Barry Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law, "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." (From Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine, 1991)

Today's quotes from a science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke:

Clarke's Three Laws

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962)

Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962)

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)

Interesting news:

JERUSALEM (AP) - A confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that his government would support a division of Jerusalem, which is reportedly a key component of an Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be made at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference next month.

As part of recent negotiations between the sides, Deputy Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon has proposed turning over many of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Ramon said the Palestinians could establish the capital of a future state in the sector of the city, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

In return, Israel would receive the recognition of the international community, including Arab states, of its sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the existence of its capital there, Ramon said.

On Monday Ramon said even hawkish elements of Olmert's coalition, like Cabinet Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party, would back such an Israeli concession. The centrist Labor Party would also support the proposal, Ramon said.

"There are two central parties that agree to this," Ramon told Army Radio. "The most important thing is to preserve the state of Israel Jewish and democratic."

Under his proposal, neighborhoods in east Jerusalem where about 170,000 Palestinians live would be transferred to Palestinian sovereignty, Ramon said.

Prediction: the Palestinians and Arabs will respond to this proposal by lobbing more mortars at Israelis, together with stepped up attempts at suicide bombing. They are unlikely to accept the proposal. Instead, they will complain about what Israel isn't offering them, accuse them of playing games and not being serious, along with offering lists of the other faults of the Israeli government and how that once again Israel is guilty of not being serious about peace.

If they do accept it, the Palestinians will simply move in mortars and other weapons and use the newly acquired territory for more attacks against the Jews. Any Israeli response will be greeted by more accusations of their warmongering and oppression.

Science fiction/fantasy author quote of the day, from Neil Gaiman, author of Neverwhere and American Gods:

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

from an essay at neilgaiman.com.

The daily mortar attacks from Gaza into Israel rarely make the news. You might not have heard about today's attack:

Two Palestinian armed groups said Sunday they launched four homemade rockets from northern Gaza Strip at the southern Israeli town of Sderout early in the day.

The armed wings of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Fatah movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas claimed their responsibility for the attack in leaflets.

The two groups also told media that they attacked the Israeli- Egyptian crossing by eight mortar shells.

Oddly enough, besides being reported in the Jerusalem Post, as one might expect, the above quote came from People's Daily, which comes out of China.

I am still trying to figure out why Israel is always painted as a bad guy. But of course criticism of Israeli policies could never, ever be a consequence of anti-Semitism. Surely the constant drumbeat of negative statements against Israel by those on the far left and far right, in the universities and elsewhere is nothing but legitimate criticism of the Israeli government's current policies. Odd, how both Hamas and Fatah, despite their differences, seem united in their commitment to attacking Israel.

I'm just curious as to what the Palestinians have ever done to promote peace. Perhaps their constant preaching in mosques, newspapers, school text books, magazines, radio shows, and television shows of Nazi-style anti-Semitism are designed to encourage peace with Israel?

Of course if the Israelis respond to this attack in any way, the critics of Israel will be quick to argue that it is Israel, and Israel alone, that is guilty of putting roadblocks in the way to peace. After all, if it weren't for how awful Israel is to the Palestinians, none of this would be happening (which reminds me of what neanderthals have to say about rape victims, but I'm sure I'm just being viscious). I'm sure it would be rude on my part to suggest that those critics of Israeli policy who seem always silent about daily mortar attacks and anti-Semitic preaching might be oh, just a wee bit anti-Semitic themselves in their one sided condemnations of the only liberal democratic nation in the Middle East.

An etymology lesson from a philologist:



I don't recall my English professors ever looking like this. My wife discovered Marina's video lessons and made me watch some of them. If all English teachers looked like this, there would be no child left behind--at least if that child was male. Just visit YouTube and do a search under "hotforwords."

From an interview with newspaper editor Flemming Rose, Revisiting the Danish Cartoon Crisis

But what really bothers me today—and this hasn't been reported very widely—is that right after the cartoon crisis, the Organization of the Islamic Conference at the United Nations sponsored a resolution condemning the "ridiculing of religion." It didn't pass, but in March of this year the United Nations Human Rights Consul, which is the highest international body in the world for the protection of human rights, passed a resolution condoning state punishment of people criticizing religion. I think this is a big scandal. This was a direct result of the "cartoon crisis." Fortunately the European Union voted against it. But countries like Russia, Mexico and China supported the resolution. And in this resolution, they call on governments to pass laws or write provisions into their constitutions forbidding criticism of religion. This would give a free hand to authoritarian regimes around the world to clamp down on dissidents.

The whole interview is worth reading.

Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein quotes for the day:

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

and

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

Both of these are from his 1973 novel, Time Enough for Love. One can read a bunch more of his quotes at Wikiquote.

Japan orbited the moon today:

Japan's Kaguya probe slid into lunar orbit late Wednesday after a circuitous 20-day trek from Earth to begin more than a dozen science investigations designed to gain insights about the moon's history.

Email today from Barnes and Noble letting me know they have corrected the spelling of my name on their website for my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People. I checked, and the spelling correction has already appeared, though they still show Penguin Group, USA as the publisher rather than Reader's Digest.

Happy birthday to the Space Age. 50 years ago today Sputnik became the first artificial satellite.

Christian Book Distributors has let me know that they're fixing my name on their website for my book. Amazon fixed the problem on their site yesterday. So I'm only waiting on Barnes and Noble now.

Interesting article from the British center-left magazine, Prospect:

The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition's role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.

Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world's axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world's largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam.

The great question in deciding whether to keep fighting in Iraq is not about the morality and self-interest of supporting a struggling democracy that is also one of the most important countries in the world. The question is whether the war is winnable and whether we can help the winning of it. The answer is made much easier by the fact that three and a half years after the start of the insurgency, most of the big questions in Iraq have been resolved. Moreover, they have been resolved in ways that are mostly towards the positive end of the range of outcomes imagined at the start of the project. The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team's success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity; even the Kurds—whose reluctant commitment to autonomy rather than full independence is in no danger of changing—celebrated. Iraq's condition has not caused a sectarian apocalypse across the region. The country has ceased to be a threat to the world or its region. The only neighbours threatened by its status today are the leaders in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran.

The whole article is worth reading.

Amazon has updated my name to "R.P. Nettelhorst" on my new book's listing on their website. So when you click on my name on my book's page, it now gives you a list of my other books. Potentially, that could increase sales of those books--assuming of course, that people like The Bible's Most Fascinating People.

Speaking of liking: for a couple days I noticed that it was a best seller in a narrow category of "stories" from the Bible--it got at least as high as 29 out of 100, but it has since dropped off that list and the page no longer references that list. Apparently someone had recently pre-ordered the book again and that boosted my sales figures, briefly. The Amazon sales rank is incredibly volitile. A single sale can move you way up on the list, for a little while. But as the days pass with no more sales, the number quickly declines....

I got a nice email from Amazon.com today letting me know that they will fix my name on their website within "two or three" days. So my book The Bible's Most Fascinating People will now be listed as by "R.P. Nettelhorst" instead of by "Robin Paul Nettelhorst." The nice thing about the change, besides it being my preferred byline, is that it will link my new book with my other books--which may help sales of the older books. At least I like to think it will.

As to why I prefer my byline to be "R.P. Nettelhorst," it is related to the fact that 87 per cent of the people in the United States who are named "Robin" are female. I didn't recognized this could be a problem until I started getting junk mail addressed to "Miss," including tampon samples. The first two days in a row in a new High School my Senior year, one of my teachers called out "Miss Nettelhorst" as he was doing roll call. That's when I realized I had to take action. Ever after, if my name is going to be seen by people who don't know me, I use my initials. That way they won't automatically assume I'm female.

Caroline Glick writing in the Jerusalem Post makes some interesting points regarding the recent visit of the Iranian President:

IT COULD be argued that since Ahmadinejad's central message failed to register on his Western audiences that his visit to America was a failure. The fact that no media organs felt it necessary to analyze what he was talking about could be seen as a clear sign that no one is interested in buying what he is selling. But this is a dangerous argument, for it misses a basic truth.

