Intolerable tolerence

Outrageous: The news story of the Saudi court sentencing a woman to 200 lashes for “illegal mingling.” If you are a Saudi woman, unlucky you. You can’t mingle with men unrelated to you. Oh, I forget to mention that they stood by their verdict even after they found out she was gangbanged by those men she was mingling with.

Something I respected about the first BBC coverage is their total refrain from any judgment on the Saudi law or the judges. But by the time I was reading their second story, I liked Clinton’s outrage at Bush’s neutrality towards this sentence, but I was appalled by the non-judgement the US system seems to provide, and provide generously, to the Saudi freedom to implement this kind of laws. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for freedom, but a country can have such horrible laws only if they are not free. Should the US stand back and not bring out their axis of evil winning card against such laws? This can only remind me of the many many major injustices the justice system in Saudi uses against its foreigners.

Is this the same situation where you have American feminists fighting their lives off to assure the legality of gay-marriage in the US, while turning their backs on grave and everyday injustices done to women worldwide? (To be  fair, some  of them glance back on other women  every once in a while)

Women can’t drive in Saudia Arabia. No strings attached. Period.

Time and Change in Physics

With the noble intention of self promotion, I am telling you about this talk, below, that I gave yesterday as a part of a series of physics graduate student seminars. I think the crowd was as nice enough as to actually ask me questions. I call this success! kind of. The most valuable part of this talk I think are the references (and the awesome Prague clock on the first page!) that’s why I am posting, since a fellow grad, Tristan, asked me to link it. Well, also, since I have talked about this topic that I have been reading about for so much I feel finally free to think about it differently: re-learn it if I am brave enough to  venture into re-learning.timetalk.pdf