The Islamization of Pakistan

This month’s Newsline has a couple of excellent articles on the Islamization of Pakistan.

First there’s an article called ‘The Power of the Pulpit’ by Mohammad Hanif, author of ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ which was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award.

Hanif writes:

Mullahs, maulvis, imamas, or ulema-i-karam as many of them prefer to call themselves, have never had the kind of influence or social standing that they enjoy now. A large part of Pakistan is enthralled by this new generation of evangelists. They are there on prime time TV, they thunder on FM radios between adverts for Pepsi and hair removing cream. In the past few years, they have established fancy websites with embedded videos; mobile phone companies offer their sermons for download right to your telephone. They come suited, they come dressed like characters out of the Thousand and One Nights, they are men and they are women. Some of them even dress like bankers and talk like property agents offering bargain deals in heaven.

Then there’s an article called ‘The Saudi-isation of Pakistan’ by Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of High Energy Physics and the Head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Hoodbhoy writes:

The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.

Both are excellent, though long, articles that I highly recommend you read.

Axis of awesome – 4 Chords

If you haven’t already seen this, make sure you check out Axis of Awesome’s song ‘4 Chords’:

:)

Nadia Gets a Tattoo

Nadia’s been wanting to get a tattoo for…well, forever. Certainly she wanted to get one soon after we got to Australia (back in the middle of 2006) but there was a problem: she couldn’t decide what she wanted the tattoo to be, say, or represent.

Last week, however, she had a eureka moment and three days later, it was done:

Yes, the tattoo says ‘stet’.

Er, ‘Stet’?

So, what does ‘stet’ mean? Well, ‘stet’ is an editing/proofreading mark that means “Let it stand” or “You know that change you made? Undo it and leave my original text the way it was, thank you very much”. Author Max Barry explains it best:

On Monday I received the copyedited manuscript of Company. This means someone at Doubleday has gone through it with a red pencil and pointed out everything I did wrong …

…[If] I want, I can overrule them, with the awesome power of STET. “Stet,” I discovered while editing my first novel, means, “Put everything back just the way I had it.” (Accompanied, one suspects, by the subtext: “Idiot!”) How good is that? When I discovered this word, it was like a gnawing, hollow place in my heart had finally been filled. Looking back, I can’t work out how I ever made it through a day without it. “Max, I tidied up your desk for you.” “No! Stet! STET, dammit!”

This is the coolest and most powerful mark (read: command) that an author has over her editor and proof reader and I presume this is what JRR Tolkien used when he started spelling the plural of ‘dwarf’ as ‘dwarves’ – instead of the more commonly used ‘drwarfs’ – when he wrote his ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy [More on this here].

Anyway, here’s a close-up of the tattoo:

Isn’t it awesome? It’s simple, yet powerful and relevant on so many levels.

The inspiration for this tattoo came from two places, by the way: the Science Tattoo Emporium (that Carl Zimmer maintains on his Discover Magazine blog) and our love of geeky t-shirts (the kind you find on Think Geek). And though I am honoured to be the one who suggested ‘stet’ to her, I’m pretty sure she would have gotten to it on her own anyway.

The Middle of the Story

What was funny, however, was the way in which it finally happened. Nadia had decided to get her tattoo from Tattoo Magic in Fitzroy so, on the morning of 27 January, the two of us made our way down to Tattoo Magic to have a consultation with one of their artist and to book in a date and time for when the actually tattooing would take place (which would hopefully be some time later that week).

When we got there, however, their receptionist was out to lunch so we ended up talking to a couple of tattoo artists directly. When they saw what Nadia wanted for her tattoo, one of them said tattooing this would take just a couple of minutes and he could do it right then. After a slight hesitation, Nadia said ‘yes’ so the artist (Sean Jackson) went to his office to make a stencil that he would use to size and place the tattoo on Nadia’s arm.

Making the stencil took about five minutes, placing it correctly on Nadia’s arm took less than a minute, and the actual tattooing took less than three minutes (and it wasn’t painful). So, after having waited for two and half years to get a tattoo, Nadia walked out of a tattoo parlour with the tattoo she really wanted less than twenty minutes after she had walked in!

Also funny was that Nadia had psyched herself up for a painful tattooing experience and I was there holding her hand when Sean started to make the first line. I didn’t laugh out loud but I did chuckle inwardly as her facial expression went from “Must tolerate this pain…must tolerate this pain…” to “Er, WTF? This barely stings” :)

So there you have it, Nadia has a tattoo:

You can see more photos (including some funny ones) on my ‘Nadia and her Tattoo’ Picasa Web Albums gallery.