Ahmadinejad is not interested in convincing the US government or even the majority of Americans to convert to Islam. He is interested in convincing adherents of totalitarian Islam and potential converts to the cause that they are on the winning side. He is interested in demoralizing foes of totalitarian Islam within the Islamic world and so causing them to give up any thoughts of struggle. In this goal he is no different from any of his Sunni counterparts in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or their sister organizations throughout the Islamic world and indeed throughout the West.

Throughout the world, Islamic ideologues are aggressively spreading their message of global domination. In mosques, on the Internet, on television, in schools, hospitals and prisons, Islamic preachers can be found propagating the cause of Islamic domination. And aside from Iran, no regime, including the Saudi regime, is immune from the pressures of the message.

Perhaps the central reason that Ahmadinejad's message, and the hundreds of thousands of voices echoing his call throughout the world, are so dangerous is because the Free World is making precious little effort to assert its own message. Indeed, rather than contend forthrightly with the challenge that men like Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden pose to the West, the West searches for ways to either co-opt their message by seeking out points of agreement or to show that really, the Islamic imperialists have nothing to fear from the West.

The whole article is worth reading.

October 4, 1957 will be the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age. On that date, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik on top of a R-7 intercontinental balistic missile originally designed to send nuclear warheads to US targets. The R-7 was used by the Soviets to launch the first man into orbit a few years later and modified versions of that rocket continue to loft the current Soyuz Passenger Ships and Progress Cargo Ships to the International Space Station.

There is an interesting article in Newsweek about the effect of Sputnik, attempting to downplay its significance. I don't think the revisionism of the article is entirely right and it seems, especially in its conclusion, entirely too negative about the value of Sputnik's legacy and spaceflight in general.

There is an element in the intellegentsia who think that spaceflight is a waste of money. I think those with that opinion are shortsighted, without much sense of wonder or vision, and ignorant.

Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness

The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains might shut out this same information through a process called "latent inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.

"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with high IQ. ....

...."We are very excited by the results of these studies," says Peterson. "It appears that we have not only identified one of the biological bases of creativity but have moved towards cracking an age-old mystery: the relationship between genius, madness and the doors of perception."

This may explain a lot about writers...

Tim Rutten, writing in this morning's Los Angeles Times, does a good job pointing out the problem with allowing the President of Iran to speak at Columbia:

One of the world's truly dangerous men, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left New York a clear winner this week, and he can thank the arrogance of the American academy and most of the U.S. news media's studied indifference for his victory.

If the blood-drenched history of the century just past had taught American academics one thing, it should have been that the totalitarian impulse knows no accommodation with reason. You cannot change the totalitarian mind through dialogue or conversation, because totalitarianism -- however ingenious the superstructure of faux ideas with which it surrounds itself -- is a creature of the will and not the mind. That's a large lesson, but what should have made Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University this week a wholly avoidable debacle was the school's knowledge of its own, very specific history.

Read the whole article.

Every so often (well, okay, several times a day) I look to see what's up with my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People. It is currently listed with all the online booksellers that I'm aware of: Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Christian Book Distributors. Only Amazon and Borders spell my name right (of course, Borders online store is actually just Amazon with Borders labeling in the corners). The other online sellers mispell my name in the most common way: "Nettlehorst" reversing the "l" and the "e." Of course, Amazon and Borders make the mistake of listing my whole name, "Robin Paul Nettelhorst" instead of my preferred "R.P. Nettelhorst." So far, I haven't figured out how to correct any of this. At least in the actual, physical book, on the title page and on the cover, my name is spelled properly.

So far, the cover illustration for the book has not appeared on any of the online sites, though in the Winter Catalog for Putnam Praise, there is a fuzzy image of it.

Oh, and that's the other odd thing. Barnes and Nobel lists the publisher not as Reader's Digest, but as "Penguin Group (USA)"; Putnam is part of the Penguin Group. Perhaps it being listed in their catalog confused Barnes and Noble?

I really don't think I understand the publishing world yet.

UPDATE:

After I wrote that post, I decided to hunt about on the Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com websites, I soon discovered how to let them know about correcting their listings. Now to see if they make the changes I requested.

Almost disturbing, but a funny mashup of Star Trek:

I stepped outside this morning, as I normally do, to get the newspaper. The time was about 6 AM. I looked up at the sky and saw a bright object, nearly as bright as Venus (which is currently up in the morning and very, very bright), moving across the sky, flickering only as it would pass behind thin clouds. I watched it for a couple minutes until I couldn't see it on account of the trees. I've seen objects move like that before, going from west to east and my first thought was: that's the International Space Station.

I went inside, called up Sky Watch, a Java aplet that NASA has on one of their websites and entered the data. I was right: it was the ISS. Here's what the aplet told me for my location in Lancaster:

Fri Sep 28@5:57:24 rise
Fri Sep 28@6:07:00 set

Max elevation (degrees) 36.7

It's the first time I had seen it.

Made me happy.

The Dawn spacecraft is on its way to the asteroid belt. It took off this morning about 7:30 Eastern Time (4:30 Pacific).

Meanwhile, MSNBC relates that astronomers have found something odd:

A new and intense type of radio burst has been discovered in archived views of the cosmos, astronomers revealed today.

The single, short-lived blast of radio waves likely occurred some 3 billion light-years from Earth, and it may signal a cosmic car crash of two neutron stars, the death throes of a black hole — or something else.

As a Star Trek fan I like to imagine it's a starship going to warp. But I know it's probably something more mundane (as if coliding neutron stars or a dying black hole isn't actually something quite weird in its own right).

If the weather cooperates and there are no technical glitches, the Dawn spacecraft will launch aboard a Delta II about 7:20 AM Eastern Time (4:20 Pacific Time) on Thursday for a long voyage to visit Vesta and Ceres, two asteroids who between them account for about 1/3 of the mass of the rubble that makes up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn will reach Vesta in 2011 and spend 10 months there before voyaging on to Ceres, which it will reach in 2015. Ceres is interesting because observations from Hubble indicate it has a thin atmosphere and a thick layer of water ice beneath its surface. If that turns out to be true, Ceres may contain nearly six times as much fresh water as Earth (in frozen form). Ceres is large enough that it is now classified as a "dwarf planet" like Pluto.

The Dawn spacecraft is interesting because it will be using ion propulsion on its long trek (once it leaves Earth orbit), rather than chemical rockets. Dawn is also notable because it will be the first spacecraft to enter into orbit around two different planetary bodies other than the Earth and Moon.

Visit NASA's Dawn Mission Home Page.

September 26, 1983 could have been a very bad day, but thanks to a Soviet soldier who chose to do nothing, it wasn't:

1983: A Soviet ballistics officer draws the right conclusion -- that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm -- thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

Read the whole very interesting article from Wired Magazine.

Accordng to the British newspaper, the Telegraph, "Parallel universe proof boosts time travel hopes:"

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea.

The work has wider implications since the idea of parallel universes sidesteps one of the key problems with time travel. Every since it was given serious lab cred in 1949 by the great logician Kurt Godel, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.

But the existence of parallel worlds offers a way around these troublesome paradoxes, according to David Deutsch of Oxford University, a highly respected proponent of quantum theory, the deeply mathematical, successful and baffling theory of the atomic world.

He argues that time travel shifts between different branches of reality, basing his claim on parallel universes, the so-called "many-worlds" formulation of quantum theory.

As a science fiction author and fan, of course I like this and hope it's all true. The theological implications of the Many Worlds Hypothesis have always been interesting to me, too.

According to the US Military:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iran is smuggling advanced weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, into Iraq to be used by extremists against American troops, the US military charged on Sunday.

US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told reporters in Baghdad that Iran was shifting sophisticated arms such as "RPG-29s, explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), 240 mm rockets and Misagh-1 surface-to-air missiles" across its borders into Iraq.

