tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56977543296313933262024-03-22T11:21:27.166+02:00NotGDNot Green DataAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-32783023040166150802015-04-29T08:03:00.000+02:002015-04-29T08:09:59.615+02:00Egyptian Budget ins and outs<a href="http://www.amrsobhy.com/" target="_blank">Amr Sobhy</a> and <a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/" target="_blank">I</a> created a new application to make the Egyptian budget available to everyone in a machine readable, visual and easy to understand manner.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mwazna.com/ar/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="mwazna" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO924fiJAbGVJIkahjDHSYx11-l0OYPTh92FWFrJhcEyHHn32-_c1TosyYVaJjPbvSYv_CIXNDWaXwia7fQ3X2AWDYBgVHhtOxG7xzjjIgyZ71uHQIDX5S1VlgFuIcU0z86pJ8TdbS1kN2/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-04-29+at+08.03.53.png" height="277" title="" width="320" /></a></div><br />
As explained by <a href="http://qz.com/391869/egypts-revolution-will-get-a-shot-in-the-arm-with-data-to-show-how-the-government-spends-its-money/" target="_blank">Quartz</a>:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://mwazna.com/en" target="_blank">Mwazna</a> (budget in Arabic) the brainchild of a data scientist, Tarek Amr, and a web developer and hacker, Amr Sobhy, aims to inform Egyptians on how their money is being spent through an easy to use Arabic and English site.<br />
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joana-breidenbach/using-facts-as-weapons-ne_b_7017572.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a> also wrote about it:<br />
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Last week saw the launch of a website which has the potential to be far more explosive that any of the bombs which are regularly detonated in Cairo and Alexandria. <a href="http://mwazna.com/en" target="_blank">Mwazna</a> is the Arabic for "state budget" and it's the name of a new platform which lets citizens to monitor the income and spending of the Egyptian government.<br />
<br />
Here is a link to <a href="http://mwazna.com/en/">mwazna.com</a>, which is also available in <a href="http://mwazna.com/ar/">Arabic</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-42140693270054336292014-03-21T14:47:00.000+02:002014-03-21T14:47:51.015+02:00Mother's DayDear Vodafone and all other retail stores who have got my mobile number,<br />
<br />
I really appreciate that you keep texting me to remind me to get a present to my mom in the Mother's day. I also appreciate all the present ideas and generous discounts you put in front of me. But, I'm sorry to tell you that I won't be able to make use of any of your offers, either this year, or in the future.<br />
<br />
Best regards.<br />
Tarek<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0Cairo, Cairo Governorate, Egypt30.0444196 31.23571160000005929.934475600000003 31.074350100000057 30.1543636 31.39707310000006tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-58611070997227639562014-02-17T00:47:00.000+02:002014-02-17T00:50:28.367+02:00Tarek's Dictionary - Volume IILast year <a href="http://notgr33ndata.blogspot.com/2012/08/tareks-dictionary-volume-i.html">I published a list of the new English vocabulary I learnt</a>, and was planning to keep publishing new words as I learn them, but I didn't. Thus, here is the second volume of my newly learnt words.<br />
<br />
<b>Benign:</b> If you too are dyslexic, then you may read it begin, but no, benign means gentle and kind. It's of a Latin origin, that's why the equivalent terms in French and Spanish are bénin and benigno respectively.<br />
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<b>Wrath:</b> Extreme anger.<br />
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<b>Thwart:</b> Prevent someone from accomplishing something. The thieves plans were thwarted by the police.<br />
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<b>Indemnity:</b> A payment made to someone because of damage, loss, or injury. It is used more in legal documents. The latin word indemnes means unhurt.<br />
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<b>Selfie:</b> You sure know that already, but it is a newly invented word which refers to a photograph one has taken of himself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.<br />
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Contemplate: to view or consider with continued attention, or to meditate on.<br />
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<b>Futile:</b> incapable of producing any useful result; pointless. Her efforts to educate them good manners were futile.<br />
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<b>Squidgy:</b> Soft, spongy, and moist.<br />
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<b>Kinship:</b> In biology, it typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species. More commonly, it may refer to the feeling of being close or connected to other people. He feels a strong kinship with his colleagues.<br />
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<b>Toddler:</b> A toddler is a child between the ages of one and three. It comes from the verb toddle, which is to run or walk with short, unsteady steps.<br />
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<b>Tatters:</b> Irregularly torn pieces of cloth, paper, or other material. He was forced to wear rags and tatters a beggar would scorn. <br />
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<b>She is easy on the eye:</b> She is good looking or pretty.<br />
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<b>Squint:</b> Look at someone or something with one or both eyes partly closed in an attempt to see more clearly or as a reaction to strong light: the bright sun made them squint.<br />
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<b>Tongue in cheek:</b> Saying something that shouldn't be taken very seriously. E.g. He always speaks tongue-in-cheek, he never takes things seriously. Ann made a tongue-in-cheek remark to John, and he got mad because he thought she was serious. The play seemed very serious at first, but then everyone saw that it was tongue-in-cheek, and they began laughing.<br />
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<b>What's the Craic:</b> An Irish saying, referring to "what's up?" or "what's going on?"<br />
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<b>Trough:</b> A a long, narrow open container for animals to eat or drink out of. Pronounced like enough.<br />
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<b>Exhume:</b> Dig up, unearth, bring out of the ground. Humus means soil, thus exhume means to dig into the soil and bring something from there. It has a Latin origin, and the French and Spanish verbs are exhumer and exhumar respectively.<br />
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<b>Bonkers:</b> Crazy, mad.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-46504005793963108432014-01-08T21:31:00.003+02:002014-01-10T17:37:34.802+02:00Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy [Book Review]I have just finished reading <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B0FSSK8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B00B0FSSK8&linkCode=as2&tag=gredat-21">a great book by Phil Barden called Decoded</a>. The book shows us how branding works in order to influence our purchase decisions. Barden <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7uy6-06490" target="_blank">argues</a> that, "Strong brands have a real effect in the brain, and this effect is to enable intuitive and rapid decision making without thinking".<br />
<br />
The main foundation of the book is based on the work of Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for showing that people are not the rational agents that economists had thought they were. Kahneman summarizes his work in his book, “<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141033576/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0141033576&linkCode=as2&tag=gredat-21">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a>”. Kahneman's book stated that the mind incorporates two systems: an intuitive “system one”, which makes many decisions automatically, and a calculating but lazy “system two”, which rationalises system one’s ideas and sometimes overrules them.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhOnHBpet5LfL44y0irg7SEzGLqV6edGwgNaitGBvFsMzClN05S5p2sEkWifHCKRnOTMSjqrBq1f86oFSVAOzIov5-ENKRCcM_RriNaeQ6yrlJb0NsAw9ChqNj9MwoD6jiljgvmsYwb45T/s1600/FastSlow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhOnHBpet5LfL44y0irg7SEzGLqV6edGwgNaitGBvFsMzClN05S5p2sEkWifHCKRnOTMSjqrBq1f86oFSVAOzIov5-ENKRCcM_RriNaeQ6yrlJb0NsAw9ChqNj9MwoD6jiljgvmsYwb45T/s320/FastSlow.jpg" /></a></div>
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Back to Phil Barden and his book Decoded. He incorporated the ideas of Kahneman into the field of marketing saying: "There are two decision-making systems at work in any decision we make: an implicit system working like an autopilot, and an explicit system". Thus, when we make a purchase decision we are under the influence of both System 1 (Autopilot) and System 2 (Pilot).<br />
<br />
The explicit pilot system is a rational one and rule-governed. So you may argue, why do we base our decision on the implicit autopilot system which is irrational. The point is that the autopilot system is fast and can process multiple pieces of information in parallel, and above all, it is effortless and doesn't consume much of our energy as opposed to the implicit system. Thus, in our day-to-day tasks we cannot make use of the the explicit system all the time. You may think of implicit autopilot system as our intuition, it is what helps us to turn the steering wheel in a fraction of a second when we face some dangerous situation while driving. It is also the one that is trained that the red colour means stopping or rejection and the green colour means proceeding or acceptance, and that's why when our mobile phones ring, we press on the answer button based on its colour rather than by reading what is written on it. The pilot system is learnt by explicitly memorizing rules. This is the one that learns the multiplication table and is used to calculate mathematical operations such as 5 * 12. The autopilot system on the other hand relies on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory" target="_blank">Hebbian theory</a>, "What fires together wires together".<br />
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Phil Barden explains the Hebbian theory as follows: "The first time we hear the word No [as babies] it is just a phonetic pattern, a sound. But we recognize that the voice becomes louder and Mums face looks different the second time she says it. Some minutes later the word No is accompanied by her taking something away from us. After a while we learn the meaning of the word No. This implicit learning is completely different to how we learn a foreign language in school". That is why the autopilot system is slow-learning despite that fact that it is fast-acting.<br />
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How can all this affect our purchase decisions? Barden referred to the researches of Brian Knutson, an associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford University, whose studies show that purchase decisions are based on a reward– pain relationship. Barden elaborated: "The neuro-logic of a purchase decision is based on the equation: Net Value = Reward – Pain. The higher the net value, the more likely the purchase". The reward in our case is the value a product offers to its purchaser, while the pain is its cost. Both value and cost are divided into explicit and implicit components, each of those components targets its designated system in our minds. Thus, in order to increase Net Value, there are four strategic playgrounds which can all be used at the same time": <br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Value (reward)</li>
<ol>
<li>Explicit value</li>
<li>Implicit value</li>
