February 27, 2006
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." -- Henry David Thoreau I just came across this little quote and it just struck me how true it is. After all, in everything we do, we're giving away some of our precious time, some of our lives, some of the time we could be spending with our loved ones or doing other things that we truly enjoy. I guess we rarely stop to think of the true price of things, and to ask ourselves if what we're doing is worth the price we're paying. From now...
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February 25, 2006
Posted on February 25, 2006 07:05 PM under:
Tunisia
In our regular blogger meetups, one of the issues that always comes up is what we can do to spread blogging even more in Tunisia. An idea that we came up with is by giving presentations about blogging in cultural, internet or youth centers. We also thought it was important that we give such presentations in places outside the capital city where most Tunisian bloggers are from. Last wednesday, we were able to take the first step in that direction, by holding a presentation about blogging in Zaghouan, a city that lies 55Km outside Tunis. The presentation was held in...
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February 24, 2006
Posted on February 24, 2006 12:57 PM under:
Everyday Me
Today's my last day at work... Days like this always feel weird and sad. Weird because you're leaving something you've come to know so well to venture off into a somehow unknown future, sad because you're leaving behind a load of memories and mainly because you know you'll be missing the people, you actually spent most of your day with for over 3.5 years, so much. I guess it's always the people you get to know, how they touch your life, the different relationships you build with them, the good times, and even the not so good ones, that gets...
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February 21, 2006
The company that pioneered the concept of space tourism has announced plans for a commercial spaceport in the United Arab Emirates. Space Adventures will build its first spaceport in the emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah, less than an hour's drive from Dubai, and, in a project estimated to cost at least $265 million, is designing to add further ports in locations such as Singapore and North America. The US company has also struck a deal with investment firm Prodea to develop rocket ships to take paying customers on sub-orbital flights. It's amazing how day after day the UAE keeps turning more...
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February 20, 2006
Coffee, sandwiches and open source in Toronto's Linux Caffe... Groups of open source enthusiasts meet there regularly; GTA-lug, Ruby, Python, Asterisk and the Toronto 2600. Linux newbies hang around and gurus visit. There's a row of penguin buttons and t-shirts and pocket protectors are on the way. Cool, in a geeky kind of way. I wish we had a café like that in Tunisia....
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February 18, 2006
A new study has found that complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, and that over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions. Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with. I...
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February 17, 2006
"When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army. But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me. In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either. You become so apathetic you don't care at all. Shooting is the IDF soldier's way...
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February 16, 2006
CNN International has launched a major overhaul of its on-screen presentation on February 5 in a move described as a "radical move away from the cluttered screens and heavy graphics that currently prevail in today's rolling news and business networks." The network's logo was repositioned to the left, network identity spots and music were revamped, fonts in the lower-third bars were changed, and full-screen information graphics got a new look. The colour scheme used on CNNI also underwent a revamp, with the channel adapting the internationally-recognised "alert" colour, yellow, for breaking news graphics. The news ticker, which has run at...
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February 15, 2006
Bored with pitting his wits against the Joker and the Riddler, Batman is setting his sights on a more challenging target - Osama bin Laden. Frank Miller, the famed Batman writer, sees the caped crusader facing off against al-Qaida operatives who attack Gotham City in "Holy Terror, Batman!" Miller, who has inked his way through 120 pages of the 200-page opus, told a recent comic book convention that the novel was an unashamed "piece of propaganda" in which Batman "kicks al-Qaida's ass". Miller said the use of comic book heroes for propaganda had an honourable tradition. "Superman punched out Hitler....
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February 14, 2006
The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats. The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement. So this is the democracy that the US is...
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February 13, 2006
Israel and U.S. Jewish groups have lobbied organizers of next month's Academy Awards not to present a nominated film about Palestinian suicide bombers as coming from "Palestine." Many Israelis were irked when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in publishing the nomination, said "Paradise Now" came from "Palestine." There were also some obviously unhappy faces at the Golden Globes when "Paradise Now" was announced as a movie from Palestine, and won the award for 'Best Foreign Language Film'. They say is that no one, not even the Palestinians themselves, have declared the formal creation of 'Palestine' yet, and...
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February 10, 2006
"The demonisation of Islam and the vilification of Muslims, there is no denying, is widespread within mainstream Western society." Muslims for their part have to avoid "sweeping denunciation of Christians, Jews and the West" "The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals." -- Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi [Source: BBC]...
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Posted on February 10, 2006 12:35 PM under:
Cinema
Last night while zapping through satellite TV channels, I came across this scene in a movie with Dick Van Dyke and Benny Hill. My wife and I automatically detected it and knew it was from a movie that was a big favourite for both of us in our childhoods: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's a movie we've both seen tens, if not hundreds, of times as kids, and it brought back a flood of sweet childhood memories. We remembered the bits we loved, the bits that bored us and the bits that scared us with that damn childcatcher lollypop man....
