December 30, 2005
Pet Trees are the latest craze from Japan, and, like most innovations from the Land of the Rising Sun, they're incredibly small. Basically each Pet Tree is a real tree (well, mini-plant) inside a tiny plastic bell jar with a keyring attachment. A bit like a mini-me bonsai encased within a Lilliputian bio-dome. Apart from a little TLC (Tender Loving Care) all you have to do to keep your pipsqueak of a plant healthy is water it every couple of weeks by placing the container in a saucer of water for a few minutes. As you nurture your Pet Tree...
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"Terrorism" is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason for state-sponsored violence -- our violence -- which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously... Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, the be-all and end-all of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and occupation and murder on a mass scale. -- Robert Fisk, The Great War For Civilization [Via: Lawrence of Cyberia, Salon]...
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December 29, 2005
These days whenever you look at a newstand, you find yourself in front of heaps of magazines with these gorgeous bombshells on the cover, and you wonder how come there are so many beautiful and perfect girls in the world, yet you never come across any that perfect in the real world. Well it's because they actually don't exist. Ok, this isn't like that movie Simone; Of course, those models exist in real life, but not in the form or perfection you see on those magazine covers. Yes people, mainstream media is lying to us by creating this false version...
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Posted on December 29, 2005 09:05 AM under:
Everyday Me
Two days to go before this year is over and we embark on a new voyage through a new year, that we usually wish will be a lot better than the one we're currently in. As usual, most people are thinking of another set of new year resolutions, that they won't be able to accomplish again, just like the ones from last year and the year before. I guess I'm no different from all those people; I barely got any of my 2004 or 2005 resolutions done, but still I'm thinking of some resolutions for 2006. In the end, the...
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December 28, 2005
What should I do with my Blog when I go take a vacation? That is a question I always find myself asking whenever I'm about to leave on a break, and up to now, the only way I've answered it is by telling myself I'd do my best to get online as often as possible to post on it. But that doesn't always work out like I want it to. My last trip to London being a good example, with only 2 or 3 posts in that whole week. Darren asks the same question over at problogger and comes up...
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Every now and then, I come across an article, a blog or someone talking about how there should be a new modernized version of Islam. Some go as far as taking out verses from the Koran that talk about war, while on the other side of the spectrum some seem to limit it to making things like the hijab optional, and of course there are many thoughts in between those two. Some countries are taking steps forward with some of these ideas, with some of them taking out certain Koranic verses from school curriculums, some others trying to make the...
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December 27, 2005
On my flight home from London, a Tunisian man and woman were seated next to me. The woman was going through a magazine when she came across a game of sudoku. She obviously didn't know the game, read how to solve it, seemed to like it and started working on it. She started using a pen, which made me want to tell her that she'd be better off with a pencil because she'd be erasing and trying numbers all over the grid before getting it right, but well I didn't want to seem nosy. A while later, she realized how...
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December 26, 2005
It seems like we will have to wait an extra second to ring in the new year 2006, and that's because a "leap second" is being added to the last minute of the last hour of 2005. Leap seconds are used to synchronize precise atomic clocks with the more variable rotation of the Earth. Although the Earth's rotation with respect to the sun has been used since ancient times to know the time of day, it is not like clockwork, and can speed up or slow down by a few thousandths of a second a day. This means that every...
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This is a poster I saw in a shop in London, and that I absolutely loved....
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Posted on December 26, 2005 08:11 PM under:
Tunisia
Last night we had the 9th Tunisian blogger meetup, which was a lot of fun, as usual. We had 4 new faces with us last night, one blogger, two bloggers-to-be and a TV presenter who has a show about the uses of the internet on national TV. So, who were the bloggers there last night? Toon-C, Adib, Mouse Hunter, Infinity, Evil Drako, Blogeuse, Tom, Troubadour, Mraihi and Subzero Blue. The meetup started at 4PM at Café 112 in downtown Tunis, at the end of Palestine Avenue, and then we moved to Villa Venecia in La Marsa. Something everyone's been...
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Posted on December 26, 2005 08:43 AM under:
Tunisia
The results for the Tunisian Blog Awards are finally out. It was really a pleasure to be one of the jury in these awards. The results are as follows: Best Blog: Choice of the jury: La Rebelle Choice of the public: Adib Best Post: Choice of the jury: World Summit on Desinformation Society Choice of the public: Dasdous et la religion, World Summit on Desinformation Society Best General Blog Choice of the jury: No Flying Monkeys Zone Choice of the public: Adib Best Intimate Blog Choice of the jury: La Rebelle Choice of the public: La Rebelle Best Humour Blog...
