“Saadanius is a genus of fossil primate dating to the Oligocene that is closely related to the common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes, collectively known as catarrhines. It is represented by a single species, Saadanius hijazensis, which is known only from a single partial skull tentatively dated between 29 and 28 mya (million years ago). It was discovered in 2009 in western Saudi Arabia near Mecca and was first described in 2010 after a comparison with both living and fossil catarrhines.

Saadanius had a longer face than living catarrhines and lacked the advanced frontal sinus (airspaces in the facial bones) found in living catarrhines. However, it had a bony ear tube (ectotympanic) and teeth comparable to those of living catarrhines. The discovery of Saadanius may help answer questions about the appearance of the last common ancestors of Old World monkeys and apes and help date the evolutionary split between these two primate groups.”

Read more from wikipedia

اكتشاف حفرية لكائن من الرئيسيات في الصحراء القريبة من مكة بالمملكة العربية السعودية قد تملأ فجوة في التاريخ النشوئي للرئيسيات، وتساعد في تحديد متى انقسمت أشباه البشر والقردة العليا عن قردة العالم القديم.

اكتشفت بعثة بقيادة هيئة المساحة الجيولوجية السعودية بالمملكة العربية السعودية وجامعة ميتشجان بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية حفرية محفوظة جيداً لجزء من جمجة كائن من الرئيسيات من بداية العصر الضحوي.

Read the original research at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09094 and find more science from the Arab world at Nature Middle East: http://www.nature.com/nmiddleeast/index.html

Check this hot chick out!

Brave girl, strong character, intriguing perspective, look forward to seeing more of her stuff

She says: “I have very good self esteem in myself. I rarely start fights with people because I’m at peace with my soul. People who are jealous, will always put down others. If you point your finger at me and call me degrading names, I will bite your finger off and then shove it up your ass.”

And here’s some extract from an interview of her’s:

“No matter what Muslims do, every time a Muslim makes a film or writes a play or whatever about Pakistanis or Indians or w/e who aren’t “typical” they still get hate about it. It makes me so mad. Some Muslims ask me why do I write about “Muslim whores” and I’m like, why the fuck not? They exist.

…

I had hot pink hair once and my father was furious, he wouldn’t speak to me for 3 weeks. I told him to get over it. I can’t stand that patronizing bullshit from parents, especially Desi or Muslims. They are making judgmental remarks about people who dye their hair or get tattoos or wear revealing clothes. What the fuck does it matter to them? It’s their lives and their bodies, it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

I also used to wear hijab, too, you know. For about 3 years in the late 90s to early 2000s.

… one day, I had a wake-up call from a goth girl who was sitting next to me. She was the only one in the entire college who was nice to me, while everyone else were extremely nasty toward me. I stared at her hair and her outfit and then I thought to myself, “what the fuck happened to me? I used to be a punk and now I’ve become this?” and then I realized how wearing the hijab is such an artificial thing to do. I don’t want to piss off any hijabis here. But I truly felt that wearing the hijab was a slap in the face for women’s individuality and their bodies. Someone once said that wearing hijab is saying “YES, we women are sex objects, so we HAVE to cover ourselves to protect ourselves from men’s lustful glances!”and when I sat next to the goth girl I thought about how some Muslims would call her a “whore” because she was wearing a short skirt. But she was such a nice girl. And I felt dirty. I felt like a hypocrite. I still wore hijab for 1 more year after that goth girl incident and then I took it off.

When I wore the hijab, sometimes I was under the pressure to be a saint-like a proper Muslim who had to be polite and be on her best behavior all the time. Some people said that we hijabis were REPRESENTING Muslims and we had to be on our best behavior. That was a lot of pressure. When I took it off, I no longer felt that way. When I wore hijab, whenever I’d cuss or make sex jokes or whatever, people were shocked and looked confused. They would say, “Why are you talking this way? I thought you’re a good girl.” I hate that shit. Hijabis should be allowed to cuss and talk about sex and watch porn if they want to. They shouldn’t have to be saints for everyone else while they all go get drunk and have sex! Hijabis are humans, too.”

Her YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/VelmaSabina

Her website: http://www.sabinaengland.com/

Her Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabina-England-the-deaf-muslim-Punk-playwright/275393336529

Her creative writings: http://deadamericandream.blogspot.com/

I’m listening to this book by Rafael Sabatini at the moment and not only is it an entertaining story but the influence of Islamic culture and history makes the story even more fascinating to my ears.

