Partial Solar Eclipse in Pakistan today!

Greetings everyone ...

While Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, Mongolia, Libya, Togo, Nigeria, Chad etc. (mainly countries in Africa, Central Asia & Europe) experience a full solar eclipse, I am stuck with a partial eclipse in Pakisan, which I cannot see unless of course I am interested in a permanent damage to my retina or partial blindness or something of that kind ... thats what the doctors are saying at least ... they recommend you to build up a pinhole camera (instructions to build one in the same link) ...

Or use solar glasses, if you can get them, but they definitely cannot be replaced by sunglasses.

Wikipedia , as always, gives good information on the entire situation so do not forget to check it out. Check this site too, apparently created solely for the 2006 solar eclipse. And you can watch the actual event over here, sadly not live, but one hour later than the event.

The myths and rituals of eclipses are fascinating to read ... and I loved this article : 'Solar Eclipse in History and Mythology'

Gotta go now ...

J.R.R. Tolkien: A biography by Humphrey Carpenter

I got this book about two-three weeks ago at the Lahore Book Fair but tried hard to keep myself away from it. Why, you’ll ask. I actually have a book reading obsession syndrome or something of that sort and I do not mean it at all in a positive way. What happens is that when I start reading a book, I just keep on reading it on and on even if my finals are a week away and if the stars are too much against me I am carried by an uncontrollable reading ride and start on another book, even if I’ve actually read that book before. I do not have the power to control. Hope I am able to cultivate it soon otherwise I am surely a goner. So, if there is a book fair in town, its actually bad news for my studies.

Anyway, I finally succumbed and read it and quite surprisingly without skipping a page or two in between. When my mind reviews the word ‘biography’ I get a dull, cheerless feeling, that of reading a half monotonous account of a person’s life ( I haven’t at the moment gone onto reading biographies much). But this one goes on like a story. His birth in Bloemfontein, South Africa, his unusual flair and love for languages at an early age, his formative four years at Saremole Hill (which as the author says is perhaps a model for Hobbiton), his school, then going on to become a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and of course the fashioning of his Middle-Earth and its languages; all of it is brilliantly told in a perfect, savoury language. I would say I loved it.

It tells of the history behind the stories, influences of Finnish, Icelandic on his stories and languages. The story of Turin in the Silmarillian is actually an amalgamation of the Finnish Kalevala(description from the author: Finnish Kalevala or the Land of Heroes, the collection of poems which is the principal repository of Finland’s mythology) containing a story of Kullervo, who unknowingly commits incest and then throws himself on his sword, and of the Icelandic legend of Sigurd killing the dragon Fafnir. It’s fascinating to know!

And besides that I got to know, curious little fascinating facts: like the initial hero of Lord Of the Rings was a hobbit named Bingo (after a set of koala bears, 'the Bingos', his children had) but as the story took on a more serious and a grander tone, the name was changed to Frodo who was initially just a companion of Bingo. And how there was this postcard he got on his return from his journey to Switzerland, and on it was “a reproduction of a painting by a German artist, J. Madlener. It is called Der Berggeist, the mountain spirit, and it shows an old man sitting on a rock under a pine tree. He has a white beard and wears a wide-brimmed round hat and along cloak. He is talking to a white fawn that is nuzzling his upturned hands, and he has a humourous but compassionate expression; there is a glimpse of rocky mountains in the distance. Tolkien preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he kept it: ‘Origin of Gandalf’.” How hobbit might be taken from ‘Marvellous land of Snergs’, a book his children read; Snergs being people as tall as an average table but broad-shouldered and a people of strength, and from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. I loved the part of Father Christmas letters he used to write to his children, with an account of the recent happenings at the North Pole in a shaky hand of Father Christmas,'the rune-like capitals used by the Polar Bear or the flowing script of Ilbereth'.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the book. I think it’s a must read for everyone interested in Tolkien, his life and works.

