Random Tangent

Finally, there’s some more information on the web about HP’s new TX2000 tablet PC (i.e. not just specs). Again, it’s thanks to the GottaBeMobile.com crew at CES 2008 and, as with the Toshiba M700 (which I wrote about earlier), they’ve done a quick hands-on video review of it.

Stuff learnt from this video: (1) it’s a multimedia tablet aimed squarely at the consumer market; (2) it is a little heavy, though; (3) the multi-touch features seem to work well and the wide screen display seems really nice; (4) it has some nifty multimedia features like a TV tuner, S-video output, Altec Lansing speakers, and a video camera; and (5) it has a 64-bit, dual-core AMD Turion processor. Other than that, it’s a pretty standard tablet PC. Oh, and it’s pretty decent on the pricing too, coming to about US$2,500 for a maxed-out version (while a maxed-out Toshiba is for about US$2,600).

However, as with the Toshiba, I can’t wait for GBM to do full hardware Inkshow on this machine. I’m also looking forward to GBM’s Dell XT Inkshow. Once all three go up, I’ll do a side-by-side comparison of my current top-five — the Lenovo ThinkPad X61T, Fujitsu LifeBook T4220, Toshiba Portege M700, HP Pavilion Tx2000z, and Dell Latitude XT — and see how they stack up against each other. That should be fun.

Tags: Tablet PC, Technology by Ameel
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Fatemeh Fakhraieon has written an excellent article on altmuslim on the Arabization of Islam:

Since the original Muslims were mostly Arab, everything associated with them – their culture, names, and family structures – has been associated with Islam. But this presents a problem since the vast majority of Muslims in our current world are not Arab. Passing off Arab culture as Islam in this regard is inaccurate, exclusionary, and disrespectful of other Muslims’ cultures.

Converts to Islam illustrate the issue even further. If a Latina converts to Islam, for example, she may decide (or those at the local mosque may urge her) to take a “Muslim” name, like Fatima or Khadija (which are also Arab names). But why can’t Lucinda be a Muslim name? What makes a name “Muslim”?

I know of many non-Arab converts who have taken Arab names upon their conversion. But why? What’s wrong with the names their parents gave them? There isn’t anything in the Holy Qur’an that mandates Muslims to have Arab names. Changing your name from Carmelita to Khadija isn’t going to get you into Paradise any quicker. Changing one’s name doesn’t change one’s ethnicity or personality. But having an Arab name makes one seem more “Muslim,” because of the way Arab culture is seen as synonymous with Islam.

Another excellent example is clothing, which mostly affects Muslim women. The niqab (the face-veil) was rarely seen outside of the Arabian Gulf until recently. Most Muslims see the niqab as a byproduct of Arab culture. It is only recently that the niqab has been interpreted as religiously authentic instead of a cultural expression. A minority of women in Canada, the U.S., and Europe now wear niqab because they believe it is religiously mandated.

…

The real danger is that Islam is getting buried under all this cultural expression. It is possible to be Muslim without being Middle Eastern, without having a name like Mohammed, and without wearing dishdashas (the long robe worn by most men in the Arabian Gulf states) or niqabs. We should reconsider why Arab-ness is, all of a sudden, next to godliness.

Fakhraieon also runs Muslimah Media Watch and contributes to Racialicious, neither of which I knew about but both of which sound very interesting.

Tags: Life by Ameel
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Tea and Tetris are the master keys to my life.

Let’s take tea first. What do I do to wake myself up? I have a cup of tea. What do I do to relax? I have a cup of tea. What do I do when I’m tired, I’ve eaten too much (or too little), I’m watching TV, am on the computer, or am working? At the start and end of things? In order to celebrate? When I’m getting really to have a really good discussion with someone? Or even when I have nothing to do? I have cup of tea. Tea is a constant. Tea is everything.

Yes, coffee, Pepsi, and Coke are all valid alternatives — and they’re sometimes exactly what I need and want — but there’s nothing quite as smooth and gentle, yet strong and powerful, and as…default as tea. Meanwhile, coffee can be bitter, harsh, overly strong, really weak, or really milky while carbonated drinks can be sharp and over-carbonated. And yes, tea can be weak or milky…but, dammit, cold or hot, milky or not, tea it’s tea!

Oh, and if you want something even smoother and gentler than black tea, there’s green tea, other types of tea (English breakfast, Earl Grey, etc.), and many, many flavoured teas to choose from.

Then there’s Tetris: the be-all and end-all of work life. What do I do to energize myself for work? I play Tetris. What do I do to relax my brain? I play Tetris. What do I do when I’m on the phone, in order to stay awake, while I’m uploading/downloading large files, while listening to a podcast, or simply to mitigate boredom? I play Tetris.

Tea and Tetris: what would I do without them?

Thank you China/Burma/India and Alexey Pajitnov.

Tags: Life by Ameel
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From 2003 to 2004 I was in an English rock music band called Corduroy. We were pretty successful — as successful as an unsigned, underground, English music playing rock band based in Islamabad, Pakistan can be — and we even released an album, called ‘The Morning After’.

For reasons that I’ve explained on this page, I still maintain the website that I made for the band. Recently, though, I’ve uploaded our entire album to MediaFire. The production quality isn’t the greatest, but the songs are good.

Tags: Music by Ameel
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the newly-launched, really exciting Toshiba M700 tablet PC. Since the touch screen version of that is due to be launched by the end of this month, no reviews of it have been posted on the ‘net so far. However, thanks to GottaBeMobile.com’s coverage of CES 2008, there is now a quick hands-on video of it and a brief discussion on it with Toshiba’s Kevin Roberts.

