the amazing Ze Frank video blog

the show with zefrank




... oh it's only a matter of time before the Riaz video blog.
Just remember boys and girls. Making something is always worth more than making nothing. We don't want to be addicted to brain crack now do we?

Day of the Longtail

Bourdain on Beirut

We went to Beirut to film a TV show about the city's newly vibrant culinary and cultural scene. Then the bombs started falling, and we could only stand on the barricades of our hotel balcony and watch it all disappear -- again.

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Mobile Phones in Emerging Markets

A mobile and wireless phone kiosk in Kamapala draws its power from a car battery (in the red box, photo below). Despite its bicyclesque design they were not particularly mobile - one or more tyres were often flat and they remained tethered in one place for the duration of the day.

<link> via wmmna

Bear Attacked!

Link

Tiger Attack!

In certain parts of India, many dozens of people are killed every year due to tiger attacks, both on land and in the water. Here is video of an attack on land.




Link

Butt and Bhatti to the MAX!!!

I realize this isn’t the work of Butt and Bhatti (who dubbed Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan in “Shanghai Noon” in Punjabi) because Butt and Bhatti never cuss. But this is even funnier!

Link

dreams

dreams, originally uploaded by mazen kerbaj.

Can't get enough Pakistani Truck Art

Pakistani Truck Art, originally uploaded by Diagoro.

Here's looking at you kid

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

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Dance Monkey Dance

<movie> via radiointeractive

Hi :)

I went to another country today. I've been many times. Getting around there seems almost natural now. The people there, the things they do are very different from us, yet, I live only an hour away. Different money, politics, language. Very cool. The even cooler part is despite our differences, there are essential things we do as humans that allow us to relate despite our cultural differences.

I went to Ikea (the international sanctuary for contempory western design + style ). There was a person in front of me causing a hastle with the cashier at the check-out, making her upset. By the time I got to the front, the cashier seemed distraught and agitated. I looked into her eyes, smiled sincerely and said "hi" (actually it was "bonjour"). Because she was working like a hard-drive all day, I don't think she thought anybody would take a second out of their daily life to express any depth of human feeling towards her. She felt and a was treated like a drone, but she wasn't a drone, she was a human breathing, living, thinking being. Her existance as a human being was agnoliged and respected all in one action. How powerful such a simple greeting with sincerity can be. It turned her frown upside-down and the day completely around. The agitating, disrespectful incident with the previous customer seemed almost non-existent now.

Why is it that when people converse, they look into each others eyes? Why is it that when they point to themselves, they point to their heart? Why are so many of them so busy that they can't even say hi? to care sincerely, or even pretend to care?

When the cities (hives) and society (culture pool) get to a certain size, rudeness loses it's evidence of consiquences. A person can tell someone off and its okay because they will never see each other again. This action of rudeness and uncaring only breeds a society of pissy, unfriendly, paranoid people, shelled by clashing egos. Life is too short to be afraid. To be unable to show your real self. To set up a fortress around yourself so thick that you can't taste the fresh air.

One of my jobs involves me dealing with ALOT of people, all the time. People generally have a sour attitude until you reveal to them that you are somehow given joy by their presence. People like to feel useful. They like to feel important. It makes them happy. This may be why a large number of people die all within two years after they begin retirement. When it comes to greeting; a sincere smile and the word "hi" can go a very long way. Not only does it make both parties feel good, but it opens up a stream of conversation that has the freedom to grow, to make connections and create something greater. I have gotten several freelance jobs that way. Its the open heart that people are unwilling to do. They think that by exposing themselves it makes them vulnerable. What is there to fear? They will never fall apart if they see that they have never fallen together.

Happy Travels :)

Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?

Link

I can't get enough of Mazen

antoine, originally uploaded by mazen kerbaj.

lorriadda

Colorful Bus, originally uploaded by go2net.

The W 11 Pakistani Tram in Melbourne

Thar she blows!

Complete with Pashto music!

