Gold fisks Fisk

Here's an interesting review of two recently published books: The Great Ear for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by none other than Robert Fisk, and The Long War For Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East by Barry Rubin.
The reviewer, Alan Gold, proceeds to fisk Fisk:

...he cannot see beyond his prejudices. To compound matters, his book contains serious errors of fact. To describe King Faisal of Syria (later he was made king of Iraq) and his brother King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan as members of a Gulf tribe denies them their birth as Hashemites in the Kingdom of the Hejaz, which is the other side of the peninsula; the Iraqi monarchy wasn't ousted in 1962 but four years earlier; and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 in 1967, just after the Six-Day War, not in 1968 ... and so on.

Minor points, perhaps, but it shows that Fisk's ungovernable rage gets in the way of his need to check facts.

...

...instead of looking ahead, Fisk dwells alongside his Arab victims on the past.

...

Rubin, on the other hand, believes that every Arab country as well as Iran has been led by dictators who have failed to deliver any promise or substantive benefit to their people. They have succeeded by repression, corruption, the use of anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric and playing ethnic politics.

Radical Islamists who share this world view are today challenging these dictators and want to substitute Islamism for Arab nationalism. But, according to Rubin, a small band of liberals in these despotic societies has begun to emerge as a weak yet important alternative.

...

Rubin believes these liberal voices, rather than an imposed democracy of the West with its sometimes anti-democratic outcomes, will provide a long-term solution to the dangers of Islamism. He is confident Arabia will be democratic within the next 50 years, but not within the next 10.

Hiatus

Wow, it's been a while since I had time to write. I've been quite busy.
Last week was the official graduation ceremony where I got my PhD diploma. It was nice, the ceremony was not too long, and it was nice to see everyone celebrating with excited friends and proud parents. I was one of only four PhD graduates, and got to wear the funny hat and everything.
I've been busy at work too, but in a good way: the kind of busy that makes you look at your watch for the first time and gasp because it's already past 16:00 and you have to leave but have so much more to do.
This weekend I was wondering, as always, what to do in those precious 2 hours when junior has his nap. Should I cook? Clean? Paint? (I recently took a short course in abstract painting.) Yesterday I took the easy way out and took a nap myself. Today I decided to use the time to make some jewelry (I also just finished another course at the evening college: beading and silver wire work), and I even have some time to blog!

Project Jerusalem

Opportunities are there if you look for them....
I signed up for a bunch of uni newsletters: events, talks, grants, stuff like that. Usually I skim and toss them. But a few weeks ago an item caught my eye -- an exchange program between my uni and the Hebrew U in Jerusalem. It's open for students and staff. At first I ignored it. But then I saw it again; the deadline had been extended. I assumed there weren't too many people lining up to go to Jerusalem.
So I applied.
I made contact with some people there and we thought of some interesting, short-term projects we could work on together.
The grant pays for airfare, which is much more expensive than I thought, and accommodation there.
It will be a few weeks yet before I find out if I got it or not.
It would be great if I get it. We haven't been back home in over 2 years, and if someone can pay for my ticket, and I can get a paper published as well, it would be awesome.
And if I don't get it, that's fine too. It would cost quite a lot for the three of us to fly there, and the thought of a 24-hour flight each way with a toddler, who will then be jet-lagged in freezing Jerusalem, is enough to make me want to stay home and enjoy the summer break here.
I'm also really excited about the opportunity to see what it's like to work at an Israel university.
Hubby and I left Israel before we really had a chance to work much and be "grown ups" there, so we don't really have a clue what it's like. And while we're perfectly happy here in Oz at the moment, there is always that nagging thought: are we going to move back?
This would be a research project on more than one level!

My Dream Votes

Tzipi Livni for PM.
Condi Rice for Prez.

I'm pretty happy with Howard (and I actually voted for him!) I would say Australia is doing just fine. But Israel and the USA deserve better.

