Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
NASA head Charles Bolden, July 2010 –“[Obama] wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world […] to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Gateway Pundit, Jan. 2009 – Local Muslims want the monastery of Mor Gabriel to be appropriated and divided up among them. They say there used to be a mosque there and have a case with the Turkish Court. The monastery was founded in 397 AD. Islam, of course, was founded in the 7th century.
Stupid, stupid, nasty, stupid, bloody-minded wilfully ignorant Muslims.
Oral history takes a beating.
The narcissist-in-chief gives credit to the muzzies for his own discovery.
Yup. Looks like that Muzzie math is working well for them. Must be that “new” math the schools teach.
I’m waiting for similar directives from Obama to other agencies. For instance, the FDA getting directed to offer to assist in registering worldwide food processors to verify they are Halal, the CIA to perhaps run a global worldwide ‘apology’ hotline (“Just one call, and we’ll be happy to apologize for how the United States has inconvenienced you!”), or maybe the EPA going ahead and doing an environmental assessment of the Gaza Strip based on carbon dioxide exhaled by goats.
Just sayin’.
The Hindus invented the zero. Well, and the Maya.
But you knew that.
The muslim elders from the local villages are not suggesting that a mosque was demolished to build the monastery.
They are talking about the mosque formerly sitting on the lands currently owned by the monastery.
These are apples and oranges kind of comparison, which certainly does not warrant dragging out 1 1/2 year old ‘news’.
And before you accuse me of being a radical muslim terrorist mole, try to remember that for the most of this blog’s lifetime I was considered a racist xenophobic and islamophobic neocon.
I am saying that because it just saddens me when conservatism is hijacked and discredited by those who think that it’s enough to smoke, drive a truck and own one gun to be a conservative.
So, have the muslims contribute to space exploration. How may ships can be built and how fast?
Western European civilizations are suppose to have a guilt complex and feel bad because of our own advancements and achievements but we are to appoint those of other civilizations or religions who are not so advanced to make them feel good Ooookay I gets it.
So much for going into space anymore. Now NASA new mission is to make people feel good.
I want to heave.
Is it November yet.
If NASA wants to “reach out and touch” some middle eastern regimes, maybe they could send one of these over:
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
The Flying Crowbar. Good show on Discovery Channel as well.
Then there was THOR, basically a bundle of tungsten fence posts with a rocket motor on it, in a low orbit. De-orbit with the giant motor and you have a dandy hypersonic, steerable pack of tungsten fence posts. Hits harder than a nuke but without the aftertaste. Want a bigger bang? Use a tungsten telephone pole.
See? All kinds of things for NASA to send the global jihad.
Aaron – the link doesn’t suggest that the monastery added more land and the Muslims want that land.
“In August of 2008, the leaders of three Muslim villages around the monastery accused the community of proselytism, for having students to whom they can hand down the Christian faith and the Aramaic language. Their case has not yet been accepted by the Turkish court. But the village leaders are also asking that the monastery’s land be appropriated and divided among the villages; that a wall be knocked down that was built during the 1990′s (when the monastery was on the front of the conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdish communist party (PKK)). According to the Muslim leaders, there used to be a mosque on the land where the monastery was built. ”
As you can read, the statement is clear that ‘there used to be a mosque on the land where the monastery was built’. Obviously this can’t be true.
I think the real reason is the Christian faith of that monastery.
Given how many terrorists have engineering degrees, I am not sure that we want Muslims to be more engaged in applied math and science.
http://www.slate.com/id/2240157
as I said a few days ago. Obama has found an outlet for the Gaza rocketeers.
> ‘there used to be a mosque on the land where the monastery was built’.
Yeah, that’s the part I am referring to.
It’s like in Canada when you are inquiring with the city’s office about firearm discharge by-law and they tell you that ‘in the town of East Gwilimbury blah-blah-blah’ and the ‘town’ means not just the town itself, but entire county including the bush and surrounding farms, gravel pits and crown land.
