February 28, 2005
After demonstrators defied a government ban and poured into Beirut's city center to protest against Syria's military presence in Lebanon... The Lebanese government abruptly resigned Monday during a stormy parliamentary debate, prompting a tremendous roar from tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in central Beirut. The demonstrators, awash in a sea of red, white and green Lebanese flags, had demanded the pro-Syrian government's resignation -- and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon -- since this month's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The country's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, now must pick a prime minister to form a new...
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So Ariel Sharon was invited to Tunisia for the WSIS 2005 (World Summit on the Information Society) and apparently he accepted the invitation. This was met with mixed reactions by Tunisians and Arabs alike. Some people are totally against it and feel that it is wrong to host the man behind the Sabra and Chatila massacres and all the Palestinian bloodshed. Others think that it's a very normal thing and that it shouldn't be taken out of context as the WSIS is a world summit and many leaders from all over the world will be attending. Some people try to...
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Posted on February 28, 2005 07:48 AM under:
Cinema
So the Oscars are over and the winners in the main categories are: - Actor in a leading role: Jamie Foxx (Ray) - Actor in a supporting role: Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) - Actress in a leading role: Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) - Actress in a supporting role: Cate Blanchett (The Aviator) - Animated feature film: The Incredibles (Brad Bird) - Best Picture: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, Albert S. Ruddy and Tom Rosenberg) - Directing: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood) - Music: Finding Neverland (Jan A.P. Kaczmarek) - Visual Effects: Spider-man 2 (John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony...
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February 27, 2005
Posted on February 27, 2005 07:40 PM under:
Cinema
Today we watched "Ray", the movie about the extraordinary life of Ray Charles. This is one great movie. Jamie Foxx did an amazing job as Ray Charles. He truly deserves an Oscar for this role. He wasn't acting, he simply became Ray Charles. Awesome acting. I've always been a fan of Ray Charles and seeing this movie gave me insight into his life, music and genius. I truly enjoyed every moment of it. The soundtrack was beautiful too, full of great Ray Charles songs. I'll sure be getting it and enjoying it time and again. This movie is a must...
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Posted on February 27, 2005 01:14 PM under:
Books
I just finished reading "The Gardens Of Light" by Amin Maalouf. The book tells the story of Mani - the painter, mystic, physician and prophet - exploring his life and journey. It's a very interesting book that takes the reader back to those times when the great Roman and Persian empires were in their battle to control the Middle East, and followers of different religions were fighting against each other for ascendancy. It lets you live the journey of Mani while he preached his doctrine of humility, tolerance and love. I really liked the way the story was told and...
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February 26, 2005
Good news from Egypt... Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the constitution changed to allow multi-candidate presidential elections in September, making a surprise reversal Saturday that could mean he will face a challenger for the first time since taking power in 1981. It was the first significant move toward political reform in decades in Egypt, a powerhouse in the Arab world that has had one-party rule for more than half a century. The announcement came amid increasing calls for political reform from the domestic opposition and from the United States and after historic Iraqi and Palestinian elections that brought a taste...
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February 25, 2005
Om Malik reports: Rumors are flying thick and fast in Silicon Valley: Yahoo is all set to buy Ludicorp, the company behind the hot photo blogging web service Flickr, for an undisclosed amount of money. Its not the first time rumors of these talks have made the rounds. Most of the deal-related chatter is coming from blogging world insiders who have said that Flickr might have inked the papers last week, but Yahoo is holding off on an announcement until March 1. At this point, it could all just be that–chatter. If this is true, then I consider it bad...
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So Google have rolled out yet another cool feature in their search engine. You can now search for movies on Google using the new "movie:" method (e.g. "movie: usual suspects" ) to find critics' reviews, ratings and showtimes for that movie. As a movie lover who's always on the lookout for reviews of new movies, this is a great quick tool for me....
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February 24, 2005
Now this should be really cool... Quentin Tarantino has signed to direct the season finale of primetime's most-watched series, CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." Tarantino also has come up with an original story for the episode, which is expected to shoot in early April and air May 19, according to "CSI" executive producer Carol Mendelsohn. "There will be more bugs and blood this time," Mendelsohn joked. [Source: CNN] WOW, I'm sure this would turn out as one of the best CSI episodes ever especially that it'll be a story of his own that he's directing. I've watched all of Tarantino's...
