Ghazali suffered a similar fate when he was brought by Hoe to the flat on 6 February. He, however, proved resistant to the sedatives, taking a long time to fall asleep. Lim decided to tie up the boy as a precaution; however, the boy awoke and struggled. Panicking, the trio delivered karate chops to Ghazali's neck and stunned him. After drawing his blood, they proceeded to drown their victim. Ghazali struggled, vomiting and losing control of his bowels as he died. Blood kept streaming from his nose after his death. While Tan stayed behind to clean the flat, Lim and Hoe disposed the body. Lim noticed that a trail of blood led to their flat, so he and his accomplices cleaned as much as they could of these stains before sunrise.[57] What they missed led the police to their flat and resulted in their arrest.
What this paragraph is saying is that this boy died horribly for no good reason.
The Battle of Baghdad was such a tragedy. Not because so many lives were lost, but because so many books were destroyed and a flourishing city that wasn't showing any sign of decay was sacked just because of the arrogance of the Caliph.
Books, in those times before the printing press was invented, were essentially treasures. Imagine how much effort it takes to copy a book with your old ink and brush. You have to copy each page with perfect handwriting, zero mistakes and no smudge, and maybe use some preservatives to prevent the material from rotting. If there are pictures ( I imagine there would be sketches sometimes), the difficulty multiplies.
I'd say that books (and any other data storage devices) are the essence of the lives of the past, the work of generations of intelligent thoughts distilled into words. To burn books, to wipe out all copies of books (which I imagine to be very easily accomplished by burning a library in those days) is not only a tremendous loss for the people, but is also the destruction of the lives that were spent in the making of the books. In short, the Mongols didn't just kill people, they also destroyed the essence of the lives of the ancestors of their victims.
Worse is that the old Baghdad was described as a "one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world". Destroying it proves that the Mongols were only concerned with warmongering, that they were true barbarians. If you are thinking that people back then were all like that I'd have to remind you that this happened merely 750 years ago only. A relatively short while ago in the history of mankind.
Now I see why Islam isn't as widespread as I'd thought when I read the other historical events like Mansa Musa's hajj to Mecca. It was events like this that eventually doomed it. I just don't see the link between this religion and its downfall, though I suspect that such a thing does exists.
It's also quite interesting to read about the series of leaders of the ancient world. The Battle of Baghdad led me to the article series on the Caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty. The first caliph, Abu al-`Abbās `Abdu'llāh as-Saffāh ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abdullah ibn Abbasibn Mutalib ibn Hashim, led the revolt against the previous Caliph and his family, the Umayyads, and founded the new dynasty. But he was named "the Slaughterer" not because he actually slaughtered millions of people but only because of his attitude towards the Umayyads - he was hell-bent of hunting down and killing every single last one of them.
It is surprising to note that he wasn't actually an uncivilized barbarian the way the Mongols were above, and his government actually included Jews, Christians and Persians. And by using the Chinese prisoners he captured in previous battles, he set up paper mills and thus improved access to education for his people.
He's not actually the bad guy his epithet seems to imply! Too bad he died of smallpox four years after he took over. Man, I think he'd have made a better name for himself if he was given more time.
By the way, I thought that all those "ibn" was a typo since I've no idea what "ibn" means. On the other hand, I know "bin" means "son of". A quick check in Wikipedia shows that they're the same. Not sure if they can be used interchangably though.
Paper has to be one of the greatest inventions of all times. Though its data storage density is low compared to modern CDs/DVDs and hard disks, it is the second most durable medium humans have ever used. I believe the most durable form is rock carvings/paintings. Books can last for centuries, while most electronic media don't last more than a decade. Paper often remain in perfect condition when stored in the same dry, dark place complete with wrapper (commonly seen in collectors' editions of comics and stamps), but I'm not sure if the same can be said of modern electronic media.
Better still is that books do not have the compatibility issues that electronic devices have, though both have the language barrier to deal with( data may be stored in a language that has become obsolete).
So if you are going to make a time capsule for the far future, use paper, words and pencil drawings or better still, rock paintings/carvings (make tablets like the way the Ten Commandments were given to Moses LOL!).
