On Afghanistan's Thomas Edison 445
13.7BillionYears writes "The Institute for War and Peace Reporting details on the exploits of Ghulam Sediq Wardak, a 62 year old semi-literate Afghan with 341 clever inventions to his credit. His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body. His most recent is a 1980 Volkswagen rigged to run on solar power. A handful of others are mentioned. Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents. 'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'"
Geek, thy name is "Sediq" (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one welcome our new clever, semi-literate Afghan overlord.
Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq" (Score:5, Interesting)
-Mike
Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq" (Score:4, Interesting)
So using the french "du jour" with the english "rig" is perfectly plausable. Nautical lingo is almost its own seperate language anyway (When have you ever heard "rig" used in english to mean "collection of nets and ropes that hold a structure in place", in some context OTHER than sailing?)
I don't know if the poster is right or not about the origin of the word, but the fact that it contains a mix of french and english, by itself, is not the problem you make it out to be.
Slashdot Honorific Life Membership (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership (Score:5, Funny)
What would he do with a
He might put the rest of us at a disadvantage...
Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly, he'll fit right in :P
He will do like all slashdotter... (Score:5, Funny)
He will do like all slashdotter... semi-read the articles.
Re:He's a Wardak, alright. (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose that would depend on whose idea of intellectual [gnu.org] property [google.com] rights you are talking about. I think I know where the lions share of dotters stand.
A little disturbing that a google on the term will put WIPO right there at the top so you can't miss it!
Interesting, I couldn't get to the WIPO page by clicking that link. Maybe a piering issue on my end or perhaps they've been DDoSed. Not that I would eeeeeevvver suggest that doing so would be a fa
Re:He's a Wardak, alright. (Score:5, Informative)
By the way (hey, the other guy got +5), the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%... everything. It's from one of Aesop's Fables:
The Lion's Share
The Lion went once a-hunting along with the Fox, the Jackal,
and the Wolf. They hunted and they hunted till at last they
surprised a Stag, and soon took its life. Then came the question
how the spoil should be divided. "Quarter me this Stag," roared
the Lion; so the other animals skinned it and cut it into four
parts. Then the Lion took his stand in front of the carcass and
pronounced judgment: The first quarter is for me in my capacity
as King of Beasts; the second is mine as arbiter; another share
comes to me for my part in the chase; and as for the fourth
quarter, well, as for that, I should like to see which of you
will dare to lay a paw upon it."
"Humph," grumbled the Fox as he walked away with his tail
between his legs; but he spoke in a low growl.
"You may share the labours of the great, but you will not
share the spoil."
Lion Overlords (Score:3, Funny)
"...the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%...everything."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
"lion's share- The greatest or best part."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer:
"lion's share- The greater part or most of something..."
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:
"Lion's share- All, or nearly all; the best or largest part..."
Interesting! (Score:4, Insightful)
A nice solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
In response to the grandparent post, creative work without pay is ridiculous. So authors shouldn't expect to get paid for commercial publication of their stories? Or we just shouldn't try to make money off of our work at all--since, god knows, no one else on earth gets paid for the work they invest in whatever it is they happen to do. Books should be published for free, without any regard for paying all those involved and the cost of production? Please. Maybe it would work for someone who is creative as a h
Proof to Microsoft of prior art! (Score:5, Funny)
I would say this is prior art. Guess their patent is history
Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art! (Score:3, Informative)
well (Score:5, Insightful)
If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use. Maybe it would be nice if someone used the system against itself once in a while, eh?
Re:well (Score:5, Informative)
No kidding. It's almost always the 'assignee' who causes all the trouble, not the 'inventor'. Problem is, it's pretty damn expensive to get a patent, at least in the US.
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably a good thing that it is expensive. If patents were as cheap as domain names (Patents as Cheap As $7.99 When You Register 25 or More!), we would have applications flooding the patent office, thus more patents on every stupid thing in the world. It would render the internet useless in a matter of a couple years. We would have patents applied for everything, pressing certain keyboard combinations, methods of posting to a site, and other garbage that would create so much noise, that by sheer odds you would see some of these get approved.
