Market

A few months ago we discussed among friends that there should be a social network on which anyone could advertise anything they wanted to sell. Be it services or goods, it could be advertised using pictures and profile related details. The social network, as we envisaged, would be more like facebook, but would rather be a niche social network. We even named the project as Market. Market was created using WordPress and BuddyPress. The latter is a plugin for WordPress that can be used to create social networks within a very short time and with very minimal knowledge of web application development tools, such as PHP, in which these tools are basically written. 

It was quite fascinating to learn that a facebookk class social network can be created using these tools within a few hours of dedicated effort. That too is so much because of the time it takes for the whole system to be hosted on a third party hosting service. If this tedium were absent, it would have taken a lot less time. Market does not exist any more because we never pursued the idea any further. We just learnt that a few similar niche networks exists for things like knitting, sewing etc. But the idea in itself is cool. And there is a need for such a nice social network as well that could be used to sell a wider range of products.  More precisely, the envisioned role of the market was to enable the buyer and seller to connect with each other irrespective of their geographical locations on the planet. They would consequently be able to exchange goods with each other.

Think Twice Before You Take A Leap

I have been thinking about shifting the whole of this blog to this new Word Press powered hosting and website management and creation service called Wealthy Affiliate. But may be one should think again before doing all the dirty work of creating the website and actually exporting all of it from here to there. What are the tradeoffs? The bottom line of word press is that it also only allows you to create a blog. It is another thing that one can arrange the things to look more like a dedicated niche specific website. Blogger does not allow to have that sort of a look and feel. It has a blog-like look after all. And I imagine that even if we tried hard to convert our blog to a website through blogger, it is still going to look like a blog. But what is a blog after all? It is a website. Right? Right!

But there are other better things that are better about using blogger. One thing is that you don't have to wait for nasty approvals. Another is that you do not have to go to the HTML source code time and again to switch the text alignment from left aligned to justified. This is something that has to be done by hand in word press. But I am sure that there must be an easy cure for this. It is just tedious somehow. Media management is also not quite cool with word press. It just does not have the kind of look and feel blogger has. Dynamic views in blogger make the whole thing appear much nicer. It is just that it is a bit difficult to get rid of its blog-like appearance.  

What are the other benefits? The bottom line I guess is that if you really want to have a website then it is better to switch to Word Press. Moreover, the guys working with Wealthy Affiliate promise that they will help in guiding a great website that is going to churn out profits in a short while. Indeed, they have helped to a great deal. I wonder what is next in their jukebox. I hope it would be cool though. 

Home Based Business

I have almost finished reading all the lectures of the first level course that is offered for free on Wealthy Affiliate. I did that last night. The website is impressive. It is owned by two online marketers Carson and Kyle. They founded it in 2005. The website teaches people how to develop an online business through a set of tutorials. Reiterated, I have finished reading the first set of ten tutorials and they were quite lucid and informative. They teach you things like how to get a website up and running in minutes. 

As I woke up this morning, one of the first things I had in my mind was that how can I benefit from Wealthy Affiliate. Although I did have an idea in my mind after all due to which I had read through wealthy affiliate. But that idea was not to become wealthy at least.

So a few ideas sparked in my mind. One was Aqua-ponics. I don't know if I have spelt the phenomenon right. But this technology gives a person a utility to build a small home-based orchard along with a fish aquarium. The fertile water of the fish tank would be used to irrigate the vegetable of that small orchard. I attended a small presentation about it the other day. I do not know that from where did I get the link. I presume that the project is somewhat like having a rooftop garden, albeit with a few technical glitches involved. The idea is really cool though.

But what does that have to do with Wealthy Affiliate. The link between aqua-ponics and wealthy affiliate does not make much sense. But then the ultimate idea sparked in my mind. The idea is that as wealthy affiliate helps people in developing their personal online marketing business, one can leverage from the services, tips and tricks of wealthy affiliate to develop a similar sort of a business that would help them in building their home-based business. I presume there is dire need for such an idea for multiple reasons. I think that I had what one may call a eureka moment when I conceived this idea in my mind. I am thankful to Allah for this.

The first thing is that there is a lot of unemployment in the whole world. Worst downsizing has been observed by many companies around the globe in the last 3-4 years. These are years of economic recession. Moreover, I read an article on LinkedIn a few days back that was suggesting that the concept of jobs would vanish in the next five to ten years. The article proposed that as opportunities for working from home would grow, more people would become interested in working from home instead of  finding a place to work where they would have to commute to work everyday. Indeed, I also read another article, again on LinkedIn, the other day that projected correlations between divorce rate and the time it is required commute to work. There was a strong positive correlation. The author suggested that people should take a few days off from work. In any case that is the whole idea, that is to facilitate people who want to work from home.

I presume that the idea I am suggesting is not novel at all. Rather it would be naive to assume that nobody is working on it. But I am sure that there is a great deal of room of improvement in it. The other day I was discussing with a friend of mine that LinkedIn which is the world's largest professional network and it also has a very nice job board, is still not extremely applicant friendly even though it has evolved to a great deal recently. For instance, one of the irking things is that as soon you find a job that matches your qualifications and suits your interests, you can still be directed to a company website where you have to fill in a new profile afresh. I presume that such things distract attention badly. But LinkedIn is a professional network and professional are expected to be industrious!