Tips on Napping

Lifehacker’s Adam Pash recently blogged about a new article in the Guardian called Napping: The Expert’s Guide which is a text-based re-hash of an older Boston Globe guide called How to Nap (this was published on the web as an image file).

As you would expect, the article gives some pretty useful tips on how to nap. For example, it suggests you limit your afternoon nap to 45 minutes or less. Unless, of course, you don’t get enough sleep at night in which case it might be good to nap for more than 90 minutes.

The sleep science behind these tips also helps explain my own heuristics around napping. For example, I’ve always likened afternoon naps to charging mobile device batteries:

• If all you need is a quick recharge, either sleep for 10-15 minutes to clear your head or for 20-30 minutes to get a more useful recharge (that will help you function for a few hours longer that a 10-minute nap would).
• If you’re tired, do a full recharge which takes about 2 hours – but make sure you don’t do it too late in the afternoon (like 4-6pm) otherwise you’ll wake up feeling groggy and goggle-eyed.
• Make sure you’re in a quiet and dimly lit (or dark) location to get your nap.
• Don’t let anyone interrupt you because getting woken up 5 minutes into your nap is the worst thing that can happen.

I also have a few heuristics for night time sleeping – some which I have collected over the years (from other news articles or research on sleep) and some of which I’ve come up with myself:

• Never sleep for less than 3 hours at a stretch. Indeed, it’s almost better to not sleep at all (or take a quick 30-minute nap) than it is to sleep for only 1-2 hours at night. This tends to happen when, say, you need to pick someone up from the airport at 2am and you figure you should get an hour’s worth of sleep from midnight to 1am. No! Either go to sleep at 10:30 PM and wake up at 1:30 AM or don’t sleep at all. Trust me on this one.
• If you’re a college student, the previous rule changes to never sleep for less than 2 hours at a stretch. The 2-hour rule was actually my original sleep rule and, as you can guess, I came up with it while I was in college. Once I graduated, developed a more regular sleeping pattern, and (basically) got older, the 2-hour rule became the 3-hour rule.
• Make sure you get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep at some point during the night. This is important.
• If you and your partner sleep in the same bed (or you have a room mate), make sure you take their sleeping pattern into account when planning your own. For example, you don’t want one partner interrupting the other when the latter is deep in the middle of a sleep cycle.
• If you’re not getting enough sleep (i.e. 7-8 hours every night), at the very least sleep in on weekends or nap in the afternoons. However, doing just that is not sufficient to completely repay your sleep debt. What you have to do is sleep a little extra every night till your natural sleep cycle is restored. That is, sleep for 9-10 hours every night till your body tells you its time to go back to your regular 7-8 hour sleep schedule.
• Don’t drink too much liquid before going to sleep otherwise your 5-7am sleep will be disturbed by your need to go to the bathroom.
• One good way of waking yourself up – especially if you’re feeling tired or groggy – is to start breathing deeply while still in bed. This increases your heart rate and will pump more oxygen into your blood, both of which will help make you more alert which, in turn, will make it easier for you get up and out of bed. Also, force open your eyes to let the daylight in. Your body reacts to environmental light and using your eyes to acknowledge that, “yes, indeed it is morning” helps wake you up.

If you have any napping or sleeping tips of your own, please do let me know. I’m always looking for ways to do things better.

5th Anniversary Sightseeing

Nadia and I like to spend public holidays and other special days doing things we don’t normally do – such as picnicking, sightseeing, and travelling. That’s how, for example, we took a trip down the Great Ocean Road on my birthday last year.

This year, our fifth anniversary [1] fell on a Saturday (24 January) so we decided to do some touristy sightseeing stuff around Melbourne.

Specifically, we did three things: First, we took a cruise up the Yarra River (which, believe it or not, we hadn’t done before):

 

We wanted to go down-river (to the Docklands) as well, but it was too windy for our river boat to go into the Docklands harbour.

Next, we took a trip around part of the city in the Melbourne City Tourist Shuttle. We did this partly because we hadn’t completed the entire circuit the last time we’d ridden on this and partly because, like the City Circle Tram, the tourist shuttle is a free and convenient way to get from one Melbourne touristy hotspot to another.

Finally, since the river boat had failed us, we got off the Tourist Shuttle at Docklands and chilled out there – to a live African band and live video of the Australian Open – for a bit:

You can see all the photos from this trip on my Picasa Web Albums gallery called 5th Anniversary – River & Dock.

