tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-380853672024-03-17T23:03:24.166-04:00IrtiqaA Science & Religion BlogSalman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.comBlogger2058125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-63902184886137826482019-01-01T21:06:00.001-05:002019-01-01T21:06:48.863-05:00Moghul Emperor Jahangir's Interest in Science<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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Growing up in Pakistan, I did hear a lot about the Moghul Emperors, but rarely about science. In fact, if science was brought up, it was to state their lack of interest in the subject and, thus, one of the big reasons for their fall. There were some exceptions. There is probably an embellished tale of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun">Humayun</a>, the second Moghul Emeperor, slipping down the stairs to his death after watching stars at night. There have also been stories of the Moghuls and their love of birds, especially pigeons. In fact, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar">Akbar's</a> court (the third Moghul Emperor) had <a href="https://www.irtiqa-blog.com/2013/11/mughals-pigeons-and-darwin.html">20,000 pigeons including 500 trained ones</a>. And then there was Musavi's 18th century book of poems, <i><a href="https://granmogolhistoria.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/palomas/the-book-of-pigeons-by-valih-musavi-1788-4/">Kabutarnamah</a></i>, which included 163 couplets followed by prose explaining the differences in pigeons!<br />
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It seems that the fourth Moghul Emperor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahangir">Jahangir</a>, also had interests in birds and also interested in biology and breeding experiments. Here is an <a href="https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/science-technology/-jahangir-s-scientific-contributions-have-been-ignored-by-mainstream-academia--52898">excerpt from an interview</a> with art and architectural historian, Ebba Koch:<br />
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<i>In your paper Jahangir as Francis Bacon’s Ideal of the King as an Observer and Investigator of Nature (1998), you write that “Jahangir has indeed been something of a Cinderella of text-based Mughal historical studies because of the focus of Mughal historians has been on Akbar’s and Aurangzeb’s reign.” This was way back in 1998. Is the situation different now?</i> </blockquote>
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Yes, the situation has changed somewhat because now, we do have historians who are getting interested in Jahangir. We have Corinne Lefevre, who is a student of Sanjay Subrahmanyam and she is doing her dissertation and writing a book on Jahangir. Also, Lisa Balabanlilar has recently come out with a book on Jahangir in London. So Jahangir is getting more attention from mainstream historians. But art historians were always interested in him. And scientists also, since he made important contributions to ornithology and biology. He is still quoted by Salim Ali in his book on Indian birds. </blockquote>
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<i>Jahangir was self-taught as were Akbar and Babur before him. But what drew him to biology, botany, geology, ornithology and zoology? Is there something in his childhood and early years that triggered his interest in these disciplines?</i> </blockquote>
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It is a very unique phenomenon and in a way, we can describe it as a dynastic interest of the Mughals. It starts with Babur. He gives us very vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna of Hindustan in the Baburnameh, his own autobiography, which is a unique text of the 16th century-world. The way he talks about his own experiences as a warlord—he wanted to be a successor to Timur and raise a new empire and finally, he directed his interest to Hindustan—he describes all this. In a way, Jahangir picks up from Babur. He tells us, “My ancestor Babur describes the phenomena (which I am describing) but I am also directing my painters to make illustrations so that these phenomena would not only be recorded in text but also visually, in images. And he did so. We have wonderful bird studies by Ustad Mansur, his court painter, who was a specialist in nature studies.</blockquote>
And then here is a bit about breeding experiments, including Akbar's experiment going not according to plan:<br />
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<i>Why was Jahangir so interested in breeding experiments, like the one with a pair of Sarus Cranes and the one where he crossed two male Markhor with seven female Barbary goats?</i> </blockquote>
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Jahangir did not believe in knowledge that was transmitted through to one through hearsay or literary sources. He rather believed in acquiring knowledge through experiments and practical application. This was also what Sir Francis Bacon in England suggested, should be done. It is extremely fascinating to know about what Jahangir did here in India but hard to explain. But here again, we know that it is a family tradition, a dynastic interest because Akbar also had experiments undertaken. In the late 1570s, Akbar started an experiment and had children brought up in a secluded house with nurses who were not allowed to talk to them, to find out whether they would speak on their own and in what language. The experiment failed tragically because the children remained dumb and some even died tragically. <br />... </blockquote>
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<i>“Jahangir”, you write, “recorded, depicted, measured, enumerated and tested what he considered as noteworthy and outstanding.” Was Jahangir then, a true scientist or something else?</i> </blockquote>
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Obviously, he was something of an amateur. But sometimes, we get better scientific research from amateurs. Take for instance, photography. The best photographs that you have of Agra and the Taj Mahal are not from a professional photographer, but a certain Dr. John Murray who was employed by the British East India Company. Jahangir was an amateur as he did not have training as a scientist. But other Mughal emperors were really talented personalities. So, in this way, he had a natural talent for these observations. Also, we do not know about the people around him. Though it is possible that he had advisors but he does not mention them. Only once in the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, he speaks about “men of superior knowledge” who advised him during the construction of his father’s tomb in Agra. So some people seem to have been around and it may also have been for science. But we do not get the notion. But he had an agent sitting in Goa, named Muqarrab Khan, who was tasked with sending exotic birds and animals to Agra. He sent a North American turkey and monkey once and Ustad Mansur drew the turkey, the painting of which survives till today.</blockquote>
Read the full interview <a href="https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/science-technology/-jahangir-s-scientific-contributions-have-been-ignored-by-mainstream-academia--52898">here</a>. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-31767128303222909732018-12-22T13:10:00.000-05:002018-12-24T00:17:05.705-05:00Please read this short story - "My Mother is a Lunar Crater"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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There are very few writers who can provide a nuanced critique of politics in different cultures, bring science into their stories, and write a beautiful prose. All of these elements are present in the short story, <a href="https://www.calyxpress.org/md-prize-2018-runner-up-khan/">My Mother is a Lunar Crater</a> by <a href="http://uzmaaslamkhan.blogspot.com/">Uzma Aslam Khan</a>. A full disclosure: Uzma is a good friend of mine and also a wonderful colleague at Hampshire College. Sometimes it can get tricky if you know a person but don't like their writing. Fortunately, Uzma always makes this really easy for me (plus, don't take my word for it alone. This story was awarded second prize in <a href="https://www.all-story.com/contests/">Zoetrope</a> and was a runner-up for the Margarita Donnelly Prize for prose writing in <i><a href="https://www.calyxpress.org/md-prize-2018-runner-up-khan/">Calyx</a></i> magazine). The local setting of the story is an added bonus for those who live in Western Massachusetts.<br />
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You can also see Uzma's ability to beautifully weave science into her prose via her 2009 novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-God-Uzma-Aslam-Khan/dp/1566567742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532994779&sr=8-1&keywords=Uzma+aslam+khan+the+geometry+of+god">The Geometry of God</a> (if you have a chance, please read it). While the protagonist in the novel is a paleontologist, her current short story is centered on a Pakistani-American astronomer. What is really cool here is the way she anchors her story around a crater named after an 11th century Muslim polymath, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Biruni">Al-Biruni</a>. And along the way, you also get to learn about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration">lunar libration</a>. As you will notice after reading the short story, I have not said anything about the central theme that is urgent, important, and also tragic.<br />
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Here is the beginning of the story:<br />
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<b>My Mother is a Lunar Crater</b></div>
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by Uzma Aslam Khan</div>
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My mother is a lunar crater by the name of Al-Biruni. The crater lies on the far side of the moon, away from Earth. It can only be glimpsed by a loving eye when the moon sways. As I watch my mother on our way to the science museum, I want to tell her the name for this slow oscillation: lunar libration, from our zodiac sign libra, Latin for scales. </blockquote>
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She sits in the passenger seat, tense, nodding very slightly from the tremors that doctors say are nothing serious, her right hand clutching the armrest, her left clutching prayer beads. A libration, I want to say, permits us to peer just beyond the moon’s eastern edge. Even then, however, Al-Biruni appears only in profile, never head-on. </blockquote>
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“You drive well,” she says after a time. Moments earlier she had sucked in her breath at the speed of cars at that tricky intersection between Springfield and Chicopee where interstates merge and the GPS says to turn right and then left and the lanes go from three to two to four. I was in the wrong lane and the man passing us gave me the finger. Because she was there, I did not give him the finger back. “How scary,” she had said, releasing her breath. That’s when she began to clutch the armrest and the beads. </blockquote>
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“Thank you,” I reply. </blockquote>
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This is her first time visiting me in western Massachusetts. This is my second time seeing her since the deaths of my father and sister in Karachi. I could not make it for the funeral. By the time I arrived, they were already buried. While I was there, each time our friends came to the house to condole, my mother said how glad she was that the bodies had been identified, sometimes they never are. When she had kissed them on the cheek—first my father, then sister—they seemed to smile, she told the guests. I wondered if she shared this detail only when I was present. I wondered if she knew what it was to not be able to touch the faces of those you love to say goodbye. </blockquote>
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I cannot remember which exit I am to take. My iPhone rests to my right, in the cup holder beside the hand brake, charging. It is hard to see, and the GPS voice is mysteriously silent. I decide it is Exit 7 not 8 and stay in a middle lane.</blockquote>
Read the <a href="https://www.calyxpress.org/md-prize-2018-runner-up-khan/">full story here</a>.<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-45967546466463854112018-12-21T14:37:00.000-05:002018-12-21T14:37:05.751-05:00Launching a new initiative: Kainaat Astronomy in Urdu<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPEg7i_kgPBMp2GrxuUXSKmscnb7p1OT80M-By3quO2U6gjXjNwJSStq7ffLMZHoK8cyruKves4YTfSgmuj3y_XIEoioL-vp6RRMWwaOzXWNJ0v2MOAwqx67kOv2l_zoVQ3vn/s400/YouTube-banner-Kainaat-Urdu.png" width="400" /></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClJlxaRQLPsx0gPIHgIZffw"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kainaat Astronomy in Urdu</span></a></div>
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I have been making popular astronomy videos in Urdu for the past couple of years. I, myself, got hooked onto astronomy after watching Carl Sagan's <i>Cosmos</i> - on Pakistan, and it dramatically altered the direction of my life. For this reason, I have always appreciated the power of visual media. I am now making an effort to bring astronomy videos to audiences in Pakistan and other places that understand Urdu. There are three YouTube series that I am engaged in:<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VmmPP1XGZHROOtY_kA2TTMfZwX1hT4n">Science ka Adda+ (Café Scientifique):</a> An in-studio episode about recent discoveries in astronomy.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VmmPP1XGZEtvOcMwVkGQ-tcRwfDhb3a">Kainaati Gup Shup (A Chat About Our Universe)</a>: A video podcast about astronomy recent astronomy news.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VmmPP1XGZFo-zXJQGCixP3JHylsX4rW">Hamari Kainaat (Our Universe)</a>: A more detailed discussion about astronomy between me and Pakistan's leading amateur astronomer, Umair Asim.<br />
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Now all these series will be under the same channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClJlxaRQLPsx0gPIHgIZffw">Kainaat Astronomy in Urdu</a><br />
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So first of all, please subscribe to the channel. It is free - but with subscriptions, we can say that there are others who interested in the channel.<br />
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Setting this up has been a fascinating experience. I used to think that all you have to do is make good content videos, upload them, and people will get to them. But that was so 2016 thinking! There is a whole YouTube ecosphere that you now have to understand and appreciate the fact that close to 3<a href="https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/">00 hours of content</a> is uploaded on YouTube every minute!! I think this is completely nuts - and the number is going up fast. And I am not helping!<br />
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One more thing: If you don't understand Urdu, that is okay as well. The video podcast, Kainaati Gup Shup will soon (January 2019) be in both English and Urdu. This will not be dubbed or sub-titled - but rather recorded separately. Stay tuned.<br />
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In the mean time, here is a recent Video podcast about <i>Oumuamua</i> - an asteroid from outside our solar system:<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-76479554916964149512018-08-14T22:00:00.000-04:002018-08-14T22:00:33.570-04:00An excellent new book on doubt in 19th century Victorian England<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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This year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's <i>Frankenstein</i>. I am again reading it right now and I am again reminded of how good it is. There is also plenty of science and religion in there, especially as we are dealing with the creation of (intelligent) life by a human. Most of the movies have not really done justice to the true philosophical themes addresses in the book. Danny Boyle's (of <i>Trainspotting</i> and <i>Slumdog Millionare</i> fame) stage production of <a href="http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/ntlin4-frankenstein"><i>Frankenstein</i></a> is outstanding. But the point is that there are many themes in the book that pertain to science and religion.<br />
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There is a new book out Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Crisis of Victorian Faith that directly addresses science and religion of the era. Apart from <i>Frankenstein</i>, it focuses on <i>The Island of Dr. Moroe, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Alice in Wonderland</i>, etc. It even even has a place for Edwin Abbott's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flatland-Romance-Dimensions-Thrift-Editions/dp/048627263X">Flatland: A romance of many dimensions</a> - </i>a book that we love to talk about in astronomy when talking of dimensions of the universe. As an aside, here is a clip from Carl Sagan's <i>Cosmos</i> on <i>Flatland</i>:<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UnURElCzGc0" width="560"></iframe>
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I really digress. My point is that the <i>Genres of Doubt</i> looks fascinating. You can listen to the interview with the author, Elizabeth Sanders on the <i><a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/elizabeth-m-sanders-genres-of-doubt-science-fiction-fantasy-and-the-crisis-of-victorian-faith-mcfarland-2017/">New Books Network</a> </i>(it is a long interview but really interesting). Here is the description:<br />
