Hulleye Comes By!

some news of the rainfalls in mumbai via desi media bitch and how much damage they’ve caused with pictures. scroll down the page. i’ve linked the entire blog, not a specific entry.

following up on the previous story about the female android, here is a a wonderful and emotional review by a fellow who just ordered a robot, nuvo, and tells us his experiences of living with it.

I said, “Nuvo, how are you?”

It tilted to the left, and raised one arm to greet me. It shook my hand and winked with one of the lights in its little head.

Much of the time it felt like having a dog around, without my having to feed it. When I called it, its sensors detected me and it automatically stopped about six inches from my feet.

If I said, “Nuvo, shake hands,” it reached a hand up to greet me. By calling up its control panel on my cellphone, I was able to send Nuvo shuffling around my apartment to snap photographs, which it relayed to me. In Japan users often use Nuvo to check on their children, sometimes from remote locations.

I don’t have children, so I sent it to view a pile of laundry in my bedroom. It used a light in one of its eyes to illuminate the room.

I realized that part of my motivation for operating Nuvo from outside was to make sure it was all right; the photographs assured me that it hadn’t turned off or toppled over. I realized I was falling for the little guy.

Read the rest.

the wonderful writeups at k5 (who brought out the truth behind natallee holloway) brought me to this article recently.

The methods and bias of the media.

michael leza does a pretty good job of summarizing how crappy news and media organizations today are. explains how formulaic and disturbing the current situation of big corporate companies really is. a highly recommended read.

When most people watch a TV show, like Buffy or CSI or Survivor, they are well aware of the fact that everything they see is preplanned, scripted, and fully controlled. Days of planning, hard work, and post production have gone into that show to turn it from a jumble of video recordings into a coherent show.

What many of these same people are not aware of (and how could they be?) is that when they sit down to watch the nightly news, or their favorite artificial news-flavored product, they are in fact watching a show that has been just as managed, planned, and scripted as any episode of Seinfeld was.

The BBC is reporting that Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a “female” android called Repliee Q1. ‘She’ has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe. She can only sit though at present, so we’re a long way from Blade Runner yet.

from slashdot.

michael palin, of monty python fame has decided to publish all of his travel books online for free. was browsing around his website and came across his travels through the himalaya’s and more specifically through pakistan. from his experiences at the murree brewery, to watching polo games in the shandur pass or be it having tea and biscuits with imran khan or hanging out in lollywood with shaan, they are all superbly documented here. check them out. they’re a fun read, or just go through his photo essay.

i miss you. come back soon so we can yap and plan your trip here to be serene together. and don’t meet anyone out there just yet. you still need some time to heal and i will help.

Quantum communication networks show great promise in becoming a highly secure communications system. By carrying information with photons or atoms, which are entangled so that the behavior of one affects the other, the network can easily detect any eavesdropper who tries to tap the system.

Physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have just reached an important milestone in the development of these systems by entangling a photon and a single atom located in an atomic cloud. Researchers believe this is the first time an entanglement between a photon and a collective excitation of atoms has passed the rigorous test of quantum behavior known as a Bell inequality violation. The findings are a significant step in developing secure long-distance quantum communications. They appear in the July 22, 2005 edition of the Physical Review of Letters.

Relying on photons or atoms to carry information from one place to another, network security relies on a method known as quantum cryptographic key distribution. In this method, the two information-carrying particles, photonic qubits or atomic qubits, are entangled. Because of the entanglement and a rule in quantum physics that states that measuring a particle disturbs that particle, an eavesdropper would be easily detected because the very act of listening causes changes in the system.

Read the rest here.

oldest known phallus found.

yay!

for any new yorkers out there who feel they are living in hell, here is your citizen’s right to refuse searches in the new york subway. know exactly what to do and what to say if you are asked to be searched. remember refusing a search is not admission of any sort of guilt nor is it any form of resistance, it is just not consensual. for god’s sake, just don’t run.

also more specifically relating to any desi’s reading this, you also do not have to show any proof of citizenship, ID or immigration status as that is a violation of your rights. in fact, you don’t have to even reveal your name.

http://www.flexyourrights.org/subway/

here’s the other four brats along with a grown up oompa loompa.

Why was the Math book unhappy?
It had too many problems !

What did the circle say to the tangent line?
Stop touching me.

An insane mathematician gets on a bus and starts threatening everybody: “I’ll integrate you! I’ll differentiate you!!!” Everybody gets scared and runs away. Only one lady stays. The guy comes up to her and says: “Aren’t you scared, I’ll integrate you, I’ll differentiate you!!!” The lady calmly answers: “No, I am not scared, I am e^x .”