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[1] Yes, our wedding anniversary is on 1 February but, technically, we signed our nikah nama (marriage contract) on the 24 June, 2004 so we get a whole week’s worth of celebrations! :)

TEDx Melbourne Evaluation Survey

Fill out the TEDx Melbourne evaluation survey: http://is.gd/gVeM.

Politics – Change & Struggle for Change

So a number of interesting things happened in politics this week. I’m not good at writing about this stuff [1] so you get pictures, video, and links to other sites.

I Can Haz Change?

The big news, of course, was the US presidential inauguration and Aretha Franklin’s hat. I guess Americans finally have earned the new puppy that coming with the Obamas to the White House :)

The Struggle for Change

Meanwhile, Nadia and I attended a protest rally in Melbourne over the weekend:

And though the people who attend rallies (myself included) all have their own particular agendas, mine was summed up by this poster:

And The Struggle Continues

Finally, if you’re in Lahore, consider attending the peace rally being organized by the newly-formed Amn Tehreek  (peace movement) at 3pm on Saturday, 31 January (click the image for details):

It’s easy to have a “nothing I do will make a difference anyway, so why bother?” attitude towards all this, I know. But if there is one thing that has the potential to make a difference – however small that influence may be to begin with – it’s attending rallies such as this one (at least to start with). Because if you don’t, then you might as well stick your head in the sand, renew your silent majority membership, and lose your right to complain if the future doesn’t turn out the way you wanted. (I extend the same argument to voting in elections, by the way, which is why I love the fact that, in Australia, voting is compulsory.)

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[1] I have a hard time writing about politics because this is not something I talk about often. As a result, I have far too much to say and far too little space to say it in. I also have a hard time cutting to the chase which, funnily enough, I have no problem doing when I’m writing about other topics (…must work on this). Besides, I find that, when it comes to politics, others say what needs to be said much better than I do. People like Mosharraf Zaidi, for example.

New U2 Single - ‘Get Your Boots On’

Want to hear the first single from U2’s upcoming album ‘No Line on the Horizon’? :)

The album will be launched in the US on 3 March. [Via E!Online]

TEDx Melbourne was Awesome

Saturday, 17 January was definitely “a day of TED” in Melbourne [1].

Over forty of us TED geeks got together at Monash University and spent the whole day watching our favourite TED talks, talking about those talks, and also watching a live talk on rebuilding faces (through engineering assisted surgery) given by Dr. Ninian Peckitt of ComputerGen Implants Limited. The video of Dr. Peckitt’s talk will be uploaded to the web some time soon.

What I loved most about the day, though, was meeting and talking to all the people who were there (search for #tedx or #mted on Twitter and you’ll find a whole bunch of them). In between the talks we managed to swap stories on how we got hooked onto TED, we talked about what each of us is doing personally and professionally – we’re a fun bunch doing a lot of fun things, by the way – and, of course, we talked about the talks themselves. [2]

So a million thanks to the organizers who did a wonderful job planning and then running TEDx Melbourne. I’m sure this event will becomes a regular feature from now on – maybe with groups of us taking turns to organize it each time – and I’ll keep you posted on this blog every time such an event does take place.

Meanwhile, Shawn Callahan has written about this on his blog as well so make sure you check that out. Also, keep an eye out for the post-event survey that Cheng is in the process of putting together.

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[1] This despite the fact that they didn’t include one of my all-time favourite TED talks: ‘Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes’. Oh well. Next time, perhaps :)

[2] My apologies but the over-use of the word “talk” in this blog post was inevitable!

Roland Emmerich to Direct Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Series

Variety reports that Columbia Pictures has won the screen rights to the ‘Foundation’ series of books written by Isaac Asimov. Asimov is one of my all-time favourite authors and ‘Foundation’ is one my all-time favourite series of book so the fact that they’re in the process of developing these books for film – presumably a series of films – is awesome.

Unfortunately the director they have chosen to do so is Roland Emmerich. Now Emmerich isn’t a bad director – ‘Stargate’ (1994), ‘Independence Day’ (1996), ‘Godzilla’ (1998), ‘The Patriot’ (2000), and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ (2004) are all good films – but the ‘Foundation’ series is much too awesome to be made into simply a good series of films. And thus I am…concerned.

That said, what is cool about Emmerich’s films is that they manage to depict very well the epic scale of the stories being told. Further, the epic nature of these stories is brilliantly supported by superb special effects that don’t get in the way of the storytelling (think: ‘Star Wars’ prequels as a case in which the CG got the better of the story being told).

