I am scattered

While Americans subsidize new Israeli settlements, Israel chokes access to education in the Palestinian territories

2008-09-13T04:16:00.004-05:00

25 Aug 2008 14:27:11 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations.

As Condoleezza Rice flew in on Monday for another round of peace talks, Israeli and American supporters of settlements defended the tax incentives, which benefit West Bank enclaves deemed illegal by the World Court and which the U.S. secretary of state has said are an obstacle to Palestinian statehood.

Reuters - US tax breaks help Jewish settlers in West Bank

19 Aug 2008
Source: Haaretz
By Mijal Grinberg and Fadi Eyadat

Anwar al-Qazaz, 41, sent his eldest son to the market last weekend to buy school supplies for next year for his younger sisters. "He returned home with his sisters and told me there was nothing. No pens and pencils, no notebooks, and no school uniforms," he told Haaretz yesterday.

"I don't know what we'll do now," the unemployed father of 10 added. "Maybe wait for them to bring stuff in from Israel or Egypt. But the products that come from Egypt are expensive." Staple foods do reach Gaza, Qazaz said, but prices have skyrocketed because demand outstrips supply.

Haaretz - Despite truce, still no sign of school supplies in Gaza

8 Sept 2008
Source: SabbahBlog
By Zohair M. Abu Shaban

A few weeks ago when I went to the Erez Checkpoint between Gaza and Israel, I was told by the Israeli official that I could not leave unless I collaborated with the Israeli occupation. I refused. My conscience and my people’s right to freedom and equal rights mean more to me than even the finest education.

U.S. officials came to my aid. They held special visa interviews along the Israeli-Gaza border for me and two other Fulbright scholars in a similar position. The U.S. granted my visa. Once again I could imagine taking my seat in a lecture hall in America. I packed my bags, bought souvenirs for my future friends in America and bade farewell to my family.

Then came a phone call that changed everything. My American visa had been revoked based on secret evidence provided by Israel. I cannot see the evidence and so have no opportunity to contest it.

What carrot did an Israeli security official dangle before another Gazan’s eyes, or what torture tactics did he use to manufacture information he could use against me? However it happened, and for whatever reason, the outcome is the same. Despite my abhorrence of violence, I am being penalized.

What troubles me most, however, is not my own personal plight, but the effect this experience has had on my talented younger brother.

After watching what I have endured as an innocent and politically unaffiliated student, he has concluded that he will no longer pursue the educational dream outside of Gaza he once held. His horizons are closing.

SabbahBlog - Israel Turns Gaza Into Prison For UConn Fulbright Scholar

Why rednecks may rule the world

2008-09-10T17:01:00.005-05:00

Great piece by the author of "Deerhunting with Jesus"

link

Why this woman isn't getting my vote!

2008-09-10T16:55:00.005-05:00

"Mrs Palin enjoys moose-hunting and salmon-fishing - and has said her favourite dish is moose stew."

She EATS my kind! What have us large gentle animals done to deserve her redneck wrath?

link

Who is Tiri?

2008-09-10T07:31:00.004-05:00

Tiri is a small organization with a gargantuan task, fighting corruption in developing countries, especially those that are in a post-conflict phase. Their stated mission is "working collectively and individually to raise integrity standards everywhere, in both public and private institutions, in the belief that by so doing successfully we will assist processes of sustainable development and the reduction of poverty."

Tiri was founded in 2003 by Fredrik Galtung and Jeremy Pope, two founding members of Transparency International (TI). TI is the global civil society organization against corruption and publishers of the TI annual Corruption Perceptions Index. I used data from TI's CPI for my graduate research on the link between export concentration and corruption. In Tiri, Galtung and Pope hope to teach a new generation the skills to foster integrity within institutions. With 15 employees and headquarters in London and Jerusalem, Tiri is a decidedly small enterprise. Their clients include businesses, governments and IGO's with most of their work in Africa, the Middle East and South and Central Asia.

Link to Tiri

Link to TI's 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index

Good week 1 for Purdue quaterbacks in the NFL

2008-09-09T09:55:00.006-05:00

This Sunday afternoon, Drew Brees & New Orleans Saints beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and later that night Kyle Orton & Chicago Bears beat the Indianapolis Colts. Good showings from both quaterbacks. Moose is happy!

Whats happening with the US government and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac?

2008-09-09T08:15:00.005-05:00

First of all, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GSE's (Government Sponsored Enterprises) that guarantee nearly half of all US mortgages, have NOT been nationalized. That requires an act of Congress. They have been put under "Conservatorship" of the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency), their government regulator. But don't let the "conservatorship" language fool you into thinking that the goverment will nurse them back to health and then let them go back to being private entities, which currently is the stated objective. It could also be that Fannie and Freddie eventually become nationalized and the current conservatorship be more of a receivership.

Below are the details of the conservatorship arrangement:

1.) Current leadership is replaced.

2.) GSE's get access to loans from the treasury, secured against their assets till the end of 2009.

3.) Treasury gets a $1 billion "fee" from the GSE's in the form of preferred stock and the right to buy 80% of the firms' common stock at a nominal price.

4.) GSE's lobbying apparatus (responsible for much of what went wrong) is shut down and can no longer lobby lawmakers.

5.) Treasury becomes buyer of last resort for GSE bonds, meaning if no one else buys them on the open market, the treasury will, potentially opening the treasury (and taxpayer) to substantial losses from the acquisition of large volumes of toxic paper.

Fannie and Freddie played an important role in greasing the mortgage market and the government wants this role to continue. As such, the size of their portfolios will be allowed to grow untill the end of 2009. From 2010 however, they will be forced to shrink their portfolios at the rate of 10% a year untill they reach an as yet undefined "less risky size". This is critical because the whole reason for the government intervention was that the two posed an unacceptable risk to the US economy due to their massive size.

The GSE status in the main reason Fannie and Freddie came to be so huge. Because of it, they were able to sell notes and securities at a lower yield than strictly private financial institutions, eliminating competition and leading to them becoming a duopoly in the conforming loans market.

The GSE's ONLY deal in what are called confroming loans. Up untill March of this year, a mortgage had to be $417,000 or less to be a conforming loan and this was the national limit. This really hurt people living in more expensive areas as Jumbo loans (loans over the conforming limit and which Fannie and Freddie don't deal in) carry a higher interest rate due to lower liquidity in secondary markets. Given the disparity in home prices between different parts of the country, I never thought this was fair or made much sense. However, in March 2008 the legislation to make the limit regional (with a maximum regional limit of $730,000 and a minimum regional limit of $271,000) was passed as part of the economic stimulus package.

I Googled what the conforming loan limit was for my region (DC / Northern VA) and according to this website we are at the maximum limit of $729,750. Yay for us!

I love KAL's cartoons!

2008-09-08T06:00:00.003-05:00

Kevin Kallaugher is the cartoonist at the Economist magazine. Week after week, he publishes the most creative and poignant cartoons on current international politics and economy.

Link to the KALLERY

Nehru on Kashmir (from BBC)

2008-09-08T05:57:00.001-05:00

The builder of modern India and its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke about a plebiscite in Kashmir and independence for the state with its defence guaranteed by both India and Pakistan.

And Mr Nehru's letter to the maharajah of Kashmir four months after India's independence in 1947 was also chillingly prescient.

"It is of the most vital importance that Kashmir should remain with the Indian Union," he wrote.

"But, however much we may want this, it cannot be done except through the goodwill of the mass of the population.

"Even if military forces held Kashmir for a while a later consequence may be a strong reaction against this.

"Essentially, therefore, this is a problem of psychological approach to the mass of the people and of making them feel they will be benefited by being in the Indian Union.

"If the average Muslim feels that he has no safe and secure place in the Union, then obviously he will look elsewhere. Our basic policy must keep this in view, or else we fail."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7597715.stm

Nice run but it's over now (hopefully)

2008-03-08T02:03:00.008-06:00

2008 may be the year Roger Federer finally falls from the World's #1 perch that he has held for so long. He has lost 2 matches in a row now, one against Nikolay Davydenko in the Aussie Open semifinal and the more recent against Andy Murray in the Dubai Open opener. Additionaly, he lost a very recent match playing Pete Sampras in a exhibition event.

Why do I hope this is the case? Because I'm sick of non-competitive semifinals and finals in majors events. This guy may be a great tennis player but hes not much fun to watch. He has a somewhat robotic game, with not much emotion or flair to speak of. His probable replacement, Nadal, plays way more expressive tennis. But thats not terrribly important. Whats important is Federer's invincibility is over. The predictability of his matches is over. The predictability of major and minor opens is over.

With all the new talent hitting their strides and established players going in and out of form (Take Roddick right now), tennis at the very top is going to be exciting to watch again!

I got kicked out of Carmax

2007-01-26T03:38:00.000-06:00

This past Tuesday, I went to test drive a Subaru Legacy 2.5GT and an Audi S4 at the Richmond, VA Carmax. Both were very fun cars to drive and both felt faster than the '07 Infinti G35 I drove a few weeks back, although that might be because I test drove the G35 with an automatic and the other 2 with manual transmissions.

Anyway, I drove both cars pretty hard and while I was waiting to have my current cars value appraised (In case I wanted to trade it in), a 40-something man in a suit walked over to me and introduced himself as the general manager. He handed me his card and in a very somber tone told me that 2 people had called him complaining about my driving, saying I was being reckless. The manager told me he confirmed that I was the driver of the offending cars and that he will not tolerate anyone endangering the lives of his sales associates. Then he said "I think you should leave now". I protested a little (wanting to get my car appraised) but he interrupted me saying he though it best we part as friends now (rather than something much worse than friends later being unsaid but implied).

So there you have it! I think I may now be a persona non grata at every Carmax in the country (they photocopied my license for the test drives).

