They keep on burying our dead
They keep on planting their bones in the ground
But they won't grow
The sun doesn't help
The rain doesn't help
And all we've got is a giant crop of names
And dates


Lacrimosa
Regina Spektor

Go Iraq Go

Let us start with this question: “What is a credible scientific theory?”

In general, a scientific theory should be able to precisely explain the observations and experiments and make plausible predictions about the still unknown or undiscovered phenomenon.

It will surely gain strength and validity when future proves the prophecies to be true and inevitably lose it when tomorrow demonstrates otherwise.

Holding the above-mentioned definition, it seems somehow convincing what Nassim Taleb’s elaborately explained in his book “The Black Swan”, and I’m paraphrasing, in some fields of studies, subjects are so extremely influenced by pure random that it is strange we still hold their models as “scientific models” although they have been proven to be dead-wrong for times and times again!

Examples?! Well, economy and political science for instance.

No economist has ever managed to successfully and accurately predict, for example, a market crash or anything as bold as that. Very much like a fortuneteller, they confidently tell you many things, which could be plausible, but you have absolutely no idea which one to believe, whatsoever!

In political science, in almost every given subject, the range of predictions are so wide and usually contradicting that although eventually one of those prophecies should prevail (because they cover every possible scenarios), but the science in general seems to be impossible to rely on.

One wonders that how many times a theory should fail to be deemed as a horrendous one!

A very recent example was the outcome of the invasion of Iraq. Some predicted it to be a bad mistake with catastrophic results and some other, the beginning of a prosperous and democratic middle east!

Though the future proved to be much closer to the League of Arab nation’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, who announced, “The invasion of Iraq will open up the hell’s gate” than some of the well-known Washington’s think tanks, it was surprisingly not the end of the story.

The same well educated, handsomely paid, so-called “specialists” who got almost every predictions wrong, are still proposing theories about the outcome of a sudden or a gradual withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq as if their words are any more credible now as it was four years ago!

Now in this chaos, allow me to make a prediction! Who knows, maybe I can be a better political analyst than those educated in Harvard and Princeton! :)

Iraq’s football team is in the Asian cup’s semi-final. They are two matches away from becoming the champion of Asia for the first time.

Apart from the Americans whose their “Cricket for dummies” and “Rugby for Sissy’s” never allowed them to discover the-larger-than-life capacity of football, everybody in the rest of the world is aware of the potentials of this Not-Just-A-Game’s social phenomenon. So as ridiculous as it sounds, if this happens, the unity that the glorious national achievement would most probably create, would provide such a golden opportunity that I seriously doubt any surge or Washington-made plan could ever offer.

Let us cross our fingers for Iraq’s championship in Asian Cup and also, for the incompetent crowd in Washington and their counterparts in Baghdad, not to ruin it by using their miraculous talent of fucking up the opportunities!

Go Iraq Go

Painting Blues!