An EFP is a feared roadside bomb which when it explodes emits a white-hot slug of molten copper that can cut through the armoured skins of US military vehicles.

Fox reiterated that Iranian national Mahmudi Farhadi, detained on Thursday in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah, is one of the kingpins in the bomb smuggling operations.

"He is a member of the Ramazan Corps, the Quds Force department responsible for all operations in Iraq," Fox said.

So Columbia allowed the leader of a country that is actively killing Americans to come address its students. The words Bollinger, the president of Columbia, spoke before the dictator of Iran began rambling do not undo the mistake of giving him a forum as part of the "Columbia Distinguished Lecture Series." As Hugh Hewett pointed out, Bollinger does not seem capable of imagining that "skilled propagandists are at work for the other side, and that Ahmadinejad's non-answers to the questions posed to him will benefit him and his regime." He is naive beyond belief.

Hugh Hewett went on to write in an article entitled Bollinger's Fantasy World:

Today's fiasco has nothing to do with what Bollinger said, a name little known or long remembered anywhere outside of the upper West Side. It is about the platform Columbia provided this thug who is actively engaged in the killing of American soldiers and Marines while plotting the extermination of Israel.

“Gays do not exist in Iran,” according to the Iranian president. He insists women are well treated and respected and free in Iran. He also assures us that he was apparently only joshing about that wiping Israel off the map thing, since, he assures us, he really has no plans to attack any country. He also, he tells us, is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, even as the centrifuges spin.

Of course, Hitler, after signing that treaty with Chamberlain in 1938, assured the world that he had no more territorial ambitions. The Iranian president couldn’t possibly be lying about gays and women, so of course we can trust him about that other stuff, can’t we?

Why do I find it so hard to shake the feeling that I’m living in the late 1930’s all over again?

Columbia sued to prevent access by U.S. military recruiters to their students. They banned the ROTC from their campus. And yet Columbia's administration talks in glowing terms about allowing diverse opinions and freedom of speach.

Somehow it's appropriate to give an official invite to someone who denies the Holocaust, hates Jews and wishes to see Israel wiped off the map? They'd like to hear the views of a man who presides over a government that oppresses its people, executes gays, hangs teenaged girls, and anyone else they decide they don't like?

The Iranian thug can say anything he wants. But why does a major university have to give him a forum? Is it impossible to render moral judgments against hate-filled murderers? Would they sanction a speach by a serial killer from the local prison?

Perhaps Columbia's administration believes that a man who favors executing children has something worthwhile to contribute to their students? Frontpage Magazine had a discussion three years ago about the slow hanging of a sixteen year old girl in Iran:

Execution of a 16 Year Old Girl

The president of Iran is an evil man heading up a vile government.

I'm sure people can find bad things to say about the U.S. and about Israel. But pointing out the faults of one group does not absolve the other group of their crimes or make them equivalent to the first. Pointing out that someone else has unpaid parking tickets does nothing to make the criticism of your murders invalid or make you any less a murderer.

They liked the Nazis then, and I guess they still do:

Anti-semitism is a long tradition at Columbia University, apparently. Their current decision to allow the anti-Semitic thug running Iran follows a pattern, as reported by George Mason University's History News Network:

Columbia University has invited a representative of the world’s most antisemitic regime to speak on its campus. This week’s news? Try 1933.

Seventy years before this week’s invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitler’s regime. The invitation to Iran’s leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him. Luther represented "the government of a friendly people," Butler insisted. He was "entitled to be received ... with the greatest courtesy and respect." Ambassador Luther's speech focused on what he characterized as Hitler's peaceful intentions. Students who criticized the Luther invitation were derided as “ill-mannered children” by the director of Columbia’s Institute of Arts and Sciences.

Columbia also insisted on maintaining friendly relations with Nazi-controlled German universities. While Williams College terminated its program of student exchanges with Nazi Germany, Columbia and other universities declined to do likewise. Columbia refused to pull out even after a German official candidly asserted that his country’s students were being sent abroad to serve as “political soldiers of the Reich.”

Certain groups in the U.S. were perfectly happy with the Nazis up until Hitler broke the agreement with the Soviet Union and invaded it. They didn't complain at all when the Nazis and Communists divided Poland between them. It didn't bother them what they were doing to Jews, or the mentally ill, or the disabled. They didn't mind the book burnings either.

Somehow anti-Semitism never seems to entirely go out of style with some people, though they insist sanctimoniously that they merely have disagreements with Zionism and the current government in Israel. They are loud in their denunciation of the Jewish state for it's supposed mistreatment of Palestinians. But they don't seem to mind that the Iranians hang gays, preach hatred against the Jews, oppress women, and restrict the press and speach of its citizens. Of course, they don't seem to mind that the Palestinians do that, too, in addition to the terrorist bombings and the like. They remain silent to the barbarity of the Moslem regimes of the Middle East.

I'm really sick of the willful blindness and the plucking at splinters while ignoring logs.

Today is "Talk Like a Pirate Day!"

For details, go to Talk Like a Pirate.

I looked at CNN's website this morning and thought this was worded oddly:

The Israeli security Cabinet declared Hamas-controlled Gaza a "hostile entity" today in response to continued Palestinian rocket attacks. The unanimous Cabinet vote represents a major escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Gaza has--every day--launched rockets into Israel. But Israel's cabinet votes to express the obvious, that Gaza, controlled by the terrorist group Hamas is a "hostile entity" and this "represents a major escalation?" Silly me, I'd have thought shooting rockets at Israel was a bigger escalation than a harshly worded statement. Why is it that Israel is always the bad guy, not the jerks shooting rockets, sending out suicide bombers, or broadcasting Nazi-like anti-semitic statements on their radio, TV and in their schools--every day?

The Google Lunar X-Prize has been announced. 30 million dollars to the first team to land a robotic rover on the moon.



I hope it's as successful as the 10 million dollar Ansari X-Prize.

Go to googlelunarxprize.org for more details.

How the Palestinians responded to this news:




Remember, as Matthias Küntzel wrote, "The refusal...to recognize the substance of Islamist ideology--the death cult, the hatred of Jews, and the profound hatred of freedom--leads back again and again to the mistaken 'discovery' that the 'root cause' of terrorism is U.S. policies. Ultimately, the refusal to recognize al Qaeda's true motives results in a reversal of responsibility: The more deadly the terrorism, the greater the American guilt. The appeal of this approach is related to the specious hope it holds out: If suicide terrorism has its roots in U.S. policy, then a change in U.S. policy can assuage terrorism and the fear it induces. Al Qaeda, meanwhile, benefits, since the bloodier its attacks, the greater the anger against .  .  . the United States."

Another interesting article. I found out about this one by way of Instapundit. It's by Matthias Küntzel. Jew-Hatred and Jihad The Nazi roots of the 9/11 attack:

As in the 1930s and 1940s, the sheer absurdity of the claims makes it difficult for educated people to believe that anyone could take them seriously. Nonetheless, this notion of Jews as the root of all evil continues to inspire the mass murder of civilians in Israel and to motivate the joy with which Islamists greet those murders. "Hitler's Islamic heirs," as the historian Jehuda Bauer has called the Islamists, have replaced an anticolonialism aspiring to emancipation with a Jew-hatred aspiring to salvation through the annihilation of everyone "Jewish." It should not be surprising to find Osama bin Laden accusing "the Jews" of "taking hostage America and the West"--or to find Mohamed Atta's acquaintances attributing to him a Nazi worldview. What is truly surprising is that this Islamist hatred of Jews is often overlooked by Western analysts, political actors, and media.