Truth be told, I found this experience educational. I am a pretty reckless driver as it is. I break enough laws with just 220 horsepower on tap. Maybe I'm not meant to own a 340 bhp car, especially one with body-hugging Recaro racing buckets, a close-ratio short-throw 6-speed manual and road-hugging all wheel drive (although I did get it to drift a little at around 80 mph on a 25 mph residential road). I'm not basing my next statement on just this experience alone but given my history and what others think of my driving, I am now convinced that I am in fact a dangerous driver and that I should stay away from buying fast cars in the future. Maybe I should get a minivan next. Chrysler Town & Country, here I come!

I am disgusted with myself!

2007-01-08T03:47:00.000-06:00

I bought Gears of War for the Xbox 360 when it first came out. I tried buying the regular game ($60) but since only the collector’s edition was available and that too at only one store in the entire mall, I ended up forking $73.49 (after tax) for a video game that I have played for roughly 20 minutes in the last month. Thats right, I payed 3/4ths of a 100 dollars for a video game! A poor family in a third World country could have had food for months for that much dough and I spent it on a video game!

How long before $100 for a video game?....for a piece of time-wasting software on a 20 cent disc? What has this World come to? More importantly, what has my purchasing judgment come to? Thankfully, as far as video games go, its a great game.

Retarded to stupid to underdeveloped

2007-01-08T03:14:00.000-06:00

A few weeks back, I volunteered for a day as a teacher/facilitator at a school for disadvantaged youth in a low-income, high-crime district. I wasn’t sure what to expect but when I entered the class and half the students were bigger than me, I was a little surprised. I didn’t ask anyone’s age but I guessed many of them must have kept failing and being held back and so were older than the typical age for that class.

I ended up working with several students on a Benjamin Franklin project on the web (It’s America, even the underprivileged have computers). The ~17 year old student I worked with most closely was mentally handicapped, or so I thought when I first spoke with him. Although he was white and the minority in the class, he was as skeptical and unwelcoming as the rest of the class towards me and the other volunteers. Initially he was very quiet but over time, he started talking more and I realized that he was not mentally handicapped but just unintelligent. His spoke very slowly and his spelling was awful. Eventually, we were having regular conversation on all sorts of topics and I realized that it wasn’t even that he was unintelligent, it was just that his intellect had been left for dead for some years.

I’m not saying whose fault this might have been because its everyone’s fault to a degree, society, government, American schools, his parent’s (him only having one couldn’t have helped) and his own. But this reasonably intelligent person who could be contributing to his society/economy in the future with good instruction was just barely on the fence between that and a life of unemployment, poverty and likely crime. The only reason I say “on the fence” is because he was at this youth center, otherwise I would say he was on the fast track to those things.

2006-10-05T01:48:00.001-05:00

The Making of a Muslim Terrorist

It was surreal to hear someone addressing a crowd of thousands say "Christian and Islamic imperialism have become one here!" A very well edited short film if maybe somewhat inappropriately titled.

Final Sermon from "Chocolat"

2006-10-04T02:58:00.000-05:00

"We can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. We’ve got to measure our goodness by what we embrace, what we create and whom we include."

-Welcome advice in today's fractured World

Republicans: A History of Corruption & Hypocrisy

2006-10-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

Saying he was "deeply sorry," Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL, Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children) resigned from Congress after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former male congressional pages under the age of 18.

So whats new? It reminds me of the time Bush appointed Dr. W. David Hager, a prominent obstetrician-gynecologist to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A man whose wife divorced him for frequently anally raping her when she was asleep put in charge of women’s reproductive health issues? When asked about it, the author of “As Jesus Cared for Women” said he “missed”. A gynecologist “missing” his subject matter? You can’t make this up!

I’m sure everyone remembers “Brownie” as well. The FEMA director whose last position was 12 years as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA), an organization he bankrupted.

And then there was Jack Abramoff. Come to think of it, Rumsfeld and Cheney probably belong here as well. Going back, there was the duplicity of Nixon and Republicans wanting to use nuclear weapons in the Korean War.

But it goes even farther back, to the 20’s and 30’s when the white, Protestant Christian right, anti-union, anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-Jew and 100% uber-American KKK had over 3.5 million members nationally and 350,000 just in Indiana. The ’24 Indiana election saw almost every Republican candidate hand picked by the Klan (16 senators elected nationally). In many areas, you could not even run for office unless you had Klan support.

This all ended with the Stephenson affair in Indiana. David Stephenson, Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states was convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer in a sensational trial (she was bitten so many times that one man who saw her described her condition as having been "chewed by a cannibal").When Stephenson was not spared by the governor he helped elect, he released 2 black boxes that brought down the governor of Indiana, imprisoned the mayor of Indiana, and destroyed the Republican party in Indiana.

80 years on, its business as usual in the Republican party.

About Time

2006-10-01T11:02:00.000-05:00

With single-card GPU’s capable of delivering 375 Gigaflops of processing power, it’s a surprise this power wasn’t leveraged in laboratory computer simulation a long time ago.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/09/29/folding_at_home_to_use_gpus/

New addition to Karachi garage

2006-09-29T12:35:00.000-05:00

My dad just bought a Toyota Vitz, imported from Japan. Its a 5-door hatchback that sells in Europe and North America under the name Yaris. It posts fuel economy numbers of ~55 miles per gallon with its 1.0 litre 4-cylinder 16-valve powerplant and has power everything. It even has a DVD player and television!

Go ahead given for $43bn Pakistan property development

2006-09-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

The Pakistan Government has given Dubai based firm Emaar Properties the go ahead to develop two resort style living islands, Bundal and Buddo (who came up with these names?) near Karachi.

"It will be just like another Dubai," Ashfaque Hasan Khan, an adviser to the prime minister said. At $43bn, I hope so. I wonder how this will affect residential real estate values in Karachi.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5387590.stm

Emaar is also developing Crescent Bay in Karachi, a 75 acre development featuring high and mid-rise towers for residential and commercial use, a shopping centre and five star beachfront hotel. The towers will contain 4000 residential apartments. Crescent Bay will located within DHA Phase 8 and in close proximity to the DHA golf course. It will offer individual architectural styles for each tower within the development.

Woman who lost 8 relatives on 9/11 embraces Islam

2006-09-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/08/Tampabay/Faith_s_friction.shtml

Canadian Muslim falsely charged, tortured

2006-09-28T08:34:00.000-05:00

It's interesting to note this poor chap confessed to having received training at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan despite never having ever been even close to that country. Just goes to show that torture does NOT obtain accurate actionable intelligence.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14897315/ (story since taken off MSNBC)

A Novel Approach that Worked!

2006-09-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5372718.stm

If only Israeli and Palestinian women would take a page out of this book!

Islam-bashing in Washington Think Tanks

2006-09-27T06:09:00.000-05:00

Last week, I watched a panel organized by The Claremont Institute (one of many conservative think tanks in DC) televised on C-SPAN2. The topic of the discussion was "Constitutional Issues after 9/11". Many issues were discussed, including “the future of Islam”. Not as in what is happening in Islam and what might Islam look like in the future, rather, what are we going to do about Islam and how are we going to mold it now to suit our interests in the future.

Mark Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute addressed Muslims as “The most stubborn, fanatical and unchanging billion people the world has ever seen.” Helprin also referred to his experience serving in the Israeli army during Q&A. Had he not mentioned it himself, I would never have guessed. All of which lends more credence to the theory that much of American foreign policy is shaped heavily if not controlled by Israel and American Pro-Israel groups. Only a few days later I saw Joel Rosenberg appear on CNN as a Middle East expert for what was a fairly long segment. He was a former advisor to Israeli PM Benjamin Netenyahu. He called Ahmedinejad Hitler as many are these days and urged quick intervention in Iran. He also promoted his book "Epicenter". All this goes to show who's whispering in the ears of the blind giant.

William Kristol, editor of Weekly Standard, spoke briefly.

He was followed by Christopher Hitchens, Columnist at the Atlantic Monthly and Slate Magazine. Hitchens warned of the “vile combination of Islam with Self-righteousness, Self-hatred, and Self-pity” And the “dangers we face from Islamic Fascism”. He continued “When I’m debating a whining, self-righteous, self-hating and self-pitying Muslim on television or radio, and I criticize Islam or their prophet, he will say, look you have offended one billion Muslims! As if using that as a threat.” (I think Hitchens probably honestly misunderstood whoever he was debating. I don’t think any threat was implied. Many of those stepping up to defend Islam in todays hostile environment aren’t the best English speakers) Another reference Hitchens made to Muslims spoke “Who when they are not mutilating little girls or carrying out suicide bombings in Israel are celebrating the killing of Americans” which again I though was highly unfair.

Some of these speakers were self-proclaimed close friends of the Project for the New American Century. In the end the urging of the panel was to end the complacency, self-delusion and fear of “Islamofascism” and fight it head on. The audience was so hardline that one lady asked the question how much of a disadvantage was it to us (Americans in Iraq) that we used intelligent weapons to minimize collateral damage and was it something we should have done? Essentially, in Washington circles, life holds no value if it belongs to a Muslim.

The answer to today’s crisis from one speaker was force because our enemy (Muslims) appreciates force. He gave the example of a Russian diplomat killed in Beirut in response to which the KGB captured all those implicated in the killing, cut off their genitals, and mailed their heads back to the parent organization with their genitals in their mouths.

This is the conversation that is taking place in Washington, bigotry and fascism disguised as a reactionary defense policy.

What sort of Ramadan is this?

2006-09-27T05:45:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5373050.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5376968.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5380376.stm

How Gas Prices Work

2006-09-27T05:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.howstuffworks.com/gas-price.htm

Pope controversy: My two cents

2006-09-17T06:56:00.000-05:00

The PopeÂs remarks were only mildly offensive since they were not his but belonged to a 14th century Byzantine ruler who was at war with Muslims. However, they were irresponsible and would not have been made had this Pope not exiled Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the #1 expert on Islam and Muslims in the Vatican. This Pope seems to be riding global anti-Islam sentiment in order to increase the Roman Catholic Church and ChristianityÂs stature against and at the cost of IslamÂs. If his aim is to stop the persecution of Christians is some Muslim countries, it is a worthy pursuit but his approach is counterproductive. This pope is very different from his predecessor, who only worked for peace and understanding between all faiths and who never (to my knowledge) made such a faux pas.