Perfecto

Over the last few months I've been making a conscious effort to change my life; to be more relaxed, to expect less of myself. I've seen a huge improvement already. I feel better physically: I have less headaches, less muscle pain, I eat less chocolate and take fewer pain killers. I also feel better emotionally: I smile and laugh more, and most importantly I'm having a lot more fun with my son. I don't yell at him as much, and I'm letting myself relax and enjoy being with him without having to worry about things that really don't matter that much. So he wet his pants? That's fine. He wants to go to the park after day care and all I want to do is go home and have a cup of tea? No worries, we'll go to the park and I'll enjoy it... I'll even swing and run around and sing "nad ned" and won't give a damn if people are listening.
This is a fairly huge step for me but it's been great.
I'm also doing other things to help myself. I've agreed to hire a cleaner. I'm taking evening classes to promote my artistic, creative side. I starting seeing a chiropractor to get rid of the tension headaches.
I've been trying (not 100% successfully) to come to terms with the fact that I can't be at work 8 hours a day but I can still get all the work done. Work is one of the toughest things I had to change my attitude about. For the first time in my life I have a job that I really love, but I can't give 100% to it because I'm a mother, and I have a child to take care of. I have enough guilt feeling with putting him in day care for 40 hours a week, and I wouldn't want him there for longer even if I could. But this of course means that I can't be at work 40 hours a week because I have to take him there in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. So I try to make up for it by taking less breaks, chatting less and working more efficiently.
Mostly, I am trying to teach myself that it's ok not to be perfect at work, and have a perfect home, and be a perfect mother and a perfect wife.
Today I noticed this article and which really sounds familiar. At least I'm not alone! Apparently, lots of perfectionists suffer from problems like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I went to a therapist exactly once in my life, and in one session she told me that I have a mild case of OCD. I was shocked. I thought people with OCD wash their hands 40 times a day and do stuff like that. But then I started thinking about it and it was very clear. And just being aware of it helped me so much. But I needed to take that very real step of actively trying to change, in order to see improvement.
I guess writing this blog is also a form of therapy. And oddly enough, knowing that nobody is reading it is rather liberating: I don't feel like I have an audience to write to. But on the other hand every blogger wants an audience, so if anyone actually does read it, that's great too. It's a win-win situation!

Uni

The new school year has started and the uni is swarming with students. The halls are awash in bewildered first-years, clutching campus maps and asking for directions.
So when I was fed up with work yesterday (programming! I hate programming! Dammit Jim, I'm a mechanical engineer, not a programmer!) I took so time off and went wandering around campus.
I had to walk on the roads because there was no room on the sidewalks, what with all the students. I finally found a place of peace and quiet: one of the university's museums (there are several). I had a wonderfully relaxing time browsing the exhibit; all sorts of Australian animals and birds, some extinct. Old scientific instruments like microscopes, and even part of the first Australian computer, Silliac, that was built here. Photos and artifacts of the local people on the mainland and in the Torres Straits. In the gallery there was an exhibition of jewelry made by Sydney artists, inspired by the items in the museum. It was all very civilized and relaxing.
I love working at uni. Even when the work itself gets boring, there's always something to see and learn, and the atmosphere is buzzing with learning.

Cholent Woes

For the first time in my life, I agreed to hire a cleaner. I've always been against it but since I decided to try and relax more, the house started to get really dirty. I just don't have the time or energy to clean the house. So we hired cleaners to come in every other week. It's expensive but worth every penny. Except....
The cleaner got a bit too enthusiastic with the outside of the oven and erased all the marks on the controls! So now I have no idea how hot the oven is. I suspect this will make baking a problem. It's already caused me to mess up a cholent.
Now, cholent is hard to mess up. Even a vegetarian one. You put everything in a big pot (potatoes, beans, pearl barley, yams, eggs, spice), cover it with boiling water, and stick it in the oven on low temperature for 8-14 hours. How many hours? It doesn't really matter. It's done whenever it's done.
But this time, I suppose I set the oven temperature to way too low, because when I opened the lid after about 12 hours it was still full of water and not really cooked well. I was flabbergasted. I actually had to finish cooking it on stove because that was dinner and I couldn't bother to cook anything else.
It just doesn't taste the same now. The eggs are cooked, but not brown. It's just not the same. Oh the shame...

Ashes and Snow

Gorgeous photographs.

Pierced

After several months of internal debate, I finally did it.
I got my ears pierced. Again.
I had them pierced many years ago, and got terrible infections in both ears. After that I didn't want to hear about any piercings. But lately, I've been noticing all those pretty earrings... and the more I noticed the more I wanted, and I kept thinking about it.
Yesterday I finally did it. This time I went to a doctor who specializes in body piercing. So far so good... I was surprised that he told me to clean the lobes with salt water once a day. And also that it will take 4 months (!!) to heal properly.
As he was creating unnecessary holes in me, he told me that people often ask him what it's like to work with beautiful women who want to get pierced in various body parts. He replies that inevitably, they all end up saying the same two things to him: it was really quick, and I didn't feel a thing.
And these are the two things no man ever wants to hear from any woman.

