- Imam Khalid Latif, Khutbah on “Responsibilities of Giving”, June 27, 2008

How to listen to CityFM89 or your favourite radio station on your phone for free:

This will work on most smartphones that support internet and multimedia, like BlackBerry, iPhone, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Motorola, etc. Windows Mobile devices are probably out of luck unless the manufacturer installed 3GPP streaming like HTC. Also, since radio takes a lot of data, make sure you have a flat-rate/unlimited data package, or something large enough to handle regular streaming (above 500mb/month at least).

Sign up for Moodio and search for your radio station (e.g. Cityfm89) or explore some random ones. If you can’t find a specific one just go to the radio station’s website and they’ll probably have a streaming link. Just copy the URL of that link (it gives you instructions on how to do this on Moodio) and add it to their Stations list. Then, point your mobile browser to http://m.moodio.fm and the rest is pretty straight forward. When you click on the link it should open in your phone’s media player. If this doesn’t happen… meh.

To make it easier just add your favourite stations to “My Stations” and bookmark the “My Stations” page on your browser. It’s not a nice and fancy app but it does the job okay?

How to listen to CityFM89 or your favourite radio station on your phone for not-free:

If you want to listen to CityFM89 through a BlackBerry app, you’ll have to put up $25 US to get Nobex Radio Companion Premium. You can listen to North American stations for free though, and some of them are awesome enough to give you a look at the playlist if you like a song but don’t know the name. If you’re only interested in North American stations, there’s lots of radio apps out there that will do that for you.

Rock on! (yeah that’s the best closer I could think of)

Via Nedroid

Related note: have become just a bit anti-Apple since getting a BlackBerry. :)

I’ll let you read the article and come to your own conclusions, but for me it brought up a lecture by Janice Stein, director of the Munk Centre for International Studies, where she talks about the phenomena of accountability that we as Canadians increasingly hold dear to us.

A Public Safety spokesperson in the above article mentions that “the removal of inadmissible individuals is key to maintaining the integrity of the immigration program”, which is a fair statement. The government is indeed accountable to its lawfully residing citizens and immigrants that their procedure is fair and objective. In the case of the Sheikh family, Mr. Sheikh may volunteer at a health clinic as a translator, and he may manage a popular grocery store, and he may completely integrate into Canadian society and essentially embody the perfect case for refugee status as one could find, aside from fleeing from the country where Mr. Sheikh’s father and nephew were killed for political reasons. The fact that he lied on his application form means that he and his wife must make the difficult decision to leave Canada without the children they arrived with. This makes complete sense in Canada’s judicial system, because of our country’s inability to broaden the definition of accountability to beyond things that we can measure.

Lost in the standardization of our values is a word that is not found often enough in our parliament or newspapers today, the word that represents the accountability we have to ourselves: Responsibility. Stein argues that we have become so pre-occupied with accountability that it has actually taken away from the idea of responsibility that used to be at the soul of our government. In this culture of accountability, we constantly seek better systems, better information, and better checks and balances to ensure mutual compliance. In exchange, we’ve lost our conscience and our creativity in dealing with some of the most serious ethical problems we have today, whether it’s corporate or health industry whistleblowers, or in this case, our immigration policy.

Have Canadian institutions lost their soul?

Maybe not. Less than two years ago, judge Sean Harrington, the same judge who yesterday ordered Mr. and Mrs. Sheikh to return to Pakistan, presided over a trial of a man who was scheduled for deportation to Brazil. Compared to Mr. Sheikh, Mr. Diogo Cichaczewski had been caught selling stolen credit cards and duplicate cards made from identity theft on the street and was given a suspended sentence and probation. While scheduled for deportation back to Brazil and having his appeal denied twice, Mr. Cichaczewski married a Canadian Jewish woman and decided to convert to Judaism. Judge Harrington ruled in Mr. Cichaczewski’s case that:

“While Canada’s focus is on removing an individual who has no legal status here, an unfortunate repercussion is that his conversion would be delayed“

And with that, Mr. Cichaczewski was allowed to stay. Given the fact that nothing would prevent Mr. Cichaczewski from converting in Brazil, this judgment of Judge Harrington was clearly, as one lawyer put it, “an enormous stretch of what the Constitution allows.” However, it does allow it, and ultimately the judge was able to make an irresponsible decision outside of the limits of accountability.

While we’re looking at the “unfortunate repercussion” of deporting Mr. Cichaczewski, how does one less volunteer at a health clinic, closing a community’s popular grocery store, putting someone’s life at risk, and splitting a family in half look?

In a political culture where accountability blindfolds responsibility, it looks fine.