Now for the global reaction to the comments. This is the timeline as best I could make out:

- Pope makes comments

- Muslim leaders condemn comments and ask for apology from Vatican. Public protests are held in some Muslim countries.

- Muslims are called oversensitive, intolerant, against free speech, violent and accused of having double standards (re. criticism of faith)

At this point no reports of any violence had emerged so I take it that those calling Muslims violent were doing so because they were protesting which is only a Western right.

After this, I am not positive whether the Pope's expression of regret at offense caused came first or reports of firebombing of two churches in Nablus (West Bank). I know for a fact that Islam haters will be fuming that churches were attacked by violent Muslims despite the Pope issuing an apology. This would be an incorrect characterization.

3 points:

1.) Even though I live in the capital city of the United States of America, there are areas in the Capital where if I yell "Crackhead nigga!" at someone, I will be beaten to death or near-death. Would I then complain about my freedom of expression being trampled upon? I mean, black people use "Nigga" all the time. Even if the person was African American and an obvious crack addict, I would still be beaten and yet it's a free Country? That's right! It IS a free country. Black people are NOT violent and if I did the above, I would be an idiot and deserve an ass-whooping because given the situation, I should have predicted this outcome. Its that simple.

Now lets say I yelled "Crackhead Niggas!" at an upscale mall with lots of preppy African American shoppers. I will most likely not be beaten. People would confront me and angrily demand an apology, call me a racist, probably curse me and call mall security on me. Again, given the setting, this will be the response I should be expecting. This would be the fair and commensurate response. The Pope's offense is less grave than my analogy's and the greater Islamic World's response has been far less angry than my analogy's and in proportion to the offense.

Now what if I yelled the same thing in prison? Its clear that I would die an extremely violent and painful death. Well, Nablus is a prison. The entire West Bank is a large isolated prison camp. The response there, although sad, was to be expected. You cannot expect one of the poorest areas in the World (Poorest outside Africa) to give a measured response to insult. If developed countries like the US and Israel are incapable of a measured response, how can we expect this of a prison militia. When I say something, only the people around me hear it. When the Pope says something (and he knows this), everyone hears it. Second point:

2.) What's worse? Making vaguely insulting comments against a prophet of another faith or firebombing a place of worship? Obviously, firebombing a place of worship is worse. However, who should be more responsible with their words and actions, the representative of God Almighty in the Catholic Church or a teenage, unemployed boy in the West Bank who has lived his entire life under occupation? Obviously the Pope should be more responsible. I think most people will miss this latter distinction and not give due blame to the Pope for his irresponsible comments.

3.) I think many people will also miss that the Pope did not apologize. If I insinuate someone's mother is a whore and upon his/her protest, say that I regret any insult I may have caused, that is not an apology. I am not saying the Pope has to apologize. Whether he does or not is entirely up to him. However I wanted to make that distinction clear.

Regardless, I know Islam-haters are going to use this to paint Islam as an angry and violent religion. Make no mistake about it. The Islam-bashing movement is rapidly gathering steam and is becoming global. We may very soon taste a similar experience to that of the European Jews before 1941. I think it might be time for Muslims to jump on the Holocaust rememberance bandwagon.

P.S. - I need to practice brevity in my writing. I had many points to make but I went on for way too long there and I apologize for this.

Some Israeli talking points

2006-09-17T06:29:00.000-05:00

Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., addressed the International Lion of Judah Conference, held by the United Jewish Communities on “Politics of the United Nations” this Sunday in D.C. Here are some of his talking points (nearly verbatim):

"This is not a war on terror, it’s the war on extreme radical Islam. Painfully, sadly it is true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim. You just have to look at the 2nd and 3rd generation British Muslims that executed the London terror attacks."

“The other side raises their children to be suicide bombers.”

“Bullshit!” – referring to the possibility that Hamas or Hezbollah might evolve into a peaceful political organization (“Bullshit” comment from ~one year back following elections favorable to Hamas and Hezbollah)

“You can not engage or appease terrorists.” – Very convenient label

“You fight them till you win.” – So the plan is to kill or bring to submission everyone in the Middle East through military force?

“Fighting hatred” – Maybe just a little too idealistically noble and naïve for any serious person

“Fighting not just for ourselves, but for all of the free world.” – I find it amazing when Israeli spokesmen contend that if Israel didn’t exist, the Middle East would be an unchecked hotbed of terror and that Israel is fighting America’s war for it. Its really quite the contrary.

Many references to September 11 were made obviously.

The UN was made fun of and its validity/impartiality questioned.

“We are moral…” “We export life-improving scientific discoveries, artists, athletes, musicians…” “We teach our children to be contributing members of their communities….”

“Our enemies are immoral…” “They export hatred and terror…” “They teach their children to blow themselves up to kill Jews….”

Gillerman took the liberty to redefine the “real” “Axis of Evil” as Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah.

“I hope the ceasefire holds. But this is not the end. It is the beginning. As they say in this country, “Coming soon” (w/reference to U.S. movies/cinema).” – I take this “more to come” language very seriously to mean Israel will reenter Lebanon soon.

Primary purpose of speech as best I could make out:

1.) Thank US Jewish groups like UJC and AIPAC
2.) Highlight threat of nuclear Iran (shared with Bolton)

John Bolton followed Gillerman. His talking points were thankfully (and surprisingly) somewhat different. His main concern was nuclear technology proliferation, specifically with regards to Iran AND North Korea. An American official addressing Jewish American's with American, not Israeli talking points? How somewhat refreshing!

Retiring the Silver Bullet

2006-09-17T06:23:00.000-05:00

Last week I went to the DMV to re-register my car in the state of Virginia. When they asked me whether I wanted a one or a two year renewal, I thought about it for a while then finally said “one year only please”. As those words escaped my mouth, I suddenly felt very sad. After 6 years of faithful service and many exciting memories, I knew sometime this year I would have to retire my first car. Damn you pragmatism!

Wow! Six years together! More than twice as long as I’ve been with any woman, and best of all, we never fought. Why would we? We gave each other exactly what we needed when we needed. I got great handling, great braking, good acceleration, great exhilaration, a smooth shifting short throw manual, wonderful engine sounds, sticky tires, reliability, the ability to transport cargo and 4 passengers (albeit tightly), comfortable seats, great looks and exclusivity. And all in one package without breaking the bank (<$15K)! She got her regular maintenance as well as a little extra TLC and enough excitement to last 10 lifetimes! I sure did put her through her paces, and often! Here is some praise from the automotive press that the Ford Contour SVT received during its limited production run between 1998 and 2000 (Mine was a ’99). Comments by the Automotive Press:

Road & Track: “The SVT Contour is the “M2.8”, a BMW M3 for around (1/2) the price”.

Auto Week: “For just a little more than the price of the average American car, you get what may be the best American driver’s sedan”.

Bob Bondurant School of High performance Driving: “With limited modifications made for everyday use on the track, the SVT Contour has readily adapted to the rigors of life at Bondurant”. The cars were used as on-track instructor cars.

Super Ford Magazine (in reference to Bondurant): “In a huge testament to the durability and capability of modern hardware, next to nothing was required under-hood to ready the SVT Contours for a long life of constant track abuse”.

Sports Car International: “As a package, everything about this car is geared to the enthusiast, from the satisfying engine noise and unflappable balance to the slick short-throw cable shifter and leather wrapped interior perks”.

L.A. Car of the Year: The SVT Contour won the 1998 “L.A. Car of the Year” award.

Sports Compact Car: “The throaty exhaust note will make performance nuts happy”.

Auto Week: “The sound of the engine alone is worth the price of admission”.

Wards Auto World: Named SVT Duratec to its “Ten Best” engines list.

Sports Car International: “This power plant is hyper-sensitive to commands, and its spine-tingling scream is like that of no Ford sedan you’ve ever driven.”

Behold! The face of brute force!

2006-09-09T02:07:00.000-05:00

The Porsche Cayenne Turbo S has a 4.5 liter V8 powerplant that churns out 530 lb-ft of torque that propels this monster from 0-60 mph in 4.8 seconds. Yes, that means this SUV will blow the doors off your M3's and 350Z's between stoplights.

The vanilla Porsche Cayenne is a pooch of an SUV, underpowered as any on the market. That is why Porsche has offered the more powerful Cayenne S and the even more powerful, downright brutal Cayenne Turbo for the past 2 years. With the recently introduced Cayenne Turbo S, Porsche has just entered the realm of ridiculous.

The Cayenne shares its chassis with the VW Touareg and the brand new Audi Q7. Audi already offers the Q7 with 2 powerful engine choices. In 2008, Audi plans to unleash a 6.0 liter V12 TDI (Diesel) variant of the Q7. Try 720 lb-ft of torque on for size. Supercar acceleration from an SUV may be just over a year away.

Why are all bathroom attendants black?

2006-09-08T02:51:00.001-05:00

Even in cities with large white and Hispanic low-income populations, the bathroom attendants in the clubs, lounges and expensive restaurants are always black. I have seen this hold true in Chicago, Indianapolis, New York, D.C., Cincinnati and Miami so its not a regional thing.

Not only are they black either, they are always older and stereotypically black, and not just sterotypically black but stereotypically black as that would have been understood to mean 50 to 100 years ago.

It may put bread on someone's table, but when I see an African American man in his 50's, dressed in a tuxedo, sitting in a bathroom at 2:00 AM so that he can pull out and hand me paper towel, I can't help but feel sad. I know why he's there. Because when you go out at night and spend big money, you want to feel like a king and nothing makes you feel more like a king than having a slave, and the only slave that feels authentic around here is a black one.

A thought on porn

2006-09-08T02:21:00.000-05:00

If everyone does everything in their own self-interest then the pornography industry should be out to prevent and break relationships. Is it not?