As noted above, the 9/11 Commission Report is a case in point. Instead of discussing the fact that Jew-hatred had reached epidemic proportions in the Islamic world well before September 11, the report gives the impression that Islamism originally arose in response to recent American and Western policies. This is first conveyed in a remark on the early days of Islamism, when, we are told, "Fundamentalists helped articulate anticolonial grievances," an idea that ignores crucial dimensions of the outlook of the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1930s. The stereotypical message that the West is responsible is repeated in the report's analysis of bin Laden's motives: "Bin Laden's grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper." The report gets the history wrong. The al Qaeda leader was first politicized not by "specific U.S. policies," but by the writings of Sayyid Qutb and the jihadist lectures of Abdullah Azzam. As a result, the commission's explanation of al Qaeda's appeal is one-sided: "As political, social, and economic problems created flammable societies, Bin Laden used Islam's most extreme fundamentalist traditions as his match."

It is, of course, true that Islamists seek to exploit social problems for their own ends. But Islamism is not an ideology that ignites protest as it rubs up against social injustice. On the contrary, what provokes Islamist violence is any sign of modern development in the Muslim world: scientific inquiry, political or personal self-determination, economic progress, women's equality, freedom of expression in cinema and theater. The radicalization of Islam is less the consequence of poverty and lack of opportunity than their cause.

The refusal to see this and to recognize the substance of Islamist ideology--the death cult, the hatred of Jews, and the profound hatred of freedom--leads back again and again to the mistaken "discovery" that the "root cause" of terrorism is U.S. policies. Ultimately, the refusal to recognize al Qaeda's true motives results in a reversal of responsibility: The more deadly the terrorism, the greater the American guilt. The appeal of this approach is related to the specious hope it holds out: If suicide terrorism has its roots in U.S. policy, then a change in U.S. policy can assuage terrorism and the fear it induces. Al Qaeda, meanwhile, benefits, since the bloodier its attacks, the greater the anger against .  .  . the United States.

The same pattern explains the bizarre reaction to the Middle East conflict that is widespread in the West: The average observer, ignorant of the anti-Jewish content of the Hamas Charter, has to find some other explanation for terrorism against Jews, which must be--Israel. It is not the terrorists who are guilty, but their victims. Finding suicide terrorism incomprehensible, Westerners rationalize it as an act of despair that invites sympathy. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. Here, too, following the principle of "the more barbaric the anti-Jewish terror, the greater the Israeli guilt," the bombers' victims become the scapegoat for global terrorism. The old stereotype of Jewish guilt is thus amplified in contemporary form--and only encourages the terrorists.

A struggle against Islamism waged in ignorance of Islamist ideology weakens the West. The attribution of guilt to Israel and the United States adds fuel to the flames of Islamist propaganda and drives the wedge deeper into the Western camp rather than where it belongs--in the Muslim world.

I'd recommend reading the entire article.

Interesting and disturbing article in the Fall 2007 Middle East Quarterly by David Bukay, Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam:

That there is no compulsion in Islam and that Islam is a religion of peace are common refrains among Muslim activists,[1] academics,[2] officials,[3] and journalists.[4] In an age of terrorism and violent jihad, nowhere, they argue, does the Qur'an allow Muslims to fight non-Muslims solely because they refuse to become Muslim.[5] Proponents of Islamic tolerance point to a number of Qur'anic verses which admonish violence and advocate peace, tolerance, and compromise.[6]

But not all verses in the Qur'an have the same weight in assessment. Unlike the Old or New Testaments, the Qur'an is not organized by chronology but rather by size of chapters.[7] Even within chapters, chronology can be confused. In sura (chapter) 2, for example, God revealed verses 193, 216, and 217 to Muhammad shortly after he arrived in Medina. God only revealed verses 190, 191, and 192 six years later.[8] This complicates interpretation, all the more when some verses appear to contradict.

Abrogation in the Qur'an

The Qur'an is unique among sacred scriptures in accepting a doctrine of abrogation in which later pronouncements of the Prophet declare null and void his earlier pronouncements.[9] Four verses in the Qu'ran acknowledge or justify abrogation:

When we cancel a message, or throw it into oblivion, we replace it with one better or one similar. Do you not know that God has power over all things?[10]
When we replace a message with another, and God knows best what he reveals, they say: You have made it up. Yet, most of them do not know.[11]
God abrogates or confirms whatsoever he will, for he has with him the Book of the Books.[12]
If we pleased, we could take away what we have revealed to you. Then you will not find anyone to plead for it with us.[13]

Rather than explain away inconsistencies in passages regulating the Muslim community, many jurists acknowledge the differences but accept that latter verses trump earlier verses.[14] Most scholars divide the Qur'an into verses revealed by Muhammad in Mecca when his community of followers was weak and more inclined to compromise, and those revealed in Medina, where Muhammad's strength grew.

Classical scholars argued that anyone who studied the Qur'an without having mastered the doctrine of abrogation would be "deficient."[15] Those who do not accept abrogation fall outside the mainstream and, perhaps, even the religion itself. The Ahmadiyah sect, for example, today concentrated in Pakistan, consistently rejects abrogation because it undercuts the notion that the Qur'an is free from errors.[16] Many Muslims consider Ahmadis, who also see their founder as a prophet, to be apostates.

Because the Qur'an is not organized chronologically, there has been a whole subset of theological study to determine which verses abrogate and which are abrogated. Muslim scholars base their understanding of theology not only upon the Qur'an but also upon hadiths, accounts of the Prophet Muhammad's life. One hadith in particular addresses abrogation. It cites Abu al-A‘la bin al-Shikhkhir, considered by theologians to be a reliable source of knowledge about the Prophet's life, as saying, that "the Messenger of God abrogated some of his commands by others, just as the Qur'an abrogates some part of it with the other."[17] Muhammad accepted that God would invalidate previous revelation, often making ordinances stricter.[18]

....

How does the theological debate over abrogation impact contemporary policy formulation? While not all terrorism is rooted in Islam, the religion is an enabler for many. It is wrong to assume that more extreme interpretations of religion are illegitimate. Statements that there is no compulsion in religion and that jihad is primarily about internal struggle and not about holy war may receive applause in university lecture halls and diplomatic board rooms, but they misunderstand the importance of abrogation in Islamic theology. It is important to acknowledge that what university scholars believe, and what most Muslims—or more extreme Muslims—believe are two different things. For many Islamists and radical Muslims, abrogation is real and what the West calls terror is, indeed, just.

During the lifetime of Muhammad, the Islamic community passed through three stages. In the beginning from 610 until 622, God commanded restraint. As the Muslims relocated to Medina (623-26), God permitted Muslims only to fight in a defensive war. However, in the last six years of Muhammad's life (626-32), God permitted Muslims to fight an aggressive war first against polytheists,[52] and later against monotheists like the Jews of Khaybar.[53] Once Muhammad was given permission to kill in the name of God, he instigated battle.

Chapter 9 of the Qur'an, in English called "Ultimatum," is the most important concerning the issues of abrogation and jihad against unbelievers. It is the only chapter that does not begin "in the name of God, most benevolent, ever-merciful."[54] Commentators agree that Muhammad received this revelation in 631, the year before his death, when he had returned to Mecca and was at his strongest.[55] Muhammad bin Ismail al-Bukhari (810-70), compiler of one of the most authoritative collections of the hadith, said that "Ultimatum" was the last chapter revealed to Muhammad[56] although others suggest it might have been penultimate. Regardless, coming at or near the very end of Muhammad's life, "Ultimatum" trumps earlier revelations.

Because this chapter contains violent passages, it abrogates previous peaceful content. Muhsin Khan, the translator of Sahih al-Bukhari, says God revealed "Ultimatum" in order to discard restraint and to command Muslims to fight against all the pagans as well as against the People of the Book if they do not embrace Islam or until they pay religious taxes. So, at first aggressive fighting was forbidden; it later became permissible (2:190) and subsequently obligatory (9:5).[57] This "verse of the sword" abrogated, canceled, and replaced 124 verses that called for tolerance, compassion, and peace.[58]

Suyuti said that everything in the Qur'an about forgiveness and peace is abrogated by verse 9:5, which orders Muslims to fight the unbelievers and to establish God's kingdom on earth.

I'd recommend reading the entire article.