"Maa ki dua Janat ki Hawa!"

http://www.melbourne2006.com.au/In+the+News/20060325+Karachi+tram.htm

http://www.tramtactic.net/W-11/travellers-talk-cat.html

reminds me of a little me

HAPPY EID / 3eedkum Embarak...OKKK look @ my face do i look like i'm enjoying EID...HMMMMMMM ???, originally uploaded by nascity.

freedom flag

<more illustrations>
freedom flag, originally uploaded by mazen kerbaj.

Disturbing

A child’s hatred is the purest and most intense hatred. You teach a child to hate and you create a monster, a cripple and a bigot for life.

Link (Some images are disturbing)

Mazen Kerbaj's Comics

70, originally uploaded by mazen kerbaj.

Lebanese comic artists collection of discourse on the new war.

<link>

no Hanky Panky for you

An Indian version of Celebrity Big Brother will come with a ban on "hanky panky," producers say.

"Participants will be told to keep their hands to themselves," a spokeswoman for production company Endemol India told BBC News.

"India is a conservative society and is not ready for the raunchy scenes that so characterise the programmes in the West," she continued.

<link>

Since when are Indian television veiwers not used to seeing any 'hanky panky'. God knows all I see sometimes is channels full of hankering and pankerenese.

Adidas Commercial

Adidas is a wonderful company. The underdog show manufacturer has a great sense of global affinity to design that the 'other' shoe company lacks.

I love this song... does anyone know who sang this?
Or even what language it is in...

I think it's african jazz (which I would like)

` r

Global Design Forum

Moutamarat has announced that Dubai will host the first Global Design Forum in the region from the 3rd to the 5th of February 2007. On its first year, the event will focus on Industrial and Urban design as well as on the connections between Design, business and creativity.

On its first year, the event will focus on Industrial and Urban design as well as on the connections between Design, business and creativity.

The official programme will have two main platforms; a forum for international and regional Designers, urban planners, experts and businessmen and Design Lounges geared towards free interaction among participants and business networking.

In addition, the role of Design will be celebrated through a series of exhibitions and installations in Dubai to show the impact of Design to the general public.

'Business leaders understand that Design is more than making things look beautiful,' said Khalid Al Malik, senior vice-president of Knowledge and Industry of Tatweer and member of the UAE Design Advisory Board.

<link>

So who is going to join me there?
and does anyone know how to get tickets?

Top 5 Cool Things about being Desi

4. Nicknames
Every person has a nickname. All over the world, it's a variant of their 'good' name. So Michael becomes Mike, Abraham becomes Abe, and Elizabeth becomes Lisa. Now, switch to desiland.

Good Name: Mohammad Nabeel Abdus Sattar Shamsuddin.

Nickname: Bhola.

via mezba's blog <link>

how dare you

via scattered

oh those crazy japanese videos

250

Happy 250th post everyone!

Memory

Sometimes I remember remembering things without actually remembering the thing I think I am remembering. It’s as if there is this flash of color and smell of emotion right before the world turns dark again. The important thing to remember while tiredly treading through is to stand straighter and follow through with your shots.

I have to remember…

to draw while having coffeetop conversations and remember though your hands and not my mind.

to imagine the ball going in when shooting hoops.

to walk while speaking

to stop

Chomsky on Failed States

The joy of possibility is laced with the poison of loss...

Darfur is Dying video game

The idea of a Darfur-related video game came from mtvU, the music video giant's network for university students.

The network has an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur. But last October, executives decided that they wanted to add a new component, something that would hopefully increase the level of student activism.

<play>
<link>

Afghanistani Fashion Show

Zolaykha Sherzad and Isabella Ghidoni held a fashion show in Afghanistan the other day. There's a whole article on the Beeb about how amazing an event it is. Is it though? Why is it amazing that women of any culture would be interested in the lastest and greats "looks" that would be available to them. The assumption that if you wear burka that you cease to care about how you look seems as if it requires a certain naivity. What they fail to realize is that fashionable clothes aren't worn to attract men as much as they are to show off to other women. At least that's my theory.

