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ck i have in the past advocated the arming of all egyptian women with pepper spray currently illegal in egypt in order to deter would be sexual harassers who have become a blight upon this country i can t take credit for the self defence initiative reported in this bbc news article but it s a step in the right direction instead of the inocuous restraint technique mentioned in the article however can i propose the teaching somewhat more offensive jason bourne or steven segal type moves preferably rendering the attackers cojones vestigial this would have the added effect of controlling egypt s ballooning population by sterilizing men who quite frankly have no business procreating in the first place posted by the bedouin project 7 00 am 2 comments wednesday march 11 2009 academia and its discontents this troubling new york times article has been making the rounds lately among my predominantly humanities graduate student crowd none of us got into academia to get rich but we all thought that we d at least have a job we slogged through seemingly endless years of study classes and essays we struggled through exams comps vivas all to demonstrate to the powers that be that we are worthy and throughout the sleepless nights spent hunched over books or illuminated by the glow of a computer screen fuelled by a concoction of espresso ephedrine and red bull there was at the very far end of the tunnel a dim barely visible light towards which we slowly inched our way tenure you see academia is not unlike fraternities on a much larger long term and more sadistic scale academia s hazing rituals can last well over a decade and include such perversities as marking towering piles of papers written by barely literate first years or producing reams of research from which one s supervisor will pluck a single fact figure or sentence to be used in his her forthcoming publication acknowledgement not guaranteed one does this while earning barely more than the minimum wage burdened with tuition fees and past student debt and subsisting almost entirely on ramen noodles why you ask because once we get past all that once we get in we re in for life tenure is the ultimate in job security barring gross misconduct and even then the tenured professor can not be fired the logic behind this historically has been that once an academic has established his her credentials and abilities he she should be free to pursue research without fear of harassment from the institution such an arrangement would have spared socrates a rather nasty bout of hemlock poisoning and so the us supreme court notwithstanding academia remains one of the very last bastions of the job security afforded by what is essentially a life appointment and now the nyt is telling me that it s all for naught am i to understand that my two undergraduate degrees and two master s degrees in lieu of any practical life skills i prefer to obtain degrees in pairs aren t worth the paper they re printed on that the nearly 1 4 of my life thus far spent in institutions of higher education engaging in all the aformentioned inane and perverse hoop jumping has been wasted that my months of agonizing over writing the perfect doctoral research proposal would have been better spent in some sort of gainful employment nay i say to that look nyt i know you re on the brink of bankruptcy but just because you re going down doesn t mean you have to take us all down with you sure there s nothing you d like more than for a mass exodus of disheartened graduate students to read your article give up and drop out thus flooding the job market and providing you with a source of cheap labour which you having done your research so well into grad student habits know you can abuse without hearing a peep of complaint grad students prefer to voice their complaints in innocuous twitter tweets i m on to you but i won t play your game if i don t find a job after completing my phd i ll just do another one degrees come best in pairs anyway posted by the bedouin project 1 20 am 0 comments tuesday march 03 2009 webmd fuelling hypochondria since 2005 i ve been having some pretty brutal headaches as of late not having a great deal of confidence in egypt s ailing healthcare system pun intended i consulted the next best thing webmd my friend mindgrapes has already blogged about her own experiences with webmd here like me she entered her symptoms into the androgynous ken doll like model however while she came up with 20 possible diseases for what i could have told her was probably a simple case of rsi from her incessant chatting procrastinating i came up with only one on the human model i indicated the head as the location of the problem under symptoms i selected headache worst ever seriously that s an option the diagnosis brain aneurysm given that i m still alive and not paralyzed on either side of my body i m starting to doubt webmd s diagnosis skills on the upside there s a great niche market for egyptian doctors slogan we re marginally better than an inanimate website posted by the bedouin project 5 33 am 0 comments monday february 23 2009 the cairo blast first of all i was nowhere near the blast everything i know comes from what i ve been able to glean from the bbc and al jazeera so i m not going to pretend to have any additional information that cannot be obtained from the media the available information is scant a bunch of us were out in another part of cairo also very popular with tourists when one of us got a text from someone in london saying heard about what happened hope you re all okay it was the first we d heard of anything happening after ascertaining what had happened with several more text messages what surprised me the most was how blasé everyone seemed to be we noticed absolutely no increased security presence in the city despite the fact that we were in an area densely populated with embassies and we were sitting in a restaurant packed with tourists for our part aside from briefly exchanging theories about what had happened who had perpetrated it and why it was just another dinner out with friends is this a function of growing up in the mideast my whole life was it because in the grand scheme of things between gaza iraq afghanistan this seemed minor though this will come as no consolation to the victims and their families how desensitised are we becoming to these things most information we have so far http english aljazeera net news middleeast 2009 02 200922381126139132 html http news bbc co uk 2 hi middle_east 7905032 stm posted by the bedouin project 5 30 am 0 comments sunday february 22 2009 bbc tackles cairo traffic it s almost cute how indignant christian fraser seems to be over the traffic in this bbc report what s that cars don t stop at a pedestrian crossing oh mon dieu posted by the bedouin project 1 53 am 0 comments friday february 20 2009 requiem for saab as the economic crises in which we are currently mired gradually worsened one thought occurred to me what about saab as the much larger mainstream automakers struggled to stay afloat i knew the outlook for saab looked grim the quirky little swedish company always inexplicably played second fiddle to its better known compatriot competitor volvo despite the fact that saabs looked and performed better than the boring boxy soccer mom mobiles saab was never a car with broad based appeal instead the company relied on a small but passionate cadre of loyal followers i was one of them it was hardly