It has been such a long time since i updated my blog. I have been meaning to write about the fantastic flamenco concert I went to two weekends ago - it was marvelous. I am waiting for some of the photos to post.
Meanwhile, an article on PhysicsWeb about how the universe might in fact be finite sized - a cosmic hall of mirrors that trick you into believing the infinite. And the comments from /. about the article.
And finally, a hilarious cat video. Too funny by half!
Here are some interesting articles that I read:
- this article claims that as salaries get higher and higher in Bangalore, outsourcing will move away from India (or at least Bangalore) and to China.
- the other interesting article was mentioned on digg here. It seems in Ukraine there is a scam where they declare babies to be still-born but then they kill healthy new borns to sell their organs. Also it seems they harvest them for stem cell. I didn't realize babies also had stem cells (i thought it was only embryos) but then I read the following comment on the digg page:
"The idea is to pretend that the babies are stillborn so that you can take their body. Then you can harvest stem cells from bone marrow (FTA), and trade their organs. It is supposedly easier than harvesting stem cells from embryos as there are in larger amount in the bones of a full-term babies than in aborted foetuses or in embryos (supposing it's not banned). But IMHO the primary goal is harvesting hard-to-find newborn organs, stem cells being a plus."
It's a scary world we live in.
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Oh and here you can buy some very cool shirts!
For you non-firefly fans out there (why?!!!) anyway here's another reason why i love the show. Forget that it is excellent and funny and has a lovely cast. Forget that. I am now going to go deeper and let us look at the character of the characters on the show. Seems a group organized a Firefly convention in LA, with tickets selling for $60-200 and it was sold out. Three days before the event the dodgy company that was organizing it, cancelled it and ran away with the money. However, the cast still turned up at the place and partied with the people. I mean seriously, how cool and nice would the cast have to be?
I want more fireflyyyyys!!!
Hello, if you want to view some of our photos from our trip to Orlando, click here.
Alvaro has managed to dump the whole lot onto the album without doing any filtering whatsoever, so... be warned about a lot of crappy pictures! :-P
The places we went to were:
(1) NASA Space Center
(2) Epcot Center (one of the Disney parks) which had models of 9-10 different countries and then the Disney store
(3) Universal Studios
(4) Disney Walkway with all the buskers etc
(5) Cirque Du Soleil: La Nouba and then dinner with our friends Maria and Kyriakos.
This is an interesting article I read a couple of days ago which I have been meaning to post up here. Here's a funny pic from the article: (although not sure I should be finding it funny...)
It is interesting how many civil wars had their origin in the drawing of the artificial borders in WW1 and WW2.
Also interesting is Yazdânism, the religion practiced by the Kurds, called the Cult of Angels. I had no idea about them. It is interesting that the sect in Iran also believes in some of the Islamic figures like Imam Ali. They also believe in reincarnation so they are not really moslem. If you get a chance read their religious beliefs in the above article.
Mohamed touched upon some of the fine points in the priorities dilemma in his comment. You're right in that often to place family first in the priority list, we need to put career first for a while, but then how long is a while? I don't know. Is it the time away when you are doing your phd? is it the career itself?
If you want to go to academia, you have limited choices and once you make that choice it is very much of a long term choice (long term referring to 7-10 years since you can't move away before you get your tenure). It is worst when you have two career people to consider.
I know what it is like when you are away and things happen in your life that you can never get back. By being away you take a risk that things don't change during that time and that when you return it will be to the same faces. But when this doesn't happen, then you really re-evaluate everything and you see the risks more clearly with passing months.
Anyhoo.
Here's an interesting Washingtonpost editorial on how Bush is possibly the worst president ever. It says that the problem with the worst ever presidents in US history has been that they are "Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues)." Now compare this with what we know of Bush.
I wonder if the public reaction to presidents such as Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon, who claim the worst ever US presidents title, was anything similar to that of Bush. Was the public so divided?
Today on Digg I saw the following photo posted. It was such a sad sight.
Here is the link to the article. Readign the comments, it seems this happened in 2004 in CA and the ducks were rescued.
I hope that is true. :-|
Do you ever feel like you are being pulled every which way and you are not sure what to do? Sometimes I feel like my life is defined by wanting to please the people around me so much that I don't have time to decide what I want. In the game of priorities, how do you decide what is more important? And once you have decided the order, how can you make sure that you don't satisfy just one, but maybe most of them. Can this even be done? Or once you have made your priorities, do you always have to sacrifice all others for one? and life is not really an independent process, rather made up of all the different people in my life and what if they don't agree with my order?
Today I felt like I was lost adrift on this ocean and I didn't know which way to go. Not that I need to make any decisions yet but I felt that the time for decisions is approaching. And I think the picture that is emerging is not like what I had in my head. I don't know what to do. Even when I say forget what i want and lets just go along with what others want as long as I am with them... well what if those things do not converge? and where am I in the middle of all this? Am I becoming someone who is going to live their lives thru others and then wake up when i am middle aged and think where did i go wrong, where is my own life? Why is it that I make the sacrifices?
I don't know what to do. This feeling is so depressing.
A couple of kool astronauts we met at NASA. Do you recognize them?
On friday we went to Kennedy NASA Center. You should see what Alvaro bought. We will have to take a picture of them :-)
The second day was spent at the Epcot center at Disney World. It was really nice and we got a tonne of really cool pics. I will post them later. For now here is a pic of me being eaten by the shark of Nemo - fortunately I was rescued by this handsome Moroccan guy you see below. *sigh* we rode off on his camel into the sunset.
I'll post more pics later. I will return to normal life tomorrow evening. 
The first remarkable close-up pictures of animals in the womb
"An unborn elephant, tiny but perfect in every way. A dolphin swimming in the womb, just as it will have to swim in the ocean the moment it is born. An unborn dog panting. Each one amazing and now, thanks to these remarkable pictures, they can be seen for the first time."
These are really amazing photos!
read more | digg story
The lovely Christine visited the Sculptures by the Sea in Sydney on the weekend and she sent me some of the photos. The sculptures are placed along the coastline between Tamarama and Bondi Beaches in Sydney. The Photos are REALLY cool!! I especially like photo 13. Actually I like all of them but 13 is a bit sassy! :-P
I must say Chris is becoming a pretty good photographer! Some of the framings of the photos etc. Lovely!
Just some news that I was reading:
- Borat has been "recommended not to be screened=censored" in Russia. This is a very interesting article about how the reason cited is xenophobia and yet the significant xenophobia that already exists in Russia.
"In recent weeks the Russian government, from the president down, has issued populist calls playing specifically to xenophobic sentiments. Officials commonly demanded the protection of "the indigenous population of Russia" from "non-locals". There is little doubt that this language ostensibly endorses hostility toward people with darker skin and non-Slavic features, regardless of whether they are Russian nationals from the Caucasus or migrant workers from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, China, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. The head of the Russian Migration Service said point blank that "settlements such as China towns" are "unacceptable" in Russia. Such language encourages precisely those ugly, xenophobic sentiments that the ban of "Borat" is intended to contain."
- seems the OJ interview/book have been canceled - Rupert Murdoch issued an apology b/c he hadn't thought such things would cause offense. Crikey!
- finally some gossip. You might know Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got hitched last weekend. According to this article, the wedding was nothing more than a Scientology stunt. The best man was the head of scientology in US, he went with Cruise/Holmes on their honeymoon and at each table a scientology adviser sat to explain the ceremony. It is such a joke. I don't, really REALLY don't understand how scientology can even be considered a faith... without laughing... *sigh*
alright this is a slight misnomer, revolution refering to the previous name of the wii. This is not anythign to do with the Wii either, rather PS3. Here is a NY times article comparing the PS3 and Xbox. Basically they say:
"Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile. And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer."
Alvaro pay attention!! although surprising is that they do not mention the Wii at all. Speaking of which here is the latest hilarious comic from xkcd:
ok one last post for today. I went to a very interesting talk by the new prof in our department Edo Waks. Here are some of the things I learned:
(btw I haven't checked if what i am saying here is right or not! Hopefully it's correct!!)
- a potential problem with quantum crypto is that instead of one photon being used to carry each information bit, multiple photons can be excited. Specifically, since the number of photons that are excited is a probabilistic process that follows a Poisson RV, it is highly likely that more than one photon gets excited. This leaves the problem that (can potentially break the original BB84 quantum key distribution protocol) that an eavesdropper can extract only one of the photons to get the info and leave the other photon to carry the same info to the receiver.
- So it is important to create single photon emitters. This is the work that Waks et al did based on quantum dots.
- The other problem that he looked at was that an optical communication channel with ideal emitters still has a decay factor which makes it need repeaters per 100km or so. In quantum world this problem also exists however repeaters cannot be used because of the no-cloning theory in Quantum physics. What they do is that instead they use entanglement and they induce the entanglements to have shared state by remote - essentially you have two particles, and you entangle them via some coherent source (so they do not have to be physically close). Then by manipulating one particle, the other particle is induces into similar state - this is the idea of why they can have entanglement teleportation as well as repeater technology.
one other really interesting thing was this idea of remote entanglement is where the EPR paradox came from.