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February 23, 2005
Yesterday while flipping through some music channels, I stopped for a while on VH1 who were playing an ad for a show about Bob Marley they were going to put on. The ad talked about how Bob Marley was one of the strongest promoters for the Rastafarian religion...etc. But wait, I never knew that there was such a thing as a Rastafarian faith. Of course, I've heard a lot of reggae songs over the years and have heard a load of the words: rasta, rastaman, jah, rastafari, babylon ...etc. But never did it occur to me that there was a...
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"Homosexual marriages are part of a new ideology of evil that is insidiously threatening society" Pope John Paul in his newly published book "Memory and Identity". I couldn't agree more... [Source: CNN]...
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February 22, 2005
Very Sad... A powerful earthquake has rocked central Iran, destroying buildings in several villages and killing 190 people. Iranian officials told state-run television on Tuesday that 1,000 people have been injured -- at least 280 in the city of Zarand alone. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck near Zarand in central Iran at 5:55 a.m. local time (0225 GMT). [Source: CNN] Iran has been hit by a number of strong earthquakes over the past years, causing a lot of disasters and damage around the country. God help the people of Iran who have gone through these disasters time and again and...
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February 21, 2005
Posted on February 21, 2005 02:38 PM under:
Everyday Me
As some of you might already know from my wife's blog, this past weekend hasn't been the best for me. I'm sick... My whole body is aching, I have a constant headache, you could fry an egg on my head, my throat hurts, my brain feels like it's bouncing around painfully in my skull, I'm not seeing clearly, my back is killing me and a million other things. I totally hate being sick! It just sucks to feel how helpless us humans can be. Just some damn little virus is enough to throw our lives completely off track and make...
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February 19, 2005
Posted on February 19, 2005 06:35 PM under:
Cinema
Last night, I watched "The Life Of David Gale", a very good movie starring Kevin Spacey , Kate Winslet and Laura Linney. It's a drama/thriller about a man against capital punishment who is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row. He asks for a reporter and grants her exclusive interviews over the 3 days before his death to talk to her about it all. I really enjoyed this movie and would certainly recommend watching it. Kevin Spacey obviously can do no wrong. All his movies rock. I'd score this movie: 8/10....
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February 18, 2005
Posted on February 18, 2005 09:35 PM under:
Everyday Me
Using Audioscrobbler, a Winamp plugin and RSS Digest I've added a new section on my blog's sidebar that shows the latest songs that I've been listening to What happens is that the winamp plugin contacts the Audioscrobbler site to generate an RSS feed of the stuff I've been listening to. RSS Digest then kicks in to read that feed every hour and transforms it into html code that you guys can see here. Each song links to a page on Audioscrobbler with a list of the top fans of that song. I think this is really cool :)...
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U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when asked about the number of insurgents in Iraq: "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work." [Source: Washington Post] Well, I think we've all figured that out already... [Via: Esoterically]...
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February 17, 2005
Could be... A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. What was found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth. [Source: Space.com] My thoughts on this issue have always been mixed although most of the times I'm more...
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Posted on February 17, 2005 12:00 PM under:
Music
Unfortunately... George Michael says he is saying farewell to the world of pop music, using a candid documentary about his life to put the record straight before he "disappeared." He also declared the genre that brought him fame and riches, as well as unwanted media attention, was dead. "George Michael: A Different Story" traces a rags-to-riches journey that made Michael one of the biggest selling artists of the 1980s and 1990s but which was not without tragedy along the way. "I just thought it was very important to explain myself before I disappear," the 41-year-old said. "I truly believe that...
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February 16, 2005
After years of delays, the Kyoto global warming pact is now in effect, requiring dozens of industrial nations to reduce emissions of "greenhouse" gases believed linked to climate change. The agreement, negotiated in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997 and ratified by 140 nations, calls on 35 industrialized countries to rein in the release of carbon dioxide and five other gases from the burning of oil and coal and other processes. Its impact, however, will be limited by the absence of the United States, the world's leader in greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has also rejected the plan. Of course...
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Cory Doctorow has a new short story called "I, Robot". Why? Here's what he says: Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives. Today, Infinite Matrix magazine published the latest of these, a story called "I, Robot", which describes the police state that would have to obtain if you were going to...