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February 09, 2006
Very funny... If you don't understand it, it's ok because it's an IT geek joke, but it's a cool one, you can take my word for it. [Via: Windows Mobile CH]...
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February 08, 2006
Iran's best-selling newspaper has launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust in retaliation for the publication in many European countries of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. The daily paper Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech -- the reason given by many European newspapers for publishing the cartoons of the Prophet. "A serious question for Muslims ... is this: 'does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy...
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I've been observing comments and reactions from both sides on the danish cartoons conflict on my blog and others, without getting too involved with them, trying to see where they go, and I'm very sorry to say that they've been moving without direction further up a blocked alley. The whole conversation keeps turning into a big Islam vs. West, clash of civilizations style discussion, in which the westerners bash Islam and Muslim countries, and Muslims bash the West. All of a sudden the talk is about the state of women rights in Saudi Arabia, Israel and its existence, laicity in...
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February 07, 2006
I remember some time ago, on the way to a meeting with a client, a friend from work and I were talking about my blog and how I never imagined it'd get me into the World Summit on the Information Society, and then to London for the Global Voices Summit, ...etc. He said it was all great and stuff, but then asked: "But then what?" This is a question a lot of non-bloggers ask, and it's quite a logical question actually, I mean nothing really goes on forever, not even our passion for certain things, everything seems to move on,...
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February 06, 2006
There's been a lot of talk about blogging vs. journalism in the past, discussing whether bloggers compete with journalists or not, and what kind of relationship there can be between the two. Personally, I think the relationship between blogging and journalism is more or less a clear one, in that they complete each other, and can hold one another accountable. Another interesting thought though is blogging vs. psychiatry. A lot of people are using their blogs as a space to vent, unload and just get things off their chests. They talk about their everyday lives, their problems, their highs and...
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February 05, 2006
Yesterday, the embassies of Denmark and Norway in Syria were attacked by demonstrators and torched. Today, demonstrators in Lebanon set the Danish consulate in Beirut on fire too. From the very start, Muslim religious leaders and clerics have been going on and on about this and telling people not to react violently to these cartoons. And from the video footage of the attacks on the Danish consulate in Beirut, we can see a number of religious leaders trying to stop the people from what they're doing, trying to stand in their way and make them leave. And all Arab TV...
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February 04, 2006
"...While private gunrunners continue to thrive. The world's biggest arms suppliers are the U.S., U.K., Russia, France and China. They are also the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council." From the movie: Lord Of War....
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February 03, 2006
Posted on February 3, 2006 08:22 PM under:
Link Dump
Oscars - 78th Annual Academy Awards - Nominee List The nominee list for this year's Oscars is out. Paradise Now is nominated for Best Foreign Film and Brokeback Mountain got the most nominations with 8 tips, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best (tags: oscars academy awards nominations nominees cinema movies) 10 Realistic Steps to a Faster Web Site How to determine what's slowing down your web site and what you can do to get over it and make your site faster. (tags: steps list fast web site) 12 Resources on...
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A new weekly newspaper has been launched in Jordan to campaign against "blatant distortions" of Islam by portraying a moderate image of the religion. Fact International is being published by a media and research institute based in Amman with articles in both Arabic and English, according to chairman Zakaria al-Sheikh. "Fact International’s mission is to dispel the myths and misconceptions and the blatant distortions that are used to discredit the Arab and Muslim world," he said in a statement. Sheikh said there was a need for such media in the face of "forces of unrelenting propaganda" in a world of...
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February 02, 2006
Posted on February 2, 2006 11:45 AM under:
Tunisia
The WorldCupBlog is looking for a Tunisian blogger to join their team and blog about Tunisia's World Cup football team. Of course, it has to be someone who loves soccer and the national team and who would be able to write well in English. The aim of WorldCupBlog is to be the place to come for insight, news and opinions about all 32 teams in the World Cup. If you're interested, you can either leave a comment here or send an email to bob [at] worldcupblog.com and tell him why you would like to be involved....
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February 01, 2006
Both a French and a German newspaper have reprinted the series of 12 Danish newspaper cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad PBUH, that have sparked huge protests in the Muslim world. The France Soir daily said it had published the cartoons in the name of freedom of expression and to fight religious intolerance. Under a headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the paper ran a front page cartoon with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish Gods and Prophet Muhammad sitting on a cloud above Earth, with the Christian God saying: "Don't complain Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here." The German...
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I briefly wrote about the Danish and Norwegian papers that featured Prophet Mohamed PBUH caricatures in my post Freedom of Racism. But ever since that, there has been an explosion of reactions in the Muslim world, both online and offline. The blogosphere has witnessed a huge number of blogs about this topic, people all over the Muslim world are boycotting Danish and Norwegian products, some countries have pulled their ambassadors, ...etc. Over this time I've mainly been watching from the sidelines, wanting to write more about it, but just not finding the time to. Most opinions I've read in the...
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