Month: December 2007

World Outsources Pregnancies To India

IT companies outsourced programming there, other companies outsourced customer support amid other services, now it’s pregnancies that are being outsourced to India…

The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. Anand’s surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies.

More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years…

[Source: The Guardian]

I totally understand the natural desire for a lot of people to have children and a family, and I know how hard it is for infertile couples, how they feel, and how they yearn for a solution; and I think that if a woman is ready to help them out and be a surrogate mother for their child, then that is a very kind, generous and respectable action from her side.

But I think turning this around into a business, where people take advantage of some poor women in India or elsewhere who are doing this just because they can’t afford a good living otherwise is just very wrong, immoral and unacceptable.

Rudy Guiliani Will ‘Chase Muslims Back To Their Caves’

So here’s an interesting quote from John Deady, a designated surrogate for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, and a leader with a group called “Veterans for Rudy”…

“He’s got I believe the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims, and make no mistake about it, this hasn’t happened for a thousand years. These people are very, very dedicated and they’re also very smart, in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves — or in other words get rid of them.”

He has resigned now after those remarks, but after such comments you can only wonder if there is a truth in there somewhere, if maybe Rudy Guiliani who is one of the Republican front runners for the US presidency actually thinks a bit like that; After all, we know there is no lack of people who do think that way or even worse.

[Via: Huffington Post]

Copyrighting ‘Allah’

Just came across this weird bit of news from Malaysia…

A church and Christian newspaper in Malaysia are suing the government after it decreed that the word “Allah” can only be used by Muslims.

In the Malay language “Allah” is used to mean any god, and Christians say they have used the term for centuries.

Opponents of the ban say it is unconstitutional and unreasonable.

[Source: BBC News]

Fortunately, they’ve woken up, and reversed the ban now…

But, of course it was unconstitutional and unreasonable, also stupid and unthinkable. I can’t find one ounce of logic behind a decision or a decree like this. It’s just too much.

Ali Eteraz writes on ‘Comment is free‘ how he thinks “This is yet another instance where Islam is being used by conniving leaders to advance political agendas. Leaders in Malaysia promote supremacist, dominionist versions of Islam, because it makes political sense for them to do so. Sixty per cent of the country is Malay-Muslim; the rest are Chinese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus and animists. So, if you can control the Muslims, you will control the government.”

But even if that’s why the government tried to do this, I don’t see how the Muslims of Malaysia would see such a move as anything but absurd.

Cheap And Efficient Solar Energy Breakthrough

Great news: Cheap and efficient solar energy is becoming a reality…

The holy grail of renewable energy came a step closer yesterday as thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists called “a revolution” in generating electricity.

The solar panels produced by a Silicon Valley start-up company, Nanosolar, are radically different from the kind that European consumers are increasingly buying to generate power from their own roofs. Printed like a newspaper directly on to aluminium foil, they are flexible, light and, if you believe the company, expected to make it as cheap to produce electricity from sunlight as from coal.

[…]

The technology is particularly exciting because it can be used nearly everywhere. “You are talking about printing rolls of the stuff, printing it on garages, anywhere you want it. It really is a big deal in terms of altering the way we think about solar,” said Dan Kamman, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley.

[Source: The Guardian]

[More: Solar Power Breakthrough (Daily Kos), Nanosolar]

Netscape Navigator Officially Dead

AOL just announced that Netscape Navigator, the browser that launched the commercial Internet in October 1994, and that they acquired in November 1998 as part of their Netscape Communications Corp. acquisition deal for $4.2 billion, will die on February 1, 2008.

Netscape Navigator is currently at version 9. Recent surveys suggest that Netscape currently has only 0.6% market share among browsers, compared to Internet Explorer’s 77.35% and Firefox’s 16.01%. This is down from more than 90 percent of the market in the 90s, when the browser wars began, then the Microsoft antitrust trial took place, before IE took over as leading browser.

To me Netscape Navigator died a long time ago, the last version that counted was somewhere around version 4.5 or 4.7; everything went downwards from there on for Netscape as a browser.

Still, we mustn’t forget the success of the Mozilla foundations and its projects, like the Firefox browser, which spun off of Netscape in February 1998. The legacy of Netscape will live on through Mozilla’s projects.

So, again, support for existing versions of Netscape Navigator will cease on February 1, 2008. A cool thing AOL will be doing though is setting up an archive where people will be able to download older versions of Netscape, without any support.

Rest in peace Netscape Navigator, you can rest assured your role in internet history will never be forgotten.

A history of Netscape Navigator can be found here on Wikipedia.

[Sources: Netscape Blog, TechCrunch]

Top Seven Health Myths

The list of the top seven health-related myths and misconceptions, that even some doctors fall prey to, and that we’ve been hearing time and again, goes as follows:

1. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight.
2. Using cell phones in hospitals is dangerous.
3. Fingernails and hair grow after death.
4. We use only 10 percent of our brains.
5. You should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.
6. Shaved hair grows back faster and coarser.
7. Tainted candy from strangers is a Halloween threat.

Full article: Top Seven Health Myths (Newsweek).

Egypt to Copyright Pyramids And Sphinx

Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids or the sphinx.

Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the law would apply to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt, in all countries, and that the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites.

This could be a potential blow to themed resorts all across the world, from Vegas to Tokyo, where large-scale copies of Egyptian artefacts pull in the crowds.

Personally, I’m against involving copyright laws in stuff like this. The Pyramids, the Sphinx, Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, and all the other historic sites left for us by older civilizations are part of our world heritage, a heritage that was left for all of us and that we’re all proud of. They’re not anyone’s property to demand royalties for.

[Sources: Google News, BBC News]
[Via: Slashdot]

Hamed Is Gone

A few days ago Hamed passed away…

Hamed was born in the city of Sbiba, in the governorate of Kasserine, in the west of Tunisia, almost 90 years ago.
He never got married, nor did he have kids; even though he dreamed of having a son to take care of and love until the last days of his life.
In the war, a bomb exploded in front of him, and the shock made him deaf and mute.
Some time after that he moved to Manouba where my grandfather offered him a room and a job on his farm.
He was there as my mother and her siblings grew up, and later as I, my sister and cousins grew up.

Over the years, he was nothing less than a member of the family.

About a month ago, he became very ill…
My uncle took him to Sbiba, to his brother’s house, to spend some days there with his family…

A few days ago, he passed away…
Personally it felt like another grandfather of mine had passed away…

Hamed, God bless you and may you rest in peace…
You were a great man, you will always be remembered and your memory always cherished…

Tunisia: One Of Top 53 Places To Go In 2008

The New York Times recently published a list of the 53 places to go in 2008, and Tunisia ranks 3rd in their list, directly after Laos and Lisbon.

Here’s what they have to say:

Tunisia is undergoing a Morocco-like luxury makeover. A new wave of stylish boutique hotels, often in historic town houses, has cropped up alongside this North African country’s white-sand beaches and age-old medinas, drawing increasing numbers of well-heeled travelers. The Villa Didon (www.villadidon.com) in Carthage, for one, has a restaurant originally run by Alain Ducasse. Indeed, TripAdvisor ranks Jerba, a resort island off Tunisia’s southern coast, as the No. 1 emerging spot in 2008.

Four other Arab countries were featured on the list: Libya, Egypt, Kuwait and Algeria.

It’s really cool to see that Tunisia is getting more interest and becoming a better known tourist destination outside of Europe as well, where most of our tourists usually come from.

Check out the full NY Times article here: The 53 Places to Go in 2008