Listen as this English gentleman is betrayed into slavery, liberated by Muslim pirates, and embracing Islam goes on to attack the wealth of Christendom and make slaves of their persons.

As a Muslim pirate he soon becomes the lieutenant of the prince of Algiers, Asad ad-Din, Lion of the Religion, who is a devout believer in the “One True God”.

Listen as Islamic law is made use of to provide guile and intrigue.

Fast paced and action packed. By Allah you’ll enjoy this one

Download the entire audiobook (Total running time: 14:37:42): http://www.archive.org/download/sea_hawk_0710_librivox/sea_hawk_0710_librivox_64kb_mp3.zip

Or listen/download (right click + ‘Save Link As”) from here:

# 01 Preface and The Huckster – 00:35:36
[mp3@64kbps - 17.0MB]

# 02 Rosamund – 00:27:39
[mp3@64kbps - 13.2MB]

# 03 The Forge – 00:26:44
[mp3@64kbps - 12.8MB]

# 04 The Intervener – 00:21:31
[mp3@64kbps - 10.3MB]

# 05 The Buckler – 00:28:22
[mp3@64kbps - 13.6MB]

# 06 Jason Leigh – 00:28:49
[mp3@64kbps - 13.8MB]

# 07 Trepanned – 00:17:39
[mp3@64kbps - 8.4MB]

# 08 The Spaniard – 00:19:52
[mp3@64kbps - 9.5MB]

# 09 The Captive – 00:25:42
[mp3@64kbps - 12.3MB]

# 10 The Renegade – 00:38:55
[mp3@64kbps - 18.6MB]

# 11 Homeward Bound – 00:11:20
[mp3@64kbps - 5.4MB]

# 12 The Raid – 00:34:57
[mp3@64kbps - 16.7MB]

# 13 The Lion of the Faith – 00:24:48
[mp3@64kbps - 11.9MB]

# 14 The Convert – 00:17:19
[mp3@64kbps - 8.3MB]

# 15 Marzak-ben-Asad – 00:24:38
[mp3@64kbps - 11.8MB]

# 16 Mother and Son – 00:24:59
[mp3@64kbps - 11.9MB]

# 17 Competitors – 00:31:02
[mp3@64kbps - 14.8MB]

# 18 The Slave Market – 00:35:21
[mp3@64kbps - 16.9MB]

# 19 The Truth – 00:48:46
[mp3@64kbps - 23.4MB]

# 20 The Subtlety of Fenzileh – 00:23:46
[mp3@64kbps - 11.4MB]

# 21 In the Sight of Allah – 00:29:12
[mp3@64kbps - 14.0MB]

# 22 The Sign – 00:22:20
[mp3@64kbps - 10.7MB]

# 23 The Voyage – 00:25:58
[mp3@64kbps - 12.4MB]

# 24 The Pannier – 00:17:39
[mp3@64kbps - 8.4MB]

# 25 The Dupe – 00:15:04
[mp3@64kbps - 7.2MB]

# 26 Sheik Mat – 00:28:01
[mp3@64kbps - 13.4MB]

# 27 The Mutineers – 00:37:50
[mp3@64kbps - 18.1MB]

# 28 The Messenger – 00:14:38
[mp3@64kbps - 7.0MB]

# 29 Moriturus – 00:20:17
[mp3@64kbps - 9.7MB]

# 30 The Surrender – 00:25:53
[mp3@64kbps - 12.4MB]

# 31 The Heathen Creed – 00:18:20
[mp3@64kbps - 8.8MB]

# 32 The Judges – 00:20:45
[mp3@64kbps - 9.9MB]

# 33 The Advocate – 00:42:16
[mp3@64kbps - 20.2MB]

# 34 The Judgment – 00:11:44
[mp3@64kbps - 5.6MB]

Sabatini also wrote some other excellent books including Sacramouche, and Captain Blood, both which I enjoyed listening to.

Here’s the 1940 movie with Errol Flynn (part 1 is missing), I haven’t watched it yet though:

http://SciView.com/sexy-atheist-youtube-girls/

Here’s a special treat for my Saudi brothers, 10 of the sexiest Atheist girls alive!