Partly Cloudy

A few days ago I had the opportunity to meet an interesting character at the uni. He was supposed to have retired about a decade ago, but he's not the type to retire. He's an engineer and has many decades of experience in academia.
He brought a photocopied graph that he found in an article in Scientific American from a couple of years ago. It shows levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, as well as the change in temperature from the previous millennium, on a scale of about half a million years. Every 100,000 years or so, the earth goes through a period of warming that lasts about 7200 years. We're now smack in the middle of one of these periods.
Now, he wasn't arguing for or against man-induced global warming. He just thought that this was an interesting graph, based on precise measurements, that raises some questions that he thinks should lead to good scientific debate. Are we putting off the next ice age? How can we rely on recent measurements and predictions of small changes in temperature and sea level, when the sea level at the same point in this climate cycle has varied by nearly 200 meters, without any human intervention?
He told of a recent presentation that he gave, in which he showed this graph and asked some of these questions. He asked why we don't hear more debate on this. What was the response? The session chair told him that his time was up (it wasn't) and that he should step down and end his talk. He was stunned. Afterwards he asked why he was silenced like that, and was told that there are so many applications for government grants that nobody wants to say something that "they" don't want to hear.
The graph is from this article, written by James Hansen, who is by no means a global warming skeptic. On the contrary.
So what do I think of global warming? Well, I'm no climatologist, and there are plenty of people who know more than me on the subject. Unlike many journalists and pundits, I have no problem saying this. But I am a scientist and an engineer, and I know about modeling. I know how hard it is to get a good model of, say, a biological system. The model is only as good as what you put in it.
Planetary climate on a long-term time scale is just so immensely, utterly complicated, that I doubt that any of the current climate models are worth much, and especially not predicting global temperatures 100 years from now. There are so many variables, we have no idea how many there are and how they interact. We're learning new things about what affects climate on this earth every day. Each of these things factors in. We can't even explain past climate changes adequately; how can we claim to predict the future?
The big question is not whether climate change is happening or not (it is and always has) or if humans affect it (we do and always have). The question is what are we going to do about it. And that's where politics, biases, money and a host of other things unrelated to science, come into the equation. Academics wanting grant money. Journalists wanting a headline. Hollywood producers wanting to sell movies. Bush-haters will blame Bush, Howard-haters will blame Howard. The Greens will blame everyone.
I personally don't give much of a damn about it all, but I do care when scientists and academics are silenced.

The male-female brain continuum

... that's what this BBC test calls what it claims to measure.
I found it via Samudrika's blog that I just had the pleasure of perusing...
Nu so how did I do on the test?
Well, it claims that my personal brain score leans slightly to the feminine side.
Other than that, it told me a bunch of things I already know: I have pretty good spatial ability, I can't judge people's emotions all too well, and I find masculine faces attractive.
Waste of time? Sure. But it's better than working!

Crash

I was in a car accident yesterday.
I was driving to my son's daycare center to pick him up, thinking about how well my sessions with the chiropractor are going, and listening to the radio.
The light turned green, I started driving, and then a squeal of brakes, turning my head I saw for a split second a car racing towards me, and then crash.
The first person who came up to my window was, I think, from the pub on the corner. He handed me a bottle of chilled water. Then another 2 people came and asked if I'm ok. They said they saw that I had the green light and they helped me get the car out of the intersection.
I was frozen in my seat and shaking.
The driver that slammed into me came out and started shouting that he had a green light. Then he came over and asked if I was ok...
Hubby rushed over from work to help me.
The police, and the insurance company, were pretty convinced that I had the green (and I did) because I had 4 witnesses to back me up.
When the police officer was done writing the report, he saw hubby taking out the car seat and pram from the car, and he was rather shaken until I told him that Junior was not in the car. He told me to go home and hug my son.
And that's just what I did.
Our wonderful friends picked up Junior from daycare and took him home with them. They made us dinner and gave us their spare car. What would we do without them??
I hugged my son so hard.
You know, for several weeks now I've been working on improving my attitude to life and trying to be more relaxed. And it's really working well; I'm calmer, happier, I smile and laugh more, I eat less chocolate and have fewer headaches.
But yesterday's crash gave me a real quick attitude adjustment.
When I woke up this morning the first thing I thought was, how wonderful to be alive.
And there are so many good people in the world, from strangers that hand out water and a helping hand, to good friends who are there for you when you need them, and most of all the family who loves you, supports you, and needs you.

nu?

