Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Friday, May 23, 2008 Sales, Politics, and Religion  For a brief period in my career I was encouraged to try my hand at sales. I was ok at it and made decent commissions but in the end I knew that sales wasn't my calling and I returned to my passion, technology, mainly programming. That brief stint taught me one lesson in salesmanship. When on a sales call, steer away from passionate topics, specially when you don't know which way the prospect is leaning. References to religion and politics should be avoided in favor of more neutral topics, unless the product is geared towards a certain persuasion. Today I was shown an online demo of a Web product. The salesman had worked hard to secure a slice of my time to showcase his product. The part I found curious was the demo Web pages I was being shown. They included news articles about the Pope's Visit with Bush, Christianity, and the Church. Now I have no problem with these topics when used in the context of product demonstration, but I wondered if the salesperson knew about my liberal, religion-free mindset, would he have still picked these topics for his product demo. The salesman never lead the conversation towards politics or religion, and we kept the conversation on-topic, centered around the features of the product and the cost of implementation. But I could imagine that another liberal person might have reacted negatively to all this and written the whole thing off. The point is that avoiding emotionally charged topics such as religion and politics, however indirect, is a prudent policy when making a sales pitch to someone you don't know. This salesman may experience much higher success if he picks safer, more neutral examples for his demonstrations. For example, I'm not interested in team sports, but I doubt anyone would have a negative reaction to samples depicting baseball bats . Why take a chance on distracting or alienating your prospects when your goal is to secure their business? sales,politics,religion,pope Labels: politics, religion, sales <Sales, Politics, and Religion> // posted by rh 0 comments Thursday, April 24, 2008 Religious Contextual Ads  Sometimes contextual ads can reveal interesting facts about a site and its visitors. For some time I have noticed that Google Adsense has been displaying a certain banner for a site targeting Muslims seeking marriage partners. Personally I don't mind religious ads on my site. It's all about business. I consider myself an agnostic (as in, I can not with certainty prove or disprove the existence of god or the validity of any religion,) but I have a liberal view towards faith. People should be free to choose whatever creed works for them as long as they don't force it on others. I don't know what algorithm Google employs in targeting Adsense ads, but I must assume they strive to maximize click-through rates. It's possible that many of my site's visitors are Muslims (or Moslems, as Persians pronounce it), or perhaps my middle-eastern last name, Hashemian, triggers these banners. My bet is on the latter. To the algorithm, I'm just an unknown visitor from the U.S. who happens to be visiting the site. At any rate, there must be some religious profiling at work here. I haven't seen any Christian or Jewish or Hindu-oriented ads on my site. Certainly I haven't seen anything for matching Agnostics or Atheists. If the site helps two Muslims find each other and become a couple, that's cool with me. But if the marriage produces a male child (or female, for that matter,) I only hope they resist the temptation to have their child genitally mutilated, or in euphemistic term, circumcised. islam,agnosticism,atheism,marriage,dating,circumcision,persia,iran,adsense Labels: adsense, religion, social <Religious Contextual Ads> // posted by rh 0 comments Sunday, March 16, 2008 Spitzer and Morality  When I first heard of Spitzer's scandal, my first thought was, "you live by the sword, you die by the sword." But as deserving as Spitzer's fate was, his legacy as an Attorney General and as a Governor was probably a positive one. On balance he did more good for the people of New York than the final damage done by his hubris and his sanctimonious posturing. I see nothing wrong with prostitution. In fact I'm all for legalizing the profession. But in the end, the biggest lesson in Spitzer's downfall is the pervasive hypocrisy among the men of power. He certainly isn't alone in that respect. The next time you listen to some fiery speech about morality, truth, and justice keep in mind that the person on the soapbox is probably the last person to heed his own advice. That politician, priest, rabbi, or imam advocating the best qualities of man, quite possibly embodies the worst qualities of mankind. Be it molesting young boys, stealing public money, or exhorting young men to commit murder in the name of god, most are pathetic self-serving narcissists out to enrich themselves. These cults of personalities may come with different sizes, names and agendas, but most are part of the same sleazy fraternity. Have our moral compasses gone so awry that we need their phony guidance? Listen to your own sense of right and wrong and toss their lectures and speeches on a trash heap. You'll do just fine without their drivel. It's the old "do as I say, not as I do." morality,spitzer,priests,rabbis,imams,politicians,hypocrisy,prostitution Labels: morality, politics, religion <Spitzer and Morality> // posted by rh 0 comments Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Back! to Jogging  Those who know me (there aren't too many) know that running is an addiction of mine. But just like any addiction there comes a time when a man must realize when to quit. In the immortal words of Dirty Harry, "A man's got to know his limitations." That limitation hit me in the back with a Magnum force a few weeks ago and I'm still trying to recover from it. Running is a great stress reliever, but not when backache comes calling. This latest one came without a warning. One day I rolled out of bed and there it was. Like any addict, I ignored the pain and went about my running, but this one didn't seem interested in healing. The doctor says the spine looks normal, it's probably a bulging disc. The advice: take it easy, do some back exercises and ride it out. So for the past couple of weeks I had replaced jogging with walking. It's not so easy kicking such a strong habit, specially one that's been a part of my life for so long. Still, walking isn't so bad once you get used to it, specially if the alternative is painful pinches. It's inevitable that if live long enough, I'd have to give up running at some point. I just hope that time is not now. Anyways, tonight I finally switched over to some light jogging and there seems to be a glimmer of hope there. The pain is still there, but it feels more subdued now. Human body is a flawed piece of work. Regardless of the intelligent design versus