love at first sight my first encounter with a saab occurred when i was 9 i had just arrived in kuwait from canada and my father picked my mother brother and me up in an odd looking charcoal grey hatchback what kind of car is this i asked it s a saab it s swedish came my dad s response i was unimpressed and with good cause there seemed little to endear me to this odd and unconventional car a 1988 saab 9000i for starters it was already 4 years old when i arrived in 1992 and the harsh kuwaiti heat had not been kind to this scandinavian car which was likely never intended for 50 degree celsius temperatures the roof lining was sagging because the glue holding it up had hardened and the dashboard was beginning to crack the glove box was filled with screws and bolts which my dad had decided were extras after taking apart various parts of the car to repair himself only the notoriously expensive saab dealer was willing to touch the car to do repairs otherwise perhaps most troublingly though the family s quirky little saab 9000 was different and for a 9 year old desperately seeking social conformity different equalled bad slowly but steadily though i began to see our saab in a different light in its own junkyard dog kind of way it was scruffy but lovable it was rough around the edges no purebred pomeranian but rather a mutt with personality the more i learned about saabs their attention to ergonomics the company s aviation past etc the more i grew to appreciate ours in 1996 time came to bid farewell to this car that i had learned to love it was therefore with much excitement that i came across a classified ad for a 1992 saab 9000 in the newspaper we went to see it and found that it too was charcoal grey in fact it was for all intents and purposes the same car saab had a habit of changing very little about their cars as my dad put it you can t improve upon perfection and it was damned near perfect we bought the car right there on the spot at this point the saab had become my mom s car my dad preferring his oversized boats of american cars he and i tried a little experiment unbeknownst to her we switched out the old 88 with the 92 we d just bought and replaced the keys on the key ring it took her a solid two weeks before she realized the difference the giveaway the old 88 had the hazard lights button on the steering column while the new one had it in the centre of the dash that humble little 92 saab remained my favourite car until i left kuwait in 2001 it stayed with my dad for several years after that my dad taking it out for a spin on weekends until it came time for our second saab to go out to greener pastures yesterday saab filed for reorganization sweden s equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy protection gm had bought a 50 stake in saab in 1989 seeking to fill a gap in its mid luxury lineup for years it seemed as though saab dodged the bullet of gm number crunchers who have historically been more interested in the bottom line than in imbuing any of their vehicles anything approaching individual personality however gm completed its takeover of saab in 1999 and tellingly saab has not posted a profit since 2001 i often speak of saab having been my favourite car in the past tense since gm s takeover all those quirky little lovable attributes which earned saab its loyal following were gradually phased out in a bid to give saab mass market appeal it seemed that gm had a similar outlook as my 9 year old self different bad as stephen pope chief global strategist at cantor fitzgerald was quoted as saying in this bbc news article gm oversaw the destruction of the swedish car company s soul like dr frankenstein gm tried patching together parts from its various other brands to produce new saabs and the result was always inevitably a monster there was the saab 9 3x derisively called the saabaru because with the exception of about nine body panels tacked on to make it vaguely resemble a saab the car was for all intents and purposes a subaru impreza a great car no doubt but not a saab by any stretch perhaps even more catastrophic was the saab 9 7x suv in actual fact just a chevy trailblazer in disguise it didn t fool many people though as i have to this day yet to see a single one on the street all of this fiddling meant that saab purists gradually dropped out meanwhile gm s attempts to capture greater market share with those who had perhaps never previously even heard of saab failed no one was left to buy these once noble if not a little unusual cars it seems as though saab and gm tired of each other as well gm wants to make saab into an independent company by 2010 euphemism for wanting to shed the loss making company for its part becoming independent of gm is a core pillar of saab s reorganization program proposed to the swedish government a tacit acknowledgement that after dating for 10 years and being married for another 10 the marriage between saab and gm just hasn t worked out in the current economic climate the outlook for humble saab looks bleak as people s wallets become ever lighter they will choose tried and true over fresh and innovative that s if they re going to be buying a car at all who knows though after shedding the dead weight that is gm perhaps saab will go back to basics woo back its faithful followers who felt jilted by its flirtation with gm and rise phoenix like out of the ashes for my part i have yet to give up on my dream of owning a saab a real saab note reference to the 1991 bill murray film what about bob posted by the bedouin project 6 13 am 0 comments tuesday january 20 2009 reflections on cairo galavanting in the grotto after much pestering prodding my girlfriend finally convinced me to go to the grotto i remember hearing my parents wistfully recall the glories of cairo s grotto aquarium with its collection of rare fish manicured lawns and neatly identified species of flora for them the grotto s fall from grace stood in for cairo s own and to be honest they had a point we found the grotto aquarium had become a misnomer with the only living fish to be found being a lowly nile catfish alongside the bloated corpse of an erstwhile turtle had we taken up the advice of the man at the door who accosted us with offers of a private tour of the grotto we may have encountered more but we thought we d try it out on our own true there remained some labels on the various species of trees which inhabited this one of cairo s few remaining green areas but with their latin binomial nomenclature and egypt s literacy rate at around 70 just under 60 for females one had to wonder what was the point rather than crowds of cairo s good and great perambulating throughout the park parents walking hand in hand while excited children ran ahead gawking and pointing at the next exciting new species of fish this is how my parents recall it though i imagine there is some romanticized revisionist memory at play the grotto was instead peopled by young couples young couples were everywhere the eye could see assuming the eye in question squinted into the many dark corners nooks and crannies which have made this the favourite place for amorous youths to escape the omnipresent glare of pesky parents nosey neighbours and stringent societal mores once the reserve of cairo s elite the grotto is now the refuge of cairo s frisky and what of it my parents are right this grotto does symbolizes cairo at large like cairo it has a certain adaptive chameleon like quality which has allowed both grotto and city to...