The Inferno

to make your head explode!

A Muslim Astronaut’s Dilemma: How to Face Mecca From Space
By Patrick Di Justo

Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor has a problem. Two problems. The first is that Mecca keeps moving.

Well, not really. It’s Shukor who’ll be moving. As Malaysia’s first astronaut, he’s scheduled to lift off October 10 in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for a nine-day visit during the holy month of Ramadan to the International Space Station.

He’s a devout Muslim and when he says his daily prayers he wants to face Mecca, specifically the Ka’aba, the holiest place in Islam (“Turn then thy face towards the Sacred Mosque: wherever ye are, turn your faces towards it …. ” The Quran, Al-Baqarah, 2:149).

That’s where the trouble comes in. From ISS, orbiting 220 miles above the surface of the Earth, the qibla (an Arabic word meaning the direction a Muslim should pray toward Mecca) changes from second to second. During some parts of the space station’s orbit, the qibla can move nearly 180 degrees during the course of a single prayer. What’s a devout Muslim to do?

“As a Muslim, I do hope to do my responsibilities,” Shukor says. “I do hope to fast in space.”

Malaysia’s space agency, Angkasa, convened a conference of 150 Islamic scientists and scholars last year to wrestle with these and other questions. The resulting document (.doc), “A Guideline of Performing Ibadah (worship) at the International Space Station (ISS)”, was approved by Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council earlier this year. According to the report, determining the qibla should be “based on what is possible” for the astronaut, and can be prioritized this way: 1) the Ka’aba, 2) the projection of Ka’aba, 3) the Earth, 4) wherever.

This leads to Shukor’s second problem. There are two distinct schools of thought for determining the qibla: the commonly used Great Circle method, and the less common rhumb-line method. Looking at a flat map using any standard projection shows that a rhumb line (a line that cuts equal angles across all lines of longitude) drawn from, say, the Johnson Space Center in Houston to Mecca runs east-southeast. The numbers also bear this out — the space center is to the north and west of the Ka’aba, so any travel to the holy city should naturally be to the southeast.

Lay a string across a globe, however, and everything changes. A great circle — the shortest distance between two points on a sphere — between Houston and Mecca initially arcs to the northeast, then curves southward to the Saudi peninsula. Islamic scientists knew as early as the ninth century CE that the great circle route provided the shortest path to Mecca from anywhere in the world, even though it may in some places seem counterintuitive (Muslims in Alaska, for example, pray facing almost due north). Great circle formulae are at the root of nearly every online qibla compass.

Dr. Kamal Abdali, a cartographer who is also Muslim and who has written (.pdf) extensively on determining the qibla, favors the great circle route, but adds, “Prayer is not supposed to be a gymnastic exercise. One is supposed to concentrate on the prayer rather the exact orientation.” He points out that in a train or plane, it’s customary to start in the qibla direction but then continue the prayer without worrying about possible changes in position.

But how does that work in space? Mathematically, Shukor would need to place both ISS and Mecca on the same imaginary sphere — by either comparing the place on Earth directly beneath ISS with the real Ka’aba, or by projecting the Ka’aba into space (the option recommended by the Fatwa Council).

Yet the option to pray while facing a point in space brings up another problem. Muslims face the ground to pray, in part to avoid any hint of pagan sun or moon worship (“Prostrate yourselves not to the sun nor to the moon, but prostrate yourselves to Allah Who created them, if you (really) worship Him” (The Quran, Fussilat 41:37). If the Ka’aba projection happens to line up with the sun or moon, purists might believe the prayer invalid.

For now, Shukor is keeping the details of his plans fluid until he is actually on board ISS, a point with which Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, assistant professor of religion at San Diego State University, concurs. “In space,” Mohammed points out, “the ritual prayer might be offset for more of a prayer that is allowed when on jihad … for the lack of gravity and directional accuracy makes it legitimate to do as one sees fit. God does not take a person to task for that which is beyond his/her ability to work with.”

Can you believe this rubbish? I thought astronauts were supposed to be smart, score one for metaphysical supernatural gibberish. If man wasn’t meant to rise above his station and all that rot, then why is this fellow in space? Doesn’t he have women to oppress or minorities to disparage or children to brainwash with hate or whatever it is religious people do on a daily basis.

Questions like these will continue as more and more religious astronauts travel into space. When is sunset in low Earth orbit if you’re experiencing a dozen sunrises and sunsets in every 24-hour period? When does Sabbath begin on the moon, where the sun sets once a month? When is the first sighting of the crescent moon if you’re on Mars? Religious councils of all faiths will have plenty to keep them busy for years.

Questions like these would not arise if they simply didn’t send religious twits into space. On the other hand, if only they did and they met extraterrestrial entities, who would simply laugh for a millennia straight after hearing this ludicrous “God” hogwash. Or even better, perhaps the aliens would think of us as a cosmic shithole, something to be avoided for another 3 billion years until we either wiped ourselves out or grew up, mentally and physically, to participate meaningfully in cosmic exploration. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. I think the solution is clear.

Taken from here.

Succinctly delectable!