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December 23, 2005
According to CoolTechZone, an insider at Microsoft revealed that Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, has acquired Opera Software, makers of the Opera browser. The insider reported that both Microsoft and Google were trying to bid on Opera, but in the end, the software maker took the lead. It seems that, at the moment, the deal is almost through with Microsoft and Opera planning on locations for the browser’s research and development centers throughout the world. One of such locations includes India; other locations at this time are unknown. Now that's a surprise that came out of nowhere. If...
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December 22, 2005
Posted on December 22, 2005 12:37 PM under:
Music
I just finished listening to Tina Arena's new album "Un Autre Univers", which is her first all-French album. As usual, Tina always rocks, and this album is no exception. The music and lyrics are great as usual and Tina's french accent is a lot better than her "Aller Plus Haut" days. The album kicks off with the debut single "Aimer jusqu'à l'impossible" which shot straight to #3 in the French charts upon it's release. The songs that stood out for me off the album after this first listen are: "Aimer jusqu'à l'impossible", "Je m'appelle Bagdad", "Changer" and "Tu aurais...
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The French parliament passed 2 amendments yesterday that legalize file exchanges on the internet via P2P (peer to peer) networks. So from now on downloaded copies of songs or movies are legal in France as long as they are for non commercial use. That basically means that everyone can download whatever they want from the net for free and that it would still be legal. Anyway, according to Bader, even if the law passed at the parliament, it still has to go through the senate, then the President to be signed into effect. [Source: Yahoo News (FR)]...
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I'm writing this post in a new tool called Performancing for Firefox, which is a full featured cross platform blog editor that sits right within Firefox. It plugs into Firefox like any other extension, is configured easily to have access to your blogs and gets you going in a few seconds. You push F8 and you get a frame inside the browser with the editor, your blog categories, your latest blog entries and your saved notes. It seems like a very efficient and quick way to blog, that I'll be playing around with further. I think it's cool that we're...
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December 21, 2005
Posted on December 21, 2005 09:51 PM under:
Tunisia
So, a bit over a month has passed since our last Tunisian blogger meetup, and it's time for us to have another one. Marouen has launched the idea to have the meetup on Sunday, December 25th. That would be just in time to announce the results of the Tunisian Blog Awards. That's one day before the official results date for you curious people ;) So the details for the meetup are as follows: Date: Sunday, December 25th 2005 Time: 4pm Tunis Time Venue: Café 112; End of Palestine Av. in downtown Tunis I've set up a page for the event...
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Nowadays, and thanks to the internet, all sorts of information and knowledge, from different fields of expertise, has been published online, mostly freely available to whoever needs it. This, I think, changes a lot of things, among them how people learn, know and find things. We're more or less moving towards an era in which no one really needs to know much more than some core basics in a certain topic and how to search and find the information they need for the rest. Many times in my everyday life, whether at work or out of it, I find myself...
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Darwinism at it's best... [Via: Ammar]...
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December 20, 2005
Last night, I finally got to watch Gad El Maleh's latest one man show "L'Autre C'est Moi", and man was it funny! I laughed my head off. Gad is simply hilarious as usual, cracking you up with every joke, move or word he tells, does or says. I love the way he takes on all these different things from our everyday lives, that we got used to, and just makes fun of them with his amazing sense of humour. From school, to flying, to skiing, to ikea, to swimming, to music, ... he makes fun of everything. I totally...
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December 17, 2005
Posted on December 17, 2005 10:43 PM under:
Books
I just finished reading "Secret Smile" by Nicci French, which is a really good psychological thriller. To not risk giving the story away, I'll just give you what is written on the back of the book, that caught me and made me buy the book in the first place. When Miranda Cotton returns from work to find her new boyfriend, Brendan, reading her diary, she ends the relationship and throws him out of her flat. Getting Brendan out of her life, however, is not so easy. Two weeks later her sister, Kerry, phones her in ecstasy. She's in love....
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December 16, 2005
What the site says: Under Construction What the site means: Check back in a decade. Or later. What the site says: Please wait while loading... What the site means: Our underpaid programmers realized too late this thing won’t scale. What the site says: We’re still in Beta. What the site means: Don’t write bad press reviews yet. What the site says: This site is optimized for Netscape Navigator. What the site means: We haven’t updated this page since 1997. How the heck did you locate us? What the site says: Please login to continue! What the site means: Management says...
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December 15, 2005
"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder." Alfred Hitchcock...
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A lot of people complain about how they get depressed whenever they watch or read the news; Wars, starvation, natural disasters, plane crashes... and the long list goes on in our mad world. A new website called HappyNews.com takes another approach to news, reporting only the upbeat and happy news, leaving out the depressing bits. Personally, I'm not too into the idea. I understand how sometimes the bad news gets too overwhelming and that it just depresses people how much bad stuff is going on in the world, but well the solution is not to turn a blind eye to...
