August 2004

The Archives

• optical character recognition

  Ingenious Puppetry

  08.31.04 | Permalink | Comment?

  Our mutual friend, Paul K., had the good sense to go on a trip to Poland with Franz Kočka and document the experience.
  Franz is an excellent tour guide to Eastern Europe who had me in stitches. Please go see the pictravelogue here. My favorite entry is this: “He will strive all his life without reaching […]

• univerCity

  Which Way to Mecca?

  08.30.04 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  One more notch in my procrastination belt, I finished the syllabus last night. The first class is tomorrow. What a sad man I am. I have to admit to some serious nervous activity but I pulled through in the end. Once, I had the class structure up, assigning the readings was a lot easier. […]

• imperial watch

  Wish I Was There

  08.29.04 | Permalink | Comment?

  
  

• homistan

  The Yes Prime Minister

  08.28.04 | Permalink | 9 Comments

  Shaukat Aziz is now PM of Pakistan. He was elected to the post at a National Assembly session with 191 votes and no opposition. Which is funny, because, for once in Pakistani history there was the most unified opposition candidate, Javed Hashmi, a man incarcerated by the General for “sedition”. However, Hashmi was not allowed […]

• imperial watch

  Empire Struck Back

  08.27.04 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Is it wrong of me to think that Arundhati Roy is super cute? I think it is. Anyways, she is visiting US (I guess they forgot to cancel her visa) and gave a speech entitled Public Power in the Age of Empire. The speech, in line with her recent public discourse, is largely a challenge […]

• imperial watch

  Keep Out

  08.26.04 | Permalink | Comment?

  As long as we are talking about censorship, I wanted to quickly comment on the Tariq Ramadan case. You may or may not be aware of him - a European intellectual whose work negotiates the twin worlds of European secularism and Islamic philosophy. For all necessary information about him and the charges of anti-Semitism against […]

• straw polls

  The Tipping Point

  08.25.04 | Permalink | 6 Comments

  My theory about the upcoming elections has been that the country cannot remain in such close contestation for too long - that something will happen that will prove to be the tipping point and, well, Kerry will win in a landslide. I believe that (barring any “revelations”), the presidential debates will be that point. Think […]

• homistan

  The Secret Lives of Internet Cafes II

  08.24.04 | Permalink | 12 Comments

  My most popular post seems to be this one which got posted on some desi chat rooms and now I get 50 hits a day from people looking to find pictures of some net cafe action. Not here, people. Nothing to see.
  I want to give an update that, according to today’s Daily Jang editorial, the […]

• better with tablas

  Britney Needs My Uncle

  08.23.04 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Britney was seeking to cast her new video and, apparently, she asked for a Pakistani. She should have called me. Unlike sven, I am not a fan of Ms. Spears talents but I do want Pakistan getting proper respect in soft-core music videos. I would have asked one of my retired elders to lend some […]

• straw polls

  Picking Kerrys in Ohio

  08.23.04 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Good to be back. I have said, in public, that Kerry will win in a landslide; that the country cannot teeter on pinpoint for that long; that the debates (or some new tell-all revelation about Bush) will be the catalyst; that this race is most akin to 1980 with a sitting President bungling up a […]

• optical character recognition

  God Speaks Arabic

  08.17.04 | Permalink | 9 Comments

  A friend send me a link to a review of a new English translation of the Qur’an by Prof. Abdel Haleem of SOAS. The translation is getting some good press and my friend thought that I should use that for my upcoming class. I wish I had know about it sooner because I surely would. […]

• talkies

  Are we shooting people or what?

  08.16.04 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  David O. Russell is one of my favorite directors. I was watching Flirting with Disasters on cable this weekend and laughing my ass off. That guy knows how to film farce.
  Which made his 1999 film Three Kings that much greater. I remember reading a small interview in NYT before Gulf War II, where they asked […]

• holydays

  Promise of Freedom

  08.14.04 | Permalink | 8 Comments

  Happy Birthday, homistans. I was born missing some crucial nationalist bone. Somehow, the nation-state fails to provoke into me any emotion besides disdain. In contradiction, I do love Lahore and I remember many, many conversations with aamir where we imagined fighting the evil invaders to protect our home. But, home was lahore.
  My immediate family suffered […]

• homistan

  Humayun Azad Zindabad

  08.13.04 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  A leading Bangladeshi writer and academic Professor Humayun Azad was found dead in his hotel room in Munich, Germany. Prof. Azad was the recent survivor of a brutal assassination attempt in March. Remarkably, he recovered and was well on his way. He was in Munich to participate in a Bangla writer conference. While the german […]

• homistan

  Imagining Pakistan III: Iqbal

  08.13.04 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  What can I say about Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938)? I went to school at the height of Islamization policies of General Zia. Khol Ankh Zamin Dekh, indeed. In Zia’s Pakistan, and to this day, Iqbal is the ideologue of Pakistan, the imagineer of the Castle of Islam. We read the meagre selections in our textbooks, wrote […]