From Wiki: "Although originally devised as a thought experiment that would demonstrate the incompleteness of quantum mechanics, actual experimental results refute the principle of locality, invalidating the EPR trio's original purpose. The "spooky action at a distance" that so disturbed the authors of EPR consistently occurs in numerous and widely replicated experiments. Einstein never really accepted quantum mechanics as a "real" and complete theory, struggling to the end of his life for an interpretation that could comply with his Relativity without implying "God playing dice", as he condensed his dissatisfaction with QM's intrinsic randomness and (still to be resolved) counter-intuitivity."
[BTW, here is an interesting introduction to Quantum Computing which was sent to me today]
Sony is taking a considerable loss on each PlayStation 3 sold. Costs for the 20GB model exceed the suggested retail price of $499 by a total of $306.85, Analysis estimates for the 60GB version, costs exceed the $599 price by $241.35. In contrast, the HDD-equipped Xbox 360 has a manufacturing and materials total of $323.30 while you're paying $399.
[G: interesting! I wonder what Nintendo's cost/price is. I think they are making a profit too right? Also interesting that w/o blue-ray, cost of PS3 would have dropped so much. Is this just a gimmick by Sony to win the HDDVD vs blue-ray war?]
read more | digg story
[G: oh btw, here is another interesting story on how another advantage of the Wii is that the cost of game development is half as much as for xbox and ps3. ** Can someone tell me how or why?]
UPDATE.
he he, I am stuck once again in the console world!
First of all, it is interesting that you don't hear about people waiting in line to buy the Wii - Is it a good approach for Nintendo to make sure it ships out enough consoles to meet the demand and so not get lines of people waiting and so not get the media coverage? Ofcourse, in the long run, the people who wanted and didn't get a PS3 will turn to what they can get: Wii.
here's a \. story about why game industry professionals prefer to buy a Wii rather than a PS3. (Alvaro, you should read this!!! :-P )
I liked this guy's comments: "On the same note, the 360 and PS3 are both pretty much a graphics upgrade. Which means two things, first that (if you have a HDTV, which I don't) it'll look prettier. Second, there is allot more effort, and time, and money, going into making a game for them. If people thought there was too much of a problem with sequels instead of innovation last generation, it'll be worse today: for the 360 and PS3
With the Wii, though, Nintendo is pretty much forcing developers to innovate at least a little, in order to properly use the controller. If I want a graphics update, I'll get a new card for my PC. I go to a council for a distinctly different experience then a PC, usually based on the controller, since that is the real difference. And now, the Wii makes the controller even *more* different then the PC, which to me is an even greater reason to play. That and it doesn't cost *that* much money."
On tuesday night the LAPD tasered a student in a library of UCLA 5 times, because he didnt have an ID to stay in the library. The student was an iranian-american and there is a lot of attention focused on this both from the student factions, and also the iranians. What better story than in these conditions, an american police brutalize an iranian student. Will Ahmadinejad comment on this?
But the bigger problem is police brutality and especially so in LA. I read the following article which pointed to 2 other incidences involving LAPD this week. Videos were taken and spread on youtube. The power of internet.
Btw here is the Digg story about it.
From Brinda's comment: "the media in the US is accused of self-censorship etc... what do you think about that?"
Well it is definitely true. In fact that is the reason why American people should not be blamed for the choices of their government because essentially their news is censored. Then the question becomes, who does the censorship? The government, the media itself?
It's a combination of both no? If the government has the attitude of either for us or against us, what does that do for free speech? Is it possible to even have free speech in such a climate?
Check out the following article that describes how the 'lack' of censorship in the Lebonan/Israel war a couple of months ago led to the final defeat of Israel. Similar thing happened in the Vietnam war right? Although I think the Iraq war is much more complicated because in addition to the US, you have the Iraqi factions that are waging war against each other. The civil war has muddied the waters, so it is difficult to blame US entirely.
So the bottom line for me is, the media does get censored but its censorship is the result of a combination of factors including that of its self.
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Btw if you get discovery channel, there is supposed to be a documentary by Ted Koppel on this sunday at 9pm e.t. on Iran. Should be good to watch.
I saw Koppel on the daily show last night and i really like his balanced views. Check him out here.
Seems our favourite reality TV channel, Fox is going to air an interview with OJ Simpson called "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How it Happened", where Simpson will describe how he would have killed his wife and his friend.....that is, assuming he did actually kill them, which of course he has been found not guilty of. He is promoting his book "If I did it...".
It is almost like he is admitting to the murders now when because of double jeopardy, he is guaranteed he can't be charged again. What is the point of this interview? I dont understand why OJ is giving this "unrestricted" interview and why Fox will air it. Does the world have no shame?
In the article it says:
In a video clip on the network's Web site, an off-screen interviewer says to Simpson, ''You wrote 'I have never seen so much blood in my life.'''
''I don't think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood,'' Simpson responds.
