via The American Muslim: Ahmadiyya Muslims, What Next?. The real issue is not about who is a Muslim, but it is about how the majorities treat their minorities.

I forgot to post anything for Earth Day, lots of people across the blogosphere have contributed great stuff.

My contribution will be a suggestion (plea?) for you to go vegetarian! It’s really tasty, environmentally-friendly and generally just a good thing to do.

See also:
Meat and the Environment
GoVeg.com
Environmental Effects of Meat Production
TreeHugger

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite, talking about Earth Day while planning a big international flight. My consistent reducing, reusing and recycling kind of falls away then.

EDIT: My dear commenters mentioned reducing meat consumption and buying locally-grown food, both of which are excellent things to do. I made up a little scale/list:

Less Meat = Good
Vegetarian = Great
Local Vegetarian = Better
Local Organic Vegetarian = Best
Your own organic, sustainable vegan garden = Glorious!

Doing your best is always best.

Grizzly bear kills trainer. This is such a terrible story, but not a totally uncommon one. I don’t know when (or if) humans are going to realize that using animals like this is WRONG.

Just a little list of The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World… and none of them are vegan!

Oof… I stayed up way too long, ignoring my to-do list to make two new themes. It’s comforting to code… It takes my mind off of packing (bleh!) and worrying (meh!).

There’s a new ThemeSwitcher area on the sidebar to set your preference. I couldn’t make up my mind. Feedback is appreciated.

This new stuff wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the very fun and FREE compilation of “avant-pop” from adult swim and Ghostly International (whose site inspired the new themes): Ghostly Swim!

I have a new camera to take on my Pakistan trip, the Canon Powershot G9. I posted some test shots at Flickr recently. It’s a great little camera.

Hopefully, I’ll live long enough to write another blog and share more of my silly adventures. I love you, my dear readers!

Just uploaded a bunch of stuff to Flickr. I also added some VIDEOS. Flickr is afire with anti-video sentiment, but I think it’s a neat feature.

I’m going back to Pakistan in about two weeks. It’s been three years… eep!

It was good; could have been better; hopefully will be better next time. It’s good to meet other “Quranies” in the world and know what’s going on. Humans are always let-downs, though, which is sad. And I’m horribly anti-social. But anyway…

I had a little tiff about the food. For the Saturday dinner, there was no vegetarian food available (well, rice, but… come on, we paid for this stuff.) For a group of concerned and justice-minded folks to not serve at least a vegetarian option was upsetting to me. I made my disapproval known, of course.

Trips are always interesting for people-watchers like myself.

For instance, the mini-experiment at the “full trashcan” at the airport — 99.9% of the people who approached it and found it full simply placed their trash on top of it, instead of turning around where there was another can. Or any of the likely dozens in the area. Human nature annoys me…

Also, I saw a dude on the train carrying his little daughter on his shoulders as he exited. He looked like a total goofball and I knew what was going to happen. As soon as he came to the lower ceiling near the exit — bap — his daughter’s head smacks into the metal. It was only a scrape, she didn’t cry or anything but thankfully ducked down in time to miss the next ceiling, because the dumbass didn’t stop. Like the evil person I am, I laughed. I can’t believe what kind of doofuses have children. Ugh, what a shame.

Atlanta was quite nice (what little I saw from the train and the people.) It was nice to be in a place where my slight Southern accent is almost Northern.