Mohammed Atta, Farhad Manjoo, Media Watch,

Mohamed Atta confronts the historic Muslim monuments and modern high-rises of Cairo. By Daniel Brook on dispatches
In 1994, Mohamed Atta traveled to Istanbul with a student group and continued onward to visit Dittmar Machule in northern Syria, where the professor was doing fieldwork on a Bronze Age village under excavation. But Atta found himself more interested in the traditional urbanism of the nearest major city, Aleppo. Atta was hardly the first student of Middle Eastern architecture drawn to Aleppo. Along with Fez in Morocco and Sana'a in Yemen, Aleppo is considered among the best-preserved cities in the Arab world. When he decided to write his thesis on the city, he returned later that year to conduct more extensive research.

A better way to market computers: Say what they can actually do. By Farhad Manjoo on technology
Intel launched a new range of processors on Tuesday, a product line that the company says will mean faster, smaller, cheaper, and more energy-efficient computers for everyone. Hurray! Now if only I could understand what they're talking about. See, the company calls its new microprocessors the Core i5 and the Core i7. People who pay close attention to Intel might find this confusing; after all, didn't the company already unveil the Core i7? Yes, it did—the Core i7 actually came out about a year ago, with Intel billing it as "the fastest processor on the planet." OK, so the new chip is just a faster, better version of that old one, right? Actually, no. The processors that Intel unveiled this week are slower than the Core i7 it put out last year. That's because Intel is now filling out its "midrange" line. It now sells two completely different kinds of Core i7 chips, and the old ones are more powerful than the new ones, violating the computer-industry axiom that newer is always better.


An Open letter to Mr. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa By Dr. Haidar Eid - Gaza
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies - a racist organization by any standards - as well as the content of your speech at that forum.
I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.


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