Basant Banned

Yes, Basant has been banned. I wish this ban had come earlier and four lives would have been saved which were lost when the recent Supreme Court Ban was relaxed on the request of the Punjab Government. As the News, Lahore reports it, four people had their lives cut off by the kite wires. A four-year-old boy’s throat was sliced open while sitting on a motorbike with his dad … another small girl fell victim to the killer thread (preferred by some people to cut kite strings of other kite flyers, it’s a sort of a competition, as one kite is, in a way, battled against another kite). A WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority) lineman was electrocuted. There have been several other people lying in hospitals injured from the dangerous kite strings. Children (normally those who can’t afford to fly kites on their rooftops) running across roads, their eyes fixed to the sky, trying to catch a kite just after it has been cut, are a common site in Basant days and run an extreme risk of accidents every year. There are instances of children falling off their roofs. But well thank God the ban finally here. I myself love the site of the blue sky filled with all these kites of varied colours; it’s a brilliant site. I wish people were made to use harmless threads and that traditional kite flying were revived but nobody follows the law here (metal strings were being sold even after the introduction of strict laws banning them) and nobody is made to so the ban is I think the only option at the moment. The government will be trying hard to enforce the ban. I could still see a few kites across the sky, yesterday evening. Can’t wait to see what happens on Sunday, whether people are going to fly or not (some people have begun gambling on the likelihood of Basant)

Meanwhile a 5.2 magnitude earthquake shook northern areas on Friday claiming the life of one person.

A New Template!

I have just picked a new template ... the older one was not coming except the NavBar and for a moment I thought it had something to do with the ban but other blogspot sites are coming (I am using WOL, an ISP that hasn't yet decided to block all Bloggers). All the banners and all the sites I had in my sidebar are therefore not coming. I do not have time at the moment but I will soon restore them. And can someone please tell me why the sidebar content is coming in the right-bottom hand corner?

By the way, there has been a petition created ... Please go and sign it if you agree with it of course. And check out the google group started by Dr. Pak I mentioned earlier ... there are email addresses of newspapers etc. to write to, for spreading your voice farther.

I know I haven't written anything about George Bush and I do want to, but the almost miniscule time I have on the internet ( after the studying at home and tuitions) is spent on writing letters and stuff ... I will soon insha'Allah.

Spread the Word!

So the ban story is clearing up a bit ... its turning out that George Bush had nothing to do with it, poor man, when all he was doing was playing cricket with a tennis ball ... and neither is it our government's cutting down our freedoms of speech or something of that sort. Its yet again a glaring example of the utter absurdity of actions our institutions love to engage in ... PTA was ordered by the Supreme Court to ban the sites publishing those famous cartoons but instead of blocking the individual sites they actually banned all blogspot blogs ... pretty intelligent in a way ... saves a lot of time ... Who needs to think and actually see? Just go away put your hand out blindly in the dark and pick up something, anything that is enough to show the upper echeleons of power that they have actually done something. And as for the public, they might go to hell for all they care!

Dr. Pak has started up a google group which in his own words is set up for :

"putting the word out to fellow Pakistani bloggers to join so we can organize ourselves to launch a disciplined, intelligent protest in the print media to have this ridiculous ban revoked. If they want to ban the cartoons, let them do the hard work needed to pin point the individual sites. Why not just shut down the whole damn internet for God’s sake! I for one am not going to rely on their good graces to thoughtfully revoke the ban all by themselves. I plan to make a lot of noise. Let’s see how they can shut us up!"

Also in his words:

"All blogspot.com bloggers who wish to organize themselves and protest in a single voice please come here. Any others who wish to join are also welcome. You don’t have to be a blogspot.com ban victim to be driven to action by the ban. Anyone who condemns this half-baked attempt at righting a wrong with another wrong is welcome to join. "

You should also include the 'DONT BLOCK THE BLOG' banner ( in my sidebar) in your blog, if you want to do something about this.

And please digg this , Blogspot-Censored-in-Pakistan, story.

I am writing this in a sort of a hurry 'coz I have to go and do a bit of studying ... so I'll come back later ...

