Thursday, May 17, 2007

Best of the farewell Falwell cartoons ;)


I know some of us might not be too familiar with this guy, but its divine comedy at its best ! I for one will miss you and I hope your soul will rest in "peace".

I'll leave you with the top 10 of his (Grr..) gems:

On Christianity:

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."

"
If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"
I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."


On politics :

"
The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

"
God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"
The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen."

"If I were president of the United States, I would include Muslims in my presidency."

On global warming:

"
I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."


On Women & Minorities:

"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."


finally on the Teletubbies (hell even those !) :"As a Christian I feel that role modelling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children."


ENJOY!

Edit: for anyone (more like one !) that might find this offensive i apologize i tried to keep my words limited and let the man speak for himself

Labels: , ,

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Bridging the Gap between Science and Faith (implied) - Dr. Naggar

relatively lately I started hearing people talking about a certain scholar in Islam who was trying to present the scientific miracles found in the passages of the Quran, my father, my sister, and a group of other people held a great admiration for this person. His name was zaghloul naggar.

Now I was intrigued since in my mind I couldn't really bridge two fundamental things; the scientific method, and faith. When Qwaider mentioned this issue Here I remembered to finish up this article


By definition the scientific method is suggesting a hypothesis on a natural phenomena, devising an experiment that proves the predicted results, and to be able to replicate these result with higher degree of accuracy. One of the main things is that those methods and result must be objective and be able to withstand careful scrutiny. This makes science an evolutionary idea, and never set in stone.

To contrast that we have "faith", a belief without reason. It is always set in stone ...

According to our dear Dr. they meet ever eloquently! now from the premise of this idea it didn't appeal to me at all, after all science and especially astrology is very volatile !

So am skeptic by nature but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I tried to listen to him occasionally usually didn't last long at all.
So i had to get my hands on some of his books so I would get to read them, and although I discussed much of the content with people before I didn't want to post this unless i finish the first part of the book. (the book was presented by Ahmad Faraj and as i understood its an adaption from some interviews)

So far after finishing the first part the most I learned is his reasoning of why when a theory that was used to explain the Quran is falsified it doesn't effect the integrity of the Quran. The reasoning is kind of a convoluted one, since he considers the Quran as the truth it doesn't affect it and its attributed to human error. essentially its not a big deal is what he is trying to say.

For me its that religion is based on faith, their are alot of articles of faith that contradict science.
If you are going to introduce scientific thought into religion the least you can do is justify those articles with a reasoning that is not based on faith.
that is the least you can do if you are allowed to use the scientific method, you can't be selective. you have be consistent and not side step things according to your whims.

Now am not gonna go into details but generally I found him selective in his references, when ever he sites something its so obscured that there is no way to trace it (e.g. I have a recording of the an astronaut that says ... ") . The other is the reinterpretation of science in a convenient ways(eg. there are two types of light, but science doesn't distinguish between them yet, but the Quran does .... there is Do2 and there noor, one is off the source the other is a reflection and they are different in a scientific sense, or so he infers) .

What was more drastic is his loose usage of arabic language and reading. Now I don't have a Phd and am sure as hell Arabic language skills are at most sub-par, but there is no way am going to read موسعون (mousi3oon as in knowledgeable, able ) as (muwasi3oon, expanding) . plus some other shrewd speech patterns that make you feel like you missed something (he refers to some people like he already mentioned them, but he never did).

Most common of all, is that he usually ignores the knowledge of people in that area. albeit it was not scientific but it was still pretty accurate. So when you tell a pearl diver that it gets darker the deeper you go down, he will most likely reply with "yes, i know". no surprise there, so why over simplify their experience and over complicate the meaning ...

so all in all. He might have a good intent in what he is doing, and he might think its for the greater good that he is discovering those "great" things. In the end its as amazing as numerology nothing more nothing less, and that is as pseudo scientific as astrology. Hid endeavors are mostly insulting and only the faithful will ignore the discrepancies in his selective pinching of evidence.

The wealth of Islam is in its spirituality and belief, and faith is the corner stone of religion. please keep it intact. If you think you will convert people based on your scientific evidence and not the spirituality of Islam, you won't able to withstand the scrutiny of an averagely educated skeptic.
If that is the reason then Stop, and if the reason is to give more pride in their holy book, they don't need it. We are already proud of the Quran regardless ! don't insult our faith.

