Two new large ice sheets have formed in Antarctica and a magic rug has covered over the growing hole in the southern hemisphere yesterday after a global attempt to save the earth.

Not having gone on the official Live Earth concert roster, the show held in Maldives became one of the over 7000 shows worldwide held under the title "Friends of Live Earth". Most phenomenal and surprising was that the show managed to really ante up the public's awareness on global climatic and environmental problems. Even Asseyk Al-Vistas President Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom was jealous of this serious incursion into his turf, after all, as all we Maldivians know he had patented the global warming concept back when he delivered his atom-splitting speech at the UN.

Err, that is me trying to be sarcastic and possibly humorous at the same time... at which I failed happily.

Anyway, Live Earth sounds fantastic but I'm very skeptical of this whole affair and more so when it comes to it being done in the Maldives. While I do admire and support some of the efforts around the world towards investigating man-made disturbances to the climate, finding solutions and taking proactive action towards damage reduction, I just can't help but observe that most of the so-called environment related programmes conducted in Maldives seem a bit superficial. Such programmes seem to be a bit too much of doing something for the fame and name. I'm probably being an arse and maybe laying a bit of insult to the hard work done by the people who organised the Live Earth show in Male' but I really doubt there was any honest intention to participate in the event to root for its cause and goals. I wonder whether there was any intention of increasing public awareness and/or to contribute in any substantial manner with regard to "saving the earth". If you did attend this show or watched it on TVM, do YOU know WHY the show was held and what its goals were? As seems customary in the Maldives, the Live Earth show may have been yet-another-excuse for a having bit of fun and a blessing to excise some easy money to fund it all.

Anyway, the 07/07/07 Live Earth concerts were supposed to mark the beginning of the Live Earth campaign with more to come in the future. I hope there is interest in doing something more than just shows...

I was rummaging through the locally revered magazine called "Dharuma" for a friend when a series of articles written by a Dr. Mauroof Hussain titled "Evolution Theory: Mulhidhunge Bahana" (translated into english as "Evolution Theory: Atheists' Excuse") caught my eye. This was interesting because Dharuma magazine has supposedly caught a particular following of readers with its team of "high profile" writers, religious teachers and allegedly educational content.

Anyway, as someone who reads dhivehi magazines only rarely, I would have had no idea what sort of arguments the article might contain were it no for the title that clearly sets the stage - this was going to be creationist ramblings. Nonetheless, I bit my tongue and read through it, reading some bits twice just to make sure I read it correctly. The article surely had a load of surprises in store and by the time I was finished reading it I was beyond speechless - the author had managed to write complete, thorough, mindless, fallacious bullshit from the very start till the very end. I encourage you all to read this "brilliant" piece, it would teach you a thing or two about making a case without really making a case, how to obfuscate, how to commit a dozen logical fallacies and still have it all fit for publishing in a magazine. If this were an intentional hoax then it surely would make Sokal blush.

The article starts off with "arguments" (attempting) to associate evolution with every sort of demonic, evil manifestation imaginable - especially to the ultra-conservative Islamic mind. Materialism, Marxism, communism, racism and atheism are served for starters as well as a claim from the outset that the theory really is devil's incarnate and no less than his greatest creation ever! The author then drops names of scientists/thinkers/inventors no less luminous than da Vinci, Galileo, Newton and Einstein themselves as having expressed belief in the existence of Allah. Many of you should know how outrageous a claim this is - I, and probably much of the rest of the world, would challenge the author to explain and show supporting evidence. First of all, philosophically speaking, it doesn't matter what who-and-who believed as it has absolutely no bearing on the truth values of those beliefs in question. However, the biggest problem with this claim regarding the belief of those scientists is the sheer dishonesty of this claim :- da Vinci, Galileo and Newton were all Christians (infact Newtons is well known to have been an extremely religious Bible believer) and Einstein was a deist/agnost. The Einstein quote "science without religion is lame and religion without science is BLIND" when read in the full context of his essay makes clear, very well, what he means by religion and what he means by a God or more precisely what he discredits as being false Gods and religions. The quote appears in his essay "Science and Religion" and is a must (short!) read for anyone who is remotely interested in Einsteins views on the relationship between science and religion - I really recommend reading it.

