KUWAIT: After the ban three ministries placed on photography, most Kuwaiti youth are a bit confused about what to do with their cameras if they can’t use them in public and why such laws were implemented in the first place. The Ministry of Information, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Finance recently came to the conclusion that photography should be used for journalism purposes only. This has resulted in the ban of Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras (DSLRs) in public, on the streets and in malls

Shock and disappointment are the only two words that can describe how I feel when I read the title. A lot of countries have problems in the Middle East and our problems in Kuwait are piling up, but I always have hope, that things will get better that there will be a point for things to turn around. At this point I don’t think we can he any lower, we have hit rock bottom when three Ministries who have nothing to do with each other can decide to just Ban Photography of all kinds. And this is assuming that the law is enacted already, I hope it is not and still there is a chance to have it repelled. I always thought that Kuwait always had something to look forward to, to move ahead, even when we haven’t any major projects for the past decade, the nonstop cases of corruption and nobody getting prosecuted. The one thing I thought we had and that I am proud of is our Civil Liberties, and we pride ourselves with it. When Saudi Arabia is on an uphill battle trying to improve people’s lives and gain more freedom we are heading in the opposite direction. I always wondered what the thought was behind UAE blocking Flickr but now we have surpassed both Emirates and Saudi with the most idiotic law possible. Banning it in public places, in streets, and in malls, doesn’t this law sound illegal to anyone, and malls are private entities so it is illegal for such a law to affect them in this way. So what is the punishment for breaking this law? Getting thrown in jail? I honestly won’t be stopping my photography missions in Kuwait anytime soon. If you are against then please make your voice heard!

Link: KuwaitTimes

There is a lot going on about the safety of the A380 and the reason for the failure of the engine on the Qantas A380 is still unknown but whats shocking is that the blades went through the wings and so the passengers and crew were lucky. Some airlines aren’t grounding their planes like Emirates and Singapore, but Qantas grounded their planes until this investigation is completed. They have a problem with the Rolls Royce Trent 900 engine, they still don’t know the main reason for the failure, the second is that parts fly out the back end and punctured the wings. Usually the front end of the engine can contain the blades if something goes wrong, but it seems part flew out the back end which didn’t contain the parts and damaged the wings, in principle if an engine is damaged its supposed to be designed in a way to contain the damage and not damage the rest of the plane.

When purchasing the A380s from Airbus you get two choices of engines, either a Rolls Royce Trent 900 or a GE and Pratt & Whitney GP7200. There are three airplane engine manufacturers in the world; GE, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls Royce. Pratt & Whitney and GE decided on a joint venture to develop the engine for the Airbus 380. So in this case the GP7200 has no issues and all the A380s ordered by Emirates have the GE and Pratt & Whitney GP7200 so there is no reason to ground those planes. So the A380s from Emirates are safe to fly but I heard business class service in the planes isn’t too good and its understaffed, too many passengers and too few crew.

Link: Gizmodo

There are new reports surfacing about a possible cover-up of a conspiracy of the US Government in the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. According to several reports online, it all started when the US government blocked the release of this book by Anthony Shaffer who worked at the Pentagon before 9/11. You can read all the comments on Amazon from people that bought the book but it was never delivered to them.

Shaffer reveals in his book that the invasion of Afghanistan was planned a year before the 9/11, Bin Laden was a CIA asset, paid and trained by the CIA when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the 70’s 80’s (reference: Charlie Wilson’s War) and most likely died early 2002 of kidney failure. An apparent conclusion is that the “War on Terror” is fake and mostly staged. The US, UK and Israeli intelligence have been attempting to infiltrate the so called Muslim Terror cells for decades and set them up. The “terror scare” is used to justify the “perpetual State of War” in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan and have replaced the “Cold War with the complicity of US mainstream media.

You can even check the links in Amazon with people saying they allowed the REDACTED format for security reasons, so they basically removed any incriminating information from the book. 9/11 was a tragedy but not everything is what it seems, there seems to be more going then a lot people knew or at least had the evidence to prove it.

Emirates stating a profit increase of 248% for this year, so I’m not sure why they got money loaned to them from Abu Dhabi if they are making this much of a profit. Now they have just ordered 32 more of the Airbus 380s at the Berlin Air Show, which are the double decker planes. From previous information they currently have 10 of the Airbus A380s in service to 8 destinations. Now that is adding to the 58 A380s that they have already ordered, so they are going to have a massive fleet of A380s at this rate, so what destinations they have in mind I’m not sure. They are going to outgrow there current airport Terminal 3 that they have recently built at alarming rate.

Link: Luxist

Seems like the topic of the day are banks and the European countries, and the relationship between them. Greece has been in the news a lot lately and so has UK and Spain about their debt, then there is the decision of Germany to support Greece, and the other countries in the long list. Now all of these numbers flying around, but this infographic pretty much puts all the relationships into considertaion, keeping in mind if one of them goes down then this whole balancing act comes tumbling down. Click the picture for a bigger image.

