Someting from IANS

You know the background to this news item from AAA(An Alig's Armchair). Also Big Think,  Daily Bhaskar,
and News Tonight.

Habit of God

When we do not value a blessing of Allah then after some time He takes it away. And Exalted is He.

Three Jokes

Humour is allowed in Islam. In a limited quantity. Drawing living things is not. What about cartoons? In all probability it will fall into unclear matters. In science drawing is integral part. What if some want to use humour by way of cartoons to get a scientific point across? This should fall into allowed.

Puzzled? Alright. If you have any scientific bend of mind then you shall enjoy following three cartoon strips. Make sure to look an enough number of them so that you can get hooked. If the first cartoon is illustrating a point completely unfamiliar to you the you might get a feeling of not getting connected.

So here they are:
(a) Abtruse Goose
(b) PhD Comics
(c) xkcd

Spot an Alig

We had given a link earlier to the latest version of the Spot an Alig manual. Here is the link again. We'll add one more sign. If a person uses the phrase I am totally agree with you then in all probability the person is an Alig.

The New Bubble

We are living in bubbling times. Times of bubbles. Bubbles that burst. The new bubble is the education bubble. Ready to burst. People are investing too much in formal degrees. Do not believe? Well it comes from Peter Thiel of PayPal and facebook fame via The Reference Frame.

The Generations

The first generation has up and down (u and d).
The second generation has charm and strange (c and s).
The third generation has top and bottom (t and b).

Not following? Well we are talking of elementary particles. Those are the names given to some of them. Their collective name is quark. If you have heard of proton-and we believe that you have, then a proton has three quarks. Two of u-type, that is, up quarks and one of d-type, that is, down quark. Thus proton is uud. Simple isn't it? And neutron is udd, one up and two down. Simple again, isn't it?

In fact there is a well known blog called Three Quarks Daily. We do not read that much and we shall not give their link. Find them out yourself if you want to indulge in zalamtu nafsi (sinning against yourself).

The long and short of the post is that a research group called D0 (dee--zero) has reported some evidence for a forth generation of quarks. The names for the new generation quarks are even more preliminary. One of them is called a top-prime. Here is paper and here is the first blog report.

No this one is not a rumour.

Update 1: Forgot to mention that evidences many times come and go. Take the present post as an item in a days work.

Life As Usual

There is commotion in the corridor. It is full of youth. All talking in suppressed voices but the combined effect is absolutely perceptible. The students have arrived for their grand viva. Grand via is an idiosyncrasy imposed by UGC for final year graduation students. A country with three hundred universities with full autonomy can be reduced to be very ineffective by a few if they sit in UGC. But it is very heart warming to see the youth bustling outside the viva room. This is a pleasant contrast from those who start nosing around financial matters of the university rather than focusing on their studies-the prime object of their being in the university. When internet discussion groups keep giving one painful rumour after another, the rumours that mostly turn out to be true, then this scene of youth in action is straight out of Jannah. May Lord save this scene from evil glances.

The Next Bump

There has been some more exciting news in the Large Hadron Collider section of the world.

Anyway the expectation will always focus on whether they have discovered (a) the Higgs or (b) Supersymmetry.

The current whisperings are about the former, that is, whether Higgs has been discovered. Mostly the discussion in the relevant part of the blog-sphere is more on social aspect then the experimental evidence.

This is good for us. Let alone AMU even in the country as a whole we do not have much culture of discussing scientific things. May be scientists are to be blamed for that but that is neither here  nor their. No doubt science is not the easiest thing to talk about but some rudimentary culture will certainly be of some solace.

Anyway we intend to increase the amount of science in the posts.

Coming back to the new bump. Suppose you have got some result and then your friend who is doing similar things but is not a part of your group takes your results and starts talking to others, like talking to the press. This is the type of situation that has occurred in last few days. So here are various links for this case.

(1) Peter Woit of the blog Not Even Wrong has a graphic title This Week's Rumour (no the Americans, we mean the people of US of A, have not learned to spell rumor as rumour).
(2) Jester of Resonaaces is sought by people and he obliges  under title Hiigs at ATLAS, May Be.
(3) Lubos Motl at summarizes here.
(4) For all practical purposes the morality might be the most relevant thing in this context and Gordon Watts takes it up here. Nice entry point to familiarize oneself with the scientific culture.

This time onwards, like other bloggers, we too shall keep updating this post rather than writing a new one for each development in this context of the new bump.

On Focus

Once upon a time Islamic civilization was the leader of scientific advancement. Not now. Whatever be the reason. This is the situation that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan tried to change. There is no doubt that he faced opposition from the religious scholars. This aspect is used to paint the religious intelligentsia in very unfavourable terms. This far from truth. If one tries to have a broad look at Aligarh Movement at present moment then the focus on Science and Technology as an instrument for changing the lot of Muslims is conspicuous by its absence. There is any number of experts on Sir Syed and Aligarh Movement who have practically nothing to do with Science and Technology. You do not have to be a scientist or an engineer to be part of Aligarh Movement but to remove the focus from these two disciplines is plain wrong.

You Must Know This Man

Here is the article with above title.

The author is talking about beloved Prophet (PBUH). This is no way to introduce him. Religion (the deen) has to be presented directly, without frills. One might ask that what is wrong if modern flamboyant style is used for introducing Islam and its teachings. There is one possible problem. Suppose medium becomes the message. (Please, please there is no attempt here to subscribe to the modern proverb medium is the message, or to reject it.) Now if medium becomes the message then you'll end up in modern flamboyance and no Islam. If you are not convinced then just have a closer look at the result of propagation of Islam by the very same people.

