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Pakistan's believers in Islamic mysticism embrace a personal approach to their faith and a different outlook on how to run their country’s government. The BBC asks "Can Sufi Islam counter the Taleban?" The Economist reports "Of Saints and Sinners".
Meanwhile from two in-depth reporters; William Dalrymple : Pakistan is a country staring disaster in the face); and Moni Mohsin: A personal history of Pakistan on the brink.
The counterinsurgency tactics that seem to have worked so well in Iraq could backfire in Pakistan. (more articles from Nicholas Schmidle)
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Mar-4-09

"We have bought a dozen of these to give as gifts to AIG executives but once the stock market crashed and the credit crunch took hold we thought we should not show such signs of indulgence therefore we returned them. Not worth the money although they look a little better than watches costing 40 dollars."
comment posted at 1:03 PM on Mar-3-09

The corporate logos of Kevin Bewersdorf
comment posted at 1:07 PM on Mar-3-09

Democrat's efforts to paint Rush Limbaugh as GOP leader pay off. Since Rush Limbaugh famously stated that he wanted Obama to fail, Democrats, led by President Obama, have been trying to paint him as the intellectual and spiritual head of the GOP. Eyeing his low 25% approval rating amongst independents, they have hoped to equate the Republicans with Limbaugh.
comment posted at 10:28 AM on Mar-3-09

Another camera-on-conveyor incident rocks Sushi-loving Japan.
Previously
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Mar-2-09

15 year old girl in holding cell beaten by Seattle Cop Caught on Camera. 15 year old girl in holding cell beaten by Seattle Cop. Not surprisingly the cop's lawyer didn't want this video published.
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Feb-28-09

That Voodoo That Scientists Do. "When findings are debated online, as with a yet to be released paper (PDF) that calls out the field of social neuroscience, who wins?"
comment posted at 11:39 PM on Feb-27-09

If you're going to deny that AIDS is caused by HIV, you might want to not die of it.
comment posted at 8:38 PM on Feb-26-09

While the world may be abuzz with talk of President Obama's first (sorta kinda but not really) State of the Union Address last night, others are comparing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal -- who, in his response (part 1, part 2) scoffed at high-speed rail and suggested that monitoring volcanoes is somehow a bad thing -- to, um... well, just check it out for yourself.
comment posted at 12:30 PM on Feb-25-09
comment posted at 1:49 PM on Feb-25-09

"Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran's birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever. Demographers have sought in vain to explain Iran's population implosion through family planning policies, or through social factors such as the rise of female literacy. But quantifiable factors do not explain the sudden collapse of fertility. It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Second, according to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, 5% of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century."
comment posted at 9:14 AM on Feb-24-09

Girl meets boy. Girl and boy fall in love. Girl and boy move in together. Girl and boy break up. Girl kicks boy out of the house. Boy issues girl a bill for all expenses incurred in the relationship.
comment posted at 10:34 PM on Feb-23-09

"Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations." To be fair, it's not just Republicans who like this idea.
comment posted at 8:10 AM on Feb-22-09
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Feb-22-09

New Scientist:

What if we could rid the world of AIDS? The notion might sound like fantasy: HIV infection has no cure and no vaccine, after all. Yet there is a way to completely wipe it out - at least in theory. What's more, it would take only existing medical technology to do the job.

comment posted at 8:00 AM on Feb-22-09

Moving beyond no means no. The anthology Yes Means Yes brings together writers, male and female, to explore the power of enthusiastic consent and to promote female desire free of coercion. The book has spawned a series of readings, live chats, and some interesting blog responses.
comment posted at 2:36 PM on Feb-21-09
comment posted at 3:17 PM on Feb-21-09

After appearing last month on the ABC reality television show 'Wife Swap,' "San Francisco resident Stephen Fowler was forced to resign from the boards of two nonprofits, allegedly received e-mailed death threats and stood on the sidelines as his wife, Renee Stephens, issued a public statement condemning his behavior and asking him to get 'professional help.'...Thanks to online TV and easy access to private information, Fowler's 15 minutes of fame have snowballed beyond his control." "What has generated such wrath is Fowler's condescending treatment of Gayla Long, a mother of four from rural Missouri....In wince-producing remarks, Fowler, who is British, wrote off middle America with such pronouncements as 'Your two languages seem to be bad English and redneck.'" Video highlights - 1, 2.
comment posted at 11:40 AM on Feb-21-09

