I arrived in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region in Iraq, on Friday the 19th of September. Erbil International Airport is small, but has everything an airport needs. In fact it reminded me of a toy airport made bigger. (Continued in linked article.)
So I started in Berlin with some 2000 Dollars. But I needed more. I took a plane to Vienna, where I spent only one day. My guide was a former room mate of mine who happens to live in Austria’s capital now. Vienna is the most beautiful city. And it is quite visible that it is one of the few cities that once ruled the world (specifically during the 16th century when the Holy Roman Emperor was also King of Spain). And there is even a historical “Judenvie...
Canary Wharf, London, September 11th 2008. On September 11th 2008 I caught a flight to London very early in the morning. I was planning to be in the city for three days. I got an early flight out and was there for a mere two days, most of it spent with friends in Canary Wharf. I was on my way to Germany. I was due to become a godfather. But in London I met a few friends who work until 8 and apparently party until midnight. Why not, I suppose. I...
Can an Obama supporter please come forward and tell me why Michael Totten is wrong? It's not obvious to me and I consider myself quite knowledgeable in the subject. "Obama could, perhaps, argue that fewer resources were available for the fight in Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq. That would be true. But that’s also true of Al Qaeda’s resources. They also deployed manpower and material to Iraq that otherwise could have been sent to Afghanistan. The Al Qaeda leadership emph...
A lot has been made off the so-called controversy between Creationism and biology. And ever interested in controversy I have decided to give an example of Intelligent Design. When I entered the office this morning I noticed a strange construction (I thought), which looked like two rooms with double doors that opened when I pressed a button. The rooms were not immediately obvious to me since the doors failed to open until quite some time after I pressed what looked like the doorbe...
My first real computer was a COMPAQ Presario CDS 633 (a 486SX/33 with 4 MB RAM). It ran MS-DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1 at first and later OS/2 Warp 3. I first had to name it when I ran a news (NNTP/Usenet) server on it because OS/2 didn't have an offline news reader. I liked NewsReader/2 (nr2.exe) but I couldn't figure out why IBM believed that home users would be connected to the Internet all day. That was in 1994 and I was on (expensive) dial-up. So I named it gopher.gopher.org. The name was onl...
This article is meant to give a quick idea of the events of Noah's flood and what the story is really about. A more full-featured essay will follow, but not very soon, as I am still working on some details. Genesis 7:6 The Beginning of the Flood ונח בן־שש מאות שנה והמבול היה מים על־הארץ VeNoach ben-shesh meot shana vehaMavol haya mayim 3al-haAretz Two words in this are difficult, or at least go against the traditional English reading of the Bible. The first is the...
(This was originally posted as a reply to https://forums.joeuser.com/317336.) I consider the Biblical account of Abraham as extremely important and, in fact, as the most important part of the Bible that is not specifically by law defined as such. Abraham's life story is the first story in the Bible that I understand as a literal description of events, if shrouded in mystery a bit. There really was a man called "Abraham" who had a wife Sarah and both were Aramaeans. And that man really did ...
(This is a reply to a question asked in the comments section of a previous article about Creationism. Question asked was about examples of scientific research in Islamic countries in the past.) I am neither a religious scholar nor an expert on Islamic history. But I do know the word "algebra" comes from Arabic and comes to us via a book written in Islamic Persia over a thousands years ago that describes algebra (as we know it). Similarly the word "algorithm" is based on the name of an...
What opponents of evolution (and other theories) don't understand is that science is not about finding the truth (that is best left to philosophy professors) but about finding out something useful about this world. The predictions of theories can be used in engineering and other fields. Applications of the theory of evolution have been used successfully in such diverse fields as medicine and (yes) computer science. Evolution is solid, a tool that we can use to advance. For a good article...
Is it too early for President Obama jokes? 1. President Obama wants to appoint a new middle east expert. Thefirst candidate knew the middle east well, spoke Arabic and Hebrew, andhas lived in the middle east for decades, but he wasn't a Democrat. The second candidate was a Democrat, but didn't know the middle east well and spoke neither Arabic nor Hebrew. Thethird candidate was a Democrat and knew the middle east well, spokeArabic and Hebrew, and has lived in the middle east for...
To make Creationism a science, you'd have to start with some experiments. Have there ever been successful lab experiments demonstrating how a god creates life (let alone two different lifeforms)? You need: 1. A lab without any life in it. 2. A big or mid-sized all-powerful god. (You can use a Greek or Roman god or a Semitic god, I don't care; please refrain from using Hindu or native American gods if possible to make the experiment easier to reproduce. Darwinists use fruit flies beca...
Why does Object Desktop create icons in both All Programs\Stardock\Object Desktop and All Programs\Object Desktop? It's very annoying.
I have always wondered about the many "arguments" against Israel (or for the "Palestinian cause") but I never could understand where they came from. Surely the sources of the most-often-cited "arguments" have been discredited a long time ago and are now only believed by stupid illiterate people but not well-educated western students? However, despite the fact that "Mein Kampf" and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are not accepted as factual in the west, lies about Israel are still bel...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg