Jarrah's uplink

Well, last night I donned a tuxedo, quaffed matinis, gambled frivolously, and danced the salsa with a variety of charming and beautifully dressed ladies.

Damned fun party. Happy birthday Thomas!

Oh, and having just watched and enjoyed Dr. Who... I suggest you all check out The Ten Doctors

John's Uplink

(the following is something John wrote in the train on the way home today)

VENICE, EUROPEAN FEDERATION (AP) - 16/07/2034 1:15PM -
VENICE in the early years of the third decade of the twenty-first century is a slowly sinking ruin; its magnificent plazas and soaring cathedrals finally succumbing to the rising waves of the Adriatic. The catastrophe has gone mainly uncontested and unobserved; the Italian government is too preoccupied with the collapse of South Italy; the European Federation mired in Russian mud. The tourists are long since gone; the bridge to the mainland collapsed months ago. In short, the city should be dead.

Yet today it swarms with a new kind of tourist: Muslim youths have swarmed from all across the Mediterranean in a fleet of cheap corn-fiber dinghies and abandoned fishing trawlers for the flash concert of the century. The two monsters of the Islamic taqwacore world, Submission and AlQ, have joined forces to create a temporary musical Mecca in the sinking city. Word has been spread through the nooks and crannies of the internet; networking spaces throughout the Islamic world have been working overtime to energize and mobilize taqwacore fans for Taqwa Al Italia '34.

For weeks, volunteers have been trawling over the sinking buildings and plazas of the Beautiful City. In under a month, they've refloated more buildings than any previous reclamation effort; tagged and indexed the myriad aquatic hazards, and erected myriad rave cafes and dance platforms throughout the lagoon. Previously unskilled volunteers have been able to undertake massive feats of engineering, thanks to the latest construction expert systems out of Algiers. What motivates these Euro-Islamic wunderkinds?"It's not about the music," says volunteer Jacques al Fada, 18, who rode the 400 kilometres from Paris on his bicycle to help prepare for the event, "It's all about... like... faith, n'est-ce pas? It's all about building a Noveau Islam, building a modern community of faith."