Pornography is frequently blamed for destroying relationships. Did anyone ever consider that a 4+ billion dollar industry might actually act in its self interest? Relationships are bad for porn consumption/sales so the porn industry is obviously going to be against relationships.

How does an industry launch an assault on relationships you ask? Well my dear friend, try watching a bit of porn (don’t get addicted!). Are you done?...

No hurry, I can wait.....

Done? Great! Now then, consider how many girls with whom you’d actually like to have a relationship would let you do that to them. I think some real life prostitutes would take exception to many things done routinely in “regular” pornography. By creating unrealistic expectations of sexual partners and what a “good” sexual relationship should be, pornography is, in my opinion, purposefully undermining relationships and thereby preserving and expanding its consumer base.

The History of Cricket in North America

2006-09-07T15:58:00.000-05:00

"It was once the national game and the annual fixture against Canada, which was first played in the 1840s. It is the oldest international sporting event in the modern world, predating today's Olympic Games by nearly 50 years."

The earliest accounts of Cricket in North America are from between 1709 and 1712.

"The outbreak of the War of Independence in 1776 temporarily queered cricket's pitch. Like tea and taxes, it was associated with Britishness.

But by 1860 an estimated 10,000 Americans were playing the game. Presidents turned out to watch. When Chicago hosted Milwaukee in 1859, Abraham Lincoln was among the spectators."

How and Why Baseball Prevailed...

"The American Civil War uprooted men from their homes, pitches fell into disrepair, and a new sport adapted from an English girls' game called rounders, took America by storm.
Baseball suited war. It was quick, easy to learn, and required little in the way of equipment or facilities - just four gunnysacks thrown on the ground, a simple bat and an equally simple ball."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5321126.stm

2006-09-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

Einstein was right. Time is relative to the observer.

When you are staring down the barrel of a gun time slows down, your whole life flashes by, heartbreak and scars.

The past is a gaping hole.

Your only chance is to turn around and face it. But its like kissing the lips of your dead love, darkness waiting in the hole of her mouth.

Now, like all my loves, she is mine forever.

She has brought me here, to this moment of clarity, where time slows down, and I choose to look back, to see myself.

And in that act of seeing, I am reborn

Agassi this year's Cinderella Man

2006-08-31T23:57:00.000-05:00

After THE most spectacular first round match I have ever seen against Andre Pavel, I expected Agassi to lose gracefully to Marcos Bagdatis. Thats not to say I wasn't rooting for him. But after winning two unexciting sets and being up 4-0 in the fourth, I figured it was over and Agassi was through to the third round. I was overall happy but dispassionate.

Thats when the battle began. Bagdatis powered up like a mighty morphin power ranger and took the fourth set 7-5 after being down 0-4. He had dominated the third claiming it 6-3. The fifth set began with Andre's chances looking grim. The entire set was a rollercoaster with both players looking exhausted, especially Bagdatis who was suffering from severe cramping (and getting booed for it by the US pro-Agassi crowd)

In the end, it would be pretty clear to anyone who saw the match that had Bagdatis not cramped and the crowd not have been so hard on him throughout the match, the 21 year old would have been the victor, not the 36 year old Agassi. But it was one of those things, Agassi was serving up a fairy tale. And who doesn't want to see a real life fairy tale?

In the end, after doing everything to hurt him during the match, Bagdatis got his due applause with a standing ovation from the NYC crowd. It was well deserved. You could almost hear the words in the clapping; "Thank you Marcos for displaying such immense fighting effort. You're a great player but you know we had to do this. You understand. No hard feelings." And there were none. Marcos understood.

If Agassi wins his third round match, (And I would pay big money if it could inflence this outcome) I will get to see him when I get to the US Open on Sunday for the fourth round! Fingers crossed!

Back in the day when apparently, looking gay was cool!

My homies are educated!

2006-08-31T18:33:00.003-05:00

I live in the MOST educated county in the United States. 35.7% of Arlington residents have graduate degrees. That means more than one in three people have at least a Masters degree!

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/snapshots/PL5103000.html

Washington D.C.

2006-08-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

How my city has done in recent MSNBC rankings:

D.C. rank in U.S.:

Job market: #1
Rent: #8 (highest)
Crime: #13 (“most dangerous city”, see below)
Communte: #3 (longest)

“Now Washington is cowering under a new wave of late-night robberies and carjackings blamed mostly on youths armed with knives and guns. Last month in upscale Georgetown, assailants attacked a British man who had been volunteering for former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, slashing the man’s throat and attempting to rape his female companion. Last week, a 17-year-old girl was gunned down in southeast Washington. In her dying moments, she managed to save her infant godson by sliding him under a parked car.

The attacks have incensed local officials, as well as those who have eulogized the dead. “Who would kill a man in a wheelchair?” asks Dr. Melvin G. Brown, the pastor who led Crowder’s funeral after he was killed July 8 near the apartment he shared with his mother in northwest Washington’s Shaw neighborhood. Crowder was shot seven times, his body found on the ground beside his wheelchair. Another man was critically wounded. There have been no arrests in the case.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14137625/

I’m right where a lot of death is engineered

2006-08-31T18:30:00.000-05:00

At my last address, I lived two blocks away from General Dynamics, the makers of the F-16 fighter jet. My current apartment is 4 miles from the White House.

No choices. No Regrets.

2006-08-31T18:29:00.000-05:00

There are no choices.

Nothing but a straight line.

The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask ‘why me?’ and ‘what if?’ when you look back, see the branches, like a pruned Bonsai tree, or a forked lightning.

If you had done something differently, it wouldn’t be you. It would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.

- Max Payne

SLVR UNDR the door

2006-08-14T06:42:00.000-05:00

My flatmate knocked on my door wanting to use my mobile and I had just come out of the shower. I wondered if it would work and decided to give it a try. I slipped my SLVR under the door to him. When he was done, he slipped it right back. No inching doors open anymore! SWEET!!! I love skinny phones!!

"Unintended Consequences"

2006-08-14T06:34:00.000-05:00

Ayaz Amir's analysis of the role and efficacy of today's Islamist movement:

"Savour then the irony of it. The “war on terror” was meant to fight and contain radical Islam. Instead, the Bush administration has turned out to be its biggest supporter, through its arrogance, lies and blind support of Israel giving radical Islam an impetus it could never have hoped to achieve on its own."

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/20060804.htm

Galloway Blasts!

2006-08-14T06:31:00.000-05:00

Anna from SKY news is at the receiving end of Galloway in this 9 minute clip.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8302753919953151010

Ahmadinejad Blogs!

2006-08-14T03:54:00.000-05:00

The president of Iran has started his own personal blog. I saw his interview on 60 minutes today and it turns out he is just as laid back a guy as Bush but with a quicker wit and a longer last name.

http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/

Fewer Americans are passionate about their cars

2006-08-14T02:50:00.001-05:00

http://pewresearch.org/social/pack.php?PackID=16

Language Manipulation: Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the UN

2006-08-14T02:44:00.000-05:00

Language is very important. You can put something to someone that elicits a "no" one way and a "yes" another using the "right" language. Maybe thats why Noam Chomsky is a linguist although he is known for his political commentary.

Politics is all about playing on words, the current Republican administration mastered this art and it won them the White House twice in two elections. For instance, when wanting to abolish the estate tax, they changed its name from the "estate tax" to the "death tax". Lets try it!

Donkey: Do you want to tax the estate (Who has an estate? Only multi-millionaires) of rich folk when they pass away?

Sheep: Yes.

Elephant: Do you want to impose a death tax on someone so that when they die, the government takes their family's money after they have just lost a relative?

Sheep: No.

Guiness Duo: Brilliant!!!

Now lets look at Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the UN. Here are simple language tactics he employs. His language is tailored to the average American viewer, the most important kind, and he does a good job of tailoring:

1.) Refers to Israel as “her”, her enemies as “him”. (see? he even got me)
2.) Never refers to Israel as a nation or a country, only as "a democracy".
3.) Always refers to Israel's enemies as "terrorists".

Doublespeak:

4.) Israel kills four UN personnel; Gillerman accuses Kofi Annan of accusing Israel of doing it intentionally, making Israel the victim and diverting attention from the UN deaths.
5.) Israel kills dozens of civilians in Qana; Gillerman even states that he "mourns" for them but then blames them of allowing themselves to be used as human shields.
6.) Claims that if there were no Israel, the Middle East would be a “hotbed of terror". Frankly, anyone with any sense knows this could not possibly be any farther from the truth.
7.) Uses language such as “spreading democracy and freedom” to associate Israel with things Americans consider deeply “American”. (here he just took a page out of Bush's playbook)
8.) Talks of “unconditional obligations” when referring to UN resolutions asking for Lebanon/Hizbullah to give up something (1559), while ignoring Israel's obligations under numerous resolutions.
9.) Talks about “right to defend yourself” but never accepts anyone else’s.

But I can expect Dan Gillerman to speak in such a way. What makes me sad and panicked is when I see Bush speak the same way. On August 7th he appeared with Condi Rice and said “we” when referring to Israel. He said people like those that started this conflict (with the abduction of 2 Israeli soldiers) "hate freedom". They don’t want freedom and they don’t want others to have it. That is why they attack free democracies. He restated that Hezbollah started the conflict with the kidnappings. What about the decades long incarcerations without trial of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails? Was it not a prisoner exchange that Hezbollah were after? Doesn’t that mean they love freedom? Were the kidnapped not armed and uniformed male soldiers? How badly can you paint that? That sounds to me well within a reasonable set of rules of engagement.

Another thing. Try saying 1559. It just rolls off your tongue. What about all the UN resolutions Israel has broken? I can't remember one. What about all the proposed resolutions and condemnations against Israel in the UN that were killed with a single, veto vote against them? But I've heard 1559 ten thousand times in the past few weeks.

