Not only has today’s image-oriented society been limiting adult women, it also has been limiting men as well as children and senior citizens. This new phenomenon has spread in all different aspects of the society. Therefore, it started affecting different aspects of individuals’ lives. For instance, during job interviews, one of the elements that candidates are assessed based on is image rather than qualifications regarding the profession. Sadly, individuals that are perceived as ‘pretty’ are offered more opportunities than others. The question is that this phenomenon has raised is: how do individuals fight this image-oriented society? Now, individuals are being discriminated against depending on their physical features. Therefore, those who do not fall under the ‘pretty’ category are driven into shame of their own genetic heritage. Because this form of discrimination has affected all age categories, unfortunately, it has reached our children in schools. This image-oriented society has produced new, superficial, judgmental generations with contaminated mentalities.

Kay has formed a community and has arranged for a strike from work, where employees who are subject to this form of discrimination are going to march with masks instead of going to thier offices.

Since technology started intruding on people’s lives, individuals started growing dependent on it. It was once an option, but now it is a need in everyday’s life. War is just one example of how those computers or Robots have replaced the need to human resources in our lives.

Imagine a world were a computer decides which neighborhood to target. Let us assume that computers are more merciful than man, how much damage would a small error cause? Are we, as humans, rising above the heinous crimes of war by handing it to a computer that we think we can control?

You want to be a handsome 6 foot astronomer with experiences as far as the moon goes, but in reality you are just 5’3” stay-home-dad with a bad sense of humor? Second Life is the answer. Second life is a 3D virtual world, by which the characters can claim false characteristics, from physical description to profession and heritage. Those virtual characters, or members of the site, are all interconnected in an online networking site. Unfortunately, Second Life is in constant growth and is predicted to go as far as Google and Yahoo. It is a fairly accessible site as the membership is for free.

Trying to seek education, not the conventional way, but your way? Tony Karrer’s blog deals with the educational possibilities that Second Life offers. It has a new approach to learning, where as the student virtually experiences what he/she is learning. For instance, a psychiatrist would experience different states of mental illnesses that his patients would have.

Tired of the lack of moral values in the corporate world? Want to make the world a better place? Yes Man is an organization whose members impersonate big companies and business figures with the purpose of exposing unethical corporations.

Wipe out those tears over Romeo and Juliet; we will revive them for you!! Interactive fiction is a genre where users chose the story line. It also includes wovels, where the outcome of the stories is determined by online voting. Authors actually wait for vote results before they write each chapter of the ‘Wovels’. I wonder what those authors are paid for.

All of the above mentioned topics are similar in that they are a yet another stunt to demonstrate that we, as humans, are not passive creatures. We are an arrogant species; we refuse to remain creatures; we want to become creators of our destiny.

the linke to my facebook profile is http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=548075547&ref=profile. However, you are not going to be able to view it because of my privacy settings. Luckily, almost everyone in my class are in my friend’s list so it should be accessible to you guys.

The reason why I am not part of many online communities is my over exaggerated concerns about privacy issues. Instead I will demonstrate some of my interests through posting links of different topics that can tell you a little about me.

I love reading, maybe just as much as I love writing, if not more. One of the books I read lately was “Are Men Necessary?” The book discussed feminism from a new perspective, or so it was to me. Here is a link of an article written by CNN about the book: http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/11/15/dowd.men.necessary/index.html

I also read books that left a great impact on my life such as “Long Walk to Freedom” by South African former president, Nelson Madela:  http://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Freedom-Autobiography-Mandela/dp/0316548189. Not only does this book talk about Mandela’s struggle, it also demonstrates life in Africa, my home land.

I think that “100 Years of Solitude” was by far the most interesting book I have read. This link will provide you with a detailed summary of the book: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/solitude/

I read “October Sky” when I was 17, the year my boy friend died. Perhaps due to the circumstances, it touched me in so many ways. It is based on a true story about a Rocket Engineers who worked in NASA. There is also a movie about it, but I never watched it. At the end of the book, he mentions that, as a middle-aged man, he meets his high school crush whom he talks about at the beginning of the book. I wondered then, who would I meet when I am old now that my boy friend since child hood had passed away. This is a link offers some information about the book: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/October-Sky/Homer-Hickam/e/9780440235507.

Now that I have provided you with some of the books that I read, I hope  you enjoyed this post and I hope that you consider reading some of these great books.

I was born in Kurdistan, Iraq, where my parents had moved to shortly after their marriage seeking better job opportunities. As a child, I was amused by the war’s shootings and killings, thinking they were fire works like the ones I had seen in the movies. My mother lost her youth to severe burns in over 60% of her body and a bullet in her right arm. My father lost his tennis skills to a bullet in his left arm and his hips. Moving back to our country, Egypt, did not seem any more pleasant than the agony of war. We were no longer surrounded by mountains and water falls, but a big city drowned in poverty and despair. I was left alone, separated from my mother by three jobs that kept us alive. And my father? I lost him in 1985, the day I was born a girl, unlike what he had fancied – a boy. My mother held me in her arms for the very first time at 11:30 am of a Tuesday, May 29, and had been the happiest person alive ever since, or so she tells me.

In search for a better life, we moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when I was nine years old. A couple of years later, my father was out of our life and I thought I became the happiest child alive. Did he leave or did we leave? That I never bothered to ask, as long as he was gone I knew that coughing twice on the dinner table was not going to cost me a black eye or a broken arm. I could cough my lungs out at dinner with no consequences, it felt liberating.

Happily, I, then, endured ten years of being frowned upon, spat at and spoken to like a slave that the culture had sentenced us with. The price we had to pay for being a family of women and no man. Yes, I was happy. I had a devastated sister and a sick mother who could barely afford the costs of our education, but as long as they were with me, away from him, my father, I was happy indeed.

Here I am today, 24 years old, sitting before the picture of a man who once looked familiar. He has my lips, my eyes and my skin color. He is my father, the man who rejected me, the man whom approval I longed for since I was born.

I take a vow today with all the readers of this blog as my witnesses, that once I finish my education and provide my mother and my sister with shelter and safety I will look for my father and I will tell him that I have granted him my forgiveness and love and everything else a father should get.

Feminism is simply a movement that witnessed three major breakouts in the 20^th century; 1920’s, 1970’s and finally in the 1990’s. It calls out for women’s rights all over the world. Unlike the western countries, Middle Eastern feminists do not demand sexual freedom. However, they both demand equal social, economical and political recognition in the community. Some of the issues raised by Feminists were abortion rights and female genital mutilation.

Although, the world has gone through drastic changes in terms of recognizing women as equally productive members of the society, women are still subject to discrimination particularly in third world countries.