One last note, people in the Arab word are complacent to the extent that any one who is shown on television and especially if they seem quite poised and well spoken. He earns their trust trust blindly, and they would not even question his statements. they are taken as fact rather than taking the burden of researching what they are being stuffed with. Its dangerous on a different level when those are scientific "facts" that are mangled and twisted... and when its mingled with religion their brains are programmed to shut down any logic circuits so its so hard for them to be faced with the reality that alot of what is being said is not what it seems .


ENJOY!

Labels: ,

Happy Wiretap the internet day !!

To commemorate the international (US technically) Wiretap the internet day that was observed on Monday the 14th of May, please celebrate with me by clicking on this link
HERE

Happy Wiretap day everyone
ENJOY!

Labels:

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Dogmatic Amalgam of Thoughts (part I)




After a recession of religious zealous during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, after the fall of the last Islamic empire, the entrenchment of the United States status as World super power, and the birth of the state of Israel. The religious mentality was reborn again.
At this point of time religious polarization of the globe has reached the point that we have presidents declaring a new age of the crusades, children being absorbed by martyrdom ideology and blunt usage of the rules of the gentiles.

The world seems to be psychotic !

Although religious population as a whole is declining, that gave rise to a backlash of fundamentalists extremism in the world's four major religions (since I don't have much knowledge about Hinduism, but given what I know about India, and it being one of the most religious countries in the world it might pertain to it as well).

Now regarding what I'll write about in this post, I have no status to speak from, I have no authority what so ever to be didactic. I am just a person with what he considers as 8 years of experience in life, and am just trying to share what goes through my head about this specific issue, since it personally affects me every day. So if you are offended by my piece of mind, please try to talk to me about it with out being too abusive (do i sound too scared .... am just trying to be gentle thats all and asking the same in return :D )




The overwhelming majority of us were born into a faith, based on that it shapes our outlook to life. It was always interesting how much of that shapes who we are in the world. We don't have a real choice when it comes to religion.

When a baby is born into this world it has no perception of religion, but as soon as you hear his first cry he starts feeling the full effect of religion in his daily life.

If he is born to Jewish, or Muslim parents then you are guaranteed that he is going to be circumcised (am not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing). Their name that they are going to carry for the rest of their life will reflect their religion in one way or another. Even their social status in some religions. plus the untold baggage of history that he will learn to carry on his back no matter where he is going to end up in his life.

Well in case you are wondering what Christian children have to go through then it is baptism, and until recently roman catholic children who died before they were baptized were going to reside in "limbo", so the pope naturally sent "them" to heaven .... it only took 8 centuries to come to that realization !

Now little children are like sponges they take in whatever information they find available to them, so evidently the most ripe age to in doctrine children in articles of faith is at a young age
for example

"43% of evangelical Christian become "born-again" before the age of 13"


Now evangelical Christians, Wahhabi (Salafi) Muslims, and Haredi Jews (funny thing the Firefox spell checker doesn't seem to recognize any word related to Judaism) got more in common than they think.

The main theme is to isolate the community in order to protect it from the outside world,
they discourage their followers from interacting with the outside world unless for necessity.
So children being brought up in such an environment (or for that matter these extreme examples could be expanded to other "moderate" sects) can really be moved in either way, since their critical thinking has been stripped out of them, and enforced with promises of eternal damnation instead.

Now one documentary that brought this to light was "Jesus Camp" (if your interested in seeing it u can download it at the bottom but you need bittorrent to do so). It just follows 3 evangelical children aged 9, 12, and 10 years old. What was shocking to me is not that they were inducing mass hysteria into the kids and getting them to speak, not that they were getting them to protest abortion, not that they were telling them that the earth is 6000 years old, and not even that they were praying and blessing George W. Bush !


It was how similar things were to how things are going on here (as in the Arab world), they even were looking up to the methods and commitment Palestinian children. the way the children work hard to garner the admiration and approval of their parents really drove their psyche to the edge.

Here is what one of the children's minister's and what she thinks about what children should do;



"I want to see people committed to the cause of JC as they are to the cause of Islam radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are... because "excuse me" we have the "TRUTH" " - Becky Fischer, a children minister

now that is a dangerous thought to pass on to the children, and that mentality of confrontation rather than understand is so entrenched that its hard to purge it when they are all grown up.

