How You Can Help Gaza

The folks at 7iber and Action Committe are organizing a drive to help out the people in Gaza. So if you've been watching the news the last couple of days, and are feeling frustrated and helpless and would like to do something, here's your chance:

Drop off clothes (specifically blankets and jackets) that are in good condition or canned goods (except meats) at Cozmo or Books@Cafe tomorrow, December 30th between 6.30 and 8.30 PM. Try and package your donations in boxes or at least double-bag them. They will be delivered to the Hashemite Charity Commission, which is the only convoy allowed to cross the border this week. Here's the link for the facebook event.

Also if you’re looking to give blood (which is in demand right now), you can go to the places mentioned in the list below.

- National Blood Bank branch, behind the Khaldi Hospital, just off the Fourth Circle
- University of Jordan Hospital, contact: 00962788607870

Full details at the Black Iris.

On Ghaza

"There is only one difference between the attacks between Israel's IDF forces and Hamas's rocket launches: Israel's are effective. Both sides fired rockets/missiles into regions populated by civilians. Both sides claim their opponent's civilians to be legitimate targets because of their support for their respective regimes. Hamas fires 20-90 kg unguided rockets. Israel fires Air-to-Ground precision guided missiles in the 130-150 kg range. It should not be surprising that one side produces an irritant while the other produces death and destruction."

Israel Versus Gaza: A Ridiculous War Dictated by a Lack of Alternatives

And while over 200 Palestinians are dead and over 400 injured, you got Israel vowing to expand the attacks and Washington calling on Hamas to stop the rocket attacks, attacks that are so inaccurate and so ineffective that sometimes end up killing the Palestinians themselves, but are being used as an excuse for the Ghaza attacks. The Israelis come off looking as poor and helpless, and that all they're doing is defending their people. How many more people must die in the name of this power struggle?

Christmas Pictures!

Christmas around Amman:

A couple of pictures around town that I managed to snap whenever I had the camera on me.
































































Christmas around the house:

And some pictures I took last night.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I'll post some pictures later but for now I have a turkey dinner to get to! Have a wonderful christmas everyone and enjoy the holiday :D

Some Professor Claims Revealing Clothing Leads to Breast Cancer

Check out this ridiculous piece in today's Alghad. Some professor (professor, NOT doctor) is claiming that there is a direct relationship between the type of clothing and breast cancer, and that women who wear revealing clothes (who knows what's his definition of revealing clothes), are more prone to breast cancer. According to him, cells in the breast area receive more energy than other cells (huh??) which would lead to cancer. How this relates to clothes in any way is not mentioned.

But hey, I'm no doctor, so to give him the benefit of the doubt I did a little googling, perhaps I will find something that will remotely support his claims. Nothing. But a little googling about Mr. Professor reveals that he studied mechanical engineering (yes, not medicine) in the Hashemite university (no not any German university anywhere, for whoever wrote this sad excuse for an article), then went on to study biomedical engineering (again, not medicine) and is very-religiously affiliated to say the least.

He unveiled his revolutionary findings in a lecture that he gave yesterday at the Jordanian Society for Scientific Research, which is quite ironic (and pretty sad) given the fact that he made no research nor came up with ANYTHING to support whatever theory he has to scare women into dressing conservatively in a shameless attempt to get women to blame themselves for contracting such a terrible illness.

Who allows these people to lecture? Can anybody just come up with a piece of junk theory and go preach to ignorant people about it? (just check comment 2 to see how they can have an impact). And then we go reporting it as actual facts? This is downright infuriating. If this is our idea of scientific research, then boy are we in over our heads.

Thabahtoona, Lay Off GJU!

Thabahtoona, The National Campaign for Defending Students' Rights has issued yet another statement criticizing GJU, the German Jordanian University, this time because of the decision to remove it from the unified admission program. This means that students have to apply to the university separately, unlike with other public universities, where the student would send a list of choices of preferred universities and majors in descending order to the coordination office, and then depending on the student's average, the number of students applying, etc, the student will be accepted in one of the choices they have listed.

Now before I delve into the reasons the university it is not listed along with other universities I'll give an overview about it. GJU, where I'm a second year student, was founded only 3 years ago. It is partly funded by the Jordanian government and partly funded by the German government. Since the official campus near Madaba is still under construction, the temporary location is at the Royal Scientific Society, in 3 buildings that are rented by the university.

The reason why it is not part of the unified admission program is very simple: the university's fees and programs are different from other universities, and when it was included, a large percentage of students who registered backed out later because they were surprised by the requirements and the fees. The higher fees, another subject of criticism, are attributed to the different educational approach used by the university. The maximum capacity of students to eventually be reached is only 5000, a maximum of only 30 students are allowed in one class, students are obliged to study German and must spend their fourth year in Germany, to name some of the features that distinguish the university.

I'm not saying this to promote the university (believe me, I'm not one to do that), nor to criticize the campaign, because they do have a good purpose. But I'm sure there are other more important things to push for. Wastas in universities, improving the quality of education itself or biased professors off the top of my head. So lay off!

Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoes At Bush!

Hahahahaha! I think he just articulated the feelings of millions around the world.

Extremely Immature Post

Yes, very immature I know, but I literally teared up from laughing at this!




h/t: Qusai Sawalha

This Vacation's To-Do-List!

I finished my morning lectures a while ago, and my vacation has officially started. While I look forward to a 10 day vacation just like any other normal person, I'm kind of dreading the whole spending time with your family thing. Don't get me wrong, I love my family and everything, but 10 days of family time? No, thank you! (at this point I kinda wish my parents didn't know of this blog, but oh well.)

So anyway I made this list of stuff to do over the vacation. I make to-do-lists all the time, even though I almost never do anything I had planned to do, but I feel like I need to have a list. This vacation's list includes:

• Finish reading the Divine Comedy. I've been meaning to read it for quite some time now and so I downloaded the story version along with the the poem, since it's easier to follow. It includes Gustav Dore's illustrations which are just fascinating.

• Finish 1984 by George Orwell or at least get back to reading it. I started reading it back in June, but I only finished like 30 pages and then forgot about it. I'm not a very good reader I admit it, I'm very easily distracted.

• Put up the Christmas tree! Although I absolutely hate New Year's (something about the pressure of having to make resolution and new starts), I love Christmas time, and I get very excited about putting up the tree and watching the Christmas movies and making the cookies! But the weather has got to stop being sunny and warm. Start raining! We're in December!

• Watch a lot of TV. And I mean a lot. Maybe have a Gilmore Girls marathon with a couple of friends.

• Crash my friends' houses for Eid treats :D

• See if I can sign up for some activity with Cycling Jordan or Terhaal or something, seeing as I'm a member in their facebook groups and they send me messages each week about the activities they're offering but I always delete them because I think I never have the time.

• Finish the multitude of assignments I have to get done, which I just know I'm going to end up doing on the very last day. My procrastination habits will never die.

• Blog a little more often perhaps :$

So what will you be doing this vacation?

What Is Up With Zain?!

The network I mean. Lately, I haven't been able to make a decent phone call either because of the error in connection which forces me to dial again, or because I can't hear anything from the other caller until I step outside or something. And it's not even Eid yet! Anybody else having problems?