Some people (or corporations) would be submitting hundreds of similar patents, in the hopes that just a few will get approved, so they can start sending letters for royalties. If you think the IP/patent situation is bad now, just think about spam is cheaper than bulk mail, and you get the picture.
Re:well (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you want to give your invention to the world, you should patent it. You can then release the patent for the general p
1980 Volkswagen? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:1980 Volkswagen? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1980 Volkswagen? (Score:5, Informative)
The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.
Solar Powered Speed (Score:2)
Much of the time the solar cells should be recharging batteries. Driving should use both the sun and the batteries to get better performance.
Re:1980 Volkswagen? (Score:2)
The article says 25kph.
That's a bit more than half of 25mph.
Re:1980 Volkswagen? (Score:3, Informative)
Volkswagen is a brand, not a model. In 1980 there we're at least the Polo, Golf, Passat and Beegle models (and their respecive subsets). The first Golf VWs were very lightweight, my family owned one in the 80s.
Re:1980 Volkswagen? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about Afghanistan, but you get more energy per square meter from the sun on the equator than you do in, say, Portland Oregon which is at about 45 degrees North. In Kenya, you would get sqrt(2) or around 1.4 times more energy than you would in Portland. That 40% difference could easily be enough to get a car up to 25 km/h, which is 40% less than 25 mph.
Signs of a true scientist... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money," he says. "I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world."
Sadly a rapidly diminishing breed nowadays, what with overwhelming patenting and copyright laws and abuse. Hats of to this guy.
Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day (Score:5, Informative)
Edison was a great man, but I don't know that he had the spirit of our Afghani friend.
Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day (Score:5, Informative)
From your own link [wikipedia.org]:
Edison's patents "were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credits." He claims credit for some great works, and whoever invented them was a great person (or, more likely, people). However, Edison himself was a jackass. He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP.
Feel free to mod me "off-topic," but this needed to be said.
Re: Edison Electrocuted Dogs (Score:3, Interesting)
to spread FUD about AC electricity, he went around
electrocuting dogs [correctionhistory.org] to scare people away from using AC.
During the 1880s, electric service was just beginning to be sold to
towns and cities. Thomas Edison and his companies used direct current (DC).
George Westinghouse and his companies used alternating current (AC).
Both Edison and Westinghouse tried to convince potential customers of
the superiority of their systems. Edison and his staff used an AC generator
to electrocut
Re:Signs of a true scientist... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, definitively, we need more people like him.
I think that this guy has not only excelent skills, he has excellent "simple" ideas. This kind of "simple" ideas which nobody thaughts about. That's the essence of an inventor
I liked this part:
Re:Signs of a true scientist... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Of course, I just
Re:Signs of a true scientist... (Score:3, Interesting)
How generous (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How generous (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How generous (Score:3, Informative)
Goal of the successful (Score:5, Insightful)
The inventions are just things that happens along the way.
Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Insightful)
Edison was notorious for jealously guarding his patents and squeezing them for every dollar he could. This man is a much better human being.
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely agree. He can up with a wide range of inventions that made a very big difference in the world. He also was a shameless self promoter who did things like invent the "electric chair" solely to prove how "dangerous" his competitor's rival electrical standard (Nikola Tesla's AC) was compared to his DC.
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Informative)
Again, clearly not like this guy.
Edison represents everything that many real inventors resent about patents and the patent system.
GrpA
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Informative)
What he was most famous for (the lightbulb) was invented long before him. He simply combined the old invention of the lightbulb, with someone elses long lasting filament, and bang, edison 'invented the lightbulb'.
Most of his inventions came out of his menlo park complex, where he had MANY employees who were told to invent any wacky thing they desired. But everything coming out of menlo park was credited to edison.
The mentioned nikola tesla was the exact type of inventor people idolize, its amazing that he doesnt recieve more recognition. He invented the AC generator, different types of transformers, the resonating (tesla) coil, the radio, and many other things.
