Thursday, May 27, 2004

Nuclear science safer than Iraqi politics


IraqiNanoBot readers might recognize the name of Hussein Shahristini, an Iraqi scientist who recently said "no thanks" to the prime minister's position. I'm guessing that nuclear science is a safer profession than Iraqi politics.

Back in November, I reprinted a quote from Shahristini just after the Royal Society in London helped launch the Iraqi Academy of Science. The idea was to keep one of Iraq's richest natural resources, its science community, in the country and helping to rebuild the scientific and technological base after decades of abuse by Saddam Hussein, who viewed science as simply another weapon in his arsenal of fascism. Shahristani knows all about this, having himself been jailed by Saddam.

Read the rest of my notes on a little-reported Middle Eastern scientific renaissance here.

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