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10 Facts Every Westerner Should Know About the Middle East
By Daniel Miessler

Most Westerners know very little about the Middle East and the people that live there. This lack of knowledge hurts our ability to understand, and engage in intelligent discussion about, current events.

For example, frighteningly few know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and most think the words “Arab” and “Muslim” are pretty much interchangeable. They aren’t. So here’s a very brief primer aimed at raising the level of knowledge about the region to an absolute minimum.
Basics

1.

Arabs are part of an ethnic group, not a religion. Arabs were around long before Islam, and there have been (and still are) Arab Christians and Arab Jews. In general, you’re an Arab if you 1) are of Arab descent (blood), or 2) speak the main Arab language (Arabic).
2.

Not all Arabs are Muslim. There are significant populations of Arab Christians throughout the world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Northern Africa and Palestine/Israel.
3.

Islam is a religion. A Muslim (roughly pronounced MOOSE-lihm) is someone who follows the religion. So you wouldn’t say someone follows Muslim or is an Islam, just as you wouldn’t say someone follows Christian or is a Christianity.
4.

Shia Muslims are similar to Roman Catholics in Christianity. They have a strong clerical presence via Imams and promote the idea of going through them to practice the religion correctly. Sunni Muslims are more like Protestant Christians. They don’t really focus on Imams and believe in maintaining a more direct line to God than the Shia.
5.

People from Iran are also known as Persians, and they are not Arabs.
6.

Arabs are Semites. We’ve all heard the term anti-Semitism being used — often to describe Arabs. While antisemitism does specifically indicate hatred for Jews, the word “Semite” comes from the Bible and referred originally to anyone who spoke one of the Semitic Languages.
7.

According to the Bible, Jews and Arabs are related [Genesis 25]. Jews descended from Abraham’s son Isaac, and Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. So not only are both groups Semitic, but they’re also family.
8.

Sunni Muslims make up most of the Muslim world (roughly 90%). 1
9.

The country with the world’s largest Muslim population is Indonesia. 2
10.

The rift between the Shia and Sunni started right after Muhammad’s death and originally reduced to a power struggle regarding who was going to become the authoritative group for continuing the faith.

The Shia believed Muhammad’s second cousin Ali should have taken over (the family/cleric model). The Sunni believed that the best person for the job should be chosen by the followers (the merit model) and that’s how the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was appointed.

Although the conflict began as a political struggle it now mostly considered a religious and class conflict, with political conflict emanating from those rifts.

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6 Hangover cures in cereal form

An exciting night of drinking always has its head pounding aftermath. Some turn to Advil, some will stay bed ridden, and others will turn to Google search and type ‘hang over cures’. The fancy herbal remedies are all bullshit, and I’ll tell you why. 90% of us who spent a good portion of the previous night playing beer pong, don’t have access to goat testicle tea, or oshii wild boar cornhole tinctures. However, most of us have access to cereal - so here is a hand picked selection of multigrain goodness for your hangover needs.

6) All-Bran

Some people don’t like to vomit, so this one is right up your alley. 9.6 grams of dietary fiber per serving will have that barley and 2 A.M. double cheeseburger moving through your system before you can say “I shit my pants”. Accompany a bowl of this with a glass of water and you’re on your way to a productive Sunday of doing nothing.

5) Count Chocula

For those of you who don’t have time to wait and need to start your work day immediately, we suggest these morsels of chocolaty awesomeness. 47 grams of sugar per serving on top of that Red Bull you’re about to guzzle will give you that much needed zip to get shit done. The down side here is that you will probably start to crash after a few hours. If you time it right this will happen around lunch, which is the perfect time for a front seat nap.

4) Corn Chex

Unfortunately Corn Chex are about as bland as a monotone math teacher. The upside is that you’re just a few ingredients shy of ‘Chex Mix’. Chex mix can be munched on all day long, keeping your metabomism and disgestive tracts going at a steady pace. It is also easier to handle then a shakey spoon and milk (if your dexterity has not quite returned). Spill a bowl of these on your roommates Xbox and it will go unnoticed, add milk and you’re looking at a beatdown.

3) Lucky Charms

Vitamin B6? You bet your ass we’ve got vitamin B6. A whole 1.67 MG’s of ass kicking B6. Now add marshmellows and a box that is fun to look at…there is a god. Sadly, Lucky Charms also give you that sugar crash. The pros here clearly out wiegh the cons, which is why this amazing little lebrachcan takes spot #3.

