Media Bias: A Tale of Two Soldiers
Notice:
The soldier is never identified by name.
The author gives multiple mitigating factors or reasons why the soldier may not be culpable.
- The soldier saw a fellow soldier suffer a terrible injury.
- The soldier himself had a concussive head injury.
- He may have had PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
- He may have been drinking.
There is no attempt to link or compare this attack to any other attacks.
The soldier is humanized here, where the author says he had “a very strong and loving relationship with his wife.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/us/21hood.html
Notice:
The soldier is identified by full name and rank as Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
The author gives no mitigating factors for why the soldier may not be culpable.
The crime is described as one of the “deadliest mass shootings ever to unfold at an American military base.”
The soldier is described matter-of-factly with no attempt to make him seem normal, “While the results have not been officially disclosed, the progress of the case suggests that he was indeed found competent.”
Draw your own conclusions.
A Better Way to Sleep?
We all know that we are supposed to sleep for eight hours every night. This means going to bed around 10 pm and waking up at 6 am. For a variety of reasons, many of us find it difficult to sleep in this pattern. But what if the most basic things we think we know about sleep are wrong? What if we are biologically programmed for a totally different kind of sleep?
Imagine you are a doctor with a specialty in sleep. An adult male patient complains to you about his insomnia. Most nights he wakes up at 2 am, stays awake for about 2 hours, then goes back to sleep. You’ve dutifully prescribed four different drugs. Every time you switch to a new drug, he experiences about ten days of relief, then he goes back to his old pattern. He is a very compliant patient and following your instructions, he avoids caffeine, avoids exercise after 6 pm, and limits activity in bed to sleep. None of these instructions makes any bit of difference. He goes overnight to a sleep lab. He falls asleep at 11pm, wakes up at 2:30 am, stays up for two hours, then falls back asleep at 4:30 am. He wakes up for good at 7:30 am. Tests for sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and depression all come back negative. What do you do?
Before you run to the prescription pad for a fifth drug, you may want to consider consulting an unconventional expert – a sleep historian.
While researching his book about night in preindustrial times (At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past), A. Roger Ekirch, professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, uncovered the fact that before cities used widespread artificial illumination, most people slept in 2 shifts, which they called first sleep and second sleep. People would go to sleep first at sunset, around 8 pm. They would sleep until midnight when they would wake up. They stayed awake until 2 am. They slept again from 2 am to 6 am, when they would wake up for good.
Written records going back two thousand years reveal that the 2 shift pattern was common in Europe before artificial light extended the work day. These records show phrases for “first sleep” and “second sleep” in different European languages. Anthropologists have noticed tribes in Nigeria saying “first sleep” and “second sleep” in their languages. These Nigerians still practice segmented sleep.
Several mammal species show segmented sleep patterns. Chimpanzees, chipmunks, and giraffes sleep in two distinct shifts during the night. In fact, modern humans seem to stand out in their one-shift 8-hour sleep pattern.
Thomas Wehr, a sleep researcher has conducted sleep studies on human subjects. He found that when people experience 14 hours of continuous darkness, it takes them much longer to fall asleep. Instead of falling asleep after 15 minutes, which is typical for modern people living in developed countries, they only fell asleep after 2 hours. This delayed onset of sleep is consistent with the segmented sleep pattern. Wehr hypothesizes that the reason we fall asleep so quickly is because we are chronically sleep-deprived. Wehr summarizes, “”When modern humans find that their sleep is . . . interrupted by periods of wakefulness . . . they regard it as being disordered. . . . [A]n alternative explanation could be that a natural pattern of human sleep is breaking through into an artificial world in which it seems unfamiliar and unwelcome.”
The accountant troubled by broken sleep could well benefit from learning that the segmented sleep pattern he finds so distressing may be more natural than the continuous sleep he desires. And his doctor can tell him that in his nocturnal wakefulness he’s far from alone. He’s in the company not only of other mammals but also of his ancestors and many of his contemporaries. If the usual measures don’t suffice to give him the solid sleep he wants, tell him to savor the period before he returns to sleep. It’s a time to meditate, do housework, spend time with a significant other, or think about dreams. Or, as Wehr says, he can “just lie there and go back to sleep.”
Brown, W. A. (March 2007). Broken Sleep May Be Natural Sleep. Psychiatric Times, 40-41.
The Child is Father of the Man – A Poem by David Huerta
Posted by asad123 in Music, Poems, relationships on February 29, 2012
I don’t know how to seek you out inside me
child that I was: whether I have to scrape
with gritted nails
in memory’s plot
or call you forth with drastic invocations
I don’t believe in.
