My post asking for charity recommendations elicited a few questions about Zakat (the obligatory Muslim charity). I was told that Zakat is only to be given to Muslims. I had heard something like that before, but I decided to look it up this time around as I couldn’t understand any reason for such a prohibition.… Continue reading Zakat for Muslims Only?
Month: November 2004
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Enjoy your turkey! Last year, I had to fly home to spend thanksgiving with Amber. This year not only are we together, we have got Michelle with us. That reminds me, Michelle was conceived last year over the thanksgiving weekend. UPDATE: Congratulations to my brother-in-law and his wife on the birth of… Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
I read The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited before Michelle’s birth but haven’t had time to review it. It is a detailed look (640 pages) at the issue of the Palestinian refugees with more than 2,700 endnotes/footnotes. The book starts with three maps. One shows the UN partition plan. The 2nd map codes… Continue reading The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
URL Alphabet
Via PhotoDude who got it from Reecie, here is an interesting meme. Type each single letter of the alphabet in the address bar of your browser and list what the auto-complete function pulls up first. Here are my results: A is for Amygdala. B is for Brian’s Study Breaks. C is for Crooked Timber. D… Continue reading URL Alphabet
US Visa Issues
Colin Powell on US visas (hat tip: Perverse Access Memory): It is in our interest to have foreigners come to our institutions, come to our medical facilities, come to our entertainment facilities, visit the United States as tourists to get a better understanding of who we are, what we are as a nation and people,… Continue reading US Visa Issues
عید مبارک
تمام قارئین کو عید الفطر مبارک ہو۔
Exit Polls and Moral Values
There has been lot of talk about “moral values” being the most important issue in the Presidential election this year. Here are the results of the exit poll question in order of decreasing Bush margin…
Milestones and Visitor Data
Some time during my move, this weblog crossed the 200,000 visit mark. It took about 23 months since I made the blog public. The second 100,000 mark took only 6 months compared to 17 months for the first. My traffic is up after being down a bit during the summer. I also seem to have… Continue reading Milestones and Visitor Data
The Day the Iraq War was Lost
Phil Carter in an excellent article in the Washington Monthly Nov 2004 issue: A generation from now, historians may look back to April 28, 2004, as the day the United States lost the war in Iraq. On that date, “CBS News” broadcast the first ugly photographs of abuses by American soldiers at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib… Continue reading The Day the Iraq War was Lost
Biting My Fingernails
It is election day. I am sitting on the floor with the computer in my lap and watching a borrowed TV. I have to continually switch internet connections between leeching off a neighborhood wireless connection and when that’s not available, a free 10 hours on Juno dialup. Let us start with a typical Pakistani election… Continue reading Biting My Fingernails