'Ender's Game' is going to become a video game soon. It is probably one of the best sci-fi novels/short story of the last century, and like 'Lord of the Rings', it is bound (no pun intended) to be discovered and re-discovered by each new generation. If you haven't read it, you should download buy a copy and add it to the top of your reading queue (you do have a queue, right?). Here's the news on the Orson Scott Card official website. The game is going to be based around the "war-room" from the novel, so its probably going to be a lot like a free-form Quake III Arena CTF in zero g. Sounds fun.
Iraqi Children are Dying – Confidently
The American government is intent on justifying America's war against children terror by any possible means, but this 'research' funded by the US Military is a sad joke. It claims that the invasion boosted the self-esteem of Iraqi teenagers. Ofcourse, they are still dying, but at least they are dying honorably. As we have been American allies for all these years, so perhaps the US Army can come and raise our self-esteem too, we need it and our overlords owe us that much! 'Redacted', by the way, was a thought-provoking movie that should be required watching for all American allies.
Desktop Tower Defense – An Inspiration to Young Entrepreneurs
DTD turned one week old recently. I used to play a lot of Desktop Tower Defense (or DTD as it is more commonly known) when it was launched and went crazily viral, thanks to a bunch of popular blogs that covered it.
Paul and Dave, the two guys behind DTD, shared the figures (100,000$) that they have earned in the first year of this small but addictive game on their blog. They also shared the story of the creation of DTD. It is a must read for the young web entrepreneurs of Pakistan (and elsewhere). This one small flash game enabled them to quit their day jobs and start their own casual game firm by the name of Casual Collective. So go read it!
How to Bring Peace to Pakistan
The Pakistani Flag is Unislamic!
Before I can explain why, I must mention that our Government of Pakistan thinks that the flag was designed by Jinnah, while other sources say it was Syed Amir-uddin Kedwaii. We need to get our facts right so that we can blame whoever designed it.
In the centre is a white crescent moon, representing progress, and a white five-pointed star, representing light and knowledge. The flag symbolizes Pakistan’s commitment to Islam, the Islamic world and the rights of religious minorities.
But, it looks like the flag of our “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” is not really Islamic! The star and crescent symbols that are normally associated with Islam are really the remnants of sun/moon/sky worshippers, as this about.com page explains (and I completely agree with it). They say:
The crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years. Information on the origins of the symbol are difficult to ascertain, but most sources agree that these ancient celestial symbols were in use by the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia in their worship of sun, moon, and sky gods. There are also reports that the crescent moon and star were used to represent the Carthaginian goddess Tanit or the Greek goddess Diana.
So even though a lot of Muslims worshipped Diana too (and a couple of them wanted to create demi-gods with her), that is no excuse to adopt this symbol to represent Islam. So how did it begin? The page explains:
It wasn’t until the Ottoman Empire that the crescent moon and star became affiliated with the Muslim world. When the Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, they adopted the city’s existing flag and symbol. Legend holds that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Taking this as a good omen, he chose to keep the crescent and make it the symbol of his dynasty.
So not only are we using unislamic symbols that used to represent false gods, we adopted this symbol on the whim of an emperor who took a dream as a good omen. I think our flag was copied from Turkey too, and even though the Turks are ‘recovering’ from Islam and are embracing ‘enlightenment’ in the form of skirts, bars and other hedonistic pursuits, we are still stuck with the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. Its time we changed that. In fact, a lot of Muslims reject this pagan icon on this very basis. I never knew that!
Based on this history, many Muslims reject using the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The faith of Islam has historically had no symbol, and many refuse to accept what is essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.
So what can we do about it? Let us go back to basics like the true ‘fundamentalists’ we really are. Here’s the Sunnah:
The early Muslim community did not really have a symbol. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islamic armies and caravans flew simple solid-colored flags (generally black, green, or white) for identification purposes. In later generations, the Muslim leaders continued to use a simple black, white, or green flag with no markings, writing, or symbolism on it.
So before we use this new-found knowledge to fix a few flags, here is the link to the original page that I have stolen the quotes from [link].
Redesigning the Flag of Pakistan
We all know that the “progress, light and knowledge” talk is BS, so, let us attempt to fix the blunder made by our ancestors, and see what our flag should have looked like. Here is the flag as we have right now:
Let us remove these pagan symbols from the flag first of all:
This already looks much better. Now if we decide to go one step further, we can also try to see if separating religion from state can really bring peace. Green is universally though of as the color of Islam. Since we don’t really follow Islam as we should (or at least, I don’t), so like our hearts, let us remove that symbol from our flag too. This is what we end up with:
Instant peace!!
This is not just the universally accepted flag of peace, it is also one of the original flags of the Prophet. Islam, as we know, is supposed to be the religion of peace, so the white flag (derived above) is a better option for Pakistan on more than one levels.
In the next section, we will help out our other Muslim brothers.
Removing Pagan Icons
Here are a few ‘before and after’ flags of the Muslim(ish) nations – namely Algeria, Azerbaijan, Comoros, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan (already done), Tunisia, Turkey, Turkemenistan and Uzbekistan, minus the star and crescent:
A few countries end up with identical flags, and will probably need to redesign them, but that is somebody else’s problem, not mine.
Credits: About.com for this invaluable information, and my neighbor’s wireless signal that allowed me to spend “the dark hour” on this ‘research’.
Bomb Blast in Islamabad Today
An italian restaurant in Islamabad that had the misfortune to be a popular foreigner hangout was blown up by a planted bomb a few hours ago. You can read all about it on google [link] so I won't regurgitate the facts here, but I just need to get a few thoughts off my chest, that came to my mind after hearing the news.
Firstly, the terrorists are finally getting some common sense and not blowing themselves up – which is bad new for us. Secondly, how come nobody has taken the responsibility for the last few bomb blasts?! Normally, Taleban/Al Quaida etc. rush forward and tell why they did it, but unless I have missed some important news, these attacks are the work of an anonymous peace-hating terrorist entity. Why aren't Al-Quaida/Taleban etc. being blamed explicitly this time? I thought their sole purpose of existence was to take the blame for terrorist attacks, bombings, floods and earthquakes etc. Thirdly, can we please stop "strongly condemn"ing these attacks please, its getting irritating now.
Bell Canada was researching a possible outsourcing setup (which would have turned into a big thing eventually, them being Ma Bell and all) a couple of months ago, but they dropped the idea right after the GPO blast happened. I know of two small software shops whose investors have lost their confidence in Pakistan and are pulling out of here next month – and the security situation played a significant part in driving them out. The last time I saw a similar mass exodus was post-9/11, when Align Technology pulled out of Lahore and left 1000 or so odd people jobless in Lahore, with an expertise that had no other potential employers (virtual orthodontics treatment).
With this latest attack aimed at the foreigners, we won't exactly be attracting more international business, which is a real pity. Perhaps the indian IT industry has hired this new generation of freelance terrorists to push the tiny share of business that comes to Pakistan back into India. Yep, that's one good scapegoat.
We don't need to be bombed back to the stone ages by the US of A, they can save their bombs for Iraq and Afghanistan. We are a self-sufficient nation and will gladly do the job ourselves TYVM.