N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 14, 2009, 2:26 am
This has to be the funniest story I've read all week. Man, these guys have no sense of irony, do they? I also loved this sentence -- in a news report, remember: The chief justice, who is the darl...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 14, 2009, 1:46 am
This is the third and final post in a series of reactions to the Jeremy Scahill's investigative piece on Blackwater in Pakistan. In the first post, I dealt with the fact that Scahill's story w...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 11, 2009, 10:48 am
If this Dawn report is to be believed, that's the word U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to describe us. To be fair, it does save the trouble of three additional syllables. By the way, it...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 11, 2009, 1:09 am
Look who decided to let us know he's still alive: LONDON: Younus Khan who relinquished captaincy citing need for rest has said that he would be available for Pakistan’s upcoming tour of Australi...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 9, 2009, 2:36 am
As the entire country loses its marbles over Blackwater, officials from the American consulate in Lahore seem hell bent on feeding our national paranoia by acting like inconsiderate idiots on a major...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 8, 2009, 12:17 am
On the heels of today's devastating attack in Lahore, which killed 45 people and injured about one hundred, we were treated to a front page article in the NYT that would be of interest to many Pak...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 5, 2009, 2:47 am
So apparently our Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani was quoted by Al-Jazeera English as saying "Pakistan is a country. It is not a vegetable that someone can come and take it." Indeed. The obvious qu...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 4, 2009, 12:50 pm
I just watched the World Cup draw on ESPN2. First of all, let me say that Charlize Theron is fine. Second, I get very annoyed when I hear commentators and analysts instantly opine on which is the so-c...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 4, 2009, 12:36 pm
My question has nothing whatsoever to do with his famous proclamation that he would resign if the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan was proved -- which it has been, if you believe Jeremy Scahill. No...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 4, 2009, 1:35 am
News reports often rely on quotes from both sourced and anonymous intelligence officials, usually to paint a particular picture of some political conflict. I always practice healthy skepticism toward ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 1, 2009, 10:26 pm
I had to go to a department dinner, so I missed Obama's speech as he delivered it, but thanks to the wonders of technology, I am going to watch it on the NYT website. I will blog my thoughts as I ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 1, 2009, 3:54 pm
Please watch this Chinese news clip on the whole Tiger Woods thing (via Simmons' twitter): By the way, the title of the post refers to a quote from Mao, which is the only Chinese phrase I know.
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 30, 2009, 3:08 pm
I honestly did not want to write a post criticizing Tom Friedman -- mainly because it's too easy, and it's been done to death -- but I have a few minutes of spare time, so I thought: why the h...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 30, 2009, 11:43 am
This is the second post in a three part series on Jeremy Scahill's investigative piece on Blackwater in Pakistan. In the first post, I dealt with the extent to which we should buy Schaill's cl...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 29, 2009, 2:35 pm
Forty one. That was the total number of fouls in the clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou. And you know what? Barca did just fine. So often castigated for being too much beauty an...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 27, 2009, 4:27 pm
... sound is muted. 9:06 p.m. Judas edges it down to third man, all along the ground. Four more. We'll take ' ... -4. 8:50 p.m. Jeez. The best I can say about Judas' batting right now ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 26, 2009, 12:44 am
Wow. To be honest, I don't even care if we lose this test anymore. When you watch sheer genius at work, nitty-gritty things like "the result of the game" just don't matter. Let me say this rig...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 25, 2009, 1:26 pm
I have a few thoughts on Jeremy Scahill's piece on Blackwater's alleged activities in Pakistan. I read the piece extremely closely; I read almost every sentence two or three times to properly ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 25, 2009, 3:15 am
SNL, you beauty. Sometimes people outside the U.S. have trouble viewing videos from the websites of the original network, so here's the Youtube version of the same:
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 25, 2009, 2:49 am
Yikes. By the way, I finally finished reading the Scahill piece on Blackwater in Pakistan. I will be posting reactions in the next couple days, so stay tuned.
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 24, 2009, 7:03 pm
To put it simply, that was the best Barcelona have played since the Champions League final against Manchester United. Against a strong Inter side -- without Sneijder, to be fair -- Barca bossed the ga...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 24, 2009, 1:10 am
Bloody hell. The interwebs have erupted with this story from The Nation (the American one) on the alleged activities of Blackwater in Pakistan. I'm too tired to read it closely right now and wade ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 23, 2009, 4:59 pm
12:23 a.m. Well the day finishes on a bullshit end. Whatever. NZ finish on 276-6. Honors even I'd say. Our bowlers tried hard all day, and given the circumstances, did well. Let's see what hap...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 23, 2009, 1:16 pm
Here's Cartman doing some scary math: Much of my research for my dissertation actually concerns this very phenomenon -- though I seriously doubt I will be citing Cartman any time soon. The basic ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 23, 2009, 3:08 am
Yeah, Gilani. Yeah. So if he's Maverick, I guess we know who's Goose. But does that make Nawaz Sharif Iceman?
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 23, 2009, 12:19 am
I've had a really crazy three or four weeks, so I'm going to make up for it by watching a lot of sports this week. With that in mind, I will definitely be liveblogging the first day of the fir...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 22, 2009, 10:40 pm
Here's proof that you should never try to do charitable work when you're drunk: Drunk and eager to do some charity, New Zealand cricketers Neil Broom and Aaron Redmond ended up causing a “r...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 21, 2009, 8:12 pm
This is absolutely insane. Barcelona are unbeaten in eleven games in La Liga this season. In the Champions League, they have lost once. And yet, their season is at a massive turning point this week. T...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 20, 2009, 6:09 pm
Al-Jazeera English on the government's claims of success in the war against the Taliban:
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 20, 2009, 5:06 pm
Whenever I'm bored and have five minutes to kill, I always have great fun typing in regular words in the search box on Google and seeing what Google thinks I should be searching for. Hereunder are...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 20, 2009, 4:48 pm
Well, it's all over now. Via Chapati Mystery, check these guys out (click on the images to enlarge): Apparently they're one of those socially conscious companies who donate half their profits...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 19, 2009, 4:57 pm
I like reading and I like politics, but if there ever was a book I know that would not make my Amazon shopping list in a million years, it's Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. I'm not even linkin...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 17, 2009, 2:01 pm
The red squiggly line Nazi is telling me that "factionalization" is not a word. Other stupid MS Word corrections here, here, here, here, and here.
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 15, 2009, 3:43 pm
One of the strange findings in Political Science is that a country being democratic or not has surprisingly little impact on whether it enjoys economic growth. To be sure, democracies tend to be riche...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 14, 2009, 2:45 am
My undergraduate dissertation examined the negative impact an over expansive and ever expanding international copyright legal regime could have on Countries of the South. I was quite the idealist lef...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 13, 2009, 9:57 am
1:26 p.m. These random awards at the end are hilarious. 1:11 p.m. And he's gone. Styris holes out to Malik -- no doubt about this one -- and Pakistan win this T20 by 7 runs. No summing up from me...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 12, 2009, 3:06 pm
I will be live-blogging our T20 game against NZ tomorrow. Your comments/active participation will be, as always, much appreciated.
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 12, 2009, 10:13 am
As reports come in of Inzamam playing a major part in the ouster of Younus I am reminded of the time when Younus was seen as the anti-Inzamam: he was energetic, confident and media savvy. He also did...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 10, 2009, 7:34 pm
A friend of mine asked me to identify the flag to Zardari's left here. I am ashamed to say that I simply do not know. You guys have any ideas?
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 9, 2009, 2:53 pm
Sid Lowe describes what one Spanish journalist did when asked to write a hundred-word report on a particularly boring game of football: Asked for 100 words on Recreativo's crashingly dull 1-0 win ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 8, 2009, 12:48 am
Apologies for the long title. This is from Sy Hersh's latest piece in the New Yorker: Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 7, 2009, 10:15 pm
Today, I wrote close to 2500 words of academese that no one other than me, my advisers, and these people will ever read. My brain was and is fried. It took me about four hours of near constant writing...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 3, 2009, 2:35 pm
Via Ezra Klein, we discover how Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich can spend $47,000 in one afternoon at a Manhattan restaurant. I'd make some joke about this being worthwhile compared to Malouda or ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 3, 2009, 3:47 am
At a recent wedding in Lahore I was surprised to learn that the Punjab government has once again introduced the one-dish law at weddings - hosts are, by law, prevented from serving more than one item...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 2, 2009, 9:28 pm
So I'm on Dawn's webpage, and this is what I find myself staring at: Does that seem a little strange to you? The fact that our leaders and political stalwarts are mired in petty political dis...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 2, 2009, 2:14 am
As another blast rips through a civilian target, a market in Rawalpindi, the BBC tells us the story of Adnan Hussain, a teenager who lost his entire family in the Peshawar blast. Here is Adnan in his ...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Nov 1, 2009, 12:17 am
As the government bends over backwards to keep the airline afloat, the grateful people at PIA have this to say: THIS is apropos of your editorial , “ PIA’s nosedive” (Oct 21). PIA is nowhere ne...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 30, 2009, 9:37 pm
If you've watched The Sopranos, then you've had the experience of being bemused at the insanity that was the relationship between Christopher and Adriana (culminating in one of the most memora...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 30, 2009, 12:25 pm
Reacting to the news that the U.S. economy actually grew in the third quarter of this year, Krugman throws a wet blanket on things, and says growth isn't happening fast enough to affect the high l...
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N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 30, 2009, 10:34 am
But come on man. This is ridiculous.
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