Year: 2007

Musharraf’s Two Hat Tricks and Pro-BB CNN

Sohaib Athar

Despite my aversion to political commentary, I couldn't help checking out the couple of remaining news channels that are still online. One of those channels has a news ticker saying:

"Chief of the Army Staff Pervaiz Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency…" and immediately afterwards:

"President of Pakistan Pervaiz Musharraf will address the nation anytime tonight".

Wicked.

CNN, on the other hand, in [this] post, thinks that its a euphemised Martial Law, and says "Emergency declared by president" … confusing me on whodunnit.. the President or the COAS? The CNN report seems to be more about portraying BB as a hero than Pakistan actually, claiming that "…Bhutto, who has defied death threats, is working to lead…" and "Bhutto received light wounds, but escaped largely unharmed  [in the suicide attacks]". I had the impression she was safely towed away from the mess in her armored vehicle. Stop confusing me CNN!

I guess I should start watching TV again. :-/

Robert J. Sawyer, Pakistan, Synchronicity and Last Minute Changes

Sohaib Athar1 Comment

Robert J. Sawyer, winner (and multiple times nominee) of Hugo and Nebula awards, has become one of my favorite science fiction authors recently. I was reading one of his novels "Flashback" last week, and noticed a small mistake where it said:

"Islamabad, Pakistan (autotranslated from the original Arabic): In my vision, I have two arms-but today, I have only one (I am a veteran of the India-Pakistan ground war)."

The above sentence implied that Arabic (and not Urdu) is the language spoken in Pakistan, which comes as no surprise as a lot of Americans think we are part of the Middle Eastern Arab nations (I've been called a towel-head in jest more than once before I corrected their misconceptions).

Read more “Robert J. Sawyer, Pakistan, Synchronicity and Last Minute Changes”

Interview at PakSpectator

ReallyVirtual

The Pakistani Spectator interviewed me last week, you can find the interview here [link]. Though I repeatedly denied being a blogger of the interviewable sort, they wouldn’t listen. Thanks for interviewing me TPS and Ghazala, you made me actually think about things – my brain can use whatever exercise it can get.

The word ‘spectator’ reminds me, I am spectacularly spectacled again. I kept hoping the headaches and blurred vision was somehow Microsoft’s fault (the Visual Studio default font does suck, and the Microsoft Reader font isn’t much better either, ClearType and all) but the ‘bug’ was at my end. I and got myself a new pair of eyeglasses today. Unlike Seth Godin, I just went out and bought the first frame that looked half-decent to me.

Happy Birthday LOGO

ReallyVirtual

logo-square

It was LOGO’s 40th birthday a couple of days ago. Interestingly, last week, I installed the free version from Microsoft on my laptop and played for a few hours with my son (who is four, has his own computer and prefers playing games to watching TV). We made lines, triangles and squares with turtle graphics, and he grasped the idea of turning and moving the turtle quicker than I expected – I hope its in his genes.

Read more “Happy Birthday LOGO”