The effect of reading the Qur’an and repeating the word ALLAH...

Vander Hoven, a psychologist from Netherlands, announced his new discovery

about the effect of reading the Qur'an and repeating the word ALLAH both on

patients and on normal persons. The Dutch professor confirms his discovery

with studies and research applied on many patients over a period of three

years. Some of his patients were non-Muslims, others do not speak Arabic and

were trained to pronounce the word "ALLAH" clearly; the result was great,

particularly on those who suffer from dejection and tension.

"Al Watan", a Saudi daily reported that the psychologist was quoted to say

that Muslims who can read Arabic and who read the Qur'an regularly can

protect themselves from psychological diseases. The psychologist explained

how each letter in the word "ALLAH" affects healing of psychological

diseases. He pointed out in his research that pronouncing the first letter

in the word "ALLAH" which is the letter (A), released from the respiratory

system, controls breathing. He added that pronouncing the velar consonant

(L) in the Arabic way, with the tongue touching slightly the upper part of

the jaw producing a short pause and then repeating the same pause

constantly, relaxes the aspiration. Also, pronouncing the last letter which

is the letter (H) makes a contact between the lungs and the heart and in

turn this contact controls the heart beat.

What is exciting in the study is that this psychologist is a non-Muslim, but

interested in Islamic sciences and searching for the secrets of the Holy

Qur'an. Allah, The Great and Glorious, says, "We will show them Our signs in

the universe and in their own selves, until it becomes manifest to them that

this (Qur'an) is the truth." (Holy Qur'an 42:53)

[Translated from the Qatari "Arraya" Daily Sunday, 24 March, 2002]

Source: http://smma59.wordpress.com/2006/09/07/the-effect-of-reading-the-qur'an-and-repeating-the-word-allah-vander-hoven-a-psychologist-from-netherlands/

Study claims Internet forums increase political participation

By Alan Franciose

In the study, conducted by Northeastern political science professor David Lazer, online town hall meetings showed promising results for the impact of the Internet in political systems. The study showed people who took part in the online meetings increased their approval and trust of officials, as well as a demonstrated an increase in voting and political discussion.A new study suggests that the Internet may revolutionize the way the public and the government communicate with each other.

"Much like the printing press of another era, the Internet is being used to transform our democracy," the study's introduction said.
The study states that in a democracy, the ability for constituents and representatives to communicate with each other is of critical importance as it creates a feedback cycle. Members of the public first voice their opinions, giving representatives feedback about what their core supporters are asking for. This creates an incentive for the representatives to respond to concerns, as their ability to respond to the wishes of the public, decides whether the public will vote for them or not.

Clear communication between representatives and constituents is critical if the feedback cycle is to work.  The Internet may prove to be the next big method for political communication.

The study enlisted the help of one senator, Carl Levin of Michigan, and 12 representatives. The representatives participated in an online forum about illegal immigration with between 15 and 25 constituents. The senator's session, however, included 193 constituents. The officials responded to constituent questions for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of chat between the constituents without the congressional official present.
"The finding that really excited me the most was the affects on political attention and engagement," Lazer said.

The study showed the town halls increased constituents' knowledge of illegal immigration policy. The participants were asked several questions about illegal immigration, and their answers were more often correct than those of a control group who did not partake in the discussion.

The study showed whether or not the particular facts were mentioned by the member in the session had little impact on learning. Instead, learning seemed to have been driven by increased engagement with the issue, where those who participated were more likely to talk to others about the issue, and those who talked to others about the issue were more likely to learn about the issue.                       

Discussions allowed people from a wide demographic to come together and participate. Traditional town halls tend to bring a certain slice of the population, Lazer said, the people who have the time and motivation to travel to see an official in person. The Internet is widely, though not universally, available allowing many more people to come together.

"Young people were more likely to participate," Lazer said. "That was not something we expected, it was exciting."

"If I had the chance to [participate in an online town hall], I would," said junior psychology major Shana Szerlag. "I think more people would be willing to speak in that setting."

However, when politics and the Internet come together, the validity of the discussions being held can face some problems. Lazer said there is always a chance that an online town hall might not be moderated by neutral players, and that certain questions may be chosen or framed solely to make the representative look good.