Quite a few inventions of tesla's are somehow credited to other people in popular educational literature. For example, the radio. Ask most people who invented the radio they will say marconi. Yet tesla had patented everything marconi wanted to patent years before. There was a huge lawsuit going right to the supreme court and they ruled marconis patents invalid, since tesla's were prior art. Yet even wiht this supreme court decision, most encyclopedias will list marconi as radio's inventor.
Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Insightful)
Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.
So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:3, Interesting)
Bill gates is a very ruthless business man, like edison. Bill gates himself is worse than edison because he dindt actually create anything. He purchased DOS, used other's ideas for windows, and leveraged his advantage to become a monopoly.
I dont know if edison would have done the same, but he did create the foundation of a very large company (General Electric).
But, at least edison did work on some stuff, and you can say the stuff that came out of menlo
Re:Clearly not like Edison (Score:5, Informative)
Potential Prior Art Here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm ... it seems to me that use of the human body as a power grid is immediately extensible to the use of it as any other type of grid upon which electron flow is contingent *cough* MS PAN Patent *cough*.
I happen to share his views that some things should be done For The Good of Mankind and should be Free, but with this aside (or maybe because of this), were I in his shoes, I'd strive for a few things:
1) Contact EFF for legal funding of Me v. Microsoft.
2) If/When MS's patent is overturned, then turn the patent over to Public Domain.
3) Don't profit! Just know that I righted a wrong and successfully defended Prior Art to boot!
Re:Potential Prior Art Here? (Score:2)
just think... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:just think... (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly though...I don't think formal education would have done him any good. He seems to be doing just fine for himself...not sure what more some schooling would have done.
Not a lot. (Score:3, Insightful)
i wonder (Score:4, Funny)
To make the world a better place (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair to westerners, many Open/Free Source Developers are coding for the same motives. I hope that brilliant Afghan will not have to face up to these idiotic IP patent attacks that is happening over here.
OS developers (Score:2)
Tidbit of the day (Score:5, Informative)
That definitely doesn't sound like this guy.
Re:Tidbit of the day (Score:3, Informative)
Edison? Patents? What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be hallucinating, but wasn't Edison (who invented AC generators, the phonograph and the motion picture camera/projector system) a patent hawk who did everything he could to extract money for every little invention he had a hand in creating? In fact, IIRC, that's why the motion picture industry set up shop in the (then) isolated desolation of Hollywood, California -- they wouldn't have to pay his exorbitant licensing fees out there.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like comparing this guy to Edison is like comparing Linus to Bill Gates.... in a comparative sort of way.
Re:Edison? Patents? What? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Edison? Patents? What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Edison? Patents? What? (Score:2, Interesting)
inventions (Score:5, Interesting)
So I thought of a heater, which would turn off automatically when the water was boiled and when the water gets cold, it would turn on again. And then I made it
basically an alternative to a thermostat, but effective and cheaper.
His system involved surrounding a house with concealed wires that were attached to a battery, an audio cassette player and a camera. When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.
again, simplified version of the modern alarm system.
i find his original ideas more interesting, the crying-baby-activated rocking cradle (does this already exist?), solar-powered well-lift, etc.
Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if Edison did that.
If Franklin did obtain patents, he obviously did so to ensure that nobody else would patent it first and keep the specs secret.
Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote from http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfra nklin_inventions.htm [about.com]
Ah, and someone quoted Franklin on the issue in a slashdot article before:m l [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/18/1339201.sht
But which VeeDub? (Score:5, Insightful)
I found a few more electric VWs with a little bit of looking:
Diesel-Electric (1.3L TDI) New Beetle [uqm.com]
Electric 1969 Kharmann Ghia [cardomain.com] (the Ghia is a Beetle derivative)
Electric Rabbit (US Mk1 Golf) [electroauto.com]
And that's just for starters. VW AG itself considered a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain option for the Concept 1, which later became the New Beetle, but so far only the diesel portion has survived (the TDI is an option in the Golf, Beetle, Jetta, and now the Passat and the Touareg in the US, and in the rest of the model line elsewhere in the world.)