Teaching Chicago’s immigrants how to responsibly enjoy American food

2006-08-14T02:43:00.004-05:00

Interesting article with a jumbo-sized side of irony. It seems our food has become just as dangerous as alcohol.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5216960.stm

Many Tintin and Asterix comics available for download

2006-08-14T02:40:00.000-05:00

TINTIN - http://www.savefile.com/projects/262819

ASTERIX -http://www.savefile.com/projects/753830

Crosshairs adjusted Captain Insano!!!

2006-08-14T02:27:00.000-05:00

When the language in the media and from the White House became more and more ominous towards Afghanistan, I took note and sure enough, the US went in, disregarding the Taliban’s offer to turn Osama Bin Laden over if evidence of his guilt was presented to them. No biggie. Bush was angry.

When the language from the White House, the think tanks and in the media turned ominous towards Iraq, I didn’t give it much thought initially. As the jump off got closer and closer, I became incredulous. They are not really going to do this? Its insane! And yet they went into Iraq anyway.

For the past few months, the language from these same sources has become increasingly threatening against Iran and Syria but especially Iran. Now however, the US military is overstretched. No doubt about it. Syria and Iran needn’t worry about a US ground invasion. They can expect missile attacks and aerial bombardment but there will be no more ground invasions for a while.

HOWEVER, war needn’t just be a war of militaries or even economies. There can also be a war of cultures and America has JUST readjusted its crosshairs in a completely new direction and this one is the most dangerous one yet by far. America has JUST launched an attack on Islam. The language from the White House is “Islamic Fascism” and the language from the media and think tanks is “not a peaceful religion like Judaism and Christianity”. Everywhere I turn, I see my religion being openly and gleefully bashed. Such sentiments have been present here in the US for some time but they had remained latent till now. That has just changed and I am very fearful.

I hope this is just a misstep. There is enough hatred towards Muslims as it is without this BS. As always, I will speak positively about Islam to whoever I meet and show them what moderate Islam is but even a million me’s would be no match for the juggernaut that is US news/fear/hate media. More Americans are going to hate more Muslims more intensely. In turn, more Muslims are going to hate more Americans more intensely. And things will continue to get exponentially worse. I hadn’t even got used to this level of religious bigotry and you’re going to up it on me? What’s next from the USCIS (the new INS)? An arm band to identify me as a Pakistani and a Muslim? Detention Camp?

As a Muslim in the US, I was not afraid even immediately after September 11, 2001 but now, I am very afraid. I have never been a pessimist, especially as I firmly believe in the underlying goodness of human beings. Yet tensions have gotten to a level that will not be sustainable for long. Something will give. What will it be?

Butt and Bhatti to the MAX!!!

2006-07-27T17:55:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pip2GXaZp4Y&search=desi

I realize this isn’t the work of Butt and Bhatti (who dubbed Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan in “Shanghai Noon” in Punjabi) because Butt and Bhatti never cuss. But this is even funnier!

Tiger Attack!

2006-07-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

In certain parts of India, many dozens of people are killed every year due to tiger attacks, both on land and in the water. Here is video of an attack on land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge0vLCFmad4

Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?

2006-07-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. It was a crusade.

"What's a crusade?" I says.

He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says:

"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"

"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he --"

"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war."

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm.

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land -- there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to --"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if I had a farm and another person --"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers -- dey mos' sholy is. I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't run across none dat acts like dat."

- From “Tom Sawyer Abroad” by Mark Twain

I may have turned someone gay. How should I feel?

2006-07-24T03:08:00.000-05:00

I told this kid on my dorm floor his freshman year that I thought he was gay and I did it jokingly but only half jokingly. I presented this as an argument, starting with my premises that by themselves were taken as a litany of compliments by the queer-accused (you are well dressed, have appreciation for the fine arts, etc). At the time, we had become reasonably good friends but that all ended the moment I presented the conclusion of my argument. After that, this young African-American Purdue student hated me more than maybe I have ever been hated by anyone. He would poison the minds of others about me using terms such as (and I overheard these firsthand) “Bad”, “Evil”, “666” and The Devil”. Man he hated the crap out of me. I never understood why he was being such an asshole about it till 2 weeks back when I received confirmation from a friend’s ex in Chicago (whose roommate is a gay man so she often goes to gay bars with him) that my old friend had discovered himself and converted to Gayism. He wasn’t being an asshole after all, he was just being bitchy, which I now realize he was predisposed towards so I can’t really blame him there.

I enjoyed receiving this piece of news initially. I enjoyed it a lot actually! But then my friend who had just conveyed it to me changed all that by proposing that had it not been for my stinging remark in 1998, maybe this chap, lets call him Jay, would have never turned gay. First of all, could this be? Could my statement have had this much of an impact? Could that dark seed of doubt that I planted into his feeble and impressionable freshman mind have manifested itself 8 years afterward in Jay becoming Gay?

And if it did, how should I feel about it? I’ve got nothing.

Some Thoughts…

2006-07-24T02:58:00.000-05:00

To truly understand a belief or point of view, its best if you start off on the opposing side. In other words, that you begin by actually holding the opposite viewpoint to a given issue, even be passionate about the view from that side and feel passionate hatred for the view you will later adopt. If you are an “active” person, you will act on your views at any given time and try to convince others of them. But once you have swapped paradigms and later find yourself holding the opposite viewpoint, you should not view those prior actions as wasted or negative actions. Though you may have acted to worsen the situation when you look back with your new insight, you really haven’t because that is part of the process of “true” discovery, one of the purest if not purest experiences a human being can have. You haven’t wasted any time because this new understanding that you possess is “better” than other peoples. I say better for many reasons. For one, you would need to be very convinced to sacrifice your prior/opposing view. You would not do this without weighing all arguments and counterarguments to the issue very carefully. In addition, you would have deep insight into the minds of those in opposition to your views because you were one of them a short while back. That would empower you with empathy and the ability to bring about understanding between the opposing/quarrelling sides.

When I see genuine Muslim converts, I always find myself very lacking in the practice of my religion, the religion of my forefathers and the one I was born into. New converts comprise a disproportionately large number of the “best” Muslims I know. They practice Islam with love and passion.

There have been a variety of issues on which I have made 180’s over the course of my life, some of them very important and some more controversial than important, but none the less important due to the gravity given to them in daily social discourse. For the most part, I have found my flexibility to be a very good thing. I feel I have benefited from it. I am certainly a far more tolerant person than I used to be.

But the shedding of this vice of intolerance has opened the doorway to something that may also be a vice, cultural relativism. I have become desensitized to all extremes of everything. I am understanding of all but the most awful actions of people because I am always willing and able to find and more importantly, understand, their twisted justifications. I say “I am understanding of…”, and not “I understand” because I wouldn’t have made the same decisions as these people, these people who through their actions become criminals. But I see the grayness in their decision making process, not just black and white. There is so much gray is every decision. That’s what relativism does to you, it makes you see gray everywhere there used to be just black and white. Going from black and white to a grayscale? That must be an improvement, right? Yes and no. The no is very simple to explain. Relativism has made my interactions with the world more complex and difficult. Gone is the happy-go-lucky me of yesteryear when I would make decisions on the fly based on how they made me “feel” and in his place is nervous, unsure and conflicted me of today, highly involved in all my decision making and yet still too often wrong in the choices I make as a consequence. But now for the bright side. How relativism has brought “improvement”. Quite simply, I understand, I empathize and I feel. Even if these feeling make me depressed, it is important that I feel. I’d rather feel and be “aware” than be numb and dumb.

Throw back to Einstein and disdain for all worldly objects except Ferraris

2006-07-24T02:43:00.000-05:00

So as I have already stated on this blog, I have no burning desire to possess large televisions, fancy clothes and fast cars. I am a simple man (like Einstein). Simple things suffice in keeping me happy, my health, my family, my friends, good food and all the wonderful things that God has provided free of charge on his green Earth. Sunshine, rain, snow, the Moon in the night sky; they all cast a different kind of beauty upon the Earth. I appreciate too many things out there to list; dogs, predatory cats, birds, flowers, dolphins, mountains, waves breaking upon a sandy beach or waves breaking anywhere really. I really feel life should be enjoyed every bit of the way. Anytime spent depressed over trivial matters (in the big picture) like school or work is time wasted.

I think I always felt this way but I truly understood this just a few weeks back. My good friend and roommate of several months was leaving the US permanently to go back to Pakistan. He and I had shared many months of depression from being unemployed and stress and frustration from not being able to find work. The night before he left, I took him out to a favorite Chinese buffet of ours. Although my favorite item there is the cheese wontons, I started with shrimp. I piled on my plate approximately 30-35 shrimp and proceeded to dispatch them to my tummy. As I had finished my first plate of the night, my friend was just returning to the table with his second plate. He had not had any shrimp on his first plate but had a couple on this one. I asked him to count the shrimp on his plate. He counted 14.

I then said this to him. “Do you realize that those 14 shrimp on you plate were once living things. That they possessed souls? That they were born, had families, survived in the dangerous waters of the sea only to grow up so you could enjoy the succulent flavor of their meat coupled with that of cocktail sauce?” (I’m not trying to put anyone off meat. God intended for us to eat meat otherwise he wouldn’t have made it taste so good)

My friend took in my point as he peeked at my plate which was a mess of empty shrimp exoskeletons and tails. I confessed to him that I had had at least 30 shrimp myself so that as a team we may have eaten 50 shrimp that meal. 50 shrimp in one meal costing less than $10 per person. Not bad, eh? But where am I going with this?

I continued…”Do you know that shrimp is regarded as a delicacy? A luxury? Its true. Hell, for the majority of the World meat of any kind is a luxury spared only for celebrations when it can be afforded. Do you realize that perhaps two thirds of the World’s population will live their entire lives and die never having tasted a single shrimp? And here we finished off 50 like it was no big deal!” If you are reading this, you have access to and knowledge on how to use a computer and the Internet so the following will most probably apply to you as well. “The fact is we are probably in the top 5 percent of the World in terms of wealth and quality of life and definitely in the top 10 percent. If ever we should feel suffering or depression, we should first feel it for the 6 billion below us. Otherwise, live happy because your life is not just good, its excellent!”