Back in 2004 I had the opportunity to be a volunteer with the X-Prize Foundation and so I was there for both launches of SpaceShipOne when it won the 10 million dollar Ansari X-Prize. On September 13, the X-Prize Foundation will be announcing a new, much larger, X-Prize. They've made a teaser video which I discovered at NASAwatch.com:

By way of GeekPress, I found out about the "Exploit the Earth or Die" campaign. I think it's both amusing and true:

It's not a threat. It's a fact. Either man takes the Earth’s raw materials -- such as trees, petroleum, aluminum, and atoms -- and transforms them into the requirements of his life, or he dies. To live, man must produce the goods on which his life depends; he must produce homes, automobiles, computers, electricity, and the like; he must seize nature and use it to his advantage. There is no escaping this fact. Even the allegedly "noble" savage must pick or perish. Indeed, even if a person produces nothing, insofar as he remains alive he indirectly exploits the Earth by parasitically surviving off the exploitative efforts of others.

They had a graphic element available for it, so I put that in the sidebar to the right; it's at the bottom, under "links I find interesting."

I finally updated the list of my books in the sidebar. Eventually, where it currently says "no image available" in the spot for my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People an image of my book's cover will appear.

I get at least one email per day from MEMRI--The Middle East Media Research Institute. Some of them are encouraging, with word of rational people behaving rationally. But too often, it is very discouraging.

If the extremists were a small and insignificant group relegated to the sidelines, able to only put their materials out only on cable access at three in the morning, or on obscure websites and mimeographed sheets passed out seriptitiously, they'd be disturbing crackpots and worrisome, but not quite so terrifying as when one discovers that a leader of a ruling party in Turkey spouts the sort of nonsense one expects to read about only in Nazi literature of the 1930s or in the ravings of crackpots on neo-Nazi websites:

VISIT THE MEMRI TURKISH MEDIA BLOG: http://www.thememriblog.org/turkey/

Special Dispatch-Turkish Media Project/Antisemitism Documentation Project August 29, 2007 No. 1699

Antisemitism and the Turkish Islamist "Milli Gorus" Movement: Zionists/Jews "Bacteria," "Disease"

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD169907.


A Turkish Flash TV interview (http://www.milligorusarsiv.com/videolar/file.php?f=5) with former Turkish prime minister Prof. Necmettin Erbakan, who is the founder and leader of the Islamist movement Milli Gorus, was aired July 1, 2007 as part of a pre-election program.

Erbakan is the leader and mentor of the ruling AKP leadership, including both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and presidential candidate Abdullah Gul – both of whom have in the past been active members of Erbakan's political parties, filling mayoral, ministerial, and parliamentary posts. All of Erbakan's parties have been banned by Turkish court orders.

In his campaign to promote his Islamist Happiness Party (SP) prior to the July 22, 2007 general elections, Erbakan reiterated antisemitic statements in this interview, as well as in interviews with other TV channels. In his public speeches, he expanded on these views, frequently referring to "Zionists" (meaning, in fact, the Jews) as "bacteria" and "disease," to crowds of tens of thousands, at every stop on his campaign trail, including Ankara and Istanbul, and especially in Anatolian cities such as Konya, Elazig and Trabzon.

The following are excerpts from the Flash TV interview:


All Infidel Nations Are One Zionist Entity; Jews Want To Rule From Morocco to Indonesia

Interviewer: "Dear Mr. Erbakan, we are going to elections at the end of a five-year-long rule by your students [in AKP]. You say that these elections are of vital importance, that they are about 'to be or not to be' for Turkey. Why do you think this way, especially when the country is being ruled by your own disciples?"

Erbakan: [following greetings and prayers] "These elections are about whether we will be, or we will cease to be. I'll tell you where this is coming from, and for this we have to first demonstrate the infrastructure. [...] The right path to the happiness of all humanity is our path, the Milli Gorus way.

"Our Prophet was sent with love and compassion, and our goal is the happiness of all six billion people in the world. We are Muslims, and our civilization has brought happiness to the entire world. This is the good, but there also is evil. Our religion says that the infidels are one nation [Millah]. That means evil is run by one control center.

"When we look at the map of the world, we see about 200 countries painted in colors, and we think that there are many races, religions, and nations. The fact is that for 300 years, all these [200 nations] have been controlled from one center only. This center is the racist, imperialist Zionism. Unless you make this correct diagnosis for the illness, you cannot find the cure to it. You will ask, 'What is this belief, this racist imperialism that destroys happiness in this world?'

"This belief began 5,765 years ago, when the children of Israel were living in Egypt, with a book of magic that was written by someone called Kabbala. The author or authors of this book later claimed that they belonged to the tribe of Moses, but this is not true. They distorted the Tevrat [bible] of Moses and put in it the Kabbala. If you want to see proof of this, you can look at their Tevrat and then look at the Kabbala.

"What do these people believe in? Their belief has four principles [while ours has six] that say: [...] 1) You are the real people of God; all others are created to be your slaves; you were created as men and others [were created] as monkeys that later turned into men. This is what they believe and what they teach. They believe that they are the superior class. 2) This superiority will be not only in thought, but will be materialized, actually realized. They will be the masters and the others will be their slaves. 3) For all this to come true, they must perform three duties: The first duty will be to gather all the exiled sons of Israel into Quds [Jerusalem]; the second duty is to build the 'Greater Israel' between the Nile and the Euphrates, within these determined borders, and to provide for the safety of this Greater Israel.

"Do you know what the safety of Israel means? It means that they will rule the 28 countries from Morocco to Indonesia. Since all the Crusades were organized by the Zionists, and since it was our forefathers the Seljuks who stopped them, according to the Kabbala there should be no sovereign state in Anatolia. This is these people's [i.e. the Jews'] religion, their faith. You can't argue or negotiate with them. This is their religion, and it comes from the Kabbala.

"Why did this man, Kabbala, write this book? Because he wanted to encourage those who were oppressed by the pharaohs, by saying that they were superior and were God's true people. Kabbala says that this people defeated even God – may Allah forgive. The same line is found in the Tevrat as well."


The Zionists Worked 5,767 Years to Build a World Order In Which All Money and Manpower Depend On Jews

Interviewer: "I understand, my hoca [teacher], but what does all this have to do with the July 22 elections? Can we come to that?"

Erbakan: "I'll finish their four principles. 3) They will destroy – Allah forbid – Al-Aqsa mosque and in its place build Solomon's temple. 4) Only then will their messiah come and establish them as the rulers of the world.

"This is what they believe in. To realize these goals and meet their obligations, they [i.e. the Jews] have been working for 5,767 years!

"Their history begins with this Kabbala. They say that they want to be the rulers of the world. This is a racist religion. If your mother is not a Jew, you cannot be a Jew. That's why they cannot multiply and grow. Among six billion people they are only 30 million. [...] So how will they rule the world? They say, 'Wait a minute, we have conquered the power of money within the capitalist order. As one can see in the symbol of the 13 levels of a pyramid that is depicted on the American dollar, all peoples will serve us at the top. With the power of the dollar, we have established a world order where money and manpower are dependent on us. This is how we rule the world.'

"Now, let’s come to us [the Muslims]. Thanks to our beloved Prophet, light and happiness came to the six billion people of the world. We became the masters. We [the Muslims] ruled for 11 centuries. But unfortunately, in the last three centuries the children of Israel have grabbed this material power. Now they control the world that we live in.

"What kind of a world did they build? Without understanding this, nothing can be comprehended. Ballots, elections [that you ask about] are all details. The essence is this: Let's assume you, as a Muslim, want to go to [Mecca for] the haj, and you want to fly on a Turkish plane. For an airline to get a permit to fly and land in other airports, it must be a member of the IATA. The IATA is an organization of the children of Israel, of Rockefeller. To become a member, airlines must give them [the Jews] 9% of the ticket proceeds."


The U.S. Dollar is Zionist Money; The Jewish Bacteria Must be Diagnosed for a Cure to be Found

Interviewer: "This means that when we go on the haj, we pay 9% of our fare to Israel."