However, there is no such thing on the web for sweater weavers and banana sellers. It would be a great idea to develop an internet business that helps people in building home-based businesses. I think there is a dire need for good online marketing strategies that may help in promoting work from home business. The need is dire specially given the fact that there are roughly 800,000 unemployed people in the United States, and the things are also not as good as ever in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One last thing, if this idea that I have given above is so great then why have not I kept it a secret? I could myself start such an internet based business after all! I think that the answer is something what a friend of mine said to me a long time a go when I requested him to jealously guard our idea for a new script for a theatrical play. He said that hiding ideas inhibits the process of creativity. That was quite altruistic on his part when he used to share his ideas with others. But I do not have completely altruistic purposes in disclosing this idea, no matter how old or well-known it really is. Another reason why I am sharing this is that I am not that sort of a geek with computers after all as much as you guys may be out there and so I might not close the loop very tightly on this idea. Have a great weekend!

Wealthy Affiliate

Today I decided that I would write a full fledged research proposal about neuroscience and human consciousness. I have been reading about this field for quite a bit of a time after all. So I opened my Latex editor and started writing down all of my thoughts about human consciousness. But while I was about to finish it I just thought for a moment that it is just another research proposal after all. At the best it may only win me another postdoc at best. And after finishing that I would be on my own once again about finding another postdoc. And the vicious cycle goes on. But research can be very charming and enticing at the same time too. Anyhow, I just thought for a moment that what if I put the same amount of effort in going solo that I would have exerted for doing a postdoc or any other research job? It is good to own a business after all where you don't have to work for someone else. I do not have any business experience by the way. I have a fear that I would mess it up somehow. And that explains the endless procrastination about not attempting to start one.

I just made a casual google search with the phrase "How to become an online entrepreneur?". I remember I came across the term online entrepreneurship a short time back. And I remember that it has got to do something with creating and managing a web based business. It can be a difficult thing to do indeed, specially if you do not have any prior experience in it. Anyhow my search led me to the website of Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy affiliate helps people in establishing their own online marketing business. I have already read through a few of their lessons on how to create an online business. Their free membership offers you to create two wordpress websites for free along with free web hosting. 

This is quite interesting. They also teach some other useful stuff such as search engine optimization (SEO). And how to have catchy menus on the website. The tutorials are really lucid. They encourage that the more effort you put, the more successful you may become in terms of making money. And then they also have a premium account. I presume that by becoming a premium member the chances of becoming wealthier increase. This is quite interesting. I wonder if the whole effort would be as much lucrative as it promises to be. But I guess that it is definitely worth giving a try.

Give Me A Shout

I started writing this blog as a response to the work of people like Sam Harris. At that time I had not envisaged that I would write so much on this. As a matter of fact, as the time has passed, I have started enjoying writing quite a lot. This is not to say that I did not like writing before. I have quite a bit of research experience in which I had to write substantially. Writing is one of the most interesting things about research. It is perhaps needless to say that reading and thinking are the other two interesting things about being a researcher. And yes I am forgetting all the hands on and thought experiments. 

But writing a blog or about anything that does not include hardcore technical writing has it own charm and, I must say, addiction. Indeed, it is fun to write on diverse topics. It is also quite fascinating to try to develop different writing styles and to use them in developing write ups probably to address a broader audience. Technical writing can be for a very few people who are domain experts.

I have been wondering for past some time that what would it be like to become a writer or to formally adopt writing as a professional choice. Of course, this is a bit of a leap from where one thinks that one could work as an all encompassing researcher to where one is merely a writer. But I never appreciated it before that becoming a good writer, if one can, is a far more exciting professional choice. This is not to say that I had never read, let's say, fiction or history books before. I had done that. But there was a time that I used to feel that writing fiction or becoming a journalist was something that anyone could do. In other words, I used to believe that becoming a researcher or a scientist was far more challenging and so I used to think that I must try to become that. But now I feel that becoming a writer is also a much better professional choice. And indeed it is also both challenging and fascinating at the same time.

I wonder if I can become, for instance, a Scientific American or Huffington's Post class writer. So if you can, or know someone who can, help me in any way in taking up writing as a profession, I would be grateful. If you can help me in honing my skills and/or winning a writing contract, please give me a shout. 

Provocative Ideas

I generally like a few things about Sam Harris. He raises some thought provoking issues at times. Specially when he provokes everyone into thinking and asking themselves introspectively that why do they believe in what they believe. I think that this kind of provocation is healthy and urges a human being to study human consciousness. That where did we come from and where are we headed? Or whether it all starts here and ends here too. This much is fine. There are other such things which one should appreciate too. This is also not in conflict with traditional Islam. A keen study of history suggests that wherever the medieval Muslims went they learnt something from other societies. And they were not too much into killing other people at all after all. So, according to Islam, one should learn good things from where ever one can. This is naturally a good idea. 

But then there are other things which are quite objectionable about Sam Harris's objections on Islam or religion in general. One of them is that Sam does not like the idea that religion is used as a tool to glue people together. This is generally true about his opinion about every religion. In my opinion as much as religion is used to unite people together for common good, it should be fine. Of course, it should not be fine to unite with each other to harm others. Unity should be also be fine for self protection. There is no harm in having a harmless brotherhood too. I used to respect atheists as I had some of them as friends and I used to think that they are educated people. Brotherhood is also good if it enhances the self-respect of a community. But I have read a few articles from other atheists about Sam Harris in which he has been addressed as a "Son of a Bitch" and a "Bastard". It might be the case that Sam does not mind that, but this sort of treatment is quite harsh. 

Moreover, just because he does not mind listening to such complements himself, he demands more liberties of free speech regarding religion. His use of the term misogyny of Islam can have many connotations and can be justifiably considered harsh. But the truth is that we Muslims believe that Islam was born at a time when Arabs used to bury their daughters alive due to the fear that they would grow up and would have to be married to someone. A perceived consequence of marriage used to be that the family of the daughter would have to live under the perpetual domination of their daughter's in-laws. Something which the Arabs despised and could not live with. I personally think that the mere idea that their daughter would get married and go on to have sex with another person was unbearable for them, even if that other person was her husband. And a solution for that was burial of the living and breathing child. We believe that Islam was born out of such circumstances. 

