أرصاد أرضية

From Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B Cialdini, PH.D. Does Jordan have optimal conditions? Does Egypt's new revolution follow the same path? I'm not sure but I don't know how Egypt was doing in the past few years. However, I find the below much more accurate in the case of Jordan. Social scientists have determined that scarcity is a primary cause of political turmoil and violence. One of the most prominent speakers of this argument is James C. Davies, who states that: "We are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions. Thus it is not the traditionally most downtrodden people - who have come to see their deprivation as part of the natural order of things - who are especially liable to revolt. Instead, revolutionaries are more likely to be those who have been given at least some taste of a better life. When the economic and social improvement...

To win is to subdue an enemy to your will... It is as simple as that... Your enemy doesn't win when he kills... When he gets higher returns on income... A victory is ONLY attained by your enemy when you behave according to his will... When the US/Israel command and we obey then we are defeated... We become slaves without any form of free will, ready to do whatever our masters command... Not moving in a direction that is self driven or purposeful... It does not matter how much money we get... it is as simple as that... The US was able to tame the Red Indians and make them adopt a different way of life... Are we heading down the same path? Palestine was controlled by Crusaders for some time, if people accepted that fact and looked at the economical benefits and taught their kids that money is more important than anything... No one would have sent Armies to free the land... Defeat is not a matter of guns, economics or manpower... It is a matter of willpower... One Ideology Vs. Anothe...

A hospital in Amman last Thursday... late at night, I had chest pain and wanted to check it out. I sat down in a room to have my blood pressure checked when a nurse stormed into the room shouting "COLD WHITE" and holding a baby so small in size... so young... so tenderly wrapped in his bed sheets... I stood up and the baby was placed in the bed I just sat on, I didn't know what to do... I stood there in complete shock... I was looking at his eyes, there was no movement whatsoever... he was looking at me, through me, rather in my direction but not at anything... I kept looking trying to find any sign of life... I didn't believe what I saw... I didn't want to believe it... he can't be dead... he is sooo young... His eyes were so wide, but his skin was yellow and his lips almost blue... I cannot forget his wide eyes... "Sorry, Please leave the room" another nurse said.. "Of course, of course" as I was wearing my jacket... Doctors rushed in... ...

This post is the ridiculous labour, mental exhaustion, hallucinations and contemplation of the tiny minute details that passed us by so quickly... In short its about the rise and fall of "fafies" in Jordan... A new breed rising on the bones of others... The amount of change that we are witnessing in Jordan is fascinating. When I was in School, I remember that if someone was saying (aal o olna) instead of (gal o golna) or (MAMA) instead of (Yummah or El-Waldeh) lol... Then the poor kid was quickly classified as a "fafy" type of person... belonging to the people who live in Shmeisani!!! For those of you who don't know what a "Fafy" boy is... its the boy who's spoiled, rich and a classified wimp... The bullies and the teachers would use the famous good old question, "Where are you from, Shmeisani!!" -laughing-... To indicate that a boy is spoiled belonging to a class that doesn't know how to fight with the rough guys coming from the poor...

According to the Guardian, six years after the US celebrated the quick "Victory" in Afghanistan. Today, Taliban is gaining control over 50% of Afghan land, "It is no longer a question of Will Taliban gain control Kabul? It's just a matter of when and how!" You can check the Arabic version here on Aljazeera.net I wonder when we will see this report on Iraq, two years... three... and what's next? The road from Afghanistan to Jerusalem might be shorter than we think... but there is a hurdle along the way... One day there will be a confrontation, when? and which side will we stand against?

How long have you been blogging? hmmm 100 What!? Actually it's 100 and something... I think it's wrong to have blog aged in years, not even months or days... Blogs should be aged according to number of posts... So, I'm proud to say I just passed the 100 posts around 3 posts ago :) I guess there are many out there who are really old, a few thousand posts old...

It's like upgrading your senses from normal to superman... I just noticed that I'm exploring new levels of smell, its like being introduced to a whole new world of aggravated senses... Could it be related to fasting, maybe?! but then again maybe not, I guess I just made the connection today when I smelled coffee in the office... A faint but vivid pleasant smell and I don't even like coffee... A few incidents swept through my mind, the extra strong perfume in the elevator... maybe it wasn't that strong in the first place... The "repulsive beyond reason" cigarette smell in the car from yesterday's night out... Flashbacks everywhere, dots connected Ramadan and fasting is altering the way my body functions and it feels like being in a mysterious adventure in the middle ages... Now vision is a whole different story, I wish I could say I can now see a needle a few miles ahead, but its something else... I can capture so much detail in a single glimpse, its lik...