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December 14, 2005
After years of air travel, I've basically developed a deaf ear for the presentation of in-flight instructions that they have to play before every take-off, as I know every little detail by heart. Anyway this time travelling to London aboard an Air France flight, I found myself listening to this weird recording of the in-flight instructions in Arabic. It's not that it was in Arabic that shocked me, that's only normal as it's a flight to/from an Arab country. What I found weird was how it was recorded in a broken Arabic language mixed with a certain North African accent,...
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When I went to Thailand three years ago, in the hotel, I opened the bedside drawer and found a book about Buddha and his teachings... Recently in London, in the hotel, I opened the bedside drawer and found a copy of the Bible... Over the past years, in hotels in Arab and Islamic countries, I opened the bedside drawer and found nothing... Why?...
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December 13, 2005
Posted on December 13, 2005 11:59 AM under:
Everyday Me
My recent trip to London was the first time I ever set foot there, and I wanted to use every single moment I had to discover this amazing city. Our hotel was in the Paddington area, which I thought was a great place to go out from to discover London. The first place we discovered on our first night in London was Edgware road which we were astonished to find full of Arabic restaurants and stores. There were even campaign posters for the upcoming Iraqi elections there. In the days after that we went on to Oxford Street, Bond Street,...
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December 12, 2005
Posted on December 12, 2005 06:27 PM under:
Tunisia
The first Tunisian blog awards Tunisie Blog Awards 2005 started today to promote the Tunisian blogosphere even more, encourage bloggers to work more on their blogs and give credit to the bloggers who are doing a great job. The process will be going through 3 phases: Phase 1: Blog submissions for each category (12 - 18 December) Phase 2: Jury votes for top 5 submitted blogs in each category (19 - 25 December) Results: Results are announced (26 December) I'm one of the members of the jury in these awards, so for reasons of fairness my blog won't be running...
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Racial tension sparked violence on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia yesterday when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants like "No more Lebs (Lebanese)", attacked youths of Middle Eastern background, saying they were defending their beach after lifesavers were attacked there last week. Violence then spread to a second beach, Maroubra, where scores of men armed with baseball bats smashed about 100 cars. More than 20 people were injured and 12 arrested. Police said a group of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists stirred on the drunken crowd at Cronulla. Arabic and Muslim leaders said the violence had been expected as Muslims...
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A car bomb explosion killed anti-Syrian member of parliament and journalist Gebran Tueni in Beirut today. Tueni is Publisher, Chairman of the Board, General Manager and Editorialist of the Arabic An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon. Three other people also died and 10 were wounded in the explosion that blew up Tueni's armoured SUV car as it was driving in the Mekalis area of mainly Christian east Beirut. Lebanon has been rocked by a series of bombings and assassinations since the killing of the former Prime Minister, Rafik al-Hariri, on February 14th. May Shidyak is another journalist who was a victim of...
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So, I'm back to Tunisia after a wonderful week in London, that I'll be getting into further detail about later. This post is about the Global Voices 2005 London Summit that I was there to attend and how it went. First of all, it was great meeting all the really interesting bloggers from all over the world who were there for the summit. It was such a pleasure and so much fun getting to know them all and talking about our local blogospheres among a bunch of other issues. As for the summit itself, it was really exciting and many...
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December 08, 2005
Going around London feels like one big game of monopoly. All the streets, squares and stations that you've gone through and bought while playing the board game are there, only this time it's in the real world and you're walking through them, discovering them, bonding with them. There's so much to see in London, and you get this feeling of not wanting to miss any single bit of it, and we're doing our very best not to. I'm sure that in these past 5 days in London, I've personally walked more than I have in the past 5 years of...
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December 05, 2005
A big hello to everyone from London... Yep, you read that right. Right now, I'm sitting in an internet cafe on Praed Street, not too far away from Paddington station. My feet and legs hurt like hell after a long day of walking all over central London. I'm here for the Global Voices 2005 London Summit. Can't wait to meet all the members of the team and get to know them all. This is my first time to London and I'm loving every second of it. This is a great and fascinating city, and I'm truly have a blast taking...
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December 04, 2005
Sometimes in my everyday life, as I go through certain daily experiences, I get these ideas on how they could be enhanced to make our lives a lot easier and better. Some are good ones, some not so good, but well, here are some... - Road Bumps: You know those shitty road bumps they put in the middle of the street to force you to slow your car down? Well now they have these signs that they either put in unviewable places, too close to the bump or just forget to put in the first place. A thought I had...
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December 01, 2005
Your heartbeat accelerates, you have butterflies in the stomach, you feel euphoric and a bit silly. It's all part of falling passionately in love -- and scientists now say the feeling won't last more than a year. The powerful emotions that bowl over new lovers are triggered by a molecule known as nerve growth factor (NGF), according to Pavia University researchers. The Italian scientists found far higher levels of NGF in the blood of 58 people who had recently fallen madly in love than in that of a group of singles and people in long-term relationships. But after a year...
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