We believe that all the struggle of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) including his migrations and wars was against this kind of oppression, which is quite a lot I would say. We believe that all the Islamic rules viz a viz marriage and betrothal are there to enhance the self-esteem of the women. A woman should not be buried alive if she has been born in pre-Islamic Arabia by chance, nor should her naked picture be put on a billboard if she is fortunate enough to be born in 21st century Amsterdam. She should be married properly with her consent. To this end, Islam tries to strike a balance between the people of different mentalities. On one extreme, there can be people who can flare up instantly at the mere sight of a stranger falling upon their daughter, sister or mother. There could also be people who do not mind if their daughter, mother, sister or wife thinks that it is boring to have the same partner for two consecutive days but is at a higher risk of catching sexually transmitted disease, being kidnapped or raped or ending up in a bad situation of the same magnitude. Islam tries to anneal all of them. And I know from personal knowledge that plenty of such people exist in non-Muslim countries where people do not accept their women to be dating on loose. I remember the movies unfaithful (Richard Gere) and Revenge (Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn) where these guys ended up in bloody circumstances because their wives were seeing someone else. A question is that are these movies representative of the American culture, if so Islam presents a cure in the form of respectable marriage laws.

Islam allows a woman to not get married if she chooses so to be. Similarly, one cannot wed a woman off to someone if she does not agree. And yes, should she not be educated? Islam argues that it is the duty of every Muslim man and woman to seek education. This is quoted in many hadiths of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). I am a Muslim and I like Sam Harris. I even like his commentary on religion. I think he enlightens us all on as to what and why should we believe in. I think that as a human being Sam Harris deserves respect. But Sam Harris should also try to earn that respect. His use of the term misogyny is rather provocative. 

Digital Image Processing

Learning an intricate subject such as digital image processing can be a quite of a difficult expedition to undertake. The student should have a firm background in mathematics. He/she should have taken a number of different pre-requisite courses in mathematics and signal processing before even being considered eligible to study image processing. Raafael C. Gonzalez, however, makes that task easy for the student. Digital Image Processing by Gonzales is a book written for the maths shy student. It assumes that the student would have little mathematical background. In so many ways this book can be compared favorably with the one written by Richard G. Lyons on digital Signal Processing i.e. Understanding Digital Signal Processing. In a metaphorical sense these books can be considered cousins of each other for two closely related subjects. 

After preparing the student with initial background material in the first two chapters, the authors illustrates a few spatial domain image treatments. In the first two chapter concepts such as linearity, pixel distance measures, spatial versus greyscale resolution, and shrinking and zooming are described. Chapter 3 discusses image enhancement in the spatial domain. Topics such as contrast enhancement, histogram matching, histogram processing, equalization etc. are explained.  

Chapter 4 is about frequency domain transformation and processing. The author explains the 2-D Fourier transform. In my opinion, this is the best part of the book. The explanation of Fourier transform is not only lucid, it gives key insights into how the whole transformation of image from the spatial domain to the frequency domain is realized. This is done in a step by step manner so the reader may fully grasp the inner workings of the otherwise quite enigmatic Fourier transform. Moreover, it is explained how filtering can take place with the Fourier transform. 

The subsequent chapters discuss more advanced topics such as image restoration and color image processing techniques, image compression. Lossy and lossless methods of compression are discussed. 

Overall the book is quite fun to read and it makes the reader enthusiastic about the subject of image processing. Although it is assumed that the reader has some familiarity with calculus and linear algebra, it is still a very good resource for almost any student from any background interested in studying digital image processing.

Articles Writer

A Reader Profile

Yesterday I visited The Muslim Blogger, a website that helps people in building word-press blogs from an Islamic point of view. As I was browsing through the website I came across a nice article that had tips for blog traffic enhancement. One of the ideas was to develop a reader profile. The idea is based on the observation that as writing for a wider audience is difficult to do as opposed to writing for a single particular reader in mind, one should write for a single ideal reader. This was probably the only idea that particularly caught my attention. Although there are other nice ideas listed there as well. Anyhow, the main benefit of addressing one's ideal reader is that through addressing him/her one addresses the whole of his/her audience. This is quite convenient.

The reason why I liked the idea was that as soon as I read it, I felt that I do have that ideal reader in my mind. That ideal reader in my particular case is nobody other than Sam Harris. I have been reading the work of Sam Harris for a long time now. The main reason why I started rewriting this blog was to be able to argue with him about his criticisms on religion. The idea was to be reasonable and rational. Moreover, by leveraging from the lenses of reason and rationality, the idea was to be able to argue whether he is right about his convictions about religion. Indeed, it is a difficult thing to do as the objections he raises to religious doctrines are quite too many. But I, like so many others, have tried to build the whole argument thing step by step. This blog was an attempt to that. I tried to post things concerning human consciousness and its survival after bodily death, about Islamic perspective on western spiritualism, about existence of God (Allah), and my understanding of free will.

The main objective of writing this blog, however, was not to criticize the work of Sam Harris alone, or anyone else's. One of the reasons was to develop an understanding of how atheists or other people think about Islam. I believe that if Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins can be convinced that atheism is at least wrong, that would be a great job indeed. Generally I like Sam Harris. He writes extremely well and has a very good expression. I am sure he is also a nice man. I also think that at some point in his life he may as well convert to Islam. That would be good news. 

