LegendaryLife Blog

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, the father of the scientific method.

Let’s face it, the Muslim and Islamic world is best known for their religious zealots than scientific breakthroughs… yet, ironically, we have the Middle Eastern culture to thank for the modern scientific method!

What???

Yes, according to an upcoming documentary studying the role that science played while most of Europe was still in the Dark Ages, we all have genius along the ranks of Einstein and Newton, called al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham to thank for all the wonders that we now enjoy today.

How can this be???

We tend to forget that history is written by the victors, not the conquered. When I grew-up, the only science of any importance had its roots in Europe. Anything that came out of the Middle East, which use to be the center of the scientific, financial and social world over a thousand years ago was completely unknown. Even in university while studying for my science degree just ten years ago, all the scientists we read about where white, from (mostly) Europe and anybody from Africa, Australia, Middle East or even Asia was completely unknown to us. I think its marvelous that slowly, the truth long rejected by elitists is coming out. Who knows, maybe these revelations will cause a surge of people from Africa and the Middle East to rise-up again scientifically!

Who is al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham?

Apparently, al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was a genius on par with the most famous minds in all of history! He was a gifted mathematician who created theories explaining everything from light refraction to the beginnings of gravitation relating how planets orbit around the Sun while most people where forced by the Catholic Church to believe that the Sun orbited around the Earth (see Galileo).  Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham is also credited with creating the first pinhole camera, stating that the Earth’s Atmosphere is but 100km thick and even disproved the emissions theory when it was all but accepted as fact! Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was born in the year 925 in what is now known as the country of Iraq.

More about Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham very soon!

If it wasn’t for the BBC, I never would have heard about Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, my next task is to learn more about him and make a LegendaryLife Profile of this amazing man who is a credit to the human race no matter his origins or beliefs! I find it ironic that Charles Darwin was a Catholic who tried in vain to disprove the Theory of Evolution and Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was a Muslim who, at the very beginning, created the seed that disproves the existence of the supernatural, which was (and still is) a widely debated issue across all religions.

The Bottom Line

Knowledge is power, no matter its origins.

Buzvia: The First True Scientist

• LegendaryLife Profile: Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason (Episode 2)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt (Episode 3)
• The roots of Modern Science come from Islam!

Extremes come in all sizes, shapes and colors... just look around you to find them!

I am sure I am not the first to realize this but the more extreme people act, the more attention they seem to garner.

Why extremes get attention

From those who (still) fear that the Large Hadron Collider will mark the end of the world to simply “famous” people acting rather stupidly, being extreme does get attention but why? Basically, most people can be organized along a bell curve. You have the 5-10 percent at either end (extremes) and the large majority in the middle living a rather mundane life. How do you give your mundane life some excitement? Well, you read and try to imaging living life through those 10-20 percent extremes. Don’t believe me? Why is it that Britney Spears is able to get front page news reports around the world while the genocides STILL occurring in Africa are barely raising a tick on the attention meter? Unless you are involved in the genocides as either the victim or executor, most people honestly don’t care about what others are going through as death is both a taboo subject in our “civilized” society and celebrities seem to be way more fun with their money, fame and fortunes. Another instance, take the Queen of England, a useless relic who is (was) supported by the taxes of the people she “governed” to live a life of absolute luxury… she gets worldwide attention each time something happens in her family. Why? Who cares? I bet just down the street there are some far more interesting people who don’t live a subsidized life of luxury that can actually play an active role in solving many of the world’s problems without being given an allowance by the general public. So, why do extremes, either created by heritage or otherwise get so much attention? Because they represent a novelty, something out of the ordinary or mundane. They wake people up and make them feel alive, give them something to talk about and sound “intelligent” about.

The spiral of becoming an extreme

Our brains have developed a quick adaptation mechanism that, in some people, is a little out of wack. This isn’t a good or bad thing. To be blunt, not everybody can stand living the life of a lemming being told what to do, how to do it and when by societies norms. The problem with becoming extreme is that the next time around, you must be even more extreme to get the attention otherwise you get little or no attention. We, collectively, quickly become desensitized to things. For instance, if you watch a horror movie made in the 40s or 50s, I am willing to bet you don’t find it all that scary compared to what is being played today. If you where able to travel back in time and bring somebody from the 40s a movie produced in 2008, I am willing to bet that they would totally freak-out. What “was” scary “is” no longer. Sames goes with just about every other aspect of our lives. This is why extreme views become more so with time, if they don’t, they quickly become boring and disregarded. This happens in parties as well, the Republican party in the USA slowly evolved into the “religious, me” party while how the Democrats became the “secular, socialist” party over the period of a few elections. Another example of this is reality TV, they USE to be real but then producers realized that having extremes together made for more interesting television, thus diluting the entire meaning of “reality TV”.