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Posted on February 16, 2005 01:13 PM under:
Cinema
Last night we watched "The Forgotten" featuring Julianne Moore and Anthony Edwards. It's a suspense mystery thriller about a man and a woman who are told that their children never existed and that they made up memories of them, only to discover that there's a much bigger enemy at work. The movie was very promising at the beginning. It started powerfully and kept getting better and better until halfway through the movie, but then it degraded and dissapointed me. Why? Because it turned sci-fi. Now, I love sci-fi movies, but I believe this movie would have been much better if...
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February 15, 2005
A little joke... A man and a woman, who have never met before, find themselves assigned to the same sleeping room on a transcontinental train. Though initially embarrassed and uneasy over sharing a room, the two are tired and fall asleep quickly...he in the upper bunk and she in the lower. At 1:00 a.m., he leans over and gently wakes the woman saying "Madam I'm sorry to bother you, but would you be willing to reach into the closet to get me a second blanket? I'm awfully cold." "I have a better idea," she replies. "Just for tonight, let's pretend...
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Now this is extra disgusting and disturbing... A Swedish woman said on Sunday that she had found a penis in a bottle of ketchup. Viktoria Ed said she was lucky enough to discover the organ before putting the sauce on her bread rolls, unlike her husband Stefan and their children, Madeleine and Simon. The Godegaarden brand ketchup was made in Turkey and distributed in Sweden by the company Axfood. [Source: IOL] I can't believe this, It's so so disgusting! Thank God I don't really like ketchup in the first place. This ketchup company should be shutdown for good and they...
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Posted on February 15, 2005 11:21 AM under:
Tunisia
Street Lamps on the sides of La Marsa's Boulevard. Picked for you from my photolog....
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Sometimes two wrongs can make a right... US scientists hope to be able to use a harmless form of the Aids virus to seek and destroy cancer cells. In the laboratory, the scientists took HIV and removed the parts of the virus that causes disease. They then stripped off the virus' outer coat and redressed it with the outer suit of another virus. By doing this, the researchers had changed the target of the virus. HIV normally infects immune cells called T cells. The new outer coat instead directed HIV to hunt down molecules present on cancer cells, called P-glycoproteins....
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February 14, 2005
Al-Jazeera, the Arab news TV channel that emerged back in 1996 as the only bastion of free press in an authoritarian Middle East, is now approaching an important crossroads in it's life. Al-Jazeera has been a government owned and funded station ever since it's creation. Qatar spends roughly $100 million a year in funds for the TV station, and even though it generates other revenue from advertisements, sponsorships, program sales and subscriptions in Europe and North America, it still remains a losing enterprise. So lately, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Emir of Qatar), ordered the government to produce a...
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In what has been described as the biggest blast since the dark days of the Lebanese civil war... Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri has been killed in an apparent large-scale bomb attack on his motorcade in Beirut, a bodyguard and officials at the American University of Beirut hospital told CNN. Hariri, 60, a multi-billionaire businessman who resigned from government last October, recently joined calls by the opposition for Syria to quit Lebanon in the run-up to general elections in May, Reuters reported. Hariri served as prime minister from 1992-98 and again from 2000 until his resignation after parliament amended...
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I think one of the most annoying things in life is indecision. That yucky feeling of not knowing what to do exactly, where you're gonna go, how you're going to handle it, what's going to happen... You sit down, telling yourself that today and right now you're going to come up with a solution and find your big decision. You focus, try to forget everything and think clearly, you push yourself into the sea of little details and circumstances. And then? Nothing, you simply drown... The sea becomes an ocean and the ocean becomes a galaxy of probabilities, ideas and...
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February 13, 2005
Posted on February 13, 2005 07:42 PM under:
Cinema
At last, I got to watch Pixar's animation movie "The Incredibles". Needless to say, I loved it like every other Pixar movie I've seen. These guys are just so talented and their work is so beautiful. From "Toy Story" to "Monsters, Inc." to "Finding Nemo" to "The Incredibles"; the story, the animation, the music, they all rock. The story for "The Incredibles" is a great one too. Very creative, fun and funny. It's about a family of undercover superheroes who, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. The animation is amazing,...
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February 12, 2005
Posted on February 12, 2005 02:00 PM under:
Cinema
A couple of days ago while going through the DVD section in Carrefour, I came accross the DVD set of the Karate Kid trilogy. I was swept away to my childhood in one of those very sweet flashbacks. I remembered the very first time I went to the cinema in Zimbabwe to watch Karate Kid 1, how moved I was by it and how much I loved it. I must have seen that movie a 100 times and loved it every time. I've even watched it a number of times in Italian on RaiUno not having to understand the dialogue...