I'd love to see VW build a Golf-based CR-V competitor with a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain and the race-bred DSG transmission.
But yeah, this guy gets geek points from me.
Solar powered VW? (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't this make him Afghanistan's Ed Begley, Jr.? [snpp.com]
~Philly
Edison was an evil bastard... (Score:2)
Crazy (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats insane! He's more Mcguyver then the Wizard of Menlo Park!
Project Wardak? (Score:4, Interesting)
If there were, it would be really cool to contact Ghulam and see if he would be interested in publishing his inventions on the web. There are a lot of third world countries out there who could use them.
So anyone out there up for Project Wardak?
Cheers
Re:Project Wardak? (Score:5, Funny)
I hope so... I was wondering how you say "you insensitive clod" in Pashto.
he should get patents, and here's why. (Score:4, Insightful)
now, lets say this obviously charitable guy gets his due, and decides some of it will be used to futhur even more charitable inventions, then his good can be multiplied greatly. maybe hire an assitant, or get some parts.
heck, he could donate it all if he doesn't want it, but he's lining someone elses pockets if he doesnt get it himself, and I doubt the other guy is as scrupulous as he is.
Re:he should get patents, and here's why. (Score:5, Interesting)
besides than that, it would probably cost him more than what it would be worth(the guy is living on 200$ per month, which might get a living in afghanistan but sure as heck doesn't make a lot of budget for applying for patents).
so, tell me, what difference would there be in him patenting the stuff he does and then licensing them for free(which is what he would want to do) and not patenting at all? and how the hell is the money lining up in someone elses pockets, you think they wouldn't forward the licensing costs to the buyers of the manufactured stuff if they had to pay for the licenses? the solar powered water pump business just doesn't work that way, if he had a patent and could demand say 30$ per pump then the price of the pump would be 30$ higher, this is something that the guy doesn't want.
so in short, he wants others to 'rip him off', he just calls it helping his fellow men.
Re:he should get patents, and here's why. (Score:5, Insightful)
By not patenting at all, other people can alter his inventions and patent those as new inventions - yes, citing his as prior art upon which they improved. Improvements are patentable, even minor ones. Those other people can then restrict the use of those alterations, charging license fees or even blocking all work along that line of improvement.
However, if he patented and licensed for free, then he could prevent other people from taking control of improvements of his inventions: he could force "derived inventions" to be just as free as his own (by analogy with derived works in copyright).
That's a huge difference. It's analagous to the difference between public domain and GPL, and the results might be just as significant. I don't know of anyone who's tried it yet.
-- Jamie
Not Edison (Score:4, Informative)
This Afghani sounds like a good person, one who actually cares about people more than money. That would set him far above Edison.
Re:Not Edison (Score:4, Informative)
You're wrong about distributed power stations. That would have been possible regardless of the transmission medium, but the reason that it is not done is simple economy of scale. Building lots of small facilities is substantially more costly than building a few centralized ones. Rather than being able to locate coal or oil-fired power plants in remote areas, we would be forced to have them right next door. Bad idea all around, and given the Bush Administration's propensity for eliminating power-plant pollution-control requirements I don't think I'd want to live near one of your neighborhood power plants. The closest were coming to that is the nuclear pebble reactor, which ironically may make your dream of local power plants a reality, but I still wouldn't want to live near one.
And I don't know what you mean about "alternate sources of energy", that's really easy to say but a lot harder to accomplish. Maybe if cold-fusion had panned out that would be possible, but then I'd say go even further and make small power sources for individual buildings.
