"And I think the lack of US Muslim radicalism can be explained by looking at class. The charts in the Post made the following useful comparisons between US and UK Muslims:

College education. 59% of US Muslims have a Bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to 27% of the population). In the UK, only 12% do (compared to 17% of the population).

Income. 52% of US Muslims make $50K and above (compared with 45% of the population). Although there aren’t equivalent numbers for the UK, the chart indicates that UK Muslims earn 68% of non-Muslims and have the highest unemployment rate in the country.

I think that explains a lot, and much more than the ideological/culture argument does. After all, you have two similar religious minorities living in Western secular nations — but with vastly different levels of radicalism. Of course, correlation does not causation make, but I’ll stick with class until I hear a better explanation." (Publius Pundit)

I think it is possible to be tickled to death.

Yes, SilverKey has a color blind web designer and his article on color blindness got 100,000 page views in less than 24 hours after being listed on digg.com.

SilverKey Egypt August 2006 - yeah, every developers gets two monitors. The wall behinds show some left behind screen prototypes for systems that we are working on. Yes, the whole office is full of various screen prototypes and db diagrams. In this picture you have an Indonesian, a Morrocan, an American and Egyptians.

just in case you are wondering.

Today I woke up late - 8.30, 2 hours later than the usual 6.30 morning call - I went out and find a spring like Cairo morning weather. There are days where I feel pessimistic about the future of this country, but not today.

This weekend I hung out with a friend, who belongs to the high class of Egyptian society and used to have a friend named Dodi who died in 1997 in a fatal car crash in London.  It was interesting to see how the high class live their lives here - it's the same lifestyle lived in the upper strata of society in the Western World.

No, I am not about to go into the tirades about how bad income equalities is in Egypt (for the fact our breakfast probably cost more than a month salary for a lowly government employee with 3 kids) nor frown upon their lifestyle.

I am a capitalist pig afterall. People should be able to spend and live the way they want it to be.

I have little care about income equalities - I think it matters little in a developing world. What I care about is the massive reduction of poverty and improvement of quality of life, not income equality.

"It may sound a bit odd but that's really what I felt in Egypt that I don't feel in my war-torn city; for the first time in 3 years I felt the restrains of government…I told one of my colleagues I feel safe in Baghdad despite the dangers, I may feel afraid of terrorists or random violence but I never fear the government and that's not only how I feel, Iraqis are not afraid of expressing their differences with the authority because we in Iraq have more or les became part of that authority the day we elected our representatives while terrorists and militias are nothing more than temporary phenomenon that unlike constitution and elections have no solid foundations." (Iraq the Model)

"The majority of Indonesian Muslims still believe a secular state is more suitable for the country than an Islamic or Western-style liberal system, a survey found.

But the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) also recorded increasing fears among respondents that fundamentalist groups are systematically working to establish an Islamic state through the implementation of sharia-based bylaws.

A total of 69.6 percent of the 700 respondents (88 percent Muslims) from the 33 provinces said the inclusive Pancasila ideology was the most ideal political system. Only 11.3 percent believed that Indonesia should adopt an Islamic political system similar to that in the Middle East.

"We're rather surprised with this finding," LSI executive director Denny J.A. told a press conference here Thursday. "This corroborates the old belief that Muslims here are mostly moderate.""

(NY Times)

I discovered her last year - since then, it's been a strange, twisted and psychedelic journey. I would not have it any other way.




She might look innocent here, but in reality she's an Ice Cream eating monster.