Over the weekend, I went to a Halloween party at the significant other’s. This year, no untoward incidents happened and everyone’s costume was preserved relatively well. I’m not dressed up because I’m sick, a Viking helmet is all I could muster, but some of the costumes there were pretty hilarious.

Pictures here.

I could ride like this:

She was typing in an address into Google Maps and tracing the result with her mouse. With frizzy blonde hair, a red scarf, a green sweater and blue jeans and a suede handbag, she looked ready to travel. Who dresses up to go to the local library anyway? As I browsed through Kafka-Koontz, she typed in more addresses furiously and made notes on a free Remax pad. Where was she going, I wondered?

Was this a lonely runaway, running away from home? A pregnancy? An abusive step-parent? I had to admit she looked altogether too well dressed to be a runaway, too composed. Aren’t they usually found lurking shiftily at Greyhound bus depots, eyeing everyone with suspicion and dressed in raggedy outfits? Maybe she was just planning a daytrip on a horribly sunny day such as today. But then, why come to the library? Surely everyone has the internet at home, especially one so prosperously dressed.

Perhaps she was one of those youthful RCMP officers who pose as teenage girls on social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook and let themselves be lured by paedophiles in sting operations. But why would a cop need Google maps to figure out an address? Unless she was playing the role to brutal perfection. Doubtful and unlikely.

Maybe she was a mule, enroute to the wharf to pick up the next shipment of illicit drugs that would get her through the next little while. It’s not uncommon for the mob or drug launderers to use pretty women to transport their stuff, since they’re the most likely to be smiled at and passed on with a friendly wave. Although, this seems highly unprobable, who would need a mule within Vancouver? Unless, of course, she was travelling to the States, in which case, this would be a perfect cover.

It is most likely that the truth was much more banal than that. She was probably just another one of those glittering pieces of scum that passes for humanity these days, going home to watch reality TV after spending money at the mall and making sure her clothes had those all-important labels. Disgusting.

How to create a montage like the one I made above for my header pic? It’s almost too simple, but first, credit where it’s due. I would have never had the idea to do that if it hadn’t been for the theme this blog is currently running, which is this one.

First, go to Google Images or whatever engine you use and search for images of your preferred topic. The sizes don’t matter, just save them all to the same folder, let’s call it “montage” here.

Secondly, install ImageMagick. Most Linux distributions will already have it, if yours doesn’t or in Windows, download and install it.

Thirdly, run this Bash script within that folder.


#!/bin/bash

for img in `ls *.*`
do
convert -resize 50x50! $img shrunk-$img
done

It simply forces each image to resize to a dimension of 50×50 pixels, and they’ll now be prefixed with the word “shrunk”.

Now you’ll want to run this command in the shell in the same directory, of course:

montage *.* -mode Concatenate -tile 30x3 montage_array.jpg

This will stitch the pictures together into an array, 30 pictures wide by 3 rows high called montage_array.jpg

Of course, you can put all this into one bigger script and move the originals or ls | grep shrunk or whatever. Feel free to improve it, as always. Good luck!

The great clan meeting of the mice was held yearly on the anniversary of Yog-Rodoth, the event that marked the breakaway of the genetic tree of mice from rats. Mice everywhere celebrated it with a variety of revelry, usually not just limited to raiding the larders of the humans whose houses they cohabited. So why was there a clan meeting of the mice who haunted the walls of Cardston Court at this inopportune time this year? The answer is simple.

Vercingovorious, the great chief of the clan was saddened and disappointed in the deaths of two of his ablest lieutenants. One had perished by stepping into the bog, the quagmire beyond the wall and unable to move had squealed piteously for almost an entire day. The human, who in this case had been large, noisy and hairy beyond measure, had woken up to see Gagnivorovix stuck to the black tar outside the hole into the mouse fiefdom. The mice had gathered just beyond the sight of the human and they stretched in a long line, almost ringing the entire girth of the apartment building, anxious to see what would happen to their fallen comrade. Gagnivorovix squealed and tried to move, but the more he thrashed, the more he got stuck and now bits of fur had come off, exposing the pink flesh underneath. A few of the mice edged away from the sight as mice are squeamish, timid creatures and will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being seen or heard.

The human saw the mouse, ignored it and puttered around the kitchen. He smelt as all humans do when they wake, a myriad of odours that assailed the finely tuned olfactory nerves of the rodents. He was accompanied by a female, who opened the door of the frozen food factory and consumed something from inside. Normally, the frozen food store’s contents are unreachable by mice, thereby lending it a hallowed air, making it something of a sacred Shangri-La, the palace of a thousand smorgasbords. Curious as mice are, the smells and sounds of the frozen food store did nothing for the mice, deeply dismayed as they were by the unfolding drama in front of them. A few of the cynical mice wondered if they should bet on the method of demise, but thought against it, the repercussions of being caught being too severe for them to imagine.

Then to everyone’s surprise, the human turned off the lights and left. A few of the bolder mice edged closer to the hole and tried speaking to the trapped Gagnivorovix, asking him if he needed anything or if there was anything they could do for him, comforting him. Maddened beyond the pale, Gagnivorovix barely heard them and lay there, the occasional tremor of his body being the only sign that he was aware of his imminent demise. Hours passed in this fashion, with Gagnivorovix’s attempts to dislodge himself getting weaker. The mice clustered around the edge of the hole to pay their respects. Some saluted him, some spoke softly, some cried but they all filed past in a sombre line through the tunnel that they had dug through the very walls of the edifice, their home.