It is disgusting. More yet, it is disturbing.I was just reading a complaint post on digg about how EB Games had created this display of girl games which appears to be based on the assumption that women are only interested in barbies and cooking. Anyway they then started on how PSP ads were racists. Does anyone know what they are talking about?
anyway this was funny: Games for girls:
- Mega dishwashing
- Grand theft vacuum
- Cook simulator XXX
Crikey I am a magnificent procastinator.
Tomorrow i must teach one of my advisor's classes (he is away next week) and the topic is security policies - so very very interesting. No no really... Have I convinced you? If so, do me a favor and convince me. My two least favourite topics I have to teach this week, monday and wednesday. Such luck.
So I procastinate any way i can. I even checked orkut. Yup.
It's too bad I am hampered by this dial up connection - I imagine you tube otherwise could have kept me entertained for hours.
Have others received a plethora of spam lately too? more than usual? The past month or so, possibly more so the past couple of days, I have been spammed-a-lot*. The number of bits wasted .. :-( If I was a resource-constrained device, that's a lot of wasted energy receiving.
What else. Not much. I have to return to the issue of globalization again. I still don't know if it is good or bad. Alvaro was saying something today about it being generally good but implemented bad? What were you saying again ALvaro?
By popular request, word verification has now been lifted. Leila khanoom that means you :-) Noone should say I don't listen in to my audience. I do i do.
ok back to policies. :^|
* I wasn't sure if anyone caught my Sir Mixalot reference, so i am being obvious. Did you get it?
Below is a kind of review of Borat by Brinda :-) I am beginning to believe I might have had the wrong ideas about Borat...
Brinda's comment about tolerance of US is very interesting though.
Hey
I went and watched the movie - and came out thinking a fwe things
- The movie is not about Kazakhistan - its more about the US of A. The Kazakh journalist persona - is a ruse - and I think that if a viewer thinks that it is representative of Kazakhistan - then its really unfortunate ...
- He did poke fun at anti-semitism , homophobia and just at a lot of people
- Also despite all or some flaws in America - you realize how immensely tolerant it actually is ... especially the unscripted parts of the movie - I was trying to place it in another country - and you realize that it pretty much couldnt have happened anywehere else!
I even found the crowd at the movie theatre very interesting - cos it was a varied demographic - an dpeople were laughing at it all - even when it pokes fun at parts of who they are!
I was just wondering though if he could have gotten away with his pranks if he was not a white guy ...
My 2 cents..
Brinda
Btw I ended up reading a couple of interesting review of Borat here at metacritic. It has a score of 89. Gosh darn it, I hate to be wrong.. especially when i have been so vocal about it :-P
I heard something interesting on the radio this morning, related to the election. Of course let me first say how relieved I am by the result - My pessimism over world politics and the elected governments would have known no bounds if the democrats had not gained control of the house and the senate. Which reminds me, I will have to find out the difference betweent he house and the senate in US.
anyhoo. The result of the election also made this year, the Year of the Woman, because of the number of women that got voted in. We have the speaker of the house who it seems has had 4 or 5 children (good god!) and a number of other states where it is the first time that women have won for the first time in history. And why has that come about? This part is interesting. They said:
- Women are an antidote to corruption
- Women get things done
Do you find that interesting as well? Did Bush make such a mess of everything that the idea of the woman president is getting closer by the minute? It seems that Hilary Clinton who already had NY state cinched, still spent $30 million on her campaign, causing people to think she was in fact laying her foundation for her presidency campaign.
Somehow I don't think Americans will yet welcome women presidents.
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Meanwhile you might be wondering why I haven't written in the past couple of weeks. Last week both Alvaro and my mum came to DC area for a conference. It was so much fun going to conference with both, Song was there as well. Anyway, would you say we are a recipe for family discount for the conference? :-) They both left last weekend, maman on friday and Alvaro on sunday, I mean monday! somebody missed their flight :-P but since back I have been busy with research and also an academic roundtable that is being held for ECE. Brinda, we miss you. I am helping Song get things done and actually we think it is going to be crowded. We got Baras and O'Shea and a bunch of other people interested and involved and ... well lets see what will happen. I am moderating the discussion with the help of Song. I don't know how i got involved. Song emailed me and said they wanted an ECEGSA outsider as the moderator and there i am. I ended up helping her alot more of course since i think our vision for the roundtable was more similar that her other helpers. The roundtable is today at 2-4pm. Wish me luck!! :-)
I am so confused by whether globalization is good or bad. I am getting the feeling that globalization is like communism - in theory it is good but in reality it has a lot of bad side effects. Ideally it should be removing borders, thus allowing knowledge and richs to freely flow about. Something like thermodynamics: money will flow where it is most needed, resulting in a uniform money through out. But in reality it can drain the resources of poorer nations, resulting in extreme contrasts. Ofcourse we can argue that it has been globalization and the out sourceing which has allowed india to gain riches and become its own powerhouse. But it seems to me the Indias of the world are few and far between. More often than not, resources of a country are drained. Look at Iran for example. How much of a knowledge drain has Iran undergone? Unlike India, people do not return to Iran once they become established and wealthy. Money does not really get sent back to iran. So in the right circumstances, globalization can work. But third world nations generally have so many political and cultural problems that the right circumstances are rare. What do you think?
