Month: August 2007

Categories
Food Lebanon Weird

One Milk Carton, Two expiry dates!

Yesterday morning I wanted to eat a cup of Corn Flakes with milk, I checked the fridge to see if we have milk and found a “Taanayel Les Fermes” milk carton, during the summer we don’t drink a lot of milk here so I checked the expiry date and well I couldn’t tell if it was expired or not! If I read the English part, well the milk expired 5 days ago but the Arabic part gives the milk 4 more days!

Taanayel Les fermes Milk Carton

Taanayel Les fermes Milk CartonI ended up drinking the milk since it’s a UHT sterilized milk so a couple of days added to the 6 months if the English date is true is not a big problem but I threw the rest of the carton since it is expired anyways and we won’t be drinking from it soon.

Categories
Lebanon People

Atheism in Lebanon

I found an article on Digg about the least religious nations so I checked it and found it’s source. I used the source to check the percentage of atheists in Lebanon. As I expected it’s not a big number. Two statistics have some numbers related to Lebanon, the first one is from BBC saying less then 3% of people do not believe in god, the other is from Moaddel and Azadarmaki showing that less then 2% of Lebanese do not believe in god.

Categories
Lebanon Politics

“Civilians” left Nahr L Bared

Today the wifes and children of the Fath L Islam terrorists left the Nahr L Bared camp and are under the Lebanese Army’s custody, I don’t know if this should have been accepted by the Lebanese Army, housing and helping terrorists makes you a terrorist. I am afraid Fath L Islam only did this to have more food for the remaining days, and that this will enable them to last longer.

Lebanese Army Tank

Categories
Funny Videos

SLCHI – Miss Lebanon

euhm je vais vous poser une question très simple et très direct-eu! comment trouvez-vous la personnalité de la femmmmme tangentiellement à celle de l’homme par rapport à la racine carré divisée par le log népérien, OU le subjonctif présent de ce dernier. A Paris, cette parabole est sujette à des changements plébiens, mais, anticonstitutionnels à la procréation, donc, qu’en pensez-vous? Merci.

This is one of the funniest SL CHI clips! I hope MTV returns and SL CHI restarts, I know half the crew is now at FTV in La Youmal but SL CHI was much funnier.

Categories
Cell Phones Personal Technology

Sony Ericsson W960

I currently own a Sony Ericsson K750i, the phone is great, when I bought it it contained everything I needed. The K750 is now 2 years old and I want to change it, my minimum requirements are:

  • Wi-Fi
  • 3.2 MP Camera
  • 2GB of memory
  • Other features are now standards (Bluetooth, MP3…)

I found everything I needed in the SE W960 that is coming out later this year, it has Wi-Fi, a 3.2 MP Camera, 8GB of Memory, a touch screen and many more great features, the package also comes with a bluetooth headset and a normal one.

Here’s the full phone specifications from the GMS Arena.

Sony Ericsson W960

Categories
Funny Lebanon

Kalem L Ness – Comedy

LBCI Kalem L NessTonight “Kalem L Ness” was about comedy, on LBCI’s 22 birthday the gift for Lebanese was to take the politicians out of the screen, so Marcel hosted Lebanese comedians and discussed with them every aspect of comedy, it’s effect on the Lebanese society, the Taboos still present in Lebanon and the way they deal with politics and politicians, the talk show was funny and new! It was one of the few times you felt the same way as the person on the show! it wasn’t a politician talking, it was a Lebanese citizen that was talking about your problem in a funny way, they were making us laugh about the problems we live in! During the show they also showed hilarious parts and extracts from the plays and creations of everyone present and all of them were hilarious! I hope Marcel Ghanem hosts more similar shows instead of just focusing on the politicians, the comedians today really said what the people want to say and since the name of the show is “The talk of the people” hearing people more will really make the show better in my opinion.

Categories
Internet Technology

Connecting to the internet via an unsecured wireless connection

The BBC has a very interesting article on connecting to the Internet via an unsecured wireless connection, is it wrong to do that? The person is the one offering the connection for free, but taking the internet from him might slow down his connection!
I have a wireless connection at home, it is a secured one but I always check the logs of the router and check the connected computers, I also turn off the router when I am not using the internet, I do that because I know that my connection is secure and connecting through it involves hacking and this would be stealing and I would make the person stealing my connection pay for this (info on how to do that later).
But what if I left my connection unsecured? Connecting through it would be very simple, the person doing it would be taking something that he isn’t paying for but this connection is available for him!
I never found an unsecured connection so I never had the chance to connect to one, but I am pretty sure that if I ever found one I would at least test it’s speed but would never check my mail on it, maybe a person is offering this connection for free and monitoring the traffic to take info! I think that everyone is responsible for his connection and if you leave a door open you can’t blame someone for taking a peak inside!

Router WiFi

Categories
Lebanon People

Land Mines in Lebanon

We all know that Land Mines are contaminating many areas of South Lebanon, but we rarely see a news report about the extend of this problem in other areas of Lebanon.

A couple of days ago I was in Batroun, while in the car I noticed that the road is surrounded by barbed wires with a red sign saying “Algham” (Mines in Arabic), I asked why the area is full of mines and the answer was that this was the border between some of the free areas of Lebanon and the areas occupied by Syria, when we reached our destination the same sign was hanging on an Electricity pole!

Danger Mines Lebanon Batroun

That wasn’t the first time I know about mines in areas other then the south, we were once in Rechmaya (Aley Region) and a friend pointed to Deir L Kamar (Chouf Region) and said that the whole mountain was full mines the Lebanese Forces planted while they were retreating to stop the Druze advance.

Today I searched for some map of the locations of the minefields, the only one I found is from 1999, it’s attached to this article (also from 1999). What’s scary in the article is that apparently they don’t know the exact number of areas contaminated, some countries won’t give us the maps of the mine locations (Syria and Israel) and many militias don’t want to give information (weird since all of them are now part of our “political life”), what’s also scary is that according to the author every year 200 people are injured or killed by mines in Lebanon!

Lebanon Mines Map

I also found this speech by Jeffrey Feltman (US Ambassador to Lebanon) from 2004 containing some estimates, in the speech he says that we have an estimated 400,000 mines and unexploded ordnance in Lebanon and that 2800 people have been killed by them!

So what is real extend of the problem? How many minefields (and undiscovered minefields) are outside the south and do they pose a danger to the people living in those regions?

Categories
Lebanon Politics

President Bachir Gemayel

President Cheikh Bachir Gemayel

25 years ago, on the 23rd of August 1982, the dream of many Lebanese started to come true, Bachir Gemayel was elected president of the Lebanese Republic, a new era had began.

This dream didn’t last long, 21 days later he was assassinated, since then the situation in Lebanon kept deteriorating, Christians destroyed each others, The country was occupied for many years and now the politicians Bachir used to fight are “leading” this country (or what’s left of it).

I never knew Bachir and many people my age didn’t, but just listening to his speeches makes you love him, he was Lebanese and had all the qualities of a leader, he could have saved Lebanon and that’s why they killed him.

Here’s a Video of the election day, the celebrations that followed and the foreign medias reporting the news.

Categories
Weird World

The Pirates are back!

Pirates

Pirate still exist,they replaced the old boats with new ones, are armed with sophisticated weapons and high tech equipments! and still look for money and demand ransoms to be payed to free the vessels.

The latest Pirates catch was a Danish vessel that was freed today after Denmark paid a ransom to the Pirates! The pirates held the ship since early June and were briefly chased and fired at by a US Ship that stopped the pursuit when the ship entered Somali waters.