I know how it feels guys. I lived in KSA for a year in total and experienced the utter frustration of never seeing (much less touching) any live sexy flesh. I know what it’s like to be sitting in a dark smoke filled internet cafe late at night; the cafe’s metal gate rolled down to appear closed in accordance with curfew, hoping no one can see into your private booth as you feverishly search for any of the rare porn sites that have not been blocked by the authorities, touching yourself but not wanting to go any further, despairing over your lack of faith, hoping to get home with the images still fresh in your mind…

I remember too the passion that enflamed me when I saw pretty eyes or bulging bosom through the enveloping niqab. It was hard to stop fanaticising over the few times that a sister, all covered in black, hit on me.

Subhanallah, she could be a real hotty!

Neazor has already more than met the very low expectations I had of him. While I definitely was adversely affected by the incompetent management I experienced while working for the SIS, as I have already said, I enjoyed the experience, benefited from it personally, and do not regret anything except that I was unable to bring some aspects of my work regarding training for Jihad to a conclusion (due to my personal and student life suffering).

What interests me is that there are other agents working in the field, and other activities of the SIS, which may well be severely compromised by the kind of incompetence that I experienced. I am making a personal complaint as this seems the only avenue through which a complaint of any sorts can be made.

Here’s my response to Neazor:

Dear Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Hon D.P. Neazor

As I stated in the letter I sent you the SIS did not pay me the annual bonus and travel that had been verbally contracted to me. They were refused in early 2009 after I had worked an entire year under the understanding that I would be paid as agreed. Further to this; while I functionally put an end to my work for the SIS on the 10th of June 2009, I was not paid up until that date, I had a written contact for my regular salary, and it was not till some time after the 10th of June that my employment was officially terminated.

While working for the SIS I had been informed that I was free from prosecution, and that if any charges were brought against me by the police the SIS would intervene. I was told that I was free to quit whenever I chose without consequence. However, when I made it public that I was no longer a Muslim and related my past as an Islamic militant publicly, I was told to expect the police would search my home, that I would likely be prosecuted, and that I may never be able to travel out of New Zealand again. I was told thus several times and sometimes such threats were accompanied by requests to remove the video I had published on YouTube. I am free to publicly state my lack of religious beliefs, and as for relating my past as a militant; I had been relating my militant activities to members of the Islamic community with the permission of the SIS, and Gregory Thorne, my old boss, had even encouraged me to one day write a book on my history.

I was repeatedly told by my boss that I was not required to maintain the cover, and its associated constraints, that I had developed for myself as a radical Islamist. Not only did such inane behaviour directly oppose the purpose of my work, but it has the potential to compromise the safety of people working undercover. As I told you, when I slackened the rigorous precautions I was taking it was not long after that people I was investigating began mentioning to my face rumours they had heard concerning me (and consequently I again undertook my previous discipline without bothering to tell my boss).

I did say that I did not wish to make a personal complaint; yet after due consideration I changed my mine. You say you will not examine my complaint further having read my letter; yet I clearly stated in my letter that rather than it being a full account of the incidents I thought worthy of complaint it merely gave examples, and you have made no effort to request from me any additional information. In the first letter you sent to me, after my having corresponded via an Ombudsman, you stated that you had not replied to my original letter as it had been addressed to the PM and I did not supply you with an address; yet the email was addressed to you, I have a copy in my email (the second one from the Ombudsman was incorrectly addressed to the PM), and I had supplied you with my mobile phone number and email.

With regards to your office; I am sure you know your work and function. If in the future there were an attack by militants in New Zealand and the SIS was found to be severely lacking, perhaps that is none of your business and you’d be entirely comfortable with the manner in which you conducted yourself.

I worked as a close confident of leaders in the Muslim community who were dedicated to Jihad and preparing to, and had began, physical training for Jihad. We were preparing camps in New Zealand forests for such training and the SIS had notified me they wished to prepare and conduct surveillance of these camps. Yet what I experienced in working with the SIS, in terms of how they managed me, and in terms of how they went about their business, was incompetence. I do not ask that the organisation should be judged based solely upon my experiences; what is required is that the SIS’s organisational practice be investigated and be compared to international best practice both in terms of the functions unique to intelligence agencies and also in terms of basic human resource management.

Extrapolating from my experiences it is my opinion that New Zealand may not be in the position of possessing a properly functioning intelligence agency. Unfortunately it appears as if the SIS has very meagre oversight and no avenue for such serious matters to be addressed. While there may be some security risk in publishing accounts such as mine, for if I were a militant wishing to do damage to New Zealand society such accounts would give me great confidence, I decided that the best thing to do is try and draw attention to my experiences in the hopes that any inadequacies could be repaired.

I will continue my efforts, I will publish my experiences in greater detail, and be assured that I will publish the manner in which you conduct your office.