The old design, as nice as it looked at first, just wasn’t giving me what I wanted. It was a magazine-style layout that was too ambitious and forced me to write articles. Articles with a thesis, paragraphs, conclusions, headlines, a splash photo. Articles that made me think until I didn’t want to think anymore. It took me far away from the blog I wanted to have, and went from nice eye candy to a lollipop stuck against my sweater. Having to be a magazine editor every time I wanted to post an article just made it so blah and I preferred writing it down or calling a friend instead. Not that I want to replace those things, but I do want to — okay I’m talking too much again.

No, this isn’t the new design. Just a new sheet of paper for now I guess. When I get some time I’ll start tweaking the code for what I want it to look like, but for now I just want to get back to writing!

UPDATE: ICC Development International took down my video from Youtube claiming copyright, which I won’t comment on for now. I’ve attached the link to the video from my personal Facebook account below. Enjoy!

The success of the Pakistani cricket team in the 2009 Twenty20 World Cup has caught us more as deer in headlights than rising to a predictable sunrise, though you could make an argument that their success makes such little sense that it makes complete sense. Still with me, everyone? Everyone from Mr. I-told-you-so to Is Inzamam-ul-Haq still the captain? Yes, you, us, Pakistanis all over the world brought together once again by eleven of our best when it comes to hitting a ball or throwing it at some sticks. It’s a beautiful thing you know, a community of 170 million suddenly gripped by something other than fear.

That fear threatened to make Pakistan pariahs of the cricketing world, one of the only worlds that provided us with a sense of belonging. I say this relatively of course, because when we were accused of not doing enough to provide security or doing too much on a ball, we weren’t doing ourselves any favours either.

However, in typical Pakistani fashion, “koi gal nai“.

The captain, while casually pointing out that they simply need to win and “the cup is ours”, is completely aware of the magnitude of what they can do, though he shouldn’t forget what they’ve done already. The pitch darkness that they found themselves in will give way tomorrow to a pitch that’s a few shades lighter, in the home of the sport that had forgotten their name: Pakistan. I suppose it’s a good thing then that we’ll be roaring it in unison tomorrow, from first ball to last, London to Lahore. As the 1992 World Cup brought us together to build our first cancer hospital, this World Cup has brought us together to build ourselves, and not a moment sooner could it have come.

Win or lose, tomorrow will be a beautiful day for Pakistan and I hope also for our deserving opponents, Sri Lanka. It will be a meeting of two countries whose people know all too well how insignificant the result of a cricket match is, but entirely aware of the power of sport.

IN THE NEWS

Redefine confinement without trial? Yes we can!

Barack Obama really convinced me, at times, that he was going to bring change that we could “believe in”. But as the ever-wise Pervez Musharraf said recently about his opinion of Obama: policies are based on a county’s interests, not the individual’s. You still have to come off as if something has changed, so when Barack Obama wiped his ass with the constitution and proposed confining criminals for crimes they MAY commit, without trial, he had the good thinking to at least redefine it as Indefinite Preventive Detention. Now what will Obama supporters remember more: Obama famously announcing that he would shut down Guantanamo Bay, or this announcement which basically makes the first announcement meaningless?

North Korea tested another nuclear device and nobody outside of the Pacific Rim gives a crap.

A Toronto man who had swine flu has died, making it about 4000-2 in the battle of regular flu vs. swine flu. “One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic.” – Joseph Stalin. Just saying.

The ROM hosted an informal discussion as part of its Doors Open program this year, which unfortunately turned into another city hall debate over the merits of the Crystal extension. This city had the same hatred for our City Hall in the 60s, and I guess some things will never change. It’s a refreshing building for a city that is embarrassingly conservative and mundane considering its amazing diversity. Hate the design but don’t hate the initiative.

Canadians are spending less on luxury on non-essential items, while Seth Godin writes a genius little article on the difference between luxury and premium, and why brands are losing their on-the-fence clientele to the recession.

Right-wing radio mouthpiece questions how bad waterboarding really is and offers to try it out himself. Lasts about six seconds and shortly thereafter declares that it is “absolutely torture”.

ZOMG, think using cloth bags are good for the environment? Think again, tree hugger. They are hazardous to your health! …says the Canadian Plastic Industry Association.  Ugh, I hate corporate lobbying. Just because of this, I will now actually begin to use cloth bags.

BETWEEN THE LINES

Totally random.

Mary Roach delivers 10 things you didn’t know about orgasms, which is undeniably interesting.

Susan Boyle delivered again last night, singing ‘Memory’ from the musical ‘Cats’. Her “ugly” appearance is probably working to her advantage to be honest. She’s now the fifth most watched viral video ever on YouTube!

