|
question everything |
~ublog |
HOME |
|
|
about 
|
doing the right thing.. ... and interpretations thereof. what exactly is the right thing? the anti-defamation league derides the members of the un general assembly, and especially the european union for not being able to "muster the courage to do the right thing". a resolution calling on israel to abstain from its avowed action against yasser arafat passed 133 to 4, with the nays coming from israel (but of course), the united states (ahem, but of course), micronesia and the marshall islands. apparently the whole world is wrong except israel, the us and m&m, just like the time they wanted the iraq war. i don't even understand this new found obsession with yasser arafat, can anyone honestly claim removing him, be that assassination or expulsion, will solve or even begin the process of solving the israel-palestine issue? will it heal the situation in any manner? the problem, of course, is far more deep rooted, the solution does not lie in getting rid of an almost spent symbol, rather it does in the streets of palestine and israel. the israelis are wasting their time on arafat, and making no progress toward peace, they are helping worsen a situation that has been way out of hand for years now, these actions will in no way deter another generation of palestinians from pursuing a messed up sense of martyrdom, rather it is likely to drive them toward more violence. dave barry takes a hilarious potshot at the california recall tar pit. via winterspeak.
illruminating via the always illruminating, illruminations, this story from israel, an excerpt, What was it that drew me back salam pax has talked about the raid on his house in baghdad, riverbendblog/baghdad burning a lady iraqi blogger talks about them too, this is evidence of the americans' continued blotching of their task in post-war iraq, excerpts, Yes, we know all about the ‘raids’. I wish I had statistics on the raids. The ‘loyalists and terrorists’ must include Mohammed Al-Kubeisi of Jihad Quarter in Baghdad who was 11. He went outside on the second floor balcony of his house to see what the commotion was all about in their garden. The commotion was an American raid. Mohammed was shot on the spot. I remember another little terrorist who was killed four days ago in Baquba, a province north-east of Baghdad. This terrorist was 10… no one knows why or how he was shot by one of the troops while they were raiding his family’s house. They found no weapons, they found no Ba’athists, they found no WMD. I hope America feels safer now. the riverbendblog is an excellent perspective on the american occupation and life in baghdad these days, perhaps not as famous as salam, but incisive nevertheless, pay it a visit.
the nincompoop confessions i've just found out i'm grossly incompetent, stupid and have been spectacularly ill equipped to recognize how unbelievbaly low on the intellectual scale i've stood in the twenty three years of my life. this article i ran into recently talks about how how easy it is for stupid people to think they are smart for the rather simple reason that they are not smart enough to realize they are stupid, which is a paradox, but anyway. so well, the time i locked myself out of the car, with the engine running, was not a sign of absent minded forgetfulness, it was, horror of horros, clear and simple evidence that i AM STUPID. and the reason i don't have a job yet is that recruiters and hiring managers knew all along what i'm only just starting to realize, my years in school, college and university have been an absolute drain, not only on my father's hard earned money and my teachers' well worn patience but also on my worthless brain that has resisted all efforts to develop the metacognitive ability to recognize my own limitations. apparently the reason i don't get a thousand hits a day is not because people don't have the intellectual acumen to understand my very literal and absorbing posts but that my posts are neither very literal, nor absorbing, in fact, i've begun to suspect, i'm the classic, much feared and loathed, bore. i've obviously over estimated my sense of humor for it is often that i say something hilarious and people start looking at each other uncomfortably, searching for a cue perhaps to laugh or whine. or kick me out of the room. it is further evidence of my stupidity that after reading this fairly revealing bit of research, and realizing what an incompetent nincompoop i am, instead of hanging my head in shame and shutting up forever, i'm making another abortive attempt at humor. sigh! some people never learn...
praying drunk Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
faith and truth an interesting look at the motivations for faith, the pursuit of truth and the struggle to come to terms with both, by seyed rezavi of monkeyx, It is said that faith cannot exist without doubt and therefore certainty is the opposite of faith for in certainty one believes that all the answers are known, whereas faith requires serious doubts and uncertainties to allow the adoption of ideas despite the sincerest and most profound doubts. Faith without doubt is bigotry.the entire post is here.
accidental(?) deaths via salon, rasheed sahib, a new yorker and a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division died on the 18th of may when he was shot in the chest, not by an iraqi insurgent, but by a negligent chappie in his own division as the other fellow cleaned his weapon. agreed, accidents happen, the american soldier in iraq is not exactly having the time of his life and shit happens but to this extent? from an article in a regional tv station's website, Since the war began in March, 145 troops have died in hostile combat circumstances. Those include ambushes, sniper attacks and bombings. are the soldiers in iraq improperly/insufficiently trained? is the number of accidental deaths nothing to be alarmed about? is this just another twist on 'collateral damage'? i'm sure the administration has its own spin on these incidents, what i'd like is someone who's been through such hell and knows what it's like to tell me how alarmed we should be. as of now, i'm very alarmed.