</ol>
<li>Cost (pain) </li>
<ol>
<li>Explicit cost (financial) </li>
<li>Implicit cost (behavioural)</li>
</ol>
</ol>
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Barden gave an example to the Implicit Value using Voss, a branded water from Norway. Rather than using normal plastic bottles, they pages their water into bottles that look more like table decoration or perfume bottles. Thus, even though the taste of Voss can hardly be differentiated from tap water, its packages offered an additional implicit value by telling our implicit autopilot system that it is a premium water.<br />
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Similarly, the way prices are presented the the users may make them look higher or lower than they are. The author added, "The implicit level of cost allows us to maximize net value without actually reducing the price. Reducing behavioural costs can be a powerful lever to increase net value and thereby gain a competitive edge". Chapters 2 and 3 are must read to understand the tricks used to alter the perceived value and cost of products. There is also this <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=phil+barden+bounty&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=91&sout=0&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=zBDQUtDpE-ek0QWc5YHgCA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAA&biw=1003&bih=456&dpr=1.25#es_sm=91&espv=210&q=phil+barden+decoded+%2Bbounty&safe=off&sout=0" target="_blank">other book review</a> that you might like to read.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-stores-make-you-spend-more-2014-1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG6WWbJsbylRnhQe7i-jAQ5L54NO30HcbzyTH8tUGZa-x9wbbG9KjXqaRn33spFNp34Y6x8IaKgdx1shHdlDajVc81ELCc27kRS0xCPw3s-sS7H6jgxk-wbE2tazykCj5yacffvbtV5Pb6/s1600/limited_time.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stores not only entice you with sales, they also use limited-time offers to increase your sense of urgency in making a purchase.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<b>Goal-based valuation</b><br />
<br />
In addition to the aforementioned Net Value equations, we also value the things we buy based on how much they coincide with our goals. The author explained, "Why do we buy what we buy? To answer this question we will introduce the concept of goals. Goals are a hot topic in psychology and neuroscience. Goal-based valuation is the most sophisticated level of value in the human brain, and it is a key concept in our journey to answer the question of why we buy what we buy". He then added, "The autopilot implicitly matches signals in the environment with goals that are currently active. As a result of this matching, attention is allocated to the signal which shows the highest fit to the active goals". He also explained "The winner takes all" effect and why a brand show make sure it offers the highest fit to its customers' dominant goal, there is no room for the second place here. "Consumers choose the product with the highest fit to their dominant goal in a given situation".<br />
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"Goal achievement underlies what we call relevance in marketing".<br />
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As with everything else, a brand should tailor its message to respond to the customers explicit and implicit goals on the same time. "There are two levels of jobs for which we can employ brands and products: to meet explicit goals that are category-specific, and to meet implicit goals that are more general and that operate at an underlying, psychological level".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBQ_GhwGrjDfXVy4vz3_-jmaFhM6H6y7LczkngVfe-GLXFEBSo0mIU68k0v-Ij3BmAgIUrEvESn88IQj8BrakW11_Xt8mbql0HtE5ktcGcCe_ASuCrWfybsBfisGeU2RW9Aph3z6wg5Uv/s1600/bounty-chocolate-bar-take-you-there-small-17678.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBQ_GhwGrjDfXVy4vz3_-jmaFhM6H6y7LczkngVfe-GLXFEBSo0mIU68k0v-Ij3BmAgIUrEvESn88IQj8BrakW11_Xt8mbql0HtE5ktcGcCe_ASuCrWfybsBfisGeU2RW9Aph3z6wg5Uv/s1600/bounty-chocolate-bar-take-you-there-small-17678.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the case of Bounty, the product experience is the basis for the implicit goal of escapism.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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"The explicit goals are the reason why a product category emerges, so all competitors who want to survive in the market have to meet these goals". While the implicit goals on the other hand are brand specific, and are not directly related to the brand. For example in the advertisement of Bounty chocolate, the explicit goal may stress on its good taste or cost, but the implicit goal focuses escapism. Notice the deserted island and the image of stay away from the crowded city. "The connection between explicit and implicit goals is important. In the case of Bounty, the product experience is the basis for the implicit goal of escapism: chocolate with coconut. The associations we already have with coconut provide a credible bridge to the implicit goal of escapism – palm trees and desert islands". The author compared this with that advertisement of Snickers, and how a similar implicit message doesn't suit them. "Contrast this with Snickers, for example, where you have to bite through nuts – a link to the implicit goal of escapism here is much less credible than one linking to a performance goal".<br />
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"Greek philosopher Plato, who talked about emotion being the black horse that needs to be controlled by the white horse which symbolizes reason and rationality. This dualism made its way through history, including Descartes and Kant". Decoded's author continued to explain how in marketing we should not entertain such dualism. He added that the products and their features are their to serve the customer's explicit goals, while the brand it there to serve the customer's implicit goals.<br />
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But what are the possible goals customers may have? Barden listed "prevention and promotion" as the two most basic motivational drivers for humans. He then added that marketeers have to pick the one that fits their brand more. "To maximize relevance, we have to know which focus is the most dominant one for the majority of customers".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21591165-admen-have-made-marketing-guru-daniel-kahneman-prizewinning-psychologist-nothing-more" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9lKCG98TsospGbf_gK5IFFHcrZ5EtXlO17tpHH52l8Cx9hmUdXFaw7b44ld2iI0XkdkqMhkh6eNUxSkM2MaxRvFkK8Zj1ZZ_lIxxfedECWRh6qWMKg5Wv6McNQFV9Y5rb_9EuD73kx9V/s1600/SecurityAutonomyExcitement.png" height="320" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carlsberg is probably the best lager in the world (autonomy), Carling taps into security (male camaraderie), while foreign beers such as Cobra or Tiger have their centre of gravity in the excitement domain (e.g. they are from exotic countries like India.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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He then added, "The psychology of motivation, show that out of the rudimentary motivations of prevention and promotion, there developed what one might call the Big 3 human motivations that are grounded in physiological processes, operate deep within us and are universal in nature:" Security, Autonomy and Excitement.<br />
<ul>
<li>Security: nurturing, belonging</li>
<li>Autonomy: power, recognition, status</li>
<li>Excitement: adrenaline, drive to change</li>
</ul>
There are also combinations of each two of aforementioned motivations:<br />
<ul>
<li>Adventure: Excitement and Autonomy combine</li>
<li>Discipline: Autonomy and Security combine</li>
<li>Enjoyment: Excitement and Security combine</li>
</ul>
<div>
When designing your brand image you have to have to pay attention where on the above hexagon you have to position it. That's why you need to understand your customers very well.</div>
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<div>
For me the book was very useful and enlightening, and it helps me in my business where <a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/services" target="_blank">I try to help marketing teams make use of Data Science in their jobs</a>.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0D5B70&t=gredat-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00B0FSSK8" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-41813754620554694152013-11-06T07:32:00.001+02:002013-11-06T07:33:54.902+02:00Egypt's Interactive Governmental Budget <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/dataviz/4" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click here to see the interactive graph" alt="Click here to see the interactive graph"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkDx8K2QLM5OmThLYAVBj8VglKUzO6q6nX-FXo_4azLnX8fxn47dCjz8DBYgU3TLPIONxr1NsSKzrqNk8ecux3go-tEjATSaX7Ok-jztp_beOE-evnAWz57en6aB5Y365MzwAfUc7o3yJb/s320/egybudget.png" /></a></div><br />
The Budget of the Egyptian Government is published every year by the Ministry of Finance. The financial year in Egypt starts in the 1st of July and ends in the 30th of June the following year. I've created <a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/dataviz/4" title="Graph created using d3.js">this graph</a> to show the different categories of the government's expenditure for the financial year 2013/2014. You can also download the detailed budget from there. The data is also available in both <a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/dataviz/4" title="For the love of OpenData">CSV</a> and <a href="http://tarekamr.appspot.com/dataviz/4" title="For the love of Open Data">JSON</a> formats.<br />
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-65574844905468668222013-11-06T07:09:00.000+02:002013-11-06T07:15:04.379+02:004 Books Reviews<b>Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable</b><br />
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In this book, Seth Godin shows how being remarkable should be enough for an advertisement to your business. Stumbling upon a Purple Cow in your way will grab your attention without it making any effort advertise itself. The same should be the case for your business. I generally like Godin's blog and books, and this one is not bad, but it was very repetitive. I felt really bored half way through it. May be I am too late to read it now, hence, the boredom. After few chapters in the book, I started to feel that book itself and its message are not becoming a purple cow to me anymore.<br />
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I gave the Purple Cow 2 stars on GoodReads.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=gredat-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002RI9S9M" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<b>Design Crazy</b><br />
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This book is about Steve Jobs Inc., better known as Apple Inc., and how the company's obsession with design and the tiniest details in their products was the key to their success. THe book format is a bit strange. The author, Max Chafkin, interviewed a number of people who worked with Jobs, and each chapter is just a sequence of quotes from them, where those quotes together form a coherent narrative. You might not feel comfortable with such a format at the beginning, but later on, I found it nice. The book as a whole is well written, ehm, curated, and the Kindle edition is less than on quid on Amazon. The book is more of a biography than anything else, by the way. <br />
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I gave the Design Crazy 3 stars on GoodReads.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=gredat-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00EX9C14M" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
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<b>City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There</b><br />