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********************** Spoiler Alert (for the Dune trilogy) ***************************
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Children of Dune, the third and last book of the first Dune trilogy, is really the best of them. How the not-children managed to outplan everyone else was nothing short of amazing, especially since they did not resort to prescience the way their father did.
It was actually very exciting to see how the plans were going well for the villains only to discover all that was really part of the twins' larger scheme to find "the Golden Path", as they call it.
The only thing I dislike was how the author used the deus ex machina so blatantly near the end. One moment Leto II was semi-conscious from the constant feeding on melange, the next moment he was pulling sandtrouts onto himself, which formed a "living skin" that gave him extraordinary strength and agility and over 4000 years of life. And let's not forget that it also becomes a superb living stillsuit.
The supposed catch was that he would no longer be human, nor would he even think like a human, though I see no signs of that in the end. So as far as I can tell, there's no catch. Well, maybe there's that part of him being sterile, but it probably also comes with the lack of sex drive. So if there's no desire for sex, then this isn't exactly a problem.
And with his 4000-year breeding programme that begins with his sister, why would he need his own children at all? He's going to be a living God for the rest of his life and the breeding programme is likely to produce genes superior to his! When he dies, he can then send his memories and persona like the rest of his ancestors to the final product of this plan, making him as much of an immortal as everyone else in his lineage.
But I'm still going to read the rest of the books. It's got promise.
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********************************* End of spoiler ***********************************
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I think I have this condition called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. It's not insomnia because I do find it easier to sleep in the day than at night, especially in the morning. Sleeping less or not sleeping throughout the previous day does not make me sleep earlier in the next.
I mentioned that I suspected this before, but now that I've observed myself for much longer without remembering what the symptoms are supposed to be, I'm quite sure of it. But for me, it's like my body thinks that there are more than 24 hours per day, so I tend to sleep later and later. I can maintain my sleeping hours for a couple days, but eventually the process would begin again.
Damn I hate to see the word "chronic" in those two articles. It has very bad connotations to it.
Uchiyama et al had earlier determined that sighted Non-24 patients' minimum core body temperature occurs much earlier in the sleep episode than the normal two hours before awakening. They suggest that the long interval between the temperature trough and awakening, makes illumination upon awakening virtually ineffective.[10] (See Phase response curve, PRC.)
In their Clinical Review in 2007, Okawa and Uchiyama reported that people with Non-24 have a mean habitual sleep duration of nine to ten hours and that their circadian periods average 24.8 hours.Without alarm clocks or any appointments during the next day, I normally sleep for nine hours a day. I also notice I sleep 1-2 hours later every night, also if uncontrolled.
Am I f*cked?
Wonder what it was like for the first humans, the original Africans, to live knowing for real that they are the only people on Earth. All the civilizations I've read about exist knowing that they have human neighbours out there, even if they're unreachable.
But these first humans, they know they are alone. They live in their primitive settlements, knowing they have no neighbours out there. They have only the rival tribes with whom they share the lands with, with whom they share the same ancestors with. Across the sea, there is no one. Across the mountains, there is no one. Only they exist.
Wonder what they think of that.
So now a US doctor is offering sex change treatments for kids as young as 7. I think it's good for those who are seriously damn sure that they're born with the wrong gender. However, if they change their minds later, I shudder to think about the consequences.
And it's kinda strange that the age of consent for sex is so much higher than the allowable age for sex change. So guys aren't allowed to f*ck around with underaged pussys, but doctors are totally okay. Girls are not to be trusted with sexual consent, ie they cannot decide if they can have sex or not, but hey it's totally fine for them to decide if they should have a vagina at all or not.
I didn't realize there was anything wrong with my blog till yesterday. Apparently there is a little mistake in the HTML for the Flash Player section. When I was changing the movies a year back I forgot to change one of the links. I've no idea how it works; I merely copied it from somewhere else and tweaked the links and player size.
However, for the second player, I only changed one of the two links among the codes. On Firefox it worked perfectly fine, but on IE the previous movie played. Worse is that I had removed it because it was on autoplay and repeat loop that I can't fix, so it became a nuisance for everyone who viewed this blog on IE.
In short, IE sucks. Switch to Firefox to avoid such bullshit elsewhere.
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