"The greatest contraceptive one can have in the developing world is the knowledge that your children will live."
Julius K Nyerere, President of Tanzania 1964-1985
This is a quote that we saw on the slideshows of Al Gore in his The Inconvenient Truth, which we just got around to finishing. I thought it was a very nice, poignant quote.
ps I wish he could help me with the intro of my papers... he motivates the problem so well!! :-P
I liked this blog entry, found on digg. It talks about how the 300 million american people have all died on the inside.
"4000 dead American soldiers, that is; it's almost as if the two orders of magnitude greater number of slaughtered Iraqis, the millions of refugees, the destruction of an entire country, simply don't matter and don't count. Americans find it hard to gather outrage over thousands of our own dead, and tens of thousands wounded, and they sure as hell aren't going to get stirred up over hundreds of thousands of dead foreigners."
someone else commented:
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin
Also another interesting comment:
"And that's just the 4000 they officially count. If you're shot in Iraq, but die on the plane to the hospital in Germany, you are not counted as a casualty in Iraq. And DoD doesn't even count dead American contractors."
There is nothing worst than apathy.
Listen to this version of Bi11ie Jean by this American 1dol contestant David C00k. It is so fabulous and chilling.
ps. I hope this upload works... my first upload of music!!
See if you know the meaning of the following words: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual,
technosexual...
say what? The following article was pretty informative and contained an interesting interview with a man who has married his robot lover Alice. It was funny when he said that at the beginning of their relationship she dumped him and so he had to delete her memory and start over. Otherwise it actually wasn't that bad. As long as he is happy. It can definitely help people who want relationships but cannot have them for whatever reasons. Not having a partner can be lonely. I do wonder though if the technosexuality will be as prevalent as is predicted by some.
Do you think there is anything wrong with it?
What's so special about the following poem? (Try and answer with out reading the article)
Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
In mystic force and magic spelling.
The article is actually really interesting. I love this one:
"in 1873, William Shanks announced he had found 707 digits over years of hand-cramping work; unfortunately, he had made a mistake after the 527th place. The following digits were all wrong." D'uh!!!
Also... "Pi Day is a time to honour not just a number and our fascination with it, but also the essential truth that there are some things we simply cannot know. We can only get close to knowing."
It's election time again in Iran because ya know, Iran is, like, a democracy, ya know?
Ha! What kind of democracy disqualifies any candidate that might disagree in the slightest with the current regime? Let the people decide what they want.
This makes me mad.
Don't get me wrong though, such democracies are all around the world. For example, in Russia where Kasparov was having so much problems. or Venezuela where Chavez seems to somehow have a never ending term. Cuba doesn't even hold elections, right? :-P Even in the US, if a candidate is not rich, don't bother running for election. But I guess it's all relative.
Let's play a game... Can you name other so called democratic countries?
This one is just plain weird! It seems in Germany, unless you hold a doctorate degree from EU, you cannot call yourself a doctor. If you do, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Hilarious and educational - not only for the men, but also for the women. A `man' is a mysterious creature.
Let me tell you a funny story. Albarino bought an airbed, instead of a bed, when he moved in to our new place in Berkeley. He thought it was easier to carry home etc. So the airbed was HUGE, a motherflying queen which filled our bedroom. We ended up having to buy it king sized sheets because it was so fat - like a botero painting! I wanted to buy a proper bed but Alnarido insisted this was a great bed and it is going to work. sigh.... do you know how this story is going to end?
Remember the time I said our house is guest friendly? well no more. The night my friend left our house, just when we were looking around the house and congratulating ourselves for such a nice looking house, such a guest friendly house, the airbed went poof and it went saggy and it went decrepit. Inconceivable!!
So now our house is again a mess. We sleep in the middle of the living room, on the guest sofa bed. Where is the humanity!!
Anyhow, the moral of this story? Stick to your convictions and don't sleep on an airbed for too long. However big and hearty it looks!
It is seriously unfair that in 2004 the Democrats had such douche bags for candidates and this year we have both Obama and Hillary and only one will win.
The Underdog
The power of the underdog for me is amazing. I want (mostly) who is not winning. I think I like Obama better (I say i think, because the feminist in me wants to welcome a woman president but then the idealist in me likes Obama better). But since Obama's rocket of a campaign (it has been pretty much going up, up and beyond), and the total obsession with Obama around me, I seem to always be defending Hillary. And not because i like her and want her to win (I am undecided like the other aspects of my life!). Only because she is turning out in some ways to be the underdog of the story. Which is kind of weird.
Who do you think will get the nomination in the end? My friend RSN, who is an Obama fan, thinks Hillary will win in the end, because people in general tend to make more conservative choices.
The Beachboy
McCain has won the republican nomination. People, even on the left, seem to generally like him. But do we like him simply because he is not as bad as the other candidates? He is still pretty bad!! True it is more likely that he will unite the republicans and the democrats, and yes it is true that he is not a fan of torture.... but his foreign policies are still not good. He wants to go to war with Iran... wasn't he the one that sang "bomb, bomb, bomb, iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys? He has always supported the war in iraq. I think the scary thing is that he has certain good characteristics so he is more likely to get elected in current america than the other republican candidates. The other candidates had no chance. This is not good.