Yours sincerely

Charles Wardle

Check out some of Joe Rogan’s views on religion http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=joe+rogan+religion&aq=f

Yeah man, like Rogan says, go smoke a joint and educate yourself!

Dana White, UFC president, in a PlayBoy interview:

PLAYBOY: You mentioned being a tough kid.
WHITE: I grew up in Las Vegas. My dad used to be a firefighter, but later he was mainly out drinking. My mom was a nurse. She worried because I was a horrible student who hated school. She kept threatening to put me in private school and finally did—St. Viator’s School in the eighth grade, then Bishop Gorman High School. Strict Catholic schools. I got expelled twice. Once was for kicking an old nun’s door shut. That door would make a huge bang; I would kick it and run, then she would freak and let the kids out of class, so the kids loved me. One day I kicked it and my shoe flew 30 feet in the air—right to her! “Ha-ha, I’ve got him now!” They caught me walking around with one shoe and kicked me out.

The other time was for fighting. This guy was tossing big heavy rocks at a toad in a planter. I said, “Knock it off. Leave that toad alone.”

“Fuck you,” he said. So we fought. I was throwing punches, thinking, Here I am in Catholic school, saving a horny toad’s life. They’ll say I’m a hero! No, they kicked me out again.

PLAYBOY: Are you still a Catholic?
WHITE: I don’t believe in God, the devil, ghosts or any of that shit. But I’m still fascinated by religion—how violent and crazy it is. That stuff sticks with you.

PLAYBOY: Ever have a religious experience?
WHITE: The summer of my junior year I was 16, drunk and hauling ass in my girlfriend’s Subaru with a girl who wasn’t my girlfriend. I had just met this girl at an under-21 club. I hit the median, spun the car and hit a pole, and the impact shot me out of the car. It scalped me, took all the hair off my head. I landed in the parking lot of the Dunes, which is now the Bellagio, with chunks of glass in my head and rocks and shit in my knees. Broke my collarbone. My feet busted open like baked potatoes. The girl was okay, but she was screaming. I couldn’t see, but I heard someone say, “I’m a doctor, I’m a doctor.” The doctor looked me over and said, “He’s dead.” I remember lying there, thinking, Oh my gosh, I’m fuckin’ dead. Then he said, “I got a pulse. He’s alive!” I spent that summer in the hospital. Then my mom sent me to live with my grandma in Levant, Maine. That makes sense, doesn’t it? You’ve got this troubled kid the parents can’t handle, so you send him to a 70-year-old lady in Maine. I just went out drinking and partying every night. Girls and more girls.

PLAYBOY: You were a ladies’ man?
WHITE: I was very sexual. I was 14 the first time I had sex. It was in a maintenance shed in Vegas with a girl named Jane, with rakes and lawn mowers all around us.

PLAYBOY: You had the sharpest tool in the shed.
WHITE: Probably the smallest! It was awkward and very fast. I obviously didn’t impress Jane, since that was the only time we got together.”

I’m not writing this post as some kind of strawman, claiming Dana or Rogan’s opinions suggest anything about the existence of a supernatural “god”. Their opinions are irrelevant, and religious claims can be easily dismissed with a little basic science and reason.

But I am a BIG BIG UFC fan!

So many of my favourite fighters, like Wanderlei Silva, are religious. Fedor, who I love to watch fight, comes across as a radical Orthodox Russian nationalist (who is probably going to enter politics *shudder*).

Good on you Dana and Rogan for speaking how you feel when so many of your US fans are conservative, religious “nutters”

Yeah, and I haven’t been posting much due to exams, last of which is tomorrow. I’ll be working on my site quite a bit after that and plan on setting up a routine with more regular posts and more scientific content.

Written by Benjamin Joffe-Walt
Published Monday, May 17, 2010

Incident follows a wave of challenges to the authority of the commission enforcing religious law.

It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, he asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

“To see resistance from a woman means a lot,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist told The Media Line. “People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years. This is just the beginning and there will be more resistance.”

“The media and the Internet have given people a lot of power and the freedom to express their anger,” she said. “The Hai’a are like a militia, but now whenever they do something it’s all over the Internet. This gives them a horrible reputation and gives people power to react.”

Neither the religious police nor the Eastern Province police has made a statement on the incident, and both the names of the couple and the date of the incident have not been made public, but on Monday the incident was all over the Saudi media.

Should the woman be charged, she could face a lengthy prison term and lashings for assaulting a representative of a government institution.