2) CAP’N Crunch

These Riboflavin packed mouth cutting squares could part the Red Sea if they wanted to. Aside from being full of Riboflavin and Niacin, staring at a box of CAP’N Crunch is bound to have you making pirate noises by the end of your meal. Speaking like a pirate can brighten even the rainiest of days. It is also completely acceptable to place a few handfuls into a zip lock bag and take them to work with you. When a co-worker asks “Uhh are you eating cereal in a bag?” Your response of “Dude its CAP’N Crunch” will shut them up instantly.

1) Fruity Pebbles

Surprised to see Fruity Pebbles take the number one position? Don’t be. Fruity cereal is the polar opposite of what a hungover stomach wants. The nutritional intake your body receives from a bowl of these is about as useless as the reproductive organs on mother Theresa. Too soon? Once the cold milk and fruity colored rice hits your stomach your bound to start feeling even worse. You’ll spend the next 45 minutes praying to the porcelain gods. The first wave of rainbow colored vomit triggers your super puke which is something that can’t be done with a simple finger to the throat. Before you know it, you’re looking at yesterdays breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You make a quick promise to yourself that you’re completely over drinking, take 2 IBuprofen, and a trip to your parents house for an actual meal. You’ve just recovered in 2 hours and gave up drinking, all thanks to 7 spoon fulls of Fruity Pebbles.

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Most of the folks here only really need to be concerned about the last paragraph

By Amanda Gefter and Tom Simonite

In today's technological world we leave electronic traces wherever we go, whether shopping online or on the high street, at work or at play. That data is the raw material for a new industry of number crunchers trying to explain and influence human behaviour, as Stephen Baker explains in his new book The Numerati.

In the book, Baker meets the maths whizzes at the bleeding edge of this new way of doing business, politics, and even matchmaking.

You might be surprised at some of the things Baker's "numerati" want to know and can already find out about you. Read on for some examples taken from the book, and click here to read our full review.
Mountains of facts

Databases know more about you than you realise. A Carnegie Mellon University study recently showed that simply by knowing gender, birth date and postal zip code, 87% of people in the United States could be pinpointed by name.

Websites can collect huge amounts of data from users. Retailers, for example, can track our every click, what we buy, how much we spend, which advertisements we see - even which ones we linger over with our mouse.

Sites can easily access your entire web browser history, enabling them to try and guess your gender and other demographic information.

Some of the links that data can reveal are surprising, and profitable. Ad targeting firm Tacoda discovered that the people most likely to click on car rental ads are those that have recently read an obituary online, apparently planning their trip to a funeral.

The second largest group are romantic movie fans - they are suckers for weekend rentals perhaps trying to emulate the lovey-dovey escapes common in romantic fiction.
The business of data

Data is big business for the numerati. US firm Acxiom keeps shopping and lifestyle data on some 200 million Americans.

They know how much we paid for our house, what magazines we subscribe to, which books we buy and what vacations we take. The company purchases just about every bit of data about us that can be bought, and then sells selections of it to anyone out to target us in, say, political campaigns.

Much effort is expended finding new ways to gather data on people. A company called Umbria uses software to analyse millions of blog and forum posts every day, using sentence structure, word choice and quirks in punctuation to determine the blogger's gender, age interests and opinion. That knowledge can be a valuable tool to people launching new products, or politicians seeking votes.

Microsoft has filed patents for technology that monitors the heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, facial expressions of office workers, and even their brain waves.

The idea, the patents say, is to let managers know if workers are experiencing heightened frustration or stress. Given that the same technologies are used in lie detectors and to study human behaviour, it seems unlikely many workforces would quietly accept their boss introducing such a system.
Management by numbers

Such data makes it possible to manage workplaces more mathematically. A team at computing giant IBM is sifting through resumés and project records to assemble a profile of each worker's skills and experience.

Online calendars show how employees use their time and who they meet with. By tracking the use of cellphones, email and laptops it may even be possible to map workers' movements and social networks of each person.

The results might show that a midlevel manager is quietly leading an important group of colleagues - and that his boss is out of the loop. Maybe these two should switch jobs.
Health and safety

Number-crunching techniques can look after your home life too. At the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology in the US, researchers have computers that monitor every one of a user's interactions - every keystroke and mouse click.

The idea is that by watching a person's speed, vocabulary and sentence complexity over time it is possible to pinpoint the onset of cognitive deterioration - like dementia or Alzheimer's - long before more noticeable symptoms emerge.

The management of whole nations increasingly depends on the numerati, and not just because of their role in political campaigns.

After the 9/11 attacks, the CIA made large investments in statistical techniques to track known terrorists and even predict future ones, and has relied heavily on such techniques ever since.

One of the first pieces of software brought in was NORA, originally developed to reveal and track cheats and criminals working or staying as customers in Las Vegas casinos.

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[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BLZQOH5M9Y"]YouTube - The PenIsMightier[/ame]