Palestine by September

Urdu Roznama  Rashtriya Sahara columnist Hasan Kamal has been saying for some time that the state of Palestine will come into existence by September 2011. He sites various circumstances which are not getting much attention in English media. But today we have this from UN via BBC.

How Much Nuclear Waste?

How much nuclear waste is generated by world? This article at Symmetry Breaking magazine has a clue.

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, U.S. nuclear power plants have produced roughly 70,000 tons of radioactive waste over the last four decades. By 2025, scientists expect the amount of waste to be roughly 100,000 tons.

Do the rest of the calculations yourself. Roughly divide above numbers by the number of reactors in USA and multiply by the number of reactors in the world. If you have any idea about the nature of nuclear radiation and hence nuclear waste then the numbers will only leave a churning feeling in your stomach.

Charter of Eastern Rights

West is a very conscientious civilization. (Apologies to M.K.Gandhi who thought that western civilization is a good idea.) The west has given us human rights. It has given us woman's rights. What about giving us eastern rights. The gist of eastern rights declaration will be that west will not impose its values on east.

Sobering Beginning

Beginning of everyday is sobering one.
That is, if you begin your day with a perusal of the daily newspaper.
Elders tell us to read the newspaper to get admonition. Too many of those who read newspapers go through it like a person who thinks that the stories with admonition are not for me.
Roznama Rashtriya Sahara of Urdu has one chilling story from the same area in Noida where a few years back human skeletons were found. This is the story of two sisters locking themselves in a house for seven months. Their father was an army officer who expired in 1992. The second trauma came when their mother too expired soon after. Third one came when the only brother married and decided to live separately.

The west had killed the institution of family some time back. We are following them. It is unlikely that the results can be much different for us.

We seek Allah's refuge from the effects of our bad deeds. May Lord Most High make is easy for us, our near and dear ones, our neighbours and our society in general.

Like Chernobyl

In this media savvy era it should have been easy to get a grip on truth. Nothing far from the truth. Media management is the art of manipulating the media to your ends. Soon after the Fukushima accident the proponents of nuclear energy had declared that the disaster there has been contained. Today we get the news that the disaster in fact is on the same level as Chernobyl. See here for live updates.

May Lord Protect Him From Evil Glances

Aziz Burney is one Alig for whom one should be constantly praying for protection from evil glances. He completed a hundred part series of articles last year or so and then started a new one. In this one he had a set back but has resumed to some extent.

Calamity of Sarkozian Measures

France has implemented its law. On Muslim women. All things taken into account Muslim women are not French property. French know what they are doing. They must be feeling very strong. That might be true. Lord Most High distributes strength and power too and He does not differentiate in bestowing his blessings in this world whether the recipient is obeying His commands or not. For Lord this world in not worth the wing of a mosquito. So the French have the power, at least in their home. Not so long back they had power outside too. Just like their brothers ( and rivals) in Great Britain. That external power is gone for both of them. Power of a similar nature, that of US of A, is slowly and surely slipping out. Right in front of us. French should have been wise. When things start going horribly wrong they would not know what went wrong. As such the things are not so good in west. The materialistic prosperity is crumbling in front of our eyes. Those who find the last statement difficult to believe should note the fact that the west is severely cutting its science funding. You do not cut the funding of the hidden power engine of your economy, Science and Technology, unless there is something horribly wrong. And finally the west is already in deep crisis on the social front, having demolished the institution of family, slowly but definitively. They do not admit it because they do not understand it. We do not talk about it because we still do not have the confidence. What is worse is that we insist on copying them.

Aligarians Dot Com

A You Tube video of Dr Nawaz Deobandi Sahab has the legend Aligarians.com on it. This has been posted by a user called Muhib. Here is the link.

The couplet to note is:

Gungunata ja raha tha ek faqeer,
Dhoop rehti hai na saya der tak.

(An ascetic was going and he hummed,
Neither ease nor pain stays for long)

AMU Problems About to be Solved

One of the oven hot things under discussion at AMU related forums is the teacher evaluation system. One person has even revealed that this is the thing behind India legging behind other countries in spite of its talent.

Great going.

Except few reality checks. Those who have an open eye for international science funding will tell you following three things.
(1) Science funding in USA is being cut.
(2) Science funding in Europe is being cut.
(3) Science funding in India is increasing.
As a result one can now a days see that, during conferences, the Europeans' attitude towards Indian scientists has changed for better.

Now how does that square with above discussion?

Zahidah Khatoon Sherwani (1898-1922)

ZKS was daughter of Nawab Sir Muzammilullah Khan Sherwani, LLD, KCIE, OBE. Died young. ZKS was a poetess. She was planning to support the Gandhian Swadeshi Movement and just then

Gin ke rakh diye toone meri auqat ke din
(You limited my days of sustenance).
(Abdul Ahad Saaz)

Gail Minault, Professor of History and Asian Studies at University of Texas at Austin tells more here. Of course like most of our western friends this writer too gravitates to the caged Muslim woman theory.

What Muslim poetess do? See this couplet by Shabeena Adeeb:
(She requests to think of Iraq and Afghanistan before this couplet.)

Chali woh aandhi ke tinka-tinka bikhar gaya aashiyan ka lekin,
Jo tod de mere hoslon ko, abhi woh toofan utha nahin hai.

The winds were such that every straw of my nest was scattered,
That can break my determination such a storm does not exist.

Listen to the Urdu recitation at this link.