The other thing was the comment of Brinda about why middle east countries are poor. Basically, Juan is correct. They have raw resources but they don't have the technology to develop these raw materials. So they sell them cheaply to other countries and buy back the refined material at a much higher cost. This was what was happening to the petrol industry in iran during the shah regime. Iran was selling raw petrol to england (i think) and buyin back refined petrol at a loss and this was what Iran had!! Jeerjeerak, do you know much more about this?
Last night I went to our university's Anwar Sadat's lecture for Peace, given by Dr Mohamed El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Before I say more, let me just say that it was a wonderful lecture. His ideas and view of the world corresponded to mine very well, save for the fact that he could verbalize them a thousand times better than me.
El Baradei is from Egypt and has been in his current position for the 2 other terms. Of course anyone who has been in such a position for so long has to be a great politian and diplomat. He won the 2005 Nobel peace prize.
His lecture was about the state of the world today, with special emphasis on the middle east. The following are some of ideas I picked up at his lecture:
- paraphrasing someone else: the world has never been more at peace (ie fewer wars) and yet less secure.
- there are 4 main reasons for this lack of security - for the world to become a more secure place, we need to overcome:
(1) poverty, a necessity for achieving lasting peace;
(2) Corruption and lack of democracy;
(3) Injustice - the balance between the haves and the have nots for wealth and power;
(4) Artificial polarization that is created because of for example, religion.
- The current islam versus the west clash that has emerged is not because of the clash of different religios values, rather it is inequality. It is easy for the downtrodden to blame their situation on religion.
- Globalization and the interdependence of nations that is supposed to brinig opportunities for all, also has the bad effect that it allows the exploitation of the poorer nations. Globalization has also opened a window so that people can see what they can also have, allowing nations to have artificial wants.
- Security organizations must be reformed to match the emerging threats. For example, the difference between nuclear profileration versus nuclear disarmament.
- Threats from the west drive countries such as north korea and iran to have nuclear weapons. (G: I guess this goes back to the disarmament idea)
- Quoting someone else: "Human security is too important to be left to governments".
I am going to complain only a teeny weeny bit and then go back to my studies.. but. bloody hell, my computers all messed up. I have really been free with what i install on it and now, it complains to me by croaking and moaning and once in a while freezing me out - well more, freezing itself and showing me what it thinks of me. If only it had hands it is thinking.
I need to reformat my computer and re-install everything on it. But I keep thinking too many things to install, its going to take too much time and also how do i know i have all the softwares still which i installed? I am doomed if I do and doomed if I don't.
So I will procastinate.
But seriously, turning this topic to a bit ph philosophical ping pong, don't you wish life had a re-start button and you could re-start when the system just becomes too bogged down. Or maybe you can.
Well you can't restart everything just like the computer (for example, you delete a file and it is deleted..[I don't want to hear any comments suggesting tools which help resurrect deleted files - this was a weak example i know]).. anyway. Do you like my analogy? ;-)
This was interesting, how a recent poll arrived at 655k dead iraqis:
So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings, based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing? The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849 Iraqi families -- 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims -- and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.
Here is the trailer of the new Borat movie:
I am unsure about this movie - i know that i don't like it and the view of Kazakhstan in the eyes of the world is going to be changed forever. Definitely in a bad way. Why would anyone make something so... vulgar? it is a waste of the world's resources - this guy Sacha Cohen is smart so why does he make these kind of movies?
Personally i think this movie needs to be boycotted.
I have not been posting very much lately because, well I have been busy. Today I had a presentation which fortunately is over. The better news has been that my cousin has been here visiting which has been very good. He has been very good to me and helped me with a lot of my car troubles. He'll be staying till monday.
Then my next visitor will be Dazbend dearest on saturday and mozzer dearest on sunday. What else can a girl want? :-)
Meanwhile, check out this cute putty kat!
Today I read on Digg that Stephen Hawking is getting separated from his second wife Elaine Mason whom he married in 1995. So I was reminded to look up my personal questions about Hawking - his illness, his wives etc.
First of, he has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) not MS as I had for some reason assumed. Despite being diagnosed when he was 21 and given a life expectancy of 3 years max, he is right now 64, though he is fully paralyzed. He married when he was only 21. Here he is with his first wife.
