Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Khalil Gibran Revisited
I've been stewing for the past 24 hours about Daniel Pipes and the Stop the Madrassa campaign that transformed a pro-peace moderate named Debbie Almantaser into an Islamic extremist bent on destroying and subverting American values. Before the school opened its doors, she was forced to resign as principal. Gershom Gorenberg of the South Jerusalem Blog read my mind with his latest post on why Daniel Pipes is completely insane. What is apparent when you listen to pipes talk about Islam, is that he believes that it is less a religion and more of a subversive political ideology along the lines of communism or fascism. Therefore, any manifestation of Islamic culture in the public sphere is a threat and must be duly squashed. Gershom is better equipped to deal with Pipes, so I will let him debunk Pipe's madness.
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Ambiguous Image
The NY Times wellness blog has an interesting post about reversible images, optical illusions that don't have any visual cues. As they put it:
Your eyes will sometimes see the dancer standing on her left leg and spinning to the right. And sometimes they will perceive her as standing on her right leg and spinning to the left. Most people, if they stare at the image long enough, will eventually see her turn both ways.
The most well known reversible image is the necker cube.
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Free Cone Day Today!
WOOHOO!! FREE CONE DAY!!!
Whoever said nothing in life is free? Get to your local Ben and Jerry's today for a free cone.
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A Better Bike Lock
The folks over at Street Films have this great film about how to lock your bike. Watch, and perhaps the next time you leave your bike outside of Union Station it won't get stolen.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Thomas Friedman Creamed at Lecture...Literally
A video has been circulating in the blogosphere of Tom Friedman getting hit by pies at a lecture he gave at Brown by a group called the Greenwash Guerillas. I won't weigh in, but as usual the Onion gets it.
New Bicycle Sharing Program in DC
Washington will soon get a new bicycle sharing program. It will work like the Zipcar system in that for a $40 annual membership fee, SmartBike users can check out three-speed bicycles for three hours at a time. The program will not provide helmets but does encourage their use. With the high price of gas these days ($120 a barrel as of yesterday--eek), I hope that the program will catch on and spread to other US cities. At least here in DC, bikes make more sense. I ride mine everywhere and find that I often get where I need to go faster than if I took a car or public transportation. Plus, spandex is hot.
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Khalil Gibran International School
The New York Times published a story today detailing the controversy surrounding the Khalil Gibran International School in Brooklyn, New York. I am saddened and outraged by the whole mess. The founder Debbie Almontaser sought only to foster understanding between the US and Muslims. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities,
learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent and groomed to become new generation of American leaders. They would be
ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and
hope.” In my eyes, she was a victim fear-mongers who exploit ignorance to promote their own closed-minded ideology.
Read the article and check out the media section. The Times does a great job of conveying the progression of the controversy.
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
On Death and Life...
I ran across this series of haunting portraits taken by German photographer Walter Schels of cancer patients before and after their deaths.
"I wonder if it’s possible to have a second chance at life? I don’t think so. I’m not afraid of death — I’ll just be one of the million, billion grains of sand in the desert…”
[Link]
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