What all of those movies lack, then, are deep, complex, meaningful characters that you find yourself caring about…well, with the exception of Benjamin Martin’s character (played by Mel Gibson) in ‘The Patriot’. Okay so the characters aren’t all that bad (you could even say that some of them are good) and, yes, you do end up sympathizing with them (and the predicaments they find themselves in) but they are pretty one-dimensional. Indeed, most of the conflict that makes Emmerich’s films interesting occurs, not because of the way the characters are written, but because of the stories themselves.

*Realization dawns on Ameel*

Ah.

Which is why, I suppose, that Emmerich is the perfect director to tell Asimov’s stories. Why? Because Emmerich makes the kinds of stories that Asimov writes.

Let me explain: Asimov was never good at writing characters that were deep, complex, and meaningful – indeed very few science fiction authors are – but he did tell awesome stories on a very grand scale.

For example, the Foundation series – which spans a period of about 500 years – contains only one deeply-written (though not very complex) character in Hari Seldon and only one complex (though not very deeply-written) character in Golan Trevize. What you get instead is an excellent, nay mind-blowing, story that is worthy of the the special “Best All-Time Series” Hugo award. And since this matches so well the types of stories that Emmerich likes to make into films…this could actually work really well!

And thus I am now…excited :)

TEDx Melbourne Schedule

The TEDx Melbourne schedule has been published:

Schedule

09:30 - Get checked off the list and get your name tags
10:00 - Introductions
10:30 - 'Do schools kill creativity?' - Ken Robinson (2006)
11:00 - 'Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?' - Dan Gilbert (2004)

11.30 – BREAK (30 minutes)

12:00 - 'My stroke of insight' - Jill Bolte Taylor (2008)
12:30 - 'How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes' - Philip Zimbardo (2008)
Bonus video: 'A 3-minute story of mixed emoticons' – Rives

13:00 LUNCH (1 hour)

14:00 - 'Our priorities for saving the world' - Bjorn Lomborg (2005)
14:30 - 'The art of collecting stories' - Jonathan Harris

15:00 BREAK (30 minutes)

15:30 - 'Sliced bread and other marketing delights' - Seth Godin (2003)
16:00 - GUEST SPEAKER: Ninian Peckitt - 'Rebuilding the Face' + Q&A

16:30 BREAK (30 minutes)

17:00 - 'The mystery box' - J.J. Abrams (2007)
17:30 - 'Why we age and how we can avoid it' - Aubrey de Grey
18:00 - Wrap-up + Bonus video: 'How I built my family a windmill'- William Kamkwamba

Further details

More details on the TEDx Facebook Event page. Oh, and we’re up to 83 confirmed guests :)

Chay Magazine Issue 2

The second issue of Chay Magazine is now out. This seems to be a small edition – only five articles, all of which are listed on the front page – but that’s five more articles on this topic than would otherwise have been written. Good job, folks!

Meanwhile, they are now accepting submissions for Issue 3, which is on the topic of sexual diversity.

TEDx Melbourne Details

There are ten days to go to TEDx Melbourne marathon! Thanks to Monash University entry to the event is now free and there are already over sixty confirmed guests :)

Here are the basics:

Date: 17 January, 2008
Time: 10am to 7pm
Location: Lecture Theatre H1.25, Building H, Monash Caulfield campus

For more details visit:

• TEDx Melbourne Facebook group
• TEDx on Twitter
• TED website (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

There’s still time to nominate your favourite TED talk on the TED Facebook app (there’s a link on the Facebook group page) so make sure you do that soon.

See you there :)

End-of-Year Video Mash-ups

Two for movies (via /Film: here and here):

• 2008: The Cinescape by Matt Shapiro
• 2008 - A Tribute To The Movies by Kees van Dijkhuizen

And one for music:

• United State of Pop (Viva La Pop) by DJ Earwork

Good stuff…and here’s to an equally awesome 2009.

Biases in Communities - Even the Scientific One

Awesome blog post by Lee Kottner on the Cocktail Party Physics blog on the “old guard” or “old boys’ club” attitude that tends to permeate through religious or specialist knowledge communities. In this case, of course, she’s writing about the scientific community:

…Richard Dawkins' selection of writers for the new Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is damned odd, if not downright insulting. For one thing, there's nary a mere science writer among them; they're almost all scientists…

…And, of course, there are too few women, three, to be precise…

Make sure you check it out.

