“When there is no freedom, there is no creativity.” – Jordan Writers Association President, Soud Qbeilat, on the jailing of 27-year-old Jordanian poet Islam Samhan, who has been charged with insulting Islam and the Koran as well as violating the Press and Publications Law for incorporating Koranic verses in to his love poems. If found [...]

If an everyday houseplant had the ability to blog, what would it say? Unfortunately I have no idea because the houseplant in question blogs in Japanese. The plant interface system, which is built around technology developed by Satoshi Kuribayashi at the Keio University Hiroya Tanaka Laboratory, uses surface potential sensors to read the weak bioelectric [...]

24 hours. 12,800 Bloggers. 14,053 Blog Posts. 13,498,280 Readers. 17 Top 100 Blogs. Thousands raised in micro-loans. Picked up by the Washington Post, The Guardian, Arab News and Reuters just to name a few. Very cool. Hats off to all the Jordanian bloggers that participated. POVERTY…

This piece of news is just oh so ironic. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has condemned violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians harvesting their olives as a “dangerous escalation”. There have been several reports of attacks in recent days, a week into the yearly olive harvest. But settlers have accused Palestinians of burning their own olive [...]

“I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the [Republican] Party say… such things as ‘Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim’. Well the correct answer is, ‘He’s not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian’. But the really right answer is, “What if he [...]

SNL proves why it is still probably the best political satire on American TV (after the Daily Show). After weeks of being impersonated by Tina Fey, Governor Palin shows up on SNL and watches the impersonation live with show creator Lorne Micheals backstage. Soon enough, Mark Wahlberg shows up looking to beat up cast member [...]

I found this bit of news pretty interesting. While attempting to create the world’s longest sandwich, a stunt conducted under the guise of encouraging Iranians to eat healthier, Iranians began doing just that. Before Guinness officials could finish measuring, the hungry and chaotic crowd began devouring the rare and expensive ostrich-meat-filled sandwich, completing it in [...]

Thank God it’s Thursday. Here’s another pre-weekend feel-good post. a cap·pel·la (adv): Without instrumental accompaniment.