Since the advent of online video hosting, a number of videos have appeared on the internet showing Egyptian police –to put it very mildly– mistreating and humiliating citizens in the most deplorable ways. Most recently, two videos were widely circulated; one showing a man being violated by some sort of a stick (maybe a broom handle), and the other showing a man being repeatedly slapped on the face. I didn’t link to the videos at the time, and I won’t now, for reasons that will hopefully become clear by the end of the post.

First, let us examine the process with which these kinds of videos become available. It is hard to tell who’s doing the recording in every single case, so a generalization wouldn’t be fair. However, in many cases it appears –or at the very least it is plausible– that the incidents are being recorded by the perpetrators’ colleagues (talk about adding insult to injury.) Some videos are then leaked and posted online (I say leaked because I can’t imagine someone being arrogant or stupid enough to post self-implicating videos online, but I could be wrong.) These videos are then further popularized when certain popular blogs link to them (if not being the ones to post them in the first place). And, in the case of the aforementioned incidents, a certain newspaper report, complete with stills from the videos, brought the topic to a wider audience (which reportedly led to an investigation by the general prosecutor.)

As far as I can tell, not a single link in this chain has gone to any length to conceal the identity of the victims. Of course, one doesn’t expect the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to respect their victims’ privacy, but what about everyone else?

Don’t get me wrong; I am totally in favor of making these records available to the public, if not for anything but for raising awareness at the very least; I also applaud the efforts of these bloggers, and the reporters who helped bring this case to the public. However, in the course of raising awareness and fighting for justice, one has to be careful not to trample on the rights of these victims; one should employ all possible means to spare them any extra humiliation.

There are ways to tread that line. In these particular cases, simple video-editing to distort the faces of the victims would’ve done the trick; it would’ve concealed the identity of the victims while still delivering the desired impact.

I have not provided any legal arguments here, partly because I am ignorant of such arguments (and maybe those knowledgeable about the law could enlighten me (us) on that perspective,) but mainly because this is intended as a friendly reminder of sentiments that I believe should be upheld by anyone claiming to defend human rights.

Remember Banksy? onegoodmove has a recent report on his work in Palestine and LA, including a brief audio interview with the man.

Continuing 25 years of interfaith respect, mutual understanding and harmony among world’s faiths, the 26th World Religions Conference is scheduled for Saturday, December 2, 2006 to be held at the prestigious Humanities Theatre, J.G. Hagey Hall, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. RSVP Registration Form.

What is this a picture of? (need a hint?)

Inflated egos make for easier targets.

Here’s how one expressed hers on craiglist:

I’m looking for a man to photophosphorylate me all night long. - w4m

I will fondle your vesicles while you caress my golgi body. My stroma is leaking all over the place. We can do it in the alpha or beta configuration, whichever you prefer. You whip me with your flagellum, tubulin subunits flying everywhere. We can make a mess as I’ve hired some lysosomes to clean up after. Please have a smooth endoplasmic reticulum but know that I like it rough, if you know what I mean. I also prefer my ribosomes bound…tight. Spin me round with your basal body and make sure it’s turgid. Pump me up and down your concentration gradient, letting the chemiosmosis take control. I can go both ways, just like an amphipathic phospholipid. Do you like aerobic respiration as much as I do?

Let me know if this makes you secrete.

I guess we don’t really know that she’s a scientist, but–my guess is–very few non-scientists use the word configuration.

(If you had asked me when I first started blogging, I would have guessed that the term photophosphorylate would never appear anywhere on this blog–let alone in this context–even if it was the last term on earth.)

The news item about the anger over the annual Jerusalem gay pride parade (now in its fifth year) got me wondering when (if ever) there’ll be one in Cairo. Anyone ventures to guess?

(TheDailyShow’s take on the news.)

“I” am a dam
holding up great waters–
I would’ve blown myself up
years ago,
but I am inhibited
by an irrational fear
of floods.
عجبى

اقلع غماك يا تور و ارفض تلف
اكسر تروس الساقيه و اشتم و تف
قال :بس خطوه كمان…خطوه كمان
يا اوصل نهاية السكه يا البير يجف
عجبى

The biologist and the philosopher meet up to talk about God, evolution, incest, and of course, ants.

An interesting conversation, indeed. Notwithstanding that I got lost about half-way through despite my numerous tries — lack of appropriate background, maybe. I am going to have to revisit later, but here are two points that I think are worth recording:
1. On the history of philosophy, D.D:

It really is important to know the history of philosophy if you’re going to do philosophy, and the reason is actually very simple. The history of philosophy is a history of very tempting mistakes, and the people that we study in the history of philosophy—Plato and Aristotle and Kant and all the rest—they were not dummies. They were really smart people and they made stunning errors. These are very tempting mistakes. So you really have to learn the history of philosophy if you’re going to do it well. Or you have to learn some of it. Because otherwise you just reinvent the wheel. You end up falling in the same old traps.

2. On evolution; on the rarity of sociality (as a study case for the rarity of creativity), E.W:

Evolutionary theory is unique in all of science in that it’s a theory of things that almost never happen. Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but almost none of them are. The whole biosphere depends on these things that almost never happen. Mutations are almost never good. But it’s the ones that are advantageous that do all the work. So it’s tempting to ask a question like the one that you’ve just asked about what sociality doesn’t emerge more often. Well, I think they answer may just be, don’t think there is a reason why more of them don’t, because like everything else in evolution, this is a case of something that almost never happens. But when it does, amazing things result, and one should simply get used to the fact that you don’t have to explain why it doesn’t happen. You only have to show the sufficient conditions, and then every now and then they arise.