Quick confession

I have a new addiction. It is the one and only Facebook. These days I’m finding myself checking this networking portal at least 10 times a day. I’m not sure why. Nothing much happens in there. I guess what has got me is the idea of "six degrees of separation," where I find myself getting in touch with people from as far back as elementary school. All of a sudden I’m reconnecting with scores of people that I befriended during the last thirty years of my life. It is absolutely fascinating.

My "Friends" on Facebook range from old coworkers to people I went to graduate school with to family relatives and old friends, all of them scattered across the globe. What a neat service and what an organized way to keep in touch with your loved ones! I highly recommend it.

I even got the husband, who is usually highly skeptical of networking portals, into it. Every once in a while I catch him checking the latest developments of his "friends" on Facebook or browsing through the photos updated by his acquaintances. Pretty neat!

As is case with many of my obsessions, I’m quite sure that I will lose interest eventually, but I’m not sure when. For the time being I’m hooked.

Taking a break from the Muggle world

Cover of 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' A new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is coming out this summer. Sweet! Also, the highly-anticipated finale to the book series will also be available next month. This, of course, is making the summer even more exciting, at least for me. Last week, my husband confessed that he had pre-ordered Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows for me some months ago, which I thought was very thoughtful and sweet. However, the minute he mentioned this, I felt intense pressure. I’m behind, I thought to myself. I still need to read The Order of the Phoenix before the movie comes out and there is still another book to finish before I can put my hands on the finale.

Ahh! Too much to read, too little time. Yes, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan but I have not been doing my homework lately. I’m leaving everything until the last minute. I just started The Order of the Phoenix and so far it is as expected: charming and magical.

It is worth noting that I’m reading this while the region that I’m so attached to seems to be deteriorating even further. From Gaza to Iraq to Lebanon, things are moving from bad to worse. While all this is happening, I choose to lose myself in a world of witchery and wizards. It is a world so mesmerizing that it makes you lose sight – at least for a moment — of the dramatic real-life events around you. Yes, it’s true. I’m sick and tired of the Muggle world. Take me to Hogwarts.

Media watch: The work of consultants

For those that care about media issues, here is an article I wrote about the work of The Rendon Group in Afghanistan.

Consultants say they focused on skills, not influencing media

Rendon Group, a public relations firm known for helping the U.S. government make its case for the war in Iraq, denied any direct influence over Afghanistan’s news media at a June 8 event in Washington, D.C. Linda Flohr, a consultant at Rendon, said the group’s work in Afghanistan was only with training that government’s press officers. "We only worked on skills," she told IJNet.

The work of Rendon Group and other public relations contractors hired by the Pentagon was once nearly unknown to the public. But they have faced higher public scrutiny since 2005, when news outlets reported that another firm, The Lincoln Group, paid Iraqi journalists and newspapers to publish stories favorable of the U.S. military’s work in Iraq. Flohr said that any articles connecting Rendon Group with those efforts have since been retracted.

Read more: [IJNet]

The Bodies Exhibition anti-smoking message

Smoker's lung comparison One of the most gripping things that I saw when visiting the controversial Bodies Exhibition (in which real corpses are on display) was the real lungs of real smokers. The scientific exhibition, currently running in Washington, D.C., makes a point of showing visitors the grave dangers smoking does to our bodies by showcasing the difference between a smoker’s lungs and those of a non-smoker. Naturally the smoker’s real lung was in a dire state. It was all black and looked rigid and in extremely rough shape. Real corpses on display

Visitors to the exhibition that are smokers are encouraged to throw away their pack of cigarettes in a glass box that has a sign above it stating: "On average a pack of cigarettes takes two hours and twenty minutes off your life. We’d like you to be around longer. Leave your cigarettes in the gallery and stop smoking now."

After I saw this, I had this sudden urge to take every smoker I know by the hand and bring them to this exhibition to show them how they are killing themselves — slowly but surely. While there, I kept thinking about my home country, Jordan, and how widespread smoking is there. Would an exhibition such as this one deter people from taking up this nasty habit? Will I live to see the day when young Jordanians find it "uncool" to smoke? Maybe. Only time will tell.

Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns:’ Disappointing, clichéd

Cover of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'Everywhere I go in DC these days, I see people carrying around Khaled Hosseini’s latest novel: A Thousand Splendid Suns. Washingtonians are reading it everywhere: the train, the park, the bus, you name it. According to the Washington Post’s "Book World" section, the hardcover edition of the book is the top seller in the Washington DC Metro area. It is really quite fascinating for me to see a bestseller at work.

I, too, am among those Washingtonians carrying around this novel. Like everyone else, I’m reading it while commuting back and forth to work. I’m nearly done with it and so far I’m unimpressed. It’s a real disappointment for me, as I was so enchanted by The Kite Runner that I could not wait to put my hands on Husseini’s next work.

But this novel doesn’t really present anything new. It is filled with clichés and it’s quite obvious that Hosseini had Western audiences in mind when he wrote it. I felt he was writing to please an audience and not merely to exorcise his deep-rooted feelings. I was also disappointed with the prose. It felt so dull and it dragged until eternity. I also felt he had trouble portraying the female point-of-view. His Kite Runner protagonist, Amir, was so well-developed and complex. That is not the case with the two protagonists here: Mariam and Laila. Too bad!

But then again, this is only humble opinion. I’m sure there are many out there that will disagree.