The day after Katrina

in «Local & Regional» by moftasa

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Katrina is scary. The photos from the news sites reminds me of the Day After Tomorrow. Here are photos from real people posted at flickr. Even scarier photos from newswires

Also, here are some evidence that Hurricanes will go from bad to worse in the upcoming years due to global warming.

An implication of these studies is that if the frequency of tropical cyclones remains the same over the coming century, a greenhouse-gas induced warming …

Back from Dahab

in «Blogging & Personal» by moftasa

Well, apart from the standard activities you can do in Sinai like snorkeling, hiking, sleeping on the mountain that God spoke in a way that God would never appreciate, sleeping on the beach and dodging police flashlights at night, watching the sunrise and seagulls, sleeping in an Internet cafe along side a stray dog, sleeping in a bar's toilet, getting your legs bruised and scratched in your first windsurfing lesson, seeing veiled women getting out …

Perseid Meteor Shower

in «Local & Regional» by moftasa

I was very lucky to watch this year's Perseid meteor shower.

Last Friday, in Marina, my cousin noticed two shooting stars. I vaguely remembered that there was a meteor shower in mid August. We drove about 20km west of El-Alamein, we escaped city lights. We didn't stay long because they were not really showers. They were like 1 meteor every 6 or 8 minutes. Anyways, since this was my first meteor shower I get to …

several picks

in «Blogging & Personal» by moftasa

This post is a little bit different. I would like to share some of my bookmarks and things I found on the Internet.

Few of the best music tracks I found available under a non restrictive license. They deserve a mention here as they made it to my main playlist. You can download them, share or remix some of them.

You …

A case of Female Genital Mutilation

On the day the tragic attacks on Sharm El-Sheikh, a different tragedy occurred and continues to occur but with a different magnitude. Although it affects the lives of more people than that of the bombings of Sinai, it however usually goes unreported. And mostly unseen.

Mona (name changed) a 10 year old girl was admitted with post-circumcision bleeding at around 2 a.m. that morning.

I was in the pre-labour room and a bed pushed …

ROC phase IIIa

Finished phase IIIa of the Research Orientation Course. It was a fascinating experience as usual. This time we had Shawky Galal, Youmna Tareef El-Kholy presenting and discussing with us Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's philosophy of science. In an earlier session we watched Ordinary Fascism by Mikhael Romm and discussed it with Mrs. Arab Lotfy. Those sessions made the course very special.

Other sessions were about scientific reasoning, data management, tabular and graphical presentation of …

A minor quake

in «Local & Regional» by moftasa

Whoa, a very minor quake happened few minutes ago (19:17). My heart dropped for a moment, I remembered October '92. I guess I am seismophobic. It probably lasted around 20 seconds. Till now there is no information at the USGS website. May be it was so mild that it will go unreported. For sure it was due to the usual secret Israeli A-bomb test conspiracy theory.

Anyways, here is an entertaining list of phobias …

No such hospital exists today in Cairo

The following is an excerpt from a series of lectures titled The Evolution of Modern Medicine delivered in 1913 by Sir Wiliam Osler. He is one of the founders of 20th century medicine and known to the masses by several Eponyms carrying his last name.

Unfortunately, his statement '''"No such hospital exists today in Cairo as that which was built by al-Mansur Gilafun in 1283"''' is still true today, which is based on an account …