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I liked reading this book. It has lots of interesting ideas about how to transform cities using individual initiatives or wisdom of the crowd. Each chapter is in the form of an essay, so it is more of a collection of essays rather than a book, that's why it is less coherent, and ideas are not glued well together. Would love to read a proper book out of this done by urban researchers who can pour in some analytical and theoretical aspects to glue all ideas here into a more interesting book.<br />
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<b>The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization</b><br />
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Rather than wasting your time reading my review here, just go and buy this book now. I loved it so much. The title says it all. In this book, Alberto Cairo will take you in a trip showing you how to represent your data into graphical format. You can call it a guide book, since he touches bases with interactive design, graph theories, cognition and mental models. I read it out of interest in the topic, however, I believe others who might not be interested in the information graphics can still read, and enjoy it.<br />
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I gave The Functional Art 4 stars on GoodReads.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=gredat-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0091SXDOM" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-86695663945711183002013-09-18T01:13:00.002+02:002013-09-18T01:32:30.233+02:00Don't "World Tread Center" on me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbct4gi9q-yO-Qa1rIAO0XP0Kf5fjW_iH7DI9Ut_DXrz2DViBHJXJfaWH_3use08jOEiTh1Q4E4sIEA_ek8f1oveqGgZzo5x8S-YUfO5_xJ9O-6Y1GwlgO1cfl_Q29S0LU8UvpMLYJnT7Y/s1600/Tread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbct4gi9q-yO-Qa1rIAO0XP0Kf5fjW_iH7DI9Ut_DXrz2DViBHJXJfaWH_3use08jOEiTh1Q4E4sIEA_ek8f1oveqGgZzo5x8S-YUfO5_xJ9O-6Y1GwlgO1cfl_Q29S0LU8UvpMLYJnT7Y/s320/Tread.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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A friend of mine was putting this image in her Facebook profile. I didn't get it at first. Well, I could tell it's a vagina for sure, and it was obvious that it has something to do with women rights, but, what is that grass underneath? Why the yellow background? And what's motto!? After some search, I discovered that it is a play on the Gadsden flag, a flag that was used during the American revolution. In the original flag, it is a rattlesnake snake rather than a vagine, and the snake seems to be provoked, and is striking. Hence the warning; Don't Tread On Me (or I will strike). So, now it is clear. <br />
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A dictionary is enough to tell you that the world "tread" has nothing to do with "trade". Treading is some synonym of walking, hence the "treadmill" and W.B. Yeats' verse, "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”. But a dictionary is not enough to reveal the essential cultural background one needs to understand things people from other countries say.<br />
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I can write a sentence in perfect English, that no one can understand but an Egyptian here: "Mr. X has no end". An English speaking person will sure understand the sentence as sequence of words, but he will not understand what I mean by it, since he probably hasn't seen the Egyptian film the sentence was used it. If I say that someone is in Switzerland now, most of you will think of that European country whose flag is red with a white cross in the middle. But only an Egyptian will think of that one being in jail instead. <br />
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That's people who claim to be multilingual confuse me. For me, it is hard to speak more than two or three languages, it is even harder to understand the cultures of those languages as well. And not knowing that culture makes it even harder to claim that you speak that language fluently. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-4919179526176851712013-06-12T22:41:00.002+02:002013-06-14T04:06:24.152+02:00UK Border - between humans - Agency<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://instagram.com/p/ZCw7g4niKw/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZQAWKW39p0HINdYJbNcFdKXjwQWaHJeRyoXVvmABK7N2d6VjlbOok0aGMhyVqNkgvlfTZv3dfDVgU9vxb5FXwQ5T6PA5ujO-GyAvngDVQzTFCUAIAWirHU0RZ8I92vbB6c6y7N2R9b0H1/s200/border.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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The day I arrived to England, I knew I'd go back to Egypt after I finish my studies here. This fact didn't stop me from volunteering in charity work every while and helping others whenever I can. I don't have to belong to a country to do good there, because, in the end, I belong to the people living there. We do not share the same citizenship, but we share the fact that we are all humans. <br />
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Today, the <a href="http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/">UK Border Agency</a> reminded me that I am wrong. They are not there only to draw borders on the map, but they also build borders between humans. I wanted my father to visit me for a couple of weeks. Because of a family matter, I needed him to be here with me and he needed to be here too. We applied for his visa, and filled and submitted every single document that is required. But in the end, those in UKBA recklessly refused the visa. The reason they gave was that they are not sure if he will return back to Egypt after he comes. The documents he submitted and his return ticket are supposed to be enough proof that he will, but the fact that we belong to a thirds-world country was enough for them to think he won't. I always believed that "all humans are equal", but the UK Border Agency reminded me today that, for them, "some humans are less equal than others". <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-39615997031814107142013-06-03T19:29:00.000+02:002013-06-05T10:44:22.435+02:00Making myself a cup of memories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriXaPDMzllqzB-0puUI95OR9wHFjCitU-Heql7awXXcp4ISnnf1FggkTD4aXQMj_3w7WIMrqOvJp3upZ6u2SqFcpFm4dhQuJEaUNY6G7_MVxzMhYpQ3xHfcI7YXtBFrJhwD-Viw_HsIeH/s1600/ElectricTeaKettle.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriXaPDMzllqzB-0puUI95OR9wHFjCitU-Heql7awXXcp4ISnnf1FggkTD4aXQMj_3w7WIMrqOvJp3upZ6u2SqFcpFm4dhQuJEaUNY6G7_MVxzMhYpQ3xHfcI7YXtBFrJhwD-Viw_HsIeH/s200/ElectricTeaKettle.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Making myself a cup of tea reminds me how 8 months ago I used to put the the electric kettle on its base with its handle on the right side, while my mother used to put it with the handle on the other side, because she was left handed. I didn't know how to cook, and I seldom made my bed unless she asked me to, and my only way to say that I can be useful was to offer making her some tea every while. I then developed a bad habit. I used to put the kettle on and simply forget it, and usually I found her coming into my room later on, after making me the cup of tea I promised to make.<br />
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Later on, after I travelled to England to do my postgraduate degree, I started to learn how to cook different dishes. Although, they are some simple dishes, but I was really happy that I now can promise to make her one of them after I return back home. Spaghetti is the safest option, but come on, that one is very easy. May be, I should try rice with carrots and peas, but that's too cliché. How about a pie? I cannot assure making an edible pie every time, but if I failed, I can make those muffins I learnt to make too as a last-minute compromise.<br />
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The very same thoughts come to me every time I make myself I cup of tea. In fact, I can hardly find any detail in my day to day life where she is not present there. I wish we can bring people back to life the same way the tinniest details of our days bring our memories back to life. And I know the day those details will fail to remind me of her is that day I will be dead already.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-3831731366158013142013-05-10T14:15:00.001+02:002013-05-10T22:18:04.904+02:00Notes on re:publica 2013This was my second time to attend <a href="http://re-publica.de/" target="_blank">re:publica</a>. It is a yearly social conference that takes place in Berlin. It started as a conference for bloggers, but now it include lots of other themes from startups to activism to campaigning and marketing. In fact, I attended less sessions this year than the previous one, and I am going to write a brief about them later on in the post, but let me first start with some random notes I grabbed from the conference.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQiNcTRMBpUJZTDW59VjPn7xQKJ_d0KlX1XQgg9qv0s3t9gtwS-MmsN5nMBLdqfZIR_SA33hHoFhpEIxbAIO7RFhU2_It8qilEH2K0UnkHPosYUBAmMGP9ORGN0tQLkNlEmL7nkJ-lwVN6/s1600/re-publica.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQiNcTRMBpUJZTDW59VjPn7xQKJ_d0KlX1XQgg9qv0s3t9gtwS-MmsN5nMBLdqfZIR_SA33hHoFhpEIxbAIO7RFhU2_It8qilEH2K0UnkHPosYUBAmMGP9ORGN0tQLkNlEmL7nkJ-lwVN6/s320/re-publica.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I love the style of those posters of re:publica</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>The smaller the room, the better the session. Well, not only me, but many others have noticed the same thing. The less known speakers giving a workshop-like sessions are more interesting than the well known ones or panels arranged in bigger auditoriums.</li>
<li>More than speeches, I enjoy the new ideas I stumble upon while attending such conferences. So here are some of those ideas.</li>
<ul>
<li>Re:public is not held in a fancy conference centre per se. What surprises me last time is that the <a href="http://www.station-berlin.de/" target="_blank">venue</a> used to be deserted factory, it was prepared and converted into a conferences venue later on. It is cool, cozy and suitable for the spirit of a bloggers conference.</li>
<li>In the main hall, where key note and major speeches take place, there is a screen behind the presenter, and his speech is being transcribed on that screen in real time. It is a tough task done manually, but it is very useful for those with hearing impairment, or even journalists or others who take notes of what is being said.</li>
<li>This is a new idea, but it is new to me at least. <a href="https://www.fabbeo.de/" target="_blank">Fabbeo</a> allows those who do not have 3D printers to send them an STL file for an object they want to print. In fact, they do not have 3D printers themselves, but they just serve as a marketplace matching customers with service providers with 3D printers.</li>
<li>In conferences like this, people are busy tweeting and taking photos with their phones. So, their mobile batteries are not expected to last for the whole day, right? As a way of promoting their company, <a href="http://www.simyo.de/" target="_blank">Simyo</a>, a German mobile operator, allows people to borrow portable chargers for their mobiles.</li>