Link: NYTimes

A lot of people have either friends or family stuck in this strange situation. I never knew that Volcano can do this much damage, I just remembered that helicopters get clogged in it from Dante’s Peak but other then that I never knew the rest of the stories that have been flying around. The reason they grounded all the planes and halted all travel to the European airports is because of the ash in the air, all the way up to 40’000 feet so the planes can’t fly over it or under it, and if they flew through it they may not make it through. Ash is basically made up of grounded rock, glass, and sand which acts like sand paper against the body of a plane and cement when going through the plane engines. The blades on the engine are also sanded down which causes more friction then causes the engine to catch fire which in turn destroys the engine. After a plane fly’s through the ash it comes out looking like a bare metal plane sanded down to its core, that’s if it makes it through the ash. Now with a lot of planes grounded, all types of water and ground transportation has been overloaded. Everyone trying to get across via boat or train to one location or another is insanely full. Even the transportation companies in all the different European countries are charging exuberant prices because they know some people will pay for it in this extreme situation. And all these delays are having an affect on many countries which aren’t directly affected by the ash.

Kuwait’s businesses and people have been affected by this delay but people don’t realize to what extent. I kept asking about these delays and it really added up very quickly as to the extent of the effect.

Delays:

• Delays from delivery companies such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, Aramex, UShopWeShip, SkyNet, and TNT. You can’t get any of the packages in your mailbox and if you need send something via courier it isn’t going anywhere for this moment in time.
• A large amount of meats, fruits, and vegetables aren’t being flown in, we ate at Meat Co and there were some steaks which weren’t on offer because they weren’t delivered.
• Many flowers aren’t offered at flower shops because flights can’t take off from Holland

I really think they should rename the Volcano, I think it needs more vowels to make an audible sound.

Link: BigPicture

What’s new

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed

• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery

What a mistake by an Apple employee! They left the prototype iPhone in a Bar in Redwood City, I know where that is but I wonder where he left it. The phone had a case to look like the 3GS but with the Aluminum Bezel and new look, sort of resembles the iPad this is the new iPhone for sure. I bet lots of people are going to go nuts for this phone as soon as its out, lines will be longer then the ones for the iPad and the Apple store might crash. I’m not sure if its going to be locked to AT&T such as the first one when it first came out but it does look good. But one surprise is that it will be a micro-SIM. We know from previous posts that Zain, Wataniya, and Viva are all working on micro-SIMs and testing it out on their network, but will it be ready for this phone. I like the way this phone looks, it looks more rugged but still smooth design. Based on the details on Gizmodo this is the phone for sure and it will be released in June, make sure to check out the link for a lot more details and full breakdown after dissecting the phone and before sending it back to Apple. Now I’m looking forward to seeing this phone and I bet it is meant to destroy all the competition, Apple just doesn’t stop throwing punches.

Link: Gizmodo

Now this is a shocker, Sony Ericsson became synonymous with phones, I can only remember back in the late 90s and early 2000 when I had a few Ericsson phones then the joint venture took place and I don’t remember as anything else but Sony Ericsson. Its no secret that I’m a huge fan of Sony Ericsson, because they built quality phones which didn’t have too many software bugs and could survive a major beating. I switch from Nokia a little while back and loved the phone. Now this major surprise is a shock, they will cease operations in four months and all employees will be distributed between Sony and Ericsson. It seems the recession hit them hard as well and they couldn’t get out of it.

Sony Ericsson CEO, Bert Nordberg, says: “We truly did believe in the vision that was Sony Ericsson, we had an ambition to rise to the top, but sadly, our way towards there has been hampered in numerous ways during the past few years, both financially and strategically. We are saddened to announce that our parent companies, Sony and Ericsson have decided to quit the joint venture and put its reinstatement on hold indefinitely.”

Link: SEBlog

I’m the type of person that really hates the smell of cigarette smoke, I detest it, I’m the guy that enforces non-smoking at work and at home and if friends are over. Sheesha is just a whole other category, and the producers of the tobacco out of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi, and Kuwait are not regulated for any healthy regulations at all such as cigarette manufacturing companies, not that those are better either. Sheesha is a whole different matter all together, the smell of a sheesha makes my stomach turn, the stench at those cafe’s makes me dizzy.

There is very little research about the effects of sheesha on one’s lungs but now BBC has published some interesting information about Sheesha being more damaging to people then heavy smokers of cigarettes. High levels of carbon monoxide can lead to brain damage and unconsciousness, and that results from cigarettes and sheesha but with sheesha its a lot higher concentration from one session. People have this misconception that its safer since its being filter through the water but that isn’t really the case. Strangely these days there are more and more women smoking sheesha then before, for Lebanese, Egyptian, and Syrian women its more a norm but lately in the Gulf you see more women smoking then before which is surprising. This is even happening in Western Cities such as London, New York, Los Angles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Miami, all these new Sheesha/Hookah bars popping up all over the place even with the smoking bans in place, permits can be acquired. It isn’t nice seeing a girl smoke a sheesha, and for me seeing a girl smoke a cigarette is a huge turn off, there breath would stink afterward, and a lot of guys have the same opinion, pretty much anyone who smokes and has that smoker’s breath is disgusting, and covering it up with perfume just isn’t really working.

(Couldn’t help the picture though)

Link: BBC News

The worldwide leader in family entertainment is about to get a great deal more entertaining, as the Walt Disney Company agrees to acquire iconic comic book company Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion.

Now this is an interesting development, after all these years of rebuidling the brand Marvel went ahead for a sale. Comics as many know were having a tough time over the last decade, it wasn’t like it used to be and then Comics were losing ground to a lot of different media and a lot to Manga but they made it big with Spiderman and X-Men, from there they expanded. The easy part for them is that they already had the storyline and depth to make this amazing movies and so many in the horizon, and I think they made a great business move to sell while they are on top. Disney does have a lot to offer and they do have some interesting ideas, I just hope they don’t change the direction that Marvel Universe is heading in or slow down any development of the upcoming movies.

Link: Kotaku