Interesting Facts (& Rumours) About Living in the UAE

It'll be exactly 2 months tomorrow since my Empress and I moved to the UAE and we've learned, heard and seen all kinds of interesting things since touching down. These are but a few of them and the list will grow as time goes on. So in no particular order:

1. An Emirati (name for the locals) male can marry up to 4 women at a time. He can get a sum of money and a piece of land for each one he marries (through loans which are routinely waived).

2. You may see someone washing his feet in the face basin of the public toilet. I did and it seemed...ok.

3. When a Sheik passes away all the radio stations are required to play Muslim chanting/prayers for 7 days. It happened just today (27/10/2010) during the morning news on Radio One mid-sentence. Literally mid-sentence.

4. Every Emirati is entitled to a stipend from the Government, employed or not.

5. Locals pay no utility bills and all health care is free.

6. You can get arrested for eating in public during Ramadan.

7. You can get arrested for wearing inappropriate clothing or inappropriate public displays of affection.

8. Some Indian men routinely hold hands in public (totally cultural, nothing sexual), but it's cool. However, unmarried persons of the opposite sex could be jailed for doing the same.

9. You are often paid according to your race and/or nationality. Pay increases with the progressive lightness of your skin.

10. Skin lightening products are openly advertised and sold here. One of India's most prominent actors, Shahrukh Khan, is the spokesperson.

11. The food is pretty awesome, especially Lebanese and Filipino food.

12. You must do a medical in order to take up employment here. You can get deported immediately (if working with kids or food) if found to have a contagious disease (like Hepatitis). Get a medical done before you arrive.

13. It's more open and liberal then you hear it is.

14. Emiratis are human beings and behave as such.

15. It's very cheap to hire a maid here. Very often Filipinos are maids and sometimes terribly exploited. Some Westerners get a kick out of having a maid because it makes them feel better about themselves. They are idiots.

16. Laws and policies can change very quickly here as they are done by decree rather than democratic process.

17. Dubai is the London/New York of the UAE. Abu Dhabi is the Coventry of the UAE. Coventry is the Coventry of England.

Robots V Man: Why The Obsession?

I'm not sure who was the first to propose that Mankind's ultimate demise would be brought on by his own sentient robotic creations, but it has caught on with no discernible association to reality whatsoever - except maybe an environmental implication.

Asimov's I, Robot series came out in the 1950's but Fritz Lang's Metropolis appeared in 1927. Since then a slew of apocalyptic films/books on the near extermination of mankind via automaton have been produced including Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, Runaway with Tom Selleck, the cult classic Blade Runner, The Matrix trilogy, The Terminator series and more recently Tim Burton's 9. Waiting in the wings is Spielberg with something called Robopocalypse (based on a novel). Robopocalypse? It might be good - but what kind of name is that? If it's a satire, then I can understand, but it's going to be hard to take a movie with a name like that seriously.

That said, the main question is why we have become obsessed and fixated on this idea of technology as the bane of mankind - more specifically, technology as deadly, autonomous reservoir of intelligence and choice.  

I can see how our use of technology through biological and nuclear weaponry could lead to a serious crisis. Even the impact of industry on the environment. But robots coming to life and demanding to write poetry and live out a life of free choice? No, not happening. If anybody is going to kill Mankind it will be Mankind - and it will have nothing to do with intelligence, artificial or otherwise. 

If anything, our greatest weakness is the digital age. This was  insightfully implied in John Carpenter's Escape From LA with Kurt Russell reprising his role as Snake Plisskin. A generally bad movie, it had Snake plunging the Earth back to the 'Dark Ages' at the push of a button, wiping away the World's progress by permanently shutting down all power via satellite. Then with eye-patch-like coolness he grunts, 'Welcome to the human race'. We've all wanted to do that. 

Think about it. Everything is going digital, and by extension is becoming highly connected, one mega hard drive crash and we have to start from scratch. Granted, not everything is digital yet, so we should be safe for a few years more - but only a few. 

After the nuclear winter when the remnant of humanity surfaces, significantly stupider than pre-apocalypse, they will hardly know what to do with a laptop, should they find one. A book would be easier to figure out and no batteries necessary. 

What we may be obsessed with is the fact that much of what we fabricate will outlive us, toilet bowls will live for thousands of years, long after we've Tweeted our latest bowel movement to Cyberspace. There is also the Matrix premise that our progress comes at the very cost of our own lives. The energy needed to run our World and its many contraptions is, in essence, our own life energy sacrificed for the sake of profit and comfort. Otherwise, the closest battle between man and machine to date is right below and we clearly win!

The lesson here is clear. The World needs to be a Mac rather than a PC.