the evolution debate, the human body is no work of art. I can understand that nature is imperfect, but if god is the designer, he can't be that perfect creator that religion purports him to be. He sure has a lot of learning about the KISS concept, as in, Keep It Simple, Stupid. I mean why all this complexity when he probably could have taken a much simpler approach? Reminds me of Nomad, the perfect sterilizing machine, from the Star Trek Episode, The Changeling. This is what it said, referring to biological units (humans): The unit Scott is a primitive structure. Insufficient safeguards built in. Breakdown can occur from many causes. Self-maintenance systems of low reliability. If only I could have Nomad fix my back the way he revived Scotty after killing him with a high energy bolt. But alas, Nomad wasn't so perfect itself either, and it finally met its own demise by the imperfect Captain Kirk. running,jogging,back pain,star trek,nomad,god,religion,dirty harry Labels: back pain, god, jogging, religion, running, star trek <Back! to Jogging> // posted by rh 0 comments Sunday, June 24, 2007 Circumcision - Religious Child Mutilation  If you are a male born into a Jewish or Moslem family, chances are you are circumcised. Circumcision is a euphemism for penile mutilation. I was horrified by the images I saw in this LiveLeak video taken from a Turkish ceremony where scores of young boys are gleefully taken by their parents to a butcher shop to be mutilated. It's hard to fathom what motivates a parent to even consider such a savage act against his or her own child. Of course, no sane parent would rip out a child's arm, or sever a child's ear, but somehow this barbaric practice is tolerated and even celebrated in the name of god. A reasonable person might ask, why does god care about a man's foreskin? Aren't there more important things for god to consider than obsessing over men's penises? Some parents would tell you that god doesn't care, they disfigure their boys as a show of respect and reverence. Others would condone it by claiming health and sanitary benefits! Of course you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who'd admit the truth; that they are fanatics and want to selfishly score a few points with god, or they are just ignorant, following a tradition that, unbeknownst to them, predates theism itself. I have no problem with an adult deciding to mutilate himself in the name of god or whatever else. But subjecting innocent boys (and sometimes girls) to this cruel and excruciating practice is nothing short of diabolical, or at least demented. circumcision,religion,god Labels: god, religion <Circumcision - Religious Child Mutilation> // posted by rh 2 comments Sunday, December 03, 2006 The Agnostic Advantage  The other day I was browsing through Amazon's bestseller books page when I came upon the book, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is the famed British scientist who authored the controversial book, The Selfish Gene, back in 1976. These days he is better known as a vocal atheist and an equal opportunity denouncer of religion and theology. The subjects of God and religion have become hot topics these days, perhaps more pronounced than the decades past. Each side has dug in its heels and are duking it out on the public arena. The battle between evolution and intelligent design is only one front on that war. Each side is engaged in a struggle to win as many converts as they can and usher more people into their camps. Having a strongly neutral position, I decided to engage in a bit of research and listen to what each side had to offer. In the end it became obvious that what each side seems to be targeting is the agnostic. Agnostics offer a tempting target to both atheists and the religious because of their openness, tolerance, and their willingness to listen. They are fertile ground to those who want to persuade them to join their cause against the other side. Neither religion-oriented nor atheists, they are the Switzerland of the war waging between atheism and religion. I suspect another major reason behind targeting this group is that most people, whether they admit or not, are agnostics in nature. They might label themselves atheists, but still struggle with the 'what if' question, as in what if there exists a supreme being who has had a hand in orchestrating everything around us? Or what if science does prove the existence of God some day? On the other side, many religious people are disillusioned with the current world affairs and wonder if there were a God, would he have allowed the state of world to be in such dire condition? Religion hasn't scored many positive points lately. From terrorism to church scandals, religion's image, as an institution, has been considerably damaged, disillusioning many believers. Each side of this battle has a treasure trove of arsenals in the forms of theories, testimonials, and evidence (however tenuous) to support its position. They are all compelling points of argument, but when you clear the haze, the crux of both arguments rests on a rather simple, yet fundamental, unknown; the origin of the universe. The religious camp argues that the universe could not have come to existence by chance. That it would have needed a designer or a creator, as everything else does. Even if you trace the origin of the universe to the big bang, someone had to be there to spark that original event and place all matters in their current forms. Atheists, while admitting lack of knowledge on the pre-bang conditions (at least for the time being), counter that time and evolution are responsible for the current nature of the universe. Besides, if everything must have a creator, they respond, then God must have had a creator as well. Following the same argument, his creator must have its own creator. This leads to an endlessly vicious circular reference whose final answer is as clear as the exact value of Pi. Obviously the old age debate will not be resolved any time soon, if ever. Which is why many have decided (consciously or otherwise) to remain agnostics. They see value in both sides' arguments, but they also see plenty of inconsistencies and contradictions. Fence-sitting has its privileges. You can believe in God, but also believe in evolution. You can believe in having a good moral character without believing in heaven or hell. You can believe in science without believing that it can or will ever answer everything about the universe. Yes, sometimes it's troubling to subscribe to two contradictory views, especially when those views within themselves are contradictory. But given the belief choices available today, why not sample all the good parts? After all, we live in the age of iced-coffee, kosher ham, and veggie burgers. Why not religious ambiguity? god,religion,atheism,agnosticism,richard dawkins Labels: god, religion <The Agnostic Advantage> // posted by rh 2 comments

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