<li>Last year one company was doing one fine marketing idea. They had a vending-machine-like stand that is connected to the internet. When you go there and publicly check into the machine via Foursquare, it gives you a soda can or something. They were generating a lot of buzz on Foursquare about their company this way, as well as attracting people to their stand.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7iy-K5uyDdnO60_xEPJB-x0ub-JexQHdWfoHGMzyuDBRdXQg4x3OQ22CERvSTtm6X9BPoUPepjYCEgD4EX42eVeFUg-nAYaGCnrS5gqhJPlkDdAth81FbEALGm1jOI5ZmupGpFR4b3SYF/s1600/EricHersman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7iy-K5uyDdnO60_xEPJB-x0ub-JexQHdWfoHGMzyuDBRdXQg4x3OQ22CERvSTtm6X9BPoUPepjYCEgD4EX42eVeFUg-nAYaGCnrS5gqhJPlkDdAth81FbEALGm1jOI5ZmupGpFR4b3SYF/s320/EricHersman.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eric Hersman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The conference's keynotes was given by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Hersman">Eric Hersman</a>. For those who do not know him, he is an American born and raised in South Sudan. How now lives in Kenya. And you can call him an African entrepreneur. He started iHub, a startup incubator in Kenya, he made Ushahidi with others and is widely respected technologist, blogger and commentator who specialises in the impact and application of technology throughout Africa. I believe the choice for the keynote came because, although he is a bloggers, but it also reflects re:publica's intention to present itself as a conference for entrepreneurs and business startups too. His choice also reflects the need to shed the light on a usually ignored continent, especially when it comes to technology and development.<br />
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Eric is an okey speaker. The speech was not impressive or strong as <a href="http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media" target="_blank">Eben Moglen's keynote</a> last year for example. Eric was focusing on the startup scene in Africa, giving examples from different countries. Showing the incubators across the continent, the entrepreneurs and their challenging spirit was a good thing, but the choices for some of their products was patronising in a way. He pointed one of the main problems that face local investors in the Middle East and Africa, where there are lower hanging fruits such as real-estate business and food chain, which attracts investors diverting them from funding technology startups sometimes. For sure, market economics shall fix that someday, but this still is one of the issues. He then stressed on the need for entrepreneurs to find way to collaborate with each other and build communities and ecosystem. He referred to huts building in Africa as an example where a whole village collaborate to build it. It's up to each one to choose whether he want to be a "villager" or an "individual". Being an individual is okey, but they shouldn't expect people to help or collaborate with them. Then came the main point of his speech, at least according to me. He said that Africa does have its own problems, and entrepreneurs have to solve those problems of their local communities as no body else is going to offer to fix them. In other words, a product made for Berlin or London is not usually suitable for Nairobi or Delhi. He gave an example with a 3G model they are producing in iHub. In a way, it is not a new idea, it is just 3G modem produced everywhere. But giving it a second thought, you can see that electricity is not stable in Africa. Hence, their 3G modem (BRCK), is rugged, portable and can work on batteries rather than electricity. He finally ended his talk with the following summary notes: "There is A LOT going on (in Africa)", "Local problems need local solutions" and "Support and growth are lacking".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK6gtc2csnu_x8vUyqCC-yWtNfKFk24221YX42HrJ5JlMy3KCDH4WAoJNUwxVrKELndSzhAF2X0YA_xih4ndf3ph75ivdoDDZEQGZmIyAhoUZn_GG5gyqFlIIGozCgtpk8HoCK1KMlkyTV/s1600/BenScott.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK6gtc2csnu_x8vUyqCC-yWtNfKFk24221YX42HrJ5JlMy3KCDH4WAoJNUwxVrKELndSzhAF2X0YA_xih4ndf3ph75ivdoDDZEQGZmIyAhoUZn_GG5gyqFlIIGozCgtpk8HoCK1KMlkyTV/s200/BenScott.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ben Scott</td></tr>
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Another <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJt_quKiMgw">session</a> I attended was given my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Scott_(policy_advisor)">Ben Scott</a>. Ben used to work as a Policy Advisor for Innovation at the US Department of State. He worked at the intersection of technology and foreign policy, or to use his own words, he worked with Hilary Clinton on how to change the US policy in the internet age. Prior to that he worked for 6 years in <a href="http://www.freepress.net/">Free Press</a>. He described Free Press as a non-profit organisation that tries to organise people online and help them engage with wider audience on the internet to discuss internet policies and see how to put forward "good" internet policies. I put good in between quotes here because I have no idea how he defines good policies. Ben started talking about internet campaigns and how all successful campaigns share the same aspects. He added that the internet doesn't really care what you are for and what you are against. Using internet for campaigns is basically the same for all causes. He then referred to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, and how for the first time they harnessed the internet with such scale. "What Obama realised in his 2008 campaign was that the power dynamics is changing because of the internet", he added. Although, most of what he is saying is well known, I enjoyed some of his examples. To elaborate the contrast between social campaigns now and twenty years earlier, he wondered what are the odds that someone with a camera is taking photos when something like the Boston Marathon bombing takes place in 1985, compared to it in 2013? He then warned that it is - however - not about technology any more, it is more about social change. A successful campaign should make use of technology, but it should also know how to use it to get engaged with the audience. To elaborate more, he added that two companies might use the internet and social media to deliver their message, but a successful social media strategy should not be how you shrink your press release into 140 characters, it is how you engage with people. Back to Obama campaign, he added that they realised than that people want to be heard. The campaign success came from the fact that they gave people a platform to be heard. A campaigners objective should focus on engagement with audience even before listening or just speaking to them. Additionally, social media is not only about delivering a message now, it is also used for collaboration or even funding causes, for example: <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">kickstarter</a>. Both SOPA and PIPA are example how laws can be defeated by the power of internet collaboration. When one of the audience asked whether he is very optimistic about the internet and its super powers, given that some countries like Iran already control and censor the internet. He replied: "30 years ago, if you wanted to start a revolution, you had to control the broadcast station; and to stop it, you had to install armed forced around the station. Now it is that you go online to start a revolution, and you censor and police the internet to stop it". Then he added regarding the case of Iran, "the thing to do in such case is to find alternatives for the internet, or any other parallel ways for communication". <br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-85791776372041969322013-05-07T17:28:00.000+02:002013-05-07T18:04:13.843+02:00Humanity on display in Neues Museum<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKIiW4VrSJ6U_4k85dKykEcSIVnMCrulzva5Yo-C8OCd1rCUI7IzFfARmOGJebbw9UaCC7L3Rmaj1s1ZJJdWCBvQTZOVZzW9nZb9UFu0Web50UQJFXxlO7RhQM77e644b0DEvIyGS9-vZ/s1600/Nefertiti_Berlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKIiW4VrSJ6U_4k85dKykEcSIVnMCrulzva5Yo-C8OCd1rCUI7IzFfARmOGJebbw9UaCC7L3Rmaj1s1ZJJdWCBvQTZOVZzW9nZb9UFu0Web50UQJFXxlO7RhQM77e644b0DEvIyGS9-vZ/s320/Nefertiti_Berlin.jpg" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bust of Nefertiti</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Today I was in Neues Museum in Berlin. They have got the iconic head of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti. Let alone how they value the statue. Let alone how they put it in a separate hall by its own. Let alone all the valuable historic items in the museum. Today, I've seen something more valuable than all the historic monuments in there. Something that touched my heart. In a corner next to the statue of Nefertiti, there is another bronze copy of the statue with braille text underneath it. It is there for those blind ones who cannot see the original statue to go and touch it and see it with their fingers.<br />
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For me that statue is more valuable than all the original items in the museum. It just symbolises humanity.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com2Neues Museum, Bodestraße, 10785 Berlin, Germany52.5199428 13.39830919999997149.957399800000005 8.2347351999999709 55.0824858 18.561883199999972tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-12172217649141744612013-03-17T01:00:00.001+02:002013-03-17T01:00:07.700+02:00On Glorifying ViolenceContrary to almost all of my fellow Egyptian youths nowadays, I hate this growing tone of glorifying violence. Well, this post might be two years late, it might not be the perfect time for it, since the regime and its security forces are currently killing people. But still, I prefer to say it out loud right now. As it is usually better late than never. I am not just agains the idea of glorifying and legitimising violence and considering it a revolutionary act, because of my natural hatred to violence. I am agains it for pragmatic reasons as well. But let me first explain what I mean by "glorifying and legitimising violence".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.behance.net/gallery/arabic-type/268025" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWyKuBt2Vc3F98qL7gpxomAPjHpc3mqANHUJuWY6rjHhkyZVdmag8_8MS2x6gkIEoCfiEr0AaIbijay61YHR-vvgpNOZDsA1axY7PcYWR1PHLtIgEFPWXqyeV_ZJa4sJE-OaFt-wCzksCq/s320/Molotov.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Mohamed Nabil Labib</td></tr>
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<br />
About two years ago, when the Egyptian people revolted agains Mubarak regime, there existed two narratives for the revolution. One pictured it as a peaceful revolution taking places in Tahrir square, where people carried banners and chanted agains the regime. The other side of the story are those rarely-filmed acts of burning police stations, official buildings and looting department stores. The argument now, is not whether one of them existed rather the other. Because both sides of the story are true. The more valid question now is to ask ourselves, whether we should blindly legitimise the second act and value it as "the only" facet of a multi-facade revolution or not.<br />
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One reason for glorifying violence was because Mubarak, SCAF and the Ikhwani government now, always find it plausible to accuse their opponents of being thugs and violent mobs who want to sabotage the country and its stability. This was always their favourite strategy to give legitimacy to the state's brutality. And according to our friend Isaac Newton, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Hence, the leftists on the other hand, decided to nullify the meaning of terms such as thugs and violence by mocking them sometimes, and glorifying them some other times. You can see people on twitter and facebook giving themselves names like "a thug" and "baltajy". Other than that, there also exists the radical ones who believe that peaceful protests will lead people nowhere.<br />