One of his earliest symptoms occurred when he lost balance and fell downstairs, hitting his head. Worried of losing his genius, he took the Mensa International test, to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. Does that seem arrogant?
His marriage with Jane ended in early 1990s when he started having an affair with one of his nurses. Now really, a man in a wheel chair having an affair while there is a healthy woman that is willing to be married to him? Maybe I am being very prejudiced against handicap people, but ... Jane was willing to marry him when she knew he was sick, before he got famous... I don't understand.
Am I so wrong to think this way?
I know once you are famous, you have certain privileges but is this any different to Ana Nicole Smith marrying that 90 year old billionaire?
Another interesting fact I read was that: Elaine Mason's first husband, David Mason, had designed the first version of Hawking's talking computer.
You think you have seen everything, but then along comes an animal which makes you question everything you have ever learned. Today I found out about the Okapi.
Although it bears striped markings reminiscent of the zebra, it is the only living close relative of the giraffe. The resemblance it bears to both the zebra and giraffe led some to believe it is a cross between the two, but despite the appearance of certain similarities, it is in fact not closely related to the zebra. Native just to the Ituri forests situated in the north east of the , aka forest giraffe. Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was known only to the local people until 1901.
Here are some funny facts about it:
- has very long (apx. 30 cm or 12 inch), flexible, blue tongue that they use to strip leaves and buds from trees. The tongue of an okapi is long enough for the animal to wash its eyelids and clean its ears: it is one of the few mammals that can lick its own ears.
- Okapis are unusual in their ability to sleep for only 5 minutes in a 24 hour period and yet remain at peak alertness.
- The okapi is the symbol of cryptozoology.
(Cryptozoology is the study of animals that are rumored to exist, but for which conclusive proof is still missing; the term also includes the study of animals generally considered extinct, but which are still occasionally reported.)
oh this is hilarious! I posted a comment on digg and of course now I keep going back to it to see how diggs and buries I have. I am following my real time!
Come on, dig me!!! :-P
Btw there was another article on digg about how stephen hawking will be starring in his own documentary about the big bang - they call it a movie. Anyway the comments were hilarious! immature but hilarious! some where:
- What's the point. Just get Microsoft Sam to narrate it.
- If he does, I'll bet his bang isn't that big.
- I wonder if he'll get a sex scene... etc
read more
This is painful for any kid who wears it... who thought of it...?!!
To include pics in my profile I needs upload some pictures on my blog first. So here is me in all of my glory. Alvaro you lucky man.
Alright it is my night to complain about the lovely governments governing us today. Btw I just realized that in my previous post what i didn't say was that whenever I talk about a country, I am talking about their government obviously. It is just too complicated to make people responsible for their government... hmm, although i know that sentence is true, it is sad that it is true.
Anyway so next source of complaint. I've already talked about the government of Australia and US. Lets go to UK now. Actually this also involves France. A couple of days ago the lovely Brinda sent me this article about Blair backing Jack Straw in "his opposition to Muslim women wearing veils by saying it was 'perfectly sensible' to discuss the issue in the context of breaking down barriers between communities."
It amazes me when non-mulsims insist on women not wearing veils etc. Why do they do that? Really, it comes down to two things: (1) they believe women don't really want to wear them and they are doing them a favor by backing them; (2) they want to deliberately disrespect the beliefs of muslims by forcing them to reject their beliefs. And then they use the excuse of assimilation. Why is it that society wants everyone to be the same? Why is it that the 'different' is accepted only when it is a westernizes difference (does that make sense?). Remember a while ago, the French forcing school girls to take off their veils if they wanted to go to school? why? I still don't agree with their excuse of taking religion out of school. So for example, is it correct if the muslims use the excuse that we don't want there to be differences and so when you come to our country you should wear a veil?
Anyway it is getting late and I am not making sense. But before I go, the last two paragraphs of the story above really annoyed me and made me think that westerners who 'insist' on women not to wear veils are trying to be sympathetic to women:
In his weekly column in the The Lancashire Telegraph he expressed concern that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".
Mr Straw said he had been mulling over the issue ever since a veiled woman attended his surgery and said she was pleased to meet him face to face at last.
Oh I am tired. Long day today and at 5pm I want to finish up - alas i have to stay here another half an hour. So, blog time.
I saw this comic on the left on digg today. Kind of funny - the best part is the name of the comic - ctrl-alt-del! I don't know why they are singling out sony though - it is not as if MS has done a better job - although it IS cheaper so... anyway it's all speculation. It ain't over till the fat lady sings.