"It's far from hopeless," said Lazer. "A balanced forum, like the ones held for the study, demonstrate the significant impact such meetings can hold for the public, a fact that outweighs the potential for misuse."

Source: http://www.huntington-news.com/news/study-claims-internet-forums-increase-political-participation-1.2063436

Scholarly Communications Must Transform

Academics have been conditioned to believe that they are responsible scholars if their work appears in reputable peer-reviewed journals or comes out through academic presses. Ever since the 17th century, the "advancement of learning" as Francis Bacon called it, has depended upon the way print publications have organized the evaluation and dissemination of academic work. The print medium has been the default scholarly medium.

Well, it's been a good 300 years. But print is no longer the primary intellectual medium, and it is time for scholars to move forward.

In the digital age, scholarship cannot succeed by working upon the assumptions (nor within the formats and procedures) of a communications system based on print publishing. Today's scholarly communications system must transform, setting aside print paradigm restrictions and fully integrating with the networked knowledge environment of the digital age. 

This post introduces criteria for a digitally transformed scholarly communications system. But first, let's go back in time for a little thought experiment.

In the mid 1700s -- when learned journals really came into their own -- imagine there is some bright scholar who wishes to share some of his best thinking with the world. He is most comfortable with communicating via handwritten letters. After all, scholars used to share information about their work in just this way all the time before scholarly periodicals began appearing in the 1660s. How would our scholar do?

Well, the quality of this scholar's ideas wouldn't matter a great deal in the 1700s if he insisted on sending them around by letter.  Why? Because at this time, in the Enlightenment, information circulated principally by way of print. What people discussed in the coffee houses or in universities was what was getting published in print. In fact, the medium became so important to the message that the authority of knowledge has become associated with its appearance in print. If something was worthwhile, it was worth circulating; if it wasn't, then it wasn't worth spreading through the most prominent medium of the day. And if you refused for some reason to package your thinking within the typeset bounds of the new dominant medium, well, you just plain took yourself out of the game.

I'm sure there was a lot of whining about this as letters and hand-copied manuscripts receded from prominence among scholars. That whole infrastructure that depended upon the manuscript tradition melted away. Gone were the professional scribes, gone were the beauties of calligraphy, gone were the  illuminations that decorated medieval manuscripts. And that personal touch of something handwritten -- could it ever be replaced?

Yes it could.

And those foolish enough to cling to the outgoing medium simply exiled themselves from the new republic of letters -- the exciting new domain of printed literature that reached more people and engaged more minds than the manuscript-based communications system ever could.

Now, let's further pretend that Leonardo da Vinci, that brilliant Renaissance man active in the late 1400s, was  somehow transported forward into the 18th century. His notebooks were amazing, full of novel ideas and fascinating sketches. But he simply wouldn't have been taken seriously in the Enlightenment if his ideas went unprinted. Or, to press the analogy, if our time traveling da Vinci agreed to have his work printed, but insisted that it appear exactly as he wrote it down in his notebooks (in a coded script that took a mirror to read), then his work also would have failed because it would have defied the conventions of the new medium -- which included expanded accessibility and greater standardization of the presentation of information. Sorry Leonardo, you can't go halfway into the new medium and expect to be taken seriously. 

I claim that today's academic publishers and the institutions that uphold them are like my fictional da Vinci, going into the digital age just far enough not to appear utterly out of touch, but essentially clinging to the print paradigm and all the customs and institutions that have grown up around it. Print was a recipe for success from the Enlightenment through the 20th century; today, it is a recipe for the failure of academia as a knowledge system.

And print is persisting online, as ironic as that sounds. The scholarly genres, the methods for evaluating publications, the conventions and expectations surrounding how knowledge is supposed to circulate, be recognized, responded to, and built upon -- these remain largely unchanged. Knowledge has new habits, new identities, and a new social life within the radically transformed ways in which communication takes place today. But you wouldn't know this by examining today's scholarly communications system -- no matter how many journals now offer electronic versions. It's business as usual as far as how publications operate in the academic knowledge and reputation culture. Scholars in 2009 are still publishing as though knowledge works they way that print taught us that it works back in 1709 when print was achieving its monopoly on learned communication.