You’re lost – not lost to yourself:
only to me. But all the same I’m you,
or so they say, the ones who seem to know
more about me than I do, or than you do.
In the time that’s given to a life
you had your own time,
wide and stretching out as far as
the edge, the margin of endless play.
I know you played once as I’m playing now:
but this isn’t to meet you. I’m your repetition
- if only in the curtailed splendour
of the game, its guilt and innocence.
Wordsworth declares that you’re my father:
himself playing a weird and wild game
with the years, succession
and genetics. For my assembled parts,
the biological thing,
I had another father
- and now he’s dead. But you’re alive.
No doubt about it – you’re alive
like a pulsing shadow
inside me. Yet I have no knowledge of this ‘inside’.
When I examine the interior of what I am
I find a mass of inchoate forms
that even by an effort of memory
are barely distinguishable.
But you are there – untouchable, invisible.
Come closer. I sometimes think
you don’t want to
for fear I’ll kill you. Or that deftly
you elude me
out of an unfathomable
will to hide. Then I suspect
you have no fear of me -
as the shadow has no fear of the body
that casts it on the wall.
It could be that you’re always here
and that you’re the sacred form
of a cosmic ignorance
that should torment me.
Though perhaps, better still,
you’ve sounded the depths of visionary wisdom.
All the same, I know you hate
such big words, maybe
because you’ve no knowledge of them
nor they of you.
Among countless other things you may be,
I can understand that you’re precisely this:
the ignorance of big words.
That for the present moment of your absence
or of your manner of hiding
this is enough for me. In the meantime, in dreams,
I croon your songs without meaning
and, awake, I try to place them
in the irregular lines of serious play,
this other edge, this margin.
The final translated version of the poem is by Jamie McKendrick
No sé cómo buscarte dentro de mí,
niño que fui: si debo escarbar
encarnizadamente
en la memoria
o invocarte por medio de magias repentinas
en las que no creo.
Estás perdido pero no para ti mismo:
sólo para mí. Sin embargo soy tú,
o eso me dicen quienes parecen
saber más de mí que yo mismo; o que tú.
En el tiempo de la vida
tuviste un tiempo propio,
largo, dilatado
hasta el confín de juegos infinitos.
Sé que jugabas como ahora yo juego:
pero eso no es encontrarte. Soy tu repetición
-siquiera en el esplendor mínimo
del juego -y sus inocencias y sus culpas.
William Wordsworth afirma
que eres mi padre:
él juega un juego estrafalario
con los años, con las edades
y con la genética. Por las entrañas
y por la biología,
mi padre fue otro
-y ya está muerto. Tú estás vivo.
Y es cierto que vives
como una sombra palpitante
dentro de mí. Pero no conozco ese «dentro».
Cuando examino el interior de lo que soy
hallo solamente un amasijo de formas
indistintas, apenas discernible
por un esfuerzo del recuerdo.
Pero estás ahí, impalpable, invisible.
Acércate. Pienso a veces
que no quieres hacerlo
para que yo no te mate. O te me escapas
minuciosamente
por una voluntad incomprensible
de ocultamiento. Pues sospecho
que no me tienes miedo
-como no le tiene miedo la sombra
al cuerpo que la proyecta sobre la pared.
Es posible que siempre estés aquí
y seas la forma sagrada
de una ignorancia cósmica
que debería atormentarme.
Pero quizá, mejor aun,
tienes la hondura de una sabiduría
visionaria.
Sin embargo, sé que aborreces
tales grandes palabras, acaso
porque las desconocías
o porque ellas te desconocían.
Entre mil otras cosas, puedo entender
que eres precisamente eso:
el desconocimiento de las grandes palabras.
Que por el tiempo presente de tu ausencia
o de tu estilo de esconderte
eso me baste. Mientras tanto, en sueños,
murmuro tus cantos sin significado
y en la vigilia intento ponerlos
en líneas irregulares de juego serio,
ese otro confín.
Three Kinds of Souls
Posted by asad123 in Islam, Psychology on February 25, 2012
Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychologist, said the human self was divided into id, ego, and superego.
Islam says there are three types of souls – ammara, lawwama, and mutma’ina.
Is it just a coincidence that these two worldviews each have a set of three souls or is there some deeper connection?
The id is animalistic. Freud depicted it negatively, showing it as a source of base desires for food, power, and sex.