Erbakan: "You know what this means. It means saying to Israel, 'Take this money, buy guns, and kill me tomorrow, [so that you can] occupy Turkey.' This is the order that they have built and have implemented for three centuries.

"Let's say that you, as a Muslim, want to send money to another Muslim country. Say you want to send money to Pakistan. You cannot send it, because you don't have the infrastructure to do that. You are living in their [i.e. the Zionists'] world. To send the money, you need to take it to a Turkish bank. Then the Turkish bank will give it to the American bank. The American bank will give an order to its branch [in Pakistan], that branch will give the money to the Pakistani bank that will pay out the money that you sent.

"But in all this, you will pay 1%. From wherever [and] to wherever the money goes, 1% is paid to the Jew. They have taken the world into their hands. That green dollar that you recognize is Zionist money.

"The owner is not the American central bank. The American central bank only rents this money, paying $500 billion a year for rent. They [the Zionists] print this green money, the paper, and they bring it to our sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and they say, 'Here, take this green paper and give us your oil.' And they take the oil with these pieces of paper. There are five trillion [of these] dollars outside of America.

"And look at what else they do. I am telling you all this so we can all recognize this bacteria. What do they [i.e. the Zionists] do? They go back to the oil sheikh and tell him to return the green papers, and give him a yellow paper instead. What is this yellow paper? It is an American bond. There are bonds outside the U.S. valued at $5 trillion as well. That means they took back their green papers to use them again. Those bonds go to the central banks. And what does the American central bank do? It gathers all the central banks, to give them a white paper.

"So where are all the reserves of the countries? Our reserves are not in the safes of our central bank. They are in the safes of Rockefeller. He is using all this money. What do we have? The head of our central bank has a white paper in front of him. On this paper it is written that such and such a number of billions of dollars are in the banks [in the U.S.] What we have is only a piece of white paper.

"They are crooks three times over. They suck [money] from everybody – five trillion with green papers, another five trillion with yellow papers, and they keep trillions with the white paper they give you. Every child born should be told, 'Welcome to this house, my dear, but this house has an owner, and there is rent to be paid. The owner of this house – that is, this world – is the Zionist, and you must pay him $1,200 every month.' Every one of us has to pay this $1,200, because of those trillions of exploitation dollars.

"There's more: Say you go to a supermarket, wherever you are in the world. You [select] some products, and you pay for them. Say the cashier tells you the total is 300 lira. You pay 300, and you walk out with your sack. No matter where you are and where you buy, 100 lira of the 300 is interest.

"You buy bread. The tractor was purchased with interest. The flour mills, the factories were built with interest. We are made to pay for these interest [charges]. If you read the book we wrote on this, you would see clearly that one-third of the money we pay for a loaf of bread is paid out in interest."


Zionists Organized the Crusades; The Jews are Using the Christians

Interviewer: "But, my hoca [teacher], it is now your students, your disciples [in the AKP], who are ruling Turkey..."

Erbakan: "My students must have thought, 'Since there is so much money going around, why shouldn't we have a share of it too?' But that money is exploitation money. It is not good money. Our students apparently have not understood what we have been teaching them for 30 years [in Milli Gorus].

"Let's go back to the [Zionist] bacteria. About $22 trillion out of all the money we spend every year is paid to these racist imperialist Zionists. We, as a country, are paying $200 billion every year to the Zionists so that they can prepare their bombs, so that they can one day come and take our country. This is the world that the Zionists have built. [...]

"This racist imperialist Zionism organized 19 Crusades just to reach its goals. To organize the Crusades, it used the Christians. Why is it that the Christians are helping the Jews? A rabbi goes out on the balcony and tells them, 'Oh Christians, isn't it the Messiah that you are waiting for? We too are waiting for the same Messiah.' What the rabbi is doing is taqiya,(1) of course. Then he goes into his synagogue and tells a five-year-old, 'What you heard me say outside is not true. Our Messiah is different. That Jesus is someone whom we killed. He will not come or go anywhere. I told them that to deceive them.'

"These people tell the Christians, 'You are waiting but you have no guidelines as to how to make him come. Our Tevrat tells us what to do. Let's do them together and let's bring the Messiah.' And what were those guidelines? To bring the Jews to Jerusalem, to build and secure the Greater Israel, and so on."


Jews Founded Protestantism, the Capitalist Order; Clinton, Bush are Members

"It was Zionism that established the sect of Protestantism. The capitalist order of today is the religious order of Protestantism. It's because the pope rejects the concept of interest, so as not to allow the exploitation of his children. That's why the Jews decided to change the [Christian] religion, and founded Protestantism. This way they can charge interest and make everybody work for them.

"That's also why they built the Evangelical sect in America, which now numbers 90 million members. Most people you see there [in the U.S.] belong to this sect. Take Clinton: He said that he did not serve in the military for America, 'but for Israel' he said, 'I would take up arms, go into a bunker, and fight.' You ask him, "Hey, Clinton, are you a Jew? Why is Israel your business?' He says, 'Nooo. It is not because I am a Jew that I say this. It is because I am a good Christian that I think that way. It's because I want Jesus to come that I am saying this.'

"All this is because the Evangelical sect was built by the Jews for them to think that way. Bush belongs to that sect. Clinton belongs to that sect. Anyone you know... Now look, when we look at someone we see his skin only; but behind it are all the muscles, bones, nerves. I am now giving you the anatomy of the world to show you what is behind the skin, behind the surface.

"Without knowing all this, you cannot comprehend what is going on in the world. When we learn all this, we will know that there are no 200 countries in the world. There are only two. One is the world of Islam, and the other is all the others. Who uses these others? Racist imperialism [meaning Zionism].

"The Zionists are holding the Christians in the palms of their hands, and using them. China's and India's industrial development is being carried out with Jewish capital. Japan's too. They control them too. Now, only Islam remains against them. The Jews say you will be our slaves. Islam says la i lahe il l'Allah. We won't bow to anyone but Allah. Nobody will be slaves to anybody. So this is the clash between the two – the clash between good and evil."


Bush Attacked Iraq to Build Greater Israel, So Jesus Can Return

Interviewer: "So how do we tie all this to the elections? Why is it that these elections are about 'to be or not to be?' It is your students who are going strong. They were taught and trained by you. So what is the problem...?"

Erbakan: "A little more patience. Look. These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War [I]. Why? Only to build Israel. They used the Christians to build Israel. The Canakkale [Gallipoli] victory was only one of our battles. We fought on 30 fronts during the war. Then they had us sign the Treaty of Sèvres. They told us they would eliminate us and build Greater Israel and make us their slaves. No other nation could fight against them on 30 battlefronts like our nation did.

"After they made us sign the Treaty of Sèvres, the French came to Kahramanmaras [on the Syrian border], not to keep it but to give it to make it part of Greater Israel. The English went to Palestine, not to keep it for themselves, but to build Israel. They are doing all this just so that Jesus will return.

"If we do not see these realities, we cannot understand world affairs. What does Bush say? He says that Jesus ordered him to invade Iraq. He says that the most important factor in making his decision on Iraq was his being Christian. [He thought,] 'I will take Iraq. I will build Greater Israel, so that Jesus can return.' These people work with that kind of belief. If you don't know about these peoples' beliefs, you cannot understand why they do what they do. Our youth must learn all this." [...]
[Break for commercials.]


Endnote:
1 Taqiya is an Islamic term that means concealing one’s true beliefs to avoid repression.


*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
Search previous MEMRI publications at www.memri.org

Some wonder "why do they hate us?" as if it's a mystery. Well, given that the material spouted by this crackpot is taught in the schools, preached from the mosques, printed in the newspapers and magazines, and broadcast regularly on TV and radio, why do you think?

Adolph Hitler is alive and well and widely distributed throughout the Moslem world, where his book sells very well, together with all the other old Nazi lies.