My point to my friend was to look at the bright side and to value all his blessings. In addition to this point, I make another point to you. As those born into comfort, it is our duty to do what we can to help those born into poverty.

OK, now here I am going to lose all my credibility. You probably don’t remember the title of this blog entry anymore but it had “Ferraris” in it and this is why. I love Ferraris! They are beautiful to look at, to listen to and to drive and I must have one. Now I am a car buff and have driven a fair number of exotics and even one or two that might qualify as supercars (dunno, would a 911 Turbo or a 360 Modena count?). I have had the good fortune of having filthy rich friends and family and so have sipped the good life alongside them free of cost. And I mean the whole shebang; being whisked through airports straight to my car without having to deal with customs, fancy vacations, gorgeous women, fast cars, private jet trips, etc… All this has made me value these things less and less except ownership of a Ferrari. I don’t know why but I am addicted to Ferraris and I must own one. Not rent one! Own one! Maybe if I were a motorcycle buff, I would be pining for a Triumph but no, for me its cars and its Ferraris! So here I am, willing to go bottom rate on everything in life regardless of how much I earn but one day I know I’m going to have a Ferrari in my garage. The rest, I will give to charity off-course!

Israel in Lebanon: Proportional Force?

2006-07-19T05:49:00.000-05:00

Total Israeli deaths as of Wednesday, July 19th 10:30 GMT were 25 of which 13 were civilians. The Lebanese toll for the same period was 270+, mostly all civilians. That puts the ratio at approximately 11 lebanese deaths to every Israeli death. Approximately 20 to 1 for civilians. Commensurate Force? I think not.

The Origin of Ctrl+Alt+Delete

2006-07-19T01:12:00.000-05:00

http://www.devilducky.com/media/28888/

Interesting and funny!

Oh British masters, when will you leave us alone?

2006-07-19T01:09:00.000-05:00

"He is quite unlike other ghosts. He is harmless. Even if you do not serve tea and biscuit, he leaves you if you promise to get it any other day,"

-Faiyaz Ahmed, local resident of Gaya, India

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5186722.stm

Your 2006 International T&A Competition Contestants…

2006-07-18T05:24:00.000-05:00

South Americans looking especially good this year.

Oh America! When will you learn?

2006-07-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

Former US Army Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters writes about how a better Middle East would look in the latest issue of the Armed Forces Journal (AFJ). Below is the before map:
And viola! Here is the "After" map. Easy as pie!

Winners — Afghanistan, Arab Shia State, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Free Baluchistan, Free Kurdistan, Iran, Islamic Sacred State, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen.

Losers — Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, West Bank.

Link to full article.

Purdue gets a deservedly lousy NCAA Football pre-season ranking

2006-07-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

30. Purdue
2005 Record: 5-6
Why to get excited: Let’s try this again. After being one of the nation’s biggest flops last year, the team gets mostly everyone back. Yeah, we heard this last year as the team went into the tank after a heartbreaking double overtime loss to Minnesota followed up by a loss to Notre Dame, but the pieces are there for a quick rebound. QB Curtis Painter and WR Dorien Bryant should keep Big Ten defensive coordinators up nights, while the defense has the potential to be better if the line can be replaced. The schedule starts out with Indiana State, Miami University and Ball State before getting Minnesota in West Lafayette. For the second straight year, there’s no Ohio State and no Michigan. However …
Why to be grouchy: … seven of the final ten games are on the road. Once again, we all fell for this last year. Lots of returning players, favorable schedule, blah, blah, blah. The program can’t win close games, rarely comes through clutch over the last few years, and has to learn to take advantage of all its breaks. Does the defense have the talent to be better? There can be a big improvement from last year and it can still be bad.
The number one thing to work on is: Pass defense. There wasn’t a big play the secondary didn’t like to give up allowing 287 yards per game. Painter was more of a runner than a passer when he took over for Brandon Kirsch, but he has to be far more efficient. The punt return game could use a little bit more pop.
Biggest offensive loss: RB Jerod Void
Biggest defensive loss: DE Rob Ninkovich

Washington D.C. going at a murder a day this month

2006-07-14T05:24:00.000-05:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13834211/

BBCD’s overwhelmingly fail the Tebbit test

2006-07-14T05:23:00.000-05:00

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/comment/0,,1820202,00.html?gusrc=rss

How Dare You Say Such A Thing To Me!!!

2006-07-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

What Zidane should have done instead of head butting Materazzi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5qoMfBJUeI

Was Insult "Son of a Terrorist Whore"?

2006-07-10T18:28:00.000-05:00

Just why did a man blessed with complete control of a football lose his head in such a violent manner at such a crucial moment, boring it into the chest of Marco Materazzi? As L’Equipe summed up the moment of madness with a headline of “Regrets Éternels”, a day of endless questioning began. With many conflicting versions of events circling on the internet and in the world’s media, The Times enlisted the help of an expert lip reader, Jessica Rees, to determine the precise nature of the dialogue that caused Zidane to react in such a manner.

After an exhaustive study of the match video, and with the help of an Italian translator, Rees claimed that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore” before adding “so just f*** off” for good measure, supporting the natural assumption that the Frenchman must have been grievously insulted. As the son of two Algerian immigrants, the 34-year-old is proud of his North African roots, dedicating France’s 1998 World Cup win to “all Algerians who are proud of their flag and all those who have made sacrifices for their family but who have never abandoned their own culture”, so such a slur would certainly explain, if not justify, his violent response.

"Read my lips: the taunt that made Zidane snap" BY Matt Hughes
The Times, July 11, 2006
Full Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,28783-2263995,00.html

Could this happen to us?

2006-07-10T08:02:00.000-05:00

Funny!.... but also quite scary......

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

Track US past obesity levels by state

2006-07-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

Do I need to point out they’ve been on the rise?

http://health.msn.com/reports/obesity/default.aspx?GT1=8307

Can your PC run Aero Glass? (Windows Vista front end)

2006-07-10T07:59:00.000-05:00

Aero Requirements:

1 GHz processor
1 GB of system memory
Graphics processor supporting DirectX 9
128 MB of graphics memory
40GB hard drive with 15GB free

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5157574.stm

Zidane thing way overblown

2006-07-10T07:54:00.000-05:00

He didn't "leave in disgrace" or anything even close. That was overblown BS for dramatic effect. He just left on something of a bad note. I mean, he still got the Golden Ball award!

Calculate your McMeal nutrition

2006-07-10T07:51:00.000-05:00

McDonald's makes it easy with Bag a McMeal!

At least they're somewhat honest.

http://app.mcdonalds.com/bagamcmeal

The World as I see it

2006-07-08T23:51:00.000-05:00

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

- Albert Einstein

Interesting Factoid

2006-07-08T23:45:00.000-05:00

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

Maybe they should have asked Purdue alumnus for a hand on such an important engineering undertaking. After all, if we needed to write an important poem, I'm sure we'd ask them for their help.

I only had McDonald’s yesterday!

2006-07-08T23:13:00.000-05:00

So due to all kinds of constraints, I had 2 meals consisting entirely of McDonald’s today. I tried to keep them small and cheap. Lets do a calorie and cost audit:

(Note: stupid-ass blogger.com does not accept tables)

In total, I had 3 Double Cheeseburgers, 2 McChickens and a small McFries. The totals came to 2370 calories, 1030 fat calories, 114 grams of fat, 173% recommended daily value for fat and 229% DV for saturated fat.

I did get my 2000 calories for the day. However, half of these were fat calories. In addition, whereas I got just over my 2000 calories (112% DV) for the day, I ended up getting nearly 2.5 times the recommended daily intake of saturated fat. I took the food to go and had diet coke at home so no calories or cost need be added for the drink.

Now my total after tax came to $6.30 at a Virginia McDonald’s drive-through. Consider for a second what a bargain this is. My meal averaged 376 calories a dollar. A double cheeseburger (of which I had three) that costs 99 cents has 460 calories. Off-course, have enough of this stuff for long enough and it will make you obese and lazy and will eventually kill you.

This is what it looks like when you're sitting in $1,300,000

2006-06-21T03:42:00.000-05:00

Bugatti Veyron specs:

- 1001 hp (yes, SAE net)
- 922 lb-ft of torque
- Sixteen cylinders, sixty-four valves
- Four turbochargers
- 253 mph top speed (governed)
- 0 to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds
- 0 to 124 mph in 7.3 seconds
- 0 to 186 mph in 16.7 seconds

Probably not breaking news anymore but...

2006-06-15T02:30:00.000-05:00

Windows Vista (Longhorn) beta, Microsoft's new 64-bit OS is available for download!

Download it here for free (file size 4.4 GB):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx

Pakistani Military Truck attacked in BLA video

2006-06-15T02:03:00.000-05:00

The BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) has started full-fledged guerilla warfare in Balochistan and especially close to Quetta, one of my chilhood homes and where my grandparents reside to this day. The pace of attacks has also picked up to where today, you can expect several terrorist attacks every week.

The BLA has picked up a trick or two from their Iraqi counterparts. IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices, generally remoste detonated) for one and making videos of their attacks for another.

At the below URL for Baloch Voice, several interesting video clips are available for download. Currently there are three. One showing the BLA (or someone else in the Balochi desert) being attacked by a Pakistani helicopter gunship and two showing the same by Pakistan Air Force jets.
http://balochvoice.com/Video_clips/Video_Clips_Index.html

Previously, there was a video of a Pakistani military truck being attacked by an IED. The blast was extremely powerful but missed the truck by roughly two car-lengths. The video was taken from over a mile away and had Balochi music playing.

Video: Watch Mustafa tell you why his meat is better

2006-06-15T02:02:00.001-05:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13181714/

Islam in Europe: A cursory glance

2006-06-15T02:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12757599/

Ah! Nintendo (Famicom, NES) Nostalgia!

