Morning "Civilizational Progress" Roundup
In Israel, technology is being used to intensify the power of the sun by a thousand-fold, with the intention of creating new Green technologies:
Israel’s National Solar Energy Center will start testing a 400 square meter (4,300 sq ft) solar collecting dish. The huge dish is capable of achieving 1000 suns — it can concentrate the intensity of the sun's energy by a factor of a thousand.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has achieved demographic parity, with "a beggar for each man and woman living in Jeddah" and Iran is determined to ignore silly things like nature when it gets in the way of the Koran:
Daylight saving, which was due to come into force in Iran on Tuesday - the first day of the Iranian new year - has been abolished by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... Government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham justified the decision to eliminate daylight saving on the grounds that when the legal hour changes many faithful have difficulty in calculating with precision the hour of prayer.
No Daylight Savings Time because people won't be able to figure out when to pray. Maybe instead of building nukes to destroy a country where everyone has advanced far enough to be able to tell time, Ahmadinejad should hand out digital watches to faithful Iranians.