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The Victorians left an indelible stamp on culture that continues to be in evidence today, not least of which is their refinement of the realist fiction medium known as the novel and their innovations, which led to the birth of fantasy and science fiction – two of today’s most popular genres. This period also gave rise to a Victorian “crisis of faith,” as the traditional Christian beliefs that had underpinned British society for centuries faced new challenges from scientific discoveries, the writings of Charles Darwin, and exposure to other cultures. In her book Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Crisis of Victorian Faith (McFarland & Co. Publishers, 2017), Elizabeth M. Sanders argues that these two shifts—one literary and one cultural—were deeply intertwined. She writes that the novel, a literary form that was developed as a vehicle for realism, when infused with unreal elements, offers a space to ponder questions about the supernatural, the difference between belief and knowledge, and humanity’s place in the world. She revisits familiar, representative works from the period, organizing her analysis around how they exemplify particular responses to or strategies for dealing with the problems raised by the new questioning of the supernatural. </blockquote>
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Elizabeth M. Sanders holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Iowa. She works in corporate and foundation relations at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and speaks at conferences about career transitions for Ph.D. graduates. She was recently a speaker at the Beyond the Professoriate online conference and her book was recently nominated for the Mythopoeic Society’s Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies.</blockquote>
Listen to the interview <a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/elizabeth-m-sanders-genres-of-doubt-science-fiction-fantasy-and-the-crisis-of-victorian-faith-mcfarland-2017/">here</a>.<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-18156153705327464312018-08-11T11:25:00.000-04:002018-08-11T11:25:00.597-04:00Anti plagiarism efforts in Nigeria<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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Plagiarism in scientific publication is not a Nigerian issue alone. There have been high profile cases from all around the world. Plagiarism is also not the only issue worth worrying about in science publications: There are key retractions on fabrication of data and then there is the problem of low-quality for-profit journals that would publish anything (for your amusement, here is a <a href="https://www.gianfuffo.org/uploads/4/2/6/9/4269865/2016_the_international_journal_of_science___technoledge_flatearth.pdf">paper</a> defending an Earth-centered universe published in the <i>International Journal of Science and Technoledg</i>e).<br /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPlop3c-BwQxSLbRXRY0GLzzdMFmD6FF9D_DhmRw4E300-xyQiO69RWq3ABhVhfKNdIdjZnw1Cm1UxDWsO4KnX76qCWuLJnMvlUmh8FoLRdqFnzLsFM4o3Tf6WLZ2DxCi8TQNM/s1600/Geo-centrism.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="770" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPlop3c-BwQxSLbRXRY0GLzzdMFmD6FF9D_DhmRw4E300-xyQiO69RWq3ABhVhfKNdIdjZnw1Cm1UxDWsO4KnX76qCWuLJnMvlUmh8FoLRdqFnzLsFM4o3Tf6WLZ2DxCi8TQNM/s200/Geo-centrism.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />However, it is good to see young researchers in Nigeria taking an initiative to combat some of these issue. From <i><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/1384">Science</a></i>:<br />
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The experience led Unuabonah to become a leader in a growing movement to combat academic plagiarism in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and home to more than 150 public and private universities and colleges. Since 2012, the Nigerian Young Academy (NYA)—an off-shoot of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences (NAS) for <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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scientists younger than 45 that Unuabonah helped found—has made educating academics about the pitfalls of plagiarism a major focus of its work. The group will hold a session on preventing plagiarism in August at its annual meeting in Ondo City, Nigeria. This past February, a record 350 participants showed up for a daylong, NYA-run plagiarism workshop, and the group soon hopes to arrange at least six more, one in each of Nigeria's six geopolitical regions. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The fledgling group, which has just 36 members, is also encouraging universities to make greater efforts to detect plagiarism—such as by installing software that can detect plagiarized material—and to penalize those who copy. Last year, NYA itself ejected a member for plagiarism, and it has formally made improper copying a dismissible offense.</blockquote>
One of the problems is that students are often not trained to know what is and isn't plagiarism. We see this issue quite frequently in undergraduate classes. Because of the internet it has also become easy to copy material, but search tools also make it easy to catch such cases. Nevertheless, this is a real problem and Nigeria's efforts are commendable:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Many Nigerian researchers believe few plagiarists get caught, Okonta's survey suggested. But that may change. In 2013, a group of Nigerian vice-chancellors negotiated discounted subscriptions to the antiplagiarism software Turnitin, which screens documents for borrowed material. And Okonta's university and others have made plagiarism checks a part of faculty promotion reviews. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Campaigners also want to institute stiffer consequences for copying. “We need to do a lot more sensitization, telling people about the awful side of being caught,” Unuabonah says. “That will send some fear into their hearts.” Recent dismissals of Nigerian academics for plagiarism are helping that cause, says Charles Ayo, former vice-chancellor of Covenant University in Ota, Nigeria. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Nigeria's two-pronged effort to raise awareness about plagiarism and penalize wrongdoers is a good model for change, says malaria researcher Virander Singh Chauhan, who chairs India's National Assessment and Accreditation Council in Bengaluru and helped write that country's new antiplagiarism rules. “This is not an Indian or Nigerian problem,” he says. “It is a global issue, and technology has made it so very easy and tempting.”</blockquote>
Fellow scientists: lets not cheat!</div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-82361907105033377322018-06-13T15:34:00.004-04:002018-06-13T15:34:42.345-04:00Elaine Howard Ecklund lecture on "Science and Religion in Global Public Life"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofgU1HeipDn4x6RD0gaglZyUAOBVncOWM26wfYexLJ3CbSbQVFIzzI_J6ZLWdNELJ07GowwaYDH8xL-9_b6KrbnpGCgBeDWfTascIW4bxeWV0YSbODfoPU475LOR4SX04hIll/s1600/Ecklund-rel-sci.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="331" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofgU1HeipDn4x6RD0gaglZyUAOBVncOWM26wfYexLJ3CbSbQVFIzzI_J6ZLWdNELJ07GowwaYDH8xL-9_b6KrbnpGCgBeDWfTascIW4bxeWV0YSbODfoPU475LOR4SX04hIll/s200/Ecklund-rel-sci.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
<br />
Elaine Howard Ecklund has done some of the most extensive empirical sociological work on public perceptions of science and religion. If you are interested in the subject, you should check out these two books on the subject:<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Science-vs-Religion-Scientists-Really/dp/0195392981/"> Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think</a> and the one that came out just a few months ago, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Religion-vs-Science-Religious-People/dp/0190650621/">Science vs Religion: What Religious People Really Think</a>. You can also follow her publications <a href="http://www.elainehowardecklund.com/journal-articles/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
But here is an opportunity to see her deliver the prestigious Gifford Lecture:<i> Science and Religion in Global Public Life</i>. Enjoy!<br /><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BDNwTICRQW0" width="560"></iframe>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-85629640731879025452018-06-08T17:42:00.001-04:002018-06-08T17:42:10.301-04:00Pre-print server for Indonesian research<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
When I was in graduate school, astronomy pre-print server (<a href="https://arxiv.org/archive/astro-ph/Astrophysics">astro-ph</a>) had just started. It was an incredible source of articles and we would get those in a timely manner as well. There were many legitimate concerns as well. For example, if authors upload "submitted" articles, then you may miss on potentially significant changes after peer-review. Or what about the submission of low-quality articles that will never be published in a reputable journal? Ultimately, the good of astro-ph far outbalanced the bad and now it is a flourishing site for many scientific disciplines.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, a new pre-print server has started that focuses on research of a single country rather than on a discipline. <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/inarxiv">INA-Rxiv</a> is all about Indonesia and it is a getting a good response from researchers. From <i><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08838-6">Nature</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Os63VxOj793Ju2NoeKZ7-qIlEOuyPOZub4dyW0ie8Fx1Fum_3Tne-1m4u_xOqNN7RQwE6FMxJ2eEeP4Q2M-C7h4hVEU70eMnj6LfUhgKaIrBpdJEYoyRnUkvdIX8e460EuMc/s1600/INA-Rxiv.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="208" data-original-width="382" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Os63VxOj793Ju2NoeKZ7-qIlEOuyPOZub4dyW0ie8Fx1Fum_3Tne-1m4u_xOqNN7RQwE6FMxJ2eEeP4Q2M-C7h4hVEU70eMnj6LfUhgKaIrBpdJEYoyRnUkvdIX8e460EuMc/s200/INA-Rxiv.png" width="200" /></a>The server hosts manuscripts in multiple disciplines — most in the natural sciences, followed by engineering, social and behavioral sciences and arts and humanities; and accepts material written in Bahasa Indonesian and English. It operates in partnership with the Open Science Framework, a service from the non-profit Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Computer scientist Robbi Rahim at Indonesia’s Medan Institute of Technology has uploaded 26 manuscripts. An article he submitted, about multimedia learning in mathematics and written in Bahasa, has been downloaded 330 times. Rahim says that the preprint server helps his research reach a bigger audience, because he can upload articles in both languages.</blockquote>
There is also a recently launched government system that ranks researchers and institutions. But this is where the quality of research papers submitted on INA-Rxiv will become an issue. On the other = hand, it will provide a boost for articles published in Bahasa:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In January 2017, the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia in Jakarta launched the Science and Technology Index (SINTA), which ranks researchers and institutions by various metrics, such as number of peer-reviewed papers and citations in national and international journals indexed by citation databases, including Scopus and Web of Science. It also includes papers indexed by Google Scholar. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The ministry says that SINTA measures researchers’ publication productivity, and will be used to inform future promotions for government-supported scientists and funding decisions. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But Irawan says SINTA does not index many open-access Bahasa-language journals, which disadvantages academics who use them, particularly those researchers who struggle to write English well enough to publish in international titles. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Irawan says some researchers seem to use INA-Rxiv to get around SINTA's limitation. That's because articles on the preprint server are automatically indexed on Google Scholar, which is recognized by SINTA.</blockquote>
On the other hand, Indonesian government is planning additional regulations on international collaborations. Also from <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05001-7"><i>Nature</i></a> from a few weeks back:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Scientists in Indonesia fear that a government plan to introduce strict rules for foreign researchers will scare off potential collaborators and hamper experiments. The proposals also suggest tough new penalties, including prison sentences, for foreign scientists who break some existing rules, such as the requirement to have research permit. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Next month, representatives from two science academies will meet with politicians in the hope of convincing them to reconsider the proposals. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The new regulations will only repel foreign scientists to do research in Indonesia, and this is not good for Indonesia’s science,” says Berry Juliandi, a member of the Young Academy of Sciences and a biologist at Bogor Agricultural University. The contribution of international scientists is crucial for Indonesian research because foreign science agencies have larger budgets and more sophisticated technology, he says. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Government documents state that the proposed regulations for international science are designed to protect Indonesia’s natural resources and to increase local science capacity.</blockquote>
If it is about protecting natural resources, then it is not a bad idea. But this is not exactly clear and the this may end up deterring collaborations as well. Lets see how things develop. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-80559275063068649812018-05-13T20:33:00.001-04:002018-05-13T20:33:26.186-04:00Four new Pakistan related books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
You should know that podcasts for <a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/">New Books Network (NBN)</a> are an amazing resource! This is the place you hear the authors not only talk about their books, but also what got them interested in their field to begin with. It introduces cutting-edge research and scholarship. So here are a couple of interviews that might be of interest:<br /><br /><a href="http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/QrIsMXzOzv1PC_4YDC58C4gAAAFjW_O0NgEAAAFKASwUA1w/http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674280032/ref=as_at?creativeASIN=0674280032&linkCode=w61&imprToken=bOGgEfC133AA6tAMhwW9ow&slotNum=0&tag=newbooinhis-20">The Pakistani Middle Class</a> by Ammara Maqsood. I am finishing up reading the book and it is set in Lahore and is an interesting look at contemporary Pakistan and - for some - a nostalgic imaginary Pakistan of the 50s and 60s. Here is a <a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/ammara-maqsood-the-new-pakistani-middle-class-harvard-up-2017/">blurb from NBN</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The relationship between class and religious piety represents a theme less explored in the study of modern Islam in general, and in the study of South Asian Islam in particular. In her incredibly nimble and nuanced recent book The New Pakistani Middle Class (Harvard University Press, 2017), Ammara Maqsood, Lecturer in Social Anthropology at <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjG4M5jbjxlJ1D_aae1AcW88D23qYSejmW9SyTooWRkyswL-il5mbqYvWTZ1DYOC3tA8C0Hpq46BC6S655ZtylrXfsyMfp_FisgWf7JbEvBLxh1lxYk55C-irUM9-fNguQkL2u/s1600/Maqsood-book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="789" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjG4M5jbjxlJ1D_aae1AcW88D23qYSejmW9SyTooWRkyswL-il5mbqYvWTZ1DYOC3tA8C0Hpq46BC6S655ZtylrXfsyMfp_FisgWf7JbEvBLxh1lxYk55C-irUM9-fNguQkL2u/s200/Maqsood-book.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
the University of Manchester, addresses this lacunae by offering a fascinating narrative of the intersection of religion, class, and piety among the urban Pakistani middle class. With a focus on the history and present of older and the new middle-class communities in Lahore, this book charts with remarkable analytical precision, the interaction of global and local politics, and the choreography of everyday religious life among the urban middle class in Pakistan. Theoretically sophisticated, historically grounded, and ethnographically vivacious, The New Pakistani Middle Class represents a groundbreaking contribution to the study of post-colonial Muslim societies, South Asian Islam, and to the anthropology of religion and Islam. In addition to its intellectual merits, this book also reads lyrically making it eminently usable in undergraduate and graduate seminars on religion and class, Urban Studies, South Asian Studies, Islamic Studies, and Anthropology.</blockquote>
<br />
