Category: Society

Categories
Activism Politics & government Society

[154] Of the invasion of Iraq

The United States Of America and its allies have started bombarding Iraq. At the same time, the Ann Arbor populace are showing their discontent against the unjust war.

A few pro-peace movements organized a successful rally today. The students’ movements started the peace rally at the Diag at 1700 hours. A few students spoke in the name of peace. Later, the students marched along N. University St., E. Liberty, W. Liberty St. and Main St. before joining other war protesters in front of the Ann Arbor Federal Building. I joined the procession at about 1700 hours and left the rally at about 1900 hours.

Although it was raining, the event was a success. The anti-war march received a huge turnout and the peaceful Tree Town was transformed into a noisy city. A few chanted were shouted. Among them were “What do we want? Peace. When do we want it? Now”, “Who let the dog out? Bush, Bush, Bush, Bush, Bush!”, “Who is the bastard? Bush!”

Candle vigil was also carried out with thousand of people standing and singing in front of the Federal Building.



















For peace!

Categories
History & heritage Society

[142] Of mutazilite

To those who have online diary, the ones that write stupid stuff as if other people care, FUCKING SHUT IT DOWN. Thank you.

The Sun rose slowly over the horizon, transforming the dark sky into an adorable orange colored ceiling. It didn’t take long before the whole Ann Arbor started to enjoy the brightness of the Sun. Today, the snow melt and the birds sang. Spring is here.

One news, Jessica asked me out. It wasn’t a date or something but she did invite me to see an acappella show at the Mendelssohn Theater with her. (There were also 8 other people but I don’t think that is important. Hehehe.) Okay, let’s move on.

Logic is a tough platform to stand on, especially where religion is concerned. I am saying this because I am trained in logic (or least I’ve taken discrete mathematics) and now I am taking a course in Islamic studies. The class is not about the typical boring stuff that people was thought in school. It is about the introduction to Islam and its thoughts development. This week in class, the professor explained to us an age old problem – the problem between human free will and predestination.

Basically, the argument starts with Islam assertion in Qa’qa and Qa’da, a term that roughly in English describes that everything that happens is the will of God and human must accept whatever happens with an open heart. It is also about how human can change its destiny.

Here is the problem. If God is all-knowing, then He knows what will happen in the future to anybody. If God is all-merciful, then He won’t allow his servants to suffer. The third premise is everything is predetermined. If somebody is predestined to go to hell, then surely, if God is all-knowing, will know this and if God is all-merciful, will not make this happens but certainly to our understanding of Islam, somebody will go to hell.

Here is an analogy, the story of the three brothers.

“A long time ago, there were three brothers. The first brother was admitted to heaven since he was well-behaved during his life and set exemplary life for this younger brothers. The second brother died when he was an infant. This is because God knew that he was going to be a sinner through his life. So, out of mercy, God took his life early as to prevent him from committing acts that would bring him to hell. The third brother however was in hell. He felt cheated when he knew about his second brother and asked God why he was let to live his life while God knew that he was going to hell?”

This is where Qa’qa and Qa’da failed in the eyes of the Mutazilities, a group of Muslim that was influenced by Platonian thinking. Since the logic makes God looks bad, they abandoned the idea of predestination in favor of human free will.

They believed that God had given human the paths that can be taken and human will be free to choose which is good for them. After they had chosen the path, they will fully be responsible for their choice with the possibility of heaven or the burning hell. This way, the premies God is all-merciful will be held easily.

I don’t think want to explain this because it is suddenly becoming hard for me to write the idea in words but the main thing I want to say is that if I lived back during the ninth century, I would be a Mutazilitie. In fact, I believe all modern day liberal Muslims are Mutazilities in one way or another. I’ll continue on this if I managed to put it down in proper sentences.

Categories
Kitchen sink Society

[136] Of types of blog

Go to http://www.__mars.blogspot.com/#88596289 after reading this thing. And please, don’t link to it. A no means no.

The term blog is a short hand of the word web log. In a short time, the term became weblog and later as most people know became the blog phenomenon. The phenomenon quickly changed how personal websites are designed and maintained. Furthermore, to some extend it changes how the public receive and convey information to and fro the public. With this widespread influence of blog, several distinct groups of bloggers came into existence. In black and white, there are two distinct groups. One is the serious blog while the other type is personal blog.

Serious blog mainly consists of political motivated content. This type ranged from Libertarian ideology to the Green movement. Another branch of serious blog is the judgmental type. The content usually contains opinion on lots current events, whether the issues originated from the main stream media or from the blogosphere itself. Some of it are prejudiced to certain groups while few others simply analyze in a so-called “unbiased” view. On second thought, the two kinds might be the same thing.

The serious branch also contains blogs that review various subjects such as games and technology. Others are simply a collection of forwarded email, photos, haikus (or poems), fictional stories etc. posted in short but random intervals. Of all blogs, these blogs are the most unique (and weird).

The second kind is the personal blog. Personal blog is merely an extension of the idea of personal website. It contains at best random rambling, ranging from “what I did today” to “fuck the world”. Some of it are exceptionally good and typically crossed into the serious blogosphere. The others, usually with cliche title (e.g. “it’s all about me”) are simply personal diaries. The latter type has small scope and usually receives visit only from friends and families. It’s worth mentioning that most surfers hate these personal online diaries.

All in all, most readers, in my opinion, would find the former class to be more interesting with the exception of this and that than the latter version.

Categories
Society

[128] Of the internet’s under attack!

The Internet was again attacked, resulting in global slowdown. I, first hand witnessed the global slowdown frustratingly. Although the servers in the US seems to work now, a lot other servers are still suffering from the cyber attack. Out of all this, somebody suggested everybody to block port 1434. I have no idea why.
Note that the last attack on global internet traffic was less than four months ago.
Read all about it here.

Categories
Environment Society

[117] Of anon unleashed

Something about the push for solar power:

Thoughts
by: annonymousposts (38/M/New Mexico) 01/03/03 11:34 pm
Msg: 360 of 362
1 recommendation

While everything has a cost, I think there are some overall misconceptions about the cost/benefit & risk/reward associated with the posts on this board.

To those who think this is nothing but a target for terrorists:
Get a life. For you, they’ve won. You’re scared and paranoid. A power tower in the middle of nowhere Australia is not a prime target, is it? I mean, where’s the collateral damage terrorists would want? The next targets are going to be smaller than WTC and will probably be aimed at large gathering/population centers. Don’t ya think? Seems obvious to me that a tower in Australia would be of little interest to a terrorist.

To those who keep repeating that nuclear and/or hydro power is the way to go:

Where can we store the spent fuel? Huh? We can’t even store the spent fuel we have, much less the millions of tons more that’d be generated by more nuclear plants. And hydro? C’mon. How many more rivers and their ecosystems have to be destroyed before we realize that doesn’t work either. What we need are systems that don’t leave behind any waste. While this system could (farfetched idea coming) cause thermal atmospheric changes if hundreds or thousands of these towers were built, it’s at least a step away from our current wasteful behaviors.

To those who are using this to spew forth a bunch of anti-Arab/Semite/Canadian rhetoric:

Jeez! Hate much?! It is specifically that sort of rhetoric that the hate-mongers want you to spout forth. You are, in fact, fueling their cause by provoking them and exhibiting behavior that allows them to believe Americans are evil. Not to sound to motherly, but for crying out loud, don’t operate any heavy machinery and please, don’t go into the water for thirty minutes, you may get a cramp or something.

To those who are trying to intelligently respond to the issues of renewable energy and its relationship to this proposed structure:
Thanks.

Oh, and please, either learn to spell or learn to type!