Dude, call it right on hallmark, but we did mothers day when i was a child in somalia .. anyhow if your idea of appreciation is a hallmark card and good'ol fashion blow you wage to kingdom come then .. that aint it ..

sorry i meant non-islamic. I can't imagine what hadith people will dig up for a mothers day - but common sense says celebrating someone you love is a good thing.

why not put it another way and ask what would you on a mothers day that would be anti islamic?

Maximum utility, I say. bax, where is the proof?

It all starts with one magical and so far illusive notion in somali politics and here it is ************************************************* ************************************************* ************************************************* ACCOUNTABILITY ************************************************* ************************************************* *************************************************

Khary, By definition you are a cyborg as soon as you have fillings in your teeth, wear glasses or otherwise use any equipment which modifies the biological process of the body.. The research mentioned except in extreme cases is little more than hype. most the functionality for the masses can be attained non-intrusively. And in reality its nothing new, we've been at it from the day tools came about./.. YOur last post is interesting but full of contradictions: This sentence for example What is being promoted is the world view of "Subjective Epistemology". An epistemology of "othering" knowledge and actions. A view that promotes the Cartesian bifurcation seperating the knowing subject and the object to be known. Epistemology simply means taking knowledge into account during the process of reasoning, i.e. everything is not deduced from a the set of axioms in front of you... so i'm not sure where your going with it.. However with regard to knowledge being subjective, how else is there for knowledge to be? No one person can know everything, so your knowledge is always subjective on what your have learnt. The "Cartesian bifurcation" to be honest sounds like something someone made up to sound clever. If bifurcation is simply the process of branching. what Cartesian knowledge is i wont even attempt to understand -- but from a quick google and your description, I think your again talking about two things. First, the process specialisation, where fragments of knowledge are continually fragments into smaller sub classes leading to for ever smaller but richer domains of knowledge.. sadly again i think this comes back to most of us being too dumb to know everything. On the second part, i don't quite know what bifurcation has to do with the relationship between the object under study and the subject studying it. If your talking about it in grand-terms of the relationship between the designer of the a chip or drug and its user, then I'm not sure what more of a relationship exists other than finding the answer to "is my product socially acceptable and required". With regard to the engineering thing, come back when you have freed your self of your computer . and finally i don't see what religion has to do with any of it - again more contradictions in those last words of yours. You are unknowingly arguing the position of non-interventionism, for example everything has a cause to follow, a fate if you must and that we have no part in interfering with it. Sadly you contradict this daily in every non autonomic action you take. If you really believe to be true, try this, next time you see a car heading towards you while crossing the road dont command your body to move out of the way, wait until it reacts on its own accord.

ebyan, honey, it seems that you would give two short planks to race to think about - i'll exit now

in reply, to title of the post "my Qabil has fought harder for my families'" Two views: 1. its the complete opposite, your clan has done the most to harm yours and your families well being. For evidence look at the quality of life for somali's in somalia today compared to before the qax, every indicator of welfare from child mortality and life expectancy rates to access to education, health care, education nutrition .. and what ever else u'd like to put here is worse. Now what does your clan have to do with it... well in somali culture, it defined as the other made you subject to segregation by affiliation. 2. On the other hand you could argue say clan has done amazingly well for you personally because with out its affiliation, qaxooti maadan noqon laheyn, civil war would have to find another way to distinguish you - and then how would you enjoy the bounty of west anyhow on the off chance, if anyone has access to real data on somalia before and after '89, i would be interested analysing it, let me know

ebyan I'd never pay money to 'tolka' so they can ransack villages and do god-knows-what, but I'm not gonna be 'sad' that the advancement of my qabil might mean that other qabils get the short-end of the stick. That's life.. So is my support of my qabil 'innocent'(/halaal)? I think it is. First when is money asked for to "ransack", it never is, but more importantly, money is secondary. The important thing is your voice and support which gives the permission and encouragement for the action. It is only by removing your voice and support that you remove your permission and reduce the incentives to act in such ways. Just to give you a background on that paragraph you wrote, it has been the backbone of every unjust action that subjugated a people,from the pharaohs, to the slave holders, the nazis and hutus and israelis - they have all cited that line, 'if its not my kind' ... If your conclusion there were true, then it would be a sad day for any one with a faith in a fair and just god, since it would imply a god that did not care for a just society - so if you believe that you might as well renounce islam. now lets peek at your kind.. to Geel_Jire you write: You said you don't "love" your clan, let me ask you, do you love yourself? Are you not apart of your clan? I question the self-esteem of people who make comments like yours. WTF. It is actually your self asteem which is more in question, you are the one in search of an identity defined by ever reducing concentric circles - grabbing for a label in 1/2000 of a share in forefather ... i'd hate to ever be in need of your charity

shehehehe, true on power aphrodisiac - however, i've always felt flaunting it was a preluder to loosing it "I look at the female form far more; there's so much of it out at the moment. I kept looking at this woman's clevage yesterday" What a coincidence, i was doing that the day before, its amazing how distracting they are "She had the most beautiful face and good manners- not that the men would have noticed." I'm sure it unintended,

