Salaama Ahmed Salaama Translation

Check out my translation of Salaama Ahmed Salaama’s piece “Barren American Policies” on the FPA Egypt blog here.

Who’s Disgusting?

The Celtics are, that’s who.

Interview with FPA

Check out my and the other Foreign Policy Association Egypt bloggers’ interview here.

“It’s Raining Men (who are married to each other)!”

“A Gaythering Storm”

I am glad the ridiculous original anti-gay marriage add got this much attention. Frank Rich has a good piece about it here.

The Force has told me good things…

I know it’s unlike me to promote religious doctrines but come on who doesn’t want to sign up for this? Awesome.

Egyptian T-shirts

My roommates and I just love the colorful t-shirts we sometimes see people wearing here in Egypt. We just spotted someone in the Sadat metro station wearing a shirt that said “2 Times Sex a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!”

Other notable t-shirt quotes include “Orgasm donor” and my personal favorite, worn buy a muhajiba girl at AUC, “I’m the one you have to blow to get a drink in this place.”

More to come inshallah.

Long Live KG

We should all be rooting for KG to make a quick recovery so he doesn’t have to watch the games from the locker room. KG is THE man.

Garnett chooses to watch games from the locker room rather than the bench when he is injured because it frustrates him to not be able to contribute.

That’s heart. Go Celts.

A Decline in Jihadist Violence?

Here is an interesting piece by Nathan Field in The National:”Across the Arab and Muslim world, jihadists are beginning to renounce violence as a means to change their societies – and not just because they lost.”

I think he makes a good point here, but would point out that in Somalia it seems the trend is moving in the opposite direction. However, I think that an examination of that case would require an analysis by an expert on Somalia, which I am not.

Joseph Nye on the Ivory Towers

I really liked this piece from Joseph Nye of “soft power” fame in the Washington Post. I remember reading an article during my undergrad by Lisa Anderson, now the provost of AUC, about how academics and policy-makers need to do a better job of working together. Here are some quotes:

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one’s career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers.

Yet too often scholars teach theory and methods that are relevant to other academics but not to the majority of the students sitting in the classroom before them.

I definitely think this can go both ways, and policy-makers sometimes ignore academics for the wine-sipping, elbow-patch wearing snobs that they are. Academics complain so often about American policy, which they have a right to do, and which they should do. But how about using that Harvard PhD to actually help the US make better policy decisions?

Stress, yes!

Stress may not be the one-way ticket to an early grave that most of us assume. In fact, it could do wonders for the immune system and even keep cancers at bay

Ha! Not that I believe everything I read in the news, but screw you to all those people who are always telling me to relax!