Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

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

Miss Plastic Surgery

The world’s first beauty pageant for women who have undergone plastic surgery is to be staged in China this November.

A spokesman for the organisers said contestants would have to produce doctor’s certificates confirming their charms were not natural.

He added that to avoid a series of bungled rush jobs participants also had to have gone under the knife no later than May 29 this year.

Now, let’s imagine this.
A group of obsessed women with oversized breasts, lips, buttocks and what more fighting over which one of them actually looks artificially better.
Should be quite interesting for an artificially intelligent audience 😛

I Am Israel

The following is a short, succinct article that tells a lot, written by Hashem Said, a young Palestinian student in Washington State University, for which the paper – under pressure, as usual, from pro-Israeli activists – had to apologize.

This was forwarded to me back in 2002, and I stumbled upon it today while sniffing around my old emails, and I thought I’d share it with you guys here.

I am Israel
By Hashem Said
The Daily – Washington State University, Feb. 25, 2002

I am Israel – I came to a land without a people for a people without a land. Those people who happened to be here, had no right to be here, and my people showed them they had to leave or die, razing 480 Palestinian villages to the ground, erasing their history.

I am Israel – some of my people committed massacres and later became Prime Ministers to represent me. In 1948, Menachem Begin was in charge of the unit that slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, including 100 men, women, and children. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for our allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

Continue reading I Am Israel

RSS Bandit

After being a loyal SharpReader user for quite a while now and using it as my default feed reader, yesterday I stumbled across another one called RSS Bandit.

I installed it, ran it, and loved it. In only a few seconds it lured me in and it became my default feed reader.

It’s really a neat piece of software.

It’s written in C# too, and it’s open source.
I’ve downloaded the source code and am thinking of doing some customization in it if I actually find time to, mainly in the looks because the rest is going fine.
Anyway, if I do get around to it, maybe I’ll make it available for you guys to download as the official Subzero Blue Feed Reader 😛

Update (29/07/04):
I’ve switched back to SharpReader. It’s simpler, lighter and well I just got used to it 😛

Why Al-Qaeda wants President Bush to be re-elected

Aaron Swartz presents three reasons why Al-Qaeda wants President Bush to be re-elected.

  1. Reuters reported a letter from an al-Qaeda group that said “it supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader ‘more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.
  2. A top CIA expert on al-Qaeda has concluded that al-Qaeda loves President Bush, and might go so far as to plan an election attack to rally the country around Bush.
  3. Even administration officials concede “al-Qaeda has morphed into a loose and expanding association of regional terror cells [and] the Iraq war has fueled rather than doused the fires of jihad.”

I truly agree.
I think President Bush is doing more harm than good. He is fueling the growth of such terrorist organizations through the use of dumb force and creation of more hatred towards the US throughout the world.

The situations Bush keeps creating are the ideal ones for an organization like Al Qaeda to grow and recruit more and more members.
Of course they’d want him to stay.

[Via Boing Boing]

Norway: Right-wing politicians want to ban Islam

Central members of Kristiansand Progress party (Frp) claims Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and the Koran are one of the same, and they want Islam banned in Norway.

“It is about high time Norway and Europe make the ideology Islam and the practice of this, illegal and punishable in the same way as Nazism,” said Karina Udnaes, deputy leader of the Progress party’s city council group in Kristiansand.

Halvor Hulaas, chairperson in Krstiansand Frp, says: “The religion as it is practiced is a threat against our social system and way of life.”
He goes on to say that Kristiansand now lives under the threat of getting a large mosque in town.

Now what the hell is that?!

Dubya, The Peace President

“I Want to Be the Peace President”…
“Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president… The next four years will be peaceful years.” — George W. Bush

Yeah right!
After waging two wars and obviously starting to get things ready for the next ones, this is a really stupid thing to say.
I’d laugh if I weren’t so disgusted.

Peace President my ass!

[Via Je Blog]

Iran: The Next Target

So George W. Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

And he says that his administration is investigating possible links between Iran and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, although CIA Director John McLaughlin said there was no connection and that Iran did not support the attacks.

So here they go again, trying to build false links between a country and Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, even though their intelligence people tell them there are none, all in an attempt to set the stage for a possible new war.

Soon, we’ll start hearing that whole thing about the so-called Irani nuclear program and it’s weapons of mass destruction again.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ‘first strike’ plan against Iran is ready.
Israel has completed military rehearsals for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear power facility at Bushehr, Israeli officials said.

They noted that the strike could also be accompanied by an attack on other targets, including a facility at Natanz and a plant at Arak.

Of course such an attack would start a war (or would be part of an already ongoing one) and Israel wouldn’t dare do it alone, so guess who’ll be doing the dirty work for them. The US of course.

More war, more blood, more chaos and more death.
It’s unbelievable what this world has come to.

10 Rules for driving in Tunisia

The 10 golden rules for driving in Tunisia 😉

  1. Get in the car and make sure you don’t fasten your seat belt. ( It’s considered a bad habit.)
  2. Try to avoid looking in your side mirrors or front mirror. Mirrors in cars are made only to check on your appearance.
  3. Before you start your engine, make sure a car is passing by, And then start driving.
  4. Do not warn the drivers behind you of your intentions to stop, just step on the brakes and stop as suddenly as you possibly can.
  5. Remember to cross the traffic light only when it’s about to become red.
  6. If by any chance you see a friend, just stop in the middle of the road and greet him/her.
  7. Never honor stop signs, they are only there for decorative purposes.
  8. If you need something from the supermarket, double park making sure that no car will be able to find its way out.
  9. A one-way street is an idea foreign to our culture, don’t ever go by it.
  10. If you hit a car, don’t stop, just leave, and forget Anything happened.

Enjoy 😛

Picasa

So Google have acquired Picasa, the digital photo software maker, and now they’re offering their product for free.

I just downloaded it and man does this look like some sweet piece of software to import, organize, edit and do loads of cool stuff with your photos in.
It’s really cool and a must for everyone.

Check it out here.

Don’t you just love Google more and more with every move they make.