A number of cool things about the M700 emerged from that discussion: (1) the optical drive has an auto lock feature that disables the CD/DVD eject button when the tablet is in motion; (2) the widescreen LCD looks really good; (3) the inking experience seems to be pretty good; (4) the weight distribution on the tablet is pretty good; (5) it is a powerful, full-featured machine; and (6) it has an excellent price point.

I can’t wait for a proper hands-on hardware review of a production system. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long.

Tags: Tablet PC, Technology by Ameel
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Some excellent health advice from Michael Pollan, author of ‘In Defense of Food’:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

That’s the advice journalist and author Michael Pollan offers in his new book, In Defense of Food.

“That’s it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy,” Pollan tells Steve Inskeep.

Read the NPR article for more.

Tags: Life by Ameel
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I came across two good articles on Pakistan today.

The first, ‘They don’t blame al-Qa’ida. They blame Musharraf‘ by Robert Fisk (thanks, Ayesha) talks about the ISI (i.e. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency) and about how:

…Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a “murderer” were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.

The second, ‘It’s Troubled, But It’s Home‘ by Mohsin Hamid,is completely different. It’s a much more personal article, written from the perspective of a Pakistani expatriate:

…As my wife and I board our flight from London to Lahore, evident all around us is a longing for home — for the friends and family who are central to Pakistani culture in a way that many foreigners find so remarkable. (As an admiring American roommate of mine once said, “All you guys do is hang out.”) This duality of Pakistan as a place both troubled and normal, a place capable of producing a large diaspora while also affectionately tugging at those who have left, is often lost on the world’s media. International news outlets tend to cast Pakistan as the one-dimensional villain of a horror film, a kind of Jason or Freddie whose only role is to frighten. Scant attention is paid to the hospitality, the love for music and dance, or the simple ordinariness of 164 million people going about their daily lives.

Which then ends on a positive note:

In the United States, there will be newspaper columns and television talk shows dedicated to “loose nukes” and the “war on terror.” Here in Pakistan, one can see signs of people coming together. Scare stories notwithstanding, it is possible (although by no means certain) that out of this tragedy the world’s sixth-largest nation may succeed in finding its voice — and with that the chance for a better future.

If you get the chance, do read both of them.

Tags: Pakistan by Ameel
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Jonathan Power wrote a really good article in the Toronto Star yesterday in which he rightly defended President Musharraf:

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gets a bad press; Benazir Bhutto a too kind one. Which of them is the real rogue?

When Musharraf, as Pakistan’s top army commander, tried to engineer war with India over Kashmir in 1999, he demonstrated his roguish side. Yet even many of his opponents in Pakistan will concede that since he deposed Nawaz Sharif and assumed power he has been largely a benevolent dictator.

Read the whole article; Power makes a good point. Though, really, most of us Pakistanis didn’t expect much “democracy” from Bhutto anyway. Her post-herself PPP succession plan being the ultimate case in point.

And we have no problems in conceding that Musharraf has been good for the country. I mean, can you imagine what life would have been like under anyone else? Present circumstances excepted, of course. Though, if you think about it, it’s all those good years that make the present situation seem that much worse don’t they? For example, had we not had a totally free press for the last five years, would we have missed not having one now? And had things not been so good in the last five years, would college students from across the nation have known enough or cared enough to actually protest the Emergency? Heck, had things not been better for the country, at least half of those students would have been in the US anyway!

My point is: all this is worth thinking about before we completely dismiss Musharraf and, in a catastrophic error of judgement, let the crooks back into the country and into a position of power. I hate to say it but, for now at least, the only way that I see us getting out of this mess is to keep Musharraf on as President. Without him — and, really, without the military providing a constant threat and counterbalance — our mostly corrupt and mostly useless politicians will, yet again, screw the country over and we’ll be back to square one. Again.

And if not that, the only other way out is via a provisional government and the restoration of the judiciary. The real, honest, and just judiciary; not the sham one they’ve got in there right now. That’s the key, though, isn’t it? The Rule of Law. We’ve never really had it — not in the last 4,000 years at least — and until we get it and keep it for at least three generations, we’ll never actually break away from our feudal, kingly, and dictatorial past.

Tags: Pakistan by Ameel
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Speaking of the situation in Pakistan, things seem to be getting only worse. The Asian Human Rights Commission just published a statement on the how Asma Jehangir’s daughters were assaulted and threatened that you should read [Via The Emergency Times].

The AHRC has also published a good overview on the fundamentals of what is happening on in Pakistan these days. And though it comes across as sounding a little sensationalist:

This is what Pakistan has become. It is a draconian military state and uses anti terrorism as a pretext to strengthen itself and to oust the rule of law. In essence it is a lawless place where any act of cruelty to any person at all, be it a leading politician or a chief justice, can be done with impunity. Those are the conditions under which the ordinary Pakistanis have to live and must adjusted themselves to.

Everything that the article says is, unfortunately, true.

Tags: Pakistan by Ameel
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A couple of months ago I wrote about how, as it turns out, things in Pakistan aren’t going as well as we thought they were. Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of Pakistan’s leading scientists recently wrote an article in Dawn that dispels the myth the the Government of Pakistan is actually fixing up our higher education system. It’s an excellent two-part article of which this is the first part. I’ll post a link to part two when it gets published.

(Note: You can find some of Hoodbhoy’s other articles in Chowk.)

Tags: Pakistan by Ameel
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