Anyway, the author finally finds space for dispensing something about the theory itself. Anyone with even a mild knowledge of proper evolutionary theory and its workings would just stare at the garbage inked cheerfully by the doctor. It must be said that the author fails miserably at defining what evolution theory entails. Unlike what's said in the article, evolution theory does NOT include postulations on how life arose - evolution stands independent of abiogenesis and "origin of life" theories. The article also states that evolution theory claims white supremacy but again there is no such thing inherent in evolution theory. Rather, it has to be acknowledged that Darwin indeed held racist views (very much in accordance with the then contemporary views) and did denigrate Africans. However, it would be a logical fallacy to discredit evolution theory on this basis since, again as I mentioned above, a particular person's individual views are irrelevant to the truth evaluation of a claim. I hope I can skip giving analogies to make it clearer as to why this is a such an easy argument to make and why its fallacious...

The article continues on with a hogwash of standard Creationist and/or Intelligent Design objections with arguments such as irreducible complexity, apparent design, purported perfection of creation and (current) holes in the fossil record. I'm too sleepy right now to iterate them all here but I'm sure anyone curious to know the other side of these arguments (and their answers) can find them bundled up in short neat sections at the "Objections to evolution" page on Wikipedia. Stand assured that the explanations you may read may lead to the elucidation of the false assertions made by the author, who seems to hint that humans walked and lived safely among bands of animals upto 60ft tall, 60lb heavy ferocious carnivorous animals we call dinosaurs and had been around unchanged since the Jurassic years.

Science is an evidence based enterprise that aspires to explain the world - it is not biased towards nor is hostile to any particular religion. It does not care whether its findings and theories conform to a particular preconceived framework for understanding and interpreting nature - for its goal is to build, refine and distil the best explanation of the universe and everything in it. Arguments such as the gaps in the fossil record mentioned in the article do nothing more than state a half-truth. There is no explanatory power in the creationist argument since all it does is say "God did it". Most amusingly, these particular people seem to be incapable of perceiving a God powerful enough to create a beautiful process as evolution to power the biological processes in the world just as the physical processes (or laws) govern motion, flight etc. It must be said that there are Muslims, Christians and Jews all of whom are pious and steadfast in their beliefs yet see no conflict with science and evolution - their interpretation and understanding allow for a God who creates magnificent mechanisms to drive the world without constant meddling by God himself...

After reading the article(s) in question, I was agitated enough to say something (thus the blog post!) about these sort of mindless crap being granted the authority to be published and spread without the freedom for countering arguments. I wish I am able to articulate better in Dhivehi so that I could myself write an article to respond to these sort of advocates of mysticism. I hope atleast some of you would think twice after reading articles in Dharuma and ignore the pseudoscience it packages to be passed off as modern science. It is always a delight to realize the true essences of science, the power of the scientific method and start re-learning and replacing strict ancient mysticism for a better, brighter life of knowledge and understanding. May God grant all those who aspire for such understanding the means and the will to do so.

Note (05/July/2007): My support for evolution theory does not imply anything more than just that and my criticisms of the article in question do not constitute of an attempt to support religious disbelief as some assume. I am compelled take issue with these sort of articles and ideas because it (in my view) presents bad science, incorrect information and is heavily tainted with the particular interpretation of holy books by its authors which they want to pass off as the ultimate truth. Any of you who bother to do further read up on its claims will find the extents to which most of its facts and arguments have been misquotes, misinformation and misappropriations - my post highlights a few of the more blatant ones. Such dishonesty seems to be indicative of an attempt to discredit a scientific theory that is well respected and accepted as the cornerstone in many areas of research. My goal in criticizing the Dharuma article certainly did not constitute of an attack on religion or religious belief but rather is an honest attempt to promote good science and critical thought.

The male dominance in Male' was at no time more apparent to me than the first few hours I walked around the streets of Male' after returning from UK this time. Everywhere I looked, the field of vision was guaranteed to be 95% dominated by mammals with XY chromosomes. More interestingly, everywhere I looked, male non-Maldivians occupied about 30% of those in an eyeful.