When extremes is linked to finances

Now, imagine your earning potential was directly related to your behavior or lifestyle. For example, Madonna usually does something termed “crazy” just before the release of a new record to get some quick press, same for Michael Jackson and many other artists. This does two things. First, it makes the collective realize that “hey, I remember them (flood of memories)” and secondly, eases the entire marketing process from “remember” to “purchase”. First time you see something, there is shock, second time, your brain has had time to recover and you are far more likely to act on impulses… the time frame for this might be a few seconds or weeks but this is a process that marketers know very well and take advantage of.

The Bottom Line

Being or listening to extremes isn’t bad, it’s acting on what you are learning that is.

In North America and to a lesser degree in Europe, when you call customer service, more often then not, your being patched directly through to an Indian call center to handle your requests. Taxes with companies such as H&R Block are also subcontracted to India including a lot of manufacturing, resource allocation and even strategic development. If you have some money and don’t have time to become pregnant yourself, it only makes sense to outsource that to India as well!

Pregnancy

It’s no secret that the entire process of pregnancy takes a number of the woman, that, till now, was simply a birthright, there where no other alternatives. The hormonal, psychological and physical toll or pregnancy stay with her the rest of her life along with the stretch marks. Pregnancy isn’t without it’s risks but as women push their child bearing years into their mid to late 30s, infertility becomes a growing issue as well. India serves an unlimited number of young, economically disadvantaged women who are willing, if the price is right, to become a surrogate. The process occurs through in-vitro fertilization (sorry guys) using the man’s sperm and the woman’s eggs, they are then implanted into the surrogate. The end result? Your child in every sense of the word, sharing no genetic material with the surrogate and your wife or girlfriend gets to keep her amazing body, having a child without ever taking a day off work nor pain associated with giving birth.

Womb for Rent

Now, this surrogate isn’t getting pregnant with your child for the fun of it, she expects to be financially compensated. In India, a woman can expect around $4 500 for the entire process, not a lot by First World standards but this is 15 years of wages for the average maid! She gets pregnant and wins essentially a lottery that sets her up on a better path in the future. She wins as she gets out of relative poverty, the family wins as they get a child out of the transaction. Both winners right?

Self-Induced problem

It’s no secret that one of the major factors causing infertility is age, the longer people wait before starting a family, the harder it will be. A woman as at her peak reproductively in her 20s, out in nature, this isn’t a problem but in the real world, that is right before university, after high school! It seems nature hasn’t adapted fast enough to our ever changing world and now, couples the world over, are paying dearly for it. A woman having a child in her 20s, unless within a very secure relationship, has a higher chance of being marginalized the rest of her life. I wrote a few months back about my experiences working in Canada and Australia at minimum wage jobs, what I may not have mentioned is that the vast majority of the women that where there, you guessed it, started their family in their early 20s if not younger. They where mostly divorced or never got married to begin with, most of them hated their jobs as much as their lot in life. For men, although we can have children all our lives, our peak is in our mid 20s. It isn’t just infertility rates that increase with age by the way, genetic defects rise as well such as Autism, Down Syndrome and a host of other conditions that a family would want to avoid at all costs.

Moral Issues

This isn’t just happening in India, it’s happening around the world, even in the industrialized world so I am not picking on India specifically. The biggest question you need to ask in these circumstances is that if the woman was economically advantaged, would she want to become a surrogate for a family she has no relationship with? Although there are exceptions, I bet 95% of the time the answer will be “Hell No”. So, the question must be asked, is renting a strangers womb for 9 months a moral act? I know that on the streets of Bangkok (Thailand), you can rent a young woman for $20US for a 24 hour period (use your imagination) so is this much different? How much different is renting a woman for 9 months compared to a 24 hour period, or even buying a liver for that matter? These are poor women, who have no real choice, selling the only thing they have to try to better themselves. Alternatively, most people rent their brains and bodies 8 hours a day, so how is even this act different? I am not here to preach, but just think about this and feel free to share your comments.

The Bottom Line

There is no way around this, renting a person, now matter how well intentioned, is still renting a person.