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February 11, 2005
Posted on February 11, 2005 06:30 PM under:
Cinema
It's been a while since I blogged about the movies I've seen. It doesn't mean I haven't been seeing any, you know that's impossible, I just haven't been writing about it. So here is a list of the movies I've seen lately: - Cellular - Shall We Dance? - Taking Lives - The Door In The Floor - The Punisher - Surviving Christmas And now here's a little review of each one......
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In Florida, USA: A newborn was tossed out a car window onto the grass beside a busy street Thursday afternoon, and the car sped off, authorities said. Investigators were seeking the parents of the boy, whose umbilical cord was still attached when he was found by a woman passer-by. Doctors believe the infant was less than an hour old at the time. The woman who rescued the baby who was inside a small plastic bag said she saw a man and woman arguing inside the vehicle. [Source: ABC News] Whoever did this, whether they're the baby's parents or someone else,...
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In response to the launch and success of One TV, the guys at MBC have redefined their Channel 2 as the first free 24h/24 movie channel and launched MBC4 to group a bunch of imported sitcoms, soap operas, talk shows and news shows. By doing this they've made both channels more interesting to watch. And aside One TV they've made leaving the couch in front of the TV a harder task to accomplish. I especially enjoy the variety of sitcoms available now. And it's nice when I catch a movie here or there that I haven't watched already or that...
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February 10, 2005
I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Hijri Year 1426. May it be a blessed, happy and joyful year for you all bringing you prosperity, success and great health. On another note... Even though this occasion is still marked all over the Islamic world, people are giving it less and less importance. It's becoming more and more like one of those meaningless days off. What is weird is that muslims are now celebrating all sorts of things from valentine's day to halloween to christmas to almost everything, but they fail to truly celebrate the start of a new...
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February 09, 2005
As Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas shake hands in Sharm El Sheikh to announce a halt to violence and the beginning of an understanding, this just comes as a reminder of the enormous differences in power between the two sides. [Drawn by: Steve Bell] [Source: The Guardian] [Via: Rafah Pundits, AquaCool, PalestineBlogs]...
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Yet another blogger bites the dust for blogging about his job... Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. "Mark is no longer an employee at Google," a Google representative said in response to an inquiry Tuesday. Efforts to reach Jen for comment were not immediately successful. Jen's departure comes less than a month after he joined Google as part of a wave of new hires and began recording his impressions of his new employer, including criticisms, in his blog. [Source: CNet News] I'm not sure...
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February 08, 2005
Democracy is not to force people to follow USA!!! I have to agree with this Iraqi child... Don't you?! [Via: Je Blog, Pas Au-Delà]...
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February 07, 2005
I don't know what to say... This past week was so frustrating for me... The blog dissapeared all of a sudden, but then it turns out the hosting company is just relocating servers. Phew... But not for too long, as the relocation ends and the blog is still not there, Panic takes over... I go insane and border on depression... Every day the news gets worse, first all the files were lost, then all the data was lost too, and so there was nothing left of the blog but some files lying around here and there on my desktop which...
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February 02, 2005
Ok so GMail accounts aren't as hot a property as they once were, as almost everybody has one now. Anyway, I have 50 GMail Invites to give away. So for those who still haven't gotten their hands on some GMail, if you're interested in a cool 1GB email account, just add this blog to your browser favourites and leave me a comment here ;)...
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February 01, 2005
Now, this is funny... "Hi, sexy. Welcome to Intimate Encounters." Not exactly the kind of message you expect to hear in the middle of doing your taxes, but that's just what some TurboTax customers are getting as they try to set up their state returns. The message pops up when TurboTax Business users advance to their state tax return and decide they need to file for more than the single state return supported in the product. The message in the software tells them they can purchase software for additional states, at $30 each, online or by calling an 800 number....
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So, The 2004 Best Arab Blog Awards (BABA 2004) are over and the results are finally out. Subzero Blue won the award for Best Tunisian Blog :) Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for this blog. I truly appreciate it. These are the first BABA Awards and some difficulties and problems have occurred, but still I think it was a good effort by Haitham and Mahmood who deserve a big thank you for it. Just the fact that this award has grouped a big number of Arab blogs and created some sort of directory for them makes...
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