2006-06-15T02:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6144735/index.html

Graphics Cards Gone Wild!!!!! (GCGW)

2006-06-15T01:18:00.000-05:00

Graphic cards HAVE GONE WILD!!! Technological advancement usually means things getting shrunk down. Not so with graphics cards, they are only getting bigger and badder:

This EVGA Nvidia 7900GTX is SLI capable, meaning you can have two of these monsters working together at the same time!

And lets not leave ATI behind. Their two-behemoth-card-per-machine solution is called Crossfire. Two not enough for you? Quad-card solutions are on their way...

To deal with all this heat, Saphire offers the Radeon X1900XTX with its very own self-contained water cooling.

So you've spent $1,200 on two $600 graphics cards (all the cards in this post cost around that much) and you're still not satisfied? Not to worry, how about shelling another $300 for a PhysX card so all your in-game physics look better?

Considering you can spend $1,500 on just the graphics cards, a high-end desktop today can easily cost $4,000+. Having played the upgrade game for many years and having dumped nearly two thousand dollars into my own machine, I am very happy to call it quits and embrace the console. Long live my Xbox360!!!

SLVR in the SHWR

2006-05-19T04:17:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered that the SLVR's internal speakers are loud enough that you can use the SLVR to play music while you shower. I have a smaller bathroom and that helps but its pretty amazing how powerful the speaker in that sleek sexy tiny thing is.

Desktop PCs over?

2006-05-19T04:07:00.000-05:00

The notebook takeover!

I have always loved desktops. I am a desktop enthusiast and an overclocker, but...

Notebooks are not just getting faster in terms of general processing capacity but are increasingly incorporating powerful GPU's in mobile/convenient/attractive packages that don't break the bank. Anything above a Geforce 7800 or a X1600 will make for a decent gaming machine. George Lucas's company, Industrial Light and Magic (MI3, Poseidon, Pirates of the Caribbean 2) is now able to use laptops to render scenes (with special effects/animation) on location in realtime for directors.

Heat dissipation issues in notebooks have also been resolved. Manufacturers have started incorporating multiple fan designs with heatpipes in their high end offerings that allow for top end GPU's in laptops. I recently bought an aftermarket notebook cooler for my Dell 600m (Intel Centrino Dothan core w/ Radeon 9000) so that I can game on my laptop when I don't feel like starting up my desktop (which is often, even though I have a 26" widescreen monitor hooked up to my desktop, simply due to the convenience of being able to play anywhere). Even some low end notebook coolers (mine was <$20) provide enough airflow to lower notebook temperatures to allow intensive 3D gaming. Today, you can buy a notebook with a dual core processor, a 7800GTX GPU and 24bit HD sound. What do you need a desktop for anymore?

My desktop revisited: http://moosejamal.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-big-fat-greek-bottleneck.html

note: I have upgraded my graphics card since the above post. I now have a Leadtek Geforce 6800LE with additional pixel pipelines and shader units unlocked using Rivatuner, essentially turning it into a 6800 Ultra but with only 128 MB RAM running at slower speeds.

What some Mexicans will do to sneak into America!

2006-05-18T06:32:00.001-05:00

Cricket not a growth sport?

2006-05-18T06:28:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, when Jagmohan Dalmiya was taking cricket far and wide, I had felt a genuine surge of excitement. It was novel watching cricket matches in Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada. Some grounds were oddly shaped, the matches were thinly attended, and there were hardly any locals. But I supported the expansionist zeal, and hoped that cricket would catch on. I was naïve, and wrong.

Chastened and wiser, I can now see the futility of the ambitions, genuine or otherwise, to grow cricket outside its natural habitat and I am prepared to venture that cricket will never catch on. It is just not that kind of a game. Instead of pointlessly envying and aspiring to emulate the growth of football, cricket must spend all its energies trying to preserve and strengthen what exists.

Cricket is not an easy game to start liking. It is a complex and baffling game. It demands utter devotion, infinite patience, certain intellectual engagement, and that utterly scarce commodity: time, lots of it. Also, the cricket lover, particularly those attracted to the alluring charms of Test cricket, must be prepared to enjoy the journey for the sake of it, without obsessing about the destination. Try convincing your American friend that a drawn Test is not a waste of five days.

It's a pity if we cannot learn from our experiences. Cricket was a regular fixture in the UAE for more than a decade, yet how many indigenous cricketers has the country produced? Does the USA have a single player outside the expatriate communities? Has the game taken roots in Singapore? Cricinfo Magazine carried a detailed feature about the attempt to grow the game in China in its May issue, but why do I think that the Chinese will find much harder to embrace cricket than capitalism?

Cricket does not need to be anxious or apologetic about its insularity, or elitism, if you must call it that. It has survived and prospered in the countries where it found root in colonial times, and to try to grow it beyond the Commonwealth might require a distortion of form. More worrying is the state of the game in Zimbabwe, where it has been ravaged by politics, in West Indies, where it suffers from administrative lapses, and in Kenya, which has fallen off the map due to sheer neglect.

Let's leave Americans to baseball.

Sambit Bal is the editor of Cricinfo and Cricinfo Magazine

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/247695.html

To all mah engineers out thar!!!

2006-05-16T16:17:00.000-05:00

So sad and yet sooo true...

This used to be my playground...

2006-05-11T02:02:00.000-05:00

...but today its littered with dismembered limbs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/11/ap/world/mainD8HHCEJO0.shtml

I used to come here for target practice. Even the last time I was there in '03, my ATS (Anti Terrorist Squad) weapons instructor was telling me how over a dozen new police inductees had been ambushed and killed that week. Bad times in Balochistan...

Question time with a bisexual Pakistani servant

2006-05-10T02:53:00.000-05:00

Sophomore year (1999), my cousin, Ghost (not his real name) and I were having a conversation outside our dorm (Inside the quadrangle at Cary Quad). The weather was great so I was outside having a cigar when he happened to walk by. I don’t know how the conversation started but at some point I told him what a great time I had hunting with a close servant of his many years back. At that point my cousin, told me that the servant, Darkness (not his real name), was a gandu (Urdu for homosexual). I asked him if he meant it literally and he assured me he did. I was shocked! I asked him if he was sure. He said he was. I asked him how he could be sure. Ghost said it was no secret and that Darkness was very open about it actually. I stood there in shock!

Let me explain. Darkness literally watched me and my cousins grow up. He was the closest household servant in Ghost’s home. When our parents would be out at night and I’d be staying over, he would bring us kids our night-time glasses of milk, ask us to turn off our video games and go to sleep. He literally tucked us in at night! That hunting trip I referred to earlier was when I was around 14 or so. It was just me and him in the wilderness for hours! Granted, I did have a shotgun. Still, I don’t think I would have been cool with it (at the time) had I known this about him.

“Doesn’t he have a wife?” I asked Ghost. “Not only does he have a wife, but he also has 3 kids,” he replied. Now I was shocked and confused. “How does that work?” I asked. Ghost replied “I don’t know, but I asked him about it………

(In Urdu, English translation below)

Ghost: Darkness, mey tum se ek sawaal poochoon?
Darkness: Jee saab, zuroor poochein.
Ghost: Darkness, tum aurat chodtey ho?
Darkness: Jee saab, bilkul aurat choodta hoon.
Ghost: To phir tum mard kyoon chodtey ho?

(Darkness laughs like he has been asked a very dumb question. He gives Ghost the look that you give someone when you’re perplexed that they don’t understand something so simple and you are embarrassed and amused that you have to explain it to them.)

Darkness: Saab, mein aap ko samjaata hoon.
Darkness: Saab, mey aap se ek sawaal poochoon?
Ghost: Haan Darkness, zuroor poocho.
Darkness: Aap khanna khata hai?
Ghost: Haan Darkness, bilkul khanna khata hoon.
Ghost: To phir aap proot kyoon khata hai?

(In English)

Ghost: Darkness, can I ask you a question?
Darkness: Yes sir, absolutely. Ask away.
Ghost: Darkness, do you have sex with women?
Darkness: Yes sir, off course I have sex with women.
Ghost: So then why do you have sex with men?

(Darkness laughs like he has been asked a very dumb question. He gives Ghost the look that you give someone when you’re perplexed that they don’t understand something so simple and you are embarrassed and amused that you have to explain it to them.)

Darkness: Sir, let me explain it to you.
Darkness: Sir, may I ask you a question?
Ghost: Yes, Darkness, absolutely. Ask away.
Darkness: Do you eat food?
Ghost: Yes Darkness, off course I eat food.
Ghost: So then why do you eat fruit?

After this, there was a pause, and then I started laughing uncontrollably. If those reading the exchange between the two in English didn’t find it very funny, believe me, a lot is lost in the translation.

The thing that sounded crazy to me was that to Darkness, the difference between having sex with a man or a woman was the same as the difference between eating a fruit or any other kind of food. For him, each had their own allure, so if you believed that “variety is the spice of life”, being bisexual was a no-brainer.
Having grown up in Saudi Arabia, where there is very little tolerance for homosexuality, I had always assumed that Pakistan was the same way. The shocking thing is that after spending more time in Pakistan and nearly 8 years now in the US, I am beginning to see that homosexuality is actually more acceptable in Pakistan than it is in the US! Some may argue with me here but I think it is just an initial gut reaction because it really doesn’t make that much sense. However, everyone would agree that transvestites and cross-dressers are more accepted in Pakistan than in the US. A very odd thing but true!

My SLVR senses light...

2006-04-17T21:09:00.000-05:00

My new SLVR is so cool! Not only does it act as a MP3 player for when I work out. It also acts as a small boom box in the bath room when I shower and check this... If there is a lot of light, the crazy cool looking back lights in the SLVR don't come on when u use it, in order to conserve battery life. Use it in the dark and they do. It senses light to determine when to light the back lights. How cool is that?

$5 cover for sneakers!

2006-04-17T03:30:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday while out on the town, we queued outside the club, Left Bank, on Adams Morgan (DC nightlife area). I overheard 3 guys ahead of us arguing with the bouncer about cover. I asked one of them what the argument was about. As it turned out, while cover was $10 for men (which the guys in our group also had to fork up), it was an additional $5 if you were wearing sneakers!