In other news: prominent Iraq war supporter and atheist writer Christopher Hitchens caught in street brawl with Syrian nazis in Beirut, Lebanon, after defacing the group's poster with "No, no, Fuck You". The assault occurred on the eve of a lecture held by Mr. Hitchens at the American University of Beirut, on the subject of "Who are the revolutionaries in today's Middle East".
comment posted at 6:31 PM on Feb-19-09

An editorial cartoon in the New York Post gets reactions from around the world about its possible racial depictions.
comment posted at 12:36 PM on Feb-19-09

SIGNS A very cute "simple short film about communication". (SLYT)
comment posted at 8:38 PM on Feb-18-09

CableCard, savior of the PiP, intended assassin of the set-top box, it sounded like for the first time in a while, an industry group had done something that actually improved consumer choice. But it turns out it came with a price.
comment posted at 6:51 PM on Feb-18-09

Did Hampshire College Become the First to Divest from Israel? It is being reported that Hampshire has divested from 6 corporations that provide Israel with military equipment and services in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Students for Justice in Palestine claim success. But the University claims that the decision had "nothing to do with Israel." This move is being hailed as a landmark victory by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign which calls on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era."
comment posted at 8:28 AM on Feb-17-09

Flight No. 3407 crashes in Buffalo, New York. This, after the flight that landed in the Hudson, and all the people were saved. The Plane crash on YouTube as of now.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Feb-12-09
comment posted at 11:13 PM on Feb-12-09

With its $41 billion deficit spiraling out of control and federal judges ordering its prisoners released to relieve overcrowding, can legal marijuana save California?
comment posted at 4:28 PM on Feb-12-09

"Let them arrest me". Vehemently anti-Islamic Dutch MP Geert Wilders was scheduled to travel to London tomorrow to attend a screening of his controversial short film Fitna (wiki, mefi). Yesterday however, the UK's Home Secretary notified Wilders that his presence in the UK would pose a "serious threat to [...] public security" (PDF), presumably intending to refuse his entry into UK. Wilders plans to board the flight anyway, daring British authorities to arrest him.
comment posted at 6:09 PM on Feb-11-09
comment posted at 2:45 PM on Feb-12-09

A mysterious internet forum poster named Reinhardt has the financial conspiracy theorists abuzz this week ahead of a predicted "event" coming this Friday. He first surfaced last July by predicting to the day the bad week in September kicked off by the Lehman Brothers collapse on the 15th.
comment posted at 9:31 AM on Feb-11-09

"It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. ... I believe that time is unreal. But I do so for reasons which are not, I think, employed by any of the philosophers whom I have mentioned, and I propose to explain my reasons in this paper." ~McTaggart, The Unreality of Time, 1908. (Bonus: The Kant Song.)
comment posted at 10:06 PM on Feb-10-09

Canada is a desired location for Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Canadian Council for Refugees has profiles (pdf) up for some of the people they are helping.
comment posted at 4:35 PM on Feb-10-09
comment posted at 4:38 PM on Feb-10-09

A series of articles in the Times shows that the original 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield that started the scare that MMR vaccination was linked to autism was based on falsified data. This is the latest in a series of scandals about this key research paper (which has not been successfully replicated) that led ten of the twelve authors to retract their publication. Though substantial evidence since 1998 contradicts a link between MMR and autism, measles are again becoming endemic in the UK, and are on the rise in the US as well, as herd immunity begins to fail.
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Feb-10-09

The salvage of flight 1549.
comment posted at 10:38 PM on Feb-9-09

Do you have what it takes to be an officer in the Swedish Armed Forces? ["Headphones required", new window pops]
comment posted at 9:46 PM on Feb-7-09

The Gay Alphabet. "This is an art project that explores what a recruitment campaign might look like..."
comment posted at 6:33 PM on Feb-5-09