Nu? So am I keeping up with the 3-things list every night?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, I'm making the list, but no, I'm not actually writing it down. I'm not sure how important the writing down bit is, but it is a good excercise and I'm enjoying it! It really does make you feel good.

Attitude shift

One of the things I enjoy most about driving to work is the chance to listen to the radio. Usually there are some pretty interesting programs on AM talk radio. This morning I heard an interview with the president of the American Psychologists Association. He was talking about teaching people to be more optimistic and happy. He said that until now psychologists have focused on depression, anxiety, and disorders, and still in America today more people than ever are depressed, and at a younger age too.
He reckons we should shift the focus to the study of happiness, contentment, and optimism.
I thought this was very interesting since I'm a rather stressed-out person generally, and lately I've been quite stressed and this of course has an impact on everything in my life. I had suffered from depression once in my life, when I was in my early teens, and I was starting to feel that I was getting awfully close to falling into that trap again.
The radio speaker said that our mind was analogous to our tongue, in that it moves around and around in the mouth looking for a cavity or a sore, and when it finds it it stays there and dwells on it so that we can't think of anything else.
He suggested a simple strategy to help people become happier. Every night, write down a short list of three things that went well for you today, and what you did to make them happen. He said it didn't have to be long, but it was important to get 3 things.
According to a big study he just finished, most people respond really well to this technique and show significant improvement in their outlook on life within 6 months.
He also said that this turned out to be a rather addicting activity, which I was happy to hear since my biggest problem with these types of things is sticking to it for longer than 2 days.
Apparently by using this simple technique, people learn to change the way their minds think about life and our place in the world, and learn to focus on the positive contributions they make instead of on what's wrong.
So, I have resolved to try this starting tonight. Let's see if I can keep it up...

Tim Tam

Ahh, Sunday afternoon and the boy is taking a nap.
A cold iced tea with fresh mint from the garden. Galgalatz on internet radio. A few minutes to relax and get ready for another week.
And here's a reason to celebrate: yesterday at the supermarket I picked up a pack of the new Tim Tam Latte.
Tim Tam is a yummy chocolate biscuit, with chocolate in the middle and on the outside. It's nice on its own, but if you want the true experience then you have to do the "Tim Tam Suck".
First you nibble a bit of one corner, then you nibble a bit of the opposite corner. Then you dip one of the nibbled corners into your hot drink (coffee, tea, whatever), suck on the other end until you feel the drink in your mouth, then in one quick deft move, you put the whole thing into your mouth.
The sensation of melting chocolate has been likened to a chocolate orgasm.
It's guaranteed to cheer you up if you are under the weather...
The original Tim Tam is with milk chocolate, but there are lots of variations. Double Coated is for people with acute depression I reckon. The other flavours are ok, but my favorite is Classic Dark.
Tonight I'll try the new Latte flavor and let you know the verdict.

A tale of three countries

Sunday morning, and it's my turn to sleep late but due to a 6:30 AM tantrum by my son I couldn't go back to sleep. So I sneaked into the office and now I'm enjoying some quiet time at the computer. Now, I didn't have any caffeine this morning so please take that into account.
We live a comfortable and good life here in Sydney, and still I find myself going over the same dilemmas every day it seems. Is this where I want to live in the long term? Is this where I want to raise my family?
I've lived in 3 countries and all three have a lot to offer. Let's start with where I am now, Australia.
I think that the thing that I like most about Australia is how 'normal' it is. It's a free country with an established democracy, a great economy, wonderful health care, good education. People spend a lot of time participating in, talking about, and watching sports. The people are relaxed and polite. On a personal level, I have a job that I actually enjoy (the first in my life!) with colleagues that I like working with. All in all, it's a great place to live.
So what's the problem? I guess it's more of a personal thing. Why are all my friends here Israeli? I can't seem to connect with Australians the way I do with Israelis. I have no problem with English, and I try to immerse myself in Aussie culture (I even tried to learn the rules of cricket, but I still only see a bunch of men standing around on the grass for 5 days, scratching themselves), but I still can't seem to connect on a deep, personal level.
In Israel I have friends I can call at any time and talk about anything with, even though I haven't been living there for 10 years. Here I just don't have that, and it's hard.
Now in Israel, there are numerous problems and a long list of things that make me cringe when I think of moving back. Terrorism doesn't scare me so much as such, but it's the secondary effects that are a daily problem: people are stressed and aggressive, they drive like maniacs, the economy has suffered immensely, there's not enough money or time to think about things like education or health care, because of the more immediate security issues.
On the other hand we have family there, and good friends, and that support network is missing from our lives now.
The third option is to move back to California. Life was good there for us, and there's a lot more money to be made than here. But that comes with a price: you have to work long and hard to get it. In Israel people also work an incredible amount of hours, but get a lot less in return. Australia certainly takes the lead when it comes to work-life balance.
The important question, and the reason why I am thinking about this so much in the last 2 years, is where do I want my son (and his future siblings) to grow up? I know that once he starts school, he won't remember any of the Hebrew he's learning now. I'm not religious, but it's hard for me to see him at the day-care centre end-of-year party, singing Christmas carols and getting a pressie from Santa Clause. I know that in Israel he would get the language and culture that I would rather have him know.
Oy.
There is no good answer. Having too many choices sure makes things difficult.