International Year of Astronomy 2009

I’m a day late in posting this but the International Year of Astronomy 2009 has begun!

Over 130 countries are participating and, indeed, 87 countries have their own IYA websites (including, of course, both Pakistan and Australia). Be sure to check those out so you can take part in the events being held in your area.

Further Rant on BBC Article on Zeb & Haniya

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I had a few issues with Syed Shoaib Hasan’s recent BBC News article on Zeb & Haniya.

As expected, that article was picked up by a number of Pakistani blogs like PakPositive and Vajood and I thought it might be useful to include here the comments I left on one of those blogs because it further explains my issues with the article:

I don't understand the relevance of Nadeem Paracha's comments in this article. Was this a news report about Zeb & Haniya or a review of their music? This is aside from the fact that saying their music is "good, not extraordinary" is actually quite useless because it doesn't mean anything. I mean, really, what does it mean when you say that someone's music is "good"? That's too general, too relative, and basically a cop-out. And why does Paracha "caution" people about their music? Is he afraid they'll like it too much and will think it's "extraordinary"?

The reason I'm getting so irritated by this is that this is the only time I've read an article about Pakistani musicians in which their music has been reviewed by a "leading music critic" or by any critic for that matter. And, personally, I don't think it's a coincidence that the only time this has happened is the only time a female duo has been discussed. I don't remember *anyone* talking about the quality of the music of *any* male artist, duo, or group in an article like this *ever* in the past. Do you?

BBC News Report on Zeb & Haniya

The BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan just published an article on Zeb and Haniya on the BBC News website. And while it’s awesome that Zeb & Haniya are getting this kind of international news coverage, I don’t particularly like the angle that Hasan has taken with this story.

As it stands, the article has the “Ooh, look! Pakistanis aren’t all terrorists – some women are allowed to sing!” tone and that really pisses me off. This despite the fact that political commentary in a story like this was inevitable. The phrase “girl band” in the title, ‘Pakistan girl band creates a stir’, ticks me off as well.

The article then makes a needless reference to Bollywood in its first sub-heading (“Ooh, look! They watch Indian movies…they must be normal people!”) and contains this sentence:

Addicted to their Bollywood movies and Pakistani pop music, many are at ease with privately imitating their idols.

Right. That exactly what all Pakistanis are like.

Hasan also keeps calling the duo “Pakistan's first all-female music band” which is not accurate.

Worst of all, though, he goes and quotes the eminently patronizing Nadeem Farooq Paracha who is, apparently, “Pakistan’s leading music critic”. I’m not sure why Hasan did that because Paracha’s sole contribution in the article is to put Zeb & Haniya down (in his usual eminently patronizing style) which is particularly irritating as this is supposed to be a news report and not a music review.

I mean, WTF? Why couldn’t this have been a straightforward article about a couple of female musicians who are doing well in Pakistan. Wasn’t that news enough? What was the added benefit of talking about how good or bad their music is? (This is like writing an article about a new female politician in Pakistan who is doing quite well and then getting a quote from a political analyst who says something like “her policies are good, but they are not extraordinary”.)

All those issues aside, though, I’m glad the article was written because at the very least it gives widespread and much-deserved coverage to Zeb & Haniya and their music.

Sexism in Advertising

If you, like me, felt that some of the ads you saw this year were particularly sexist – a few even disturbingly so – you weren’t wrong: Alex Leo lists the ‘Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can’t Shake’.

I guess not much real changed has occurred [1] since the Media Education Foundation produced Jean Kilbourne’s awesome ‘Killing us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women’ back in 1999. (You can watch all of it on Google Video, by the way.)

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[1] Except for a lot more awareness of the issue – thanks in particular to people, groups, and websites like Feministing and copyranter to name just two.

So…I Have Tonsillitis

After waiting three days with (increasingly) inflamed tonsils I finally went and saw a GP this morning and what I'd begun to suspect is now official: I have tonsillitis.

Why did I wait three days before visiting the GP? Because inflamed tonsils don’t necessarily mean tonsillitis, and since I didn’t have any of its usual sings and symptoms, it could have been a viral infection that I wouldn’t have been able to medicate anyway.

As it happens, I started developing some of the symptoms by yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, by then I’d already already made an appointment with Dr. Michal Lum at the Metropolitan Medical Centres Carlton so that was that.

Now I’m on a 12-day course of penicillin (specifically penicillin V) and am taking iboprufen for the inflammation. Here’s hoping things gets better quickly because this is turning out to be quite painful and I’m feeling rather miserable. Such is life.