Oh yeah it’s been a while

I haven’t blogged since 21st of September, been really busy with a few things most importantly my job with Atlantis, which I resigned. At the beginning I wasn’t feeling very good about it, having changed jobs twice in 4 months. Nothing very complicated really, it just wasn’t my thing. Let me simplify it this way, there are are republicans, and democrats, each have goods and bads, some people prefer the first, others like the latter. Nothing wrong with being either, it’s a matter of opinion. I’ve achieved a lot there, most importantly a project I managed with MBC TV where we filmed over 35 reports that aired for 2 consecutive months to approximately 70 million viewers. It was fun working with MBC, gotta love Arabic media. I’ve learned a lot, and at least now I know how important it is not to rush in making decisions that involves my career.

Where am I going? I still don’t know, got some stuff I need to finish, then will definitely be chillin’ for a month at least. I need the rest.

A lot happened in my absence from the blogging scene, interesting stuff that I wanted to blog about but couldn’t because I was very busy.


Obama spoke to gays stressing that a gay family should have the same rights as a normal, sorry I meant non-gay, family. I’m not discussing here my point of view regarding homosexuality, but what I would like to remind Obama is that a straight family contributes to the existence of humanity. It produces more people. A gay family doesn’t. This what makes me believe that a straight family is way more important than a gay one, and hence, they are not equal. It’s math. 


Obama also won the Nobel prize, like Newsweek put it, he got it because he’s not Bush. Well regardless, I think he should’ve not accepted it. Accepting a reward for something one didn’t do is plain stupid, especially if the winner is the most important president in modern history. 


Another thing happened that I really wanted to discuss. David Rohde, a journalist from the Times escaped Taliban after 7 months in captivity.  Make sure you read what he wrote, 5 parts, each around 4 pages. I think he is a hero, he worked hard and took risk with the intention to provide the world with the other side of the story. I’m extremely happy he escaped safe and sound, and I wish death and suffering to every one with Al Qaeda mentality.


I got an invite to Google Wave, unfortunately I didn’t have the time to review the product. But I will in the coming few days. I looked at it briefly, and I have no clue what it does or why it does it.


The Formula 1 Grand Prix took place in Abu Dhabi this weekend, I heard it was amazing and I’m very sad I missed it. I think Abu Dhabi is in the right direction, I mean sports, green research, nuclear plants, metros, universities, they are working smart.

That’s it for now, I need to go to bed, I received an SMS from Dubai Police today asking me to show up to the nearest police station soon because I parked on the pavement 4 days ago. I hope it goes well.

Creative Anti-smoking Ads

I just received the below print ads on email. Fascinating advertisement against smoking. Isn’t Tobacco the most evil industry on earth? enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ethics is Happiness

This blog post is a response to an article I read on Middle Eastern Poles, a blog I’ve been following. 

Thousands of years ago, Plato was trying to analyze the human Soul in order to understand human ethics, he then realized that he can't directly understand it because it's intangible. So in order to solve this dilemma, he looked at the society. Society in his opinion is a representation of human soul, because it represents a group of people and so is a reflection of different types of souls. Those souls group together naturally to form society. Plato split the society into 3 categories (he called them Faculties). 1 is the Faculty of workers, the second is the Faculty of soldiers and the 3rd is the Faculty of leaders.

Plato said that the faculty of workers represent desire. Desire is a very important characteristic of human soul. Workers mostly represent desire because they work really hard to achieve something, to be something, to fulfill their desires. They work hard in order to get what they can’t get easily. For workers, it’s all about staying alive, it’s all about the desire to live and the need to create or achieve.

The second faculty, soldiers, is a representation of emotions. Soldiers exist (in a perfect society) because of the need to protect home and land from the enemy. In big societies, there must be soldiers (naturally) and their dedication and persistence and willingness to fight and even die for the sake of home stems from emotions.

The third faculty Plato referred to was leaders. Leaders are a representation of intellect. In a perfect society, leaders are there to organize soldiers and workers and push both to be better, They stress on education because it elevates the society and makes it a better place.

Now pay attention to the below to understand Plato’s point of view about the human soul.

Society is workers + soldiers + leaders. This means soul is desire + emotions + intellect. Their presence together is perfection, is natural ethics.

If you want a perfect society, then desire, emotions and intellect should coexist in harmony. You cannot have a perfectly functioning society if one of the above characteristics overtakes the other. Portions of the 3 need to be equal. The minute we see in a society (or a soul) more intellect than emotions and desires, or more emotions than desires and intellect, or more desires than intellect and emotions then we have a problem.