The nafs ammara “constantly commanding soul” is also prone to desire. It is continuously pushing the person toward things that will bring momentary satisfaction. But one key conceptual difference between the id and the nafs ammara is that even though this is the lowest level of the soul, it is neutral in character not negative. The nafs ammara is a creation of Allah and like all creation, it was created for good. Without the nafs ammara, we would not seek things like food and marriage, things that are necessary for the continuation of human life.
In Freudian psychology, the ego serves to keep the id in check. Conscience awareness resides in the human ego. If the id is passion, the ego is reason. The ego employs different defense mechanisms to keep the id from running amok. These defense mechanisms include rationalization, projection, fantasy, sublimation, and repression. Freud compared the relationship of the id and the ego to a horse and a rider. Just as a rider uses his brain to direct the horse, the ego uses reason to direct the id.
In Islam, the middle level of the soul is the nafs lawwama, or self-reproaching soul. The nafs lawwama is reactive. It reacts to a person’s sins or faults with criticism and reproach. Somewhat similar to the ego, it tries to regulate behavior by resorting to reason.
For Freud, the highest level of the self was the superego. The superego can be thought of as the conscience. The superego internalizes rules that come from parents, teachers, clerics, and authority figures. The superego encourages a person to obey social norms.
For Muslims, the highest level of the soul is the nafs mutma’ina, (the soul at peace). Unlike the superego which aims at achieving conformity to social norms, the nafs mutma’ina aims at reaching union with God. No longer needing to constantly criticize a person, this level of soul wants what Allah wants and dislikes what Allah dislikes. This is the level that the prophets and their righteous followers, May Allah’s Mercy descend upon them all, have achieved. I end this post with a prayer, that Allah allows all of us to have souls at peace in heaven. Ameen.
Sensual – Poem by Asad Jaleel
Posted by asad123 in Poems, relationships, Uncategorized on February 18, 2012
Sensual
I want to write a poem
For people who don’t like poetry
People like you
Grounded, diligent people
Brilliant, generous people
Start at the senses
Don’t read this with your eyes
Taste it with your mouth
Swish the syllables under your tongue
Feel each word like a soft kiss
I would just speak
In whispered s’s
And rolling l’s
Erase the hard letters
Your k’s and t’s and p’s
Lustfully lick your lips
Sip sentences like cider
Letters leave from my hands
Settle softly behind your teeth
Vibrate against the drums of your ears
This is a love letter
Not a pedantic lesson
Step out of the school
Don’t study this like a chapter
Feel it like a pounding rain
Scripture Analysis – 1 Corinthians 13
Posted by asad123 in Christianity, Islam, Poems on February 11, 2012
Text of 1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b]but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
- 1 Corinthians 13:1 Or languages
- 1 Corinthians 13:3 Some manuscripts body to the flames
- [References: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20corinthians%2013&version=NIV
- http://www.crivoice.org/biblestudy/bb1cor10.html]
[People call this passage, "The Hymn to Love." It is about a set of ideals of what love should be. Many readers find this to be one of the most elegant, beautiful, powerful portions of the New Testament.
The author is likely Paul, writing a letter to the people of the city of Corinth. Corinth was home to pagans who worshiped Aphrodite, a love deity. Paul acted as a missionary, trying to inspire these pagans to embrace Christianity.
Paul speaks often here of love. He wrote this in Greek, a language that has a number of specialized terms for love. He used only one Greek word for love in this passage - the word "agape." This kind of love is unselfish love, love that is neither greedy nor lustful.
Part of what makes this passage beautiful is its three-part structure. Verses 1-3 argue that love is the essence of religion, without which all religious acts lose their meaning. Verses 4-7 give attributes and non-attributes of unselfish love. Verses 8-13 are about the superiority of love over other things.
Verses 1-3 pose three scenarios where religious acts are devoid of love. One scenario is speaking in tongues. Another scenario is foretelling the future. The third is giving away all of one's wealth in charity. Paul wants the Corinthians to see that the value of an action depends on the intention behind it. I recognize an echo of this teaching in Islam where Prophet Muhammad (S) said that Allah judges all actions by intention.
Verses 4-7 describe unselfish love. Paul describes love as being humble, never boasting or being envious. Paul knows that people will hear this and think of times they felt pride in the context of a relationship. He's not just saying that love is not proud but he's also saying the converse, that what is prideful is not love. The kind of love that inspires sins like pride, envy, rage, and jealousy is not the highest love. For Paul and his followers, the highest love is love that wants the best for the other person without expecting anything in return. Incidentally, Christians frequently read Verses 4-7 at weddings.
