Hussein, the 28-year-old victim, had converted from the Muslim faith to Christianity. Jonathan Racho of International Christian Concern says he was confronted by Islamic extremists who demanded to know if he faces Mecca when he prays, which is required of Muslims.
“Hussein says he doesn’t face Mecca when he prays because his God is omnipresent and he can face anywhere to pray,” Racho recounts the incident. “[T]he extremists were very much enraged by his comments, and they killed him.”
“Democratic politics is essentially the politics of rational dialogue in which language, thought and persuasion play key roles. At least that is what we have over the decades learnt to believe. But recent electoral battles in India appear to have fundamentally shifted the ground on which our democratic beliefs have stood so far.
It is not being argued here that the theatre of politics has moved unprecedentedly and dangerously away from reason and towards emotion. Emotion has always been an indispensable appendage of democratic politics, whether for good or for bad. What is new is something else. It is the rise to predominance of affect vis-à-vis reason and emotion. This has shifted politics on to an entirely different ground. What is most disturbing is that on this ground the rules of democratic politics as a rational discourse do not seem to apply.”
What nonsense!
And what pray are the ‘rules’ of democratic politics? Who set these ‘rules’? And, what precisely is ‘rational discourse’? Is discourse ‘rational’?
Is any form democratic politics actually democratic? Here, with specific reference to India, I’ll make the claim – democracy died when Gandhi (oh yes…I am referring to Mohandas K. Gandhi) began deciding how the passive resistance against Imperial Britain should be organized. He brooked no opposition to his ‘grand plans’. Case in point is the effective sidelining of Subhas Bose – if you are not familiar with the sordidness of this case – look it up!
So…no! India has never really engaged in democratic politics – sure it has adopted a veneer of it, but it is not intrinsic to India. What the hell is this author bemoaning about then?
Regards,
M
Ideally, politics is a rational ordering! Very true! But to say that this rational ordering is devoid of affectivity even in originary terms is incorrect. Afterall, Kant’s Critical Project (concerning Reason) was spread between three poles – reasons, judgement and the imagination – where the last was the site and the source of affectivity.
Postmodernism does not say that there is nothing true in this world. It simply invites us to question and what it claims is only that different values and systems are made by us, they don’t just simply exist as universal values. Everything is our creation.
It is true that Postmodernism hold lots of contradictions within itself and that there are also contradictions in defining it. It has been defined as both an opposition to Modernism as well as a continuation of Modernism.
A good book to understand Postmodernism is Linda Hutcheon’s ‘A Poetics of Postmodernism.’ She holds a very clear view on Postmodernism and clarifies many unjust accusations which were brought to this trend.
>Postmodernism does not say that there is nothing true in this world. It simply invites us to question and what it claims is only that different values and systems are made by us.
..
And that is what we do, i.e. we seriously consider and question what postmodernism says and keep finding its stuff very flawed.
That our theories and systems are made by us is a trivial observation, it doesn’t matter who says something but whteher what he is true.
…
>Everything is our creation.
Not quite evrything, that’s another flaws idea.
Only our theories (say Geography or Astronomy, or postmodernism by that matter) are indeed our creations, the Earth or Moon however aren’t.
Einstein’s supporters, mainly Jewish, are mischievously trying to discredit Mileva. They know very well that Mileva originated these ideas and are hiding the evidence. Meeting Einstein cost the poor woman her life.
“I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography.”
I’m sorry, but what part of the word “fiction” does Spellberg not understand?
Does she not regard “The Last Temptation of Christ” as a “deliberate misinterpretation of history”? Does she not regard that film as turning sacred history into soft core pornography?
I cannot decide whether the woman is a gibbering incoherent, or a secret islamofascist.
Re: ‘Jewel of Medina’: It’s a pity it’s taken an “Islamic sensitivities” issue to draw attention to what the historical romance industry does to history. I’ve seen far worse things done to real-life characters I care about by novelists who work under the assumption that ‘artistic licence’ can justify turning entirely innocent people into murderers/kinky sadists/rapists, & c., since the dead can’t sue. The “soft porn” issue with this novel is small beer in comparison.
Following are excerpts from an interview withSaudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, which aired on Al-Majd TV on August 10, 2008.
Muhammad Al-Munajid: how come modern sports – especially women’s sports – involve the exposure of private parts? It is well known that the Olympics – both in the past and the upcoming games… the world’s worst display of women’s clothing is the women’s Olympics. No exposure of women’s private parts on a global scale could make Satan happier than Olympic games that include women’s sports.
Interviewer: And in a scandalous manner…
Muhammad Al-Munajid: Yes. It is an enormous Satanic issue.
Beijing or not… I call it Bikini, anyway… because they are likely to display women in the worst possible way in these “Bikini” Olympic games.
[…]
What women wear in the Olympic games are among the worst clothes possible. The inventions of Satan, with regard to the exposure of the body in gymnastics, in swimming, in whatever, in tennis… Women have never got naked for sports like they do in the Olympics. It is aired to billions of people worldwide. The problem is not just with the spectators who are present. The whole thing is aired on TV…
Meera Nanda is someone who hates Hinduism. I dont think her ideas and analysis mean much because she is a biased Leftist.
For some bizzare reason, a lot of our Commy friends have taken up commenting on History of India. Its a sure shot to success cause if you cram in enough words and confuse the reader with jargon, they will say …”good work.”
History books in India were destroyed like this and the thought and process of denigrating our cultural values and ancient texts has survived.
I doubt the author has read any Vedic text completely. I doubt she has seen the knowledge hidden in the Upanishads.
Meera Nanda, I hope you get success and then start your own investigation rather than just…”read some cook some” approach.
“I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography
Ben Franklin & Jefferson both said the right of free speech is meaningless unless it includes the right to blaspheme.
Again the Christians are issiting on winning the arguement.
Re: ‘Jewel of Medina’: It’s a pity it’s taken an “Islamic sensitivities” issue to draw attention to what the historical romance industry does to history. I’ve seen far worse things done to real-life characters I care about by novelists who work under the assumption that ‘artistic licence’ can justify turning entirely innocent people into murderers/kinky sadists/rapists, & c., since the dead can’t sue. The “soft porn” issue with this novel is small beer in comparison
Sorry but Free Speech has to include the right to write bad novels. Yes there’s a lot of BAD stuff out there (see practically the whole output of FRANK YERBY) .So what ?
Hussein, the 28-year-old victim, had converted from the Muslim faith to Christianity. Jonathan Racho of International Christian Concern says he was confronted by Islamic extremists who demanded to know if he faces Mecca when he prays, which is required of Muslims.