It does open up an important question in my mind though... Do emerging markets actually care about design? Is that their perception of what design is involved this kind of run way bonanza acesssible only to the rich and wealthy.

<link>

Nationless Media

Books

• Londonstani ~ Gautam Malkani
• The Language of Baklawa ~ Diana Abu-Jaber
• The Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini
• The Elephant Vanishes ~ Haruki Murakami
• How Soccer Explains the World ~ Franklin Foer
• Modern Nomads Magazine ~
  
• Shantaram ~ Gregory David Roberts
  
• Three Cups of Tea ~ Greg Morteson
  
• The Interpreter of Maladies ~ Jhumpa Lahiri
• Funny in Farsi ~ Frioozeh Dumas
• Persepolis ~ Marjane Satrapi
• The Alchemist ~ Paulo Coelho
• Moth Smoke ~ Mohsin Hamid
• The World is Flat ~ Thomas Friedman

Movies

• Lost in Translation ~ Sofia Coppola
  
• Dirty Pretty Things ~ Stephen Frears
  
• The Girl in the Cafe ~ David Yates
  
• Baraka ~ Ron Fricke
  
• Silent Waters ~ Sabiha Sumar
  
• Lord of War ~ Andrew Niccol
  
• Born into Brothels ~ Zana Briski
• L'Auberge Espagnole ~ Romain Duris

Is there anything I am missing?
What other nationless media is out there?

Indian Tapping

<diggnation rocks>

Londonstani

London's second-generation Asians are given the "Trainspotting" treatment in this slang-driven first novel, about four "desis" ("our own word for homeboy") who fight and preen in the backwater borough of Hounslow. Jas, the teen-age narrator, was a "dickless khota" before being taken under the muscled wing of the self-styled gangsta Hardjit, and his painstaking efforts to emulate his cohorts' "rudeboy finesse" are related in illuminating detail: facial hair should look "drawn on with a felt-tip pen" and riding in a Beemer requires staring "out the window like some big dumb dog with a big slobbery tongue." The incessant blend of boyish patois and text-message speak ("we had 2 call Davinder b4 we left dis place, innit") is captivating, but the plot becomes overwrought and absurd when the boys stumble into the world of high-stakes crime. <link>

The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council is a multi-stakeholder council that is working to improve access to employment for immigrants in the Toronto region, so they are better able to use the skills, education and experience they bring with them to Canada.

<link>

Jobs Speech at Stanford

I think i'm about to buy a mac

Nationless Confessions

I've
Run down the steps of the effiel tower
Driven across the united states
Crossed a mountain in a blizzard
Ice skated in the middle of a dersert
Proposed in the middle of crowded street
Danced on rooftops and street corners
Walked against the crowd at rush hour in new york city
Closed my eyes in the middle of concert
Held on the the back of a bus for a free ride
Flirted with every single brown british girl at Heathrow airport
Layed down on the top of a van while being driven all the way back home

what are your nationless confessions?

Modern Nomads Travel Tip #001

Your cellphone will only work abroad if you have a tri-band, or above, GSM cellphone. Verizon and Sprint won't work outside, except maybe Canada and Mexico. Cingular and T-mobile will.
You can call your carrier and ask them to have your phone on with International roaming, but then you will be dipping into your retirement fund in a big way if you do that. $$$

unlock and make sure your cellphone will work overseas.

Conan o Brain in India

Nationless Mobile Home

This is the Nationless Mobile Home. I have recently picked up one of these 'chrome' bags because it is going to serve as my mobile home while I am in Europe this Fall. Its is big enough for my essentials. Clothes + Cash + Camera + Notebook + Sillystring. On the plus side it is weatherproof, theftproof, incredibly comfortable and of course, stylish, but it doesn't make you stand out like a sore thumb. You want to stay low key. Blend in all chameleon-like. On the down side, it has no toilet, no shower, no clean sheets, nor a place to rinse a toothbrush. It does make a nice pillow though.