When you bang in the same pots over and over for years, it becomes tiresome.
So when are we going to dedicate a US department to promoting African scientific development….I mean they discovered fire, cooking, and fishing plus the first tools.
BTW, what does Islam have do with scientific discovery. I dont see anything in the Koran that leads one to invevitably discover some elements of math.
I think you give credit to certain Arab societies when they were at their height of wealth and tolerance….looking nothing like what they look like today.
The Koran = Human Locusts
ET says it well. It is all about a slow destruction of Christianity.
Krauthammer Bashes Obama’s Infantile NASA Muslim Outreach Program
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zin9RkGsXrY
Aaron said, “When you bang in the same pots over and over for years, it becomes tiresome.”
I think that’s the point Aaron.
Islamic science, it’s part of a tired old Left wing canard to beat the West over the head with. It usually leads to an inevitable conclusion along the lines of “and they were doing all this while Europeans were living in the mud during the Dark Ages!” It’s just part of the anti-Western template, the little murder-suicide pact they’re trying to impose on the rest of us. You never hear them mention how much of the Islamic science was basically co-opted from Ancient Greek texts, so in that regard a lot of it was quite Western in the first place.
But really what does it matter? That was then and this is now. Modern day pan-Islamic civilization is hostile to anything that diverges from a narrow medieval theocracy. It boggles the mind that the secularist, humanistic Left of the Western world has chosen to align itself with a 7th Century throwback culture that would prove far, far, far more hostile to them than any conservative Westerner would be. I say it’s a fundamental hypocrisy. Aligning with the Islamists is just another club to use against Western Civilization, but they ultimately have their fingers crossed in the assumption that the West won’t actually succumb so it’s a safe alliance of convenience. They may find out that they’ve been very wrong. Just look at legendarily tolerant Amsterdam. Now homosexuals and women there are being assaulted on the streets by roving Muslims, and the same is happening in many other European cities. Leftism must surely have a strong current of intellectual masochism built into it.
Aaron
On the narrow point you try to make regarding the surrounding land try reading this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638477632658147.html
Beyond that you miss the larger point entirely.
Having been around here as long as you have one would think you’d pick up on the bigger picture.
The headline is one clue, the bolding of key words is another. Of course you understand what a juxtaposition is…Right?
As an aside what is the ideal time differential inherent in a juxtaposition?
BTW…Mojo dropped you a big hint also.
Anyways, I gotta run out to the truck now and get my smokes from the ammo locker on my gun rack.
Syncro
Time to repatriate Constantinople…
Aaron – but if there was a mosque on ‘the land’ beyond, beyond, beyond where the monastery was built, then, since the monastery existed before the mosque – what does the monastery building have to do with that amorphous non-existent mosque?
Equally mindboggling is – what does NASA have to do with ‘reaching out to Muslims’? I thought it was reaching out to space and what does religion or culture have to do with that? It’s pure science. To declare that Muslims ‘had’ great science is without foundation; the few scholars of the 12th and 13th c (Avicenna, Averroes) were indeed scholars; theoretical scholars.
But, with regard to mechanical, technological, biological, cellular, computer, electronic…etc..all the systems of the industrial world – what did Muslims have to do with it? Nothing. Zilch. But their oil – which they didn’t and still don’t have the technological expertise to extract and process on their own – enabled them to BUY all these products of the industrial world.
If we are going to praise medieval scholars, by all means. So, what about the Scots? There’s Duns Scotus, for one. And of course, such as the English, French, Italian… Aquinas, Ockham, Buridan, Galileo…on and on.
What Obama is doing is, as it always is with him, pure manipulation to enable him to control YOU, the electorate. In this case, he’s after the Muslim vote. His lawsuit against Arizona is for the hispanic vote where his support has dropped dramatically.