The print monopoly over knowledge is over. We must have a scholarly communications system configured to the predominant communications medium of the new millennium. This is a frightening prospect, since the new medium threatens the authority of the old, and academics have gotten very used to protecting their authority by controlling learned communication. That control is beginning to slip from their hands, just as it already has from professional journalists, the scholars' cousins. That group has also been very self-assured about their status and authority as information gate keepers. Some of them still write witty invectives against that vast sea of citizen journalists and their silly blogging -- certainly the unwashed many are not capable of conducting bonafide investigative journalism! But the crowds are typing louder than the professional journalists can shout about it. The bloggers are even Dan Rathering the Dan Rathers of the world, exposing the errors of those used to doing the exposing.

Is academia really that much more protected from the masses and their extremely powerful communication tools? Academics who refuse to transform the way they communicate and value information will find, like the professional journalists, that they simply won't play much of a role in the knowledge commons.

Scholars fancy themselves as stewards of knowledge. I claim they are incompetent stewards if they persist in following conventional academic publishing practices. Why? Because those practices  now substantially devalue and cheapen all that hard-won knowledge by slowing its release and restricting its circulation. Scholarship today cannot be considered a responsible and responsive knowledge system by continuing to operate upon the assumptions or within the formats and procedures that have characterized print communications. The scholarly monograph may not quite seem as silly as someone hand writing letters to people in the 1700s, but it is going to. 

Scholars are about to lose the knowledge franchise by not applying for full digital citizenship. Their tourist visas to cyberspace are going to expire, and no amount of email or electronically-conducted research will be adequate if the academics of tomorrow don't buy into the communications culture of today, fully. The new medium -- young as it is -- has principles and conventions that must be known and obeyed, just as the writers of manuscripts long ago had to learn to abide by the conventions of the print medium if they wanted their knowledge to have the impact that the new medium offered.

For scholarship to gain full citizenship in the digital age, it must become a fully optimized information system. And today, that means scholarly communications must meet at least the following criteria:

• Scholarly communications must be open
• Scholarly communications must be standards-compliant
• Scholarly communications must be syndicated
• Scholarly communications must be integrated into the cyber-infrastructure
• Scholarly communications must be analytics-enabled
  
• Scholarly communications must be mobile, and
• Scholarly communications must be scalable

These criteria can make for a robust scholarly information system calibrated to the networked online environment and the communications culture of today. Abiding by them will enable academic publishing to survive and thrive within the emerging knowledge environment; ignoring them will effectively decommission scholarship and disenfranchise its adherents.

I hasten to add that these requisite attributes are not automatic features of electronic communication, online periodicals, or digitized scholarly content. They are also not just the concern of information technologists. They involve technical protocols, but they are based upon philosophies about information that academics must understand, accept, implement, and expect of one another.

Source: http://www.academicevolution.com/2009/08/scholarly-communications-must-transform-1.html

These standards are in many ways at odds with the processes and quality control protocols of traditional academic scholarship. Why these criteria matter so much and how they challenge status quo publishing is the subject of this series of posts.

The Man Who Despises America

By Mark Hyman on 11.11.09 @ 6:09AM

The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the "they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality" crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.

Barack Obama despises America.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.

The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.

Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.

Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life's accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.

Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader's most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.

Obama's view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.

Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.

Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused "America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward its European allies.

He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.

Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA "torture memos," seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.

In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation's long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.

Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua's Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere's other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?

Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.

In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.

In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation's founders were devout Christians.

In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America's history of slavery; for "sacrificing [American] values;" for "hasty decisions" in the war on terror; for "America's standing in the world;" for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.

He pronounced Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Obama's approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.

This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran's election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.

In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister's requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.

Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.

Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. -- or even the West, for that matter -- in bringing down the wall, instead crediting "a world that stands as one."

Obama's disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and "truther" who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush's Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)

Three weeks after America's first black president was sworn in, the nation's first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America "a nation of cowards" for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder's comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.

Obama's Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.

One of Obama's very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He's all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.

Hours after a belligerent "African-American Studies" Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having "acted stupidly" and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.

Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama's motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.

In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was "shocked and outraged by the murder" of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a "heinous act of violence." Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.

But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was "saddened" without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.

Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military's Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.

The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.

Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2009/11/11/the-man-who-despises-america