There is still hope for a nation that can feel with such intensity for a man who is connected only by a simple thread of bytes... Out of hardships rises the best in people as roses rise from dirt... This is particularly true in the case of Who's Sane and the tragedy that had happened in Prince Hamza's Hospital... It was overwhelming to say the least... Seeing everyone in the blogk, participate in such heartfelt passion... Pride in such small victories of solidarity sweeps over the Jo-Blogosphere in a way that is - I dare say- romantic! I can almost dream of a day when more boundaries collapse... of a day when bloggers from all over the nation, not only Jordan, would give a hand... Yes romantic and perhaps even nostalgic.... For if you listen hard enough you may hear a song you used to hum back when you dared to dream.... the words are almost forgotten but it speaks of people who belong to a single entity regardless of their background and the lyrics go... "Countries of A...

At least once in your life you have written something so intense, so full of inspiration, perhaps so funny or maybe just so sad... You would look at those few lines and pride will glitter in your eyes, you'd say "I wrote this... I can't believe I did :)"... Then, you would probably put those amazing words back in a drawer, locked forever, where no one would ever read... you would hope that someday, maybe after you die one of your kids, or grandchildren would know how great you were! You have probably written this marvelous piece of work on the back of your lecture notebook ages ago in the university, maybe in your good old composition notebook at school... Perhaps, in your diary... In a published article if you were lucky enough... or in your blog! Those few lines that you wrote and believe to be the best you ever wrote, would be the goldmine of human emotion, inspiration, intelligence, charm and wit... to name a few... Every person would have experienced something un...

Every reader's nightmare... It's sad... You step into a once great blog, one that was once updated regularly, sometimes a few times every day... with tons of comments and suddenly, it stops breathing, comments are no longer pouring in, it just dies... The blogger, stopped blogging... Blog readers, stopped coming in... Like everything else, there is a cycle in every blog's life; starting as a baby blog that's small and out of place with minimum public attention but maximum care by the few kind blog parents that nurture that blog (friends and kind bloggers) showering the baby blog with comments and visits... Then if you're lucky enough, an angel aggregator would bring you into the public eyes... My advice is go to Qwaider Planet & Jordan Blogs... That's your safe house, with all the hostility out there, thus stepping into your toddler years and probably even adolescence... You'll meet great new people, some kind and some not so kind... You'll ...

I find the Japanese culture very interesting, the following it is based on a book I finished reading last week and this is how a tea master taught the author the essence of a Tea Ceremony, "Lift a pen right now with your left hand, ok, now that you hold the pen firmly in your left hand put it anywhere on the right side of your desk." The Tea Master Goes on, "Now, lets do the same thing but this time, you have to think before you move! before even reaching for that pen you should decide exactly where you want to put it, ok now do it... Notice, how efficient and smooth did it go, much better than the first time, right! That's exactly what you should do in life..." Think before you move and see the final place you want to get to! It will make your trip alot smoother and much more efficient. Pouring tea or a "Tea Ceremony" is not as simple as it sounds at least in the far east, parents send their kids at an early age to learn the fine art of Tea Ceremonies...

Wikipedia again... Those were different times and different men... Source of information, Wikipedia at this page Just a small statistic, total words used today in Spanish language influenced by Arabic is 1,214 that's one thousand two hundred and fourteen. Not to mention the influence on grammar. Just remind me how much English words are we using today! in our day to day conversations with Arabs? I guess I'm not the right person to ask this question since most of my posting is in English, but it's sad to say the least...

The mind has a very powerful way of work, fascinating, effective and sometimes quite dangerous. The mind creates "patterns" based on past experiences and codes them in words and gestures that are easy to identify in order to make decisions on the fly. Experiencing a pattern over and over again makes it harder for a mind to change the way it perceives things. For example, if you had a bad experience with a dog... Your mind creates a pattern for dog behavior based on that experience... If you have two, three, four similar experiences your mind identifies this pattern so strongly that it becomes very difficult to change that established pattern and restructure it... This is a very useful trait but can be very dangerous as well; it is very useful because it makes it easy to identify dangerous conditions at a very early stage. Creating patterns and coding them is very useful in terms of establishing minimum communication. The mind doesn't have to experience the same behavior ...