Now, why, if you are so keen..why not set up an entirely separate, yet another czar and department, devoted to Loving Muslims? Why corrupt NASA? What do Muslims have to do with the physics and technology of space travel? I’m aware of their rejection of the mundane world, their preference for heaven and its delights, but, does Obama really mean to equate spatial exploration with exploration of the Islamic heaven?
KevinS:
Where do you think the “al” in algebra and alchemy (which was the forerunner of our modern chemistry) came from? Arabs and Persians.
But I think it’s important to point out that much of this work was done before Islam became dominant. (It’s not like in 672, every Arab became a Muslim instantaneously.) Once Islam took hold, the Arab minds ceased, for the most part, to be a fount of new ideas.
And the reason is religious fundamentalism. Just as the Catholic church tried to suppress a great deal of scientific inquiry (cf Galileo), so the Islamic clergy discouraged it as well. All fundamentalists know (including modern fundie Christians) that free science raises many awkward questions, such as heliocentrism, evolution, and the Big Bang, that the fundies of all stripes prefer would go away.
A couple of decades ago, a Muslim scquaintance (and an engineer) tried to convince me of the allure of Islam. “But it’s so scientific!” he proclaimed. “Then why did Arab thought cease being a source of science and math after Islam became dominant?” I answered. He babbled for a few seconds, and then changed the subject.
Aaron – is that what you really think of the people here at SDA? That for us, it’s enough to smoke, drive a truck, and own a gun? That sounds *exactly* like the kind of asstard accusations levelled by notorious SDA trolls like Pustule. That’s the kind of lowbrow, ignorant description used regularly by morons like Kinsella.
Speaking for myself, I don’t smoke, drive a truck (or anything) or own a gun – though the gun is under very serious consideration. The article was dead clear – teh locals want the monastery turned over to them and the religious community there driven out. If you don’t see a problem with that, you don’t belong here.
Kevin B is right. Arabs and Persians should get the credit. Islam did to science and math what the Church of Rome did to maintain the voices of pre-pubescent boys. Unfortunately, the results on Muslim society are pretty much the same as for the castarati – “…volatile, conceited, and almost impossible to get along with”(from last night’s reader tips). Modern Islam is too inflexible and barbaric to allow for the creativity and freedom needed to develop science and math.
KevinB:
Yes, I’m aware that algebra had Persian/Indian/Arab roots. You can probably add the Greeks and their geometric algebra to that mix too. I never intended to suggest that those non-Western cultures were devoid of any legitimate contributions of their own. I maintain my contention, though, that they are touted (as in the recent NASA example) not so much out of respect for the contributions themselves but more for the convenience to a revisionist anti-Western narrative. Obama has a beef with anything that showcases American achievement, or on a more general level Western achievement. I’d say the expression “American exceptionalism” has been rather overused in recent political dialogue, but I do think it’s a fair assessment that Obama has at least a passive hostility to the concept. The Al Jezeera interview with the NASA administrator went on with him saying that America will not again reach beyond low Earth orbit without foreign assistance. It’s a pretty stark contrast with Kennedy in 1961 announcing his challenge to the nation that they land men on the Moon before the end of the decade. I doubt anyone is opposed to genuine cooperation among friendly nations, but something about Obama’s appeals strike me as contrived and serving some kind of warped egalitarian notions.
ET,
I agree Nasa has no business doing this, but hey the Pres ordered it. Blame him.
Interesting story. A colleague of mine recently had occasion to travel to Medina. It has Haram areas and non Haram areas. Non muslims arent allowed into the Haram areas on land….but oddly the slight path for jets goes over Haram areas, which they anounce…we are entering Haram airspace. Point is this craziness applies in airspace and they would claim it extending into space…..so I am sure some Islamic scholar would claim significant chunks of the univers as being Haram, and since the Earth rotates then large parts would be claimed.
So tell me again why there should be any help to nations that would make this claim. We are only going to have to fight about it, or concede later.
Ridiculous world isnt it?
If you don’t own a gun, you don’t qualify to run me off.
