The 13th Anniversary of King Hussein's Passing

This February 7th marks the 13 anniversary of the death of King Hussein I of Jordan. The late King Hussein ruled Jordan for 48 years and left a substantial legacy that includes the no small act of building of modern Jordan into a state practically from scratch.

In the archives of C-SPAN I found the video of the BBC's World Service broadcast of the funeral. 1999 appears an eternity ago, seeing figures like Egyptian former President Mubarak, Yemen's Saleh, and Assad senior; one can't help and wonder how the late King would have navigated Jordan through the Arab spring had he still been alive.

Here's the 3 and half hour video of the funeral from C-SPAN. Of note is that the funeral coverage is anchored by the BBC's Brian Hanrahan who passed away in 2010.

Glacier NP

First Light

The Cheesy Moon

The moon last night at full -3 days.

It's cold

There's cold and then there's North Dakota cold... in the spirit of the excitement over the cold and snowy weather over in Jordan, here's a little snapshot of some vintage Northland weather for some perspective.

I Love Radiohead

If you're into alternative music do yourself a favor and check Radiohead out. If you visit the website don't expect a "normal" band website, the website name, content, and even url change periodically. I only became aware of Radiohead, wikipediad, through their hit first released single Creep, sampled. But I thankfully was able to look beyond Creep, I never did get why idiotic rock radio stations couldn't though, it's the only Radiohead song played as if they're a one hit wonder, which is absolutely not the case.

Anyway, back to the point of this post, yes, there's a point, Radiohead have just released their new album. At the time nearing the album completion the band wasn't affiliated with any record label, there were a lot of speculation about how the band would market the new release. Everyone knows that record labels get most of the money out of album sales, the artists usually make their money from concerts and merchandise sales. Radiohead is sticking it to the man and selling their record themselves, and I applaud them for it. But wait, it gets better, scroll down to see how.

New Record


Buying Options


Discbox


Price for Download?






Really Up to You!!!

*No pixels were hurt in the making of this post.
**This post benefits greatly from pressing the Ctrl or Shift buttons while clicking links (or whatever you Mac crazies equivalent buttons are).

Technorati tags: Radiohead, New Album, In Rainbows

How Saudi Arabia Screwed ISNA: The Never Ending Ramadan and Eid Saga

Today was Eid El Fitr in much of the Islamic and Arabic world, however, Muslims in North America following the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) have to wait until tomorrow to celebrate the Eid.

This really isn't anything new, as Islamic countries never seem able to agree on anything including their calendar. This year though presents a whole new level of disparity. See, a couple of years ago ISNA made the rather forward thinking decision of establishing the Islamic lunar calendar based on astronomical calculations, the way they adopted it though was rather retarded, where they decided to use the calculation to establish whether or not the new moon can be seen with the naked eye rather than whether the new moon is born. Regardless, it was a step forward where the calendar for the year was pre-announced and everyone knew when Ramadan and the Eids are and could plan accordingly. This year ISNA sought to pursue unity with the equivalent body in Europe, where they jointly agreed to follow the same calculation practice I described above, but with the twist of doing the calculations based on whether the new moon will be seen in Mecca.

Based on the new decision, the calendar was changed, and the Eid was pushed back from Friday to Saturday, because the new moon could not be sighted in Mecca. So what does Saudi Arabia do? They go and announce that several trusted witnesses have seen the impossible-to-see new moon in several areas of the kingdom, and hence Eid is on Friday.

The one extra day really isn't that big of a deal for someone who fasted 29. But I remember growing up the 29 day Ramadan was always a nice surprise of sorts, if memory serves me right, based on ISNA we haven't had a 29 day Ramadan since 1998.

It's just the principle of it that bugs me!! Happy Eid.