We back further in history to look at Indian Muslim minorities after the fateful mutiny/rebellion/uprising/war-of-independence (pick your favorite) of 1857. Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuesrst has a new on the subject titled <a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/ilyse-morgenstein-fuerst-indian-muslim-minorities-and-the-1857-rebellion-religion-rebels-and-jihad-i-b-tauris-2017/">Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad</a> - and she spends a lot of time with the writings of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Here is the <a href="http://newbooksnetwork.com/ilyse-morgenstein-fuerst-indian-muslim-minorities-and-the-1857-rebellion-religion-rebels-and-jihad-i-b-tauris-2017/">blurb from NBN</a> for this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJJAnd9CgF5HkJBEUW4LzQu7sixNnODkF9US9DrGv3Dcgohlpxb6VfcV4ZCfKtzsm19fdcH8EygpQ7JeHkMKSrwnUrIPZSr9pKOboGGYPq_Bwt8K580-B9MIQMgQVT_G1om6g/s1600/Fuerst-book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="258" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsJJAnd9CgF5HkJBEUW4LzQu7sixNnODkF9US9DrGv3Dcgohlpxb6VfcV4ZCfKtzsm19fdcH8EygpQ7JeHkMKSrwnUrIPZSr9pKOboGGYPq_Bwt8K580-B9MIQMgQVT_G1om6g/s200/Fuerst-book.jpg" width="128" /></a>In her fascinating and path paving new book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2017), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont reorients our understanding of the 1857 rebellion in India, while offering a nuanced theorization of religion, religious identity, and questions of violence. The title of this book announces the key terms and conceptual pillars that sustain it throughout: religion, rebels, and jihad. The brilliance of this book lies in the way it raises and addresses a number of critical questions regarding memory, formations of religious identity, and conceptions of religion as a category through the close and energetic reading of a single event. This book is intellectual history at its fiercest. Nimbly written, it will also make an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate seminars.</blockquote>
<br />
If you are interested in the formation of languages and their relation to national identity formations, then you should check out Walter N. Hakala's <a href="http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/Qk1fbaNDfrkP3WtxtnMdbMEAAAFjW__cpQEAAAFKAZYNjnE/http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231178301/ref=as_at?creativeASIN=0231178301&linkCode=w61&imprToken=D6NAopvIw.wOBSiheS5fbw&slotNum=0&tag=newbooinhis-20">Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia</a>. Here is the blurb from NBN:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For many people language is a central characteristic of their social identity. In modern South Asia, the production of Urdu and Hindi as national languages was intricately tied <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIWK09Q7vyaL_k_tzUPlYWDDgGih_RiTZVXWpqdp7JdfOEDEh5uaQYlTTm2Afk3J2TQg755UkmtI-DieDfq47WKW-ubBV5-kBzSeQFhpOy58rw69cl-v8OmbyYNEqoHzTGM9t/s1600/Hakala-book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWIWK09Q7vyaL_k_tzUPlYWDDgGih_RiTZVXWpqdp7JdfOEDEh5uaQYlTTm2Afk3J2TQg755UkmtI-DieDfq47WKW-ubBV5-kBzSeQFhpOy58rw69cl-v8OmbyYNEqoHzTGM9t/s200/Hakala-book.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
to the hardening of religious identities. South Asian lexicographers, those folks who were most intimately working with language, were at the center of this political realignment. In Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia (Columbia University Press, 2016), Walter N. Hakala, Associate Professor of South Asian languages and literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, traces the long history of the construction of Urdu as a language of cultural and national identity. Dictionaries are the key source for understanding the changing social and political landscape of South Asia. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Negotiating Languages offers an episodic genealogy of the ideological underpinnings and political consequences of dictionary production. In our conversation we discuss South Asia’s multilingual premodern literature, linguistic authority, “Urdu’s oldest dictionary,” the influence of colonial knowledge production, the changing social and material challenges in 20th century lexicographical production, British lexicographers and their relationship with local linguists, Islamicized Urdu literary culture, and questions of whether non-Muslims could sufficiently produce Urdu dictionaries.</blockquote>
<br />
And no NBN interview yet, but I just got Muhammad Qasim Zaman's <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11325.html">Islam in Pakistan: A History</a>. This looks fantastic and I have read some earlier work of Zaman - and it is fantastic. Here is the blurb for this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx5iRVv4GYtLwf-XUkHwBJ1ioqVgq1wCkx8M5vxH9UH5wOxlSAAcdfWdSCz8MB9dgmSWjQrzOYnxIzN5RXrln51IutYi5GUVX7YoyGDsZl4JyxTLqTaVQTW5UVEliiFGoJfrT6/s1600/Zaman-book.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="316" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx5iRVv4GYtLwf-XUkHwBJ1ioqVgq1wCkx8M5vxH9UH5wOxlSAAcdfWdSCz8MB9dgmSWjQrzOYnxIzN5RXrln51IutYi5GUVX7YoyGDsZl4JyxTLqTaVQTW5UVEliiFGoJfrT6/s200/Zaman-book.png" width="131" /></a>The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation.<br />Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state. </blockquote>
<br />
Happy reading/listening. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-29345123615806836662018-04-23T08:44:00.001-04:002018-04-23T08:44:34.263-04:00Talk today on evolution and 'Clash of Civilizations'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />If you happen to be in Western Massachusetts today, come to Union Station in Northampton at 6pm. I am giving a talk as part of <a href="https://scitechcafe.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/and-decides-to-bring-up-a-politically-charged-topic/">Sci-Tech Cafe: A Scientist Walks in to a Bar...</a> Here are the details:<br />
<br />
<header class="entry-header" style="color: #36312d; font-family: Enriqueta, georgia, serif;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-style: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgb(233, 79, 29); border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 5px; clear: both; color: #e94f1d; font-family: Muli, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: -0.04em; line-height: 1.14286; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 30px 0px 25px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: large;">…and decides to bring up a politically charged topic.</span></h1>
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<div style="border: 0px; color: #36312d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 2.4rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: #e94f1d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Verdana; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Monday, April 23rd, 6pm</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #36312d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 2.4rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: #e94f1d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Verdana; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 0.05px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">***Union Station , Northampton***</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Impact; font-size: 40px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dawkins walks into a madrassa:</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Impact; font-size: 30px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How evolution is used in promoting ‘clash of civilizations’ narrative</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3.6rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How does biological evolution sometimes feed into the ”clash of civilizations” narrative?</span></span></span></em></li>
<li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3.6rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do Muslims accept biological evolution?</span></span></span></em></li>
<li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3.6rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is evolution even taught in Muslim-majority countries?</span></span></span></em></li>
<li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3.6rem; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How can scientists make positive contributions to discussions over biological evolution?</span></span></span></em><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></em></li>
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<a href="https://www.hampshire.edu/faculty/salman-hameed" style="border: 0px; color: #e94f1d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in; vertical-align: baseline;">Salman Hameed</a>, aka “Mr. Universe” on <a href="http://wrsi.com/monte/" style="border: 0px; color: #e94f1d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in; vertical-align: baseline;">Monte Belmonte’s WRIS radio program</a>, is Charles Taylor Chair and associate professor of integrated science & humanities in the school of Cognitive Science at <a href="https://www.hampshire.edu/" style="border: 0px; color: #e94f1d; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in; vertical-align: baseline;">Hampshire College</a>. His primary research interest focuses on understanding the reception of science in the Muslim world and how Muslims view the relationship between science & religion.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: #146fa6; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SciTech Cafe events are open all those with curious minds regardless of age and background. Our events, prizes and snack are free, but donations are appreciated.</span></span></em></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I should mentioned that one of prizes is Uzma Aslam Khan's novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-God-Uzma-Aslam-Khan/dp/1566567742/">The Geometry of God</a>, which is about a Paleontologist growing up in Pakistani in 1980s. What even cooler is that Uzma will be at the talk and will give three signed copies of the book. </span></div>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-77695444920309640912018-04-21T20:04:00.002-04:002018-04-21T20:04:25.291-04:00New Open Access Journal for Research in Africa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6meALd-eGSs7ufUXMHr9V2JIaKCqfCFe-U_uayaDKB4TKgQQBAR9GUilO2fSZjeORJuJBp3bU3b2AcO5RoCePQTp57E9m_cUt3Ed9nxtHO5pmKNRGnU8alwkl24qQDMocT2Is/s1600/Scientific+African.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="156" data-original-width="120" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6meALd-eGSs7ufUXMHr9V2JIaKCqfCFe-U_uayaDKB4TKgQQBAR9GUilO2fSZjeORJuJBp3bU3b2AcO5RoCePQTp57E9m_cUt3Ed9nxtHO5pmKNRGnU8alwkl24qQDMocT2Is/s200/Scientific+African.gif" width="153" /></a></div>
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There are two big challenges in scientific publishing right now: 1) Global access to high quality journals, and 2) Predatory fake journals. This latter category has all the trappings of science sounding names, but when you closely look at them, it turns out to be a scam to get money and publish <i>anything</i>. In this context it is fantastic to know that researchers in Africa are getting an open-access "mega-journal", <a href="https://www.journals.elsevier.com/scientific-african">Scientific African</a>, that will focus on scientific research in Africa and help build a strong research community there. Here are the aims and scopes of the journal:<br />
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Scientific African is a peer reviewed, open access, inter- and multidisciplinary scientific journal that is dedicated to expanding access to African research, increasing intra-African scientific collaboration, and building academic research capacity in Africa. The journal aims to provide a modern, highly-visible platform for publishing pan-African research and welcomes submissions from all scientific disciplines. </blockquote>
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The journal welcomes submissions of full text research articles, reviews but also publishes invited perspectives and critical policy papers.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/10/africas-unsung-scientists-finally-get-their-own-journal-to-spread-research">The Guardian</a> also wrote about the journal, and here is quote from the editor of Scientific African:<br />
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Its editor, Dr Benjamin Gyampoh, said the journal would address the problem of African scientists going unrecognised for pioneering work because they lacked access to quality publications. </blockquote>
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“There are many reputable journals but there is a low number of Africans publishing in them partly because the costs are so high,” Gyampoh said. “We are reducing these costs while providing a platform for world-class research, across different disciplines and on par with any published around the world.”</blockquote>
This is all excellent and I think these kind of efforts can have genuine positive impacts.<br />
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Not directly relates science in Africa, but NYT's weekly music highlights included a single from <i>Ras G. & the Afrikan Space Program</i>, called <i><a href="https://youtu.be/AB9COtxGNPY">The Arrival</a></i>. This is how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/arts/music/playlist-prince-ariana-grande-taylor-swift.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmusic&action=click&contentCollection=music&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront">NYT</a> described it:<br />
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The Los Angeles-based producer Ras G makes futurism feel like comfort, especially on his new album, “Stargate Music.” The tracks here seem like they might’ve been built in a lab full of microscopes and mirrors: He zeros in on small elements, giving them a sharp clarity even in the darkest environment; beats and little patterns ricochet and build on each other, like a mosaic of reflections. An avowed Afrofuturist, Ras G is making music for your soul and for your imagination, inviting a combination of close inspection and expansive thinking.</blockquote>
This is pretty cool stuff. But I wanted to highlight their really cool 2013 track, <i>BLAST-OFF!</i> featuring Eagle Nebula. Enjoy!<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-23709561415799261202018-04-12T08:30:00.002-04:002018-04-12T08:30:31.201-04:00Live telecast of Breakthrough Discuss conference on Astrobiology later today...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Salman Hameed</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7mgSMrNH4R2AKChsLzRp7B1IUIdgiFmS9-TjL3DcW63oQEz4iyWW45ux-CTHRVNCVW7h9Wfcm5p4wfo4e-Awl4ieWvlqk11BpJxZ16IFz3fX1YJSbTinctQ399qiuRkRQbOGf/s1600/project-breakthrough-banner.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7mgSMrNH4R2AKChsLzRp7B1IUIdgiFmS9-TjL3DcW63oQEz4iyWW45ux-CTHRVNCVW7h9Wfcm5p4wfo4e-Awl4ieWvlqk11BpJxZ16IFz3fX1YJSbTinctQ399qiuRkRQbOGf/s320/project-breakthrough-banner.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A quick note here to let you know that <a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/">Breakthrough Initiatives</a> - yes the same group that wants to send <a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3">small unmanned spacecrafts to Alpha Centauri</a>, is hosting its third annual conference on April 12-13. The theme of the conference is <i>Alien Life - Diversity in the Universe</i>. Better still, the whole conference will have a live telecast on YouTube: </div>
<br />Day 1 here: <a href="https://youtu.be/nFoTyKGHdLc" style="background-color: white; color: #60748a; font-family: "Myriad Pro Regular", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">youtu.be/nFoTyKGHdLc</a><br />
<br />Day 2 here: <a href="https://youtu.be/3GiN-tWAV_k" style="background-color: white; color: #60748a; font-family: "Myriad Pro Regular", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">youtu.be/3GiN-tWAV_k</a><br />
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The lineup of speakers looks really good. In a timely manner, there is a <a href="https://liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2017.1783">paper</a> that just published in the journal, <i>Astrobiology</i>, that looks at the possibility of life in the acidic clouds of Venus. And in the conference, David Grinspoon will be talking about this very possibility.<br /><br />In any case, here is the program for this year's <a href="https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/events/discussconference2018">Breakthrough Discuss</a> conference:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Myriad Pro Semibold"; font-size: 18px;"><br />Day 1 Schedule: Presenters/Panelists</span><br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Live on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://youtu.be/nFoTyKGHdLc" style="color: #60748a; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">youtu.be/nFoTyKGHdLc</a></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pacific Time USA</strong></div>
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<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">09:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Welcome to Breakthrough Discuss 2018: Hosts Charles Alcock, Penelope Boston, Jamie Drew, Peter Michelson, S. Pete Worden</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">09:15</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Keynote: Carolyn Porco, “Enceladus: Little Moon, Big Possibilities”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">10:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Session One: Search for Life in our Solar System: Chairs Penelope Boston, Chris McKay</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">10:10</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">David Smith, “Why Aren’t Clouds Green?”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">10:30</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">David Grinspoon, “The Case for Venus: Life in Acid Clouds?”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">10:50</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Britney Schmidt, “Robots Under the Ice, and One Day, In Space?”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">11:25</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Alfonso Davila, “Search for Life Beyond Earth: Motive, Means and Opportunity”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">11:45</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Morgan Cable, “Dragonfly: In situ exploration of Titan’s prebiotic organic chemistry and habitability”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">12:05</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Penelope Boston, “Wherever You Go, There You Are: The Questions That Drive the Destinations”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">13:40</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Panel One: Search for Life in our Solar Systems: Chairs Penelope Boston, Chris McKay, Panelists Dale Anderson, Steven Benner, Nathalie Cabrol, Cynthia Philips, Carol Stoker</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">15:10</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Session Two: Possibilities for Non-Terran Life in the Universe: Chairs Svetlana Berdyugina, Lisa Kaltenegger</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">15:20</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Lynn Rothschild, “Universal Biology: Investigating Life as it Must Be”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">15:40</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Steve Benner, “Chemical Constraints on Non-Earth Life”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">16:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Sara Seager, “A New View of Life's Journey Through Chemical Space”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">16:30</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Charles Ofria, “Using Artificial Life to Uncover Universal Evolutionary Dynamics”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">16:50</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Emilio Enriquez, “Searching for lifeform-independent technosignatures</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">17:10</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Lee Cronin, “The Evolution of Inorganic Life in the Universe</dd></dl>