Hmm I wonder where that saying came from. Lets do a google on that. Oooh! it is in the context of opera! Here is what they said:
The outcome of any contest isn't known until the final results are in. Thus, don't make premature judgments or give up too soon. Often associated with Wagnerian opera, specifically Brunhilde's 'Fire Song,' in 'Die Walkure,' and the fact that Wagner may seem interminable to nonaficionados. Thus one's impatience would be relieved when 'the fat lady sings.
Anyway. On the news of the day. I read on BBC today that the death toll of iraqis since 2003 has risen to 655,000 based on a US-Iraq survey. It is so crazy when you think of it how the americans simply attacked a country and they have left it in such a disarray. the worst part is that they are not admitting they did wrong. I wonder how many people have to die before Bush et al admit that maybe they were wrong. Once again lets compare the 3000 people who died on sept 11th and the 655k who died because.. well because they didn't have anything to do with sept 11th.
Whoever said the life is unfair spoke an understatement.
Anyway the politics of the world today is such a joke. I am not even going to mention Australia with its racist and america-loving prime minister. I haven't paid detailed attention to what has been going on there. But in US - it is a joke that the republicans have the vote that they have right now. By all rights, they shouldn't have any and yet they still have support. I wonder what will happen election time.
It is a depressing world we live in.
You need more proof? Since N.Korea claimed it tested its nuclear bomb this week, most nations have agreed that they must impose very harsh sanctions on it. N.Korea very much depends on donation to feed its starving masses and starving the masses will have little effect on the power of the dictatorship. This article, which my uncle sent, highlights how at the end of the day, the sanctions that are talked about won't hurt anyone but the innocent.
I forgot to mention this while writing the post about women gamers. What the stat represented was all kinds of games, the small javascript, tetris kinds as well as the MMORPG like warcraft. Now there are people (mostly those who play the latter kind) who would not call the former gamers. Now we have a couple of issues. First of all, why aren't they gamers? Having at least two MMORPG gamers in the audience, can you answer that?
The second issue is what bothers me a little (or maybe a lot), is the fact that it IS true that women are more likely to play the first. Little games, with simple objectives, and not very complicated. I do that. I prefer playing these games than the complicated ones. Well I like complicated ones too that i play on gamecube but if asked what i play most, I say simple and small games. So why is it that women usually play these kind of games? why don't we like (mostly, because of course there are lots of women who play the MMORPG games as well) the complicated one as much as guys?
So my opinion: women are not willing to invest so much of their time to these games knowingly. Each warcraft game that Alvaro plays takes between half an hour to an hour if not more. Now it is highly likely that I sit in front of my compute screen and burst bubbles for half an hour, but I really like the fact that the games are short and I can leave it off any time I want and not in the middle of a game. Now does that say something about my concentration or about my time management? and what i am willing to invest my time on?
If it is the concentration idea, it does get backed up by evidence that men have a higher tendency to concentrate on one topic without distractions for longer periods of time. Oh how I disliked writing that last sentence!
Whenever I find trends which separate men and women i find it fascinating. Why do you think women prefer to play small simple games?
Studies studies,.. you can prove anything you want by doing a study and show some numbers. Regardless a new study has come out claiming that 64% of online gamers are women.
From the article: "The study's announcement release doesn't break down what games they're playing, though we expect sites like pogo.com, which feature a multitude of Flash-based games are rather high on the list. Even more surprising is how many older gamers are playing. While the teenage market dominates in numbers, the study says more than 15 million gamers, about 8%, are actually at least 45 years old."
Some of the really funny comments on /. were:
Bangenge: I think they just counted female avatars.
nutt98: 64% of online gamers play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Coincidence?
(Fly: tee hee!! southpark reference!)
OnyxIR: My time on IRC has taught me a valuable lesson... On the Internet, all the men are men, all the women are men, and all the children are FBI agents.
On other news, check out the pic on the right of a statue of Hercules in Iran (Kermanshah) that I never knew of!! One of the things which I absolutely love about Iran is its rich history... although some people might say that the rich history has made some think they are better than others but that is fodder for another conversation. I found out about this statue which is carved out of a boudler in Zagros mountains from this site. It dates back to 153 BC.
Ofcourse, following iranian tradition the poor statue has suffered much damage. From the article: "The theft of the statue's head in 1977, which was recovered after a while, as well as the destruction of its hand and body in 1979 are among other damages inflicted on the monument."
Good old revolution - Lets chop off Hercule's hand and show him who's the boss!! good lord!
So how long do you think it will be before we have flying cars? 3D mobility instead of only the 2D. Obviously the first question is when will they start making cars which fly. Moller International is selling a prototype of their flying car, called Moller M400 Skycar. This wondercar has a max speed of 375 mph and a fuel efficiency of 20 miles per gallon. Quite practical no? Anyway due to some finance problems this prototype is being sold on ebay with a starting price of 4m$. Not bad.