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Watching the security forces killing dozens of civilians in Port Said in less than 48 hours and taking an old man's clothes off in the streets about a month ago and brutally hitting him with heavy sticks, makes part of me eager to legitimise violence as a sort of response to such acts by the state. However, as I said earlier, I still have my pragmatic reasons to refuse it. On the one hand, such violence gives excuses for the regime to kill, beat and arrest more people, and convince the others that it has the right to do so. And it is obvious that in such violent game, the regime can easily outnumber its opponents with its weapons, trained forces and media. On the other hand, if you legitimise violence now, you cannot denounce it later when others such as Salafies, who have always been true believers of violent opposition, use it later on. Not only the Salaies, you've got the Ultras (football fans who got involved into politics since the revolution) as well, they have been praised by revolutionaries throughout the past two years, and now they curse them because they are uncontrollably violent. The problem is that we all miss the point, rather than condemning the Ultrals, we should condemn that culture of glorifying violence we have been witnessing since the early days of the revolution. It's that culture that gave birth sometimes and legitimacy some other times to all those violent groups. The third problem here, is that violence is like a snow ball, it can start small and limited to – arguably – legitimate reasons, but it can quickly get out of control. <br />
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Do you think the current chaotic and violent scene is going to make people less confident in the Ikhwani government and they are going to loose any upcoming elections? Damn wrong! The majority are going to vote for the Ikhwan, like they did earlier, and like they used to do during Mubarak's regime. The people just vote for stability, for the the authority and for those who play politics while others never learn and continue to play the wrong game in the wrong arena.<br />
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Originally posted in <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/tarek-amr/egypt-on-glorifying-violence" target="_blank">openDemocracy</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-60140929216105842812013-03-16T23:07:00.000+02:002013-03-16T23:07:06.083+02:00Rachel Corrie, the girl who taught me a life lesson<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQoDAos048DlT78WSj2YDydtPWibcHUIN4UQDvu4_E8bEVHsCgHsiZZYTxpJBSFK9sRT70Hbba1eDFBDrhODUDzAx7wo7696-BuryK8PmHbl4Paoc1z3GsA9qnzngr-o77yT0RAS2yuxV/s1600/Rachel-Corrie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQoDAos048DlT78WSj2YDydtPWibcHUIN4UQDvu4_E8bEVHsCgHsiZZYTxpJBSFK9sRT70Hbba1eDFBDrhODUDzAx7wo7696-BuryK8PmHbl4Paoc1z3GsA9qnzngr-o77yT0RAS2yuxV/s200/Rachel-Corrie.jpg" width="200" /></a>On the 16th of March, 2003, a girl passed away under an armoured bulldozer in Rafah. Back then, she was of my same age, yet her mental age was way older than mine. <br />
<br />
I was raised in a school where we've been taught that Jews are synonymes to Satan. We were never taught that there is any difference between people's religion and an army that kills civilians in the name of the same religion. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie" target="_blank">Rachel Corrie</a> left her home, travelled thousands of miles and stood in the face of a bulldozer to defend some other people's houses and right to live. Rachel Corrie was Jewish, and stood in the face of a government that carries her very same religion, to defend people who are mostly Muslims. And she died. In the very same school, I was taught to call those who die for a cause Martyr, provided that they are Muslims. Members of other religions are not to be called martyrs. That's what I used to believe in back then. But screw all what we've been taught back then. She is a martyr. A more honorable martyr than millions of those we were taught to call martyrs. She is a martyr, because it's not about people's religion, it's about how human they are.<br />
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<br />
She died for a cause, but also her death taught me a life lesson. It changed the way I see what we used to call others altogether. Changed it forever.<br />
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May she rest in peace now.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-40361173007562621212013-01-25T18:18:00.000+02:002013-01-25T18:20:09.813+02:00Deduction vs InductionTo <b>deduce</b> is to draw a <b>specific</b> conclusion <b>from a general principle</b>. To <b>induce</b> is to derive a <b>general </b>principle <b>from specific observations</b>.<br />
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Read more <a href="http://grammarist.com/usage/deduction-induction/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-78097482662783099112013-01-15T13:20:00.003+02:002013-01-15T13:23:38.271+02:00Believe in destiny, yet act like Maggie<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/u-suke/196110581/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgehzw5383WYzrMuPVFqBz9KBFO5F9-eHyppTY7NSkysrZ6F7F48n2xaQTDaU5QGNszPB-wGpDEi0W1lNZdVt7D6dlvzBLa7hliqkZolPyYejCGjxvQ4P7oyyj5lfFcREkeTw1yH0iVQd2a/s1600/train-egypt.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo taken by Yusuke Kawasaki under Creative Commons license</td></tr>
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I still remember that scene of "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120632/" target="_blank">City of Angels</a>", when Maggie (Meg Ryan), who was a doctor, and she tried to save one of her patients, yet he died in the end.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<b>Maggie:</b> I couldn't fix him.<br />
I did everything right... <br />
...and I couldn't fix him. <br />
That's not supposed to happen. <br />
And l.... <br />
<br />
<b>Seth:</b> You cried.</blockquote>
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I may love this move just because of this scene. It changed the way I see the world a bit back then when I watched it 15 years ago or something. We love the word "Destiny", yet our relation with it is complicated, since we blame everything on it. We never fail, government officials never do anything wrong, it's all destiny. Maggie on the other hand did not believe in Destiny, that's why she believed she has to save her patient, and if he dies, then it is her mistake, her's only. But the patient died in the end, yet she did everything right.<br />
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Between the two extremes, I believe we may believe in destiny, yet act like Maggie, act as if it doesn't exist. <br />
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What reminded me of this today, is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/15/egypt-train-crash-army-recruits">yet another train accident that took place in Egypt</a>, exactly two months ago we had another accident where dozens of school-children died. And as you might have expected, the officials and their look-alike citizens blame it on everything from destiny to the train driver, to the former president Mubarak, to - may be - the British occupation a century ago; you name it. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-5362340302052327562012-12-05T23:48:00.004+02:002012-12-05T23:51:35.058+02:00Don't be Passive. Always have a BiasIt's always easier to blame the two sides, and find it an excuse not to have a bias. And, trust me, you can easily find mistakes committed by the parties on both sides. But the truth is, your role is to support the right against the wrong, regardless of who is in each camp and what did they do.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvcPomhJTvmAJ8hRbrZwox8-2sr3SKmY5WJnHH-w8oPWJ1MqIQmrrg8kheMfEQnjY7XQ202NI5V-nemgmqU8u3C3ZkUVtDlHS6t498HyAZ5_NESbMLTJyNyb1disy-hRRIGc0EykwdaIAF/s1600/Morsi_the_Dictator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvcPomhJTvmAJ8hRbrZwox8-2sr3SKmY5WJnHH-w8oPWJ1MqIQmrrg8kheMfEQnjY7XQ202NI5V-nemgmqU8u3C3ZkUVtDlHS6t498HyAZ5_NESbMLTJyNyb1disy-hRRIGc0EykwdaIAF/s320/Morsi_the_Dictator.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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For me, it is simple, Morsi is just as dictator as Mubarak. Well, the truth is, he is just a puppet, or let me use the Egyptian term here, he is a sheep in the herd, but anyway, he, his party and his group are the ones to be blamed here. They are the ones in power, seeing people dying and not doing any good. They are the ones who lied to people and are still lying.<br />
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So, blame El-Baradei or Hamdeen as much as you want, I too, have no problem blaming them if they happen to do anything wrong, but not now. Because what you are doing is just distracting me from the main issue. Just like those who kept on equating Mubarak to the Islamists participating in #Jan25 and asked me not to have a stance because of this. I didn't listen to those voices then, and I won't now, because I hate to be passive. Event if I am too far to do anything, I still have to have as stance.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-2152154615663644302012-11-16T22:08:00.000+02:002012-11-16T22:08:19.564+02:00Loosing faith in HumanityI am not an Islamist who hates Israel for theological reasons. And I am not a leftist who hates it for ideological reasons. I am just a human who tries not to loose faith in humanity after seeing this photo of a Palestinian baby girl burnt alive with IDF rockets.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.politics.ie/forum/foreign-affairs/200078-idf-kills-hamas-chief-71.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJdaMXHSWD3I032TCAtIiRGDZIIW4pD0esG4ZYYYB5cW76yDVwPKE5o-d9OmiopmMrL8C-__R4t5AghvQML892arcoYtcXEILZinbDyz62dNvo8qsb3U2QhWSC24rEc3mLBm-7Ih3efO2/s320/BurntBaby.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">A Palestinian medic stands near a body of a girl died after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City November 14, 2012. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">Terrible terrible loss of life. A short life.</span></td></tr>
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I'm not going to go into the 60-years old debate about who has the right to stay on this land, and who doesn't. I don't even think I have the right to suggest solutions to stop all these blood sheds. I just cannot digest how countries and borders are built on the basis of religion. I cannot understand how citizenships are given on the basis of faith and stories in religious books. And I hate how people think that the existence of one is mutually exclusive to the existence of the other.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-1109699280005179402012-09-15T02:02:00.002+02:002012-09-15T12:58:17.460+02:00Protest Outside The Box"Why did the protesters go to the embassy of the United States in Cairo?", "The police has all the right to stop them, no matter what" and "Those protesters are mainly stupid and brainwashed". Those are mainly the phrases you are going to see if you happen to follow the Egyptian activists and netizens nowadays.<br />
<br />
Like many others, I am against those protests since day one. What's the problem of those protesters? How come it is the USA that is to be blamed just because some people decided to make a film there that the angry protesters find it to be against their religion? Let alone the killing of innocent people in Libya and waving Al-Qaida flag on the anniversary of September 11. And now the protesters are asking for an apology from the States, an apology for having freedom of speech laws! Why not, when we have scholars who <a href="http://gate.ahram.org.eg/News/250939.aspx" target="_blank">call for killing</a> those who participated in that film.<br />
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Thanks to the angry protesters who made it easy for me to take such stance this time. I have no reason to sympathize with them. But a year ago, and even during the early days of the Egyptian revolution, I happen to be on the other side of the table. The Egyptians were protesting against the ruling military junta, and back then those whom we used to call remnants of the old regime used to say the exact same phrases I mentioned above to the protesters. "Why did you go to Mohamed Mahmoud street?", "The police has all the right to defend the state against those angry protesters" and "You're brainwashed and following foreign agendas".<br />
