Science

On 21 July 2004 on PBS, there was a two hour program about Zheng He. Zheng He was a Muslim eunuch in the service of the Ming Emperor of China. Zheng He commissioned, built and commanded a Chinese Imperial fleet that sailed through the Strait of Malacca, and into the Indian Ocean to Calicut, possibly East Africa, and other countries.

They also reviewed Gavin Menzies proposal that Zheng He sailed all the way to America, and even established colonies there, as told in his book, 1421: the Year China Discovered the World, and on his 1421.tv web site.

Language similarities between apparently unrelated languages is quite a prevalent phenomenon, regardless of what the underlying reasons in each case are. Here is a link that clearly shows that totally unrelated languages can have the same words for the same concepts or objects.And how likely are chance resemblances between languages? Quite likely actually. according to this statistical study on the Zompist web site.

Another case is Yi-Yong-hui's book called Mou hitotsu no Man'youshuu (Another Man'Youshuu).Marc Miyake of the University of Hawaii, on his excellent Amritas web site, says:

One highly tenuous theory, is by Professor Kamal Salibi of the American University in Beirut. In his 1985 book Bible Came from Arabia, he performs phonology and applies it to toponyms in western Arabia today, and concludes that Palestine had absolutely no historical Hebrew presence, and rather it is indded South Western Arabia is what the Bible refers to as Israel!

Regarding the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, one has to notice that the level of detail that the rest of the world had of this crisis is amazing compared to other natural disasters.One reason in my opinion is that many "normal" people own gadgets such as digital cameras and video camcorders. The people on the scene were able to take photos and footage of the disaster as it was happening.

A friend of mine, Clifford M, is from Kerala, India. On a recent trip there, he found an interesting area in a rubber plantation full of what looks like previously molten metal. If you can identify this object with certainity, then please contact me.

The next big tsunami may happen in the Atlantic Ocean.Studies by the Benfield Hazard Research Center have indicated that the Cumbre Vieja Volcano in the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands has not erupted for more than three decades. If this happens, the wave hitting North America would be up to 50 meters high and surge up to 20km inland. Morocco could get up to 100 meter high waves. Brazil would see 40 meter waves.

By now, the catastophic event of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is about to be understood by people around the world. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake west of Sumatra caused a series of huge tidal waves (tsunamis) that hit Sumatra, Nicobar, Andaman, Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Somalia, and Kenya. Initially, the magnitude of this disaster was not understood.

News came in yesterday that a newly discovered Asteroid, named 2004 MN4, may be on a collision course with earth.The collision is expected for April 13, 2029, about 24 years from now. It started with a Torino scale of 2, and was upgraded to 4 within the day. Initially, the probability was 1:233, then upgraded to 1:63, and at the time of writing this article, it is at 1:45.

Abu Muhammad Dia' al-Din Abdullah ibn Ahmad ibn Al-Baytar al-Maliqial-Andalusi أبو محمد ضياء الدين عبد الله بن أحمد بن البيطار المالقي الأندلسي. (b. 575 A.H./1179 C.E. d. 646 A.H./1248 C.E.). He was a famed physician, herbalist, pharmacist, and botanist.