What is a home to a person who doesn't really have a home? What do they need essentially? Their heart seems to be all that they need to satisfy in order to live. The modern nomad needs a means to staying healthy and get by in a world that is constantly changing. Their home is a place that fuels their passionate curiosity, a storage system for their essentials, and a means of getting by (talent > cash). Currency will open doors for people. Whether they like it or not, the nomad needs to afford being a nomad, but their way of making money is not the same as a paycheck coming to their doorstep in the mail once a week.

Having the means, attitude, and vernacular for having no stable fit in a defined culture is the first step to becoming nationless. A homeless person's goal is to simply get by in life, home or no home. The modern nomad is an explorer who's curiosity helps them find a piece of home in all that they see and experience.

P.S. I love my new bag/home.

Malcom Gladwell talks about being nationelss and race

powered by ODEO

The interviewer is a jerk. Gladwell is very insightful.

Manifesto oF Non-Nationleists (exerpts)

Preamble

For ten years, now, the spirit of non-nationalism has been abroad in the ranks of the Workers' Esperanto movement. Throughout the world, thousands of workers are using the same language, either in groups among themselves, or for their correspondence with comrades in far distant lands. This fact has begotten the idea of the possibility of the working class organising itself in an original manner and of considering new methods in the struggle between the classes.

So far non-nationalism has often been discussed in the organs of the Workers' Esperanto Association, Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, and there was never any very considerable opposition to this new idea. But it was to be expected that some day orthodox internationalists would oppose such heresy. And as a matter of fact for some time already a vast agitation has been methodically undertaken in order to resist the new theory.

Consequently, comrades who are sympathetic towards the idea, but have not a very clear conception of it, may waver. Many, without sufficient consideration, have even identified non-nationalism with a "working-class internationalism". It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to put forward our point of view clearly and to defend it against the attacks of orthodox internationalists.

This has become all the more necessary because if we do not, vigorously oppose our arguments to the sophisms and clichés spread abroad by internationalists, the latter, in the confusion, will succeed in persuading Esperantists that they represent the only evolutionary tendency. Yet, it is easy to show that their internationalism is only a species of opportunism admissible for party leaders who ignore the language problem, but unpardonable among worker Esperantists.

We feel certain, that the practical application of Esperanto for several years on the part of class conscious workers must inevitably lead them, first, to the beginnings of a non nationalist state of mind, and later, to a clear presentation of problems from a non nationalist point of view. We have no doubt that many comrades will find in the following pages the explanation and the confirmation of what they have more or less vaguely felt and thought for a considerable time.

They will no doubt agree with us that a real revolutionary must be capable of thinking ahead. Otherwise he is only narrowly conservative. Worker Esperantists must therefore draw all the logical conclusions which would follow from the general application of an artificial universal language.

We are well aware that our point of view is at present Utopian, since up to the present, Esperanto has not very widely spread. But in the eyes of many who will regard non nationalism as something fantastic, a universal language is also considered Utopian. And yet we Esperantists know, from our own experience, that it is an object capable of realisation, that it is even now a fact, a living fact.

We therefore advance fearlessly with our Manifesto into the ideological arena.

I. INTERNATIONALISM

In a famous Manifesto which appeared 83 years ago the workers of all countries were called upon to unite. With that object in view, several Internationals have already been set up, whose leaders have more or less frequent relations with one another either by correspondence or during congresses; most often through the medium of translators and interpreters. Generally speaking, however, the rank and file, in actual fact, still remain completely separated in national territories, and have no contact whatever with one another except on the battlefields during terrible wars.

Within these national confines the minds of men are so worked upon by the school, the press, and all the other resources of the State, that with the passing of several generations these nationals form, mentally, a real race. It is true that, according to the admission of the specialists themselves, real races, in the biological sense of the word, have not existed, in the so-called civilised countries for several centuries.

According to Frederick Lefevre, one finds, for example, in the short-headed inhabitants of France, descended from ancient stocks, evidence of Mongolian race. And Professor Johann Brunhes has proved that the present day Jews of Bessarabia, of the Ukraine and of Poland are to a great extent Slavs and Tatars, who, a thousand years ago, were converted to Judaism by the political and military influence of the Chazars. Further, these latter were themselves Tatars who had become Jews. The surprising result of this is that the Jews of today in Cracow and Warsaw look more Jewish than those of Jerusalem!