Buzvia: Giving birth becomes the latest job outsourced to India

Sudan is Africa’s largest country but has been strife with war for decades as has much of Africa. Muslims use to live side by side with their Arabian friends for centuries within the Darfur region but when great oil wealth was discovered this all changed for the worse. Sadly, Darfur has been characterized as a Rwanda going in slow motion and still, even to this day, little has been done to stem the tide of death and rape.

Background

Sadly, our colonial raping of the continent of Africa continues to this day but slavery has been replaced by something far worse, indifference. We are all responsible for what is occurring as the precious commodity that sparked this tragedy is what goes into your gas tank, is molded into your Barbie Dolls and what powers much of the worlds machinery… we are talking about OIL. So far in the 21st century, from Nigeria to Iraq, OIL has been the catalyst to cause so much misery and death.

Summary

I believe this is worth watching but if you don’t have time, here is a summary of the key points outlined in the documentary:

• Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century and has gone on pretty much unimpeded over the past 4 years
• camps in Chad (neighboring country where many refuges head to for safety) have a 3 week waiting period
• 200 000 dead, 2.5 million forced to move
• the motto of the UN was “Never Again” after what occurred during the Holocaust but the it has been bogged down by political semantics
• Mia Farrow has given thousands of interviews to push Darfur into he forefront of the worlds consciousness, using her celebrity to spread the word
• Mia has traveled to Darfur (Sudan) 7 times so far
• sudanreeves.org is an influential site to bare witness to the genocide within Darfur
• most attacks begin with an uncoordinated areal attack with a retrofitted cargo plane dropping barrels of explosives onto a village to cause panic followed by the Jajaweed coming into the village by camel, killing the men and raping the woman before moving onto the next village
• in 2003, the security council got together to discuss reports about mass killings happening within Darfur, a province of Sudan
• China partnered with Sudan after oil was discovered in the 21st century and has becoming one of their biggest offshore suppliers
• when oil wealth came into being due to historic agreements in China, the ruling military elite became extremely wealthy as they kept this wealth to themselves with little making its way into the region of Darfur
• Darfur region was comprised of 6 million Muslims use to share scarce water resources with nomadic Arabian herdsmen
• rebel groups formed to claim a share of the countries new found wealth from the ruling elite but instead of sharing, the ruling elite decided to wage war against the rebels by arming militias to do the dirty work, the Janjaweed
• Janjaweed translates to “devil on horseback”
• government arms the Arabs to kill off the Muslims, no more sharing of resources
• government used the Arabs because its a cheap way to wage war, they loot instead of receiving a salary and they reposes land by force
• in 2004 the Muslims thought the UN was coming to rescue them from systematic annihilation but now they have realized that the UN doesn’t care about them
• by 2007, camps in Eastern Chad and Western Sudan comprise of most of the settlements within that region
• the UN provides aid but fails to do anything to prevent the problems causing refuges needing the camps to begin with
• by the end of 2003, 700 000 people in Darfur where forced from their homes
• by 2004, areal photographs showed villages burning to the ground followed by a number of alarming reports
• 200 000 to 500 000 people so far are estimated to have been killed during the conflict so far
• in the book A Problem from Hell – America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power shows that world governments have a history of being shy to intervening when genocide is occurring even when faced with overwhelming proof, they want it stopped but don’t want to take risks
• the UN sat idly by as Bosnia and Rwanda occurred, when Sudan began to occur, the lessons learned from past failures regarding genocide where not practiced
• the United Nations security council is the most powerful council within the UN but sadly, it’s also where most of the politics of inaction towards Sudan took place
• Russia couldn’t condemn Sudan because it was doing the same thing in Chechnya, United States wanted action but it lost status due to its carelessness within Iraq, China didn’t want to do anything that would affect its relationship with the Sudanese government providing it with much needed oil
• Sudan ignored security council resolutions and suffered NO REPROCUSIONS
• on September 9th, 2004, Colin Powell told the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that genocide had occurred within Sudan and the Sudanese government along with the Janjaweed bear responsibility for what was occurring
• war crimes and crimes against humanity where discovered within Darfur by the UN after extensive investigations but still nothing has happened
• woman living in camps within Chad and Sudan risk rape daily simply because they need to leave the camps to gather firewood to feed their family
• Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, the Sudanese Ambassador to the UN, said much of the genocide occuring is blown out of proportion and made up, they say bad things happen during war and that is basically the way life goes
• in 2005, the UN continued to talk about what is happening within Sudan and the government didn’t do anything while the Security Council was in a stalemate
• the UN doesn’t have the ability to enter a country against the governments wishes
• it took 5 years of Canadian advocacy before the UN passed a resolution allowing it to enter sovereign states without their permission during the world summit in 2005, it now had the authority to enter a country and protect its citizens from their own government
• in 2006, 8 resolutions happened against Sudan (7 in 2005, 4 in 2004) and they where systematically ignored like the previous ones by the Sudanese government
• one of the resolutions allowed the UN to enter by force to protect the populations within Darfur but China added a demand that it must be done with the approval by Sudan, which Sudan then declined
• the problems within Darfur has now spread into Chad, turning the border between the two country into a new killing field
• Chad is the 5th poorest country in the world but now they have the Janjaweed to worry about in addition to abject poverty and malnutrition
• on the United States Mall, in Washington, The worlds largest antigenocide rally occurred in May 2006 with many celebrities trying to highlight the cause including George Clooney
• in 2007, the Janjaweed and Sudanese leader where indited by the International Criminal Court (world court) for crimes against humanity but the Sudanese government said it would not hand over these two criminals
• Olympic Games in China called by some the “Genocide Olympics” to make China personally responsible for the Genocide occurring in Sudan due to its direct investments in Sudanese Oil which was the cause of this genocide to begin with
• on July 31st, 2007, there is an agreement within the UN Security Council to send 26 000 troops to Darfur by the end of the year but there is no mandate to protect the citizens nor disarming the Janjaweed

