A great way to escape the present is to close your eyes and listen to some wonderful piece of music - there are some really great ones, like Chopin's Nocturne and the music by Albinoni - I forget what it is called. Just pump up the volume, close your eyes and listen and feel the heavens open up around you and lose yourself in the beauty and the feelings of the music.
It is interesting to me how our mind can often times be our worst enemy.
You see, I have a very active imagination - and not always the good kind. I get worried, very worried about people I love when I don't know how they are. If I don't hear from them when I am supposed to, my mind starts imagining the worst, scenarios rise up in my head and they don't let go. This is specially bad when you think about the fact that all of my loved ones live away from me. My lovely husband is on the other side of US and my mother is in western Canada. At least this is better than when she was in Australia. If she doesn't call me in the morning, I get worried that someone has happened to her - did she have an accident while she was driving home? did he have an accident when biking home? did she simply get dizzy and hit her head against the desk, like last time when she hit her chin against the desk and broke her teeth?
I need to hear from them at least once in the morning and once at night. Just so I know everything is ok. Nothing bad has happened.
But then I was thinking, what if something bad did happen? something happened to them and i didn't know and i just continued my happy day while they were.. not well.
It has happened to me before - every morning H. used to call me, for him to say good night and for me to say good morning. and then one morning he didn't call and I wasn't worried because I had a day long meeting at school and what is one phone call - he was busy, he was tired, he went to sleep. I went to school without calling him to make sure everything was ok. To see why H didn't call me. Instead I went to school and then I got the worst call ever at school. While i was happy and excited about the meeting, bad things were happening in Australia and I didn't know. I didn't even think anything was wrong, me who is so cautious.
Would it have made a difference in the end even if I had known? no. Logically I know it would have made no difference. He was in Aus and I was here. When I should have been over there. But I wasn't. anyway.
So what can happen when I don't hear from someone? That they need me and I don't know about it. That I am happy and laughing and carefree and they are not. That I am losing them from my life and I don't know about it, That is the hardest thing. That this person, this someone whom I love and they are essential to the very fabric of my life, is slipping away and I am not aware of this monumental, earth shattering fact.
Given this, it quite amazes me at times that I can bear live away from all of my loved ones. That I haven't yet learned my lessons and that I am a glutton for punishment.
This is a very interesting article in Nature, about the problems scientist couples face, including the infamous two body problem. There are a lot of interesting ideas in the article, including the question of the two body problem on females versus males.
One question the team hopes to answer is are such marriages tougher for female scientists? Besides being a minority in their field, female physicists struggle with the two-body problem more often than their male counterparts. A 1998 survey by the American Physical Society found that although only about 6% of its members are women, 43% of these are married to other physicists. In contrast, only 6% of married male physicists have a physicist spouse. Other studies have found that almost twice as many women chemists are married to or partnered with another chemist as compared to their male colleagues, and 80% of women mathematicians are married to other scientists.
I really recommend everyone to read the above article.
Now for some fun, read the following article about why smart girls date in parallel and not serial! :-P That is, dating explained by circuit theory!
read more | digg story
This is a funny blog about a commentary from NPR about how the Wii offers "a false sense of what it's like to compete in the world" from NPR.
From the blog: National Public Radio posted a commentary from Kelly McBride, a concerned parent, regarding her children's frequent use of the Wii. Rather than relishing the fact that the new toy has them off the couch and swinging their arms, Kelly worries that her children are equating the game version of the sports with the real-life counterpart; that is to say, the children are gaining "a false sense of what it's like to compete in the world."
It is actually quite hilarious if you think about it - violent games are too violent and non-violent games are too... wussy?!!
But the funniest part were some of the commentaries from this Digg user:
[mazerrackham]I'll never forget the bitter disappointment of losing my first war after trying to take my chess skills to the streets. The other guy's horses ran in all crazy patterns around my helpless pawns, slashing at their throats. And then when I tried to switch places with my castle to hide it wouldn't even move.
Now look at me -- dead-end job, low self-esteem...All thanks to my proficiency at chess.
Anyway, the best part of this post was this guy's comment. Very funny indeed!
What an idiot we have for a prime minister! I mean really, how the hell did he get re-elected? I hope Kevin Rudd wins in the coming election. Here is the main article, and this is the Digg commentary.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has involved himself in the US presidential race by stating that Al-Qaeda is "praying" that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), and the Democrats in general, will win in 2008. An Obama spokesman dismissed the criticism as "cowboy rhetoric."
Obama himself said: "I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced".
"I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops in Iraq, and my understanding is Mr Howard has deployed 1,400, so if he is ... to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."
1. pick a number between 0 and 9.
2. multiply that number by nine.
3. if it is two digits, add the two digits together. eg; 14, 1+4 = 5
4. now subtract 5 from the now one digit number
5. match up their number with one in the alphabet. 1=a, 2=b,...
6. think of a country that starts with that letter
7. think of an animal that starts with the last letter of the country name
8. then think of a color that starts with the last letter of the animal...
look at the comments for something interesting....
If you don't know, I have just started taking Flamenco dancing classes. So far it has been a lot of lef work, there is a fair amount of tap dancing. Anyway I am hoping to one day dance like this hippo! :-P
Btw, here is a photo of my shoes - my xmas present from Alvaro :-)
For some serious stuff, watch this:
After reading about Hiroshima, I think it is time to revisit Grave of the Fireflies.
