Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

Nour El Sharif To Portray Yasser Arafat

Prominent Egyptian actor Nour El Sharif has announced that he plans on presenting the life story of the late Palestinian President, whom he was very good friends with, in a new film. Nour revealed that he video taped the funeral ceremony held for the President in Egypt and Ramallah in order to use them in the film, which he will begin work on once the mourning period is over.

Nour stressed that he will seek a good scenarist to write the script of the film once he completes collecting all the needed research on the President

Ketchup ‘hero’ dismissed

An Indian soldier who used tomato ketchup to fake his claim for a bravery medal has been dismissed from service.

Colonel H.S. Kohli, who commanded an artillery regiment in Assam, tried to present photographs of civilians splashed with ketchup as ‘enemy casualties’.

But the fraud came to light while authorities were processing his claims for an award.

The army officer was tried and found guilty in a court martial while a major who connived with him in the fake encounter, faces a five-year suspension.

How pathetic, lol…

[Via: Ananova]

Anger!

“I have a right to my anger, and I don’t want anybody telling me I shouldn’t be, that it’s not nice to be, and that something’s wrong with me because I get angry.”

— Maxine Waters, in Brian Lanker, I Dream a World, 1989

Space Imaging

One of the sites I love passing by every once in a while is Space Imaging.

Their gallery section is just awesome, the satellite images they’ve got in there are so beautiful.
They give you a perfect bird’s eye view of the places and so much detail to enjoy.

It’s truly amazing what kind of high quality photos they can shoot from outer space and how much they can zoom in on a place.

I mean, here I am looking at a photo of Dubai and I can see the “Burj Al Arab” hotel, houses, highways, small streets, cars and more.
Or this other picture of Zimbabwe’s Victoria falls and the region around it. I can even see the Victoria Falls hotel that we used to stay at and the swimming pool I used to swim in.

It always makes me wonder that if these photos they just put up for free on their site are that good and give so much detail, then what they actually sell commercially or what the military has access to is certainly of higher and better resolution, giving way to even more detail.

Now that thought reminds me of the movie Enemy Of The State. I wonder if they’ve gotten that far though, technologically speaking.
But it’s pretty scary even if they haven’t reached that level of real-time satellite surveillance.

Anyway, next time you look up to the sky you might as well smile. You don’t want to look bad on your satellite photo 😛

On a slightly different note. With this kind of technology, how the hell couldn’t they find Osama Bin Laden and his people for such a long time?!

New Enhanced Feed

To the nerds within you who read this blog through an aggregator or feed reader, I’ve added a new enhanced feed that contains posts from this blog spliced with photos I’ve posted on flickr spliced with interesting stuff I’ve posted on my linklog.

So, it’s sort of an all-in-one feed, and you can find it here.

Enjoy 😉

Weblog Ethics

Here are some of the basic weblog ethics:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

I totally agree that all bloggers should try to stick to these ethics when blogging.

[More Detail: Rebecca’s Pocket]

Conservative Liberal

Yesterday, I was chatting to Jordan on chatango (in my blog’s right column), and as one subject led to another, I joked about how I was somewhat of a conservative liberal.

Now, it may seem funny, weird and contradictory as the way those two words are defined politically makes them opposites.

Some of the definitions of Liberal are:

1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
3. One who favors greater freedom in political or religious matters; an opponent of the established systems; a reformer.

And some of the definitions of Conservative are:

1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
2. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs; also, one who holds moderate opinions in politics; — opposed to revolutionary or radical.
3. Resistant to change, opposed to liberal reforms.

So, they are pretty much very opposite to each other.

But, when I try to classify myself, I can only say that I’m a liberal with a moderately conservative edge.

Continue reading Conservative Liberal

JFK Reloaded

On the 41st anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Glasgow video game company Traffic has released JFK Reloaded. A reconstruction of the scene and events around the Texas School Book Depository that tragic day, the game puts Oswald’s rifle in the hands of players.

From a Boston Herald article and Traffic‘s press release:
“We’ve created the game with the belief that Oswald was the only person that fired the shots on that day, although this recreation proves how immensely difficult his task was,” (Traffic’s Kirk) Ewing said.

This is so insensitive and disrespectful!
I can’t believe some people have gone this far and this low.

[Via: Boing Boing]