Oh yes, I'm going to the U2 concert in April

This is old news, but I haven't been writing for a long time so I forgot about it for a while.
I got tickets to the sold-out U2 concert!!!
I had missed out on the first concert and was all bummed out. Then they announced a second concert and this time I was ready. As soon as tickets went on sale (actually an hour before) I was ready at their web site and with phone in hand, it was "reload" and "radial" over and over again for about 4 hours. Just as I was about to give up, I got 2 tickets!! Granted they are on the 6th level and on the side, but so what?? I'm finally going to see U2!
When I was a kid I was the hugest U2 fan ever. Totally nuts. At some point in the 1990's I switched to Pearl Jam. Today I hardly listen to Pearl Jam any more and I think Eddie Vedder is rather pathetic. But I still listen to U2, oh yes...
Anyway, I was their hugest fan in Israel but by the time they finally performed there for the first time, I had just moved to the USA and so I missed them.
Getting the tickets has already caused a bit of a fracas. Hubby's friend's wife is also a huge fan and didn't get any tickets. I had already asked out my good friend, who doesn't especially like U2 or anything, to go with me as a birthday present. Some mild catfighting and attempted bribery ensued, but eventually I managed to diplomatically sort things out.
My Ph.D. graduation ceremony is one week after the U2 concert, and I can tell you that I'm much, much more excited about U2.

Is there a Starbuck's there already?

A pristine "Garden of Eden" was found in Papua, untouched by humans. Dozens of new species of animals, birds and plants have been found.
Interesting that they also found an echidna, and some kangaroos that don't look at all like kangaroos. Amazing!!

I miss flying

Last week I attended a training course and the other attendees were all from a company that does aviation-related work. At the breaks they would talk about planes and helicopters, and swap stories about test flights and all that.
It's been several years since we moved from America to Australia, and I haven't flown at all since then (except in commercial airliners but that's not real flying). I had forgotten how much I missed it. Not just the flying, but being part of the aviation community.
The flying was so great, what an amazing feeling to see the world from a different perspective... but the friends I made and the feeling of belonging to a really tight-knit community was what I enjoyed most. Being active in the flight club, "hangar flying", washing the planes, going off to new and weird airports that we found on the map and never went to before, just to see what's there. Whenever you get 2 or more pilots together, the conversation immediately shifts to flying stories and they will be happy to talk for hours and hours.
General aviation just isn't as developed and wide-spread as it is in the USA. There are fewer airports, planes, clubs and instructors. Flying is much more expensive. In California I could get in my car and be at the airport going over my pre-flight checklist in 20 minutes. Here I'd have to drive an hour and a half to the nearest GA airport. And then there wouldn't be a whole lot of places I could fly to just for fun, or for the proverbial "$100 hamburger". It wouldn't be anywhere near $100, and there would probably not be any veggie burgers either.
It's just not the same unfortunately. Australia is a wonderful place to live, but there are certainly some things that I had to sacrifice for the privilege of living here.

Stab

I just read about a stabbing on a minibus in Petah Tikva, my home town. This was on the main street from the city to Tel Aviv, and of course I know it well.
Just as I was thinking to myself "how nice to be living in Australia", I saw that there was a stabbing at Bondi beach as well.
Both stabbers were men of Middle-Eastern Appearance.
The world is indeed a small place and it seems there aren't many places left that are unaffected.
:(