Haj and Eid Mubarak

It is Haj today (it’s the day of Arafat to be more accurate). Congratulations to all the Hajis and especially to Amber’s parents and aunt who are in Saudi Arabia performing the pilgrimage. Tomorrow is Eid ul Azha. Eid Mubarak, everyone.

Turkey and EU

A Fistful of Euros reminded me of the discussion my friends and I had recently about Turkish membership in the European Union. The first objection I have always heard is that Turkey is not in Europe except for Istanbul. Mrs. T of A Fistful of Euros “wave[s] [this] aside with a laugh.” Looking at a… Continue reading Turkey and EU

More About Israel and Pakistan

I have argued before that Pakistan should recognize Israel. There have been some ambiguous signs regarding relations between these two countries recently. First, there was Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf meeting Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres during the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Davos Conference was the site of a rare and unusual meeting… Continue reading More About Israel and Pakistan

John: (extends cape and takes a bow)

In what follows, I do not harbor any intention of making myself clear. I went to school in the hope of knowing, but I discovered that university is concerned primarily with learning. After flirting with industry, it became apparent that corporate lexicons exclude terms such as knowing and learning to save space for synonyms for… Continue reading John: (extends cape and takes a bow)

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Categorized as Life

Welcome, John

My friend John will be joining this weblog as an author. He has some interesting insights and I think he’ll have some great posts. I’ll leave an introduction of himself and his interests to his first post. Let’s welcome John aboard.

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Categorized as Internet

Fast Rebuilds

As I mentioned in the previous post, comment posting has been a bit slow lately. I timed it at 35 sec, which is much better than some other weblogs (where I leave for a few minutes after posting a comment) but I think is not acceptable. The problem lies with the fact that all index… Continue reading Fast Rebuilds

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Further Weblog Maintenance

When I changed the way trackbacks appear, I broke something as well. It turns out that when someone pings you, only the index templates are rebuilt automatically. Since I had the trackbacks in the individual entry pages, those were not rebuilt and hence did not show the recent pings from Kianoush. First, I tried to… Continue reading Further Weblog Maintenance

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A Peace to End All Peace

I just finished reading “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East” by David Fromkin. The title of the book comes from a quote by Field Marshall Earl Wavell: After the ‘war to end war’ they seem to have been pretty successful in… Continue reading A Peace to End All Peace

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US States I Have Visited

Shown in Red. That’s 38 states plus DC.

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Categorized as Travel

Countries I Have Visited

Create your own visited country map Via Sofia’s Journal.

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Categorized as Travel