15.10.07

Londistan film festival .. whoopee!

Here you go check the list.

My tendancy of revelling in such visually indulgent poncage will be hampered by sever deadlinage over the coming weeks, constrained by wallatage and enabled by the absence of ramadanage.

11.10.07

Curious Wiki entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmila_Bose

Somebody somewhere is playing a broken record. As a consequence wikipedia has been graced with what i am going to call 'an imprint of Jionijom'.

My favourite part is where the lady in question (cheeky political economist) is linked to Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

Here goes.

She is married to a Brit (Alan Roslin), who works for a company (Tata) that tried to do business with a country (bangladesh) in a field (industry) where for a while there was a politician (Moulana Nizami, transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture because he was doing well and impressing people) who is hated by many but didn't exactly help Tata's bangladesh agenda.

It is a great acheivement of conspiratorial creativity to get; the colonial yoke, the indian capitalist interest, the helpless hapless country and the secularists favourite enemy all in a few lines.Oh... and in case you cared they have three sons.

Only on the internet.

10.10.07

Bangladeshi Robot ate my homework miss.

Feroz Ahmed Siddique, a grad student from International Islamic University in Chittagong, creates a rather funky robot.

video

Palestine Mapped

Georeferencing historical maps of Palestine and draping them over the current spatial configuration has been a dream of mine for a while. But as usual, I'm all talk and no action. Maps are very powerful documents which allow the writer to convey layers upon layers of heritage to the reader. Its related to one of the prongs of my research methodology in Bangladesh, and i'm so happy that this group have started repopulating the social memory of Palestine by exploiting the public facility of Google Earth.

here is the link to Palestine Remembered

7.10.07

New word - Dissentary

An affliction that infects the systems of language and broadcast causing uncontrollable releases of dissent which then catalyses suspicion, rebellion and self pleasuring intellectualism in the world. A central banker's nightmare and an anarchist's dream.

Dissentary is like a layer of noise that confuses pure messages from people to people. Sometimes it causes signals created for a closed loop system to be compromised. The jury is out as to the sequence of the relationships between democracy, dissentary and literacy in different cultures. The jury has gone to the phamracy to pick up a prescription.

Dissentary is difficult to treat and is contagious. It causes people to speak outside their knowledge and convinces them that an opinion on everything is desirable and credible. Integrating a whole suffering population with respect to variables such as temperance, creativity and utility regularly yields low values.

Dissentary has self perpetuating logic. Once infected the patient believes that expressing their fragrant dissent all over the place 'generates a discussion', which in itself is a 'good thing'. Dissentary patients are in the habit of supporting each other's delusional notions of their own value. Mutual infection is one of the toughest strains to purge.

Web 2.0 has enable dissentary as did mobile telephony. I have been carrying it for a while now.

You have been infected.

Lurgee.

Injected

Rally for Iraq




6.10.07

Why to they live and live so easy when they are so evil?

Question - How come's these Bangladesh politicians have such weak hearts that they keep needing hospital treatment when in jail? what a bunch of sissies!
Answer - They don't have hearts, what made you think they have hearts? Look at what they did to the country.

There's no arguing with that. People with a soft spot for the corrupt political formations and classes strike me as a little insidious.... self interested and suicidal.

Vanishing from the future, not the past, is too good for them. Its wrong to vanish them from the past, as we must understand their evil and learn not to be like them. They and their families must be made to feel shame, and we must be ashamed of them. Over the past few decades, and jealousy, foolishness and superficiality have grown hand in hand with democracy, the old values have been inverted in this struggling muslim society.

The systems of punishments and rewards must be firm with them. If they big girls or old flatulent men, it makes no difference. Perhaps the enforcers could experiment with hadd punishments at the top, for the cases of loot and plunder where there was no need, just greed.

But then I have another question.

How would they prevent their bangles from dropping to the floor?

3.10.07

Ian Brown calls home the soldiers

Unpretentious and straight to the man.

The paternal grandfather of the Bangladeshi Nuclear Establishment Dr Anwar Hossain is no longer with us...

innalillahi wa innailayhi rajiun.

A reflection on the life of a very intelligent institution builder , by my favourite advisor to the CareTaker Government in Bangladesh, who was a)recruited by him , b)regarded him as a mentor and c) presumably went to his janaza.

Marhum Dr Anwar Hossain won a Gold medal from Dhaka University in 1950. His specialisms were nuclear energy, remote sensing (thats acquiring and interpreting imagery of the earth from above and solar energy.

His approach to solar energy was NOT sissymarka, and his involvement in Remote Sensing and Nuclear issues were at the highest national levels. If we valued the sciences in a more balanced way wrt petty capitalism, poetry, literature and NGOgiri, and trusted these folks with more resources, they would have done us proud. We need to make more of our legendary scientists and engineers, to inspire the youth and balance the noisy irrationals(like me) who have little or nothing to contribute but insist upon having our foolishness represented.

I wish i could have learnt from him directly, might have even been more inclined to have stayed in physics if i could have seen such a trail blazer in action. Here's an abstract of a paper of his in Physics Review of 1957.

Allah grant him Jannah, his family and close ones comfort, us the living more of these world class constructive sorts and bangladesh and the ummah the social technique with which to nurture them.

Dr CS Karim recollects and takes stocks of the man's virtues in his obituary, im listing some.

Decisive
Disciplined
Scrutinising of documentation
Encouraging
Frustration busting
Communicative (distinct from drunken abuse of eloquence)
Accessible to and engaging with the humble and the noble
Brave (distinct from opportunistic or foolhardy)

One thing i wonder about is how he came to become chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1976. As an admirer of the virtues of the Old BNP (an identity which i have pinched and adapted from a respondent of mine). I naively assume that his talents were seen and integrated into the nationally utilised stockpile of intellectual goods by the late General Zia. Assume, because there is a pattern that I'm only just beginning to see emerge through observing aged accomplished national expertise as it passes on into the akhira, hobbles to and from the mosque, or nostalgically recollects the tough days when knowledge institutions were built from tinsheds, ingenuity and intellectual virility, rather than air conditional development dolarism.

Fitting tributes?
Annual lecture
Scholarship/endowment for physics research administered by the BD atomic commission (not DU because they are mean minded).
A decent writup in the Banglapedia.
Documentary on his life by the cheeky chappies at banglavision perchance?

29.9.07

A place worthy of the name Salahudin

Tonight's tarawi was so juicy, that i was sad when it was over. 8 rakats of beautiful qirat refreshing, no machine gunning here, no race to finish a sipara. The venue, the Salahudin mosque of Paddington, arranged a loving iftar but we didn't really stay for it (eclectic mix of soup and biryani). A small mainly kurdish community of humble people built this institution, its a modest 3/4 storey converted house job. Cute and unpretentious, no girly bits, this jamat had *the love*.