Ideas like global warming is not a real problem, just keep on guzzling fuel like we did. After all the world is ending anyways!

That "science doesn't proof anything" and that the age of the earth and humanity is approximately 6000 years.

These are really very dangerous thoughts. If you believe those without a shred of doubt then your critical thinking abilities have been shredded to nihilism.

Now the double whammy is that most of the evangelical children are home schooled, i.e. they are not scrutinized to peer critique.
So the end product; you get children saying things like:
"when I dance I really have to make sure that its for God, cause people will notice when you are dancing for the flesh" - Tory, 10 years old

"sometimes I don't even believe in what the bible says that makes me a faker. that makes me feel guilty and bad cause god always talked to me about that and I kept rejecting him" - a young boy at the camp after having a break-down

"I was saved when I was five years old" - Levi, 12 years old

"this world all it feeds you is trash" - Levi, 12 years old

"thats what alot of people in this world are! they are sick, they are looking for something. " - Levi, 12 years old


when I heard those lines, they just seemed so familiar.
So essentially we end up with a closed minded generation of kids, who are willing to suspend all logic for the sake of their faith. who started their political activism from the youngest age, and blindly adhere to a single party of thought. This makes them very susceptible to manipulation by a figure head. They have no ability to understand other school of thoughts and blatantly fight them and ridicule them.

Now think about this scenario but look at it happening in all three major religions, who all believe they are getting ready for the confrontation of Armageddon.

Thats the nature of the world that I was born into, how lucky am I.

I can't really think what could be done to change the route these people are taking, the only way I can think of ,but will never be implemented in the age that it really matters, is to teach comparative religions that way the thoughts and ideas will not be foreign. Ridicule will be minimized since it'll be done in a safe environment that diffuses it, and people will learn to be tolerant and more understand, even the moderate and less religious people need that !
They should be the ones pushing for it, but alas our pride will stop us from understanding since ridiculing others is the easiest and safest way...

As i promised here is a link to "Jesus Camp" on the web, and if you would like to watch it here is a bittorent download .

Just for irony's sake the camp was called "kids on fire", held in Devil's lake, North Dakota.

I leave you with those two quotes:
"we are engaged today in what they call a culture war... we want to reclaim America for Christ"
"Devil we know what you like to do ..."

ps. although this was originally not meant to talk about "Jesus camp" as much as it ended up doing, but it felt very applicable since its one of the few sources in my memory of religious extremism in children.
ps. i wanted to confine this part to topics pertaining to the children .
ps. this article was a tough writting i just hope i did my thoughts justice with my words (i don't know how to carry this conversation on with out getting people to pull me one way or another....... GRRRR )

Labels: , ,

Monday, May 14, 2007

Some nice jokes for the morning !


George Carlin Quotes
  • I don’t have pet peeves — I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!
  • Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
  • There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven….baaaad words.” That’s what they told us, right? …You know the seven, don’t ya? That you can’t say on TV? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.
  • Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
  • The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.
  • Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.”
  • I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.
  • In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.
  • “One thing leads to another”? Not always. Sometimes one thing leads to the same thing. Ask an addict.
  • “Meow” means “woof” in cat.
  • The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice.
  • I don’t have a fear of heights. I do, however, have a fear of falling from heights.
  • I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
  • It isn’t fair: the caterpillar does all the work, and the butterfly gets all the glory.
  • The planet is fine. The people are fucked.
  • Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.
The internet is going to be officially tapped from yesterday onwards ... at least all traffic to and from the US (btw that is no joke !)

quotes courtesy of blogzarro.com

Labels: ,

Sunday, May 13, 2007

And they Say history Repeats its self .....

Only if people learn to draw patterns from the pages of history, here is a great documentary of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Its concise and gives a quick breeze of refreshment to our minds.

Only if ....



Hopefully you will learn a few good lessons of why single super power model of the world is not a sustainable one .....
And why ideologies are expendable in face of reality, and interests reign supreme

ENJOY

courtesy of documentaries.ws

Labels: ,

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A reasoning ... Why I Use English instead of arabic


Today it just hit me to think of the reason why I predominately use English as my language of choice... while regardless of what I claim Arabic is supposed to be my mother tongue.

