Mo3jam ( معجم ) is a user-generated dictionary of colloquial Arabic.
Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images into a single pleasant and easy-to-use interface.
The word Shahi is Saudi Arabic for tea!
Qur'an Verses is an Islamic application on Facebook that allows the user to browse and search the Qur'an in many languages, explore explanations and exegeses, and listen to various beautiful recitations of the Islamic holy text.
Created in the summer of 2007, it is the most highly used Qur'anic application on Facebook.
by Kareem on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 5:15pmNo Comments
The National carried a piece on the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s visit to a child abuse victim, who was taken to the hospital by parents who claimed her horrific injuries were sustained by falling off a bicycle:
In a statement, Abu Dhabi Police said the girl had been brought into hospital by her father, who lived in Bani Yas, bleeding and suffering from burns, with knife cuts and bruises over her body.
Her father had initially said the youngster had fallen off her bicycle, police said, but a medical examination confirmed she had been “severely abused”. The father and stepmother were subsequently arrested by police.
One can only hope that such a high profile visit by one of the country’s leaders lends enough confidence to abuse victims to speak out, and not bear the suffering in fear and solitude.
by Kareem on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 10:47amNo Comments
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
Egypt’s state-run media is continuing to ignore today’s looming strike and protest called by the April 6 Youth movement and opposition groups Kefaya, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Ghad, led by the regime’s ex-political prisoner Ayman Nour.
The Dubai Chief of Police Lt. Dahi Khalfan is claiming that the assassination of Sulim Yamadayev was a revenge killing ordered by Chechnya’s Deputy Prime Minister Adam Delimkhanov.
Highlights of Lt. Khalfan’s tirade, reported in The National (which has had excellent coverage of the entire saga):
“The truth is that a big Chechen official, Adam Delimkhanov, the vice prime minister of Chechnya, has been identified as the mastermind behind the assassination of Sulim Yamadayev,” Lt Gen Tamim said at a press conference in Dubai police headquarters.
“It is clear to us that the assassination of Sulim Yamadayev was a dirty operation of settling scores, of a purely Chechen making, which has been dragged into foreign grounds,” he added.
by Abdullah Arif on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 6:58amNo Comments
This past week I noticed traffic increasing towards Shahi, so I thought I’d implement some enhancements I recently had in mind, now that the service is getting more attention on Twitter and blogs.
The update allows you to switch between image feeds right within the image panel so you don’t have to repeat the query more than once. It’s good for quickly checking which image feed is most relevant to the definition. Shahi is now also slightly more fault-tolerant, so if let’s say Flickr fails to return any pictures, Shahi will immediately switch to Google Image Search, and if that fails, finally attempt with Yahoo! Image Search.
by Kareem on Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:28pmNo Comments
The BBC has a story on a report by Cage Prisoners, “which campaigns on terror detention”, pointing out that British intelligence involvement in the torturing of detainees was “widespread”.
It did not require an education in international humanitarian law to know that what we were seeing was unlawful; instinctive moral revulsion precisely mirrored what is the law. This was the unlawful trafficking of human beings; it was not a manifestation of the Geneva Convention at work, it was neither deportation nor extradition, far worse, it was transport from a world and to a world outside the reach of the law, and intended to remain so.
The report describes specific cases where detainees were sent to other countries to be tortured. Who’s on the shameful list?
Egypt. Jordan. Syria. The United Arab Emirates. Pakistan.
Obama spoke Sunday at a luncheon for leaders of the EU’s 27 nations in Prague. He said the West should seek greater cooperation and closer ties with Islamic nations. He said letting Turkey into the EU would be an important sign of those efforts.
The comments came one day ahead of Obama’s visit to Turkey, his first to a predominantly Muslim nation, as president. Needless to say all eyes will be on Istanbul.
by Kareem on Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:01pmNo Comments
Wired Science published the results of a study of poverty and stress on children’s mind development:
At the same time, scientists have studied the cognitive abilities of poor children, and the neurobiological effects of stress on laboratory animals. They’ve found that, on average, socioeconomic status predicts a battery of key mental abilities, with deficits showing up in kindergarten and continuing through middle school. Scientists also found that hormones produced in response to stress literally wear down the brains of animals.
In lab animals, stress hormones and high blood pressure are associated with reduced cell connectivity and smaller volumes in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. It’s in these brain regions that working memory is centered. Evans and Schamberg didn’t scan their human subjects’ brains, but the test results suggest that the same basic mechanisms operate in kids.
McEwen also noted that, at least in animals, the effects of stress produce changes in genes that are then passed from parent to child. Poverty’s effects could be hereditary.
The cycle of violence and destruction could be more literal than we bargained for.
More than 3,000 children and teenagers were the victims of accidents on the streets of the capital in the past five years, police figures show, prompting renewed appeals for better protection for young people travelling in vehicles and playing on streets.
The figures reveal that 3,477 people under the age of 17 were involved in road crashes between 2004 and 2008, making the age group the second-most likely to be caught up in accidents in Abu Dhabi. The most likely to be involved were people aged 17 to 40.
The figures are horrifying, and they’ve been increasingly in the news recently as a result of the fallout from the deaths of children being dropped off by their school buses.
by Kareem on Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 10:43pm4 Comments
The UN published its annual World Population Prospects report, showing declining birth rates in a number of Middle Eastern countries, with an alarming 1.95 average children per woman in the UAE from 2005-2010.
The global replacement fertility rate, which is the number of children born to every woman to guarantee 0 global population growth, is around 2.3.
