I occasionally link to Asharq Al-Awsat website to comment on news and stuff, and for you who can read Arabic, and maybe some of you who can’t but were curious enough to take a look, I know that you feel sick every time you visit the website. It is ugly, it is slow, and it could hurt your eyes. I can say for sure that this website is a huge violation to the web design usability rules.

I had enough of that, so I sent an email to the editor-in-chief to complain about the awful state of the website. They did not reply to my email, but about a week after I sent it, they put a banner on the top of their homepage says “Get ready for the new look of our website… Coming soon!”

I don’t know if you ever heard about Rai music, but currently I’m enjoying the latest album of Khaled, the king of Rai, and one of the pioneers who brought this kind of music to Europe and helped to spread it around the world.

Khaled, formerly known as Cheb Khaled, took a long time to make this album, due to some problems with his former producer (Universal, I guess). Khaled wanted to make an album attached to the roots of Rai; while the producer insisted that he should go with the latest trends of Rai, which I think are lousy and dull.

So, he decided to leave the company and sign a deal with a new producer. Khaled stuck to his idea, and the result was impressive. A good album of true pure Rai, with some neat touches of Soul and Jazz. Khaled, who was the first to mix Rai with Pop, Rock’n’Roll and Hip-Hop, worked this time with the National Algerian Orchestra to give this album its original taste.

The album is available at Amazon, and I’m sure this album, alongside the other smash hit album 1,2,3 Soleils, could make a good addition to enrich your music library.

One wise man once said:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

In light of the injustices committed by the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, concerned members of the advertising and media community in Jordan have produced a media campaign (Palestine. Dying to Live.) to mobilize public opinion, to open the world’s eyes to the various violations of basic human rights, in an effort to bring forth the plight of the Palestinians to the Western world, in a language they understand.

Check out the website and the campaign gallery.

(via Subzero Blue)

Infograme, the French game company, will release two retro products this week. The first one, Atari Anthology, is a disc for PS2 and Xbox containing 85 classic Atari games including Missile Command and Pong.

The other one, Atari Flashback, is a plug-and-play game console designed to look like a cross between the two old Atari consoles, the 2600 and the 7800. The new console, equipped with a hard drive loaded with 20 games, will feature the unreleased game Saboteur, which reportedly sat in Atari’s archives for about 20 years.

I’m interested to try the new stuff from Atari. However, I don’t have this nostalgia about them. I could not spend much time with the 2600, which we used to call it simply “Atari,” with no numbers. My cousin had one, and I did not enjoy it that much. My first game console was this Sega Mega Drive, which I do really miss it now.

I was quite sure that the writer of “Cover Your Face Woman!” would receive some reactions from people saying that everything he said was untrue. In this week’s article, the writer continues to introduce us to some new surprises.

The employees of the Grand Mosque will not only shout on women to cover their faces, but they also will be ready to hit any woman who will not be ready to do that immediately! “As shocking as it is, it did happen,” the writer said.

The last three paragraphs state some facts that some people here cannot understand. The “respecting a person’s freedom to choose” concept does not exist in those people’s minds, and I don’t think they will be able to understand it any time soon.

I always thought that people in the West read because they like to read. But a British bookstore owner told Asharq Al-Awsat that most people read just to avoid taking to strangers while they are in cafés or on trains. Weird.

As I take the train two times a week, I read a lot on train. However, I never thought of it as a way to avoid talking with other people. Nevertheless, I don’t like talking to strangers on train. I think that a book will never stop some people from trying to talk to me. They will start with a silly question about the book, and then will go on talking blah, blah, blah.

Sometimes I think that some people here find me weird because I read on train. Reading a book is not something you see everyday in public over here. But reading is good, so I don’t care. I will keep reading, people.

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Happy Eid Everyone!

May God grant peace and prosperity to the whole world!