Abeer Mishkhas is very angry about the possible new prayer arrangements for women at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, and I think she has every right to be angry. I was going to put some parts of her column here, but the whole thing is worth reading, so check it out. Hatoon Al-Fassi has written about this, too.

Malcolm Gladwell: “This is the age of zero tolerance. Rules are rules.”

NY Times: “Mr. Mahfouz, a slender, modest, shy man who once described himself as “a fourth- or fifth-class writer,” was often called the Egyptian Balzac for his vivid frescoes of Cairenes and their social, political and religious dilemmas.”

RIP: Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, died today at the age of 94.

Instead of watches, many people now use their mobile phones to tell time. I never liked to wear watches, basically because I have thin wrists and watches don’t look good on them. It can also be something that I inherited from my father, who did not wear a watch, but enjoyed a special instinct in telling time despite the absence of timepieces around him.

BBC: “There is a perception that bloggers are sad, joyless people in their underwear who sit in front of their computers all day.” Not true!

NY Times: “The first rule about cooking for astronauts is don’t make anything that crumbles. No one wants to chase a crumb around a space station.”