Ebyan, in your earlier post there are 2 points and they are what politicians use to muddle facts .. please let me throw a few sentences your way .. 1. No notion is bad. Be it qabiil, religion, philosophy, and what ever else you care to name.. since a notion in its purest form is an idea - i.e. a qabiil - as corpus of people does not exist until the notion of a qabiil -a as group to belong to- is first established in your mind fist. Now, while that notion is in your head, unless acted upon, it has no effect. Therefore its not that notions or ideas or catergorisations are good or bad, its how we act upon them. 2. Since action are important, and individuals carry out actions, in order to attach some value to an idea, we must look at the consequence of acting on that idea. In effect what happens when people follow the idea 3. Because people are different and many, we can't generalise them, but we can try too look what normalised patterns of behaviour induces in people. i.e. lets say you come up with a fanstic new idea, and convince 100 people to follow you idea. Now if 70 people are better off with your idea and 30 people worse off, we can say that on average, your idea leaves people better off. Another way to attach a value to an idea is too how the actions that result from it disperse. For example if I had suddenly realised a way to construct a nuclear bomb and then detonated it killing thousands, we can conclude that my idea is definitely bad.. So, for example saying 1 muslim killed 10 people, therefore all muslims are killers is only valid if there only exits 1 muslim in the world. But if 10 or 100 or 1 million muslims exist you can see the hypothesis muslims are bad is empty. 4. Now this is why the notion of qabiil as its used by somali is bad. We can say its bad, because supporting a qabiil isn't like supporting a football team, its effects are not harmless. Not because you may suddenly develop a blood thrust, but in somalia, you fuel it. To see how, ask your self what does my vocal support for something actually mean. Obviously that depends on what your qabiil stands for. If we are realistic and ask what does a qabiil stand for in somalia, the answer to question is not an inclusive peaceful society with play grounds for all the local kids. This is not because clans are necessarily or evil and twisted, but it is a natural consequence any competition and the nature of somali political society. Because people in general are in competition with one another for resources, the groups that they form are also in competition with one another and resources are finite. So what one qabiil looses, another gains, be it prestige, fiscal or otherwise. Hence, it is not in the interest of any qabiil to look after the interest anyone other than its members - unless of course that action suits its own interests. So in effect, given the nature of game being played what does your support actually mean... It simply means your endorsements of one set of interests over the rest. Support with your voice means telling to go forth and grab those resources on your behalf, since you have chosen them as your representatives. $20 for tolka, can be used either to buy bullets or food, which depends on the urgency of risk faced in securing those interests. The tournament ends when one group dominates all, i.e. all of its interests are secured. On an stalemate groups considerate based on a balance between whom they can subvert (now or later) and what power they bring. Hence your support for one qabiil over another is not innocent. Now given the result the somali qabiil notion in somalia, can you honestly say that your support is xalaal, or do you need the instruction in scripture? [excuse the spelling - new keyboard]

with such smoothness, u must constantly be flooring them shehehe... but don't you feel kinda cheated on the endomorphin front?

^ would that change your feeling for them?

^I'm glad your enjoying it.. so, why don't you get a reward when you look at a fella?

-faarax First, i feel for you man, I'm sorry. Now honestly, i'm too old for them mags, sadly i try to read them ... and inevitably you understand what that leads to.. the closest i've subscribed to a what in my part of the world is commonly referred to as tug-mag was the national geographic and javanese tribes women don't get it out for the lads. -- digital the scary bit is the inbuilt reward scheme, now we might say that in our day the triggered parts wern't called ' reward centers' but if our brain incentives us to droolingly letch at grils .. who are to complain. Its good bye to the 'honey i wasn't looking at her' and hello to 'gimme a minute honey i think i feel an endomorphin surge coming on'

^ lol@ banging .. i haven't heard that word being used for too long -- faarax, happily like che i get to take my cold showers for free

lol@faarax, so what's in your subscription list dude?

work life is sweet for some 'ey

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:06am BST 10/05/200 Men find photos of the opposite sex much more "rewarding" than women, new research claims today. According to the study men take the same pleasure out of looking at an attractive female form as they do from having a curry or making money whereas women do not take any significant reward from looking at pictures of men. Men consume more pornography than women The survey published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B said that brain scan studies show that "reward centres" are triggered in men when they gaze at a woman's face or body whereas they are not in females. It also shows men are more likely to make an effort to view pictures of the opposite sex and pay out money. The findings shed light on why men are much greater consumers of pornography than women and why sales of Playboy have always exceeded those of Playgirl, according to Dr Benjamin Hayden at the Centre for Neuroeconomic Studies, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina. "One natural inference is that men are more willing to pay to see these images," he told The Daily Telegraph. Previous research has identified several core characteristics of rewards. Economists have shown that people tend to be impulsive, meaning they prefer rewards sooner than later, and that they are less impulsive when rewards are bigger. This study shows that photos follow the same principles, and that more attractive photos act like larger rewards, said Dr Hayden. Rewards also offer incentives to work harder and they can be traded for other kinds of rewards, which is why men exchange money for pictures of naked women. The team gave 20 heterosexual men and 20 women opportunity to view non pornographic photos of members of the opposite sex and tested if money would offer as much reward, as well as whether people would work harder on a computer to see a photo they were interested in. Men were significantly more patient than women when choosing to view attractive females than when choosing to view neutral or unattractive females. "For men, the reward of seeing a woman is strongly influenced by physical attractiveness, but for women physical attractiveness has little or no impact," said Dr Hayden. source

I SAY!