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I can sure say that the military junta was killing and arresting people, controlling the media, and they were not democratically elected and ruling the country by brute force, so we had all the right to protest then. And as I said above, the protesters now have no reason to protest this time. But this doesn't seem to be an enough answer to my wonders.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gigiibrahim/7946941536/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLnWRZf81THU73Spk8qUiLIzoOl00uLUy6FYPkYzWjdkaWfZ4Ue1QQYGtL_0BKFTJgKCoD5yucyzU8fAr5HIhJvDrgm9byCynuKepzpWyL3Di-sMleWENweEm08_rYtW_tBJd9IPW1SeYj/s320/Protest_Egypt_Quran_Cross_Military.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo taken by Gigi Ibrahim, under Creative Commons license.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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For every protest, in order to unify all protesters, there should be a reason to unify them under its umbrella. Reasons do vary from toppling a regime, to ending military rule, to seeking the rights of the martyrs (like <a href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/19/egypt-have-activists-and-journalists-been-targeted-in-tahrir-square-clearing/" target="_blank">many</a> <a href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/12/17/egypt-tahrir-square-burning/" target="_blank">protests</a> last year). And reason for today's protest are defending Prophet Muhammad. The more noble the reason is, the more easier it is to make others sympathize and even join the protest. But if you give it a second, and a more pragmatic, thought. You'll find out that most of the times those reasons can be noble and true, yet, still there are other reasons that are normally not announced. And here comes my own interpretation of protesting outside the box, that you might choose to agree to totally disagree with.<br />
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I think that the main reasons for the protest in front of the embassies of the United States, at least in Egypt, is that the Salafy's felt they were left out. After the Muslim Brotherhood seized the power, they didn't give the Salafy's as much posts in their government as they were expecting. So my interpretation for the protest is that the Salafy's are mainly trying to get back into the picture and to prove to everyone that they have power in the street and can mobilize people. The Muslim Brotherhood on the other hand seemed to be against the protests in the beginning. Most of my friends who are either members of the MB or just emotionally affiliated with them were against it, and they were using the exact reasons I mentioned above for not being in favour of the protests. A short while later, they Brotherhood and Morsi found out that one of their main assets is that they present themselves to the people as an Islamic group. And for sure not participating in "defending Prophet Muhammad" will make them loose a lot of the credibility among their supporters and offer such credibility to the Salafy's on a silver plate. So later on, the Brotherhood changed their tone, and started to call for a million man march in support of the cause. But once more, they realized that they are now in power, and they don't only deal with local matters, but they also have international relations to look after. Hence Morsi and Khairat El Shater were <a href="http://proudukrainian.blogspot.com/2012/09/egypts-president-mohamed-morsy.html" target="_blank">very cautious</a> doing their <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/opinion/our-condolences-the-muslim-brotherhood-says.html?_r=3" target="_blank">tightrope walking</a> and trying to please both the Egyptian voters as well as their own peers in the White House.<br />
<br />
Many activists might hate me for this, but the protests that took part last November and December, also had secondary reasons other than toppling the military junta and seeking the rights of the martyrs. The Brotherhood used to say then, that the protests are happening few days before the parliamentary elections, and the non-Islamist protesters are trying to postpone or even cancel the elections since they are sure that the Islamists are going to lead in the elections. I didn't agree with that back then, and I still don't agree much with it now, but I think they weren't totally wrong either. Part of the protests were a way for the protesters to get themselves back to the picture before the elections and a way to grab the voters attention.<br />
<br />
Few days ago the Ultras (football fans) were demonstrating in front of a football stadium as they didn't want the Super Cup match to be played before the ones behind the killing of 74 football fans last February to be punished. No one can deny how noble is their cause, yet it was hard for me to see it as the only reason behind the protest. Many more protests in front of the Minister of the Interior or the Israeli embassy, etc. They all needed a second thought from you to tell what are their secondary, or may be primary, unannounced reasons.<br />
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I just realized now that there is no ethics in politics, or let me say, there is not absolute good and bad there. Two parties might do the same thing, yet you chose to side with one and stand against the other. I used to do this, and I guess I will continue to do the same. Sometimes the devil is in the details of each action, and that's how you can decide which one is ethical and which one is not. But most of the time you just have to follow your senses. And I do not mean by this that you shouldn't try your best to make the most ethical choices, in fact, I just want you to stick to your ethics all the time. It's only that things will rarely be that clear, so keep your eyes wide open and be ready for all possibilities.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-69827160538933883612012-09-11T02:49:00.000+02:002012-09-11T13:14:10.078+02:00It's Paralympics not PitylympicsYesterday was the last day of the 2012 Summer Paralympics that took place in London. Throughout the games people have been sharing photos of the athletes on Facebook and other social media platforms. Challenge plays a major part in sports in general. We love seeing people challenging each other as well as challenging their own selves. We love seeing records being broken. We watch the Olympics to see how strong, fast and high humans can go. And that is reflected in photos, except when it comes to the Paralympics. Or at least this is what I've noticed in the photos people share the most on social media.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=463282943721575" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHFqLgbkPwheeWVnS34z3V0Rj8wPoOyTrookJivDm0VFlpMUh1eyU5jvmzuzI5VeTUW1hywQ_FC9LXQohINrmzZDyWfg2hA8mohOacD1qYPf0PwnwJm6ejtivFSdwrX8IOIUoF9XEx5Gi/s320/paralympics-swimmer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The above photo is one good example of what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if you can read Arabic, but in most of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=463282943721575">comments [Ar]</a> on this photo on Facebook, people are basically saying, "Thank God who spared us from what he has afflicted other people". Please tell me if I'm the only one who finds such comments stupid and silly. We do not see the athlete's name under the photo, no one has any idea how he finished the race, what records he broke, or not. All what people have is a photo of him starting the race as well as pity on him. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=367527333317404" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguK_LKLX7Z0s6pJ-dBVacjxhKwJmMXJk7MiVYF8WxusEltzl4hyxMyXa3s_Jw-7PiVhTsKETntHMpSehF8cznDFRGKla8lt1g9kfRbDuzGGr5uLhxIfmaUjU-VEz3vwLlTV0QitGJXPSXF/s320/paralympics-long-jump.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now have a look at the above photo. You think she felt down while running in some race or something, right? Well, no, that's the long jumping competition. And guess what, all long jump athletes fall down in the sand after they jump whether they are in the Paralympics or the Olympics.<br />
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Well, there are for sure comments about the athletes' strong will. They didn't give in to their disabilities and decided to play sports, just like non-disabled people. But why shouldn't they? <br />
<br />
Okey, let me surprise you now. According to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/athletics/9450234/100m-final-how-fast-could-you-run-it.html">this article</a> in the Telegraph. "The average man jogs at a speed of 8.3 mph, or 100m in 27 seconds", and "the fastest among us can sprint 100m at a speed of 15.9 mph, or between 13-14 seconds". In this year games, the Finnish athlete <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo-Pekka_T%C3%A4hti">Leo-Pekka Tähti</a> finished his 100m race in 13.63 seconds on his wheelchair. So he is fastest than most of us, while he is on a wheelchair!<br />
<br />
May be this is how social media works. But let's remember that those athletes didn't go to London looking for pity, but they are there looking for records to break. <br />
<br />
Till next post, I'll leave you with this beautiful short film, <a href="https://vimeo.com/17150524">The Butterfly Circus</a>, starring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Vujicic">Nick Vujicic</a>:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="259" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17150524" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="460"></iframe> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://vimeo.com/17150524">The Butterfly Circus - HD</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5296165">The Butterfly Circus</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-14895085546664151072012-09-06T16:40:00.000+02:002012-09-06T17:32:14.236+02:00El-Gohary: More Than HistoryI was on my way back from the Friday prayers when a stranger in the street gave me a poster of the Egyptian national football team. That was in November 17, 1989, and I still remember that afternoon like it was yesterday. Egypt was having a football match against Algeria in the World Cup qualification. Egypt had to win that match to go to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_FIFA_World_Cup">World Cup held in Italy</a> the upcoming year, and it did it. <br />
<br />
Some months later, Egypt was having its first match in the World Cup with The Nederlands. That was the first time for my generation, as well as my father's generation, to see Egypt in the World Cup, the previous time we went there was in 1934, and by coincidence it was in Italy too. A friend told me in the morning that he had a computer program that can predict match results and it says Egypt will loose 9-nil. Sure he was bluffing, but it reflects how strong was the Dutch team in our eyes then compared to the Egyptian one. That was my first football match to watch ever. I was learning the football rules while watching it. And we had a 1-1 draw! Moments later, it was also my first time to see floods of Egyptians chanting and dancing in the streets. Now, more than 20 years later it is still our last time to see Egypt playing in the world cup finals so far.<br />
<br />
Few years later, I became obsessed with football, and I happened to support a football team that has more defeats in its history than wins, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamalek_SC">El-Zamalek</a>. But that year it won, not only the Egyptian league, but the African Champions League, and it followed it by the African Super Cup later on.<br />
<br />
Eight years after the country's appearance in World Cup, it failed to make it to the two upcoming ones, and it hadn't won any of the African Cup of Nations trophies held outside Egypt since the 50's. But this time, Egypt made it to the final of the championship <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_African_Cup_of_Nations">held in Burkina Faso in 1998</a>, and bet South Africa 2-0, and we are the champions!<br />
<br />