What can YOU do?

There are a number of websites dedicated towards making genocide a thing of the past, here are a few of the more well known ones.

http://www.darfurgenocide.org

http://www.genocideintervention.net

http://www.sudanreeves.org

The Bottom Line

Todays oil is tomorrow water, hopefully we become more civilized before this transition takes place.

Watch the documentary at:
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/darfur/video.html

“This week with George Stephanopoulos” podcast for September 23rd, 2007 had a very interesting interview with Hillary Clinton regarding her scheme to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans.

Health Care Debate

What I find most interesting is that the United States, the worlds richest country, is still debating this while far poorer nations around the world have been providing universal, relatively free health insurance for all their citizens for decades! France has been offering this for a very long time, at relatively no cost to its citizens, same with the United Kingdom and most European Nations… even Cuba, considerably poorer then the United States offers free, basic health care for all its citizens! Their closest neighbor, Canada, has been offering this for decades and you wonder what the hold-up is with the United States in joining the modern world.

Interview Highlights

Politicians aren’t the most interesting during an interview so I will save your ears by listing key points about her proposal, you can pay me back by telling your friends about myfoodcount.com. Starts off good but then goes to shit once direct questions are asked.

• In 1994, her husband tried and failed to pass a universal health care plan in congress
• quality and affordable health care for everybody is an economic necessity for Americans
• believes she must work with congress in order to produce a plan that can pass legislative hurdles
• name of her plan is the “American Health Choices Plan”
• Americans can keep their current plan or migrate to one that better suits their needs and the poor can migrate into a federal plan for their health care needs
• small business tax credits to provide more affordable plans to their employees
• modernizing the health care system with electronic health records
• she believes the country is more receptive now then in 1994 for a universal health care plan
• she never loss her commitment to be smart economically and morally correct in providing health care, she just learned a lot from the 1994 experience which she applied towards this plan
• individuals must buy health insurance under her plan in order to get a job, she believes in shared responsibility between people and their employers
• doesn’t seem sure about how to implement her plan, saying there is a lot of discussions yet to happen to hammer down the details (presumably this will happen after she is elected into office)
• she answers many of George’s direct questions about her plan with basically a “lots of things in the air at the moment, we will see what drops first when I get elected” type vagueness
• oddly enough, she believes the “just say no” answers by the Republicans is unacceptable yet her “let’s talk about it” approach is, as the results from either approach is the same (so far)
• illegal immigrants are not covered under her plan but she will keep working for a basic safety net

My problems with these answers

Firstly, what is it with this vagueness? I would have thought that something that is so dear to her heart (and her husbands), 13 years after the initial failure of passing American National Health Care reforms that the point would be detailed to the max. Answering direct questions with “discussions need to happen” not only regarding implementation but how much can get through congress isn’t very ensuring.

Secondly, universal health care is just that, universal. Forcing the people who cannot afford health insurance on a federal plan while those of means, onto private plans doesn’t scream of universality.

The Bottom Line

Free, universal health care should be a human right, not a battle ground between the private and public sector.