Happy Nowruz from Lisbon

The first thing I saw today was this video from President Obama. Seeing it made me deeply happy and I really hope the other side of the table take a wise decision.

Watchmen, Graham Allison and Dick Cheney

I recently finished reading “Nuclear Terrorism” by Graham Allison. He points out to some very plausible dangers in his book (although I think some of his arguments are seriously biased). In his book I read a quote from Dick Cheney in the beginning of one of the chapters which was the following:

“If the Soviets do an excellent job at retaining control over their stockpile of nuclear weapons— let’s assume they’ve got 25,000 to 30,000; that’s a ballpark figure—and they are 99 percent successful, that would mean you could still have as many as 250 that they were not able to control.” (link)

I recently watched the movie Watchmen which is yet another Hollywood production with violence, sex and fear (a combination that really sells in today’s media) and there I noticed one of the superhero carachters saying almost the same thing about Dr. Manhattan being able to stop 99% of russian nukes and warning about the consequences of the 1% that remains.

Is it just me or they awfully sound the same?

Side Note:

Politicians and Media sell the same product to normal people: Fear!

Fear unites people and creates group cohesion but most importantly it makes people to accept authority easier and trust the decisions made by politicians without questioning them.

I am not saying there is no thread. No. In fact the threat is very real in today’s world. Weapons have become too strong and too precise that a lunatic can kill thousands in a split second. There is definitely a market for weapons and they do get into the hands of those unwise men.

Our answer lies in trust and mutual understanding. In elimination of our fear. Unfortunately our primitive mode of governance (deviding a planet into governements) is not capable of doing that. We need change.

Who are the Taliban?

For man people Taliban and Al Qaeda mean the same thing. Being completely ignorant about Islamic groups I thought the same. This comes form wikipedia and has some impotant things to learn:

The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان ṭālibān, also anglicised as Taleban; translation: “students”) is a Sunni Islamist, predominately Pashtun Islamic terrorist movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001.

Although in control of Afghanistan’s capital (Kabul) and much or most of the country for five years, the Taliban regime, or “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Taliban implements the “strictest interpretation of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world” ^[10] including the complete ban of education for girls ^{[11] [12]} and is widely criticized internationally for its treatment of women.^[13].

In February 18, 2009 the president of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari signed a deal with the Taliban to implement Shariah law in some parts of Pakistan banning all the girls from school.

Faith and Politics are a dangerous mix. Aren’t they?

Tonight’s roundup of observations

And… Tonight’s unstructured observations:

1. How to Critically Appraise a Scientific Paper, from Nature.com
2. Scientific Commons: seemingly, a very interesting social site for scientists. More on this one later.
3. Some links shared on google reader which you can find on the right hand column.

Karry Mullis talk on TED.com

Karry Mullis, noble prize in chemistry 1993, delivered this amazing talk on TED 2002. It’s been recently added to TED.com collection.

He starts by explaining the foundation and rationale of scientific method and then shows the social nature of science. The final part is especially interesting when he refers to two papers on science which refute global warming.

I think this is the best talk I have ever listened to on this website. Higlhy recommended.

The following:

1. Mendeley.com which claims to be last.fm for researchers.
2. Fareed Zakaria’s Piece in Newsweek titled “Learning to live with Radical Islam” which is a bit shallow if you ask me.
3. A few books and some papers…

A boring day altogether.

Roger Cohen on Iran, the Jews and Germany

Roger Cohen wrote  this column in New York Times yesterday on how Iran is being positioned in people’s mind as a big danger of the world while it is not. Personally I can not agree more with what he says. I am not at all in favor of the government in Iran nor I agree with any of their actions but a military strike is just going to ruin everything in that semi-stable society and just create another Iraq with street bombing. This much is clear to me that believing CNN and Fox type of stories about Iran is just silly. Maybe I expect to much from average people.

Here’s an paragraph from his article:

“…equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.”