But philosophers and psychologists can rightly speak of "historic races" and of the "souls of peoples". Such "races" and such "souls", are artificial. They do not constitute anything essentially incapable of variation, of modification. They have, as it were, been kneaded by history. Yet there are people, even among those who call themselves revolutionaries, who consider, that the actuality, which is called a nation, is something quite natural, sacred, and worthy of preservation.

Such a point of view is essentially reactionary. Among these men one of the most eminent was Jean Jaurès. In his book The New Army there is a very brilliant vindication of patriotism or nationalism, and of internationalism. Commenting on the famous phrase of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, that "the workers have no country", he explained its real meaning with a wealth of argument, and showed that the authors of the Manifesto were also adherents of the policy which stands for the independence of nations and their right to self-determination.

Marx and Engels, by saying that "the workers have no country" were only stating a fact. Since the workers do not own their right share of the country, it can be argued that they are without a country. But one must not ignore the fact that the authors of the Manifesto immediately went on to add:

«since the working class must first attain political power, must become the national ruling class and itself constitute the nation the national ruling, it is itself so far still national, though not at all in the bourgeois sense»

and a little later in the same work one may read:

«To the extent that the exploitation of one individual by another is abolished, so the exploitation of one nation by another is abolished. With the end of antagonism between the classes within the nation will also end the antagonistic attitude of the nations toward one another.»

We agree entirely with Jaurès that in these words no condemnation of the existence of nations is to be found.

Marx and Engels, therefore, did not help forward their disappearance, and took up a purely internationalist point of view. They were not, then, non nationalists. Jaurès further argued, that even in the capitalist system, the workers have a country. And that, too, is, in a sense, true. Within a national territory a member of the ruling classes and a worker are influenced in much the same way by the same resources of the state. Speaking the same language, through that powerful bond they feel themselves to belong to the same great family. People confined within national frontiers thus acquire a similarity of mind and character; they feel that there is some kind of kinship between them, especially at historic periods as, for example, during wars.

It is in this way that such forms of mental sickness as that which we experienced in 1914 at the outbreak of the war, can come into being. Class combativeness was swept away and forgotten and for the first few months a kind of "holy alliance" prevailed between the classes. Patriotic enthusiasm easily overruled all other feelings, and paralysed the remnants of reason.

Nations are realities; they are facts. To recognise a fact, however, is not to justify it. Religions and epidemics are facts, but their existence is not justified on that account. But it is also a fact that Jaurès and with him Bebel, Lenin (1) and other less famous leaders of the Working-Class Movement, looked upon the nation as something natural and worthy of being defended. Paraphrasing a saying of Francis Bacon, "a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion," Jaurès concluded his argument as follows: "A little internationalism weakens patriotism; much internationalism strengthens it."

"A little patriotism weakens internationalism, much patriotism strengthens it." That very clearly means that internationalism in no way aims at the abolition of nationality in the world. Further, all congresses of the various Internationals have declared themselves for the independence of nations, for the autonomy of all countries.

Internationalism, therefore, is only a system which aims at the setting up of a juridical organisation among the nations in order to avoid conflicts and wars, but which in no way pretends to abolish the national peculiarities constituted by languages, customs, tradition, and so forth.

Internationalists, not all of them, (2) admit the possibility and the desirability of adopting an artificial auxiliary language, such as Esperanto. But they do not agree that national languages, national cultures, and other national sanctities should disappear, or, at least, become archaic, dead things, like the ancient Greek and Roman languages and cultures.
by Eugeno Lanti


<link> (via Tono)

So in reading this it seems that older nationless movements have been socialist ones. I don't this the modern nomadic movement as something that is about denying ones nationality as much much as it is about embracing multiple cultures.

Travel in Style

ApnaSpace

There's nothing desis love more than cashing in on well defined trend. Why write scripts when you can translate them. Why think of an original concept when you can copy one. <link>