For an Egyptian born in the 80's who used to support El-Zamalek. Those are the most important events of football history to me. But this is not the only thing in common between all those events, the most important thing in common between them, is that in all those events it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_El-Gohary">Mahmoud El-Gohary</a> who was the coach managing the national or local team I was supporting. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_El-Gohary" title="Mahmoud El-Gohary" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="105" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC26BkE_Jv4y8xb63VhkhTKFQHApW1uQ1EISkH5wpwpY-rdUGGZniUWkoqkzlMVKhrm0oek5ehXqj9WH9mgGyZncS2DT70xUAB4M5tvAbHh9W9Y-VZc8yxePy78jDItd2xr2Rl1utuYEqv/s320/ElGohary_History.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
El-Gohary is one of the most important figures in the history of Egyptian and African football, and is considered by many as the best Egyptian football coach ever. He was the only one in Egypt's entire history to play in Al-Ahly and become the coach of its rival El-Zamalek later on. This - beside his achievements on the national level - made him loved by all Egyptian football fans regardless of which local team they support. And that's why everyone I know was so sad after they know he passed away few days ago. <br />
<br />
I believe the least to be done is to name Cairo Stadium after him.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-33443892597155435142012-09-02T22:17:00.002+02:002013-04-01T16:27:22.539+02:00Breakfast with Socrates“Given that Socrates was effectively assassinated by poison, you might think twice before accepting his invitation to breakfast”. This is how <a href="http://www.robertrowlandsmith.com/">Robert Rowland Smith</a> opened his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/184668241X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=184668241X&linkCode=as2&tag=gredat-21">Breakfast with Socrates</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/378323781" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS1L3JLteSeFfvsXfZjBmpkFXaEP7QBcsHIOwDkdDkT2PU_91ODLEIJuPRXNtfCt4zKLJvDMmKAgNEiqk2sXiXKMdwQfXdQAPZRx_zbYi5PVSO6eCf1tlWywSWVcIFRt1p9pcEa4eeG4jg/s320/BwS.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br />
<br />
People know I'm a slow reader. It takes me ages to read a book. Slow enough to get bored of books I am reading and leave them before finishing them. But this one was interesting enough that I couldn't but finish it. The thing about this book, not only that it introduced me to names like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida, and reintroduced me to others such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber and René Descartes, whom I rediscovered his most famous phrase "Cogito ergo sum" <a href="http://www.tarekamr.com/2012/07/cogito-ergo-sum.html">here</a>. But also - just like other philosophy books - it makes you discover new meanings and interpenetration for your everyday life.<br />
<br />
We wake up everyday, but it's nice to know how "waking up" and "discovering the truth" are related: “The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up?” <br />
<br />
After waking up, you put on your clothes and make yourself ready to go to work. But don't we all feel too lazy to go to work most of the time? May be Freud has interpretation for this: “Getting ready is that point in the day when the rivalry between the two needs is likely to peak, because we are making transition from being at home and pleasing ourselves (ego) to going out and having to conform to a series of norms an conventions (<a href="http://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html" target="_blank">superego</a>). We become less ego and more superego with each button we fasten”.<br />
<br />
How come on the one hand we cover our pubic with clothes, yet on the other hand, we want to attract the opposite sex? “Clothes exist to hide the pubic from the public and therefore make you socially acceptable. The irony is that, precisely because they are a prerequisite for social inclusion, wearing clothes has become almost more natural than being naked ... To that established irony, we can add a more subtle one. As anyone who has been on a date well knows, clothes aren't just about covering you up: while you need them to hide your sex, you want them to show your sexuality”. <br />
<br />
Smith later discusses lots of things, such as shopping. “Let's remember you can still go shopping without buying, because where buying is a matter of need, shopping is a question of want”. As well as credit cards. With money you buy things using the money you earned from work you have done in the past, but with credit card you are buying things for work yet to be done in the future. “Credit' comes from the Latin 'credere', 'to believe', for credit is the belief that the money you're borrowing will someday be returned, a belief that needs the future to function in”.<br />
<br />
The write also discusses languages, and reading, and how words in a book needs reader as well as the writer to put meanings to them. “[Roland] Barthes turned the thable on the author, saying no only the a book needs a reader to wake it into life, but that in so doing the reader becomes nothing less that the author, who reveals in the book's hermeneutic possibilities, releases them and so becomes its own creator.” <br />
<br />
The book consists of 18 chapters, each discussion one single detail of your day, from waking up to travelling to work, to bunking off, to going to the gym, to watching TV, to having sex, to sleeping. And since it serves as an introduction to philosophy, the author recommends a list of books to read after you finish this one, such as:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>The Discourse on the Method, René Descartes</li>
<li>The Last Days of Socrates, Plato</li>
<li>Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche</li>
<li>Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994, Jacques Derrida</li>
<li>The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud</li>
<li>Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Carl Jung</li>
<li>A Barthes Reader, Roland Barthes</li>
<li>Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre</li>
<li>The Foucault Reader, Michel Foucault</li>
<li>From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Max Weber</li>
<li>Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, Walter Benjamin</li>
<li>The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Claude Levi-Strauss</li>
<li>Capital: An Abridged Edition, Karl Marx</li>
<li>The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli</li>
</ul>And let me add:<br />
<ul><li>The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin</li>
<li>Rhetoric, Aristotle</li>
<li>The Nature of Things, Lucretius</li>
</ul><br />
"Philosophy is about recognising the ambiguity of life as it is lived", Breakfast with Socrates.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=gredat-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=184668241X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-42597470502706085482012-08-30T16:20:00.000+02:002012-08-31T02:16:36.309+02:00In the Name of IdentityIn case you are wondering if you can beat the record of longest sexual intercourse ever, I can assure you that you can't. This is because the one I am going to write about here is longer than you can ever imagine. It started centuries before we were born, and it is lasting forever. And for sure you've witnessed parts of it, the two bastards involved here are shamelessly fucking each other on TV screens, on your twitter timeline, and in public locations such as churches, mosques, synagogues, parliaments and presidential palaces. Those two shameless bastards are called Politics and Religion.<br />
<br />
Today, the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was in Tehran attending the Non-Aligned Movement summit. I haven't listened to a recording of his speech there yet, but from what I've heard, it seems to have been a good one, and he said it was an "ethical duty" to support the Syrian people against the "oppressive regime" in Damascus.<br />
<br />
What really alerts me is the reactions I've seen here during and after the speech. From, so-called, activists <a href="https://twitter.com/AsmaaMahfouz/status/241129275607089152">calling</a> for receiving Morsi in the airport, to others <a href="https://www.facebook.com/engmahmoud.elaraby/posts/10151279438453888">writing poems</a> praising Morsi. All of this is not because of some political actions he have done, or for any tangible advances in the Egyptian economy, education or healthcare. All this is because of that victorious moment when a Sunni politician goes to Iran, slap them in the face by praising some historic figures they - supposedly - cannot tolerate seeing them be praised. He opened his speech by praising God and some men who died centuries ago, wheres the Sunni Muslims in Egypt and in the Gulf States admire, and they believe that the Shia Muslims in Iran hate them like hell, and this was more than enough to create a Golden Calf out of Morsi for us to receive in the airport, and worship later on.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/enerva/4367618406/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg13Z9EPxgQ-r_OXi79ko9nLfUimCOmbpGlH0ConV13s42qr8pxRThyr1zGxE8T-EslkuYVjJffGKrx1QxOKyh0_FIpBrI8_AT83tzHO0uoGOyVoFgHcqrhHiyQnI6A9ec2hp5Wdd7NrpCW/s400/coexist.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coexist<br />
Photo taken by Sonny Abesamis under CC-BY license.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In his book "<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212932.In_the_Name_of_Identity">In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong</a>", Amin Maalouf wrote how we are obsessed with categorizing people according to their identities, "Since I left Lebanon in 1976 to establish myself in France, I have been asked many times, with the best intentions in the world, if I felt more French or more Lebanese". He then added, "When I am asked who I am deep inside of myself, it means there is, deep inside each one of us, one belonging that matters". And for many here, that one belonging is their religion, or even sect. <br />
<br />
They define themselves according to that one identity. It is the castle they get into when fighting with others who belong to other identities. And it is the only way they seek personal victory through. Those who support Bashar when he oppresses the Sunnis in Syria and those who support the regime in Bahrain when it oppress the Shia there, both are obsessed with defending their belonging regardless of any morals. And those who support the oppressed party in one case, and turn a blind eye to the other are not much more ethical than the first group. Morsi, by the way, attacked the butchers in Syria and turned a blind eye to the ones in Bahrain today, let alone the Bahraini human rights activist whose <a href="http://www.ircpresident.com/2012/08/28/open-letter-to-president-mohamed-morsi-from-maryam-al-khawaja/" target="_blank">was denied entry</a> to Egypt a couple of days ago.<br />
<br />
Aren't people sick of religious wars yet!? Aren't they sick already of those dictators who oppress their people in the name of religion, and fight their neighbors in the neme of it too? <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-12217204512152198742012-08-23T08:52:00.001+02:002012-08-23T08:52:59.382+02:00Egypt: Back to the IMF LoanInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde arrived in Cairo. She has meetings with Egyptian officials including the president, Mohamed Morsi. Egypt has formally requested to increase the value of the loan to $4.8 billion, after the initial request made last year for a $3.2 billion.<br />
<br />
Today the deal’s chances of being sealed are even greater, so you might like to read <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/tarek-amr/egypt-imf-loan" target="_blank">the article I wrote</a> about the loan that has been published in openDemocracy.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/tarek-amr/egypt-imf-loan" target="_blank">http://www.opendemocracy.net/tarek-amr/egypt-imf-loan</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-46558656099559010922012-08-22T13:57:00.000+02:002012-08-22T13:57:45.771+02:00Tarek's Dictionary - Volume II still have no idea how this post is going to be useful to anyone other than its own writer, but anyway.<br />