“Hussein says he doesn’t face Mecca when he prays because his God is omnipresent and he can face anywhere to pray,” Racho recounts the incident. “[T]he extremists were very much enraged by his comments, and they killed him.”
What women wear in the Olympic games are among the worst clothes possible. The inventions of Satan, with regard to the exposure of the body in gymnastics, in swimming, in whatever, in tennis… Women have never got naked for sports like they do in the Olympics. It is aired to billions of people worldwide. The problem is not just with the spectators who are present. The whole thing is aired on TV…
What parrallel universe is the sheik tuning into. In mine I’ve never seen a naked woman in the Olymics (In ancient greece Yes)
This is covered in BREAKING THE SPELL by Daniel Dennett(an unfortunately bad book by a brilliant auther). Fro the POV of believer contradiction and obscuity aren’t bugs their features. They allow religion to face in all differant directions at once and have an “answer” for everything.
This places sceptics in a bit of a poser LOGIC is a machine that is designed to deal with coherant notions fairly sharp-edged entities. Feed into it fuzzy muddy blurs like the Doctrine of The Trinity and it chokes and dies.
I haven’t an answer but for Nothingness sake lets not get wounded by the fact that we can’t answer these people on their own terms. Get into a conversation with a paronoid and likely you’ll lose; that don’t (I hope) mean he’s right!
Blackburn provides an anecdote concerning his daughter’s education at secondary school:
>… Apparently the class had been told to solve some equations governing the motion of the pendulum. In particular they had been told to use the equation of potential energy at the top of the swing with kinetic energy at the bottom, to calculate the velocity at the bottom of the swing. I asked what the problem was. She said she didn’t see what this so-called energy was. I asked if she had raised this with the teacher. She said she had, and had been told to get on and solve the equations. She never pursued any science again.<
As Blackburn writes, such dogmatic, stupid teaching may well lose many bright children to science. Having taught physics up to pre-University level for a good many years, I find it astounding that any teacher (at least, one with a physics degree which I would imagine the teacher at Blackburn’s daughter’s private school would have had) would respond in such a fatuous way when it is perfectly possible to provide an explanation on a level commensurate with the knowledge and understanding that should have been transmitted by that stage. I’m also absolutely sure that my physics teachers at a grammar school all of fifty years ago did not teach in such a manner.
That said, I’m not sure it is conceivable with today’s crowded curricular, and the slow pace that school students are introduced to basic knowledge of physics, to present the subject in the somewhat idealised way that Blackburn suggests. Historical aspects of the subject should certainly be touched upon, but I can’t think of a better way of confusing the great majority of students at secondary school than to go into the kinds of debates that Blackburn suggests: “about whether ‘force’ should be thought of as proportional to velocity or square velocity (which set Newton and Leibniz at each other’s throats… disputes, involving Carnot, Joule, and Helmholtz, about the relationship between work, heat, and energy.”
In my view, given the limited time available at school, and the level of understanding to be expected from the majority of school students, these debates can be best be understood at a later stage, when the basic elements of late nineteenth century physics have be grasped. The debates in question involve the gradual emerging of understanding over a long period of time, involving individuals of great intellectual stature. I doubt that trying to introduce school students at an early stage of their study of physics to the disputes, e.g., involving Carnot, Joule, and Helmholtz, would interest the great bulk of students, if only because they would have little idea of what the debates were about.
I suspect that Blackburn is, at least partially, looking at this from the point of view of a philosopher/scientist, someone fascinated by the way in which modern ideas in physics have come to be over the last two millennia. Leaving aside the differences in aptitudes of school students even within a streamed class (not to mention the discipline problems that plague many schools in the UK!), I suspect that professors used to dealing with the upper echelons of university subject matter have only a limited idea of what is feasible in the secondary school situation. I repeat, that is not to say historical aspects of the subject should not be discussed, only that the level of sophistication of what can be expected of such students has to be taken into account.
Back to the original anecdote above, Blackburn writes:
>It also means that the ones who remain have been spoon-fed a bunch of results and techniques with no understanding of how they were hammered out, of what their birth pangs were.<
It does not follow that because school students have not been introduced to the way in which basic notions in physics were hammered out (actually an immensely sophisticated subject), that this means they have to be spoon-fed a bunch of results and techniques. No teacher worth his or her salt needs to teach physics in such a manner, and lack of the kind of deep historical background that Blackburn recommends is no excuse whatsoever for such a travesty of teaching.
Regarding R. Joseph Hoffmann and his notes about just how fucking stupid America is.
I agree that those visions probably do start with Tocqueville and continue right down to the earnest professor.
Hmmm. The cotton gin, GPS, laser, DNA restriction enzymes, that bad ass internet, and one Vietnam grunt who ended up completing the human genome. You know the drill.
Yes, we do not like French movies, or that prose poetry that makes them swoon, nor do we care much for academics, if that is all they do.
ILORIN, Nigeria, August 14 (Compass Direct News) – Blaming the death of their leader on Christian prayers, an Islamist group that launched a hate campaign in response to an evangelistic event in 2004 is reportedly attacking Christians in this Kwara state capital with renewed virulence, area Christians said.
At least three Christians have died and several others have been injured in attacks with machetes and other weapons since June, clergymen said.
“The members of his Muslim sect went on rampage, demonstrating against America and the state of Israel, over claims that it was the prayers of Christians over the aborting of the gospel event of 2004 that caused their leader to be involved in an auto crash. Dr. Olukade, the Muslim sect’s leader, died in May 2008, and since then Muslim fanatics have embarked in serial killings and attacks on Christians in the city.”
D M Sherwood wrote; “Sorry but Free Speech has to include the right to write bad novels. Yes there’s a lot of BAD stuff out there (see practically the whole output of FRANK YERBY). So what?”
Exactly: it’s out there, and it’s our job (speaking as a historian) to dissect it and argue against it (because the problem with bad historical fiction is that it can seep into factual historical discourse). But there is no reason for some characters be regarded as ‘protected’ from trashy fiction because of ‘religious’ sensibilities. I’ve had my sensibilities driven over by trashy historical fiction vandalising the lives of people I’ve researched before now: why should others be exempt on religious grounds?
One can’t ban inaccurate pseudo-historical trash – but by taking it apart when it appears, you can prevent people taking it as ‘fact’.
It would be easier to attend to Hoffmann’s laments about loss of intelligence if he wrote better. What a mess his prose is! He splits infinitives and his syntax sometimes goes hopelessly astray. Better make sure there are no stains on your suit before you declaim about the shoddiness of other people’s dress.
The argument fails to include a consideration of the role of disinformation and propaganda in producing the “dumb mind-set”. Perhaps the addage about fools and money is appropriate here, but in a larger sense. Fools part easily not only from their money, but if the last 7.5 years of political crminality are any indication, “we” part easily from our rights and civil protections, as well. This is possible because the debate (nearly all) is deliberately dumbed down. Excluding the possibility of producing a meaningful and coherent message leads to the impossibility of coherent thought and understanding. I see this as the manufacturing of a “fool’s consensus”(sp?) which serves to provide the speaker with an unquestionable (because nonsensical) authority from whence they derive their
advantage…namely, the disadvantage of the listener.
Disarmed by bullshit, unable to reply to nonsense, we engage with an increasingly dumb world, getting dumber as we agree to each new stupidity.
The convenience that marks our physical environment, making life pleasant and conferring “ease”, provides an excuse for blithely checking out of all rational and psychic rigour. Playing the “video-anything” is more convenient than imagining/experiencing our own “entertainment”. Opening and consuming product “x” is easier than cooking ones own food. Chatting online is much preferred to actual physical acquaintance, love now resides in the house of pornography and cyber-sex. Generally, commitment is inconvenient.
The more we strive for a convenient world, the more we ban everything that offers challenge and makes us smarter.
We are producing our own dumbing down rituals when we avoid challenge.
do you really believe that husband and wife with a same afffinity for science living “so long together”did not discuss their thougts.do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?
i say todays science is dogma.i say todays mathemathics is dogma.
ex:irational numbers are not irational.it is irrational to think so. we have only ten digits;from zero to nine.i do not care how many zillions of combinatuions is needed to repeat the sequence,but the sequence will eventually repeat itself.i think you are the product of dogma.lf you treat every number as “irrational number” you might find TOE(theory of everything).
ps.i’m not mathematichien.i’m a thinker.there are more to it.good luck to you.you’ve done thorough research,but could you see “behind the mirror”ithink you’ll think differenly from naw on.cheers.
>do you really believe that husband and wife with a same affinity for science living “so long together” did not discuss their thoughts. Do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?<
This clearly relates to the articles on this website in the section Einstein’s Wife: Mileva Marić rebutting claims that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, co-authored (or at least made substantial contributions to) Einstein’s celebrated 1905 papers.
Note first that Zoran Grubetic makes the unjustified assumption that Marić had “the same affinity for science” as Einstein. Unfortunately the claims that Marić was a brilliant scientist, or brilliant mathematician, have been recycled so frequently that it is difficult for many people to conceive that this might not be the case. In fact there is no documented evidence that either was true. Although she achieved excellent grades in physics and mathematics at high school level, her grades at the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic (where she studied with Einstein on a diploma course to teach physics and mathematics in secondary school) indicate that she found higher level work rather more demanding. Her grade average in 1896 for the Polytechnic mathematics entrance test was a moderate 4.25 on a scale 1-6, her intermediate diploma grade average placed her fifth out of six students in their group, and she failed the final diploma exam in 1900, primarily due to her poor grade in the “theory of functions” mathematics component of the exam, for which she obtain a lowly 5 on a scale 1-12.
This would be of little consequence if there was any documented evidence of high level work after she left the Polytechnic in 1901, having failed the diploma exam for the second time (on this occasion she was three months pregnant). However, there is none.
People who think that Marić *must* have made substantive input to Einstein’s 1905 papers generally have little idea of the conceptual difficulties that are involved in such theoretical research on advanced physics, especially for someone who evidently found the degree-level Polytechnic course sufficiently demanding that she failed to obtain a diploma. The evidence points to the fact that after her second diploma failure, and the tragedy of the loss of care of her baby Liserl in 1902 (Liserl’s fate after 1903 is unknown) she gave up her scientific ambitions.
Back to the question of Marić’s affinity for science: In none of the surviving letters to Einstein, or to her closest friend Helene Savić (née Kaufler), is there any indication of any affinity for science remotely comparable to Einstein’s. It is often claimed that the Einstein/Marić correspondence (notably during 1898-1901), show that the pair collaborated on Einstein’s extra-curricular research in their student days, but in fact *all* the relevant material is one-way, from Einstein to Marić. On this issue, see J. Stachel (2002): http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Einsteins_letters.htm
Of course, since no one was privy to their private conversations it cannot be stated unequivocally that Marić made no contribution to Einstein’s scientific work. But the reliable evidence is consistent with the statement recorded by Einstein’s friend and colleague Philipp Frank that, after their marriage, “when he wanted to discuss his ideas, which came to him in great abundance, her response was so slight that he was often unable to decide whether or not she was interested” (P. Frank, 1948, pp. 34-35), and that of their elder son Hans Albert that “with the marriage she gave up practically all her ambitions in that [scientific] direction” (G.J. Whitrow [ed.], 1967, p. 19).
For detailed examinations of all the claims about Marić’s alleged scientific contributions, see my articles below.
References
Esterson, A. (2006). Mileva Marić: Einstein’s Wife:
>do you really believe that husband and wife with a same affinity for science living “so long together” did not discuss their thoughts. Do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?<
No, it would be like believing that Clinton and Monica only chatted about the weather when they privately met or that OJ Simpson is innocent.
But, you see, what matters in a trial is not “commone sense arguments” but only the hard evidence to be presented.
I should have included in Marić’s achievements the love and support she gave Einstein in the first decade of the twentieth century when he was making his mark in the scientific world, enabling him to concentrate almost all his available spare time on theoretical research. Unfortunately Einstein’s single-minded focusing on his research also precipitated the breakdown of the marriage, with Marić’s feeling of neglect leading to her blaming “science” for her increasing sense of loneliness. To Helene Savić in 1909 she wryly remarked that his move away from his post at the Bern Patent Office would enable him “to devote himself to his beloved science, and *only* science”, and some months later confided her “longing for love”, the lack of which “is the fault of the damned science”.
I must confess to having trouble making sense of HF’s argument. Leaving aside the Clinton and Monica comparison that doesn’t even begin to be an analogous situation, is it supposed to be the case that the hard evidence at the trial showed that O. J. Simpson was innocent? Really?
It’s not a question of whether Marić ever discussed Einstein’s work with him, but whether she collaborated on his published papers, or at least made some substantive contribution to them. Einstein had spent several years building the groundwork (reading around, thinking about, and working on ideas, discussing with friends, including Marić in their student days) that eventually resulted in the three most celebrated 1905 papers. Maurice Solovine, who studied philosophy, mathematics and physics at Bern University, and was some four years older than Einstein, recalled in relation to the time he first met him in 1902 his admiration for Einstein’s “surprising mastery of physical problems”. That kind of mastery does not come easily, and would have taken him well beyond the knowledge and capabilities of the average physics graduate of Zurich Polytechnic, let alone someone who was unable to gain a teaching diploma.
As for “justice” for Marić, that is not achieved by claims of contributions she never made herself, nor even remotely hinted at in the letters to her closest friend Helene Savić in the relevant early years of her marriage to Einstein. Her memory is best commemorated by a recognition of her genuine achievements, not ones tendentiously imposed on her. These include dealing with a physical handicap, overcoming institutional obstacles to girls studying physical science in her native Serbia to achieve a scientific education at a prestigious institution, and overcoming the tragedies of the loss of her first child Liserl, the breakdown of her marriage, and the mental breakdown of their younger son Eduard. To insist on scientific accomplishments that the substantive evidence does not support is to patronise her, and ultimately to demean her memory.
>It’s not a question of whether Marić ever discussed Einstein’s work with him, but whether she collaborated on his published papers>
We know that she was educated and that she was his wife but just don’t know what she discussed with him, i.e. the extent of her input while they were debating over a scientific question or other.
It was simply not Einstein’s academic habit to mention who helped him and from who he discussed this or that idea.
For instance no mention of Poincare in Einstein’s in 1905 paper (E. uses Poinacare’s light clock sychronization method to define time operationaly and the principle of relativity as axiom).. and also no mention of Lorentz 1904 special relativity transformations ( though they had been published already in the physics journal were Einstein was working in isolation as editor, a mainstream German physics journal-the director of which was Einstein’s aquitance M.Planck).
Einstein kept this bad character trait al his life.
No mention form Einstein of Levi-Civita input in his 1915 paper on general relativity ( they had exchanged letters in which Einstein was sending trial and error material and Civita was replying correcting Einstein’s errors in handling the math of tensorial calculus. It was L.Civita was who suggested to Einstein to add the -1/2g(ij)R term to Einstein’s first, and mistaken, try for the solution R(ij)=-kT(ij).
No mention in that paper of David Hilbert massive help during 1914-1915( here however D.Hilbert not only first found the correct solution but he also first published the equations of general relativity)
To sum up : Einstein had a habit of forgetting to mention his sources. Maric might have well been one of his victims.
>We know that she was educated and that she was his wife<
I have already dealt with that point. I suggest you look at what I wrote again, and recognise just how feeble that ‘argument’ is in the light of the information I already presented.
The rest of HF’s comments have no real connection with the issue at hand, but he takes the opportunity to return to his hobby-horse that Einstein was little more than a plagiarist, a topic we’ve been round and round before, and I have no intention of starting again. I’ll just say this on the issue of citations. I have no expertise on this subject, other than a fair amount of reading around it. As far as I can ascertain there were certainly occasions, at least in his early publishing days, when Einstein could have given fuller references, and, later, indications of the assistance he got from his mathematician friend Marcel Grossman in the later stages of his work on General Relativity around 1915. However most of the contentions along these lines grossly overstate the case (how many of Einstein’s many scores of papers does HF have knowledge of?), and anyway are not evidence for plagiarism. For instance, in relation to Einstein’s early publications Alberto A. Martinez reports that a sparseness of citations was not as unusual for the time as most commentators think. He told me: “I’ve looked at old issues of the Annalen der Physik, and the practice of including citations was not nearly as great as it is now. Some papers had none.” (personal communication)
Everyone knows that Lorentz, Poincaré and others had arrived at concepts or mathematical results that are found in Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper, but HF, yet again, recycles the same old stuff as if he were pronouncing something of great significance. The issue is whether Einstein, building on their work as all scientists do, achieved something uniquely his, from his own unique starting point. If Einstein’s paper was nothing but plagiarism, how strange that Planck and Drude at the Annalen der Physic, both of whom were perfectly familiar with these other writings, recognized Einstein had gone beyond the others. Just what that was HF might discover by wider reading, for instance, the article “Dismissing renewed attempts to deny Einstein the discovery of special relativity”, Roger Cerf (Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France), Amer. Journal of Physics, vol. 74, no. 9, 2006, pp. 818824.
Abstract:
On the occasion of the centenary of special relativity, several publications have argued that Poincaré, and not Einstein, was the discoverer of special relativity. Attacks have simultaneously been directed at Einstein, whose 1905 article on the electrodynamics of moving bodies was alleged to be a forgery. These attacks praise Lorentz and Poincaré for their results and neglect Poincaré’s failure to make the necessary conceptual leap and understand the fundamental consequences of the principle of relativity. I identify what was missing in Lorentz’s and Poincaré’s views and contrast them with Einstein’s insights.
I have no intention of returning to this subject, as it enables HF to divert attention from the actual issue that was being discussed, and especially to the fact that he evidently has nothing whatever to bring to this issue. All he can say is:
> Einstein had a habit of forgetting to mention his sources. Maric might have well been one of his victims.<
Now that’s what I call a rational argument in response to the content of my three previous letters! And for someone who makes such a fuss about absence of references, how strange he supplies precisely zero citations to support this evidence-free surmise.
A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by northwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands.
“These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”
The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.
They were still breathing as mud was shoveled over their bodies, according media reports, which said their only “crime” was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.
Somalia, enraged true believers
Hussein, the 28-year-old victim, had converted from the Muslim faith to Christianity. Jonathan Racho of International Christian Concern says he was confronted by Islamic extremists who demanded to know if he faces Mecca when he prays, which is required of Muslims.
“Hussein says he doesn’t face Mecca when he prays because his God is omnipresent and he can face anywhere to pray,” Racho recounts the incident. “[T]he extremists were very much enraged by his comments, and they killed him.”
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Persecution/Default.aspx?id=201016
“Democratic politics is essentially the politics of rational dialogue in which language, thought and persuasion play key roles. At least that is what we have over the decades learnt to believe. But recent electoral battles in India appear to have fundamentally shifted the ground on which our democratic beliefs have stood so far.
It is not being argued here that the theatre of politics has moved unprecedentedly and dangerously away from reason and towards emotion. Emotion has always been an indispensable appendage of democratic politics, whether for good or for bad. What is new is something else. It is the rise to predominance of affect vis-à-vis reason and emotion. This has shifted politics on to an entirely different ground. What is most disturbing is that on this ground the rules of democratic politics as a rational discourse do not seem to apply.”
What nonsense!
And what pray are the ‘rules’ of democratic politics? Who set these ‘rules’? And, what precisely is ‘rational discourse’? Is discourse ‘rational’?
Is any form democratic politics actually democratic? Here, with specific reference to India, I’ll make the claim – democracy died when Gandhi (oh yes…I am referring to Mohandas K. Gandhi) began deciding how the passive resistance against Imperial Britain should be organized. He brooked no opposition to his ‘grand plans’. Case in point is the effective sidelining of Subhas Bose – if you are not familiar with the sordidness of this case – look it up!
So…no! India has never really engaged in democratic politics – sure it has adopted a veneer of it, but it is not intrinsic to India. What the hell is this author bemoaning about then?
Regards,
M
Ideally, politics is a rational ordering! Very true! But to say that this rational ordering is devoid of affectivity even in originary terms is incorrect. Afterall, Kant’s Critical Project (concerning Reason) was spread between three poles – reasons, judgement and the imagination – where the last was the site and the source of affectivity.
Now, concerning India…
Re: Postmodernism and Truth by Daniel Denett
Postmodernism does not say that there is nothing true in this world. It simply invites us to question and what it claims is only that different values and systems are made by us, they don’t just simply exist as universal values. Everything is our creation.
It is true that Postmodernism hold lots of contradictions within itself and that there are also contradictions in defining it. It has been defined as both an opposition to Modernism as well as a continuation of Modernism.
A good book to understand Postmodernism is Linda Hutcheon’s ‘A Poetics of Postmodernism.’ She holds a very clear view on Postmodernism and clarifies many unjust accusations which were brought to this trend.
>Postmodernism does not say that there is nothing true in this world. It simply invites us to question and what it claims is only that different values and systems are made by us.
..
And that is what we do, i.e. we seriously consider and question what postmodernism says and keep finding its stuff very flawed.
That our theories and systems are made by us is a trivial observation, it doesn’t matter who says something but whteher what he is true.
…
>Everything is our creation.
Not quite evrything, that’s another flaws idea.
Only our theories (say Geography or Astronomy, or postmodernism by that matter) are indeed our creations, the Earth or Moon however aren’t.
Derrida himself was created by his mother.
Einstein’s supporters, mainly Jewish, are mischievously trying to discredit Mileva. They know very well that Mileva originated these ideas and are hiding the evidence. Meeting Einstein cost the poor woman her life.
In the article “On Intellectual Ethics”,
Spellberg is reported as saying:
“I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography.”
I’m sorry, but what part of the word “fiction” does Spellberg not understand?
Does she not regard “The Last Temptation of Christ” as a “deliberate misinterpretation of history”? Does she not regard that film as turning sacred history into soft core pornography?
I cannot decide whether the woman is a gibbering incoherent, or a secret islamofascist.
Re: ‘Jewel of Medina’: It’s a pity it’s taken an “Islamic sensitivities” issue to draw attention to what the historical romance industry does to history. I’ve seen far worse things done to real-life characters I care about by novelists who work under the assumption that ‘artistic licence’ can justify turning entirely innocent people into murderers/kinky sadists/rapists, & c., since the dead can’t sue. The “soft porn” issue with this novel is small beer in comparison.
Bikini Olympic games, an enormous Satanic issue.
Following are excerpts from an interview withSaudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, which aired on Al-Majd TV on August 10, 2008.
Muhammad Al-Munajid: how come modern sports – especially women’s sports – involve the exposure of private parts? It is well known that the Olympics – both in the past and the upcoming games… the world’s worst display of women’s clothing is the women’s Olympics. No exposure of women’s private parts on a global scale could make Satan happier than Olympic games that include women’s sports.
Interviewer: And in a scandalous manner…
Muhammad Al-Munajid: Yes. It is an enormous Satanic issue.
Beijing or not… I call it Bikini, anyway… because they are likely to display women in the worst possible way in these “Bikini” Olympic games.
[…]
What women wear in the Olympic games are among the worst clothes possible. The inventions of Satan, with regard to the exposure of the body in gymnastics, in swimming, in whatever, in tennis… Women have never got naked for sports like they do in the Olympics. It is aired to billions of people worldwide. The problem is not just with the spectators who are present. The whole thing is aired on TV…
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1832.htm
The structure of Intelligent design is as follows:
1. I cansee how a feature can have evolved
2. Therfore noboidy else can
3.Therefore I’m going to believe God DID IT
4. Therefore Everbody else has too \too
mikesherwod53(dms@populli.net)
Meera Nanda is someone who hates Hinduism. I dont think her ideas and analysis mean much because she is a biased Leftist.
For some bizzare reason, a lot of our Commy friends have taken up commenting on History of India. Its a sure shot to success cause if you cram in enough words and confuse the reader with jargon, they will say …”good work.”
History books in India were destroyed like this and the thought and process of denigrating our cultural values and ancient texts has survived.
I doubt the author has read any Vedic text completely. I doubt she has seen the knowledge hidden in the Upanishads.
Meera Nanda, I hope you get success and then start your own investigation rather than just…”read some cook some” approach.
regards,
Spellberg is reported as saying:
“I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography
Ben Franklin & Jefferson both said the right of free speech is meaningless unless it includes the right to blaspheme.
Again the Christians are issiting on winning the arguement.
mikesherwood53
Re: ‘Jewel of Medina’: It’s a pity it’s taken an “Islamic sensitivities” issue to draw attention to what the historical romance industry does to history. I’ve seen far worse things done to real-life characters I care about by novelists who work under the assumption that ‘artistic licence’ can justify turning entirely innocent people into murderers/kinky sadists/rapists, & c., since the dead can’t sue. The “soft porn” issue with this novel is small beer in comparison
Sorry but Free Speech has to include the right to write bad novels. Yes there’s a lot of BAD stuff out there (see practically the whole output of FRANK YERBY) .So what ?
mikesherwod53(dms@populli.net
Hussein, the 28-year-old victim, had converted from the Muslim faith to Christianity. Jonathan Racho of International Christian Concern says he was confronted by Islamic extremists who demanded to know if he faces Mecca when he prays, which is required of Muslims.
“Hussein says he doesn’t face Mecca when he prays because his God is omnipresent and he can face anywhere to pray,” Racho recounts the incident. “[T]he extremists were very much enraged by his comments, and they killed him.”
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Persecution/Default.aspx?id=201016
There are crazies everwhere that proves little enough.
What is scary is that ,tecnically, the Law of the Land was on their side.
mikesherwod(dms@popull.net)
What women wear in the Olympic games are among the worst clothes possible. The inventions of Satan, with regard to the exposure of the body in gymnastics, in swimming, in whatever, in tennis… Women have never got naked for sports like they do in the Olympics. It is aired to billions of people worldwide. The problem is not just with the spectators who are present. The whole thing is aired on TV…
What parrallel universe is the sheik tuning into. In mine I’ve never seen a naked woman in the Olymics (In ancient greece Yes)
mikesherwood53 (dms@populli.net)
This is covered in BREAKING THE SPELL by Daniel Dennett(an unfortunately bad book by a brilliant auther). Fro the POV of believer contradiction and obscuity aren’t bugs their features. They allow religion to face in all differant directions at once and have an “answer” for everything.
This places sceptics in a bit of a poser LOGIC is a machine that is designed to deal with coherant notions fairly sharp-edged entities. Feed into it fuzzy muddy blurs like the Doctrine of The Trinity and it chokes and dies.
I haven’t an answer but for Nothingness sake lets not get wounded by the fact that we can’t answer these people on their own terms. Get into a conversation with a paronoid and likely you’ll lose; that don’t (I hope) mean he’s right!
mikesherwod53
Some comments on one item in Simon Blackburn’s fascinating review of Sokal’s new book *Beyond the Hoax*
http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_14.html
Blackburn provides an anecdote concerning his daughter’s education at secondary school:
>… Apparently the class had been told to solve some equations governing the motion of the pendulum. In particular they had been told to use the equation of potential energy at the top of the swing with kinetic energy at the bottom, to calculate the velocity at the bottom of the swing. I asked what the problem was. She said she didn’t see what this so-called energy was. I asked if she had raised this with the teacher. She said she had, and had been told to get on and solve the equations. She never pursued any science again.< As Blackburn writes, such dogmatic, stupid teaching may well lose many bright children to science. Having taught physics up to pre-University level for a good many years, I find it astounding that any teacher (at least, one with a physics degree which I would imagine the teacher at Blackburn’s daughter’s private school would have had) would respond in such a fatuous way when it is perfectly possible to provide an explanation on a level commensurate with the knowledge and understanding that should have been transmitted by that stage. I’m also absolutely sure that my physics teachers at a grammar school all of fifty years ago did not teach in such a manner. That said, I’m not sure it is conceivable with today’s crowded curricular, and the slow pace that school students are introduced to basic knowledge of physics, to present the subject in the somewhat idealised way that Blackburn suggests. Historical aspects of the subject should certainly be touched upon, but I can’t think of a better way of confusing the great majority of students at secondary school than to go into the kinds of debates that Blackburn suggests: “about whether ‘force’ should be thought of as proportional to velocity or square velocity (which set Newton and Leibniz at each other’s throats… disputes, involving Carnot, Joule, and Helmholtz, about the relationship between work, heat, and energy.” In my view, given the limited time available at school, and the level of understanding to be expected from the majority of school students, these debates can be best be understood at a later stage, when the basic elements of late nineteenth century physics have be grasped. The debates in question involve the gradual emerging of understanding over a long period of time, involving individuals of great intellectual stature. I doubt that trying to introduce school students at an early stage of their study of physics to the disputes, e.g., involving Carnot, Joule, and Helmholtz, would interest the great bulk of students, if only because they would have little idea of what the debates were about. I suspect that Blackburn is, at least partially, looking at this from the point of view of a philosopher/scientist, someone fascinated by the way in which modern ideas in physics have come to be over the last two millennia. Leaving aside the differences in aptitudes of school students even within a streamed class (not to mention the discipline problems that plague many schools in the UK!), I suspect that professors used to dealing with the upper echelons of university subject matter have only a limited idea of what is feasible in the secondary school situation. I repeat, that is not to say historical aspects of the subject should not be discussed, only that the level of sophistication of what can be expected of such students has to be taken into account. Back to the original anecdote above, Blackburn writes:
>It also means that the ones who remain have been spoon-fed a bunch of results and techniques with no understanding of how they were hammered out, of what their birth pangs were.< It does not follow that because school students have not been introduced to the way in which basic notions in physics were hammered out (actually an immensely sophisticated subject), that this means they have to be spoon-fed a bunch of results and techniques. No teacher worth his or her salt needs to teach physics in such a manner, and lack of the kind of deep historical background that Blackburn recommends is no excuse whatsoever for such a travesty of teaching.
I have now read the prologue to The Jewel of Medina published at URL
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/images/uploads1/Prologue-JewelMedina.pdf
I feel that I owe Denise Spellberg a apology for my intemperate remarks of 11/08/2008.
Ms Jones may well be a competent journalist. I am unimpressed with her fiction.
Regarding R. Joseph Hoffmann and his notes about just how fucking stupid America is.
I agree that those visions probably do start with Tocqueville and continue right down to the earnest professor.
Hmmm. The cotton gin, GPS, laser, DNA restriction enzymes, that bad ass internet, and one Vietnam grunt who ended up completing the human genome. You know the drill.
Yes, we do not like French movies, or that prose poetry that makes them swoon, nor do we care much for academics, if that is all they do.
We voted for Ronald Reagan.
Maybe Obama won’t even win the election.
How did we ever survive this long?
The power of praying
ILORIN, Nigeria, August 14 (Compass Direct News) – Blaming the death of their leader on Christian prayers, an Islamist group that launched a hate campaign in response to an evangelistic event in 2004 is reportedly attacking Christians in this Kwara state capital with renewed virulence, area Christians said.
At least three Christians have died and several others have been injured in attacks with machetes and other weapons since June, clergymen said.
“The members of his Muslim sect went on rampage, demonstrating against America and the state of Israel, over claims that it was the prayers of Christians over the aborting of the gospel event of 2004 that caused their leader to be involved in an auto crash. Dr. Olukade, the Muslim sect’s leader, died in May 2008, and since then Muslim fanatics have embarked in serial killings and attacks on Christians in the city.”
D M Sherwood wrote; “Sorry but Free Speech has to include the right to write bad novels. Yes there’s a lot of BAD stuff out there (see practically the whole output of FRANK YERBY). So what?”
Exactly: it’s out there, and it’s our job (speaking as a historian) to dissect it and argue against it (because the problem with bad historical fiction is that it can seep into factual historical discourse). But there is no reason for some characters be regarded as ‘protected’ from trashy fiction because of ‘religious’ sensibilities. I’ve had my sensibilities driven over by trashy historical fiction vandalising the lives of people I’ve researched before now: why should others be exempt on religious grounds?
One can’t ban inaccurate pseudo-historical trash – but by taking it apart when it appears, you can prevent people taking it as ‘fact’.
It would be easier to attend to Hoffmann’s laments about loss of intelligence if he wrote better. What a mess his prose is! He splits infinitives and his syntax sometimes goes hopelessly astray. Better make sure there are no stains on your suit before you declaim about the shoddiness of other people’s dress.
The argument fails to include a consideration of the role of disinformation and propaganda in producing the “dumb mind-set”. Perhaps the addage about fools and money is appropriate here, but in a larger sense. Fools part easily not only from their money, but if the last 7.5 years of political crminality are any indication, “we” part easily from our rights and civil protections, as well. This is possible because the debate (nearly all) is deliberately dumbed down. Excluding the possibility of producing a meaningful and coherent message leads to the impossibility of coherent thought and understanding. I see this as the manufacturing of a “fool’s consensus”(sp?) which serves to provide the speaker with an unquestionable (because nonsensical) authority from whence they derive their
advantage…namely, the disadvantage of the listener.
Disarmed by bullshit, unable to reply to nonsense, we engage with an increasingly dumb world, getting dumber as we agree to each new stupidity.
The convenience that marks our physical environment, making life pleasant and conferring “ease”, provides an excuse for blithely checking out of all rational and psychic rigour. Playing the “video-anything” is more convenient than imagining/experiencing our own “entertainment”. Opening and consuming product “x” is easier than cooking ones own food. Chatting online is much preferred to actual physical acquaintance, love now resides in the house of pornography and cyber-sex. Generally, commitment is inconvenient.
The more we strive for a convenient world, the more we ban everything that offers challenge and makes us smarter.
We are producing our own dumbing down rituals when we avoid challenge.
The anonymous KWH takes me to task for splitting infinitives. But to split a hair, one declaims on, not about, a subject.
do you really believe that husband and wife with a same afffinity for science living “so long together”did not discuss their thougts.do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?
i say todays science is dogma.i say todays mathemathics is dogma.
ex:irational numbers are not irational.it is irrational to think so. we have only ten digits;from zero to nine.i do not care how many zillions of combinatuions is needed to repeat the sequence,but the sequence will eventually repeat itself.i think you are the product of dogma.lf you treat every number as “irrational number” you might find TOE(theory of everything).
ps.i’m not mathematichien.i’m a thinker.there are more to it.good luck to you.you’ve done thorough research,but could you see “behind the mirror”ithink you’ll think differenly from naw on.cheers.
zoran grubetic writes:
>do you really believe that husband and wife with a same affinity for science living “so long together” did not discuss their thoughts. Do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?< This clearly relates to the articles on this website in the section Einstein’s Wife: Mileva Marić rebutting claims that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, co-authored (or at least made substantial contributions to) Einstein’s celebrated 1905 papers. Note first that Zoran Grubetic makes the unjustified assumption that Marić had “the same affinity for science” as Einstein. Unfortunately the claims that Marić was a brilliant scientist, or brilliant mathematician, have been recycled so frequently that it is difficult for many people to conceive that this might not be the case. In fact there is no documented evidence that either was true. Although she achieved excellent grades in physics and mathematics at high school level, her grades at the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic (where she studied with Einstein on a diploma course to teach physics and mathematics in secondary school) indicate that she found higher level work rather more demanding. Her grade average in 1896 for the Polytechnic mathematics entrance test was a moderate 4.25 on a scale 1-6, her intermediate diploma grade average placed her fifth out of six students in their group, and she failed the final diploma exam in 1900, primarily due to her poor grade in the “theory of functions” mathematics component of the exam, for which she obtain a lowly 5 on a scale 1-12. This would be of little consequence if there was any documented evidence of high level work after she left the Polytechnic in 1901, having failed the diploma exam for the second time (on this occasion she was three months pregnant). However, there is none. People who think that Marić *must* have made substantive input to Einstein’s 1905 papers generally have little idea of the conceptual difficulties that are involved in such theoretical research on advanced physics, especially for someone who evidently found the degree-level Polytechnic course sufficiently demanding that she failed to obtain a diploma. The evidence points to the fact that after her second diploma failure, and the tragedy of the loss of care of her baby Liserl in 1902 (Liserl’s fate after 1903 is unknown) she gave up her scientific ambitions. Back to the question of Marić’s affinity for science: In none of the surviving letters to Einstein, or to her closest friend Helene Savić (née Kaufler), is there any indication of any affinity for science remotely comparable to Einstein’s. It is often claimed that the Einstein/Marić correspondence (notably during 1898-1901), show that the pair collaborated on Einstein’s extra-curricular research in their student days, but in fact *all* the relevant material is one-way, from Einstein to Marić. On this issue, see J. Stachel (2002): http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Einsteins_letters.htm
Of course, since no one was privy to their private conversations it cannot be stated unequivocally that Marić made no contribution to Einstein’s scientific work. But the reliable evidence is consistent with the statement recorded by Einstein’s friend and colleague Philipp Frank that, after their marriage, “when he wanted to discuss his ideas, which came to him in great abundance, her response was so slight that he was often unable to decide whether or not she was interested” (P. Frank, 1948, pp. 34-35), and that of their elder son Hans Albert that “with the marriage she gave up practically all her ambitions in that [scientific] direction” (G.J. Whitrow [ed.], 1967, p. 19).
For detailed examinations of all the claims about Marić’s alleged scientific contributions, see my articles below.
References
Esterson, A. (2006). Mileva Marić: Einstein’s Wife:
http://www.esterson.org/milevamaric.htm
Esterson, A. (2007). Who Did Einstein’s Mathematics? A Response to Troemel-Ploetz:
http://www.esterson.org/Who_Did_Einsteins_Mathematics.htm
Esterson, A. (2008). Critique of Bjerknes:
http://www.esterson.org/Critique_of_Bjerknes.htm
Stachel, J. (1996). Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: A Collaboration That Failed to Develop:
http://philoscience.unibe.ch/lehre/winter99/einstein/Stachel1966.pdf
Stachel, J. (2005). Rebuttal of the claims that Abraham Joffe saw the original 1905 papers:
http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Joffe.htm
>do you really believe that husband and wife with a same affinity for science living “so long together” did not discuss their thoughts. Do you really believe that she could not have some inputs whatsoever?< No, it would be like believing that Clinton and Monica only chatted about the weather when they privately met or that OJ Simpson is innocent.
But, you see, what matters in a trial is not “commone sense arguments” but only the hard evidence to be presented.
There is little left to do justice for Mileva.
I should have included in Marić’s achievements the love and support she gave Einstein in the first decade of the twentieth century when he was making his mark in the scientific world, enabling him to concentrate almost all his available spare time on theoretical research. Unfortunately Einstein’s single-minded focusing on his research also precipitated the breakdown of the marriage, with Marić’s feeling of neglect leading to her blaming “science” for her increasing sense of loneliness. To Helene Savić in 1909 she wryly remarked that his move away from his post at the Bern Patent Office would enable him “to devote himself to his beloved science, and *only* science”, and some months later confided her “longing for love”, the lack of which “is the fault of the damned science”.
I must confess to having trouble making sense of HF’s argument. Leaving aside the Clinton and Monica comparison that doesn’t even begin to be an analogous situation, is it supposed to be the case that the hard evidence at the trial showed that O. J. Simpson was innocent? Really?
It’s not a question of whether Marić ever discussed Einstein’s work with him, but whether she collaborated on his published papers, or at least made some substantive contribution to them. Einstein had spent several years building the groundwork (reading around, thinking about, and working on ideas, discussing with friends, including Marić in their student days) that eventually resulted in the three most celebrated 1905 papers. Maurice Solovine, who studied philosophy, mathematics and physics at Bern University, and was some four years older than Einstein, recalled in relation to the time he first met him in 1902 his admiration for Einstein’s “surprising mastery of physical problems”. That kind of mastery does not come easily, and would have taken him well beyond the knowledge and capabilities of the average physics graduate of Zurich Polytechnic, let alone someone who was unable to gain a teaching diploma.
As for “justice” for Marić, that is not achieved by claims of contributions she never made herself, nor even remotely hinted at in the letters to her closest friend Helene Savić in the relevant early years of her marriage to Einstein. Her memory is best commemorated by a recognition of her genuine achievements, not ones tendentiously imposed on her. These include dealing with a physical handicap, overcoming institutional obstacles to girls studying physical science in her native Serbia to achieve a scientific education at a prestigious institution, and overcoming the tragedies of the loss of her first child Liserl, the breakdown of her marriage, and the mental breakdown of their younger son Eduard. To insist on scientific accomplishments that the substantive evidence does not support is to patronise her, and ultimately to demean her memory.
>It’s not a question of whether Marić ever discussed Einstein’s work with him, but whether she collaborated on his published papers>
We know that she was educated and that she was his wife but just don’t know what she discussed with him, i.e. the extent of her input while they were debating over a scientific question or other.
It was simply not Einstein’s academic habit to mention who helped him and from who he discussed this or that idea.
For instance no mention of Poincare in Einstein’s in 1905 paper (E. uses Poinacare’s light clock sychronization method to define time operationaly and the principle of relativity as axiom).. and also no mention of Lorentz 1904 special relativity transformations ( though they had been published already in the physics journal were Einstein was working in isolation as editor, a mainstream German physics journal-the director of which was Einstein’s aquitance M.Planck).
Einstein kept this bad character trait al his life.
No mention form Einstein of Levi-Civita input in his 1915 paper on general relativity ( they had exchanged letters in which Einstein was sending trial and error material and Civita was replying correcting Einstein’s errors in handling the math of tensorial calculus. It was L.Civita was who suggested to Einstein to add the -1/2g(ij)R term to Einstein’s first, and mistaken, try for the solution R(ij)=-kT(ij).
No mention in that paper of David Hilbert massive help during 1914-1915( here however D.Hilbert not only first found the correct solution but he also first published the equations of general relativity)
To sum up : Einstein had a habit of forgetting to mention his sources. Maric might have well been one of his victims.
HF writes:
>We know that she was educated and that she was his wife< I have already dealt with that point. I suggest you look at what I wrote again, and recognise just how feeble that ‘argument’ is in the light of the information I already presented. The rest of HF’s comments have no real connection with the issue at hand, but he takes the opportunity to return to his hobby-horse that Einstein was little more than a plagiarist, a topic we’ve been round and round before, and I have no intention of starting again. I’ll just say this on the issue of citations. I have no expertise on this subject, other than a fair amount of reading around it. As far as I can ascertain there were certainly occasions, at least in his early publishing days, when Einstein could have given fuller references, and, later, indications of the assistance he got from his mathematician friend Marcel Grossman in the later stages of his work on General Relativity around 1915. However most of the contentions along these lines grossly overstate the case (how many of Einstein’s many scores of papers does HF have knowledge of?), and anyway are not evidence for plagiarism. For instance, in relation to Einstein’s early publications Alberto A. Martinez reports that a sparseness of citations was not as unusual for the time as most commentators think. He told me: “I’ve looked at old issues of the Annalen der Physik, and the practice of including citations was not nearly as great as it is now. Some papers had none.” (personal communication) Everyone knows that Lorentz, Poincaré and others had arrived at concepts or mathematical results that are found in Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper, but HF, yet again, recycles the same old stuff as if he were pronouncing something of great significance. The issue is whether Einstein, building on their work as all scientists do, achieved something uniquely his, from his own unique starting point. If Einstein’s paper was nothing but plagiarism, how strange that Planck and Drude at the Annalen der Physic, both of whom were perfectly familiar with these other writings, recognized Einstein had gone beyond the others. Just what that was HF might discover by wider reading, for instance, the article “Dismissing renewed attempts to deny Einstein the discovery of special relativity”, Roger Cerf (Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France), Amer. Journal of Physics, vol. 74, no. 9, 2006, pp. 818824. Abstract:
On the occasion of the centenary of special relativity, several publications have argued that Poincaré, and not Einstein, was the discoverer of special relativity. Attacks have simultaneously been directed at Einstein, whose 1905 article on the electrodynamics of moving bodies was alleged to be a forgery. These attacks praise Lorentz and Poincaré for their results and neglect Poincaré’s failure to make the necessary conceptual leap and understand the fundamental consequences of the principle of relativity. I identify what was missing in Lorentz’s and Poincaré’s views and contrast them with Einstein’s insights.
I have no intention of returning to this subject, as it enables HF to divert attention from the actual issue that was being discussed, and especially to the fact that he evidently has nothing whatever to bring to this issue. All he can say is:
> Einstein had a habit of forgetting to mention his sources. Maric might have well been one of his victims.< Now that’s what I call a rational argument in response to the content of my three previous letters! And for someone who makes such a fuss about absence of references, how strange he supplies precisely zero citations to support this evidence-free surmise.
>HF to divert attention from the actual issue that was being discussed >
I was putting the issue into its proper context, i.e. Einstein’s lifelong academic habits.
That is not “diverting”, to the contrary doing so is mandatory you want to make sense of individual events of a life-story.
after Musharaff
(AP)
A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by northwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands.
“These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”
The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.
They were still breathing as mud was shoveled over their bodies, according media reports, which said their only “crime” was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.
…..