Understanding Consciousness

One of the topics that is quite hyped these days is the study of human consciousness and its possible survival after death. The argument that human beings have souls that depart to a certain afterlife once we are dead is one of the major tenets of almost every religion. The materialist view, that we human beings, along with all the other life forms. are merely flesh and bones defies any such notion that human beings have souls or that they depart to some other world once we die. To this end, they also argue that there is no such divine entity, such as a godhead, that may have created life. The religious doctrines of creation of universe can be explained away with the help of theories of astronomy, cosmology and astronomy. Similarly, the religious doctrines about the creation of life and humanity can be explained away with the help of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

Rationalists try to understand and study the nature of survival of human consciousness with the help of various ways in which they can try to tap into the afterlife and communicate with the dead. There might be a possibility that some religious people may have the ability to do it already. I heard (or possibly read somewhere) that Jews have been prohibited to do it according to Torah. Given that it is considered the old testament for Christians and a holy book to be revered by the Muslims, it may be supposed that the followers of these two religions are also prohibited from tapping into the so-called unseen world. Particularly, Muslims are advised to follow a set path and believe in the unseen and are advised not to long for miracles. 

Whether or not there is an afterlife, or whether or not people survive bodily death cannot be proven by believing merely in someone's word of mouth. A religious scripture no matter how convincing it may be is not a proof of any of the extraordinary claims it makes. The claims must be proven from sources other than where they have been claimed. Thus, objectivity demands an honest scrutiny.

People who are interested in knowing about human consciousness and its survival of bodily death leverage mostly from the research of near death experiences (NDEs). As the name suggests, in an NDE a person is subjected to a clinical death of sorts in which electrical activity in the brain of the subject stops. Once rehabilitated back to normal life, the subject is asked to describe his/her experience. A keen survey reveals that there are hundreds of thousands of NDE stories. A review of the NDE research also indicates that NDE research has become a mature field of study with considerable adoption of scientific method.

Another discipline that tries to tap into afterlife is spiritualism. Spiritualism is rather old and established itself in the late nineteenth century. In simply world spiritualism entails methods to communicate with demised soul and to tap into the spirit world. A wide variety of literature is available by various contemporary and prolific scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Older people include Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russell Wallace and William Crookes, to name but a few. History of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably the best resource on the subject.

If the findings of NDEs and spiritualists are correct that human beings survive bodily death, and that human beings do indeed have souls that depart to another world as we die, it means that materialism and its related theories of evolution etc. have already been explained away. For skeptics it means that they would have one less dimension to think about as regards existence.

    

Applications of Free Will

A keen study of free will would suggest to you that it does not really matter whether you have it or not. What would matter most is that as long as you have some degree of freedom in choosing and doing things in one way or the other, you would prefer to pursue your goals. If you are an athletic type, you may want to enroll in a gymnasium and develop a great body. You may also train to become a kick-boxer. And as soon as you have learnt something about the art, you may find your heartiest adversary and you may apply a perfect flying kick right on one of his jaws. This, however, depends on how you define virility. Even if you do not care much about the masculinity of your approach, or rather if you are a person of a nonviolent type, even then you may want to do something with your newly learnt martial arts skills and your toned body. You might at least go to a beach, take your shirt off and stand in the knee-deep water. All of a sudden you stretch and raise your right leg above your head,  so quickly so as to create a great splash in the water. You get yourself photographed. Congratulations! You are in the news now!! You are Jean Claude Van Damme!!!

The above narrative was one of the many examples of how a person can hone and use one's mental and physical faculties. It was supposed to be funny! The debate that whether humans have free will or not is a totally different one. In as much as the subject may sound trivial or insignificant from a practical point of view, its study has rather serious applications in various scientific and academic disciplines that concern human development and well-being in one way or the other. These are social science, psychology, human behavior, neuroscience, law, politics, philosophy, war and religion, to name but a few.

For the purpose of brevity it may be worthwhile to look at the importance of this subject from the vantage point of its relevance in studying neuroscience. I believe that neuroscience is one such area which has started to dominate many other spheres of life in today's interdisciplinary world. It attempts to study things as simple as emotional well being of humans to issues as complex as motivations behind peoples actions and their repercussions on social order and legislation.

Consider psychology and mental health, for instance. Why do people choose to be angry when they can smile? Why do people choose to steal things from others while they could simply have helped an old person cross the street?

A very interesting reason for studying free will is to understand human consciousness. Analysis of human consciousness is a very hot topic these days. On a coarse level it tries to understand the human consciousness and along with that whether or not it survives bodily death or not. In either case, that is, whether or not human consciousness survives bodily death, it becomes quite interesting and important to understand as to how to live this earthly life happily and peacefully? What forms a healthy coexistence? What is the role of religion in our lives? This and many other interrelated questions urge us to study the nature of free will. May Allah help us all to live and coexist peacefully.

Understanding Free Will

The subject of free will has fascinated me for a long time. I have wanted to learn about the subject for a number of reasons. The first time the subject drew my serious attention has a rather boring description. But the event was that a few acquaintances had broached up the topic and were trying to explain to each other what it means for a person to have free will. I had to remain quiet because I had no concrete explanation of the subject in my mind. However, that was the first time the subject drew my serious attention. Ever since then I have been interested in studying about various other reasons too. Why do people behave in one way or the other? Why do siblings fight with each other whereas they could be affectionate with each other at the very same time. Similarly, why should we be jealous of a friend or cousin when he/she tells us about his/her recent achievement, whereas we could have felt happier and could have had a congratulatory appearance at the same time?

Why should we prefer to choose one thing over the other? Are we free to make our choices and act on them? And what are the consequences of acting upon our choices, no matter how good or bad they are? Why does a good person end up in a jail and a person who is perceived to be mean by people become a member of the parliament? These and many other questions inspired me to read and understand about the subject of free will. This article is a summary of my understanding that I developed after reading articles from various writers. I must mention that the explanations I have found most lucid about this subject are those of Sam Harris.