Alot of venom gets spat around just for using this language, I am too familiar with the run of the mill reasons; it's a proof of the elitist class, the language of the enemy, Arabic is a wonderful language, and yare yare yare ...

As I got lost in my chain of thoughts it brought me back in the years to notice where did it change, and i came to the following conclusions...
unlike kids today were the parents are over pretentious about displaying their wonderful abilities is speaking the most abysmal English ever spoken (hmm not really but pretty up there, south asian, and asian FOB's gotta take the cake) and transfering the "fruit" of their knowledge to their young ones back in the day that attitude was more lax, and still my generation came out as it is right now. So that scratched the "parents are using english more and more with their kids" reason, i just had to get that out of the way.

Now i have been comfortable with English more so than in Arabic for as far as i could remember, with memories dating back to the preschool days (even mentioned it before in here ).

When i was young all the material that was available for me from Arabic origins was always talking down to me. Dad says do that and that (think "kaman 7azeen" or may "eureka"), religion says do that (oh so many religious kids shows in my days to count), society says do that ("2ifta7 ya sim sim"). essentially the other option to that demeaning programing was .... a dumber than dumb Arabic publications.

From then it got burned in my mind that whatever had a hint of an Arabic influence degraded the quality of the product. (hey i liked sesame street parts of 2ifta7 ya sim sim, but hated the rest) essentially there was no escape, no area for just breathing a fresh air. Kids are already absorbing so much information from their society and surroundings that they find escape when they head to TV and books.
So when they start to compare the originals and Arabic versions they start to notice subtle and mostly non subtle difference. With time that drives them to stray away in pursuit of the truth, which at a young age they revere it as the holy grail.

Then the pursuit to find suitable reading material since all efforts to find watchable TV material that didn't seem to over stress the lessons you to endure to enjoy the show have all failed (remember how depressing all the TV shows were ? with the exception of like grendaizer, and all the other mecha shows ..... there was just too many drama "am an orphaned kid pity me cartoons"). So you start reading some Arabic stories it doesn't take to long to figure out that it seems "ali" and "alia" are pretty much every where doing almost the same thing .... no creativity at all, and later in life you find the ones that interested you the most were only adaptations (the example to spring to mind is a book series I loved when i was in KG , it was called "burhan" which was French in origin if am not mistaken). So you keep going back to the same point over and over... that the quality of stimulation that you get from Arabic material is lot lower than anything else that you know.


The vague glimmer of an admirable all arabic production in my mind was a Syrian show, I think it was called "kan zaman" where a grand mother tells fantasy stories to her grand children each episode. that was a well done show for the time :)

by that time the kid hits school age, and smack he is hit with a tough as hell curriculum of grammar .... and a lethargically misadventures of a kid and girl.
Dare we forget the poetry which is either of a national flavor or way beyond relevance to the kids age. So that encourages the regurgitation rather than the digestion of the information.

Then due to lack of any stepping stones since they are not deemed literal heralds, you are thrown into the pits of "abu 2il 2isba3 2al 3odwani" and "2al ja7ith". just the name should drive to strangle your self....
The literally level is so high that every time you read a paragraph of "2al bo'5ala2", it makes you feel like the idea of bashing your head against the wall seem like an act of mercy xD
So at that point you are frustrated, and unless you were of the lucky minority who had a knack for learning Arabic (Yes reality is so few of us have the innate ability to comprehend it so easily) you were left with the "duck and run BOY! " option.

While all of this is going on, you are exposed to mind blowing experience in what you perceive as English speaking programs. You progress in your reading from Dr.Seuss style books to Ronald Dahl ... to Ian Flemming. which ease the transition to the prophets of the pen....
You learn grammar through exposure and practice, not through rules and memory cramming. In a way that it becomes second nature for you, and you don't really have to think and doubt your self "is it a dumma or kasra, willa la2 fee noon 2il niswa .... AHH"

So you learn to think in English for the sole reason that it makes more sense to do that ! eventually you decide that the highest competency you CAN achieve in Arabic is the colloquial Arabic, and regarding "kawa3ed" they lost you at the tenses and now they are discussing "3orood" (poetry meters as far as I understood it).....
Your 9th grade poetry book is discussing a renegade women riding a Harley smoking her reefer and discussing how she got deflowered, while Mr. Hatim seems to be like a broken record bitching about how he killed his horse to feed his guests .... Nice going STUPID!

