I n the Winter 2004-05 issue of Parameters, Philip Seib makes a laudable effort to establish the imperative for journalists, policymakers, and the American public to “undertake a more sophisticated analysis of how the world works.” This is critical because the analytical framework adopted by the media and policymakers has a direct effect on how they approach news coverage and frame discussions ...

Sleep has preoccupied and fascinated many civilizations since the dawn of mankind. Here, we critically review the various elements pertaining to sleep in the context of early Islamic religion and culture. The many principles of sleep hygiene, wellbeing and health associated with adequate sleep, and the understanding of sleep as a dynamic state are all apparent from such explorative process of I...

Islands and their problems have elicited a dominant place in maritime historiography. Whether vital stations along important shipping routes or marginal places often by-passed by civilizations and history, their role and condition, their subsistence, their centrality to the flow of goods and the diffusion of cultures and, most prominently, their supposed isolation have much intrigued scholars o...

The Fermi Paradox is discussed in the light of the inflationary and brane world cosmologies. We conclude that some brane world cosmologies may be of relevance for the problem of civilizations spreading across our galaxy, strengthening the Fermi Paradox, but not the inflationary cosmologies, as has been proposed.