If you have Google Earth (and if you don't have it, you really need to get it) be sure to download the latest update. Google has teamed with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope to add Google Sky to the program. In addition to all the Hubble images, it includes images taken by two powerful visible-light surveys, the Digitized Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The Digitized Sky Survey contains photographic surveys of nearly the entire sky, with about a million objects. The Sloan survey comprises images of hundreds of millions of much fainter objects and covers more than a quarter of the sky. As with Google Earth, you can travel anywhere you want, magnifying images and virtually traversing light years in a matter of seconds.

If, in your wanderings, you see an icon of the HubbleSite logo, just click on it. Information on the object will appear. Sky in Google Earth also will provide links to the Hubble news database and other Hubble information, including the Hubble Heritage project.

In an otherwise intriguing analysis of the writings of the science fiction author Philip K. Dick Blows Against the Empire
The return of Philip K. Dick, Adam Gopnik writing in the New Yorker comments:

In “Clans of the Alphane Moon,” he had already glimpsed the possibility that normal governing might be the work of paranoids. This Nixon-era vision becomes, in the VALIS books, a metaphysical truth. “The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one,”

This description of the "Clans of the Alpine Moon" as a "Nixon-era" vision annoyed me since, as Gopnik had already pointed out earlier in his article, this story appeared in 1964. As I recall, in 1964 Lyndon Johnson was President. Nixon didn't become President until January, 1969. So how, exactly, is this a "Nixon-era" story?

Aside from that rather puzzling bit, I thought the article was an interesting overview and analysis of a very important and influential science fiction writer. Non science fiction fans are more likely to remember the movies based on his stories. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" became the movie Blade Runner, while "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" became Total Recall.

Interesting thought from Glenn Reynolds at TCS Daily:

The 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death has passed, and news reports have stressed his continuing influence on music, culture, and race relations. But those reports have missed Elvis's greatest achievement: as a cultural immune response to totalitarianism....

Hitler was aided by a new technological innovation: the radio. Nazism's totalitarian sibling, communism, spread largely by print and took decades to gain a foothold. But radio allowed Hitler to manipulate emotions wholesale, in a way that had never been possible before. And the masses - starved for entertainment and desperate for catharsis, and a sense of purpose - ate it up.

But now it's all different, and Elvis deserves a lot of the credit. Oh, there were big stars before Elvis: Bing Crosby's appeal is now nearly forgotten, but it was once huge, and Frank Sinatra was, in a way, a sort of proto-rock star. But after Elvis, the world was different.

Hitler used the tools provided by new technology. But Elvis owned them: radio, television, movies, it didn't matter: he conquered them all. And the changes that he brought about helped to topple totalitarian regimes, and make new ones less likely, for he left behind a changed culture that short-circuited the mechanisms that Hitler had used to secure power - and the mechanisms that other regimes used to maintain it.

Read the whole thing: The King of Anti-Fascism

My editor told me that my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People, due to be released January 10, 2008 by Reader's Digest (and currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com) was being sent to a "repro house" on August 16 or 17. I asked her what that was and she explained that "repro" is short for reprographic. The repro house essentially turns the desktop-publishing documents and images my publisher sends them into high-quality graphics that can be used by the printer. Books are printed using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) printing inks. If you look at a picture in a book through a magnifier, you'll see that it's made up of lots of tiny dots of each of these colors. The repro house separates the colors for each page of the book so that the printer can create a printing plate for each one. So, my book is that much closer to being available.

I've registered my last name as a domain name. I suppose one could consider it as my official author's website. Just visit www.nettelhorst.com.

Since the ISBN has been assigned to my book, and the title has been changed to The Bible's Most Fascinating People: An Illustrated Collection: Stories from the Old and New Testament, I’ve been checking Amazon every so often. I found it there tonight, though without a cover image yet; it is available for pre-order. It is listed under my full name, oddly enough: Robin Paul Nettelhorst. I've seen the galleys and on the actual book my name is my normal byline: R.P. Nettelhorst. The publication date is listed as January 10, 2008. A bit later than I expected.

See it and preorder it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bibles-Most-Fascinating-People-Testaments/dp/0762108886/ref=sr_1_1/002-4930214-6251256?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185425940&sr=1-1

I'm sure it will make a great gift. Buy extra copies.

Animusic 2 - 04 - Cathedral Pictures

My daughter ran across something called animusic on YouTube. I really enjoyed it. The DVDs are available on Amazon.com and I'm going to order them. Here's a version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that is doubtless different than any version you've ever seen or heard


Amazon has this to say about Animusic:

Watching Animusic is like being mesmerized by the world's most elaborate Rube Goldberg devices: You're so astonished by their ingenuity that you can't look away. This "computer animation video album" is the brainchild of Wayne Lytle, a progressive-rock keyboardist and 1988 graduate of Cornell University's Program of Computer Graphics. Modifying techniques originally applied to the visualization of scientific data, Lytle partnered with graphic artist and 3D modeler Dave Crognale to create elaborate virtual stage sets and imaginary musical instruments that are driven via MIDI interface to virtually "play" the music that Lytle has composed for them. "The music drives the instruments," explains Lytle in his engaging DVD commentary, "and not the other way around." Using proprietary software called MIDImotion™, Lytle and Crognale have invented self-playing musical instruments that exist in a magical realm of musical and mathematical precision, perfectly synchronized to the kind of fully-synthesized prog-rock that Lytle obviously enjoys (and if you're a fan of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, you will, too). It's the kind of audiovisual bombast that appeals to some more than others (and there's something oddly impersonal about removing humans from the performance of music), but Animusic is so intricately clever that anyone can be captivated by the meticulous novelty of these beautifully engineered musical marvels.

Take, for example, the most popular track, "Pipe Dream," in which thousands of animated balls take on a life of their own, popping out of an intricate system of pipes and barrels and bouncing, with percussive precision, onto all varieties of strings, drums, xylophones, timbales, cowbells... it's just hypnotically amazing. The same holds true for all of these videos, and while the colorful 3D rendering of Animusic (first released in 2001) is no longer state-of-the-art, the underlying mechanics remain timelessly appealing. For this special edition DVD released in 2004, Lytle opens his toy-box to reveal the creative process of Animusic from conceptual drawings to final 3D rendering. There's also a "solo-cam" function allowing viewers to switch angular focus from one instrument to another, along with animated set-construction demonstrations to show how everything fits together in the realm of Animusic. The 5.1-channel surround mix makes Animusic a perfect demonstration disc for high-end video systems (this is nothing if not a geek's delight), and Lytle's first animation (from 1996) is included along with a sneak-peek at Animusic 2, the follow-up DVD released in 2005. --Jeff Shannon

This week I recieved some galleys for my forthcoming book, 100 Characters From the Bible. They look really beautiful, I think. My job was to add some text here and there, among other things.

Genesis II, Bigelow Aerospace's second test facility was successfully launched this afternoon on a Russian Dnepr rocket (prior to the end of the Cold War, such missles were ICBMs; now Russia makes money with them). More details are available at the Bigelow Aerospace website: http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/multiverse/news.php#update

The Genesis II is a subscale version (16 feet by 8 feet, inflated) module for what will be a future space station.

Got an email from someone in marketing at Reader's Digest Trade Books today. It's the first direct contact I've had with them. Up til now, all communication had been through my London publisher, Quarto. They needed author's photos for their Winter catalogue and sales kits.

Armadillo Aerospace (founded and run by the guy who made the Doom games) did a demo launch of his lunar lander; if he does what he did with this test at the XPrize Cup in New Mexico in October, he’ll win a million bucks. The video is here:



Armadillo Lunar Challenge



I thought it was pretty cool; the test vehicle is about as tall as a person. More info here:



Cosmic Log



Meanwhile, the owner and CEO of Amazon.com has his own space program, too:



Blue Origin



There’s video of his vertical take off and landing rocket there, too. Just scroll down and you’ll see where to click.



