afghan
Latest
Afghanistan moves ahead with plans for national electronic ID cards
It doesn't appear to involve the biometric IDs that were first proposed by NATO, but the Afghanistan government has just announced plans to issue electronic ID cards to everyone in the country -- an undertaking that it hopes will be complete in five years. That admittedly difficult effort got off to an official start today with the signing of a $101.5 million contract with Afghan company Grand Technology Resources, which will apparently be responsible for producing the wallet-sized cards themselves. In addition to the usual identification, those will each contain a chip that stores the individual's drivers license, vehicle registration, signature and voting registration records -- the latter of which is particularly key, as one of the main reasons for the cards existence is to ensure "fairer, more transparent and efficient" elections in the future.
Super Mario Afghan
We like this new trend of people crafting game-related afghans. First it was with Tetris, and now with a scene depicting one of our favorite plumbers (Mario, obviously). This particular blanket was made by ThomcatDesigns, who have earned our complete respect for their (his? her?) mad crafting skills. The detail in this makes it look like it came right out of one of our favorite NES classics.Check the gallery to see the chronological progression of the afghan as it was created. It's pretty amazing to watch it turn from a mess of yarn into a masterpiece.%Gallery-20628%[Via Technabob; pictures via thomcatdesgins' Flickr account]
Having a cell phone in Afghanistan may kill you
You thought dropped calls were bad, what about dropping a person, Sopranos-style, over a phone call? Seriously, apparently the situation in southwestern Afghanistan is getting so bad that the Taliban has started a resurgence in some areas, reports the British newspaper, The Independent in an article dated August 20. Nelofer Pazira, the Canadian journalist who starred in the film "Kandahar," quotes an Afghan man named Besmillah, who says that at Taliban checkpoints, the big angry extremists are checking everyone's cell phone. He goes on to say that if these bearded thugs find a number that "looks suspicous" they will call it immediately and furthermore, if the voice on the other end answers in English, they'll kill the owner of that cell phone on the spot. So let's review: next time you're in southern Afghanistan, change all the numbers on your phone to read Mullah Omar -- or better yet, just leave your phone at home.