advice talk is cheap. yap is what we do. coz its easy, and free, and some people actually read what we write! since i'm in a particularly deep trough of my creativity and giving advice is a great way to cover your own flaws, here's an earful for those starting up or making over, use movable type and host your blog on some cheap web hosting service, if u r a cheapo unemployed loser like me you can stick to blogger, it is easy and thankfully customizable unlike xanga which i found suffocating after a while use colors that are easy on the eyes, both for the background and the font, slightly different shades of the same color for the font and background is a really bad idea. my personal preference is a white background or some pastel color (like yaz's) with a dark font use verdana or georgia. please. keep the font at a comfy 10pt or 12pt, anything smaller is too hard to read, and especially scary when the post is long, larger fonts make even small posts look too lengthy and suggest frivolity music? sooooo 90s, be it a weblog, a personal home page or a commercial site, a song clip when your page loads is an incredibly bad idea, it is jarring, irritating and completely unnecessary see to it that your blog is 'usable', ie it is easy to navigate, comfortable to look at and loads fairly quickly. check if possible that it displays correctly in atleast three to four browsers, perhaps ie 4.x-6.x, netscape, mozilla and safari i always add 'target=_blank' to my hrefs coz it allows people to continue reading a post while opening a link in another window. there are ways to give the reader the choice to open hyperlinks in the same or another window, but i just don't see why you'd want to go away from all the interesting stuff i post on ublog |smirk| provide a link introducing yourself, your blog, the intended audience and the purpose of your blog. this is absolutely necessary, i almost never go back to a weblog which does not tell me anything about the author. even if you wish to remain anonymous, provide a rough background so that people atleast know what's going on preferably, provide a section for feedback and comments for individual posts, this encourages reader participation and brings people back get a counter, it helps you know what degree of readership you have, who links to you and what keyword searches throw up your weblog in google searches. this can be amusing (someone came to ublog searching for something akin to 'jewish underwear during world war two') and gratifying, it keeps you motivated keep your blogroll under control, don't add a weblog if you liked one post, a good rule is to only have those weblogs that you read regularly, say once a week atleast beware of trolls! get involved, spend time on other weblogs, submit your url to bloglists like globeofblogs, weblogs.com and blogwise (links on the left) what you write depends on the theme of your blog, you might be sharing life secrets or ranting about bush's foreign policy, just remember that if you'd like greater readership you'll have to give your post thought and research for it to make an impact on your readers blogging offers the terrific opportunity to defend your thoughts and beliefs and to correct wrong impressions. i'm a muslim for example, and i've seen some really silly attacks on islam by those with a negative/flawed image of islam and i've used ublog to present our side of the story and to disabuse wrong impressions never leave a comment for the sake of leaving a comment, say something when you have something to say, keep quiet if you don't. when there is something you feel strongly about say it but without being rude or offensive. in large forums it is easy to see your voice get lost in the din, a solution to that is post something on your own weblog with a link to the post you feel merits discussion don't steal, when you quote, provide a reference don't ask for money for your web hosting/blogging expenses, it is simply not polite. if you get a zillion hits a day like dailykos and tacitus, or if you provide really readable content like the sentimentalist or joelonsoftware, in other words if you have been instrumental in creating a community there is no harm in asking for the members of your community to support your efforts. a website that gets twenty to thirty or even a hundred hits a day can in no fairness ask for money, that's crude do a grammar and spelcheck don't do as i do, do as i say ;) i'll keep this list going so if you have anything to add/edit/delete to/from it, let me know.
drunk as drunk Drunk as drunk on turpentine have i mentioned before how totally in awe of pablo neruda i am? his peotry is like the rhythm in my head that i cannot draw on paper, like happiness, only better. these days i'm leaving the writing and thinking to the fantastic blogs on the left (no pun. actually, yeah pun!), i'm concentrating rather, on listening :)
cuba My eldest sister arrived home that morningi find the concept of confession rather strange, the idea that a supposed sin can be committed and then repented for by reciting a holy verse an arbitrarily decided number of times is odd at the very least. most major religions however, proscribe the practice in one form or another, perhaps in an attempt to console the sinner or maybe to load him with so much of recitation that he thinks twice before brushing against a woman again.
a new voice a dervish's dua is the latest addition to the blogroll, and andrew sullivan has been deleted, i find his posts either too shrill or too boring. in the six months that i've been blogging, i've occassionally come across some brilliant writers, people with such clarity of thought and expression it makes me want to crawl under a carpet and stop blogging for good. ideofact, the american sentimentalist, tacitus, al-muhajabah, winterspeak, billmon, maryam, excellent writers all, thank you very much.
solaris solaris is one of the most spectacular movies i've seen in recent times, frame after luscious frame of breathtaking visuals, sustained suspense and a paper thin yet engaging story line. the treatment of death and after life, our visual and mental perceptions and the degree of credibility that we assign our faculties has been masterfully translated to the big screen by soderbergh from stainslaw's book of the same name. the movie also has a wonderful poem on death by welsh poet, dylan thomas, and death shall have no dominion, which goes like this, And death shall have no dominion.
the spirit wooed
a pot of tea You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier's rosy gleam; bob, i hear ya!
that cowboy from texas with every american soldier that falls victim to iraqi guerilla resistance, with every bomb that rips apart the americans' attempt at rebuilding iraq, with every dollar spent and asked for in keeping this occupation going, president bush's image as a reckless cowboy gather greater credibility. from his boast of 'bring them on' to his historic rhetoric of 'they are either with us or against us' this president has demonstrated an appalling lack of statesmanship, an unforgivably short sighted view of things. an article in the washingtonpost says, The planned request -- which congressional budget analysts said will be nearly double what Congress expected -- reflects the deepening cost of the five-month-old U.S. occupation and serves as an acknowledgement by the administration that it vastly underestimated the cost of restoring order in Iraq and rebuilding the country's infrastructure.what remains to be seen is how far bush is ready to continue with his flawed policies before he starts finding solutions to problems he's so ineptly created. as a side question, how safe is it for america to continue nuclear/bioweapons research in the face of such trigger happy, war mongering short sighted leadership? |
|