The lights came on harshly, blinding the mice as always, who scuttered away from the hole and watched, whiskers aquiver. The hairy human was now accompanied by another male, who was bigger, both taller and broader. This other male, who the mice knew by instinct was the executioner, reached down and fearlessly poked Gagnivorovix, who mewled piteously. Wrenching the tar off the floor with a mighty heave, the executioner walked off with the tar trap and Gagnivorovix on it. He was followed by the hairy human as he went to the place of cold liquid abysses. This was the place avoided the most by rats, as it was usually damp and cold and devoid of all food. There was something unholy about the white porcelain dome that gave even the most seasoned campaigners the shivers and as a rule, the entire clan avoided the liquid abyss. The mice in the walls had no way of knowing what was happening at that exact moment, but they guessed that the executioner meant to drown the mouse in the liquid abyss.

Mothers looked at their young knowingly, fathers shivered and the young whimpered. In a few minutes, the two humans returned and in the most callous display of disregard for murine life, shoved the tar with Gagnivorovix’s now still body into a plastic bag, tied it up and threw it into the black garbage can which had hitherto been the clan’s food store. The hairy human then placed another tar pit beside the edge of the hole and walked off with the black food store and turned the lights off.

All mice know that their lives around human habitats are fraught with danger. Their life is short and expendable, with humans willing to expend tremendous amounts of energy to exterminate them, deeming them “vermin” and other such insalubrious epithets. Despite this, seeing the life snuffed out of a fellow brother by the hands of another cast a pall over the entire clan. Foraging lieutenants were warned of the dangers of this apartment and it was elevated to Death Factory status. A week passed and the more adventurous of the lieutenants chose to forget the horrors of Gagnivorovix’s demise.

“The house is a veritable cornucopia of dropped foodstuffs”, they argued. “Why should it be cut off from our list, because Gagnivorovix, may the mouse gods bless his soul, got too adventurous and forgot to look before he leaped?”, they cried. Vercingovorious heard these arguments and finally gave in. After all, winter was setting in, the young had to be fed and if a mouse was careful enough, he could avoid a few traps set for him. He chose Retnosovorix, a crafty veteran of a few campaigns to scout the apartment for new traps. Reasoning that the trap was set in the same place, they decided that Retnosovorix should leap right out of the hole, thereby clearing all traps set right under the hole.

The big night came, Retnosovorix was eager to prove his mettle yet again. He was going to leap out of the hole, hit the ground running, run along the west wall and come to a stop in front of the earlier trap that the human had set, but which had been detected by earlier scouts, Gagnivorovix included. On returning, he was to report to Vercingovorious about the new traps, new food stores and other details. Humans often kill a mouse and get complacent, thinking that they have solved the problem, little knowing of the millions of gnawing mouths just behind the walls, eager to take the martyr’s place.

Retnosovorix leapt out of the hole and landed right on a yellow pad which moved. It was the last thing he did. The human had sought the executioner’s help and set a new mousetrap, one with a thick bar that would break a human’s finger when it snapped back. The effect of this thick metal bar landing on Retnosovorix’s skull was all too predictable. It nearly severed his head from his body, with the arterial spray splattering on the walls and the edge of the hole. Retnosovorix moved one final time and lay still, dead as a doornail within five seconds of leaving the mousedom. The sentries watching were aghast and ran back to tell Vercingovorious the terrible news.

Vercingovorious was crushed, but inwardly hoped that this would cure the hubris in some of his more adventurous lieutenants. However, no king has an endless supply of officers and to handle the growing crisis, he called the annual meeting. As the meeting is presently under way, the results shall only be determined within a few days, as news leaks out of the mouse world and slowly enters the human cognosphere. What will Vercingovorious decide? Is the death factory off limits for good? Will yet another brash young Turk try his luck, perhaps leaping twice as far?

Bush has done it again. Just when you thought vetoing stem cell research was the lowest form of political sycophancy to corporate sponsors, he goes and vetoes childcare healthcare insurance because it proposes making some extra money off tobacco sales by increasing cigarette taxes.

Can you see this picture: deep within the bowels of Congress, Big Tobacco in all their shiny suits, exuding necrosis and failed promises urging Bush on, “But King George the IInd, if we raise taxes on tobacco, that means more people will be discouraged from buying our products. And what if there’s a small kid who wants to get hooked on tobacco and the higher taxes deter him. You might have just cost us a customer for life. Remember, a child snared early is a goldmine until 70, provided they live that long, of course. Don’t listen to those godless, liberal, atheist scientists…pfft. We know that if God didn’t want us to smoke, he would have never invented tobacco. You go do the right thing, Bush ol’ boy and there’s a big campaign contribution waiting for you when you return. V for Veto.”

Ah, the sad thing is, this heady mix of right wing blather, religion and profiteering isn’t entirely fictional. All hail the culture of death.

Real article here.