<h3 style="background-color: white; font-family: "Myriad Pro Semibold"; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; margin: 40px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">
Day 2 Schedule: Presenters/Panelists</h3>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Live on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://youtu.be/3GiN-tWAV_k" style="color: #60748a; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">youtu.be/3GiN-tWAV_k</a></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pacific Time USA</strong></div>
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<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">09:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Welcome Remarks, S. Pete Worden</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">09:10</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Keynote: Martin Rees, “Will SETI Detect Organic or Electronic Intelligence?”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">10:05</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Panel Two: Possibilities for Non-Terran Life in the Universe: Chairs Svetlana Berdyugina, Lisa Kaltenegger, Panelists Penelope Boston, Chris McKay, Anders Sandberg , Clara Sousa-Silva, Sara Walker</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">12:30</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Session Three: Progress in Novel Space Propulsion: Chairs Sigrid Close, Zachary Manchester</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">12:40</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Sonny White, “Pilot Wave Model for Impulsive Thrust from RF Test Device”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">13:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Ryan Weed, “Scaled Radioisotope Positron Propulsion for Interstellar Spacecraft”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">13:20</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Geoffrey Landis, “Sails: From the Solar System to the Stars”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">13:50</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Robert Zubri, “Dipole Drive for Space Propulsion”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">14:10</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Kevin Parkin “Progress in Beamed Energy Propulsion”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">14:30</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Les Johnson, “Solar and Electric Sailing: Stepping Stones to the Stars”</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">15:00</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Panel Three: Progress in Novel Space Propulsion: Chairs Sigrid Close, Zachary Manchester, Panelists Elena Ancona, Harry Atwater, Heidi Fearn, Mateusz Józefowicz, Kelvin Long</dd>
<dt style="float: left; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; width: 60px;">16:20</dt>
<dd style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;">Conference concluding remarks</dd></dl>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-52219708273028740932018-04-10T15:10:00.003-04:002018-04-10T15:11:25.415-04:00Morocco's giant Solar Farm Looks Promising<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxrWBi0OFyt_oPhmGHPsOKs5bbKxrOMjF1DArBJeYIS_k-C9MdasPTibopjeE6QAuvEb56FPooqpKtbV0GsWcTC_MHdVuaNoaw0CVcV2hh63iom1TQ9Gz5XrLFi3P1HnERLKN/s1600/Noor-power-plant.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxrWBi0OFyt_oPhmGHPsOKs5bbKxrOMjF1DArBJeYIS_k-C9MdasPTibopjeE6QAuvEb56FPooqpKtbV0GsWcTC_MHdVuaNoaw0CVcV2hh63iom1TQ9Gz5XrLFi3P1HnERLKN/s320/Noor-power-plant.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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If you are looking for natural resources, then an unblocked Sun is definitely a good one. Here in Massachusetts, we keep waiting for it. But Morocco is taking advantage of it. It has built a huge Solar plant called <a href="https://www.power-technology.com/projects/noor-ouarzazate-solar-complex/">Noor Power Station</a> near the city of <i>Ouarzazate</i>, located on a plateau in the Atlas Mountains. The Plant uses moveable concave mirrors to follow the Sun and to concentrate the light to central processing system. It is built for $9 billion and the question is how long will it take to pay it back? The project seems promising (they are on the 3rd stage of the project that involves a huge tower - the largest structure in Africa) and is part of a larger scheme to power not just North-Africa, but also Europe (the plant is built primarily by a Spanish company). Below is a nice short (seven minute) clip from PBS that covers the promise and perils of this project. Oh - and one of the many cool things about the city if Ouarzazate: You may already be quite familiar to it. It is a favorite spot for movies like <i>The Last Temptation of Christ</i>, <i>Lawrence of Arabia</i>, <i>The Mummy</i>, among many others, were shot here.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3H1C-kJIsAOZ-ZYYvx03Csp0dCDJ_ZqhEF5nXQvWZmw8hkyOcOmqFYfRFk2L2guozHgHhGj8GwXf-d2k8FXmTjTIlZr7IJ-OPujKh20xkh10yQoc2Os61MWhYozx-qG8snM3g/s1600/game-of-thrones-morocco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1064" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3H1C-kJIsAOZ-ZYYvx03Csp0dCDJ_ZqhEF5nXQvWZmw8hkyOcOmqFYfRFk2L2guozHgHhGj8GwXf-d2k8FXmTjTIlZr7IJ-OPujKh20xkh10yQoc2Os61MWhYozx-qG8snM3g/s320/game-of-thrones-morocco.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Even </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daenerys_Targaryen" style="text-align: left;">Daenerys Targaryen</a><span style="text-align: left;"> passed through the city. </span></div>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-6703211784203734902018-02-14T18:17:00.006-05:002018-02-14T18:17:43.839-05:00Protest at an Italian museum over discount for Arabic speakers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtlAOmQ2SA5mHSSv1LtNc4G-6-7f65LAF3oF1DqnLlmeAalRd3oh3OtgwfQx76Vez49lstI32AGLFQ5iEQSp9nH7uVzIyuefsIB8Y_V70WDqhGY2EQGRDw-I0yDlKmjNA66SIi/s1600/Italy-Turin-museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtlAOmQ2SA5mHSSv1LtNc4G-6-7f65LAF3oF1DqnLlmeAalRd3oh3OtgwfQx76Vez49lstI32AGLFQ5iEQSp9nH7uVzIyuefsIB8Y_V70WDqhGY2EQGRDw-I0yDlKmjNA66SIi/s320/Italy-Turin-museum.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is a new one for anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. The largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside Cairo are hosted at the <a href="http://www.museoegizio.it/en/">Egyptian Museum</a> in the Italian city of Turin (wait - I presume that we can also see the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin">Shroud of Turin</a> here too). I am surprised that Italy has one of the largest Egyptian collection. In any case, the museum is giving discounts to Arabic speakers - which makes sense since Egypt has the largest population of Arabic speakers.<br />
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However, an Italian far-right party, The Brothers of Italy, is upset and calls it discrimination against Italians (from NYT):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Brothers of Italy, a small but vocal far-right party that is a member of the coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi, took offense at the offer for “discriminating against Italians” and staged a protest on Friday. </blockquote>
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“This is a specific case directed to a specific religion,” Giorgia Meloni, secretary of the Brothers of Italy, said in Turin, where she led the protest carrying a “No Islamization” banner. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“There is racism in Italy — against Italians,” Ms. Meloni proclaimed.<br />
The museum director, Christian Greco, left his office inside the building to confront the chanting protesters. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The museum belongs to everybody,” Mr. Greco explained calmly to Ms. Meloni, in an exchange that was captured on video, and then widely circulated on social media and on Italian television stations over the weekend. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. Greco made the point that the museum belonged to everyone and had various promotions to lure many types of visitors — including discounts for couples on Valentine’s Day.</blockquote>
Here is the video of the exchange (unfortunately not subtitled in English - or in Arabic... :) )<br /><br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TMDnfw2Elbg" width="560"></iframe>
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This is a relatively small thing but a symptom of a much bigger problem.<br />
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Read the full story from NYT <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/world/europe/turin-egypt-museum-italy-brothers.html">here</a>.</div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-65317392941583070082018-02-06T22:41:00.001-05:002018-02-07T05:54:19.035-05:00Science in Sudan after sanctions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
Sanctions have a broad impact. Even when science is not specifically targeted, it becomes harder to get scientific equipment that can support research. In the<a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php"> country ratings for science</a> (it is an imperfect measure - and we should take that caveat seriously), Sudan is at no. 99, sandwiched between Senegal (surprisingly low) and Moldova. In any case, <i><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6369/1369.full">Science</a></i> has a good story about the efforts to revive Sudanese science now that some of the sanctions have been lifted (you will need subscription to read the full story):<br />
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When Dia-Eldin Elnaiem flies to Sudan next month, it will be with a light heart. For the first time in 2 decades, he will be able to study disease-carrying sand flies in the nation of his birth without fear of breaking the law in his adopted country, the United States. “It will be such a relief,” says Elnaiem, a parasitologist at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne. “I am finally free.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In October, the U.S. government, citing Sudan's humanitarian advances and its progress in fighting terrorism, lifted economic sanctions on the African nation. Applied in the 1990s to punish Sudan's government for human rights abuses, the sanctions did not explicitly target science. But by prohibiting bank transfers to Sudan and placing stringent controls on exports of materials and equipment to the country, the sanctions essentially severed Sudanese science from international partnerships and funding. They also forced scientists in the Sudanese diaspora in the United States to run an almost impossible gauntlet to get permission to conduct research in Sudan. The restrictions “became a part of our DNA,” says Mahmoud Hilali, a 34-year-old now at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel who left Sudan in 2015 to do a Ph.D. in Switzerland on mycetoma, a disease caused by a flesh-eating fungus that's rife in his homeland.</blockquote>
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And here is a brief background of Sudanese science - starting with the British:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Modern science took root in Sudan in the early 1900s, when British colonists set up a scientific outpost in Khartoum, the capital, to study diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, and rabies. In the 1940s a Sudanese-U.K. team made a landmark find: that sodium stibogluconate can cure visceral leishmaniasis. Sold under the name pentostam, the drug is still in use today. After independence in 1956, Sudan's small science community enjoyed a “golden age,” says Suad Sulaiman, a parasitologist with the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences in Khartoum. For 3 decades, she says, the country's universities and labs were among the best in Africa. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the 1980s, however, a civil war broke out between the largely Muslim north and the mostly Christian south (what is now South Sudan), and Omar al-Bashir seized power in a coup. The rest of the world largely ostracized his increasingly repressive regime. International research funding dried up. Then came the sanctions, which made it almost impossible to purchase reagents or instruments from abroad, pay publication fees, or travel overseas for conferences, Sulaiman says.</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl7EhcHZiEAkxm3kLSgSrPLzmh1lnAZ2OpBZn00FZBGuC4pjsI_YiuJSddILf7V-3DrWjHqqbzZSG3FSwIaI-tpcFHUJANlJIxzpfQYxgK7yHtedSsR2parcLHdpd8egDXdz7d/s1600/Sudan-Science.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="436" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl7EhcHZiEAkxm3kLSgSrPLzmh1lnAZ2OpBZn00FZBGuC4pjsI_YiuJSddILf7V-3DrWjHqqbzZSG3FSwIaI-tpcFHUJANlJIxzpfQYxgK7yHtedSsR2parcLHdpd8egDXdz7d/s320/Sudan-Science.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">mage from </span><i style="font-size: small;">Science</i></div>
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It is no surprise then that many of the scientists left the country, and the numbers are staggering considering Sudanese population:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
According to UNESCO, more than 3000 Sudanese researchers emigrated between 2002 and 2014. By 2013, the country had a mere 19 researchers for every 100,000 citizens, or 1/30 the ratio of Egypt, according to the Sudanese National Centre for Research.</blockquote>
The Sudanese government has promised an increase in S&T spending to 1% of GDP. I think this is a broad number recommended by UN. However, there are two things to be cautious about. First, just because it is promised doesn't mean that it is going to happen. Second, just throwing money at a problem doesn't necessary solve the problem, and Pakistan serves as a <a href="http://www.irtiqa-blog.com/2010/09/is-money-answer-for-universities.html">cautionary tale</a>.<br />
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Nevertheless, it is good to see sanctions lifted on Sudan and hope to see good science coming out of the country as well. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-3344099532236152702018-02-03T14:05:00.001-05:002018-02-03T14:05:30.995-05:00A Dystopian Graphic Novel from Egypt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXiVoQc2TdXEoqEd4RfcHAH9eBv36kMQ44jrFCieUYOcV-nxlmoPIwLOGKGC05vSszHzrYFvd75aNAKb8FKXwraSCp3ptDUTChwMd2sKb59xdxo3P8oBc_CmukfwHGWBhTVDk/s1600/Ganzeer-protest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="958" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXiVoQc2TdXEoqEd4RfcHAH9eBv36kMQ44jrFCieUYOcV-nxlmoPIwLOGKGC05vSszHzrYFvd75aNAKb8FKXwraSCp3ptDUTChwMd2sKb59xdxo3P8oBc_CmukfwHGWBhTVDk/s400/Ganzeer-protest.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.ganzeer.com/tagged/info">Ganzeer</a> is a graphic artist from Egypt. The picture above is one of the protest graffitis against the Egyptian military after the Egyptian Arab Spring of 2011. He later fled to the US and is busy with his brand of protest art. He has also been working on a graphic novel, <a href="http://thesolargrid.net/">The Solar Grid</a>. Three chapters are <a href="http://thesolargrid.net/Read">available</a> and he planning on finishing the book by 2019. Here is a trailer for the novel:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/217870979" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="560"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/217870979">THE SOLAR GRID – a graphic novel (trailer 2)</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/ganzeer">ganzeer</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<i>Slate</i> has a nice <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/01/the-solar-grid-turns-the-egyptian-revolution-into-science-fiction.html">article</a> on Ganzeer and this novel:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0KliI7q0Q16IogX0Kp9EOD4P-KwTshhWO8O2EwoDYKEAy-02lhtTOe-zqG5u4SsWvL6KraKt24zYSwk4we47XmeVBxWthzjOnoMPMTd6l-i5sKUlGAo-PiMSABRdubiAIVPFC/s1600/solar+grid.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="182" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0KliI7q0Q16IogX0Kp9EOD4P-KwTshhWO8O2EwoDYKEAy-02lhtTOe-zqG5u4SsWvL6KraKt24zYSwk4we47XmeVBxWthzjOnoMPMTd6l-i5sKUlGAo-PiMSABRdubiAIVPFC/s200/solar+grid.png" width="131" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ganzeer’s graphic novel begins when night is eliminated forever on Earth. A network of satellites capable of farming the sun’s light and energy to redistribute it to the dark side of the Earth enables corporations to run their solar-powered factories around the clock, but it also causes insurmountable ecological disasters around the globe. Although it comes in the wake of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, Ganzeer’s comic isn’t a shot at the young Trump administration but a criticism of corporate greed going back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.<br />
