Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

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

Spaceport in Ras Al-Khaimah UAE

The company that pioneered the concept of space tourism has announced plans for a commercial spaceport in the United Arab Emirates.

Spaceport UAE

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 and more into a wonderland. So many cool things in one place.

Sleep On Your Major Decisions

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 pretty much believe this as it has worked with me before in taking decisions, solving problems or even thinking up solutions and algorithms for my work.

I sometimes feel that all we do with our conscious mind, when we’re faced with a complex issue or decision, is somehow panic, mess things up and interfere with a natural and more balanced process that our unconscious mind would follow.

[Source: NewScientist]

Israeli Soldiers Just Shoot, Shoot, Shoot

“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 of meditating. It’s like shooting is your way of letting go of all your anger when you’re in the army. In Hebron there’s this order they call “punitive shooting”: just open fire on whatever you like. I opened fire not on any sources of fire but on windows where there was just wash hanging to dry. I knew that there were people who would be hit. But at that moment it was just shoot, shoot, shoot.”

— Extract from an interview with Israeli soldiers (who are identified by pseudonyms) conducted by Israeli journalist Uri Blau and printed in Kol Ha’Ir, a Jerusalem weekly, in September 2001.
Translated from Hebrew by Tal Haran, and published in English translation in the April 2002 edition of Harpers Magazine.

[Via: Lawrence of Cyberia]

CNNi Redesigns, Goes Clean

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 the bottom of CNNI’s screen since September 11, 2001, was replaced with a new information bar that displays one complete sentence or story at a time.

Design firm Kemistry is behind the changes and says it cut back the font graphics to the length of words and sentences so that

Batman Takes on Al-Qaida

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. So did Captain America. That’s one of the things they’re there for,” he said.

[Source: Al Jazeera]

U.S. and Israelis Talk of Hamas Ouster

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 promoting in the Middle East?
You get to vote for whoever you wish, but if you choose someone we don’t like, we’ll put you in a secluded corner without food or money until you change your mind and choose the people we want?!

What kind of hypocrisy and double-standards are these?
I’m sorry, but democracy just doesn’t work that way!
When Americans made the mistake of choosing George W. Bush for presidency twice, the rest of the world didn’t go on and cut the U.S. off for their very bad choice, they just lived with it.

That’s how things are with democracy, and with life in general, people don’t always make the right decisions, or the decisions that the rest of the world wants them to make, but in the end it’s their decision and nobody elses.
The world has to live with it and work with it.

[Source: NY Times]
[Via: Sleepless Jojo]

Israel Against “Palestine” Tag At Oscars

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 thus the label would be inaccurate.

Well, declared or not, recognized or not, and whether Israel likes it or not, Palestine exists; It exists through its people, through its beautiful holy land, through our memories, through history, through all our hearts.

And it’s only normal that a movie made by a Palestinian be tagged as coming from Palestine, because that is where he, his movie and its ideas come from.

West And Islam As Equals

“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]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

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.

I remember when I came to Tunisia, and none of the other kids in the family had seen it, I’d always keep taking the video tape of it around with me showing it to them, until it got lost in my aunt’s house at the end.
I hated her and her son for a long time after that because of it 😛

I’m not sure if a movie like this one would work for today’s generation of kids, but for us it was one of the coolest movies around and we greatly enjoyed it.

The story was cool, the songs were great and the acting was good; It was one of the best kid movies of its time.

I guess it’ll live forever in our memories and in the inner child of everyone of us who experienced it.

Long Live Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…