<br />
It all started a month ago, when I was thinking that whenever I read a book, an articles online or a friend's blog post, I usually stumble upon English words that I do not know their meanings. I used to just ignore them, thinking that I'd learn their meaning from the context, which rarely happens by the way. So, I decided last month to start taking notes with words I don't know, write down their meaning, and publish them later on in what I call, Tarek's Dictionary. And here are the words collected so far:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Persona non grata (Latin): Literally meaning "an unwelcome person". You might be wondering why do they write such Latin sentence in news websites instead of its English alternative. Well, I have no idea. May be to look intellectual or something.<br />
</li>
<li>Patronizing: Treat someone with an *apparent* kindness that transmits a feeling of superiority. Talking to people as if they are ignorant or stupid. If you speak Arabic, then this looks so much like "Yalla ya shater" or the ironic "Bravo" we say all the time. Sometimes, <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=patronize">it also means</a> becoming a regular customer, "Lots of people patronize Starbucks for their daily caffeine fix".<br />
</li>
<li>Nurture: To support and encourage, as during the period of training or development, or to feed and protect.</li>
<li>Cynical: Skeptical to someone's good intentions. It originates from an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism">Cynics</a>, whose philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. I have no idea how this ended up to become pessimistic or distrusting the motives of others. Seems that the emphasis on the negative aspects of Cynic philosophy by the 19th century is what altered its meaning this way. In brief, I used to thing Cynicism and Sarcasm are the same thing, but they are not, yet they meet sometimes. The keywords here are doubt, pessimism and distrust to people's intention and/or future.</li>
<li>Delirious: While delirium is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium">neuropsychiatric syndrome</a> whose symptoms are sudden severe confusion and rapid changes in brain function. Delirious - <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/delirious">most of the time</a> - is used to express one being wildly excited, esp with joy or enthusiasm. It still is a negative term, which mostly refers to ill or uncontrolled excitement or emotion.</li>
<li>Anxiety: Being anxious! Yeah, I knew anxious but didn't know that one!</li>
<li>Apprehensive: Anxious or fearful that something bad or unpleasant will happen </li>
<li>Agony: Extreme physical or mental <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/agony">suffering</a> or the struggle that precedes death </li>
<li>Wrath: Anger, rage or divine punishment or retribution for sin. Wrath is one of Morgan Freeman's, ehmm Christian ethics', <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Wrath">Seven Deadly Sins</a>, and it may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger.</li>
<li>Misogynistic: Hating women in particular. It <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/misogyny">comes from</a> the Ancient Greek μισογυνία (misogunia) and μισογύνης (misogunēs, “woman hater”), from μισέω (miseō, “I hate”) + γυνή (gynē, “woman”). It's funny to that J.W. Roberts <a href="http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=73kTsV4FdrQC&lpg=PA22&dq=Sokrates%20misogyny%20misogynist&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false">argues</a> that older than tragedy and comedy was a misogynistic tradition in Greek literature.</li>
<li>Corny: Trying to be cool, but ultimately very uncool indeed, and often even extremely embarrassing </li>
<li>Disgruntled: Dissatisfied or Angry.<br />
</li>
<li>Dire straits: Other than the "Money for Nothing" band, it also <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dire+straits">means</a> a state of extreme distress, anxiety, or suffering. Dire on its own means alarming or desperately urgent. It has it roots back to the Latin word "<a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dirus">dīrus</a>" which means fearful.</li>
<li>To keep mum means to keep silent or refuse to talk. </li>
<li>Peril: It has nothing to do with Pril, the dishwashing detergent. Peril <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/peril">stands for</a> something that endangers or involves risk.</li>
<li>Stern: Serious and unrelenting, esp. in the assertion of authority and exercise of discipline. "The Manager sent me a stern email". It also means the rearmost part of a ship or boat. </li>
<li>Prevail <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prevail">is</a> to be greater in strength or influence; and be victorious: "Prevailed against the enemy". Also can refer to becoming predominant: "A region where snow and ice prevail".</li>
<li>Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. And since this is my favorite term in this issue. Its roots come from the Greek word ῥήτωρ (rhḗtōr), "public speaker". I will elaborate more on Rhetoric later on.</li>
<li>A Hobson's choice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson's_choice">is</a> a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". </li>
<li>Nuance: A subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, response, etc. A very slight difference or variation in color or tone. </li>
<li>Pedantic: Punctilious, overly concerned with minute details or formalisms especially in education. </li>
<li>Docile: It <a href="http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/docile">comes</a> from Latin root for teaching, docere, so someone docile is easy to teach. A docile student is willing to be taught. A docile animal is easy to handle. If you behave well and do what people tell you to do, you're a docile person. Docile might be a word of praise, but it can also be a criticism of someone for being overly submissive. </li>
<li>Monocle: A monocle is a type of corrective lens used to correct or enhance the vision in only one eye. You can have a look at the logo of <a href="http://egyptmonocle.com/EMonocle/">Egyptian Monocle</a> to know what I mean.</li>
<li>Phosphenes <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/25-everyday-things-you-never-knew-had-names">is</a> the lights you see when you close your eyes and press your hands to them.</li>
<li>A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front.</li>
<li>Consensus: Majority of opinion. General agreement or concord.</li>
<li>Impartiality: The principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Now back to Rhetoric</b><br />
<br />
Rhetoric <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric">is</a> the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western tradition.[2] Its best known definition comes from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics, and calls it "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Rhetorics typically provide heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals, logos, pathos, and ethos.<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Ethos</b>: The character or disposition of a community, group, person, etc. The moral element in dramatic literature that determines a character's action rather than his or her thought or emotion, as opposed to Pathos and Logos.</li>
<li><b>Pathos</b>: The quality or power in an actual life experience or in literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of evoking a feeling of pity or compassion. The deeply felt domestic pathos raises the movie above the average thriller. Such detailed description of their relationship underscores the pathos of its end.</li>
<li><b>Logos</b>: Philosophy reason or the rational principle expressed in words and things, argument, or justification</li>
</ul>
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point and without the expectation of a reply.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5697754329631393326.post-77304156058550326942012-08-15T16:01:00.000+02:002012-08-27T16:12:45.061+02:0010 Educational Resources OnlineMore than decade ago, my friends and I were obsessed with <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/">HowStuffWorks</a> that is meant to explain complex concepts and technologies in an easy way. That was probably before <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a> was launched, or at least when we were not aware of it yet. Later on, YouTube videos and Wikipedia became our source of knowledge. Now, there are new websites out there that took online education to the next level:<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photocapy/965775343/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Before the internet there was...reading by Photocapy, on Flickr"><img alt="Before the internet there was...reading" height="400" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1333/965775343_fe0dc01b68_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before the internet there was ... reading!<br />
Photo taken by Photocapy under Creative Commons license.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<ol>
<li>Khan Academy: With over 3,300 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, they want to give you a way to learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.<br />
<a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/">http://www.khanacademy.org/</a></li>
<li>Coursera partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. The offered courses varies from Computer Sciences to Mathematics to Biology to Economics to Statistics and more.<br />
<a href="https://www.coursera.org/">https://www.coursera.org/</a></li>
<li>Udacity also stated that their goal is to democratize education. The offered courses are more into Computer Science, as well as Physics and Statistics.<br />
<a href="http://www.udacity.com/">http://www.udacity.com/</a></li>
<li>OpenCourseWare, is a term applied to course materials created by universities and shared freely with the world via the Internet. And MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. Like other online education resources mentioned here, it is not a degree-granting or credit-bearing initiative. However, you should work through the materials at your own pace, and in whatever manner you desire.<br />
<a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/">http://ocw.mit.edu/</a></li>
<li>Just like MIT, Yale University has its Open Yale Courses project where they share full video and course materials from its undergraduate courses.<br />
<a href="http://oyc.yale.edu/">http://oyc.yale.edu/</a></li>
<li>If you want to learn computer programming, one of the available services for you is Codecademy. It offers free coding classes in programming languages like HTML, CSS, Python, and Javascript.<br />
<a href="http://www.codecademy.com/">http://www.codecademy.com/</a></li>
<li>Nalandau is an Indian website that aggregates educational content from other places including Open Courseware and YouTube.<br />
<a href="http://www.nalandau.com/">http://www.nalandau.com/</a></li>
<li>Gresham College provides free public talks within the City of London. Some of their lectures have video, audio and/or transcript.<br />
<a href="http://www.gresham.ac.uk/">http://www.gresham.ac.uk/</a></li>
<li>Babbel: A platform for learning languages online. Yet, it's not free.<br />
<a href="http://www.babbel.com/">http://www.babbel.com/</a></li>
<li>TED: Not really educational, but TED videos are interesting.<br />
<a href="http://www.ted.com/">http://www.ted.com/</a></li>
</ol>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script expr:src='"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/NotGreenData?i=" + data:post.url' type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04040899001187322598noreply@blogger.com0