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Ganzeer explained that the idea for The Solar Grid originally came from a real ecological catastrophe in Egypt. The Aswan High Dam was created to harness the power of the Nile, but the ecosystem that had nourished animals, fish, and soil that for thousands of years was altered significantly, devastating Mediterranean fishing industries and displacing more than 100,000 locals. In his retelling, Ganzeer expanded the idea from the Nile to the Earth’s sun, and working from the idea that revolution sparking from the most unassuming characters was universal, he left up to two orphans, the main characters, to restore the natural order.</blockquote>
Read the full article <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/01/the-solar-grid-turns-the-egyptian-revolution-into-science-fiction.html">here</a> and also check out <a href="http://thesolargrid.net/">The Solar Grid</a>.<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-49955194774783120502018-01-22T19:21:00.001-05:002018-01-22T19:21:11.674-05:00Political Unrests and the Upcoming Water Crisis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="tr_bq">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i></div>
<br />The recent Iranian protests have several components. Some of it is definitely political. However, another component has to do with the water crisis. And Iran is not the only country that has faced political unrest with water shortage. More recently, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria have all had water shortages leading to unrests and uprisings. Here is from a recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/climate/water-iran.html">NYT article</a> on this particular matter:<br />
<blockquote>
A water shortage can spark street protests: Access to water has been a common source of unrest in India. It can be exploited by terrorist groups: The Shabab has sought to take advantage of the most vulnerable drought-stricken communities in Somalia. Water shortages can prompt an exodus from the countryside to crowded cities: Across the arid Sahel, young men unable to live off the land are on the move. And it can feed into insurgencies: Boko Haram stepped into this breach in Nigeria, Chad and Niger. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Iran is the latest example of a country where a water crisis, long in the making, has fed popular discontent. That is particularly true in small towns and cities in what is already one of the most parched regions of the world. Farms turned barren, lakes became dust bowls. Millions moved to provincial towns and cities, and joblessness led to mounting discontent among the young. Then came a crippling drought, lasting roughly 14 years. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
A water shortage can spark street protests: Access to water has been a common source of unrest in India. It can be exploited by terrorist groups: The Shabab has sought to take advantage of the most vulnerable drought-stricken communities in Somalia. Water shortages can prompt an exodus from the countryside to crowded cities: Across the arid Sahel, young men unable to live off the land are on the move. And it can feed into insurgencies: Boko Haram stepped into this breach in Nigeria, Chad and Niger. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Iran is the latest example of a country where a water crisis, long in the making, has fed popular discontent. That is particularly true in small towns and cities in what is already one of the most parched regions of the world. Farms turned barren, lakes became dust bowls. Millions moved to provincial towns and cities, and joblessness led to mounting discontent among the young. Then came a crippling drought, lasting roughly 14 years.</blockquote>
But this is just the beginning. According to <a href="http://www.wri.org/applications/maps/aqueduct-atlas/#x=8.00&y=0.21&s=ws!20!28!c&t=waterrisk&w=def&g=0&i=BWS-16!WSV-4!SV-2!HFO-4!DRO-4!STOR-8!GW-8!WRI-4!ECOS-2!MC-4!WCG-8!ECOV-2!&tr=ind-1!prj-1&l=3&b=terrain&m=group">World Resources Institute</a>, at least 33 countries are in the category of high stress regarding water. Here is a map of water crisis around the world and you can find your own favorite country:<br /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Vt5-NYiI-1moW1Gk3oQDueAtsyiYjPHyYcfcrUpv0-_aLEm6qhY9_D-c-PvGWqBPhMR621pWJAWHGUwS1lik9vf1zEdKD311PxEzam_e0lo9T8KbrtlOxIJdu_7JfgEZZbus/s1600/Water+Crisis.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="1191" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Vt5-NYiI-1moW1Gk3oQDueAtsyiYjPHyYcfcrUpv0-_aLEm6qhY9_D-c-PvGWqBPhMR621pWJAWHGUwS1lik9vf1zEdKD311PxEzam_e0lo9T8KbrtlOxIJdu_7JfgEZZbus/s400/Water+Crisis.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The map also overlaps with much of the Muslim world population:<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs6Mpz8p3zPSX-aV_SLmhAzdcVysXeMrp_jvygLh0MxvjIrUEcuNK1RaIzz9j3R_IA4yBEkBRugcDeJyKO4eHAWYcsnjxLu27MF8AKNcGKPVRiE6_j_sFp0kyB-In3yWlFKtw-/s1600/Islam_percent_population_in_each_nation_World_Map_Muslim_data_by_Pew_Research.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="800" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs6Mpz8p3zPSX-aV_SLmhAzdcVysXeMrp_jvygLh0MxvjIrUEcuNK1RaIzz9j3R_IA4yBEkBRugcDeJyKO4eHAWYcsnjxLu27MF8AKNcGKPVRiE6_j_sFp0kyB-In3yWlFKtw-/s400/Islam_percent_population_in_each_nation_World_Map_Muslim_data_by_Pew_Research.svg.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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And this population is young - with half of the population under the age of 25! The reasons for water crisis are complex, but climate change is one of the most important variables. I know that there have been serious concerns about melting glaciers in the Indian subcontinent as water management issues between India and Pakistan are delicate and can easily lead to a catastrophic war. </div>
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<br />But apart from climate change, the NYT article points to efforts by governments to be self-sufficient regarding food supplies: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
Like many countries, from India to Syria, Iran after the 1979 revolution set out to be self-sufficient in food. It wasn’t a bad goal, in and of itself. But as the Iranian water expert Kaveh Madani points out, it meant that the government encouraged farmers to plant thirsty crops like wheat throughout the country. The government went further by offering farmers cheap electricity and favorable prices for their wheat — effectively a generous two-part subsidy that served as an incentive to plant more and more wheat and extract more and more groundwater. </blockquote>
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The result: “25 percent of the total water that is withdrawn from aquifers, rivers and lakes exceeds the amount that can be replenished” by nature, according to Claudia Sadoff, a water specialist who prepared a report for the World Bank on Iran’s water crisis. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiID-wGhVm1-Ed2PG_jbb-QAqgoqX9db53eF7naekpUOZzPWyyvSruC9vdqiXmNrdQXRVtP0XL3vtiKxlhXQgzqAxvmUJ25WoEzAnbTA27717bPED0NMy87ZM54-GXyT7fzEMsI/s1600/Lake+Urmia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiID-wGhVm1-Ed2PG_jbb-QAqgoqX9db53eF7naekpUOZzPWyyvSruC9vdqiXmNrdQXRVtP0XL3vtiKxlhXQgzqAxvmUJ25WoEzAnbTA27717bPED0NMy87ZM54-GXyT7fzEMsI/s200/Lake+Urmia.jpg" width="200" /></a>Iran’s groundwater depletion rate is today among the fastest in the world, so much so that by Mr. Michel’s calculations, 12 of the country’s 31 provinces “will entirely exhaust their aquifers within the next 50 years.” In parts of the country, the groundwater loss is causing the land to sink. </blockquote>
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Water is a handy political tool, and to curry favor with their rural base, Iran’s leaders — and particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — dammed rivers across the country to divert water to key areas. As a result, many of Iran’s lakes have shrunk. That includes Lake Urmia, once the region’s largest saltwater lake, which has diminished in size by nearly 90 percent since the early 1970s.</blockquote>
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Read the full article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/climate/water-iran.html">here</a>. </div>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-11515731555452971032017-12-20T11:37:00.001-05:002017-12-20T13:05:34.003-05:00What to make of the NYT UFO story? Read it with a dose of skepticism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Salman Hameed</i><br />
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UFO's have again crossed over into the mainstream. <i>New York Times</i> had a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">front page story</a> on Sunday about a secret Department of Defense program that investigated reports of UFOs from 2007-2012 (and may be it is still active). <i>Politico</i> also has an independent <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111">article</a> on the same UFO program. I have been teaching a class called <i><a href="http://salmanhameed.com/classes/aliens-close-encounters-of-a-multidisciplinary-kind/">Aliens: Close Encounters of a Multidisciplinary Kind</a></i> for the past ten years. In the class we look at the claims of UFOs and alien abductions from a historical, sociological, psychological, astronomical, and religious perspectives. It is a lot of fun and a story like this pretty much hits the bullseye for the topics we discuss.<br />
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So what do we make of the claims in the NYT article?<br />
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I think there are two key stories here. First, it is about the allocation of at least $22 million from late 2008 to 2011 and the second is about the investigation into UFO claims.<br />
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For the first one, $22 million is a lot of money for academics, but the DoD has an annual budget of $600 billion! Nevertheless, the powerful Democratic senator Harry Reid managed to get this money to fellow Nevadan Harold Bigelow - who owns a hotel chain and also an aerospace company:<br />
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Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.</blockquote>
Nevertheless, Pentagon was involved and via its secret <i>Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze. </blockquote>
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The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties. </blockquote>
Where did the money go?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program. </blockquote>
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Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.</blockquote>
Well - this is the part that piqued my interest. There have been earlier claims of "recovered" metal alloys from alien spacecrafts. It is part of Roswell mythology as well (for example, see a <a href="https://youtu.be/avb6i9QMo5g?t=20m35s">few minutes here</a> from the movie <i>Roswell: The UFO Coverup</i>). From that perspective, the military has been hiding this since 1947. Of course, these alien metal alloys are always "top secret" and have not been subjected to any peer-review study. And for some weird reason have not revolutionized the world either (unless, of course <i>iPhone</i> is an alien technology). My point is that these type of claims are standard part of UFO contact mythology for 60-70 years. But this time, the <i>New York Times</i> is reporting on it and so my assumption is that it may have more backing to the reported story.<br />
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Alas - when you dig a bit deeper, you find a lot of red flags that suggest that you will be wise to take these claims with a healthy dose of salt (and earthly salt will do - you don't need salt from the mineral planet <a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crait"><i>Crait</i></a> from the latest <i>Star Wars</i>).<br />
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Here are a few reasons that have made me skeptical of the claims: <br />
1) <b><i>Association with other fringe ideas</i></b>: Bigelow - whose company got most of the money - also bought <a href="http://www.skinwalkerranch.org/">Skinwalker Ranch</a> in Utah. This ranch is one of favorites for people who believe in all sorts of paranormal activities. There are claim of cattle mutilations (yes - aliens travel lights years to mutilate earthly cows), poltergeist, and bullet-proof wolves on the ranch, and have been part of stories of <a href="https://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2006/01/10">Coast to Coast AM</a>.<br />
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A number of people associated with this program have joined together to be a part of <i><a href="https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/">To the Stars Academy of Arts and Humanities</a> (TTS/AAS)</i>. It is founded by UFO enthusiast and former <i>Blink 182</i> frontman Tom DeLonge. The person who ran the AATIP initiative at Pentagon, Luis Elizondo has now joined this venture as well. The Vice President of Science & Technology, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Puthoff">Hal Puthoff</a>, was the founder of CIA's psychic program in the 1970s and also believed that Uri Geller had real psychic powers (despite the prominent debunking of Geller's claims by Johnny Carson - see this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCJDpNnHNI">fantastic clip</a>). One of the authors of a book on the Skinwalker Ranch, Colm Kelleher, is a biotech consultant of TTS/AAS.<br />
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A major major red flag comes up when you look at the <a href="https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/#how-we-work"><i>Science</i></a> section of TTS/AAS website. Just look at their approach to claims of <i>telepathy</i>. They are not even questioning if the phenomenon of telepathy is real. Instead, they are already going forward to "Explore the location in the brain where this phenomenon is centered, and develop protocols for its enhancement and use". This tells you a lot about the people involved in the project. Instead of taking of a skeptical stance (hallmark of any good science), they are already believers. For a contrast, look at how claims of microbial lifeforms in <a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-10-year-old-viking-life-mars.html">Viking Lander experiments</a> on Mars were treated or in the meteorite from Mars, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001">ALH84001</a>.<br />
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I haven't looked into all the members associated with this group. But already we can see that it is not just about UFOs, but that now it involves other paranormal phenomena as well. And that is a pretty good sign that we are now heading to the crazy town.<br />
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2) <b><i>Alien technology - always just 1-step beyond reach</i></b>: There have been claims of alien spacecrafts since 1896-1897. There were multiple sightings of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship">cigar shaped alien crafts</a>. Of course, airship designs were known at the time and interestingly "aliens" already that those in our skies. A few decades later, when humans had propeller planes, alien spacecrafts were advanced enough fly without propellers. Now that we have supersonic planes, the alien spacecrafts look slicker than our planes they move vertical and at a very high speed. It is just interesting that aliens are usually just 1-step ahead of us - but then this could just be a coincidence.<br />
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And of course, as mentioned above, alien artifacts haven never been subjected to any peer-review studies or have had any discernible influence on the human technology.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCb7uIFyHAQY6V9erLGSeTgP7I1i48bFH6FLmie4mpXPexBIGeoakuX_DpEkwJi1CBrZj_DLBsctaRygz_Ad-QrBqZwhqiErfU7hQtHLoQOkXPeh1xgC0wI4bXvfD5W3M-VUF2/s1600/ufo+california+airship.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="708" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCb7uIFyHAQY6V9erLGSeTgP7I1i48bFH6FLmie4mpXPexBIGeoakuX_DpEkwJi1CBrZj_DLBsctaRygz_Ad-QrBqZwhqiErfU7hQtHLoQOkXPeh1xgC0wI4bXvfD5W3M-VUF2/s320/ufo+california+airship.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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3) <b><i>For-profit venture and the closed cycle of credibility</i></b>: Many of these stars of research are now part of <i><a href="https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/">To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences</a></i> (as mentioned above). It is a for-profit venture in what its founder calls it a "Public Benefit Corporation" and they have a button to "invest" right on their front page. They have so far sold $2 million in stock shares so far and the NYT story is a perfect boon for such an organization - which already has plastered quotes from the article on its website. In its launch video, the founder Tom DeLonge talked about making this venture a "perpetual funding machine".<br />
