Today, Crown Prince Abdullah is going to be at the university to attend a conference on the partnership between the university and the the private sector. What I hate about visits of officials is the security regulations. Whenever an official comes, all students are forced to park their cars far away form their usual parking space next to the college. I don’t understand what kind of security plan is this: “To make the place safer, keep all cars as far as possible.” I have a better plan: “To all students: Don’t come to university on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.”

I have added my firs contribution to the Arabic Wikipedia. I have created a page about the Saudi footballer Sami al-Jaber. Now I know some people might say: you couldn’t find anything more useful to add than a bio of a footballer? First of all, I don’t care. And second of all, I can write whatever I want. In other parts of the world, they call such thing freedom.

Connecting Cultures is “an initiative designed to bring young people from the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia together in order to enhance cultural awareness and promote mutual and environmental understanding.”

Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia in 2004 is a report by The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Another great column by Lubna Hussain. Read this:

It really is a sad state of affairs that in a country that claims to uphold the highest of moral values, women are subject to this source of harassment and unpleasantness on a daily basis. My daughter upon witnessing such an event declared, “Mum, I am ashamed to be Saudi.” (…)

Strange indeed that an uncovered face implies soliciting this kind of humiliation. What then of our sisters who are covered from head to toe? Are they spared such lascivious attention? The answer of course is a blanket “no”. If anything, I would venture to profess that they are more frequently victimized than the rest of us as they appear to represent an even greater challenge: The allure of the unknown.

The special language of the new generation.

The FDA forced Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, to stop selling the painkiller Bextra, citing concerns that the drug can cause a dangerous skin condition and is at least as dangerous to the heart as other painkillers.