The Reader

The Power of Hunger

Let me share with you what my learned friend told me of one riwayat. It is a dialogue between Allah and The Nafs. The conversation was in Arabic but I think all of us will understand:-

Allah: Man Anta?

Nafs: Anta,anta.Waana,ana.

For Nafs's arrogance,it was sent to Hell for afew years.

Then, Allah called The Nafs and asked it the same question.Allah got the same answer.

Then, Allah sent The Nafs to the Hell of Ju'(Hunger) for a few years.

When Allah summoned The Nafs back to answer the same question,here is The nafs reply:

Anta Rabbi.Waana abbduka.

That is THE POWER OF HUNGER over our nafs.

Galactical mergers..

Last Friday, I read with great interest about the mergers of two galaxies some 800 millions light years away from our planet earth. What interests me most are the type of actions still taking place in the deep place ,and it occurs at a distance beyond my mental grasp to comprehend the dimension of length.

Let's see how far is one light year? One light year is about 6 trillions miles. Then, let multiply that figure by 800 millions. The answer is about 4.8 billion trillions miles(10 to the power of 21)!!! My mind is too small to be stretched to understand the size of our universe...

HIV and AIDS

To-day I was invited to attend a discourse to identify new research projects with a group of our scientists and doctors. What shocked me was the number of deaths due to AIDS/HIV is scary and the growth is exponential.

We need more money and time is not on our side:-(

04-04-04

To-day is a special day in the year of 2004.It is the 4th day of the 4th month and the fourth year of 2000!
As someone who loves number( but not as much as Paul Erdos,the famous mathematician),I blog about it just for the record.

What is there in a number?

To the mathematicians, they will spend the major part of their life looking and studying numbers.To Paul Erdos,he loved nothing else but numbers.To the superstitious,they will pay more than RM 100,000 for a certain plate number for their cars;not to mentioned quite a number of us paid a good sums of money to have our own special numbers for our phones.

A friend of mine ,who contested in Kelantan under Barisan National in the last General Election,lost by TWO votes.I think ,he is the only one in this world who really knows the meaning of number 2!

When it comes to money,everyone understands numbers,even a five-year old kid!

10 Zulhijah,1424

The above is taken from moonsighting.com

The website concludes that 10 Zulhijah is going to be on 1st Febuary.The official date for Eidul Adha( Hari Raya Kurban) will be announced by the authority. I have yet to get information on the date of the "wukuf" in Arafah.

Unsolved mathematical problems

Let me confess my other love-it is mathematics. I still read mathematics books until to-day;and that is after more than 25 I left the university. I know this subject is hated by many, but please allow me to write a short blog with some links to my other mathematical webpages. When I was in form Six(A-level), I told my teacher that I wanted to be a mathematician. But I am not good enough ,so I became an engineer;-)

A few years ago( can't remember the year), I read the book on Fermat's Last Theorem.It was a pure mathematics problem that remained unsolved for 350 years!The problem was solved by one Princeton University researcher Andrew Wiles a decade ago. It was an enjoyable read but you need basic pure mathematics pre-U level to understand the discussion.

To-day, I read that another 100-year old problem called Poincare Conjecture is about to be solved by a Russian. If he could proved it, then there is US1million prize money for him. I like the money but I may take 200 years to solve it.So, I prefer to do other business to make money and read the books instead;-)

"So far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,they are not certain.And so far as they are certain ,they do not refer to reality".
-Albert Einstein

Beauty lies..

As they used to say,"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder".May I add,the pun is intended.Just take the case of the moon.Most poets talked about its beauty and young men(in love) referred to the beauty of their beloved like the beauty of the moon. When I saw Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the place did not look beautiful at all;-)

What I understood, the physical eyes( eyesight) only see the visuals, but the mind and the hearts that make the difference.Just look at the sun.If we were to look at what the sun is, it does not look great to me. But,a little bit of knowledge about the sun that it is the greatest nuclear reactor around our galaxy that produces enegy,heat and light through the conversion of Hydrogen gas to Helium gas made me think it is a beautiful creation by God Almighty to serve our needs on the planet earth.

Planet Mars looks beautiful from a distance.On the surface of it, I don't know.But if you compare the composition of the atmosphere of the planet Earth and the planet Mars, it looks like the opposite.It has very little oxygen( about 0.3 %) and too much carbon dioxide( more than 97%). What I can conclude is that God created everything with specific features and for a particular purpose.One thing I am sure, we homo sapiens are not suited to live on Mars and we men DON'T come from Mars!

Before, we come down to planet Earth, let me take you to explore the beauty of mathematics.But then, only mathematicians and mathematical minded people will appreciate it.Just take Einstein General Theory of Relativity and Fermat Last Theorem.The mathematical expressions are so short and simple but yet a few handful of us only understood Eintein's theory and it took hundreds of mathematicians over 300 years to prove the Fermat Last Theorem.Now, beauty *really* lies in the eyes of the beholder!

[Just remember two more mathematicians-John Nash and Paul Erdos,but don't worry-I am not going to bore you with their works]

Before I get lost in the stratosphere and get TAKEN by foreign aliens,let me get back to Mother Earth quickly...

Ten years ago, I made my first trip to The Land of The Rising Sun.There, I discovered another form of beauty-the simplicity is a beauty by itself. Just look at Japanese garden,their packing of products and their sushi -just to mention a few...

Talking about The Beauty,it also reminds me of The Beast.Next month, when I am in Paris(insyaAllah), I would love to visit The Church of Notredam.Who knows ,he might still be there..but I am more interested to see The Beauty and not The Beast.What says you Penawan in London?