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Both Politico and NYT stories detail how Harry Reid bypassed the Senate and got support from Alaskan senator, Ted Stevens, and the then head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Daniel Inouye (Hawai'i) to appropriate this "black money" channeled for this questionable research. But then Tom DeLonge and others used the fact that they have been funded by DoD as way to argue for their credibility. This is a closed cycle of credibility without much due process or any minimal peer review by scientists (if they consider this research scientific).<br />
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<b>But what do we do about the video of an "encounter" of F/A-18 pilot released by DoD's <i>Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)</i>? </b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="321" id="nyt_video_player" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://static01.nyt.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000005607812" title="New York Times Video - Embed Player" width="480"></iframe></div>
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It is intriguing. The right answer is - we don't know what this is. I would love to know more about it and have the data analysis being open for a peer-review process by scientists. But just because we don't know what <i><b>it</b></i> is, doesn't mean that it <b><i>is</i></b> a spacecraft from another planet. That is a huge leap that is not justified by the data. Pilots have reported seeing lights since the early days of flight. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter">Foo Fighters</a> (not the band - but wandering lights) have been reported at least since WWII. Are these ionized gases in the atmosphere? Are these things that people imagine in a low oxygen environment at 15,000 feet? Are these refractions off our atmosphere? Are these spacecrafts from other planets? Are these ethereal beings imagined in numerous folk stories? </div>
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Well - we don't know and we do need to find out what is being seen on the radar. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivODs7-u7-oU17fEaeThNuCUPcrN5p7N_3dv3iu5K5uL3SOl3I8oa7Y5sovqhm-Ia_TcJIsqjB98GXjBTtNvoG6uLbI4Q_FaHl_2q3lgN2Ov5sJqqmGtL-_3F1Y0M3jo7F7WIW/s1600/KIC-8462852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="985" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivODs7-u7-oU17fEaeThNuCUPcrN5p7N_3dv3iu5K5uL3SOl3I8oa7Y5sovqhm-Ia_TcJIsqjB98GXjBTtNvoG6uLbI4Q_FaHl_2q3lgN2Ov5sJqqmGtL-_3F1Y0M3jo7F7WIW/s200/KIC-8462852.jpg" width="200" /></a>If you want a good example on how to approach aliens then look no further than the way astronomers have approached the weirdness of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852">Tabby's Star</a> (KIC 8462852). Astronomers detected a strange pattern in the dimming of this star. Something that had never been seen before and that could not be explained easily with any natural astronomical phenomenon. The presence of a possible <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a19346/james-webb-telescope-alien-megastructure/">Alien megastructure</a> was/is being suggested as a far-fetched possibility. While this is an amazingly exciting possibility, astronomers have been trying their best to to find a natural explanation. This is not because they don't want to <i>believe</i> in presence of intelligent beings out in the universe - but rather that the presence of intelligent beings elsewhere is such a huge claim that we have to be absolutely sure that we are missing out something more simple. "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence", as Carl Sagan used to say. </div>
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I will leave it up to you to see if the UFO claims made by DoD's <i>AATIP </i>program or the <i>To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTS/AAS)</i>. </div>
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Also, here is my conversation on this topic with <a href="http://wrsi.com/monte/">Monte Belmonte</a> on Monday for our fantastic local indie radio station, <a href="http://wrsi.com/">The River - 93.9FM</a>: </div>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-35568845156688670532017-12-15T16:24:00.001-05:002017-12-15T16:24:43.027-05:00Fantastic Iraqi Translation Project for Science<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr2emzVRXWo0T_UyZr-moZn3GCRsCC3JWj9juKnJRJw4WeMbMUN7bqP5ayiT3NwBpFl6DEwLp86rywhnDMKKuOv4yCPk1MXJl4sWi6avLoHmnDkIQn8gcyvTjYTR5UOpJ_JF-q/s1600/ITP.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="1058" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr2emzVRXWo0T_UyZr-moZn3GCRsCC3JWj9juKnJRJw4WeMbMUN7bqP5ayiT3NwBpFl6DEwLp86rywhnDMKKuOv4yCPk1MXJl4sWi6avLoHmnDkIQn8gcyvTjYTR5UOpJ_JF-q/s320/ITP.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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I have just returned from Qatar after attending a workshop on science education in the Gulf. More on that soon. But there were interesting discussions about the medium of instruction for science classes. This is a tricky issue as children learn best in their mother language. But good translations (our any translations) are not available, thus limiting what can be taught and learn in school. Within this context, is fantastic to know about the <a href="http://www.iqtp.org/">Iraqi Translation Project</a>. Paul Baterman has a nice <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-an-iraqi-translation-project-is-helping-to-rebuild-science-in-the-arab-world-89105">article</a> about this project and its promise in the Arab world:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Iraqi Translation Project (ITP) is one of several similar projects that have sprung up in recent years, spurred on no doubt by the disappointments of the Arab Spring. The potential audience is enormous; these projects keep well-curated Facebook pages, and according to the Dubai-based Arab Social Media Report, there are over 150m Facebook users in their target areas.<br />...<br />ITP started in 2013. Its materials are archived on its website, and accessible through Facebook, where it has over 140,000 followers, and on YouTube. The closely related Arabic-language <a href="http://en.real-sciences.com/">Real Science</a>, founded in 2011, also has its own website (now bilingual) and Facebook page. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The co-founders of ITP, several of whom are also involved in <a href="http://en.real-sciences.com/">Real Science</a>, include Hassan Mazin Alkhayuon, currently a PhD candidate in applied mathematics at the University of Exeter – and my own main contact with the project – a biology teacher, a construction engineer with experience in popularising science, a surgeon and an English literature graduate. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ITP translates cultural articles, videos and documentaries, with particular concentration on science-related digital materials for a general audience, of which there is a severe lack in Arabic. The project runs entirely on a voluntary basis, and currently has over 50 active volunteers, including some qualified or qualifying as a translators.</blockquote>
This is a fantastic effort and needs to grow. The impact is not immediate, but it needs a sustained effort. One of the offshoots of this kind of effort is that it may also allow a broader discussion of topics that are not usually addressed. Now evolution, unfortunately, is becoming one of the topics that is being considered more and more controversial in several Muslim countries (it wasn't the case in biology textbooks even a few years ago - and places like Saudi Arabia were more of an exception in their opposition to evolutionary theory). Therefore, it is great to know that ITP has been translating works on evolution as well, including that getting the support of Neil Shubin:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The project has managaed to attract some high-ranking support. <a href="http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/shubin_n.html">Neil Shubin</a>, discoverer of <a href="http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html">Tiktaalik</a> (the “missing link” between lobefish and amphibians), gave an interview on his motivation as a scientist. His book, Your Inner Fish, is one of my favourite accounts of evolution science, and ITP has provided <a href="http://www.pbs.org/show/your-inner-fish/">the documentary version</a> with Arabic subtitles. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So far, ITP has translated over 2,000 articles, 60 documentaries and 150 videos. Topics cover a wide range of subjects, from Sumerian civilisation, gravity waves and political secularism, to female philosophers and interbreeding of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The project does not shy away from sensitive topics, although of course publication does not imply agreement, and recent posts discuss anything from the nature of religious belief to the politics of separatism in Catalonia and Kurdistan. Evolution is one of the most popular subjects, with the first instalment of Your Inner Fish having received over 90,000 views since August 2016. </blockquote>
And yes, you should definitely check out <a href="http://www.pbs.org/your-inner-fish/home/"><i>Your Inner Fish</i></a> - both the book and the documentary.<br />
<br />
At a time when there is a shortage of good and positive stories, it is great to hear about the Iraqi Translation Project.<br />
<br />
Read the full article <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-an-iraqi-translation-project-is-helping-to-rebuild-science-in-the-arab-world-89105">here</a>.<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-7536440220748200732017-11-27T21:41:00.000-05:002017-11-27T21:41:14.094-05:00A couple of phenomenal digitized manuscripts: From Marvel of Things to Turkish Fairy Tales<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
I am more or less despairing on the broader negative turn of the Internet - in particular the addictiveness of social media sites like <i>Facebook</i>. More on that later. On the positive side, however, we can access and explore books in a way never before possible. In fact, there are books that we may never have encountered, unless we were doing research on that particular topic. With this spirit in mind, here are three books from <i><a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/">The Public Domain Review</a></i> that got my attention.<br />
<br />
The first one is an illustrated version of a 13th century book by physician and astronomer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakariya_al-Qazwini">Zakariya al-Qazwini</a>. Here is a brief description of the book <i>Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing</i> from the <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/marvels-of-things-created-and-miraculous-aspects-of-things-existing/">Public Domain Review site</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Images from an illustrated version of a 13th-century Arabic treatise by Zakariya al-Qazwini titled ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt (Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing). The text is probably the best known example of ‘ajā’ib or ‘jā’ib al-makhlūqāt literature, a genre of classical Islamic literature that was concerned with “mirabilia”: cosmographical and geographical topics that challenged understanding. Al-Qazwini’s treatise explored an eclectic mix of topics, from humans and their anatomy to strange mythical creatures; from plants and animals to constellations of stars and zodiacal signs. The treatise was extremely popular and was frequently illustrated over the centuries into both Persian and Turkish. The images featured here are from an exquisitely illustrated Persian translation, thought to hail from 17th-century Mughal India.</blockquote>
And here a couple of images from the manuscript (in the last one below, you can also read "Parinda" (bird) in Persian/Urdu next to a cat with wings):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0i0pZU3ZAI6BGxxD4xqDSSgDvhfL2mKWYeijiRn84tvev5U3R57a79HICvvB4SNpcRE4crUGfuH4wf8f78i3b5N8JVsjpRApsTfMNVRWDKurJlL4KFqUCkCIEXb3p4sSjlL5K/s1600/Marvel+things+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="550" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0i0pZU3ZAI6BGxxD4xqDSSgDvhfL2mKWYeijiRn84tvev5U3R57a79HICvvB4SNpcRE4crUGfuH4wf8f78i3b5N8JVsjpRApsTfMNVRWDKurJlL4KFqUCkCIEXb3p4sSjlL5K/s400/Marvel+things+1.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHGiSGCUyyulSH2p98C6RaHuyGPdRJZRifgjnf6wZVE7LforPLT-AevZsN0rYwLKtB0jLJygtjnHXejFEYqnyVH785hOm0kqvYBBGPOCbxi13HjTGIKom6-C6g1_w4FD8szTE/s1600/Marvel+things+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="550" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHGiSGCUyyulSH2p98C6RaHuyGPdRJZRifgjnf6wZVE7LforPLT-AevZsN0rYwLKtB0jLJygtjnHXejFEYqnyVH785hOm0kqvYBBGPOCbxi13HjTGIKom6-C6g1_w4FD8szTE/s400/Marvel+things+2.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWHKSezJaNSuJtrNIM825ThTu9USUppzb6QOvjfNMpqFPwWpNtXFzct2GNjCTIn3fHCE9Lylr6e0niOTu921Vo0-05G7KZy2GUJa1gPVMUcGxi7R-c_9LtWUhhMhsWQbTYr7Wi/s1600/Marvel+things+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="550" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWHKSezJaNSuJtrNIM825ThTu9USUppzb6QOvjfNMpqFPwWpNtXFzct2GNjCTIn3fHCE9Lylr6e0niOTu921Vo0-05G7KZy2GUJa1gPVMUcGxi7R-c_9LtWUhhMhsWQbTYr7Wi/s400/Marvel+things+3.jpg" width="267" /></a><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5jpJGsGVyyeELwPU4VfnziREzAQW17zOBhRFZ9UNLtnutLrK2MMdSafuN5aq2CkkZkLt30LYddOePLl5gu-oVqGrd62I3T50ldEXbgu3uOW1ATu3K_Fday8YzhtaKN8jL5SH/s1600/Marvel+things+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="550" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5jpJGsGVyyeELwPU4VfnziREzAQW17zOBhRFZ9UNLtnutLrK2MMdSafuN5aq2CkkZkLt30LYddOePLl5gu-oVqGrd62I3T50ldEXbgu3uOW1ATu3K_Fday8YzhtaKN8jL5SH/s400/Marvel+things+4.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
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Then there are the 16th century maps of Bosnian-born Ottoman <span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrak%C3%A7%C4%B1_Nasuh">Matrakçı Nasuh</a>. <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-maps-of-matrakci-nasuh-16th-century-polymath/">Again from The Public Domain Review</a>: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">In addition to his important writings in the fields of both mathematics and history, the Bosnian-born polymath and all-round genius Matrakçı Nasuh is best known for his exquisite miniatures depicting various landscapes and urban centres of 16th-century Persia. The images can be found spread across his four historic volumes, with perhaps the most important being Fetihname-i Karabuğdan — now at the library of Istanbul University — which addresses Suleiman the Magnificent’s Safavid War of 1532–1555. In the work Matrakçı Nasuh illustrates the cities encountered by the Ottoman army as they marched from Istanbul to Baghdad, then Tabriz, and the return journey through Halab and Eskisehir.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">The name Matrakçı was not, in fact, his name by birth but rather a nickname referring to his invention of a kind of military lawn game called matrak (a word which means “cudgel” or “mace”, the main weapon at the heart of the game). The name stuck, and later would come to label its very own genre in Ottoman miniature art, the “Matrakçı style”, describing works echoing his penchant for detail and precision of execution, perhaps nowhere better encapsulated than in the famous image of Istanbul from 1536. </span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">Here is this amazing 1536 map of Istanbul referred above: </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAszkb0G8aaSLGcmU6FJW0pUgafiKMooFRQdOSeUldSpTIv0dSYr1M5B625qQlLh1TWqlXmDVTRYwYB_CziRmHu5JV9EZc6NNWt9vr7En40uCXvosKh0YgcL4U_cMevceSEjz/s1600/Map1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="650" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAszkb0G8aaSLGcmU6FJW0pUgafiKMooFRQdOSeUldSpTIv0dSYr1M5B625qQlLh1TWqlXmDVTRYwYB_CziRmHu5JV9EZc6NNWt9vr7En40uCXvosKh0YgcL4U_cMevceSEjz/s640/Map1.jpg" width="452" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">And to cap it off, here is a 1913 book of <a href="https://archive.org/stream/fortyfourturkish001862#page/n7/mode/2up">Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales</a>: </span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: "alegreya" , serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="430px" src="https://archive.org/stream/fortyfourturkish001862?ui=embed#mode/1up" width="480px"></iframe></div>
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And a description from <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/forty-four-turkish-fairy-tales-1913/">The Public Domain Review</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The most famous collectors of folk stories remain, at least in the West, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, but many others followed in their influential wake. Among them was Ignác Kúnos (1860-1945), who compiled this volume of Turkish fairytales in the same tradition. A Hungarian-born linguist, Kúnos also had an interest in the Turkish dialect and folk tradition, and collected several volumes of oral fairytales, not through reading and study, but by travelling around the Turkish country and listening to storytellers. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In this elaborately produced volume, beautifully illustrated by Willy Pogany, Kúnos describes the stories as being closer to the fairytales of European tradition than those in Arabian Nights, seeking to dissuade his readers of any notion of Orientalism. However, the fact that these tales are thematically similar to their Western counterparts — containing stories of princesses and dragons, witches and white horses, heroes and villains — should not be surprising to any frequent reader of fairytales. They are so often, in some way, international. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One striking element of these tales from Turkey is the frequent presence of the over-sized supernatural beings referred to as “Dews” (or on occasion simply “Arabs”!) — known elsewhere in Islamic folklore as “Devis” or “Jin” (Europeanized as “Genie”). With their towering form their closest cognate in the European tradition would be the figure of the giant, with some fairy-like elements thrown in for good measure. Like giants they are normally malevolent towards humans, but are sometimes friendly and helpful.</blockquote>