I SAY!

I SAY!

Told ya the place was pretty and full of pretty people ... sick init .. have you tried the sickeningly tasty giant california rolls in melbourne yet?

It just gets worse Apr 26th 2007 | ADDIS ABABA From The Economist print edition War again, holy and unholy Get article background An Osama boy or just an ordinary gunman? THE UN says that at least 321,000 Somalis have fled their capital, Mogadishu, in the recent weeks of fighting there. Thousands more are trapped along the frontlines inside the city, under fire, packed in with rotting corpses, and unable to find a way out. At least 1,300 have been killed so far this month, most of them civilians. Ethiopian artillery has demolished chunks of the already rubble-strewn city. But it is unclear if the shelling has squelched an Islamist-inspired insurgency. Probably not. The Somali transitional government, backed by Ethiopia, says it is in a do-or-die struggle with al-Qaeda. A few more days of shelling, it says, and it will have the upper hand. But the insurgents are getting stronger, striking with machinegunners, snipers and suicide-bombers, then melting back into their communities. A contingent of 1,000-plus Ugandan peacekeepers under African Union command has remained impotently confined to barracks. Most of the displaced civilians are encamped on Mogadishu's outskirts, where the scenes are medieval. People lack water, food and shelter. Cholera has broken out. The sick sometimes have to pay rent even to sit in the shade of trees. Things will get worse with the rains, which have started. Aid agencies say people will soon start dying in large numbers. Some reckon Somalia is facing its biggest humanitarian crisis, worse than in the early 1990s, when the state collapsed amid famine and slaughter. An additional worry this time is that Somalia may be drawn into the international jihad. Somali Islamists are getting training and arms from Eritrea, which wants to fight a proxy war with Ethiopia in Somalia, and money from Arabs in the Middle East. Radical Muslims around the world are likely to blame supposedly Christian Ethiopia and America for the mayhem in Mogadishu. That ignores the fact that the Ethiopians were invited in by a Muslim Somali government and have been longing to leave ever since. America can be more heavily criticised for subordinating Somali interests to its own desire to catch a handful of al-Qaeda men who may (or may not) have been hiding in Mogadishu. None has been caught, many innocents have died in air strikes, and anti-American feeling has deepened. Western, especially European, diplomats watching Somalia from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya to the south, have sounded the alarm. Their governments have done little. That reflects a feeling of fatigue among outsiders who have been trying for years to persuade the Somalis to negotiate a new deal for themselves. The officially-recognised but feeble Somali transitional government, the elders of the ****** clan (the main one in Mogadishu) and various prominent members of the far-flung Somali diaspora have all failed to accommodate each other and are largely responsible for the present fighting. The Somali government has been particularly weak. It has used the latest offensive partly to settle scores with its enemies. Its description of the insurgents as al-Qaeda is self-serving. In reality, they include disaffected ****** people, profiteers, and nationalists who cannot bear having Ethiopians on Somali soil. There may be a few hundred jihadist fighters and perhaps a dozen or so who can properly be classified as al-Qaeda. But the government's failure to make concessions to the ****** raises al-Qaeda's hope that Somalia may become a hub of instability and a new front in a holy war against Ethiopia—and the West. A ceasefire proposed by America looks unlikely to take hold. A national reconciliation conference has been put off until the summer. Ferocious fighting between clans has broken out in Kismayo, a southern port. More Somalis, trying desperately to reach Yemen across the Red Sea in small boats, are being drowned off Somalia's northern coast. This is all bad for Ethiopia. Morale among its troops is dropping; some have deserted. Another war with Eritrea is in the offing, along with terrorism by separatist and Islamist groups at home. The insurgency in Mogadishu has pepped up the ******* National Liberation Front, an ethnic-Somali group fighting for the autonomy of the ******* region, in eastern Ethiopia; this week it attacked a Chinese oil-exploration facility in the desert there, killing some 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese, apparently with help from Eritrean intelligence. In sum, the entire Horn of Africa is back on edge. source

I know what you mean, lately i've stopped reading the news beyond the headline, and even those you force them upon yourself. Its a world of the living dead, we each develop our own strategies to avoid the misery we see/hear or read, but in all honesty and I don't know how we're meant to deal with them. In a world were the rule of the gun is the only law, escapism seems as good a strategy as any other..