On a very coarse level free will can be defined as the ability to make choices under certain constraints. This means that a person is both free to choose and also act upon his/her choices while not violating the constraints which define boundaries for his/her actions. A more refined definition of free will is the ability to choose. The ability to act is called as volition. Another term that is associated with free will is determinism. The theory of determinism suggests that everything we do or choose to do is already predetermined and that we are not free either in making choices or in acting upon them. Between free will and determinism there is a spectrum of positions that vary between soft and hard determinism. However, to keep the discourse simple, for me at least, I will stick only to the presence or absence of free will. The position that free will does not exist can be explained with the help of the following example.

Assuming that you have read this article up to this point this can be done fairly easily. Assume that now I ask you to judge this article on a scale between 1-- 5 for its quality of content. Depending upon whether you are a casual or a seasoned internet user you may find this task absolutely boring or quite interesting. You may also have a mixture of feelings. On one hand you may feel like totally abandoning this article as crap and doing something else instead. At the same time you may think that it may be an interesting thing to rate an article for its content. You might think that it may hone your skills as a reader and a reviewer. At the same time you think that it is absolutely trivial and useless both to write and read about something as monotonous as free will. But then you think to give it a try. You may get motivated by thinking that you may grasp a few nice ideas for writing something more interesting. At the same time you are aware that you have to attend to the eggs that you have put on the stove to boil. You feel like leaving this computer of your's and going to the kitchen. But then you decide to hang on for a few moments till the time you reach the end of this paragraph.

If I have portrayed your thought process to some degree of accuracy while you were reading the above paragraph then indeed you have had a stampede of thoughts. A midst all of those thoughts, ideas and feelings you have managed to read this blog post to this point. You don't know exactly why you are reading it. But your eyes are slipping through line after line and you think that it is worth reading it. Indeed, if you have read it through to this point, you are pretty much engaged with this article by now. You do not know exactly why you are reading this or whether you like it or not. You even do not know exactly why you opened this article in the first place and started reading it and kept on doing so, whereas you had other tasks to complete too. Bingo! You have finished reading another paragraph.

If you are a neuroscientist, or you know someone closely who is a neuroscientist, you may get an explanation from the point of view of electrical activity in your brain. You may be told, or you may have learnt, that your choices are governed by complex electrical activity in your brain that take place on the level of synapses and neurons. You may argue that it is actually the chemical reactions in your brain that govern your behavior in the present moment. Let's call it the electrochemistry of your brain for the sake of simplicity. You may even believe that you are not consciously choosing to read these words as they slip before your eyes. Instead you may believe that the decision to keep on reading through moment by moment has already been made by the temporal lobe of your brain a few microseconds (or milliseconds) in advance of what you are currently reading. This kind of reasoning is brought forward by the opponents of the existence of free will camp to argue that it does not exist. Irrespective of whether you are a proponent of this line of reasoning or not interested in it at all, it might be altogether mysterious to you as to why you have read this article through to another paragraph.

In the same way as I have tried to explain my understanding of the non-existence of free will, anyone can try to explain its existence. Consider now to look at things from my vantage point. In the same way as you may be baffled about why at all have you read this article, I might be confused on as to why I have written it in the first place. Is it all about electrical impulses, auroral charges, and whims of the mind through which I have grown out to write this. Among a myriad of things on my to-do-list for today why did I write this article at all? Indeed I thought about writing about free will a few months ago. This has al most been a year that I thought that I should write my thoughts about the subject of free will. The reason is that I find the subject both fascinating and challenging. Indeed, one of the most challenging things in the world is to satiate the intellectual curiosity of a philosopher. And free will is a subject that very much falls under the umbrella of philosophy.

In as much as I wanted to write about free will, I kept on postponing it. I have listed the reasons why I wanted to write about it above. But what are the reasons due to which I have been postponing it to this point. Well, there are quite a few reasons indeed. One of them is procrastination. Another is the fear that I may end up writing something stupid. The underlying guilt that I want to gain attention is another reason for holding back for so long. Another reason is that it sounds all the more pretentious to be publishing one's thoughts in the public domain. It is a blog post that I am writing after all!

But no matter what the reasons may be, I have at last chosen to write about this subject. This, out of the choices I had (i.e. to write or not to write about free will), and irrespective of all the reasons for writing or not writing about this topic, I have at last chosen to consciously write about it. And as you have reached the end of this article I would conclude it by saying that this ability of humans to make deliberate choices suggests that we do indeed have free will. May Allah help us in using it well.

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  by  Picture Perfect Pose 

The Alchemy of Happiness

The Alchemy of Happiness is a wonderful book by the renowned medieval Muslim scholar, philosopher and mystic, Abu Hamid Mohammad ibn Mohamad Al-Ghazali (RA). Although Imam Ghazzalli (RA) is remembered mostly for his works in philosophy, his book, the alchemy of happiness, aims to elucidate its readers on as to how to live a happier and a more fuller life according to the tenets of Islam. Original title of the book is Kimiya-yi saadat. The book has many chapters that are divided into four main parts.

Mainly the book discusses various forms of worship including prayers and dhikr. A significant portion of the book deals with the various aspects concerning human relations. The most interesting thing about the book is that discusses various spiritual and psychological problems and their cure. Emotional problems an individual can have such as hate, anger, spite, envy and jealousy etc. are discussed and their cures are suggested.  For instance, the author suggests simple cures such as to praise the person for whom one has jealousy in his/her heart. To this end, the book is also a very good resource for learning about emotional intelligence.