Good stuff!</div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-65371020573399584592017-11-24T15:16:00.003-05:002017-11-24T15:16:45.145-05:00Iranian scientists' death sentence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
An Iranian scientist was sentenced to death last month on the charges of spying. Apart from the inherent problematic nature of capital punishment, this is deeply troubling. Now 75 Nobel laureates have written to the United Nations <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureates-demand-release-of-iranian-scholar-facing-death-sentence-1.23037">appealing</a> for his release:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The group wrote to Gholamali Khoshroo, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, on 17 November, and the letter was made public on 21 November. The Nobel laureates express their concern for the conditions of Djalali’s detention; they deem his trial “unfair” and “flawed”, and they urge the Iranian authorities to let him return to Sweden, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJrYBwP5JcIU3l2jN-EEFVmuzodx474V0ItT7Iyd1bM5yUSyYbUxBnEoAPkr1ZQlvjrxeZ9pt0sGF6u0wsG4kTwgfEX8KvNtFaUs_WI-tYJXrvV0qAUHLCMl-J5wQc6TYGlud/s1600/Djalali.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="630" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJrYBwP5JcIU3l2jN-EEFVmuzodx474V0ItT7Iyd1bM5yUSyYbUxBnEoAPkr1ZQlvjrxeZ9pt0sGF6u0wsG4kTwgfEX8KvNtFaUs_WI-tYJXrvV0qAUHLCMl-J5wQc6TYGlud/s200/Djalali.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
where he lived. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The list includes prominent names such as Harold Varmus, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health, now at the Weill Cornell Medicine institute in New York, and Andre Geim, a physicist based at the University of Manchester, UK. They wrote: “As members of a group of people and organizations who, according to the will of Alfred Nobel are deeply committed to the greatest benefit to mankind, we cannot stay silent, when the life and work of a similarly devoted researcher as Iranian disaster medicine scholar Ahmadreza Djalali is threatened by a death sentence.”</blockquote>
Djalali has been accused of spying and for the providing information that led to the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-pushing-israel-to-stop-assassinating-iranian-nuclear-scientists/">killing of several Iranian physicists</a> (which in itself was an abhorring act conducted by Israel and/or US - and should have been denounced more broadly):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Djalali carried out research on emergency medicine — specifically, on the response of hospitals to terrorist attacks — while based at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Novara, Italy, and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 and accused of collaboration with a hostile government. On 21 October this year, Djalali was convicted of espionage and sentenced to death, according to Djalali’s wife Vida Mehrannia and Italian diplomatic sources.<br />Tehran’s prosecutor linked Djalali to the murder of several Iranian nuclear physicists. But a document thought to have been written by Djalali has claimed that he was sentenced after refusing to spy for Iran. Djalali’s lawyer has appealed against the death sentence and is awaiting the court’s decision.</blockquote>
Read the full story <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureates-demand-release-of-iranian-scholar-facing-death-sentence-1.23037">here</a>.<br />
<br />
In the mean time, US-Iran relations keep on heading south. US is even blocking the deals which were explicitly negotiated as part of Iranian's freeze of the nuclear program. From <i><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/576.full">Science</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Iran nuclear deal was meant to usher in a new era of science cooperation between the Islamic republic and other parties to the landmark agreement, which deters the country from pursuing nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief. But nearly 2 years after implementation began, few projects are underway. And Science has learned that the United States has frozen Iran out of a collaboration that the deal expressly brokered: ITER, the multibillion-dollar fusion experiment in France. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Iran has been poised for months to ink an agreement to join ITER in a limited capacity. “It was all moving well, until President [Donald] Trump took office,” says Ali Akbar Salehi, president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran here. An ITER official who requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity confirms that the United States is blocking Iran through its seat on ITER's governing council, which must approve Iran's participation unanimously. Bringing Iran into ITER was expected to be straightforward. The long delay, European and Iranian officials say, casts a pall on other scientific collaborations expected under the nuclear deal. An ITER council meeting later this month is expected to take up the issue. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formally known, curtails Iran's uranium enrichment program and mandates the redesign of the Arak research reactor to greatly reduce plutonium production there. Last month, Trump declared that the JCPOA is not in the United States's national interest; his decertification gave the U.S. Congress 60 days to reevaluate it.</blockquote>
Read the full story <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/576.full">here</a>.<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-57594920313104572632017-11-11T15:55:00.000-05:002017-11-11T15:55:21.524-05:00Women in Muslim-majority countries are flocking to STEM fields<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
There are some fascinating recent trends that suggests that a high proportion of women in Muslim-majority countries are going into engineering and other sciences related fields. Elizabeth Weingarten has an <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/better_life_lab/2017/11/09/the_stem_paradox_why_are_muslim_majority_countries_producing_so_many_female.html">excellent article</a> on Slate that explores why that is the case, and compares it to the relatively low fraction in the developed countries. And some of the reasons are fascinating. But she starts with Tunisia:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In March, inside a small room at Tunisia’s National Engineering School of Tunis, six women listened, eyes wet, as one played an old song on her iPhone. The Arabic tune was a lullaby from a popular 1950s TV show that mothers had sung to their baby girls. The lyrics envision a future in which the little girl starts school and earns excellent grades: “And I will say ‘My girl has grown up, she will be an engineer’/ Oh people, oh people! I love her!/ She’s her mother’s lovely girl.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For the Tunisian women—faculty members at the school—the song was a reminder of their childhoods. For the Americans, it was a reminder that they were in the right place. They had come to dig into an emergent and counterintuitive pattern of data: There are, in many cases, a larger proportion of women studying and pursuing STEM careers inside developing, Muslim-majority countries than in the U.S.—and in some countries, those numbers are rising further. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For Americans, the vision of a 1950s mother crooning such a lullaby to her daughter probably sounds anomalous. Back then, most women were neither encouraged nor permitted to work in a masculine career like engineering. And today, they are still underrepresented in STEM careers overall and in engineering specifically: Only 18.4 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering go to women, and women make up between 8 and 34 percent of the engineering workforce, depending on the subfield. </blockquote>
And indeed, if you look at <a href="https://contexts.org/articles/what-gender-is-science/">this data</a>, you can see some of the dramatic differences:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithejXjO7jIAXKNrZRcrdnmB8lOsUkSZLqzXsOclpdM__QHn-aP3n-EIvtVinWvMPergXxDRobV-O3vguR4KrkrlTyp0VZVGAeP-GWJ9vAehlLL80fgEm2yPveydKg_88Yqn4Q/s1600/Stem-Muslim-women.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithejXjO7jIAXKNrZRcrdnmB8lOsUkSZLqzXsOclpdM__QHn-aP3n-EIvtVinWvMPergXxDRobV-O3vguR4KrkrlTyp0VZVGAeP-GWJ9vAehlLL80fgEm2yPveydKg_88Yqn4Q/s400/Stem-Muslim-women.png" width="365" /></a></div>
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And this trend continues for 8th graders as well: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Charles and other academic partners continued the research by <a href="http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/mar6socuisfeature.pdf">asking eighth-graders</a> around the world about their career aspirations. Once again, they found the same pattern: The more developed and affluent the country, the fewer female students said they wanted jobs in STEM when they grew up and that they liked math and science. This meant that the STEM gender gap contrast couldn’t be fully explained by economic decision-making—women (rationally) choosing more lucrative career paths in financially unstable environments. Separate from economic concerns, career preferences, too, were also divided along gender lines.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But why is this happening? And this is where this becomes utterly fascinating and data will test this hypothesis: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When it came to some of the more basic indicators of gender equality—women’s political participation, access to education and economic opportunities, and existence of overtly discriminatory laws or policies—women were for the most part faring better in the U.S. than in some of these developing nations.<br />...<br />Though Charles and Bradley tried to answer that big question raised by their research, their theory was limited by the data: They had quantitative research but no qualitative interviews. Now, DeBoer, Ater Kranov, and other researchers intend to interrogate the original theory by holding interviews and focus groups like the one in Tunisia. To help them analyze their data, they’ll use Charles and Bradley’s original hypothesis: that encouraging young women to “follow their passion” can lead to a reliance on gender stereotypes. How? Imagine a 10-year-old kid who’s told to “follow her passion” in order to figure out her career path. Though it’d be nice to think that she will find this passion by looking deep into her soul, she’s far more likely to settle on a path by observing what people who look like her do, by thinking about what she’s good at, and by considering what’s expected of her as a girl. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“In Western industrialized countries, we believe that women and men are innately and fundamentally different and tend to celebrate those differences,” DeBoer explains. Another contributing factor is the tendency to “assign gendered labels to different fields. In other words, we see engineering as a man’s work and a caregiving field like nursing as a woman’s work.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the imaginations of citizens of developed countries, “curricular and career choices become more than practical economic decisions … they also represent acts of identity construction and self-affirmation,” wrote Charles in Contexts magazine in 2011. But as Charles puts it, “occupational aspirations are social products, not intrinsic properties of individuals.”</blockquote>
There are many factors that comer into play, but sometimes opportunities can just line-up with academic performances. When I was in Pakistan, if you did well in 11th/12th grade, then you were likely to go pick either an engineering or a medical college. Those choices were imperative - if you had high marks. This is also the case mentioned here for Tunisia and Jordan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For instance, in Tunisia and Jordan, all students take a national exam after high school regardless of socio-economic status, and depending on their scores, they are funneled into particular career tracks. “The majority of women didn’t choose their professions; it was the scores that chose for them,” Ater Kranov explains. Top scorers are admitted to medical school, second-tier scorers are admitted to engineering schools, and third-tier are law students. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“A large percentage of girls aren’t driven by passion for engineering but by performance,” says Raja Ghozi, a Tunisian engineering professor at the National Engineering School of Tunis who has also studied in the U.S. Though Tunisian women can change their field of study to the humanities, they tend to stick with engineering because it’s something that’s been encouraged by their parents—often their fathers, Ghozi says—and because they know they’re more likely to find jobs in engineering in a country with a 15 percent unemployment rate. These women, she says, are taught to “complete the mission. Quitting or changing career direction for them is a failure, at least when they embark on their engineering education.” In many ways, that’s a virtue. But as a professor, Ghozi says she sees the dark side of this system in women who are burned out and unmotivated by the content of the work: “I think many of the girls could have been happier by allowing themselves to change careers, but the Tunisian engineering education system may not be that flexible.”</blockquote>
The article concludes by looking at this issue of choice and conformity regarding gender inequality in STEM fields:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We may think we’re rooting gender inequality out of our systems and institutions by targeting formal restrictions and overt discrimination, but it can still exist in covert ways. Often times, “equality is defined in formal procedural terms - as equal opportunities to realize preferences, which are understood to be properties of individuals” and therefore sacrosanct, Charles wrote me in an email. If a woman pursues a career as a teacher, she’s unlikely to see this choice as one of forced conformity to gender norms but rather think her aspirations reflect a unique mix of interest and ability. “This emotional buy-in is where gender segregation gets its staying power,” Charles says. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Though this may sound like a bleak assessment, it’s actually a freeing realization: Say you’ve always thought you were destined—or designed—for a particular career. That’s a powerful narrative and one that’s reinforced by the media we consume and the people we talk to about their supposed career trajectories. But this narrative can also be powerfully constraining—especially if you experience failure or crises of confidence, which most of us will or already do. If we let go of the idea that our preferences, aspirations, and capabilities are completely self-determined, perhaps we’ll truly experience a freedom of choice that has so far eluded us.</blockquote>
Read the full article <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/better_life_lab/2017/11/09/the_stem_paradox_why_are_muslim_majority_countries_producing_so_many_female.html">here</a>. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-32331357776902815192017-11-01T22:38:00.002-04:002017-11-01T22:38:44.772-04:00And Iran just beat the US in the race for science advisers...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />For a while it looked like that both Iran and the US were competing to go the longest without a science minister (in the Iranian case) or a science adviser (in the case of the US). President Hassan Rouhani started his second term in office in May of this year and had reportedly submitted 20 names for approval. None of these names <a href="https://www.juancole.com/2017/10/fundamentalism-overrules-science.html">garnered support</a> from the conservatives. However, on Oct 28th Iranian parliament <a href="http://theiranproject.com/blog/2017/10/29/iran-parliament-approves-new-energy-science-ministers/">approved Rouhani's nominee</a>, Mansour Gholami for the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology.<br />
<br />
In the US, Donald Trump just broke the record for going the longest <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/wait-for-trump-s-science-adviser-breaks-modern-era-record-1.22878">without a science adviser</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Donald Trump has now gone longer without a science adviser in place than any recent first-term US president — by any measure. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On 23 October, Trump broke the record set by former President George W. Bush. Bush’s science adviser, physicist John Marburger, was confirmed by the Senate on 23 October 2001. That was 276 days after Bush took office, and 120 days after he announced that Marburger was his pick for the job. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Trump has also waited longer than any president since at least 1976, when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy was created, to name his choice for the science-adviser job. </blockquote>