I quote this from the wikipedia as a simple reminder for you to reflect on, it's ironic how a mossad agent might have better understanding of how fake our borders are than the educated elite who so strongly hold those borders in their heads and hearts... go on, continue to talk about Jordan and Iraq, what a shame! " As former director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad , Efraim Halevy, now a director at the Hebrew University said, The borders, which if you look on the maps of the middle-east are very straight lines, were drawn by British and French draftsmen who sat with maps and drew the lines of the frontiers with rulers. If the ruler for some reason or other moved on the map, because of some person's hand shaking, then the frontier moved (with the hand). – [6] He went on to give an example, There was a famous story about a British consul, a lady named Gertrude Bell who drew the map between Iraq and Jordan, using transparent paper. She turned to talk to somebod...

This is a true story, that I've witnessed during my university years... it started sometime around 1998... his name was Ramzi, I would never forget for he crafted his name so neatly on that notebook... his journey probably started at the tender age of Seven... He used to hold his tiny box of half full SB Gum, a box that looked a bit too large for his small hands... He would look you in the eye for a second, smile and walk those tiny steps in the hope that you would buy the product he is promoting, (his innocence and compassion)... He was different, he was polite, never said a bad word... a kid selling chewing gum... At days you would see him running away from university guards, who used to kick them out and confiscate his tiny box... his tiny source of livelihood... Ramzi grew up in a university surrounded by young men and women who knew him well, some hated the way he looked, some loved his spirit... I clearly remember the day when one of those young men bought him a present.....

First you should remember channel 2 or 6... I never knew why it was called channel 6 but that's how Jordan TV English channel was called in the old days... Remember RAMI Khoury on "Encounter"... For those of you who didn't catch up with this program it was a nineties thing before satellite dishes covered rooftops in Amman.... It was an interview program hosted by Rami Khoury, a rather large man with a beard! who had a perfect American accent... and every time, almost every episode you learned something new... It was really difficult to grab the attention of a kid in his teenage years... especially if you were talking about the "Six Thinking Hats"... But that's exactly what he managed to do? And I became acquainted with Edward De Bono and his work at creative thinking at that episode... He had great presence, it was totally new to a generation of Arcade gamers (Street Fighter II) was hot at that time :) an interview program that didn't have all the st...

Branding is about associating names and logos with concepts and ideas... This sort of advertising is becoming more of a culture... no one cares how the elements blend together... Take another example... Mecca Street Night Clubs!? no respect for the name or the implication, I read this and I remembered one of the posts on Humeid's 360 East, it captured the essence of this issue in this post ...

Suicidal Peds are the ones who look the other way when they cross the street as if they are made of super flesh and bones.... hmmm stronger than any known metal... Eat your heart out superman... Suicidal Pedestrians, will not worry about the speed of approaching vehicles, they assume you will always stop in an instant... that you somehow have developed spiderman's sixth sense... " hmm I sense a pedestrian about to walk on a collision path, he might come from behind that tree at a speed of one kotkot per hour, mine is around 70km/hr so I should hit the brakes or take the next right turn..." It's as if they don't know that the person behind a driving wheel possesses normal senses, they really don't care if they are crossing in the dark... or rain... they just cross and its as simple as that, if they are only a couple of meters away, you should use your super fast reflex and the super freezing breath to lock those wheels... If your sight is blocked by obst...

The pain was so vividly portrayed, in this reporter's voice... a 4 year old died... The cause: a bullet went straight into her heart... a baby girl lost her life, in her own living room, you can imagine what happened when her parents saw her lying in her blood... Tell me how can you tolerate this kind of celebration... Two events in the last week caused grief and suffering... Tawjihi celebrations and the Iraqi celebrations over the Football match... , the radio reporter almost cried when he talked about this.... When will this stupid, selfish agonizing criminal activity STOP! When will we see people going to jail for this kind of action... this was after Tawjihi celebrations... huh celebrations!!! criminals shooting their fire arms randomly into the air... The second thing was the joy some of the "Iraqi-Football team" supporters showed in the streets of Amman, last night... This is not against Iraqis, for those of you who would like to know how I feel read this earlier ...

We know Divide and Conquer far too well in the middle east... Now how do you discriminate between people? its very simple, all you have to do is one step, focus on a few people who are ignorant and racist from any country or background.... lets say for example Jordan & Iraq, Northern Tribes & Southern Tribes... Anything... JUST Broadcast the actions of any of a racist couple of guys in the media... And voalla divided and conquered... People from either side will GENERALIZE.... without even thinking about it, its built in in their brain... stereo typing... And before you know it, before the clip is finished one of the family members watching the news will say... oh, Those low level Jordanians... they were always like that, they did this and that... And on the other end you will be hearing all the racist comments you never thought an intelligent person would say... "man, those Iraqis, they destroyed our country... I can't buy an apartment" "those Egyptia...