The Conquest of Happiness

Conquest of Happiness is a very interesting and a wonderful book by Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell was one of the most prominent intellectuals of the early twentieth century. His major domains were philosophy and mathematics. However, this book is about life. Particularly, the book lists many tips and tactics for acquiring happiness in life and for developing a happier and a more content personality. Apart from its contents, the book is also very well written and is a good resource for anyone willing to improve their reading comprehension of the English language. There are many good examples in the book through which Russell has tried to persuade his readers to live with a simpler lifestyle. The book also gives a reflection of the simplistic mindset that Bertrand Russell had.

The most interesting thing about the book is where the author gives and example regarding struggle for survival. I do not remember the story verbatim, but it somewhat goes like this. Russell gives the example of a businessman living in a big city such as London. He spends most of his time with his work. He is so much workaholic that he hardly has time for his spouse and children. He leaves home early in the morning and comes back much late at night. On work he spends most of his time devising strategies in order to beat his business rivals. This is how his life goes on. Russell suggests that if you ask such a man on as to why he works so hard? The usual answer would be that he has to struggle for survival. Russell argues that this is not struggle for survival. Russell then gives an example of two friends stuck on a wrecked ship. Everyone except them has died on the ship. In order to feed themselves to stay alive they have eaten up all the corpses. Their plight is now such that in order to remain alive one of them would have to eat the other. This, Bertrand Russell argues, is struggle for survival.

There are many other interesting things in the book and avuncular advice to his readers for achieving happiness. For instance, Russell suggests that achieving happiness is not a one day endeavor. Rather it should be acquired over time and should be considered as a lifetime goal. Among other things Russell also argues that one should never feel guilty or remorseful from the point of view of having committed a sin. Although Russell asserted that he would explain his rationale somewhere latter in the book, as far as I remember he did not do it.

Overall the book is very nicely written and despite the fact that it is very old, it is still very much relevant for everyone to read.

Stratfor

Many people try to understand the world affairs through various sources such an news, newspapers, gossip and conspiracy theories. This normally leads to more conspiracy theories. People end up having either no understanding of the reasons for things happening around the world or they develop a foggy view of affairs at best. This lack of objective development of opinions can be further obscured by cultural conditioning. For instance, many people in the Muslim world would presume that the U.S. has a hand in the recent chemical attacks in Syria, while being oblivious of the ideological humanitarian struggle that has refrained the former from going to war or attacking the latter in response to the chemical attacks. Although, at least apparently, the two phenomena are quite orthogonal. Indeed, the way things are understood can be painful and ridiculous. It is a pity! Similarly, one may wonder what, for instance, the Europeans actually think about the role Russians have played in averting any possible air, or whatever, strikes. Indeed, there could be many misunderstandings.

Startfor addresses such misconceptions and misunderstandings very effectively through its weekly geopolitical analysis reports. Stratfor, as the name suggests, is a syncronym for strategic forecast. It is a Washington based think tank. It covers almost any situation in the world that may have any significant impact on the geopolitics of the world. Irrespective of whether it is an economic situation arising in Europe, a military situation raising its head in Afghanistan, a hurricane that may affect American trade or a political handshake in China that may affect the export of toys elsewhere and its consequence on global economy, Stratfor tries to explain that through its own vantage point of objectivity. Overall stratfor is quite objective in its treatment of various issues it picks. Stratfor can also be quite blunt and surprising in the way it explains a situation. It appears that the major objective of Stratfor is to talk about ulterior motives of nations.

The most noteworthy thing about Stratfor is the way its CEO, George Friedman, writes about any geopolitical situation. Apart from the content about the matter, the articles are interesting to read in their own right. That means that apart from his choice of topics, the way he writes is quite inspiring. Usually he starts off with a random phrase or a thought and then slowly builds his argument in the light of examples, limitations and lessons from history. The choice of words and the structure and flow of article keep the reader engaged till the end of the read. And the most fascinating thing is the way he ends his discourse.

Machine Learning

Machine Learning by Tom M. Mitchell is the first text book for students who aspire to learn the subject of machine learning. It presents detailed and easy to understand illustrations of various concepts that are used in the field of machine learning. These include, necessary topics concerning probability and statistics, artificial intelligence, neural networks and evolutionary algorithms. 

The best thing about the book is its illustration of feed-forward, back-propagation, multi-layer perceptron (MLP). The good thing about it is that the underlying mathematical concepts are explained in a layman friendly manner. One learns techniques for computing partial derivatives and the chain rule for differentiation for the first time in high-school calculus without having any apparent and significant practical benefit. Their utility becomes clear when one reads and understands how the MLP works. More precisely, Mitchell explains how partial derivatives are computed with respect to the weight coefficients at every step of the MLP so as to guide the gradient descent algorithm to plunge into some locally or globally optimal solution. Similarly, Mitchell shows the significance of applying the chain rule to derive weight coefficients at every layer and node of the MLP with respect to the input values at its first layer. The whole explanation is quite fascinating and exciting.

Mitchell also introduces and covers the complicated topic of evolutionary algorithms in a very nice way. Initially various concepts surrounding genetic algorithms are introduced in a lucid manner to make the student comfortable with the subject. Mitchell then illustrates genetic programming. Other important and interesting algorithms are also discussed. For instance, coverage of the famous simulated annealing algorithm is quite interesting. The book is an excellent guide for any student who has began to learn machine learning. 

Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings

During the last ten days of this Ramadhan I managed to treat myself with a thorough and complete read of the Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings. The fatwa is written by Shaykh-ul-Islam, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri. Dr. Qadri is an eminent Muslim scholar and his book is an attempt to guide Muslims in particular, and rest of the humanity in general, on as to why terrorism is wrong when seen through the central teachings of Islam. The book is more or less 450 pages long and contains narrations from Quran, hadith and examples from the conduct of early Muslim rulers and caliphs. The central aim of the book is to address the confusion that lurches within the minds of young Muslims viz a viz terrorism and jihad. According to Dr. Qadri the current intensity and magnitude is becoming a great cause of atheism in the world. Another reason is that the wave of terrorism that has persisted for more than a decade has been a great cause for bringing disrepute to the Muslim Ummah in general and Pakistan in particular, where Dr. Qadri  is originally from. He argues that while majority of the Muslims condemn terrorism in all forms, a minority of Muslims give it a tacit approval. It is worth remembering that Dr. Qadri was one of the first Muslim scholars who condemned the world trade center tragedy extremely vociferously.

In almost the first three quarters of the book Dr. Qadri has argued against terrorism and rebellion in a painstaking manner. In reality, this portion of book is dedicated to arguing against internal rebellion within a Muslim state. The matters concerning rights of non-Muslims living in Muslim countries have also been discussed thoroughly. Dr. Qadri argues that devout Muslims should not revolt against their unjust rulers even if they are unjust, cruel and tyrant, as it is forbidden. On the other hand, they should acquire lawful and constitutional means for getting their matters resolved by the state. Dr. Qadri argues that the people who abandon peaceful routes, such as adoption of democracy or a peaceful constitutional struggle, and rebel against the state are outlaws and should be dealt with severely accordingly.

Dr. Qadri also argues that according to the central teachings of Islam it is the duty of the Muslim state to protect the rights of the non-Muslims who live in their country. It is the duty of the state to provide security for their life, family and property. They should have proper privileges to practice their religious chores while not coming in conflict with the tenets of Islam. 

The last part of the book is dedicated to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries. Dr. Qadri argues that Muslims living in non-Muslim countries should abide by the rules and regulations of the country they reside in. Muslims should not become a source of mischief for the country they reside in. Instead they should pray and wish well for their country of residence. 

In order to strengthen his argument regarding the conduct of Muslims living in non-Muslim countries he quotes the classical event of migration of early Muslims to Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia). He quotes that the early Muslims who migrated to Ethiopia were received well by the Negus who was a Christian. The Negus treated them with humility, honor and respect. In return Muslims who lived there were also extremely loyal to the Negus. So much so that in one of the conflicts of the Negus with one of his rivals the Muslims prayed to Allah for his victory and even vowed to help him in time of need. Dr. Qadri argues that such should be the conduct and intentions of Muslims while living in non-Muslim countries. 

Dr. Qadri ends the book by suggesting a few peaceful alternatives to violence and unrest. For instance, he proposes Muslims to acquire modern education, make effective use of print and electronic media to convey their concerns, stage peaceful demonstrations and rallies, and learn from other societies about how to live and coexist with peace, harmony and nonviolence. Every Muslim and non-Muslim should read this book. 

Long Time No See

I remember having written my last post during the month of Ramadhan. It has been more or less 40 days I did not write anything on this blog ever since. But this does not mean that I did not wish to write. Writing is fun! My last post was about Shaykh-ul-Islam, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri. I wrote about him in the context of his new book concerning his fatwa on terrorism and suicidal bombing. After writing about him the next thing I wanted to do immediately was to grab his book and have a read at it. And that is precisely what I did. I read the book. But I fell short of writing a review about it, as that is what I wanted to do also. 

The book is very nice and argues extremely against all forms of terrorism from an Islamic perspective. I believe that every Muslim and non-Muslim should read it. I had a few other ideas in my mind about writing too. These included, for instance, to write about topics such as consciousness, free will, geopolitics and more book reviews etc. In fact I had made a list of topics I had wanted to write about. Reiterated, writing is a lot of fun! The reason why I stopped writing was that I wanted to give myself a break and contemplate on what I really wanted to do for future. The reason why I did not write a review about the fatwa is a bit obscured in my mind and I also do not understand precisely why I did not reflect on it. But I suppose I did not write about it because I think that by writing about it I am only trying to coax a humanity that does not really care about such things. Specially given that what is happening in the world around us on a daily basis. More precisely, given that what is happening in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere and given also the role of global powers in such affairs, I feel that people concerned and involved in such affairs care less about such literary efforts and more about their own ulterior motives. I nonetheless feel that everyone should retire for a while , though, from whatever roles they have in their wild pursuits and try to reflect on consciousness and other aspects of life and/or afterlife.

But who cares what a book writer has to say or a blogger has to write on peace specially when the stakes are too high. But how high are the stakes really?

Shaykh-ul-Islam

Shaykh-ul-Islam, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, is an Islamic scholar and a political and a social worker from Pakistan. He is the founder and CEO of Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI) which is an NGO aimed at promoting religious moderation, quality education, and interfaith dialogue. Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri is a cogent thinker and writer who has written many books on various topics about Islam. Recently he has written a very interesting book titled Fatwa on Suicide Bombings and Terrorism. This is supposed to be a very interesting and inspiring book. In this book, according to Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri himslef, he has left no stone un-turned in the theology of Islam in order to argue against suicide bombings and terrorism. This means that he has turned every page of Quran and Sunnah and claims to have argued against terrorism in light of that. This is quite interesting and remarkable. Presuming that the writing of this book is motivated by rationality and reason, it could be a great resource for understanding true Islam. The book is being reported to have been translated in other foreign languages too. Furthermore, I have heard that the book has already been translated to Danish language.

