Thoughts on: “Russia sells new missiles to Iran”

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Fact:

Russia says it has delivered new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and that it will consider more requests from Tehran for defensive weapons. (…)

Comment by a US state department spokesman:

(…) “We don’t think that it’s an appropriate signal to be sending to the government of Tehran when they continue to be in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions,” Tom Casey, a state department spokesman, said. (…)

Is that so? Since when does the US care about what the UN Security Counsil decides, or does, or says?

After all, when the question was about whether or not to invade Iraq, nobody seemed to care. This behaviour is as childish as it gets. You share our opinion – we back your opinion up. You do not – we’ll still do whatever we want – respectively whatever we seem to fit.

Quotes from: Al Jazeera English

Meditation XVII

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Again I have come across something I would like to share. Written by John Donne in 1624: Meditation XVII

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Why? Well, even though it is heavily impregnated with some kind of religious cult – in this instance christanity – there are some very fine ideas to be found within the text. That should explain my motivation.

1200-year-old problem ‘easy’

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Oh, for once this is the BBC at it’s virtual best. Lot’s and lot’s of none sense published for whatever reasons no human will ever understand. The article tells us about Dr. James Anderson, from the University of Reading’s computer science department, and is subtitled Schoolchildren in Caversham have become the first in the country to learn about a new number – ‘nullity’ – which solves maths problems neither Newton nor Pythagoras could conquer. Now if that isn’t something.

So here are some quotes from the article.

The theory of nullity is set to make all kinds of sums possible that, previously, scientists and computers couldn’t work around.

“We’ve just solved a problem that hasn’t been solved for twelve hundred years – and it’s that easy,” proclaims Dr Anderson having demonstrated his solution on a whiteboard at Highdown School, in Emmer Green.
– Quote 1 from the article

Computers simply cannot divide by zero. Try it on your calculator and you’ll get an error message.

But Dr Anderson has come up with a theory that proposes a new number – ‘nullity’ – which sits outside the conventional number line (stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity).
– Quote 2 from the article

The only valuable thing about all this is one comment, although poorly formatted, by Kurt Fitzner – in my opinion at least.

The “problem” of a computer with divide-by-zero errors is not a problem, it’s a feature. It’s not something you need to or even want to fix. You could easily design a computer that doesn’t have an error in that situation if that’s what you want. Replacing the error condition with a new symbol accomplishes nothing. The program still has to deal with the issue in order to present a real-world result to the user. A divide-by-zero error is the way programs do that. It’s easy to solve a “problem” when you’re the architect of the definition of the problem in the first case. Dr. Anderson first defines a problem: calculators and computers throw an error when you try to divice by zero, and then defines an artificial solution – but the problem was artificial in the first place. We’ve all run into poorly designed programs that don’t handle divide-by-zero errors properly and crash. This isn’t a problem of dividing by zero, this is a problem of a computer program not handling its data properly. We’ve also all run into programs that attempt to reference a null pointer. By the same reasoning, we could define the memory that a “null pointer” points to as some new type of virtual space called “nullspace” (trekies should appreciate my resistance to the temptation to call it “subspace”), and call it valid. Make the computer such that reading from “nullspace” always returns a null. Suddenly no programs crash from dereferencing a null pointer any more. It doesn’t mean that the program is going to now do something useful. It probably means it will end up displaying garbage to the user, hanging in an infinite loop, or branching off to never never land. As far as it goes mathematically, there’s nothing you can do with nullity on paper that you can’t do by simply leaving it as (0/0) in the equation. So from either approach (mathematically or from a computer science perspective), it’s nonsense. The author’s own response to some of the critics (or, I should say, alleged response) doesn’t help my opinion. Tossing out the names of two other Ph.Ds and offering vague references to undescribed “axioms” built around this new symbol all reinforce my opinion that Doctor Anderson sounds precisely like the character Robert from the movie “Proof”.
– Kurt Fitzner

N.B. I noticed to late that you can do whatever you want to the formatting of the comments on BBC, the cut the newlines out of it. In that regard – sorry Kurt.

Offline time and the reason – Books

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The last weeks, if not months, I have again been offline for quite long periods of time. Most of that time, I spent reading. I did read quite a lot and this post is all about what I read and liked. The books I liked shall be mentioned under this short and utterly useless introduction. :)

“L’Asie orientale face aux périls des nationalismes” by “Barthélémy Courmont“. Now this truly is an exceptional bit of reading experience even though it has been written in French and is by there most probably not very interesting for the non French speaking. There might be a translation somewhere, but in all honesty, I can’t be bothered looking it up. What this book is about is the rising economical powers in Asia and the political problems that may arise by the rapid ascension.

The next one is called “The Persian Puzzle” by “Kenneth M. Pollack“. Generally it explains and talks about the conflict between Iran and America – which interestingly is also the subtitle of the book – go figure. Anyhow, in my opinion this book has to be read by just about everybody who wants to take part in the debate on Iraq.

“The Pentagon’s new map – war and peace in the twenty-first century” by “Thomas P.M. Barnett” is very, very interesting as well. Actually, it might be the best presentation linking defence policy and globalization analyses if you listen to Robert Orr who is the Vice-President and Washington Director, Council on Foreign Relations. Frankly, I can’t put it any better than that.

You’ll soon see that I got a hang of the Middle East. Another book, and in my opinion the best book, I will present today is “A peace to end all peace – The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East” by “David Fromkin“. The book explains in great lengths the history of the Middle East. There is no other way to describe it than go out, grab a copy and spent a week or so reading. From the Balfour Declaration to Hussein – everything is mentioned. Just go get it.

For the computer science and art freaks there is “Hackers & Painters – Big Ideas from the computer age” by “Paul Graham“. I will cite a small bit from the cover only: “Why do kids who can’t master high school end up as some of the most powerful people in the world? What makes a startup succeed? Will technology create a gap between those who understand it and those who don’t? Will Microsoft take over the Internet? What to do about spam? Hackers & Painters examines these issues that we’ve all wondered about.” Another go and get it, terrifically good read.

And here we go for another geopolitical book: “Crossing the Rubicon – The decline of the American Empire at the end of the age of oil” by “Michael C. Ruppert“. Again a citation “The attacks of September 11, 2001 were accomplished through an amazing orchestration of logistics and personnel. Crossing the Rubicon discovers and identifies key suspects – finding some of them in the highest echelons of American government – by showing how the acted in concert to guarantee that the attacks produced the desired result. A superbly detailed scrutiny of the events of 9/11, the book also ranges across the terrain of rapidly diminishing hydrocarbon energy supplies, geopolitics, narco-traffic, intelligence and militarism – without which 9/11 cannot be understood”. Nothing to add from my part.

Then there is “Richard Dawkins” “The God delusion“. Citations all the way it seems for here is another one: “While Europe is becoming increasingly secular, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East of Middle America, is dramatically and dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, Australia and elsewhere, a dispute is being drummed up by propagandists for ‘intelligent design’ against Darwinism, which is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science. Medieval religious dogma still serves to abuse basic human rights. Dawkins shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children. And all for a God whose existence lacks evidence of any kind.”

On to the “lighter” stuff. I won’t go through the pain to explain what those are about, however here’s the list:

“The doors of perception & heaven and hell” by “Aldous Huxley”
“The Hagakure – The heart of the Warrior” by “Yamamoto Tsunetomo”
“Les mots” by “Jean-Paul Sartre”
“Narziß und Goldmund” by “Hermann Hesse”

At the moment I am into “The Economics of Innocent Fraud” by “John Kenneth Galbraith” – I will try to leave feedback here once I got through it.

Cheers