Syrian Bloggers: Free Kareem

We, as a community of Syrian bloggers, condemn the arrest and sentencing of Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman for the peaceful expression of his dissenting views. We ask the Egyptian government to reconsider its decision to arrest and prosecute Abdel Kareem. The stated reasons for their action include the preservation of the public peace and state security, and the prevention of incitement against Islam. We contend that his arrest will achieve neither. Silencing such dissenting voices as Abdel Kareem’s, serves only to strengthen the hands of extremists who will not shy away from violence to achieve their goals. Moreover, we remind the Egyptian government that his arrest and prosecution violates at least two articles (see below) of the 1948 United Nations universal declaration of human rights to which Egypt was a signatory.Relevant United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles:Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.Such rights for freedom of expression are also enshrined in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam and the 2003 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's religion. [Original Source Abu Kareem]

When are we going to learn to give the basic right of free speech?
When are we going to open our minds and take criticism openly as a form of self expression?

First night in Damascus

My grandparent's mini garden on the rooftop of the house, featuring herbs, peppers and pomegranates

I raced through the hallways of the Airport, eager to retrieve my bags, and see my family. I had finally returned after a 5 year absence. The customs officer was welcoming, and unlike I expected I entered the country with ease. My preparation prior to the trip had paid off. I then had to wait for my bags to come around the carousel. The plane was still being unloaded, and the minutes passed by like hours. I knew that one police officer and 30 meters was all that separated me from my family. My bags arrived, I unloaded them quickly, and decided to drag them along instead of waiting for a cart to become available. The police officer asked to check my bag, I opened it for him, and a minute later I was walking towards the great hall in the airport.

I noticed that they modified the airport since the last time I’ve been there. Instead of walking out through a 4 metre opening, I now had to follow narrow curved path out of the customs area. As soon as I turned around to face the crowd the people, I saw my grandfather there, right at the front of the crowd holding his cane and smiling. As I was greeting him, my cousin Ehab showed up and led me to my mom, brother and uncle Mohammad, who I have seen for only 5 hours during the past 10 years. We went outside to the parking lot, loaded the bags, and squeezed ourselves into the car, and headed towards home. As we got on “Airport Road” I was taken back by the dense pollution in the air. I was really irritated by the diesel smoke, generated by hundreds of aging mini-buses. I started to wonder to my self whether the pollution was there during all the years I lived in Damascus, or if it worsened during the past few years. I noticed how calm, and seemingly desensitized everybody in the car was to the poor air quality, including my mom and brother. It then hit me that the pollution had been there all along, I just had nothing to compare it to.

As we made our way through the city, I was glad to see shop signs written in Arabic and hearing people speak a familiar dialect. As we got closer to home, my cousin started quizzing “do you know what this street’s called?”, “where are we now?” I got most of the answers wrong. Half an hour after leaving the airport, we were approaching the roundabout leading to the Yarmouk refugee camp. The street was packed with people, restaurants filled the streets, and cars were lined bumper to bumper. But I didn’t mind, I wanted to take a look at the shops that lined the streets, which ones are still there and which ones disappeared. As the shops became more and more familiar I knew we were close. We made a right turn from the main street, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with familiar sights. The tiny street hadn’t changed much, except for the odd store here and there. A minute later and we were turning into our Hara (alley). The first thing that I did was look up to see our balcony, to take a look at my grandparent’s house. We unloaded the bags and I started making my way upstairs. As I was doing so every sense of mine was experiencing déjà vu. My memory seemed to suddenly liven up with visual cues. The colour and shape of the tiles, the small water faucet below the stairs, the electricity meter, my grandmothers grocery cart, and many many other features that mean nothing to anybody else, but all the world to me.

When I made it upstairs I was greeted by my aunt, grandmother, and cousins, some of whom I did not recognize. During the next hour my aunts and cousins started to make their way over. One of my cousins bought 20 different brands of chips as a welcome home. Cell phone suddenly started popping up, pictures were taken, and jokes were being told, “Omar, smi3t akher nokteh?” (have you heard the latest joke?) was a phrase that was repeated often. My grandmother then suggested that we get some traditional Shami food for my first meal back. Two of my uncles and I, got into the car and made our way to the “Meedan” quarter, famous for its traditional Shami food. I cannot describe the feeling of being thrown back into Shami culture after a five year absence. Everything from the way the Hummus dishes were decorated to the phrases like “2morni m3allim!” felt new to me. I felt like a tourist at home. After buying the foul, mssaba7a, and falafel we headed home teased by the smell the whole way back.