Saudi law does not permit women to be in public spaces without a male guardian. Women are not allowed to drive, inherit, divorce or gain custody of children, and cannot socialize with unrelated men.

Officers of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are tasked with enforcing such laws, but it hasn’t been an easy year for Saudi Arabia’s religious police.

The decision last year by Saudi King Abdullah to open the kingdom’s first co-educational institution, with no religious police on campus, led to a national crises for Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious authorities, with the new university becoming a cultural proxy war for whether or not women and men should be allowed to mix publicly.

A senior Saudi cleric publicly criticized the gender mixing at the university and was summarily fired by the king.

That was followed in December by a surprise announcement from Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, head of the Saudi religious police commission in Mecca, who published an article against gender segregation, leading to threats on his life and rumors that he has or will be fired.

Meanwhile, the Saudi government has gone to great efforts recently to improve the image of the religious police, most notably by firing the national director of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice earlier this year. The new director Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Humain then announced a series of training programs and a special unit to handle complaints against the religious police.

But last month members of the religious police in the northern province of Tabuk were charged with assaulting a young woman as she attempted to visit her son, in a move that marked an unprecedented challenge to the religious police’s authority.

“There is some sort of change taking place,” Nadya Khalife, the Middle East women’s rights researcher for Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. “There is clearly a shifting mentality regarding to the male guardianship law and similar issues. More women are speaking out, there are changes within the government, there is a mixed university, the king was photographed with women, they want to allow women to work in the courts and there are changes within the justice ministry. So you can witness some kind of change unfolding but it’s not quite clear what’s happening and it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”

Copyright © 2010 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.

Youtube vid

I read this on gogreen18’s Twitter and when I asked she said she was 100% serious:

“the earth will be better off when we go extinct…. ”

What do you mean by “the Earth will be better off”?

Do you have a clear definition of “better off”?

Can you measure it?

I think your comment is extremely unclear. But I have some thoughts regardless:

There are major differences between us and most other organisms on Earth. A cow in a farm does not worry about its impending execution. It doesn’t become stressed and ill thinking of any injustice done to its freedoms. Regardless of whether you value our complexity and ability to appreciate and learn about this Earth, cows do not suffer from many of the things which we do.

Nature is ruthless. I am all for maintaining the ecosystems but make no mistake about it; the number of offspring that species of organisms’ produce has always vastly outstripped the number that actually survive to reproduce. There is a great deal of suffering and hardship in the natural world. Many individuals suffer brutal lives and terrifying events. There are many parasitic species of very primitive cognition that do little more than cause immense suffering to more cognitively complex organisms.

I’ll make use of some ideology and say that, generally, I like that all individual humans should have their wellbeing and happiness increased and their suffering reduced; that animals under our care enjoy comfortable, pleasurable lives; that I like the biosphere to be maintained as near to its pre human history state as possible and that certain more cognitively complex species be protected from harm. From such a bias I then can do my best with the scientific methodology that has served us so well in manipulating the world around us.

But forget all that. I’ll take a guess at what your argument might be: I value biodiversity over all else and our species is reducing biodiversity to such an extent that I think it would be better that our species went extinct.

How do you think biodiversity is going to be effected by the extinction of our species?

What events might occur that are likely to catastrophically reduce biodiversity, and cause a great deal of nonhuman suffering, during the extinction of our species?

With the technology we have at our disposal what do you think could possibly kill ever last one of us not even leaving a few survivors left to repopulate a decimated Earth?

Indeed, even if you were to desire that we had not evolved, we have evolved. Just like every other species has.

You might argue that biodiversity will recover. But you don’t know that, not if you’re are talking about our extinction you don’t. And even if you were to wish such a catastrophic event upon not only your own species, but the rest of life on this planet for whatever reasons you have, what if another intelligent species were to evolve, and what when eventually all life on this planet is destroyed?

Our species is a fact. The future has not happened yet. You can try to aid your species in pursuit of such values as I hold, or wish for some inane catastrophe.

Hope you haven’t become angry *something* again Sorry if my post is a little blunt but wanted to make it as concise as possible for you.

Much love and respect

This is what the beautiful and talented gogreen18 was upset about, and rightly so:

Check out some of her excellent YouTube videos here: http://charleswardle.com/sexy-atheist-youtube-girls-2/

*Update* gogreen18 wasn’t serious Was just a causal statement. I enjoyed writing the post though and some people do think like that. I use to think like that when I was 17 or something; that our species is like a disease (or something) distroying the world.