Verses 8-13 talk about how love endures and supersedes other virtues. Paul has a profound insight here when he says that as a child, he reasoned in a childlike way. Modern constructivist education theory embraces this idea that children reason in a way that differs from the way adults reason. Paul says he became an adult and put aside childish things. Many people can relate to this, recognizing beliefs they had in childhood which they discarded after growing.
Then Paul ends quite powerfully with the line, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." He is saying that after discarding all the childish notions that he knew to be false, faith, hope and love remained. He is rejecting the cynical attitude that faith is delusion, that hope is wishful thinking, and that love is just pain. He affirms that these three are real, and love is the best of the three.
We can get lost in the dark places of the soul where it seems nothing is real. We can doubt the things that we used to hold as certain. But I believe, agreeing here with Paul, that faith can be real, hope can be real, and finally, that the love that deserves to be called love is real.]
Shalom to Israeli Readers
שלום לקוראים שלי בישראל. ברוכים הבאים לאתר שלי. לחלוק את מה שתמצא פה עם חברים ובני
משפחה. אנא חזור לעתים קרובות. תודה
Shalom to my readers in Israel. Welcome to my site. Share what you find here with friends and family. Please return often. Thank you.
Song Analysis – “Somebody I Used to Know” Gotye
Posted by asad123 in Music, relationships, Uncategorized on February 7, 2012
Gotye is Belgian and his name is pronounced “gaw’ tee ay.”
Now and then when I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and that’s an ache I still remember
[“But felt so lonely in your company” is a sweet turn of phrase. It suggests coldness and distance. Then he describes love as “an ache I can still remember.” Those of us who have been in love and lost it recognize this feeling.]
You can addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over
(I relate to the line about being addicted to sadness. During periods of my life, I have been stuck in patterns of feeling bad about myself. It’s weird that you can be addicted to feeling so bad, but all addiction goes from feeling good to feeling bad.]
She didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know (3x)
[Will Smith’s character on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” once said, “I was just a relative – you made me family.” The line here, “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know,” describes something that is going in the reverse direction. What is a person who was once your girlfriend? You can call her your ex. But she has no status in your life. She has no special rights or privileges as your ex. So she’s just somebody you used to know. There’s a poignancy in that because this woman went from maybe the most important woman in your life to a woman who is just one step above a stranger.]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something I had done
And I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Adele, Kelly Clarkson, and Rihanna Top Charts for Feb. 11 2012
Read the list of the top 40 artists for the week according to Billboard. The data comes from Nielsen BDS, Nielsen SoundScan, and “online music sources” ( likely iTunes, Rhapsody, and Amazon MP3).
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/charts/
Song Analysis – “A Good Year for the Roses” – George Jones
Posted by asad123 in Music, relationships on February 3, 2012
I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick
On the cigarettes there in the ashtray
Lyin’ cold the way you left them
At least your lips caressed them while you packed.
And a lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That you poured and didn’t drink
But at least you thought you wanted it
And that’s so much more than I can say for me.
Chorus:
But what a good year for the roses
Many blooms still linger there
The lawn could stand another mowin’
It’s funny, I don’t even care.
And when you turned and walked away
And as the door behind you closes
The only thing I know to say
It’s been a good year for the roses.
After three full years of marriage
It’s the first time that you haven’t made the bed
I guess the reason we’re not talkin’
There’s so little left to say, we haven’t said.
While a million thoughts go runnin’ through my mind
I find I haven’t spoke a word
And from the bedroom those familiar sounds
Of our one baby’s cryin’ goes unheard.
Chorus
[Frequent readers of this blog know I love story-songs. This is a fantastic example of a story song that uses subtle phrasing to communicate a great deal of meaning. It's a sad, touching narrative about a marriage falling apart.
It's almost as if time freezes and the speaker can see everything in crystal-clear detail. He sees lipstick on her used cigarettes and her mug of coffee. He muses that while the cigarettes are cold now, they felt the touch of his wife's lips, as if he envies these inanimate objects. Similarly, he talks about the half-filled (half empty?) cup of coffee that she didn't drink. Yet the coffee can boast that it was wanted and he feels like he hasn't been wanted in ages.
He describes the yard outside. It seems that he has turned to the yard as an escape. He feels powerless to fix his marriage but the garden is something that he can maintain. He notices that the grass is too long. The one thing in his world that seems to be doing well is the roses. Of course, roses are so often a metaphor for love and romance. The irony here is that he has these beautiful roses, but no one who will appreciate them.
It ends with a heart-breaking image- the couple's baby cries, yet no one hears the sound. The song could have ended with the man's tears, it could have ended with the wife's tears, yet by ending with the baby's tears, it makes the story so much sadder.]