Who do you blog for?

2006-04-17T03:29:00.001-05:00

There was a discussion in the Pakistani Bloggers community on Orkut begging the question, Is a blogger essentially an exhibitionist?

Different bloggers had different perspectives on this issue. But in the end "Shahzad" came up with what I think should be the litmus test:

Shahzad - "actually if you mean to drive trafiic to your blog, you definately write for others, but if you don't give a dman aboiut traffic for your blog, you write for yourself. simple as that :)"

What American women had to deal with in the early 20th century

2006-04-14T01:53:00.000-05:00

Well for starters, everyone knows they couldn't vote. I can't remember whether they could own property or not. However, while at the George Mason Law School library looking up some immigration law topics (illegal aliens and social security), I found out that prior to the 1922, if an American woman wished to marry a foreign national, her citizenship was immediately revoked, even if she never left or planned to leave the US. Meanwhile a foreign woman marrying a male American would immediately get citizenship. And I thought Saudi Arabia was backward for not giving citizenship to the male spouse. Well, I suppose it still is backward in that way and a good deal of other ways.

On Compromise

2006-04-13T00:56:00.000-05:00

Compromise made me quit on my dream of participating in the creation of sustainable agriculture in least developed countries. Instead, now my job is penalizing poor people for past behaviour by limiting their credit or refusing to give them any at all. This is what compromise has done to me.

How? Well in my culture, agriculture is seen as something poor and backward people engage in. Secondly it doesn't pay well so thats not very good (how am I ever going to compete with all the engineers, bankers and IT guys?...leave alone doctors and lawyers) and lastly, what I wanted to do involved living in least developed countries. How would I ever get US or UK residency that way? Well, this is the result. I compromised and compromised and am now living someone else's dream. Thats compromise for you.

The cure to homesickness is a herb called Orkut

2006-04-13T00:55:00.000-05:00

Online communities have been a waste of my time till now. Orkut (powered by Google) has many of my friends and family from Pakistan. Oddly enough, Its helping me deal with my homesickness from not being back in 3 years.

Why Ford might become history

2006-04-12T23:49:00.000-05:00

Economies of scale, synergy, collaboration; all good stuff. Yet despite owning a diverse portfolio of domestic and international automobile marques, it seems that America's big two automakers are in deep doodoo and in my opinion, one is going under and soon.

Although GM has had more bad news as of late, having seen new models and concepts from both automakers, I'm betting it will be Ford. I anticipate that the Lincoln division will go the way of Oldsmobile within this decade and this is why:

1.) Ugly Ineriors
2.) Ugly Exteriors
3.) Quality control still below German/Japanese levels
4.) Cars without soul/character

Interiors have never been good in American cars. Nothing new there. Exteriors have been hit and miss. Somehow, despite Honda and Toyota manfacturing most of their American offerings in the US, they have been able to attain markedly higher quality standards using the same labor and materials. Foreign marques with traditionally good reputations for quality have seen quality standards fall under GM/Ford ownership (eg. Saab), A kin to what Fiat did with Lancia and Alfa Romeo. However, it is the last point that is arguably most important. You see, as it turns out, American cars never were that reliable to begin with and yet they sold. What sold was that they used to have soul. They used to make their owners feel something. And that has ceased to be with the bulk of todays GM/Ford offerings.

For instance, getting back to Lincoln, this is what the new Lincoln Navigator will look like. Somehow, they have managed to make an already ugly car (I took a friend's from Indiana to Florida for one Spring Break) even uglier. Behold! UGG!!!

Life on 25 tabs a day

2006-04-12T23:45:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4874938.stm

Little known fact: When ecstacy first arrived in the US, it was used by marriage/relationship counselors in California to help couples undergoing treatment empathize with each other, which led to its initial name, Empathy. It was some time before it was made illegal.

How Fabulously Rock 'n' Roll

2006-04-12T23:40:00.000-05:00

"Cricket is the channel we need most of all."

- Mick Jagger's most important requirement in an eight-page list of requests, on tour in the US, is a TV so he is able to watch cricket

"Lord of War" ending statement

2006-04-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

Last year's Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War" ends with this:

"While private gunrunners continue to thrive, the World’s biggest arms suppliers are the US, UK, Russia, France and China

They are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council"

Excerpts from Paul Brian's discussion on "The Satanic Verses"

2006-04-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

From "Notes for Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses"

"In the distant past, European observers writing about people in colonized nations often distinguished between "unspoiled natives" who dwelled in childlike, ignorant innocence which was part of their charm, and others who had been "spoiled" by contact with a European civilization they could mimic but never truly master. This formula not only justified the colonial domination of colonized "children" as a form of parental concern, even charity ("the white man's burden"), but rationalized measures taken to prevent inhabitants of the colonies from gaining the education and jobs they would have needed to rule themselves in the modern world.".....

....."The entire novel strives to break down absolutes, to blur easy dichotomies, to question traditional assumptions of all kinds. There are to be no simple answers to the query, "What kind of an idea are we?" Demons can behave like angels and vice versa. High ideals can lead people to commit terrible crimes. Love can be mixed with jealous hate. Exalted faith can lead to tragedy. Just as Rushdie strives to destroy the distinction between center and periphery, so he challenges easy distinctions between good and evil."

- Paul Brians, Professor of English, Washington State University
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/svnotes.pdf

The first paragraph refers to how the novel explores the many identity issues and complexes that play a role in the lives of the diverse South Asian community in the UK. A serious take on the BBC show "Goodness Gracious Me" if you will.

The second paragraph captures the more interesting aspect of the novel, which I can't explain any better that Dr. Brians already has. However, I would say that while the novel was written during more peaceful and harmonious times in the Muslim World, it addresses the problem that we see today with violent religious extremism. High ideals are leading people to commit terrible crimes and exalted faith is leading to tragedy all around us. Today there are daily bombings in the Muslim World killing mostly Muslims. They are so frequent that we have become desensitized to their malice and savagery. My own hometown is effected. Yesterday, a bomb in Karachi killed 57 people and today schools are shut. High ideals and exalted faith.....

BBC Iraq : Terrorism Poll Commentary

2006-02-28T18:13:00.000-06:00

Iraq is in a virtual civil war today. This poll was conducted prior to the recent escalation in Sunni/Shia secretarian violence, which means if conducted again, the negative poll numbers will only be more negative (against the war).

If we were to break down the "likelihood of terrorist attacks worldwide" into within Iraq and outside Iraq, it would be non-contestable that the likelihood of attacks inside Iraq has gone up. As for attacks abroad, The Madrid, Bali and London bombings seem to indicate that this likelihood has also increased. However, this is not proof enough alone. Even though the attackers may have attributed their reasons to the Iraq war, there is no way of knowing that the attacks would not have occurred even if the war had never taken place. These bombings can even be used to justify (albeit very dishonestly) the Iraq war by crooked stakeholders.

In order to make the case that the likelihood of terrorism outside Iraq has gone up, more evidence is needed. Such evidence can be found in analyzing terrorist methods and tactics, namely the suicide bomber. During the last decade, suicide bombings have been carried out mainly in Israel by Palestinian groups and in Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tigers. For the most part, suicide bombings had remained confined to those two countries. After the Iraq war, suicide bombings made their way to Iraq and closer to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Then suicide bombings started occurring inside both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In addition to this particular terrorist method, it seems that Iraq has led to a regional trickle over effect in violence. Whether it be the increase in Sunni-Shia violence in nearby countries, the over-the-top protests against the "Muhammed cartoons", the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan, or the Maoist one in India, regional violence is up across the board. Again, this is not conclusive but with no WMD nor substantial links to terrorism to be found, it looks like most of the World has decided that the Iraq excursion was an extremely bad idea executed with terrible timing.

link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4757964.stm

As of Feb, 20th, www.Iraqbodycount.org had the total number of documented war casualties between 28,591 - 32,225. This does not include the 379+ deaths since the destruction of the Al-Askari shrine in Samarra on Feb, 22nd, less than a week ago.

BBC Iraq : Intl. Terrorism Poll

2006-02-28T18:07:00.000-06:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4755706.stm

Fairfax, VA has some confusing roads

2006-02-21T20:13:00.000-06:00

I had a site visit interview with a company two weeks back. I had to travel 1.9 miles in the morning to get there. It took me 65 minutes (Thats 1.75 MPH!) from 7:25 am to 8:30 am! I know its hard to believe but bad traffic and confusing exits with multiple on and off-ramps made it happen.

In today's "Clash of Civilizations", who wins?

2006-02-13T15:38:00.000-06:00

Some view the expanding rift between predominantly Muslim countries and Western nations as a precursor to what could potentially become an all out clash of civilizations. The publication and republication of the "Muhammed cartoons", and the ensuing debate over the relative value of freedom of speech VS. Religious tolerance has highlighted this recently.

The quick answer to the question in the title is that nobody wins. Anytime there is a large conflict, everyone loses. However, maybe it is worthwhile to examine who stands to lose more.

The above graph from the World Bank highlights the growing role that remittances play as a source of external financing in developing countries. Between 1995 and 2005, the amount of money sent back to developing countries by expatriates working in developed (mostly western) nations has approximately tripled, outpacing all other sources of external finance. The beneficiaries of remittances also tend to be more dispersed (economically, geographically, industry-wise, etc.) than of any other source.

Remittances have a crucial role to play in the future development of countries, but what would happen if rich western nations closed their borders to labor from poorer nations? For one, growth in remittances will stop and the absolute amount of remittances may even fall in the long term.

Combined with drops in FDI (due to perceived investment risk and politics) and aid, this could have a considerable negative effect on developing economies. Developed nations will see higher costs of goods and services but this may also be accompanied by a reversal of outsourcing in the short term. So the economic ramifications for Western nations are ambiguous.

Off-course, the real tragedy of a clash of civilizations is the ill will between nations and people. Lets hope this unnecessary clash never happens.

What if we lost the "war on terror"?

2006-02-13T15:37:00.002-06:00