So I guess, Iran 1, USA 0.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, may be we should be grateful for this. After all, his choice for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt is doing his best to dismantle everything about protecting the environment and has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/10/31/us/politics/ap-us-epa-pruitt-science.html">eliminated science panels</a>. So who knows - he may think that Ken Ham of the Creation Museum is a good idea for a science adviser.<br /><br />Just for the record, Obama made his choice for science adviser a month before inauguration. Sigh! Yes, yes. Times have changed.<br />
<br />
Here is a graphic from last week's <i><a href="https://www.nature.com/news/wait-for-trump-s-science-adviser-breaks-modern-era-record-1.22878">Nature</a></i>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMLRqaccIeZlICt-clkkGAL05xBfQ-u9zIO0RkINPlc9VnyXXpL0CXLhwW8SUqLrpCcgH1KYn6GhwNsXxZ7NJSCKa3wFx52StJaf1KHDJ4NVBQjtN40m02i2bLMTNQ9BM3DJQ-/s1600/Science-adviser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="630" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMLRqaccIeZlICt-clkkGAL05xBfQ-u9zIO0RkINPlc9VnyXXpL0CXLhwW8SUqLrpCcgH1KYn6GhwNsXxZ7NJSCKa3wFx52StJaf1KHDJ4NVBQjtN40m02i2bLMTNQ9BM3DJQ-/s400/Science-adviser.jpg" width="353" /></a></div>
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-62266153859595735912017-10-29T16:16:00.000-04:002017-10-29T16:16:33.671-04:00Peter Adamson's recommendation for 5 books on Philosophy in the Islamic World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
<br />
If you are looking for books on Islamic philosophy, then you can start with the <a href="https://fivebooks.com/interview/peter-adamson-philosophy-islamic-world/">recommendation</a> from philosopher Peter Adamson. However, he starts with the relevant question: What do we even mean by 'the Islamic World'?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There’s been a debate about how to refer to the field. An obvious choice would be ‘Islamic philosophy.’ Some people have preferred to say ‘Arabic philosophy’. I even co-edited a Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy before I changed my mind about the right way to describe it. But both of these phrases have problems. The problem with ‘Islamic philosophy’ is that some of the philosophers that we’re interested in weren’t Muslims. It would be strange to call a Christian philosopher like ibn ʿAdī, or a Jewish philosopher like Maimonides, an ‘Islamic’ philosopher. What we’re really studying here is this shared culture of philosophical work in the Islamic world. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bBKkeLFb9i3Wg1CLFlOGRFtID-6zUoyIMJy-Dj2dJkYlGKFkNjQCSJNpJlO9sc4H40D6BRRS6VSQcAeh9NJdVS_x_cWxLOODN9jRKP7BqyZduF13L_ZdjBCL2N5fEBM7j-2p/s1600/Gutas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bBKkeLFb9i3Wg1CLFlOGRFtID-6zUoyIMJy-Dj2dJkYlGKFkNjQCSJNpJlO9sc4H40D6BRRS6VSQcAeh9NJdVS_x_cWxLOODN9jRKP7BqyZduF13L_ZdjBCL2N5fEBM7j-2p/s200/Gutas.jpg" width="129" /></a>Some people also feel that calling it ‘Islamic philosophy’ presupposes that the main issues are all going to be about Islamic religion, which is possibly true for some figures in the tradition, but not for all of them. The description ‘Arabic philosophy’ is meant to highlight the fact that this is a philosophical tradition that gets going through the Arabic translations from Greek philosophy. But this is also problematic in various ways. If you think about really late thinkers like Mulla Ṣadrā who was active much, much later in Safavid Iran—almost a millennium after the Greek translation movement—it seems a bit strange to say that we’re still thinking about the translation movements. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oSeUEugXAiP1tOWlq4oRalRAY8CaNztFopHbGFd7d9R67U4PNe2RxUp2HJd8lou2U2K1GxyFFaWt6BYnufCvEokyltDUaDmclXX8VLLNLQR3XHBxLttgYxN1ghxOtKs6KlJs/s1600/Avicenna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oSeUEugXAiP1tOWlq4oRalRAY8CaNztFopHbGFd7d9R67U4PNe2RxUp2HJd8lou2U2K1GxyFFaWt6BYnufCvEokyltDUaDmclXX8VLLNLQR3XHBxLttgYxN1ghxOtKs6KlJs/s200/Avicenna.jpg" width="129" /></a>Also, some works in the philosophical tradition are not in Arabic: there’s quite a bit in Persian later on, there are Hebrew works too. So ‘Arabic philosophy’ is not really satisfactory as a name. There’s also a common confusion that people have: they are always saying, ‘how can you call it Arabic philosophy when most of these thinkers were not Arabs?’ That, to me, is a spurious objection because there’s a difference between Arabic and Arab: to my ear Arabic is a language and Arab is an ethnicity. This causes confusion and people are always complaining about that and, even though they’re wrong to complain about it, it’s still worth avoiding this misconception. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgLprP5ODWSZLzP5i0mPElwkm3lVUlz7G-7IbDAfnu-mq0-P4UV5UCJDyarDNYBSIVpsR0R-sXKuV3Orv7egjUkxiz8D04yo6sdf0OFySWEvLsEc2LySOPr3MAcQ1n6fS7DnM/s1600/Avicenna+de+anima.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="212" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgLprP5ODWSZLzP5i0mPElwkm3lVUlz7G-7IbDAfnu-mq0-P4UV5UCJDyarDNYBSIVpsR0R-sXKuV3Orv7egjUkxiz8D04yo6sdf0OFySWEvLsEc2LySOPr3MAcQ1n6fS7DnM/s200/Avicenna+de+anima.jpg" width="144" /></a>What I like about ‘philosophy in the Islamic world’ is that, in a way, it’s a neutral designation. It just says we’re going to be looking at philosophical texts that were produced in a certain geographical and historical framework. So, really, all I mean by ‘the Islamic world’ is regions of the earth under the political domination of Islam. That means that it could be written by Christians and Jews—it often was—because they lived in the Islamic world, and, for the most part, it was easier for them to engage in intellectual endeavour than it would have been, for example, for Jews working in Christian medieval Europe. Especially in certain times and places in the Islamic world, you actually had very fruitful interchange and cooperation between people of different religions. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbU4hp8iqCcrdMo8Cp6y7HKHi893oc_KgaYI2xy_gmWFCzZariihrRUT_fGp8Uh50f2dmtAKXKZZCjAqOBaowlZL0c7-hzdkdp1ujSDy6J0tE4Krgmd8NPG4mmYP2vXwZPfCh/s1600/maimonides.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbU4hp8iqCcrdMo8Cp6y7HKHi893oc_KgaYI2xy_gmWFCzZariihrRUT_fGp8Uh50f2dmtAKXKZZCjAqOBaowlZL0c7-hzdkdp1ujSDy6J0tE4Krgmd8NPG4mmYP2vXwZPfCh/s200/maimonides.jpg" width="132" /></a>As soon as you have the massive expansion of the Islamic caliphate in the generations following the death of Mohammed, you have this enormous empire that stretches from Spain in Europe all the way to central Asia. The borders fluctuate: they lose Spain after a while, and it’s not even mostly under one single ruler. Much later, in the period that is the same timeframe as early modern Europe, you have a fracturing into three large empires: the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire in Iran, and the Mughal Empire in India.<br />But, to me, that’s all the Islamic world. Roughly speaking, if the local authorities are Muslim, then it’s the Islamic World. This defines a very clear context for philosophy and it turns out that that is, more or less, a good way of thinking about a certain philosophical culture. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfJDotfiu1E27K5u08K8-yz-X_Y5Hk9_2oq3L1ad2WLohdU1o5mITKJWkxxknjmpAONDxVWp9CXLEwx6FywQQmfz-W6ARQ7Y68mWbMaW-B6jl-S7BpMEDRetA6A-W6dt_ZJM9P/s1600/Razi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="253" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfJDotfiu1E27K5u08K8-yz-X_Y5Hk9_2oq3L1ad2WLohdU1o5mITKJWkxxknjmpAONDxVWp9CXLEwx6FywQQmfz-W6ARQ7Y68mWbMaW-B6jl-S7BpMEDRetA6A-W6dt_ZJM9P/s200/Razi.jpg" width="126" /></a>There is actually a word, ‘Islamicate,’ which was invented to refer to the same idea. So, the Islamic world would be the Islamicate. Some people have even suggested saying ‘Islamicate philosophy’, but I resist that because I don’t think that ‘Islamicate’ is a word that most people know. Still, when I say ‘Islamic world’ what I mean is what all these other scholars mean by ‘Islamicate’. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One complaint I do have is that, although philosophy in the Islamic world is covered sometimes, it is usually only in passing. In the context of courses on medieval philosophy, you might cover Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Avicenna, Averroes, Aquinas, and Scotus. This is the typical itinerary for a medieval philosophy course. Although that is not entirely wrong—because Avicenna and Averroes were very influential on people like Aquinas, something is really wrong about that as well, because it implies that philosophy in the Islamic world really was contemporary with medieval philosophy and then stopped at the end of the medieval period. That’s just not true. The tradition carried on.</blockquote>
You can read more about his book recommendation <a href="https://fivebooks.com/interview/peter-adamson-philosophy-islamic-world/">here</a>. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-21907560082671088312017-10-28T21:13:00.003-04:002017-10-28T21:13:45.825-04:00A robot granted Saudi citizenship...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ0vadpuB9sLg4ANl7xq6oenzOWQDFU5EX3IatroI1f4o6ibNl64WvAXLSPp78nnTeZrVsCJ_02qWxtoluxPbJGOgRHsBxdV-Yc3-D898qFAo0WyGN48TNaxmpx1tpeqat0JDR/s1600/Sophia.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ0vadpuB9sLg4ANl7xq6oenzOWQDFU5EX3IatroI1f4o6ibNl64WvAXLSPp78nnTeZrVsCJ_02qWxtoluxPbJGOgRHsBxdV-Yc3-D898qFAo0WyGN48TNaxmpx1tpeqat0JDR/s320/Sophia.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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A robot named Sophia has been granted a <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/10/26/saudi_arabia_gives_citizenship_to_humanoid_robot_named_sophia.html">Saudi Arabian citizenship</a>. I don't know if they ask the robot first or not. This would be interesting if I thought it was more than just a gimmick. And of course it becomes a bit sad when considering the fact that Saudi citizenship, up until recently, was almost impossible to get for workers from South Asia (i think there is now a 10-year path). And of course, the fact that Sophia is a female robot has generated the requisite social media reaction: Why isn't she wearing an Abaya? Where is her robot male guardian, etc? But ultimately, it is a way of getting publicity and sounding "modern" - which may be enough to divert some attention away from other Saudi issues like the atrocious war on Yemen, rights of women, boycott of Qatar, etc.<br />
<br />In any case, here is Sophia (she is supposed to be in the image of Audrey Hepburn...): <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gWxRLA2BWkw" width="560"></iframe>
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Now on the other hand, it will be cool if Sophia turns out to be like the protagonist in <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYGzRB4Pnq8#action=share">Ex Machina</a></i>. </div>
Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-69652877013792138292017-10-25T16:53:00.000-04:002017-10-25T16:56:49.822-04:00Science and Sir Syed's "Thet Musalmaan"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>by Salman Hameed</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWAZUiQDWoARasHYGPS3xL9BX5Bw9WIp31IY4hX9m9TG9Z9s9hhe1ggpGZojwPPO95DTk1pu5jCLljljP4tmluGSGrcSFdDltduoXBL9iw_e3KYKD8bIB_zCNUjhknZTjZ4cFi/s1600/SAKhan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWAZUiQDWoARasHYGPS3xL9BX5Bw9WIp31IY4hX9m9TG9Z9s9hhe1ggpGZojwPPO95DTk1pu5jCLljljP4tmluGSGrcSFdDltduoXBL9iw_e3KYKD8bIB_zCNUjhknZTjZ4cFi/s320/SAKhan.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
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Last week was the bicentennial of Sayyid Ahmad Khan's birth (I am using a different spelling for Sir Syed). There were a number of workshops and conferences in both Pakistan and India. He is a fascinating and influential South Asian personality - and I think his legacy is only going to grow. While he is credited with education reforms and Muslim nationalism, his religious ideas have largely been ignored for being too controversial. For example, he did not believe in supernatural explanations for miracles. Either miracles had natural explanations or were mentioned as an allegory. He also laid out in detail his principles for his commentary on the Quran - and placed an emphasis on reason and science in his interpretation.<br />
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I had an oped on his science for <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/1537037/6-science-sir-syed/">Express Tribune</a>. Here it is below:<br />
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<b>Science and Sir Syed</b></div>
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In 1848, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan wrote an essay that fervently argued against the motion of the earth around the sun. However, within fifteen years he had abandoned this position and had started developing a framework of reconciling findings of modern science with Islam. On October 17, 2017, the earth had gone around the sun 200 times since the birth of Syed Ahmad Khan in Delhi — the capital of the then waning Mughal empire.<br />
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Sir Syed has a complicated legacy. We have schools and colleges named after him and stamps commemorating him as one of the pioneers of the Pakistan movement. India has also honoured him with stamps for his education efforts. And yet, one of his most ambitious set of writings — his Tafsir of the Quran — was not published in Pakistan until the 1970s. It is still relatively hard to find in print and is rarely discussed beyond a few clichéd sound bites.<br />
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The bicentennial of Sir Syed’s birth is perhaps a good opportunity to look at his views on science and religion. We are today living in a world that is shaped by modern science and its derivative technologies. Some origin questions that were traditionally in the domains of religion and philosophy now lie within mainstream science. We have good evidence to believe that our universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old, that the Sun and the Earth were formed in a gaseous nebula 4.5 billion years ago and there are billions of solar systems in our own Galaxy alone, and that all life on Earth is related to one another both in composition and through the evolutionary processes that have shaped it.<br />
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Understandably, some of the origin questions have also led to tensions and conflicts with traditional religious interpretations. Many Evangelical Christians in the United States, for example, reject much of modern astronomy because they believe in an earth that is only a few thousand years old. Similarly, some Muslims and Christians are uncomfortable with one of the central ideas of biology that deals with evolution of life on earth. Of course, none of these are monolithic group rejections and there are diverse interpretations within each religious group as well.<br />
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It is in this context that we can look at Sir Syed’s approach to science and religion. One of the foundational principles he laid out for his tafsir stated that, “nothing in the Quran contradicts the law of nature”. For him, the “Work of God” cannot contradict the “Word of God” (Sir Syed used these English words in his Urdu tafsir). Any contradiction is apparent, according to him, and he provides a detailed framework for interpreting the Quran in any such circumstances.<br />
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For example, he blamed the adoption of Greek astronomy into the commentaries of the Quran for the resulting Islamic opposition (and presumably his own earlier position) to the earth’s rotation around the sun. For our purposes, what is important is not the specific case, but the broader principle of incorporating established ideas of science.<br />
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In fact, for Sir Syed, the study of nature in itself takes on a religious duty. For him, advances in science will get us closer to reality, which in turn will get us closer to the real meaning of the Quran. To critics who thought that the studying of modern science can lead to atheism, his retort was clear: “It is an idiocy (baywaqoofi) for people to think that those who follow natural science…can lead to raising the flag of the kingdom of atheism.” There can be atheists (dahirya) and agnostics (la idriya). But “naturebeen” are the ones who believe in the laws of nature and that a Creator created those laws. For Sir Syed, these “naturebeen” are the real Muslims (“thet Musalman”) and the followers of real (“thet”) Islam.<br />
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It is not just the questions about origins that are important. Today we are facing a range of ethical issues stemming from advances in gene editing to the impact of humans on the climate of our planet. The next century is also going to see humans establish their presence on other bodies of the solar system. These possibilities are both awesome and fearsome at the same time. In order to form thoughtful responses, we need a good understanding and appreciation of the sciences.<br />
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I can imagine that for some Sir Syed’s emphasis on science in the matters of religion is not only misplaced, but also misguided. His instance on the existence of natural explanation for religious miracles was, and is, considered too controversial. For some, his unabashed admiration for the British is the problem.<br />
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However, there are others who may find his approach refreshing and a recipe for a successful engagement with some of the challenges posed by contemporary science. While Sir Syed’s educational and political legacies have been well appreciated, his principles of approaching science and religion may leave him with a longer and a more global legacy.<br />
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Happy 200th birthday, Sir Syed!<br />
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Salman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.com0