Friday, January 03, 2014

The Balkanization of Egypt and two physicists looking for time travelers on Facebook


Much has been made of late regarding the Egyptian military arrests of journalists on the charge of working with and/or promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, which it recently declared to be a terrorist organization.  Let's face it, Egyptians--where there is no national unity, there is no nation.  People who think that only their group are properly Egyptians while denying the Egyptianhood of the Egyptian groups they disagree with are not holding to heart Egypt's best interests on the whole and cannot be considered Egyptian patriots at all.  Either all Egyptians are properly Egyptians consenting to elected Egyptian rule, or there is no Egypt.

Al Jazeera, of course, cites principles of freedom of journalism as it speaks out against what happened, but lest we forget, Al Jaz is also a creature of Qatar government, not a private organization and as NPR's The Takeaway points out, Egypt and Qatar have a longer political history. (Transcript) Sorry, but people working for a government gathering information for a government = intelligence operations for said government.

The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is summed up in this Tweet:


What this does is give the Egyptian military a legitimate claim that the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization.  This is a bad strategy for Egypt on the whole.

The Guardian on the arrests of Al Jazeera journalists

Bidoun blog about Mona Eltahawy

Meanwhile in Iraq...

About those Russian "black widows"
Westerners who claim that Islam oppresses women should give that article about "black widows" some serious thought.  If their men oppressed them, wouldn't you think the women would be saying "good riddance" instead of taking revenge? Think about that carefully.  Take your time with that.

The Merciful is in there somewhere. Islamists forget this in their attempts to be holier than Allah and as a result are blasphemers. When did Allah die and leave THOSE clowns to judge fellow Muslims?
Mini-UPDATE January 10 via NPR: a link to a Middle East blog written by political cynic (and satirist) Karl Sharro, named Karl ReMarks








New Republic article posted on Twitter     (PDF file)

Speaking as a time traveler on Facebook, I can say that there's a lot of time travel basics that these physicists don't understand, beginning with but not limited to just how relative the dimensions of time and space actually are.  Any time traveler from the future wouldn't be here in person, as that would create a paradox that would not take care of itself, as the Doctor puts it.  And from which future?  any given point in time progresses into many possible futures, so in talking about the future from a given point in time, you necessarily need to use the word "future" in plural form.  Time travel simply isn't what physicists think it is, period.

A person from any given possible futures to this point in time in what is to them their past, would look like an archaeologist.  It would make more sense to look for someone from the past making an appearance into this, THEIR future.  But prior to this point in time, technology by which a past person can travel to any given possible future from their point in time hasn't been developed yet.  DUH.

Seriously--what time traveler that is in the future with respect to the current point in time is going to jeopardize their own history by altering it via the revelation of their presence in the current point in time?  Or even use time travel technology to explore the past when they have an infinite possible futures of their own to explore?

And yet solid suspicions revolve around how Gene Roddenberry, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Isaac Asimov could have predicted the future from their respective points in time so accurately.  There's that. 



Really--it's all relative in time and space.

For all time travelers on Facebook getting a chuckle out of this, I offer a YouTube playlist of music about time, beginning, of course, with Enya's "Only Time" and the Doctor Who featured tune called "Abigail's Song".  I'm still adding to it, but I think you'll enjoy the rest of what's there.  Clara's Time Music Playlist

Also started a playlist for Boogie and Ernest-n-Sams.  A lot of folks don't know I'm a long time Jim Varney fan, who also knows that the writer behind Ernest P. Worrell is a guy by the name of Coke Sams, when they were both working making advertisements for the firm of Carden & Cherry.  Where the playlists cross over is at the point where I included a vid of Hotrod Lincoln--done by Jim Varney, even though I'm perfectly aware of the fact that Commander Cody is the one that made a big hit with it.

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