Update: Write to Network Operations Centre on the ban ... how do you think it to be not right, how it is an infringement of our basic rights and how it is such a bloody (not of course not to use this sort of language) inconvenience to all the Bloggers around and a display of their utter disregard and negligence. Let your voice be heard. Email address: noc@pie.net.pk

Other contact information: Ather A. Baig Network Operations Center Pakistan Internet Exchange Voice : +92 21 2760066/2774258 ITI Division, 4th Floor Technical Block Gateway Exchange Building, Marston Road Karachi South, Pakistan

I know Pakistani officials seldom reply to their mails but you've got to try

Pakistani Bloggers being blocked!!!

I don't believe it ... I don't believe it at all ... yesterday my last post and recent template changes weren't coming which made me wonder. But now it is confirmed. All blogger sites have been blocked in Pakistan. They are not coming at all with my connection too. The yesterday last-post-not-coming must've been due to cookies stored in my computer. I am under absolute shock. Why in the name of God did they have to do this?
If you are having same problems check this vtunnel site out. Just type in the address and it will let you browse it. So I am not really worried about that ... the worrying thing is the ban ... the curtailing of rights has been a favourite pastime of our governments but during this government there has been, if not a total freedom, relatively more freedom given to the media than before. Now why would they ban bloggers then? Some people are saying George Bush' s arrival is behind this and the ban is here as Pakistani Bloggers out there are too critical etc. of him. But isn't it silly? Do you think the Pakistani media (with the exception of PTV) actually glorifies him all the time?

I am typing this without taking any kind of thinking-out time before and so its just a thorough rambling and a thourough in-shock critisizing. Let me go away for a while and call all the ISPs. Gosh!!!

P.S. I can't insert links at the moment( there seems to be some problem ... hope nothing to do with the ban) so I've put the main one in the heading... update: problem solved! It seems that in my absolute anger and fury I had forgotton to put '=' in the link code. :)

George Bush has arrived! Focusing on 'radical Islam'. Its always that isn't it? But lemme just watch and wait and see and then compare this visit with the one in India and see if there are any dissimilarites ... as they exist most of the time.

Update : BBC on the ban

Can't think of any title ... just read the post!

Greetings everyone!

Can someone please tell me why an apostrophe in my entire blog is being replaced by a combination of these weird symbols? There isn’t any connection but is it because I changed some of the fonts in the sidebar? I can’t write to Blogger since they hardly ever give you a personal reply and Googling doesn’t help either … Please lemme know if you can figure it out … I’ll be forever grateful.

Bomb blasts in Karachi just two days before George Bush’s arrival. They say that pictures of the suicide bomber taken from a close-circuit camera may help identify him. I know these are hollow and the people who've suffered may not even read this but my deepest condolences to those who've lost their loved ones, the family of the American diplomat and the families of the Pakistanis dead.

I would have gone into more detail and wondered who exactly did this but somehow I am losing my confidence in everything ... in the government that gives us this news and identifies the bombers(not that I've ever trusted our ultra-un-democratic government in anything) ... in the international news media which is going to suddenly go into its speculations of Al-Qaeda involvement ... and amongst all of this people proclaiming like perfect know-it-alls that CIA is involved to tarnish the image of these organizations. Sometimes I want to plug my ears hard and not to listen to anyone but can you ever do that ...

George Bush is coming today? Or is it tommoro? With his usual sentences of General being a great man, a great friend, running a great 'war on terror', how we need to fight those humanless, conscienceless terrorists if we want to save this 'free world' of ours (Gosh we've had so much freedom, haven't we? Is it time to take it back? Oh ... no perhaps we will be allowed to cherish it a few years longer until we and our General are out of America's good books and suddenly harbouring terrorists or something? ... And sorry for my cynicism. Can't help it. ) Sorry ... as usual I am wandering with no specific direction ...

Will spare you for now 'coz I have to go ... My mom is calling me for something and if I tarry for a moment longer I'll have to bear the unpleasant consequences(imagine them for yourself ... she can be quite tyrannical sometimes).

Will come back later with something.

Lahore stages a protest today. Pray that it doesn't go violent.