Many articles and historical programs I have read and watched noted that the muslims straddled the great East/West trade routes and concepts like Zero came into their empire from India, Christian, Jewish, Greek, Persian etc, scientists and scholars were imbedded in the muslim world and provided a great deal of their claimed achievements. Once the muslim religion took hold these lights were extinguished and a thousand years of darkness began and would have continued except for discovery of oil.
Brian @ 3:01 p.m., you beat me to it!
Krauthammer on Obama’s Infantile NASA Muslim Outreach Program, among other comments:
“adolescent diplomacy”
Aaron: ” … it just saddens me when conservatism is hijacked and discredited by those who think that it’s enough to smoke, drive a truck and own one gun to be a conservative.”
Are you kidding?
I don’t smoke, I don’t own a truck, and I don’t own a gun, and yet I’m a conservative.
I didn’t know there was a litmus test of smokes, trucks, and guns to be a part of this constituency — and I’m not aware of anyone here at SDA who’s set them up as a marker.
Aaron, batb is right – that description is stock lefie troll, and a very strange choice of words for someone who *claims* to have been branded (never saw it myself) a xenophobe.
And I don’t think anyone wants to run you off – mocking you until you leave of your own accord, like so many of others before you (unless there are only at most 2 or 3 of the same idiots posting over and over and changing their nyms, which is highly likely), would be far more satsifying.
Anyway we see you’re still not addressing the point – that the monastery is under threat by Muslims.
Imagine you had that one wish from the mythical wishing well and made the following wish. A separate earth where you could relocate the conservatives of this earth. Leave the Liberal West, the socialists, the communists and the Muslims on this earth. I predict this earth would be a smoking cinder within five years.
JB1000, right on. Given my druthers I’d have it the other way around though: conservatives can stay here, the others could have the other planet. I nominate Venus – such a nice name. Oops, Venus is already a smoking cinder. Okay then, Jupiter.
Yesterday if possible. I’d have you all over for barbecue on that great day.
Haven’t posted for awhile, just watching the leftard world go into its hissy fits and self-destruction, but when I read about this Holdren-NASA-Muzzy thing, it is just the end of sanity as we know it…..WTF does space travel have to do with suicide bombers……hmmmmm….suicide bombers from space……..
The Zero and his Czars are truly incompetent
Turkish islamist hillbillies are just getting their feet wet now that they have outbred their Eurocentric city cousins and taken political power. Since there are mullahs, imams, and whatever else (calling them “clerics” in the MSM tends to raise my blood pressure) who claim the earth is flat because allah never told what’s his name it’s round and since muslims were in North and South American converting the now apostate people long before Columbus showed up, “guess who owns everything” here now.
All your administrations are Pbama’s propaganda tools.
About the only science as of late out of the muslim world could be, I don’t know, maybe 101 ways to kill others not of islam? Check truthtube.tv and see for yourself the religion of peace.
Warning very graphic vids and very real.
oops forgot to add..
And NASA is supposed to reach out to this?
This is late to the thread, but I just found this out:
In 1485, an Ottoman sultan banned the use of the printing press within the Caliphate. He considered it blasphemous to use a mechanical instrument to print the Koran. Meanwhile, in the West, we were printing literally millions of books, spreading literacy, ideas, and scientific information in an explosion of knowledge. If I had known that earlier, I would have pointed out that the suppression of information technology was a key element in the sudden demise of Islamic knowledge vis-a-vis the West.
“A separate earth where you could relocate the conservatives of this earth.”
This is exactly how the Terry Goodkind series “The Sword of Truth” ended. I’ve mentioned this series before, and that the book “Faith of the Fallen” has had a major impact on my world view. Unfortunately for us there is no War Wizard, no Sword of Truth, and no Richard Rahl.
BTW, DO NOT watch the TV series “The Legend of the Seeker” as it does a horrible job of interpreting the books.
Also, isn’t it the Progressives that are the coffee & smoking crowd?