Also I remember when i was a kid, one of my favorite books was a Japanese one about this kid dying (i think she had cancer) and wanted to make 1000 paper cranes. She died before completing it.
I just did some searching and it seems that it is a true story of Sadako Sasaki and it is related to the H-bomb:
The paper crane has become an international symbol of peace in recent years as a result of it's connection to the story of a young Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki born in 1943. Sadako was two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. As she grew up, Sadako was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1955, at age 11, while practicing for a big race, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with Leukemia, "the atom bomb" disease.
Sadako's best friend told her of an old Japanese legend which said that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Sadako hoped that the gods would grant her a wish to get well so that she could run again. She started to work on the paper cranes and completed over 1000 before dying on October 25, 1955 at the age of twelve.
The point is that she never gave up. She continued to make paper cranes until she died.
Inspired by her courage and strength, Sadako's friends and classmates put together a book of her letters and published it. They began to dream of building a monument to Sadako and all of the children killed by the atom bomb. Young people all over Japan helped collect money for the project.
In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. The children also made a wish which is inscribed at the bottom of the statue and reads:
"This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world".
Btw, it is funny how the mind works. When I first remembered this story after reading the blog post with all the pictures, I didn't remember that it was Hiroshima related. But somehow my brain knew it. The wonder of it!I found the following blog post showing photos of the effects of Hiroshima and some commentary and explanations. The Digg post with people's comments is here.
There are two points here for me. The first is indeed how this event has been all but forgotten. I am comparing it to events like the holocaust which still is the subject of many movies and books. Why is it that this horror is not as well `publicized'?
The second point is actually something which I don't know and I would like someone to tell me. I have heard many people use the argument that "if we didn't drop both of those about 5 times more people would have died in a mainland invasion (including civilians)". Is this correct and would it have happened with certainty? It seems to me that it is simply a an excuse or justification for the annihilation of such a massive body of humanity. Actually this is also a comment that one of the profs here at uni (makow.) made to me one day when i dared object to this attack. Now I know what to answer him. Japan was going to surrender anyway.
Here are some comments from people on Digg that I thought were interesting:
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS-PTO-Summary.html#jstetw
He proposed the scenario where Iraq indeed had weapons of mass distruction, not chemical weapons but Nukes.
Just like the US was able to fight off the invasion of Japanese, Iraqis were able to defend themselves against the US intrusion and push coalition forces all the way back to the US border. They knew US wouldn't just give up and more people on both sides would continue fighting, so they dropped 2 nuclear bombs in 2 non-militarized cities, to put an end to war.
Would that be justifiable? Would you calmly accept the fact and nod at the loss of your own men for what's referred to as a "lesser of 2 evils"?
"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein, in a letter to Harry S. Truman
do you really think this is an excuse? then anyone with enough power should bomb anywhere, and then say "well, if i didn't do that, i was gonna do something worse. thank me."
No doubt many more lives would have been lost in a ground invasion, please note that I'm not trying to deny this. It's just interesting that this intimidation tactic (one could say its purpose was to instill fear in the Japanese government) is deemed a necessary evil, whereas 9/11, yielding a fraction of the damage, was considered abhorrent and terrible and wrong.
One is called strategy, the other is called terrorism. What a funny world we live in.
These are some very nice photos taken by Iranian Kaveh Golestan in some photo competition. I didn't see all of them (there were too many) but I def liked these ones.
This is a statue of Ferdowsi (I think) in Tehran. It has been nicely decorated no?!
Kind of dangerous!
This is a very funny blog posting about what happened in Boston recently: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/nonterrorist_em.html
I liked the following comment:
"It had a very sinister appearance," [Massachusetts Attorney General Martha] Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."
> For heavens sake, don't let her inside a Radio Shack.
Thanks to Alvaro for sending it :-)In my recent trip to Australia I had occasion to meet three weird and wonderful cats.
The first I would like to introduce is the cat of Mitra, a persian khepel (fatso!), whose hair is so long that it needs regular grooming. While Mitra and Daniel were away, his poor hair didn't get brushed and so it got all tangled and knotted so they had to shave him!! So here you see him with his body shaved and a full head of hair!
The second, is the wonderful and old cat of our friend Susan - the poor thing has osteoporosis - so last year when he tried to jump down from a relatively short cabinet, it broke his leg. :-( his leg ended up having to be removed so now he is a three legged cat. It was quite interesting watching him hobble around. Susan takes such good care of him.
This cat also reminds me a lot of our own cat, Misha. I can't find a nice pic of her right now. I'll upload it some other time.
Finally this is a garden cat. It is so cute that I had to take a photo of him. or maybe it's a her. Anything this cute has to be a her right? :-D
My african violets are blooming and they are sure looking beautiful. It is amazing how nice it feels when you see a flower bud and then bloom and then stay blooming, looking beautiful. The pride in your heart is as though you are responsible for every single petal, the violent violet or the soft pink.
They're my babies and they're blooming :-)
Tonight I watched a great Iranian movie called Ayneh or The Mirror. It was a stressful movie, but one of the most original and well acted movies I have seen in recent years. I don't want to talk about the plot very much because i don't want to give it away, so I will just write down what IMDB has said about it. Suffice it to say the expressions of this little girl who they were following, Mina, were amazing. You believed it all. And then there was the commentary about Iran, the little conversations going on around the girl. It really was a great movie.
A girl in traditional female clothing, and her arm in plaster, comes out of school one day and doesn't find her mother meeting her. She decides to travel home her self though she doesn't know her address and remembers the road only visually.
