A Different Drummer

So I was singing "Rastaman Chant" by Marley to myself on the metro this morning - until I noticed a few funny looks in my direction after mumbling the lines "Fly away home to Zion, fly away home". I guess the guys on the metro, despite typically speaking little to no English, still understand "Zion" where they hear it.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about the song - "I heard the word of the Rastaman say.......Babylon throne gone down gone down....Babylon throne gone down" - whatever the hell that means - so my first piece of work when I got into the office was to find out what it was all about.

Long story short, after a typically glorious session of Wikipedia knowledge-hoovering, I ended up reading the in-depth, and totally fascinating Wikipedia entry on King Nimrod. Anyone with a spare 15 minutes and a curiousity for ancient, variously interpreted Talmudic / Biblical / Qur'anic figures, check it out ? fascinating stuff.

Among other things, King Nimrod represents the epitome of pagan idolatry for orthodox Jews, the builder of the Tower of Babel for Christians, and the persecutor and attempted executioner of Ibrahim (Abraham) for Muslims. Quite a busy boy, was good old King Nimrod.

I found this bit the most interesting though:

The main founders and leaders of the Zionism in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century were mostly non-religious, sometimes anti-religious. Zionist thinkers, historians and writers reinterpreted the whole of Jewish history (including, and especially, the Bible) from a secular nationalist viewpoint considerably different from and sometimes diametrically opposite to the religious Jewish tradition

Specifically, the search went on for past historical or mythical figures who could be depicted as National Heroes, such as those which inspired the European national movements of the 19th Century. Those fitting the role were often placed on pedestals even when Jewish tradition frowned upon or strongly condemned them (for example King Omri of ancient Israel, which the Bible describes as an evil idolater but which Zionists approved of as a victorious warrior king and the founder of a strong dynasty)

Nimrod went through a similar process, which in his case can be pinpointed precisely....

The whole article, along with the incredibly good entry on Zionism, is 100% recommended reading.

In this otherwise interesting article about Intel and IBM moving to a "next generation" of microprocessors, I found this little factoid pretty incredible:

"Today transistors, for example, are made with systems that can create wires and other features that are finer than the resolving power of a single wavelength of light."

Phwoah. Intel's new chips will be built based on 45 Nanometer parts, meaning that typical features of the chip - wires, transistors etc - will be around 45 Nanometers wide. For some comparison, a red blood cell is around 8,000 nanometers wide, and a human hair around 80,000 nanometres. (thanks, Wikipedia...)

Its nice to get little reminders sometimes of the sheer scale of the everyday miracles that surround us....

"Dubai’s skyline is about to get a new landmark shaped like a traditionally dressed Gulf national that will act as a truly welcoming beacon for people flying into the new Jebel Ali International Airport." (maktoob.com)




At least this monstrosity is going to be hidden out of my sight in Dubai, City of Monstrosities - something that ugly on the Cairo skyline would give me second thoughts about calling the place home....

I wonder which one people care about more right now?

It is stuff like xkcd that makes the internet worthwhile - pure genius, better than 99% of all the entertainment out there, done for free. If you don't have it bookmarked as a daily read, then do it right now - and if you have never read it before, then lucky you, because a couple of the laughiest hours of your life await you, browsing through the archives...

Via arabist.net - Spain's Justice minister refused to deliver a speech at a Saudi university today after female Spanish reporters were denied entry. It would be nice if more foreign dignitaries looked at such uncool'ness in the face and chose not to grace it with their presence - Prince Charles obviously didn't have a problem with it when he spoke there in March last year.

A place that weirdly fascinates and disgusts me at the same time, Dubai is definitely somewhere I could read and argue about for a long time. Seth Stevenson has written a brilliant piece on the city in the sand for Slate magazine - check it out, it hits all the notes just spot on....

"....There is profound wackiness afoot here. But I wonder: Is something more interesting happening, too? Because I can't help but find reason for hope in this crass spectacle. The cultures that produced Dubai and Las Vegas surely must have something in common. If the Arab world's starry-eyed dreams are just like ours—full of schlock, gluttony, and elaborate theme hotels—perhaps we can get along after all.

I'm not saying that out-of-control capitalism will defuse the clash of civilizations. But I'm eager to find out what it looks like when Islam gets mixed up with reckless expansion and tacky greed. These are the sorts of ambitions the West has no difficulty understanding."

Read it all....