Will Al Jazeera English Revolutionize America's TV News Landscape?

Will Al Jazeera English Revolutionize America's TV News Landscape?
Masood Haider - Have you asked a bakri? Perhaps the only thing worse than being an Ahmedi in modern-day Islamic Pakistan is to be a bakra, particularly the black variety.

Classics and Classism Zia Mohyeddin

I am frequently dubbed as a classicist. I don't mind this even though I know that the implication is that I belong to a breed, conservative in taste, thoroughly insensitive to all modern endeavours: art literature, architecture, and blind to the wonders of the computer age. It speaks volumes for the anti-intellect culture which has spread all around us that "Classics" is regarded as something old-fashioned, appreciated only by old fogies.

What is "Classics?" What is classicism? Some dictionaries would tell you that it pertains to ancient Greek and Latin literature and art; others define it as "simple, harmonious, well- proportioned." The Concise Oxford, while giving three or four meanings, still relates the terms to Greek or Latin art and culture. Mercifully, it also offers a simple definition: "of acknowledged excellence outstandingly important."

I would like to submit that any creative work of the past -- be it sculpture, painting, drama, architecture, poetry, history -- which stimulates your mind and makes you wonder about the depth of its imagination, is "Classics." (Needless to say that all things antique are not "Classics," just as "Classics" do not', necessarily, belong to an antique world).