This is society. This is human soul.

We as human beings are bound to live with each other, love each other and function with each other.
We are a society. This applies to any group of people, to any family or in other words any relationship.
Love alone (this is my conclusion) is pure emotions and if not controlled by desires and intellect together, it creates problems.

In order to have a healthy family or friendship or relationship with others, or a healthy society, we need a healthy soul. A healthy soul is equally 1 third desires, 1 third emotions and 1 third intellect.

If you have this, you have happiness. If you try to maintain those 3 characteristics in harmony, you have happiness.

21 Favorite Quotes

I’ve been keeping an eye out for quotes. I try to memorize a lot of them when I read, I also have an amazing quotes app on my iPhone which gives me a quote randomly every time I unlock the phone. Quotes inspire me, they make me think and remind me of great people. It’s not easy to say something that the world will remember forever. Anyways, below are the top 21 quotes I came across in the past 8 weeks:

1. "It's better to be quotable than to be honest." - Tom Stoppard
2. "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." - Last words of Pancho Villa
3. "I have often regretted my speech, never my silence" - Xenocrates
4. "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today" - James Dean
5. "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -George Bernard Shaw
6. "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice." - Albert Einstein
7. "Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance" - Will Durant
8. "Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder." - Laurence J. Peter
9. "Wit is educated insolence." – Aristotle
10. "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." John F. Kennedy
11. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" - Mark Twain
12. "This isn't right, this isn't even wrong." Wolfgang Paull
13. "Man cannot live by bread alone. He must have peanut butter" - Bill Cosby
14. "Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives" – Abba Eban
15. "Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down" - Jimmy Durante
16. "I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known." - Walt Disney
17. "I begin by talking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right." - Frederick II The Great
18. "My digital detox has lasted 2 hours. Damn you Steve Jobs." - Chuma Goodwin (No one famous, my old boss and a great friend!)
19. “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” - James Branch Cabell
20. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” – Jesus Christ
21. “Righteousness is good character, and sin is that which revolves in your heart and which you do not want people to know.” – Prophet Mohammad

Google launches Ejabat – an Arabic Q&A service

I just came back from a Google event here in Dubai, where they announced Ejabat, a question and answer service to help people share information. Google Ejabat or (Egabat) is pretty much like Yahoo! Answers and the extinct Ask Jeeves, except that Ejabat is in Arabic. Ejabat is also more organized and easier to navigate than Yahoo! Answers. The product hasn’t been launched in English yet and Google didn’t confirm if they will launch it in English.

I took a look at the website and it’s amazing, simply because Arabic content online is really poor and this product will help increase it. There are questions like “What’s the best car”, “what is the secret behind the beauty of women” and “which European country doesn’t have an army”?, it’s clear there have been a big team populating the service with questions and answers for a while.

All the above are real-life examples of search queries that people write into Google every day, now such queries will return to users various answers that could make more sense than a normal website.

The way it works is pretty simple, you log in, give your self a nick name (in case you don’t want your Gmail ID visible), and then all you have to do is post questions or answer questions.

It’s a growing market over here, and this is why Google have been working hard for the past 3 years. This is also why Yahoo! acquired Maktoob. Yahoo! need to catch up, many others need to.

I had a quick chat today with Wael Ghonim, the regional marketing manager for Google at MENA and he assured to me that the Arabic market is extremely important for them. He added that they are launching some products in Arabic before they launch it in any other language. Example is today’s Ejabat and Google Ta3reeb. Wael was the project lead for Ejabat, and he said that “they will continue to innovate, they will continue to produce products that fulfill the needs of users in the Middle East, and world wide".”

Between Ejabat, Google Translation, Knol, Blogger, iGoogle, Ta3reeb and Gmail I think Google have it covered, almost. YouTube is definitely a service they need to Arabise as well.

Worth mentioning as well that Google today also launched the Arabic version of Google Sites, a service that allows any 1 to create web sites and collaborative pages. Perfect for SMBs and normal consumers.

I'm happy the service is given an Arabic name. I don't like that Arabic blogger is called "blogger" and Knol is literally spelled out "Knol" in Arabic. Companies need to give products names that are relevant to the language, names that make sense. Google are starting to see that.

On a final note, I’m extremely honored for being invited to this event. I’m not a journalist, I’m a blogger, I'm a consumer, and apparently Google consider us pretty important.