Year: 2004

Top 46 Things To Do In An Elevator

LOL…

My favourites are:

2.Blow your nose and offer to show the contents of your kleenex to other passengers.
3.Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering: “Shut up, dammit, all of you just shut UP!”
21.Frown and mutter “gotta go, gotta go” then sigh and say “oops!”
23.Sing “Mary had a little lamb” while continually pushing buttons.
26.Stare at another passenger for a while, then announce “You’re one of THEM!” and move to the far corner of the elevator.
38.Draw a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers that this is your “personal space.”
41.Blow spit bubbles.
43.Announce in a demonic voice: “I must find a more suitable host body.”

For the full list, go here.

Tahir Rashid

Yesterday, I got to know another Muslim talent from the UK. A very talented poet, songwriter and singer by the name of Tahir Rashid.

“My style of writing might be very different to a lot of the poets and lyricists as I do not compromise on what subject I want to write and I try to convey my feelings as openly as possible.” He says.

The main influence for his poetry is this world in itself. World events, situation of the people and the different phases he has gone through in his life.

Other than his spiritually/religiously subjected poems he’s also working on a hip hop album on which he will be performing with some other fellow artists.

I’ve gone through a number of his poems, and I love the way they flow, the simplicity and the meanings in them.

I truly recommend stopping by his website to check out his works.

Marwan Barghouthi to run for Palestinian President

Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan al-Barghouthi has decided to run for Palestinian president, reversing his earlier decision to stay out of the race.

Barghouthi’s candidacy was submitted shortly before a deadline on Wednesday night. Barghouthi, the most popular choice among Palestinians to succeed Arafat, told his wife during a prison visit that he wanted to run in the election as an independent candidate.

“I am running in this democratic battle … to achieve peace on the basis of justice, freedom, the return of Palestinian refugees, and freedom for our prisoners,” al-Barghuthi said in a statement read by his wife.
He called for a fair election campaign.

Palestinian officials originally said last Thursday that al-Barghuthi had decided not to run. After he came under pressure from Fatah officials worried about a split in their movement, he opted on Friday to drop his candidacy.

I remember in the last days of the leader Yasser Arafat, I was thinking about what would happen after his death and how there is no one to be that unifying figure, no one who is that popular, no one to step into Arafat’s shoes.
No one but Marwan Barghouthi, I thought.

He’s the only person who could unite Palestinians, the only one who could make them listen, the only one they all love and respect.

Ten candidates will be running in this presidential race. I think the right choice for Palestinian president would certainly be Marwan Barghouthi.

[Sources: ABC News, Al Jazeera]

MSN Spaces

After rumours going around for some time, Microsoft have finally launched their own blog service called MSN Spaces.

MSN Spaces users will be able to customize the layout of their blogs (although not too much), post digital pictures, create music and book lists, and also control who has access to their blogs.

Using a centralized contacts database that will be shared between Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail free e-mail and MSN Messenger services, users will also be able to track new blog postings.

MSN Spaces will be available in 14 languages.

I setup an account and took it for a little spin, but wasn’t too impressed by it.
I honestly think Blogger is way better.

Now, we’ll have to wait and see what Yahoo! comes up with.
They’ve already launched their blogging service in Korea. The rest of the world will have to wait.

Bridges TV Launched

Bridges TV was finally launched today.

Bridges TV is a cable TV network that plans to focus on English-speaking American Muslim youth and celebrate the American Muslim lifestyle and culture as well as build bridges of friendship between Muslim Americans and mainstream America.

I wrote about Bridges TV last year when it was still being planned.

I think it’s great that they went on with this project, because it provides American Muslims with a TV network that they can feel comfortable watching and letting their children watch but also because it

‘Blog’ is No. 1 word of the year

Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks,” was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Springfield, Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster compiles the list of the 10 words of each year by taking the most researched words on its Web sites and then excluding perennials such as affect/effect and profanity.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

The complete list of words of the year is available here.

We bloggers rock!

Wikinews

After revolutionizing the way encyclopedias are built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.

Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists and report the news on a wide variety of current events.

The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded.

The current rendition of Wikinews is an experimental version that, according to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, offers just a taste of what’s to come when the news effort builds momentum.

I think this is great.
I already thought of this idea some time ago and thought of how great it would to be to have a source of news that is compiled by the normal people on the ground and not the media giants who often offer a disconnected view on things and are even biased in some cases.

Bravo to the guys behind Wikipedia and Wikinews for making my idea come true.
You guys rock!

It just pisses me off a bit that another one of my ideas has been implemented by somebody other than me, lol…

[Source: Wired]

Leader Yasser Arafat Street

This morning, on my way to work, I drove through a street I’ve driven through almost everyday of the past 2.5 years, but today I noticed something different in it.

Before, it was called the “Environment Street”, but today I noticed a big sign that says “Boulevard du Leader Yasser Arafat”, or in English “Leader Yasser Arafat Street”.

I heard that a street was named after him here after his death, but I had no idea which one and where.

And true to it’s old name, it’s all green and full of flowers on the sides and in the middle. Pretty worthy of it’s new name.

War Criminal Bush

Vancouver legal experts join movement to rule the U.S. president a violator of Geneva and U.N. conventions.

When George W. Bush visits Canada this week, he’s sure to get an earful from demonstrators who see him more as a “war crimes president” than a “war president.”
Gail Davidson, a Vancouver lawyer, says the prime minister should rescind his invitation to Bush, because the president is a “major war criminal.”

Prominent jurists have echoed Davidson’s claims. Most recently, Louise Arbour, the former war crimes prosecutor and current United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called for an investigation into crimes against the Geneva Conventions during the recent American assault on Fallujah…

[Via: The Tyee, Je Blog]