Truth is, it's been over a hundred years since Edison's time, and we still haven't found anything substantially better than what we have, and if we had gone down Edison's road and made a huge investment in a DC power system without any long-distance transport capability we would have found ourselves royally screwed. Heavy industry as we know it would probably have been impossible, since there would be no way to concentrate the amount of energy they require. To give you an example, United States Steel's Continuous Casting facility in Indiana has thirty seven separate private substations, drawing power from numerous points in the grid and from multiple power plants. It took that many just to get them enough power to run the big Sumitomo concast. However, for them to have built enough self-generating capacity to power just that one unit would have been prohibitive, I was told when I was out there once some years ago. Not hard to believe, once I realized that firing up one melt requires several hundred megawatts. No, there's really no question that Westinghouse and Tesla had the right idea, and we're damned lucky that Edison blew it.
Re:Not Edison (Score:3, Insightful)
However, even if 80% of the devices in your house take AC power it doesn't mean they use 80% of the power. Far, far from it.
Like you said, anything with a motor. That means: Refridgerator, air conditioner, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, furnace, vacuum, washer, dryer, dishwaser, pool/sump/cistern pumps, etc. Add incandescen
Re:Not Edison (Score:3, Insightful)
This would mean the standard would have to have a large tolerance window on the voltage the appliace should expect to receive from the wall socket, enough of one to be largely useless. (There
Re:Not Edison (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, microwaves contain a big step-up transformer--they need a big chunk of high voltage current to do their thing. If you had DC mains, you'd have to convert to AC first, then rectify back to DC at higher voltage. Others on the thread have noted that building DC to AC converters is more costly than going the other way, too.
Yes, you have many DC appliances--but they operate at different voltages. Heck, your PC has 3.3, 5, and 12 volt rails. Converting between one DC voltage and another is a real pain in the neck, unless you don't mind wasting a ton of juice.
The real killer problem is that if you want to supply DC to homes at a voltage directly useful in small appliances (say 12 V) then you need to have absolutely massive wires to carry all the current. Let's say you want 200 W at 12 V for your computer--that's going to be nearly 17 amps. To run a hair dryer (1000 W) that's going to be more than eighty amps. If you're cooking dinner in the microwave, the air conditioner is running, plus you have the computer and a few lights on, you're pushing three hundred amps. In newly constructed homes, my understanding is that 200 amp service is the norm; older buildings may only have 100 amp or even sixty amp service. At 200 amps you're looking at pretty hefty cables. If each home starts requiring cable that can handle a thousand amps, you're getting into a lot of copper awfully quickly--even if the supply is relatively local.
Internal wiring would also have to be much heavier to avoid overheating. Resistance heating goes up linearly with resistance--but as the square of current. You probably wouldn't want to have to lift a hundred-foot extension cord.
Yes, you could get away with the same thickness of wiring you use now if you supply high-voltage DC inside the home, but then you would need a step-down transformer for all the same appliances that have wall warts now.
Can we please set up (Score:5, Interesting)
Afghanistan's Tesla? (Score:5, Interesting)
False Alarm (Score:3, Funny)
Tinkering (Score:5, Interesting)
We were very worried? But we didn't even know about him before the article...
Actually, I know I've seen other articles about Afghani ingenuity in "tinkering"... they've been making due for a long time with very little, so an inventive mind (especially with machines) is very useful. If something breaks, and there's no way you're going to be able to get a new one, you try to fix it. Seems like this guy really had a talent for it.
My grandfather loved tinkering as well, partly related to memories of tough times during the Great Depression (he owned an electric supplies company and had money later... but the guy still never threw ANYTHING out).
Some neat inventions: a device that would automatically close the windows when it rained, an automatic garage door opener (using a plate in the driveway), and a little train that carried concrete and such things (and children, later) around the property on sections of wooden track. His last project was a model train set he was building from scratch, with working signals and so on.
Life imitates fiction (Score:3, Funny)
I have a few of the books about this bloke, he was always inventing weird stuff and then having it go wrong.
Anyone can independently confirm the story? (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up in Soviet Russia (yeah, for real this time!) and we did have our share of "backyard inventors" kicking socks off the capitialist pigs in semi-techical news strories (yes, it was just state-run propaganda, of course, though some ideas were not too bad). And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?
