Civilization in the 21st Century and in the 9th Century

How fast it can devolve. From the UK Telegraph:

The Lebanese Rocket Society
A few years before they became the first Arabs to send a rocket into space, the members of the Haigazian College science club, in Beirut, encountered a problem. They had the materials to build a craft � some of which they�d bought with their own pocket money � but they still hadn�t produced a propellant.

The first suggestion had been gunpowder but experiments on a couple of 12in-long cardboard rockets had resulted in explosions rather than the perfect chemical reaction required to send a vessel several miles into the sky. Then, after more lab work and guidance from their teacher, a brilliant young maths and physics lecturer called Manoug Manougian, they�d decided the solution was a mixture of zinc and sulphur. But they�d still not worked out the correct proportions.

The chemicals would burn, but they needed to find a combination that would give the rocket enough thrust. Manougian was also aware they couldn�t possibly test it in their physics lab. They�d require space; somewhere away from people. The family of one of the students owned a farm in the mountains, and over the course of several weekends, Manougian and his team went up there to experiment. Finally, they came up with something that would generate enough energy to make their 2ft-tall rocket move. That first craft, called HCRS (for Haigazian College Rocket Society) and launched from the back of a rod stuck in the ground, climbed to 1,200 metres.

�We have something,� Manougian thought.

It was 1961 and the Soviet Union and the United States were four years into a dramatic space race which had begun with the former�s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. But while millions of words have been written about the two superpowers� attempts to gain supremacy of the solar system, precious little has been said about a third, highly unlikely, competitor. Between 1961 and 1966, Manougian and his group of seven undergraduates ended up building 12 solid-fuel rockets � one of them so powerful it reached the thermosphere, now home to the International Space Station, and became national heroes in Lebanon.

Here is the trailer for the film: These folks were doing excellent solid science. What are the students in Lebanon doing today? Amazing that a culture can regress by ten thousand years in the space of forty years. What the Lebanese citizens have today is not spiritual purity, it is religious tyranny and despotism.