aphexddb.com

Wow, I can’t believe how bright that explosion is and how far away they must be.

I just finished reading this wonderful article entitled Science and the Islamic World. It examines the once rich Arabic scientific culture (alegrebra, optics, etc.) from antiquity, and how today’s Islamic culture has basically gone backward scientifically.

here are some incredible and very, very sad quotes from the article:

The situation regarding patents is also discouraging: The OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] countries produce negligibly few. According to official statistics, Pakistan has produced only eight patents in the past 43 years.

…

Science is fundamentally an idea-system that has grown around a sort of skeleton wire frame—the scientific method. The deliberately cultivated scientific habit of mind is mandatory for successful work in all science and related fields where critical judgment is essential. Scientific progress constantly demands that facts and hypotheses be checked and rechecked, and is unmindful of authority. But there lies the problem: The scientific method is alien to traditional, unreformed religious thought. Only the exceptional individual is able to exercise such a mindset in a society in which absolute authority comes from above, questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and must only be discovered.

…

According to a 2002 United Nations report written by Arab intellectuals and released in Cairo, Egypt, “The entire Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth the number that Greece translates.” The report adds that in the 1000 years since the reign of the caliph Maa’moun, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.

Most everyone has seen Domo-kun on the internets somewhere, but do you know what its all about? He’s the mascot for Japan’s NHK TV station. He pops up on Japanese TV in little stop motion spots. Word.

Man, that show was AWESOME. Thank god my parents let me watch it every single day. Thanks to BoingBoing for the linkage.