Dr. Aribert Heim known to his friends as Dr. Death was the "Most Wanted" Nazi War Criminal whose whereabouts were unknown. He has been found, having lived in Cairo, and died there in 1992 after converting to Islam. Previously, he had been thought to be living in Chile. The long hunt for Heim and previous misinformation had led to some doubts from experts that the case is indeed, finally, closed.
comment posted at 10:25 AM on Feb-5-09

Iraq: "A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame."
Algeria: "Evil al-Qaeda chiefs are raping young male converts to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, it emerged yesterday. "
comment posted at 7:41 PM on Feb-4-09

"Turkey is emerging as the crucial power in the Muslim world." But after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent walkout from a Davos panel discussion and his confrontational words to Israeli leader Shimon Peres, some wonder whether Turkey is forfeiting its role as a peace-broker, attempting to smoke-screen its own oppressive actions against press, intellectuals, and ex-military, and possibly hurting its chances for full EU membership.
comment posted at 3:53 PM on Feb-3-09

"I am Russian so, obviously, I like this film. It has typical Russian humor, it is a farce, so do not look for higher meanings in the jokes, it makes fun of the social standards of the Soviet regime as well as the people who served it so well. It features some of the best Russian actors that we love seeing and acting; they sing in the movie and it is lovely as well. If you are a tough judge of movies, then please make sure you know Soviet history a bit and understand that the humor differs from what you see in American movies before you call it crap."
comment posted at 11:30 PM on Feb-1-09

Michael Steele, former Lt. Governor of Maryland and one of only a handful of semi-prominent African-American leaders in the Republican Party, has just been elected RNC Chair. He beat out Katon Dawson, Chair of the South Carolina GOP, who had recently resigned his membership from an all-white country club, by a vote of 91-77. Some argue that the RNC Chair race was all about race.
comment posted at 7:19 PM on Jan-30-09

Maybe outsourcing is the answer. Canadian importers detected the salmonella tainted peanut products, and, prior to eight Americans dying from it, informed the US FDA. "The FDA failing to follow up after this incident, does that mean that products that are not good enough for a foreign country are still good enough for the USA? That's a double standard that has deadly consequences for our citizens."
comment posted at 6:29 AM on Jan-30-09

Bats sleep upside down. They hang by their feet. They have little claws. They use echolocation to catch bugs. They are the only mammals that fly. They sleep during the day. They are dying.
comment posted at 4:29 PM on Jan-28-09

Robots at War: The New Battlefield. "It sounds like science fiction, but it is fact: On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, robots are killing America’s enemies and saving American lives. But today’s PackBots, Predators, and Ravens are relatively primitive machines. The coming generation of 'war-bots' will be immensely more sophisticated, and their development raises troubling new questions about how and when we wage war." [Via]
comment posted at 8:33 AM on Jan-26-09

Al Jazeera presents I Knew Khomeini (Part 1 2) and I Knew the Shah (Part 1 2).
comment posted at 8:28 PM on Jan-25-09

President Barack Obama The text of the Inaugural speech will be posted after it's completed. Change.gov is closing up shop; Change has come to Whitehouse.gov.
comment posted at 9:40 AM on Jan-20-09

Bill Ayers, arriving in Toronto to lecture on inner-city education, has been denied entry to Canada.
comment posted at 1:36 PM on Jan-19-09
comment posted at 6:05 PM on Jan-19-09

The End of the Affair. Like many followers of Judaism around the world, Sir Gerald Kaufman, a British MP and friend of Golda Meir, has gone through an internal battle over their views regarding the State of Israel. Kaufman rejected the Sharon government and later made a remarkably prescient 2002 documentary (.ram) on Israel. Though he has been targeted by zionist webistes, and has repeatedly received death threats, hate mail, and has even been harassed during worship, Kaufman remains outspoken about Israel's attack on Gaza: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza . . . they're not simply war criminals, they're fools."
comment posted at 8:34 AM on Jan-19-09

If Breast is Best, Why Are Women Bottling Their Milk? Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker explores the rise in the popularity of breast pumps.
comment posted at 10:00 AM on Jan-17-09