Btw, here is a nice history of flying cars.
Now say we have the car, then what? are we going to start ourdrive on the sky highway?
Nope! That would be too easy. So for today, I am trying to think of all the challenges if we were to start using hover and flying cars.
1 - (and possibly the biggest challenge?) Air traffic!
I mean how tightly controlled are airport traffic regulations and imagine transporting this onto everyday roads. Air traffic regulations must incorporate:
1.1 Do we have layers of streets or will streets be vertical lines?
1.2
2 - ease of use and affordability
3 - environmental issues, like noise and pollution
4 - safety of people on the ground. Is the sky falling?
5 - sky cars need to be even more robust than street cars - engine problems in a sky car can be fatal!
Can you think of other challenges?
Meanwhile here is a quote from Calvin and Hobbes:
Hobbes: "A new decade is coming up."
Calvin: "Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero-gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?"
Hobbes: "Frankly, I'm not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got."
Calvin: "I mean, look at this! We still have the weather?! Give me a break!"
Last night's episode of South Park was perhaps the funniest ever.
"When Hitler rose to power, there were a lot of people who just stopped playing. You know who they were? The French. Are you french?
"No"
"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"
First part:
Second Part:
Third Part:
There are so many hilarious lines. So very many.... What were some of your fav lines?
Da Husband aka Dazbend, has proclaimed the following in an email which i was privy to:
"If Roomba was a woman I would be polygamous"
and if only she didn't suck so good.... ok now I am being crude, but seriously a tear drop is gathering at the corner of my eye. about to drop off....
How could he...
on another note, I found this quote by Gandalf which I like very much:
So do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do
with the time that is given to us.
I was reading this book and one of the characters was asked if they believe in fate.
This was her answer:
"I do believe in coincidences," she said. "I believe that some unexpected things happen to catch our attention, and that what we do with those moments might affect or change the whole course of our life. but I do not believe we are blown about helplessly by a fate over which we have no control. There would be no point in free will if that were so. We all have the power to decide, to say yes or no, to do something or not to do it, to go in this direction or that."
Do I believe in fate? i don't think so because believing fate reduces to believing in a god and a grand plan that we are involved in. (or does it?)
No I don't think fate exists. It is always easier to have someone else be responsible for our decisions so that's why fate has come in. Perhaps that is why religion has come in because we want to put the responsibility of this world onto someone or something else.
Or maybe again we are trying to grandize ourselves by thinking we are important enough to be involved in a plan? no that is a pessemistic view: Depending on our point of reference, we are grand enough. Why is it that we try to find a global point of reference?
In physics, do we have a global frame of reference? I don't think so, but i can't remember for sure. There is light which is always constant. Do we have something which is always constant in our lives? truth is always subjective right?
An undercover investigation by BBC News finds that China has a flourishing trade of organs from executed prisoners. China is becoming the destination of choice for rich foreigners in need of organ transplants. One hospital said it could provide a liver for about $100,000. China has more executions than all other countries in the world combined.
Now coming from another angle, is it bad to use the organs of bad people (assuming that all executed have committed horrendous crimes - the fact that china executes so many is another debate and whether execution is acceptable a different one still)
If someone is dying, isn't it better to serve society? I am not talking about selling it, but making it available to ordinary people the same way as normal organ donations are made.
Ofcourse its a very delicate situation when you make profit from someone's death. If it costs you money then you are more careful.
What do you think?
Rumi, it is time to know him: he was babajoon's favourite poet/philosopher.
http://www.rumi.org.uk/
Where is that Moon that never rises or sets?
Where is that soul that is neither with nor without us?
Don't say it is here or there.
All creation is Him but for the eyes that can see.
And imagine this in Farsi!!
On saturday, the day that Alvaro left, I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival with some of our colombian friends - ofcourse not everyone is colombian, but thats how we all met. Anyway, here's a pic of me with Maral and Biviana.
It was a pretty cool festival - people were dressed up like this guy in his gear - although he looks more from Lord of the Rings than the renaissance times!! and ofcourse the festival provided good opportunity for women folk to wear some mighty low cut dresses. Corset action was the order of the day, where I saw more pressed and dying to get out - which I just realized i didn't take any photos of. :-( oh well! These ladies on the right were more the high class ones. Very uppity I tells you :-P
Finally the real star of the show was Gloria and Victor's baby girl Gabriella who was cute beyond reason. And oh my that stomach of hers was wonderfully rounded, as you can see in this photo where she was standing watching some dancers with Victor.
So the pressure is on about what to have as my first post. All the cool and funny things I wanted suddenly have made themselves scarce.
Anyway the funniest so far has been a couple of PhD comic strips that I read. This one was the best.
