new Holmes fights bare...
...which version is correct? Well, both. Or neither. No one, it seems, is really sure. Both the church boxes and the servant presents definitely existed, although historians disagree on which practice inspired the holiday. But Boxing Day's origins aren't especially important to modern-day Brits - Britain isn't known for its religious fervor, and few people can afford to have servants anymore, anyway. Today's Boxing Day festivities have very little to do with charity. Instead, they revolve around food, football (soccer), visits from friends, food and drinking...
...Party-shot isn't going to send the amateur photographer the way of the switchboard operator. Still, for version 1.0, it is an adequate stand-in at large gatherings, and can come in really handy at small ones, like a family birthday, when nobody wants to be on camera duty. It guarantees that there will be some sort of photo documentation, making it a fairly cheap form of insurance against a lazy or distracted human photographer. It also guarantees, I suspect, a proliferation of even more mediocre photos on Facebook...
...Oxford Book of Carols, first published in 1928, was a landmark book that combined medieval carols, folk songs and Christmas songs from around the world, publishing 201 of them in a 700-page volume. An updated version, the New Oxford Book of Carols, was published in 1992. (Read a story about a church group attacking Christmas commercialism...