Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Funny Cats in the Universe

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!

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Some articles

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!

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Why I love Firefly!

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!!!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Crazy Cat in a Bowl Trick

Photos from Orlando

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.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Amazing and Beautiful Mime!!


Watch the above - amazingly beautifully done! :-)

10 fascinating facts about Iraq

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.

Dilemma Continued

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?

Sunday, December 03, 2006

A Sad View

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. :-|

Saturday, December 02, 2006

The Unknown

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.