If the story is true, it is really remarkable, though I am not really sure how the fact of him being "semi-literate" really fits into the story (we have all been semi-literate at some stages of our life, and a guy like him would have learned the "tough skill" by now
Paul B.
A Radio? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont believe the whole story. (Score:4, Insightful)
and was first shown 1963 and mass produced starting 1966 http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/1-17/h1.html
Also, more here http://www.fact-index.com/c/co/compact_audio_cass
In 1964, when he was 22, a theft in his village inspired him to invent a burglar alarm that would also take a picture of the intruder.
His system involved surrounding a house with concealed wires that were attached to a battery, an audio cassette player and a camera. When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.
So I dont believe he had an audio cassette player in 1964.
Also, he has to be very rich, outfitting his 1980 VW with solar panels,
120w solar panel costs like $500 or more. To power a car he needs lets say at least 10hp engine, so this is 7456.999 watt. lets say his electric engine is close to 100% efficient, so he will need only 62 panels * $500 = $31k.
the panels will need 62*1.425*0.652 = 57.6042 m^2 area which is about 7.5*7.5 meters or 22*22 feet for americans. good luck fitting this on any Volkswagen.
I SMELL BULLSHIT!
Re:I dont believe the whole story. (Score:3, Informative)
Calling Homeland Security... (Score:4, Funny)
He should be thrown into Camp X-Ray. He is clearly a threat to the whole American way of life!
"Traditional" vacuum flask? (Score:3, Funny)
I call abuse of cute adjectives! I haven't read up on Afghan culture but I'm willing to bet vacuum thermoses are about as "traditional" as solar panels.
like Edison? (Score:3, Insightful)
Edison was a strictly for profit dude. Ever heard of Edison Electric a.k.a. G.E.?
Re:'Semi-literate' Slashdotter? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)
Errrrr... since when is Afghanistan "Arab"?
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, is "racist" the opposite of "truthful" to you, or can something be both simultaneously?
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Culture is a set of learned behavior and ideals. It's not racist, it's a behavior, unless you think that Arabs (and their sympathetic formerly taliban ruled neighbors) cannot behave in a way other than what is considered 'arab culture.'
And then that would make you the racist, because you'd be saying genetic heritage determines behavior more than anything else.
The parent post is correct. The d
Five hundred years... (Score:4, Insightful)
Today, the Arab world is benighted, mired in superstition. Literature and art are at a standstill. The greatest minds of the era (e.g., about half of the engineering faculty at most American universities) flee the Arab world, so they won't be hunted down and set on fire. It isn't safe to be a Jew in the Arab world; many of them choose to live instead in Christian nations.
The wheel turns.
--grendel drago
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't take me wrong, but could it be possible that you might not actually know enough about "arab culture" to make the this kind of sweeping pronouncement? The reason I say this is the way you use the term "arab culture" to talk about a distinctly non-arab country. The Pashtuns, for example, are no more Arab than Spaniards are Scandanavian.
Why do you think that folks like you can only point
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
And you think that the American legal and social system encourages tinkering? Ever read the DMCA (just to name on instance)?
... in the midst of an Arab culture... ??? (Score:4, Informative)
So, I think that you do confuse current fundamentalist Arab politicians/"warriors" with "the Arab culture"...
Paul B.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem that Islamic countries in general have is not that they have stopped being inventive, but that strict prohibition of usury makes it difficult to create the kind of economy that we know in the west. Much of todays technological innovation requires big bucks to bring it to market, and it's hard to start up a technological firm without borrowing money.
Re:tall tales (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite my admitted nitpick, I also smell exaggeration.
Re:tall tales (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, you can't suck water higher than 10 meters. How to you think water gets to the toilets on the top floor of a skyscraper?
Re:tall tales (Score:2)
there are some nice, low-tech designs shown at
http://www.itdg.org/html/technical_enquiries/do
Re:tall tales (Score:3, Informative)
Here [gormanrupp.com] is a company that sells pumps that do just that. (See under vertical turbine pumps).