I remember having met Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri when I was an undergraduate student. I suppose it was back in 1,999 or 2,000. Current era of terrorism had not began yet and the world was a peaceful place in some sense. The reason for meeting him was quite interesting. Two of our very dear friends had become atheists. I would not disclose the names for the purpose of confidentiality. Another one of my friends was very concerned about this. He was affiliated with MQI and proposed to us to take both of them for a dialogue with Dr. Qadri. After much efforts we reached MQI center in Lahore. We were a group of around more than 50 people as I remember. Dr. Qadri was somehow not expecting us. He nonetheless greeted us warmly and we had our meeting and dialogue with him. As the meeting progressed, incidentally the two of our dear friends chose to keep quite. This was rather strange because they used to be very vociferous about their atheistic ideas on the campus. After all the idea of taking them to Dr. Qadri ensued due to this. And they had agreed to having an open dialogue with Dr. Qadri prior to going there.

Seeing their silence and the consequent gravity of the situation, I decided to ask all the atheistic questions that I thought could be the most compelling about the existence of God. I found it interesting because I had recently started to learn to speak in English those days. I used to form a sentence in my mind and then utter it. It used to be questions normally. I learnt to become a bit more spontaneous over the years due to my interaction with books, movies, the Internet and various people. Similarly, my knowledge about atheism was also very limited. I remember that the friend of mine who had reverted to atheism used to keep a thick book along side him. I remember that it posed questions about the existence of God. The idea that someone would read something about the existence of God used to appear very weird to me in those days. I think it would be just as if an atheist or a materialist would find it hard to grasp the idea that God somehow existed. But for me, just like many religious people, God simply existed. There was no question about that!

So as the discussion proceeded, I asked many questions and they were answered and the congregation listened. Most of the questions revolved around the existence of God Himself, creation of life and of universe. Dr. Qadri answered each one of them in the light of Quranic verses. There were other questions like if God created the universe and all the life then who created God. Such a question has a basis in philosophy and the cosmological argument addresses it. There were also other typical questions of the sort that why does an onion have so and so number of peels and why not any other number. For instance, a typical question could be that why is God not like this or why is He like that. Or, why cannot God be seen if He exists. Such questions were also answered. But a problem with such questions is that no matter how much one dwells in to their explanations, the answers can never quell the concerns. Latter in my life I took atheism seriously and read it. This gave me a clearer perspective on what atheism was all about.

Meeting Dr. Qadri was otherwise a pleasant experience. He is a simple and a courteous man. I hope his new book on terrorism is read by every Muslim and non-Muslim.

Fractals

One of the possible sources through which one comes across a knowledge about fractals is the study of Internet traffic behavior. Internet traffic can be said to behave in a self-similar manner. Self-similarity means that given a network traffic trace, the pattern of variability of various network metrics, such as end-to-end delay or variance, at various time-scales does not exhibit any change. In other words it means that given a time-series of network statistics, no-matter how much you zoom-in or zoom-out of  that time-series, the pattern you observe is the same.

Internet traffic behaves in such a way due to various reasons. Self-similarity is modeled using heavy-tailed or long-range statistical distributions. A heavy tailed distribution is one which has its hump on one side and it is skewed to another side. Its tail is rather thick and that is probably why it is called heavy. They are normally classified as belonging to some exponential family of statistical distributions. Pareto and Weibull distributions are examples of such statistical distributions. It has a finite mean and an infinite variance. It is the consequence of this infinite variance that anything modeled through it exhibits a self-similar behavior as described above. I presume that if something like a time-series of internet delays has an infinite variance, it will exhibit the same type of variability no-matter what time-scales you choose to look at it. This makes it self-similar.

The simplest way of understanding self-similarity is usually proposed to be the study of fractals or fractal art. A fractal in fractal art is a piece of art that apart from its aesthetic appeal has one additional quality. That quality is that if one zoom's in or out of the picture, one gets to see the same pattern repeating as was seen in the previous step.

Crime and Punishment

I read crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky during the summer of 2004. It was recommended to me by a dear friend. With a typical slow start of a huge novel, the author introduces us with the characters of his novel, about the living circumstances of the people of his time, about the poverty of St. Petersburg, and the lonely and cold Russian streets of its time.

The central character of the novel is a young man named Raskolnikov who lives in a small rented room in St. Petersburg. For some odd reason he develops an idea that he should kill an old lady, who is a pawn-broker. After much pondering Raskolnikov sneaks into the old woman's apartment and kills her with an axe. He also murders her half-sister. Nonetheless, apart from a few things he leaves the apartment untouched and does not take anything substantial from it. As Raskolnikov fled, he somehow fortunately managed to do so unseen and unobserved.

The plot of the novel takes various turns and twists with a number of events emerging as it progresses. But what is central to the novel is the thought process of Raskolnikov as he holds the secret of his crime in his heart. Even though nobody knew of his crime, his psychological bewilderment make him appear as a suspicious person. Eventually he discloses his secret to his beloved, Sonya. Despite there being a minimal  practical chance of him being convicted, he eventually confesses upon Sonya's persuasion. He is eventually sentenced to eight years of penal servitude in Siberia. Sonya follows him there too. After some time in the prison the process of his redemption and moral rehabilitation begin. This happens due to the affectionate influence of Sonya.

Reading Crime and Punishment can be an extremely depressing thing to do. A sensitive reader can himself go through various psychological phases during the read. The most tormenting thing here is of course to go through the tormenting thought process of Raskolnikov after he commits the murder. Putting oneself in the shoes of Raskolnikov is the other difficult thing to do. Actually it is not only difficult, it is unavoidable too. While reading the novel the reader unconsciously maps himself on to the circumstances and the personality of Raskolnikov. This adds further anxiety to the nerves of the reader. Visualizing about the poverty ridden  circumstances of St. Petersberg is the last thing that keeps the reader melancholic for a few days of viscous reading. Through crime and punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky creeps into the conscience of every one of its readers.