I never had a Lite Brite as a kid, so this online version is rather nifty:

First, a young woman named Neelum Noorani was set to make history as the first Miss Pakistan in the Miss Earth pageant. Now, however, Pakistani authorities have told pageant officials to prohibit her from participating, because "participation in the contest denigrated Islam and brought shame to Pakistan, officials said. "

As an unabashed feminist I'm no fan of beauty pageants. I just don't think they benefit women in any way, despite all the protestations to the contrary.

On the other hand, Pakistan's reaction represents movement to the other extreme - cover women up and make them invisible. And it's such a hypocritical thing too. I know, after dealing with it for the past decade.

Officials say she can participate on her own, but not as a representative of Pakistan. I suppose that's fine, but I also know that had she entered as a U.S. representative (she currently lives in the U.S.) and made it all the way to the finals, they'd be all over themselves with pride that a women of Pakistani ethnicity made it, and they'd claim her as theirs. I KNOW, because people do that to ME all the time. I can't tell you the number of times Pakistani men have openly discouraged me from doing the very things that later bring me successes that THEY are proud of. And though I'm American, that's used as an accusation against me when I make comments - comments I have every right to because of my ethnic heritage and experiences - but that they disagree with. That's when they'll deny me any connection to that side of my heritage. On the other hand, when I've done something exceptional and they find pleasing they ignore that I'm American, and ignore the Scandinavian side of my heritage and claim me as Pakistani. I find it frustrating, even infuriating sometimes. I hate the hypocrisy of it.

I know Pakistani guys are checking out beautiful women, and I just feel the reaction against the contestant was that sort of hypocrisy that I detest. Check out the vast majority of Pakistani male's web sites. Somewhere on it you'll find links to pictures of "models". Usually these are female fashion models, actresses and singers. [ Of course they never include MALE models in any of these personal web picture collections. (I out right asked one guy once, "I looked and couldn't find the pictures of the actors and male models - where did you put them?" I had never *occurred* to him of course... Even as women go woozy over men like Aamir Khan. But that's a whole 'nuther rant...] There's plenty of obsession over beauty when it comes to other areas - it's just *subtle* and harder to pin down. Not obvious, like a blatant beauty pageant.

Any way.

Other interesting things? London's Natural History Museum is opening its Darwin Center to the public. Twenty-two million specimens have been moved out storage and into a state of the art research and display facility. I would LOVE to see this thing. I remember being just blown away with The University of Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology. They had most of their collection on display, rather than stored (as is the case for most research items). You could pull out these enclosed drawers, find a identification number and then look those up in these huge books and find out what they were. The way the museum was setup, there was just so MUCH more visible and so many cool things to look at and discover. I had no idea that most museums displayed only a small percentage (5% I think) of their collections, and MOA really impressed me. Now there's a similar kind of thing in London with regards to natural history and I so wish I could go and see it.

Oh and now that hurricane Isadore has finished making her way through the gulf (pounding the islands, the Yucatan and Louisiana) we're looking at copy-cat Lili! Looks like this hurricane is going head right into the Gulf as well, pounding much of the same areas - though the projects put Lili's path at a beeline for Houston, Texas - my home town. Eep.

I've also been keeping up with world news a bit better lately, and the rising death toll of the African ferry disaster is just astounding me.

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