It was an unforgettable night.

You know you're an engineer if...

I have 6 midterms this week. I have been doing so much math, that I’m literally dreaming of x’s and y’s. Lists like the ones below always put a smile on my face, especially because they’re so true… read on.

You know you’re an engineer if:

1. You have no life - and you can PROVE it mathematically.
3. You know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long division.
5. You've actually used every single function on your graphing calculator.
9. You think in "math".
13. You laugh at jokes about mathematicians.
15. You can translate English into Binary.
16. You can't remember what's behind the door in the engineering building which says "Exit".
17. You have to bring a jacket with you, in the middle of summer, because there's a wind-chill factor in the lab.
18. You are completely addicted to caffeine.
19. You avoid doing anything because you don't want to contribute to the eventual heat-death of the universe.
20. You consider ANY non-engineering course "easy".
21. When your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe.
22. The "fun" center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.
23. You'll assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math easier.
26. The salesperson at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions.
31. You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work.
34. You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring.
35. You think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep.
37. You've ever calculated how much you make per second.
39. You understood more than five of these jokes.
40. You can't write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines.
41. You make a copy of this list, and post it on your door (or your home page !)

I would like to add a few of my own..

You know the Greek alphabet more than the English alphabet

You can assign a physical unit to every letter in the English alphabet

You use phrases like “within an order of magnitude” and “to the nth degree” as part of your daily talk

You type on your calculators with two fingers

When faced with a tough partial differential equation, you start assuming everything as negligible.

technorati tags: engineering, funny, list, university

If you're looking for good cheap books, I can help

I recently learned about a very useful website that I thought I would share with you. This site is of specific importance to students in need of textbook, or professionals in need or a good reference.

It turns out McGraw Hill, Wiley, and all the major textbook publishers put out books in paperback format for about 10% of the price of the hardcover edition. The textbooks are the exact same as their hardcover counterparts, but are sometimes printed in black and white, and on cheaper paper. The only catch here is that these books are printed with the intention of giving students in third world countries access to good educational resources. So these books are only available for students in countries like India, Nepal, etc. And this is where the website comes in.

The website sells these books to anyone, anywhere in the world. I noticed that most of the students in my class have made the switch to paperback books, so when I inquired on where they got them from “firstandsecond.com” was their answer. I tried the website my self and ended up buying a $136 dollars for $30 including shipping and handling. The books are brand new and come wrapped and ready to go.

So if you’re looking around for a text, you may want to check out firstandsecond.com.

technorati tags: books, textbooks, university, cheap,

My Experience at "Arabic" School

One of the major concerns for many newcomers to Canada is how to maintain their cultural identity, and language not in themselves but in their children. When we first moved here my mom and dad worked very hard at establishing a Saturday class that teaches Arabic to all levels. They called everybody they knew, they worked very hard at convincing the principal that we have the numbers to create and maintain a class. Once the class opened, we called every family on Friday night to remind them to bring their children the next morning. We picked up people from their houses to drive them school. But the number of students wasn’t enough to justify another class, at that time the Arabic community was small. By the end of semester the class was cancelled. During the semester that the class ran, my mom’s focus was on keeping a religion free class. As a result the class was a mixture of Muslims and Christians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrian, just the way it was intended to be.

Fast forward a few years and I’m finishing my high school, looking for an easy credit to bump up my average. Out of the 6 courses that determine my average, I had the freedom of choosing only one. So naturally I wanted to take something that I’m good at. At that time someone suggested that I take Arabic on Saturday, and having maintained a decent level of Arabic I thought it was a wonderful idea.

My first day at the school consisted of a morning Arabic lesson class, taught by a very competent languages professor at the University of Waterloo. He spoke 5 languages, and often mixed German, French and English while speaking. His lessons were all over the place, unorganized, and lacked theme. His class lasted for just over an hour, after which we had our break.

After the break came the Arabic teacher’s wife. Having not been to the previous week’s class, I didn’t know what expect for this period. I was shocked to learn that she didn’t actually speak Arabic! She was of Pakistani origin, knew her dua’ very well, probably knew a bunch of “soras” by heart, knew all the buzz words in Islam, but I stress once again, she didn’t speak Arabic. She was able to scribble a bunch of Arabic words on the blackboard with very neatly written letters, but that’s probably because she knew Urdu. In a sense she as good write Arabic as well as I could write Farsi. Her spelling was horrendous. During one boring lesson of hers, I remember clearly that she spelled “Wudu” by writing in Arabic, waw dal waw (so much for ‘lughat iddad’). We (me and a bunch of other students) got into a heated argument with her that her spelling was way off. Being the closed minded person that she was, she persisted that she was right, and kept on teaching us the dua’. Her classes mainly consisted of memorizing dua’, for example what should a Muslim say before he enters a bathroom, and before he eats, and so on. I’m not going to discuss my views on dua’ here but let’s just say it was something that I didn’t expect to learn at Arabic school. But of course being in an Arabic class, we not only had to memorize dua’s in Arabic, but also in English. It was then that I got introduced to translations such as “All praise is due to Allah” and “O Allah, I ask You to grant me beneficial knowledge” and other such phrases that I could not even relate to, just because of the mere fact they were taught to me in English. In this period we also had to go up and recite the dua’s one on one with the teacher. Being the least religious out of the bunch, I was the only one that had to memorize these dua’s five minutes before I had to recite them… So that’s two periods and still no Arabic.

Surely the last period had to offer some Arabic right? No, just like you probably expected it had nothing to do with learning Arabic. The last “lesson” consisted of “assirah annabiwiya” which’s Islam’s equivalent, and in many instances identical, to Biblical stories. Now don’t get me wrong, I always enjoyed hearing about the battles, and legendary stories of the chivalrous men, who shaped our history in many ways. I just didn’t want to be forced to listen to them under the “Arabic class” banner, especially when the stories are told in English (out of respect of the two Urdu speaking students who were there to learn Arabic).

If coordinators of the school were true to their beliefs they would be honest, and at least called the course “Islamic Studies with a bit of Arabic” class. I certainly don’t want to be taught Arabic under the banner of Islam, and I most certainly don’t want to learn Arabic by non-Arabic speakers. It’s a shame that people refer to this school as an Arabic school. Arabic is a language that pre-dated Islam for centuries. Christians spoke Arabic, Jews spoke Arabic, and all Idol worshipers spoke Arabic. By putting all the effort on making this pseudo-Arabic class mainly a religion school, the organizers have alienated many people who want to learn Arabic from other religious backgrounds, including Arabs and non-Arabs.

My final result of the course was a 70 something. I did very well on the Arabic part of exam, but bombed the religion part. That mark was my lowest mark of the year; it stood as a scar on my transcript. That same semester at regular school, my English mark was the second highest in the class.

This post comes in light of a new development in the local Arab community. Recently a new group of people, including an authentic Arabic teacher from Damascus, pooled some money together to make an Arabic class. Today I heard they’re teaching religion as part of the curriculum.

technorati tags: , Arabic, school, canada, langauge, Islam, religion

The Politicization of Global Warming

I often get into intense discussions with a friend of mine over global warming. Him being a typical misinformed capitalist, claims that science studies contradict each other when it comes to global warming, and my defense to his argument has been that some scientists are actually being manipulated by oil lobbyists. Today, I read an article on Newscientist.com that gave further proof of how the government intervenes with genuine scientific studies, in an attempt to delude the public of the serious, and eminent problem of global warming.

According to the article, a recent study by the watchdog group, Union of Concerned Scientists, showed that 150 climate scientists reported to having been pressured by political figures to message their findings. Over the past 5 years, 435 political interferences have been reported. The scientists were encouraged to refrain from using the terms ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’, for fear the public may actually sense the danger of Bush’s environmental policy.

The main culprit from the government’s side is said to be Phil Cooney, who served as chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. After resigning from his position in 2005, Cooney joined the oil giant ExxonMobil, a company which has been recently accused of spending over 16 million dollars to support global warming sceptics.

The article goes on to mention that all documents on global warming required Cooney’s review and approval, thus implicitly encouraging self-censorship, especially for scientists who wanted their work published. Talk about control of the media!

The more I hear of how corrupt the government is, the more I lose faith not only in politics, but in humanity in general. It boggles my mind how the people at the White House think. To me ignoring global warming can only be a result of two factors:

1- Short term thinking, and over simplifying of the catastrophe that awaits us, or

2- Arrogance to the point where these politicians think that they can conquer nature with their military

I just hope their environmental plan works a lot better than their plan for Iraq. Brace with me people we’re in for one hell of a ride.

Read the full article here.

technorati tags: global, warming, climate, change, politics, bush, environment, media, control, science