Herman Melville-Philosophers Have a Broken Digester

From the Princeton full-text version of Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester."

I added another Moby Dick quote in a later blog entry.

Review: A Season in Mecca by Abdellah Hammoudi

A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage. Abdellah Hammoudi. Translated from the French by Pascale Ghazaleh. New York: Hill and Wang; 2006. ISBN-10: 0-8090-7609-8. www.fsgbooks.com

Amnesty International Report on Women

Amnesty International has released a report entitled "Egypt: Women Targeted by Association." A local Amnesty International member requested that I translated some letters to Gihan Ibrahim Abdelhamid, the longest-held female administrative detainee in Egypt, into Arabic. I've attached them to this blog entry in case you wanted to use them yourself. The report does not include instructions on how to send the letters, but in sha Allah I'll get that information and updated the blog entry.

Arabic religious letter (MS Word, TIF)
Arabic secular letter (MS Word, TIF)
English religious letter
English secular letter

Update April 20, 2011