Tell me now is it any wonder why ??!!

(I should have probably never included the last line since it will prompt a knee jerk reaction due to the claimed "hedonistic" tendencies of poetry, but I can't recall how many lines of virgins and wine I had to memorize during my school while being told in the following 30 minutes that we are not supposed to appreciate those things. That is just neurosis in a book ! )


Essentially language bridges in Arabic are very lacking, they are delusional in their belief that you can make the shift from every day speech to something spoken 1400 years ago and still be able to relate and comprehend. There is a reason why you don't get exposed to Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare till later in life, and it feels like the books are reborn than what you recall when you first read them and they didn't make any skills.

It simply means you were not ready then, so stop discarding poorly written stories that help bridge the gap or start producing works for different levels.
The really sad thing about this all is that I don't feel remorse for not learning Arabic in a proper way, since the reality of the matter is I don't use it for anything more than every day speech ........ I can't even maintain interest in reading an Arabic book because I don't have an impetus to bridge my gap, since there is nothing of interest that isn't translated, and when i read the translated version then i'll refer to the original to verify a few doubts I would have for the context and carry on .........


Ok fun Fact of the day, almost 70% of this post was thought off during a shower today. I guess the heat and having the AC busted at work finally got to me.

Listening to: PANIC! AT THE DISCO - Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Witheout Taking Her Clothes Off

Labels: , ,

Saturday, May 05, 2007

BamBam ..... SP Style!


Well I feel silly ...

Labels: ,

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Wanna drive a message through ..... here is one way to put it

A very intriguing commercial ....... caution is advised, adult material is involved


ps. better stop doing this, this is turning into a joke of a blog, am gonna stop including so many videos ... ~_~'

Labels: ,

AC, Welcome to the party ........ here is what you have in store for you :D

AC won last night 3-0 over Man U, with goals coming from Kaka, Seedorf, Gialardino(sp?)



ENJOY - May 23rd can't come quick enough ...
btw try to leash Gatuso he may have the rabies ..

Labels:

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Wooo Hoooo ... Merseysiders IN blue mercenaries are OUT !


Hell ya ! We are back BABY .......

Liverpool 1-0 in the first 90 min
Liverpool 4-1 Chelsea on penalties (Zenden, Xabi Alonso, Gerrard and Dirk Kuyt - Lampard)
(2 saves by Pepe on Arjen Roben, and Geremi)
We Owned, and pawned
The second time we are there in 3 years ...... join the Barca fans in moaning HAHA !

Goals coming from Daniel Agger at the 22 minute mark, a superb strike to the right of Cech from a set piece played by Gerrard.
A legit goal by Dirk Kuyt disallowed in the first period of extra time.

The match was tightly matched, the KOP was explosive as usual. We definitely had our twelfth man attending with a deafening presence. the first half saw Liverpool dominating possession by 65-35 the first 30 minutes of each half were dominated by Liverpool while Chelsea settled for whats left of the half.

a magnificent performance by the REDS, Pepe took care of the goal keeping superbly having a couple of excellent saves. Zenden seemed 10 years younger he literally plowed the field.
Agger & Carra held it tight in the back, and Kyut irked the Chelsea defense non stop.

Do i need to mention the Cap ! ? Hell yeah Stephen Gerrard was ......... well Stephen Gerrard what hasn't been already said about him, the man is the beating heart of the Merseysiders .

Chelsea missed out Carvhlo alot today, while Terry was solid at the back. Drogba was the faker that he usually is, but thanks to the referee he didn't get away with as much as he wanted. Lampard for the most part seemed out of the game, in short the quest to garner a behemoth 4-title season took its tole on the team and it shows, and from the looks of it they might end the season empty handed.


Damn am excited, and probably this is the most poorly written piece of written i did since 5th grade .
I DON'T CARE !! Athena here we come we have a date with our sixth...... May 23rd And it would be all the sweeter if we get to cock block AC again :P
and we sing:

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone


I'll ENJOY, blue mercs eat your heart out !
in case you missed it, am ....... RED


EDIT : Video of the game ..




pictures courtesy of eurosport

Labels: