Any question?

A friend of mine said that it is time for us to start asking questions; why, what, how, …

I said, OK, good for him. I’ve been in his position before. Once the intention to ask questions is there, the next step would be to learn how to formulate a question. A good one, that is. As absurd questions will only lead to absurd answers. Ridiculous output only comes from ridiculous input. “What is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?” “42″. If you know this quote, you certainly know what I mean.

There’s one problem. In a multicultural, multiple background environment, where exact same words may have different meanings to different people, it is not always easy to find the “right” question. I’m still struggling in this aspect, and I have fear to the risk that this struggle may be an endless one.

Fad

From Cambridge dictionaries online:

fad
noun [C]
a style, activity or interest which is very popular for a short period of time:
    the latest health fad
    There was a fad for wearing ripped jeans a few years ago.

faddism
noun [U]
a tendency to like a style, activity or interest for a very short period of time

faddist
noun [C]

The Muslim’s Past

Again today, I watched a presentation on the glorious past of muslim scientific development and contribution from muslim scientists. I don’t exactly remember how many times I have seen such typical presentation. Countless sources in the Internet, German magazines, Welt der Wunder, History Channel… They’re everywhere. We’re not lacking of them.

I like the “western” presentation style better, because they’re usually presented as a sort of acknowledgment to the contributions made by extraordinary people in the past. My muslim “colleagues”, however, have a different style of presentation. They almost always end by persuading the audience to seek the wonder of the past (THE, that, their past, I mean), so that they can improve their (our) situation in the future.

Of course, 7 centuries of remarkable science and engineering achievements is something not to be ignored. But it is not the ONLY thing that bring changes to the world. The Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman, the French, the English, the German, the American, just to mention some, they have done pretty much the same thing. And thus, I think, it is not something to be overly worshiped. It is one step (a very big step indeed) in the course of science, but it is not the only step.

Moreover, many things have happened since 1492 AD. Gauss, Newton, Leibniz, and hundreds of other mathematicians have laid the ground for modern mathematics, and through it we have, among others, answered the 2000 years question posed by Diophantine equations and Fermat’s last theorem; Two waves of industrial revolution had changed the world of engineering for ever; Wernher von Braun had invented rocket, and man had gone to the moon with it; The wave-particle duality nature of light has been discovered through quantum theory; Modern optics have enabled man to build telescopes to observe the very far end of the universe. And thus, not only our good-old-mother-earth has been mapped, a large part of the UNIVERSE also has; The discovery of DNA, the better understanding on human brain, nervous, and hormonal system, have brought a giant leap from 15th century’s medication system; Navigation? think of GPS for God’s sake!

And 600 quintillion of other bla bla blas…

Therefore, believing that bringing back the knowledge of the 15th century science, and hoping that the future can be better because of it, is, I think, a complete nonsense. There has been a lot of improvement and complexity in science since then, and, I think, these are the things where we need to put our focus on.

Superman

We are not superman, my dear. There can only be one instance of our being, in one place, at a particular instant of time. Well, the same rule applies for superman as well, after all he is still a “man”. But the fact that he can move (and necessarily, think) very quickly, enables him to define a finer resolution on the notions of “space” and “time”. We can’t, unfortunately.

Galileo, oh… Galileo

I saw the trailing text news of the recent Galileo deal in one of the German TV stations a few days ago, but just found the news in BBC today. Probably they need some time for a little mock up between the real event and the actual press release Finally, after the endless struggle among the companies involved in the consortium, resulting in the death of their Public Private Partnership (PPP) funding scheme, the project continues. Fully covered by European citizen’s tax. Taking spare money from agriculture funds. Until today, there is only one test satellite (Giove-A) in orbit, out of 30 planned, launched end 2005 (note: one of the purposes of its launch was to secure the frequency allocation for Galileo given by the ITU which would have been otherwise canceled should there be no satellite in orbit by 2006. And by the way, Giove-A was built by Surrey Satellite Technologies, SSTL, which is not a member of the original consortium)

Why do the European insist on building their own satellite navigation system anyway? With the emergence of Beidou from China, plan from Russia to re-strengthen their GLONASS, and the dawn of GPS III, competing for the “piece of the cake” of satellite navigation market, it is really questionable, whether the system is really worth the price. Accuracy will not be the factor that will determine the market dominance of any of the systems, as they will have approximately the same positioning accuracies.

Will Galileo be independent from GPS? This was another argument trying to justify Galileo. Since GPS is owned by US military, it can be shut down at their will, and considering that GPS is also used for aviation navigation, it may raise safety-of-life issue. Galileo will be a civilian system. However, to have a system with complete global coverage having ultimate accuracy, it is necessary to have GPS and Galileo combined, in a sense that a receiver should be able to process navigation signals from both systems. In other words, Galileo is not really independent, is it?

Roller coaster philosophy

After exploring all roller coasters in Heide Park near Hamburg, including the “Collosos”, world’s steepest coaster with 61 degree inclination, I discovered that if I let loose of my grip on the security belt, I can enjoy the ride more. There’s no more fear, and I feel more free. Simply fun.

I was thinking probably this rule applies to life in general. In almost all situation, no matter how hard we try to change things, the final result is not always due to our effort. There’s always a “greater power” that determines how the end will be. So if we could just loosen our “grip”, or our “sense of control” on how things going on, just a little bit, we would possibly have more fun in life.

It reminds me to a heuristic that I learned in a class about international management, which says: “the only way you can get people under control, is by not controlling them at all”

Weird, eh? well, that’s life…

Just passing…

If there is one most valuable thing to be expected when studying and staying abroad, it is to fully comprehend that all human being are created equal, and no one has the right to enslave others in any circumstances; to be able to walk with head up against those who claimed themselves to have a higher civilization than other parts of the world, and to beat them in their own game.

money vs skill

Money and skill is like the “chicken and egg” problem. When we don’t have money, we can easily speak “Well, the Americans, the Japanese, the French, the Germans, they just happen to have a lot of money. They can do whatever they want. They can make metro subway systems, fast trains, space shuttles, they can even send robots to make a picture of the edge of the solar systems”.

But when someday, someone come to us and say “Here’s the deal: I offer you to 5 million euros and no less, and you’ll give me your business proposal. Remember, I want no less. 5 million; the bigger the better!”, we finally realize that it is skill that we don’t have, because probably we won’t know what kind of hi-tech business to propose with such a large amount of money. Even if we know what to do, we might know nothing about how we can do it.

And by the way, that was a true story, not just a hypothetical situation.

So which one should come first? money or skill? well, just leave it as a chicken and egg problem :p

Wallahu a’lam