Be it the early morning, the evening or late night, the streets are littered mostly with testosterones on motorcycles or behind the wheels of a Maldive-pimped up second/third hand cars. And be it the early morning, the evening or late night, anyone sitting down on a wall, a public bench or using legs for locomotion is likely to be some expatriate male worker sporting a tough moustache and lovingly holding hands with a fellow male colleague. Well, that maybe a bit of an exaggeration but you get my drift..

I'm not sure about the latest statistics but if I recall correctly, the numbers would give a ovaries-to-testicles ratio of 2/3!

I was very excited when I first saw the multi-touch-screen technology demo by Jeff Hans on TED Talks earlier this year. Like Jeff said in his talk, it hinted at what new turns the standard human-computer interaction might take in the near future. A lot of different researchers and companies had been working on it for atleast a decade now but Jeff's demo was the first of its kind that I had seen that delivered such an impressive and seemingly feature-complete product. However, since it was just a technology demo I expected to be left to drool at this marvel till the technology is perfected and hit the market in a few years.

It really didn't occur to me that such products may hit the market as soon as this year. So, I was very surprised when Microsoft recently announced their Surface computing device for release in November! Their "Surface" product delivers the full multi-touch computing experience with an interaction surface area that of a coffee table. Apparently, it can track upto 52 touch points and can even recognize objects placed on it. The product essentially follows similar technology to what was demoed at TED Talks by Jeff. But what really astounded me was the technology demos that Microsoft and technology reviewers have published on the product. Microsoft seems to have done a lot of mock applications to show how the multi-surface interface can be used and exploited towards a radically fresh computing experience. This really is a case of seeing is believing (and being impressed) and requires a look at the demo videos.

Sadly though, with the product's supposed price tag of around US$ 5000, it really packs a blow to the wallet. The price will certainly go down as more multi-touch devices from other companies appear on the market. Apple has already incorporated multi-touch technology on their soon-to-be-released iPhone but will deliver the multi-touch experience at a smaller scale.

Check out the video below of Microsoft's Surface - there's more on YouTube. If anyone would like to give me a spontaneous gift for any reason, I surely wouldn't mind receiving one of these babies!

It never fails to annoy me when the self-righteous (religious) folk attribute misfortunes and disasters on people’s behaviour. It is something these folk do, without fail, each and every time that chance happens to wreak some trouble.

They were quick at it when the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed, injured, destroyed and disrupted the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. According to these enlightened folk who take it upon themselves to deliver this holy message, the tsunami was no accidental natural disaster – it was a divine punishment delivering a mighty blow to all those who sinned! Apparently, the Indonesians got it because they had gotten too barbaric, the Sri Lankans and Indians deserved what they got because they were polytheistic infidels and well, Maldives got it because people were shooting up heroin and being a tad bit too shag-friendly…

These claims fall under a type of logical fallacies known as a non sequitur. Humanity has subscribed to such crazy cause-effect relations since the dawn of time. Almost always, a deity sprung up to handle the task of managing and delivering some “punishment” when the people committed some random “sin”. The Aztecs, for example, believed in a god called Tlaloc who was responsible for floods and droughts. The Aztecs appeased Tlaloc by sacrificing children. Any modern person would see the utter lack of a relationship between child sacrifice and the occurrence of floods and droughts. Similarly, any sane person would (or rather should!) realize that there is absolutely no causal link between mundane human actions and droughts, floods or whatever the choice of natural disaster or misfortune one may imagine up. The physical universe isn’t dependant on human (im)moral behaviour anymore than it is dependent on the whims and wishes of individual humans.

What is sad, or rather disturbing, is that these claims still run amok whenever disaster strikes – like the wave-flooding in the islands that Maldives is facing right now. The self appointed messiahs have the arrogance and the audacity to tell the suffering that it is all directly because of their bad behaviour: divine retribution (especially?) for those who are wavering on their true path. I tell you, the sheer depravity of preying on people’s misfortunes is just downright appalling…

Note: This post was inspired by the article titled “Gudhrathee haadhisaathakaa kurimathilaan jeheynee eemantherikamaaeku“ (local copy here) found on Adhaalathu Party’s website.