Not quite sure how to say hi? Here you go! I’m sure around the world, hi’s have started everything from life-long happy marriages to corporate mergers. They’ve also probably instigated ass-kickings. Just being realistic. :)

Unfortunately Pakistani news sites don’t have a concept of archiving content, so thank God for blogs that do. Here’s a summary of a classic article from Prof. Khwaja Masud on charismatic leadership and social change. I was explaining it to a friend recently to explain my support for Barack Obama despite his inexperience, but fear that his charisma could weaken the pluralistic culture that comes from having a shitty president like George W. Bush. Anyway, I used Hitler to show the flip side. BTW, creating a parallel between Obama and a mass murderer is a great way to lose legitimacy when explaining something.

And finally, another genius, GENIUS ad.

SONG OF THE DAY

Not sure if I’ll have this with every article, but there’s so much good music out there, I guess as long as I keep discovering it I’ll keep sharing. BTW please forward any awesome tracks, especially if you’re living outside of North America.

All Smiles – Our Final Roles As Birds

Sayonara grasshoppers,

Rule of thumb on Pakistan: never try to predict anything

Al-Jazeera’s Imran Khan is filing some incredible stories out of Pakistan in regards to the current anti-terrorist operation and exodus of refugees. Here’s another of a town that attempted to take on the Taliban on its own. Surprise! It’s amazing to see the pendulum swing of support to the government’s side in such a short period of time. Such is Pakistan, about as predictable as a minefield. Who would have thought that a Pakistani newspaper would shout out a headline like “Crush ‘em!” in support of the army? Kudos to Gen. Kiyani for managing to appear in the headlines for the right reasons. If Zardari’s plan of negotiating a peace agreement only to show Pakistanis that militants don’t honour them was actually intended, then I guess he can have a biscuit too.

Speaking of Pakistan, Wasim Akram tips the team to win the Twenty20 World Cup in England this summer. Thanks Wasim, except for the fact that I’d rather swine flu reach this team before any whiff of expectation. If someone could hypnotize them into thinking these were all a bunch of pointless charity matches, they’d win the whole damn thing without blinking.

Toronto the good, the bad, and the ugly

“The Beaches” is now changed to the more straight-forward “The Beach”, marked by the first of Toronto’s new street signs. Now whenever we say “I’m going to the beach” we can have that awkward exchange of “No no, THE beach” “What beach though?!”. This is what happens when you put the decision to name an area to that area’s residents. Good job guys. Back to the signs though.. can those things look any more sterile and plastic? This city’s aesthetics are so conservative and sterile, it grosses me out sometimes. What’s the point of showing off a diverse city when we can’t even commit to diverse street signs?

Toronto chief of police Bill Blair’s brilliant handling of the Tamil street protests of 2009 has landed him a five-year extension. Love to see the good guy get his reward.

To end on a sad note, one of this country’s greatest architects, Arthur Erickson, passed away on Wednesday. Check out this brief gallery the Toronto Star put together of some his work.

NOT IN THE NEWS

What’s one way to make public transportation more attractive? Turn the bus stops into crazy-looking futuristic thingies that you feel cool just standing in. Yee.

What do you do when you find like $8 million CDN in your bank account by accident? JUST TAKE IT AND GO. Sometimes you just gotta take the low road. And yes, I did mean to do that in the Russell Peters voice. :)

I thought this court’s ruling was amusing on the significance of Facebook friends. “Indeed, “friendships” on Facebook may be as fleeting as the flick of a delete button.”

Loved this brilliant ad illustrating the power of the Internet in bringing human rights abuses to light. Ogilvy has some creative mofos working at their joints.

Wish you knew when a good time was to head to the washroom during a movie? Set your watch and note the time from this brilliant little website.

And finally, I freaking hate it when I copied something, forgot about it, then copied something else and lost my first copy forever AND EVER. Luckily I found THIS. Bless programmers who just want to make this world a little happier.

Also just haaad to post this highly inappropriate video just because the girl’s voice is so freaking cute. I hate the preview images on these YouTube videos too. Like right now this looks like a softcore porn site. Oh well, nothing worse than whatever’s in a Bollywood movie. Dude’s dancing is pretty epic too, won’t lie.

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Doors Open Toronto is this weekend. Lots of great opportunities to walk into buildings you normally wouldn’t (or even be allowed to).

UFC 98. I have a birthday party that night so I might have to pull some scams to watch this one live. Otherwise I’ll just ignore all of my text messages and download it once I get home.

The Canadian Pakistanis for the Arts are having their first meeting on Sunday afternoon in Oakville, which I will probably attend. Let me know if you’d like more information.

Mmmmkthxbai,