And, Bigelow Aerospace (owned by the CEO of Budget Suites of America) has a test space station in orbit and plans to launch another one later this month. For more info (pictures and video), go here:



Bigelow Aerospace



Things remain very busy in space. NASA is scheduled to launch the next Shuttle to the International Space Station on Friday, June 8.

Richard Chesnoff of the New York Daily News writes:

Forty years ago tomorrow, Israel wielded its terrible swift sword against the attack-poised armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan - and saved the Jewish state from destruction.

It was the Six-Day War, and the fledgling state's stunning victory over enemies determined to annihilate it galvanized the world and changed the Mideast map - perhaps forever.

I was one of the handful of foreign correspondents who reached the front during that monumentally brief battle. I was in Sinai on the first day, then returned north and managed to enter Gaza just as that benighted city was falling to Israel's largely civilian tank corps. Then it was on to Jerusalem.

Like anyone who believes in the justice of Israel's existence, I was deeply relieved by its victory on June 10. I had heard the bloodthirsty Arab threats of a new Holocaust. I had seen the "Kill the Jews" posters in Gaza schools. I had seen the bunkers and mass graves that Israel had been forced to dig in expectation of invasion, if not defeat.

Yet, as we mark its 40th anniversary, it's become fashionable in some circles to rewrite the history of the Six-Day War. Radicals, so-called "humanitarians" and others who love to hate Israel now claim that what was essentially a war for survival was in fact just an excuse for Zionist imperialism. Even serious journals like Britain's The Economist say that while the war may have been necessary, it has ultimately proven "a calamity for the Jewish state."

How ridiculous! Despite the seemingly insoluble problems that have arisen over the past four decades - not the least of them, Israel's continuing rule over occupied territories and a million-plus hostile Palestinians - the war was not only necessary, it was one of Israel's finest hours.

Read the rest of the article, A War That Never Ends.

Remember that Friday, May 25 is Towel Day, set aside as a remembrance of Douglas Adams (1952-2001), author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This means that everywhere you go on Friday, you must carry a towel with you.

To quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

"More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

See the site: www.towelday.kojv.net for more information.

I recieved the "queries" from Michelle, my editor today. They are the result of a consultant that Reader's Digest hired to go through my manuscript. Most the the questions have to do with minor issues, like a desire for a biblical reference, or to double check if I got something right, or to clarify how I wrote something (and there are, unsurprisingly, some questions regarding interpretation that are more substantive, especially with Mary Magdalene), but it's about 24 pages worth total (much of that space is taken up with quotations from my manuscript, so it's not so long as it seems). So, I started work this morning around 8:30 and worked without a break until about 4:30. I forgot to eat lunch. I finished the OT queries and now have only the NT ones to go through. I think I'll have everything done by some time on Monday, most likely.

SpaceRef.com has reprinted a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that I think is very exciting:

For the first time, astronomers have created a rough map of a planet orbiting a distant sun-like star, employing a technique that may one day enable mapping of Earth-like worlds. Since the planet just charted is a gas giant and lacks a solid surface, the map shows cloud-top features. Using the Spitzer infrared space telescope, astronomers detected a bright hot spot that is offset from "high noon," where heating is greatest.

For images and other details:
Extrasolar World

The news about Herod's tomb is very interesting. Though it took them all day, by this evening even MSNBC had corrected the error regarding when Herod ruled. It certainly took them long enough. Kind of odd, really.

Herod's tomb has apparently been discovered. The AP story, reprinted by both CNN and MSNBC, both get a minor detail wrong, reporting that Herod began ruling in Judea around 74 BC (which is actually about when he was born):

Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Romans around 74 B.C.

Encyclopedia Brittannica gets it right (as does Wikipedia):

Herod the Great, Latin Herodes Magnus Roman-appointed king of Judaea (37–4 BC), who built many fortresses, aqueducts, theatres, and other public buildings and generally raised the prosperity of his land but who was the centre of political and family intrigues in his later years.

So, besides the date being wrong, it is also a bit imprecise in suggesting that he ruled the "Holy Land" when in fact he only ruled a piece of it: Judea.

I emailed MSNBC's science editor at 6:04 PM PDT; as of 11:48 PDT the mistake remains. I wonder if they'll ever bother to make a correction? I can't imagine that they'll actually pay any attention to an email from me, after all.

UPDATE:

CNN's website at least, has the correct date up now. Perhaps MSNBC will notice eventually and follow suit.

May Day has been a holiday for Communists for many years. I ran across the suggestion, by way of Instapundit today that, just as there is a Holocaust Rembrance Day for recalling the slaughter of millions by the Nazis, that perhaps May 1 should be transformed into a day to remember the 80 to 100 million people murdered by those who marched under the banners of Communism in such places a the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Poland, Rumania, East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia and the like.

Communism is and was at least as great an evil as Nazism; I find it startling the numbers of people who still hold it in honor.

Stephen Hawking lands after zero-G flight, MSNBC

"He had a wonderful time. Far beyond our expectations," Diamandis said. "The medical indications were better than expected." After six parabolas, Zero Gravity tried to call it quits, but Hawking insisted they do more, said Noah McMahon, chief marketing officer for Zero Gravity and Hawking's coach for the flight. They decided to keep going because he was doing so well."....

In preflight interviews, Hawking said Thursday's trip was also meant to show "that everyone can participate in this type of weightless experience" — even people with disabilities as serious as his. Diamandis said that Hawking was the first person with his kind of disability to take a weightless flight, and the outcome showed that "others can follow in Dr. Hawking's footsteps."

I'm glad it went well and that he had a good time. Everyone will be able to travel to space some day.

One bit of very interesting news, at least to science fiction writers, is the discovery of a planet around a red dwarf star about twenty light years from Earth that apparently is in that star's "habitable zone," which means that it's in a place where the temperatures allow liquid water to exist. Since liquid water is a pre-requisite for life, it raises the possiblity that Gliese 581c could harbor some sort of "life as we know it."

Whether it does, or not, at this point we can only speculate, since all that is certain is that this planet exists. Current technology does not make it possible for scientists to gain any information about the conditions on this distant world.

For more details, check out the article in Newsweek.

On Thursday April 26, 2007, Stephen Hawking, the physicist, will get to experience weightlessness. MSNBC reports:

Hawking, the world-famous physicist who is known for his theories on black holes and the origins of the universe, is in Florida this week to go on a zero-gravity flight, which he sees as an initial step toward his dream of flying in space.
On Thursday, the 65-year-old genius, who has a degenerative nerve disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, will roll his high-tech wheelchair out to a converted Boeing 727, take off from Kennedy Space Center's shuttle landing strip and be guided into position for what's basically a roller-coaster ride in the sky. During the top half of the plane's parabolic ups and downs, Hawking and his fellow fliers will be able to float in the air for about 15 to 20 seconds at a time.

It will be the first time in decades that he will be free from his wheelchair.

When SpaceShipTwo makes its first commercial flights in a year or two from Mojave, he hopes to ride on that. So this is preparation for that future flight for him.

It is very nice to be paid well for one's writing. My publisher, Quarto, has been very good to me, and very nice. They pay me well, and they pay me quickly. I learned, this week, something I didn't know before. If you deposit a check above a certain amount to your bank, no matter how big the company that wrote you the check, and no matter how big the bank against which it is drawn, your bank will hold the check and not allow you to use any of the money for a week. So, my bank account shows a substantial balance. But my "available funds" is sadly quite tiny. Thankfully, that will change come the 16th, according to a nice letter I got from my bank today.

I have been remiss in posting of late, largely due to being distracted with the book. Things continue to proceed well. According to my editor, I should have the printouts of my book in hand some time in June. Meanwhile, I will be working on whatever changes might end up being required in the text. My London editor sends the book to Reader's Digest in New York this month so they can read through it. If they require any changes other than corrections of spelling or other minor matters, then she'll work with me to help me make the adjustments necessary. I recently had my picture taken for publicity purposes and for the book jacket. My editor didn't turn to stone when she saw them, so I suppose she will forward them to New York.