The shortest math joke: let epsilon be

A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Then suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator approaching and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry. “Well, you see, there’s this differential operator coming this way, and when we meet, he’ll differentiate me and nothing will be left of me…!” “Ah,” says e^x, “he won’t bother ME, I’m e to the x!” and he walks on. Of course he meets the differential operator after a short distance.
e^x: “Hi, I’m e^x”
diff.op.: “Hi, I’m d/dy”

Q: Why couldn’t the moebius strip enroll at the school?
A: They required an orientation.

Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant and a banana?
A: | elephant | * | banana | * sin(theta)

Q: What do you get if you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber.
A: You can’t cross a vector with a scalar.

Two mathematicians are studying a convergent series. The first one says: “Do you realize that the series converges even when all the terms are made positive?” The second one asks: “Are you sure?” “Absolutely!”

Q: Did you hear the one about the statistician?
A: Probably….

Q: What does the little mermaid wear?
A: An Algebra

Q: Why didn’t Newton discover group theory?
A: Because he wasn’t Abel.

((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0

Or for those who have trouble reading the poem:

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven, plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.

Several scientists were all posed the following question: “What is 2 * 2 ?”
The engineer whips out his slide rule (so it’s old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces “3.99″.
The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces “it lies between 3.98 and 4.02″.
The mathematician cogitates for a while, then announces: “I don’t know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!”.
Philosopher smiles: “But what do you mean by 2 * 2 ?”
Logician replies: “Please define 2 * 2 more precisely.”
The sociologist: “I don’t know, but is was nice talking about it”.
Behavioral Ecologist: “A polygamous mating system”.
Medical Student : “4″ All others looking astonished : “How did you know ??” Medical Student : :I memorized it.”

konfabulator is now free and konfabulous. check it out.

espn is running an article on the dumbest rules in sports. sadly it’s only north american sports which suck for the most part relative to other sports of the world. anyway, can anyone list any other dumb rules of other sports?

try and solve this sci-fi crossword puzzle. if you’re sitting there scratching your head going…wtf?!?!!, then notice the date on the newspaper. will post the answer in a few days or you should be able to find it on wired.com if you look hard enough.

Update:Here is the final solution to the crossword. The crossword puzzle is from a hypothetical 2019 issue of the NY Times and the clues have somewhat of a geeky bent to them, ranging from Firefox to Coleco to the Appollo 11 landing.

from the Sun Ray Blog, the war on terror via unix shell interactions.

The War on Terror

As viewed from the Bourne shell.

$ cd /middle_east
$ ls
Afghanistan Iraq Libya Saudi_Arabia UAE
Algeria Israel Morrocco Sudan Yemen
Bahrain Jordan Oman Syria
Egypt Kuwait Palestine Tunisia
Iran Lebanon Qatar Turkey

$ cd Afghanistan
$ ls
bin Taliban
$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory “Taliban”: Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
. .. .insurgents
$ chown -R USA .*
chown: .insurgents: Not owner
$ cd ..
$ su
Password: *******
# mv Taliban /tmp
# exit
$ ls
bin
$ cd bin
$ ls
laden
$ cd ..
$ rm -r bin/laden
bin/laden: No such file or directory
$ find / -name laden
$
$ su
Password: *******
# mv bin /tmp
# exit
$ pwd
/middle_east/Afghanistan
$ cd /opt/UN
$ ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
ln: cannot create /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda: Permission denied
$ su
Password:*******
# ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
# cd /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
Al_Qaeda: does not exist
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# mkfile 100g /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
mkfile: No space left on device
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# cd /opt/Coalition/Willing
# mkfile 1b /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# chown -R USA:Proof /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
#exit
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls -a
. .. saddam
$ find / -name [Ww][Mm][Dd]
/Korea/North/wMd
$ wall Propaganda.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on USS_Abraham_Lincoln Th May 1st
Mission Accomplished!
$ rm saddam
saddam: No such file or directory
$ find / -name saddam
/var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam
$ wall NewsWorthy.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on Time.Magazine Sat Dec 13
We Got Him!
$ mv /var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam /opt/jail
$ cd /opt/USA
$ cp -Rp Democracy /middle_east/Iraq
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq/Democracy
$ ./install
Install Error: Install failed. See install_log for details.
$ more install_log
Installed failed!
Prerequisite packages missing
Conflicting package Wahhabism found in /midde_east/Saudi_Arabia
Packages Church and State must be installed separately
File System /PeakOil nearing capacity
Please read the install guide to properly plan your installation.
$

for anyone who has been hiding under a hole, this month kay has done a truly brilliant job photo documenting all the emotions and feelings behind her sister’s wedding and captured every mood leading up to the final day. jammie, i wish you and your husband best of luck in your life ahead and thank you for allowing kay to share her thoughts with the rest of us.

sincerest apologies to kay for a terrible typo. they are all her own thoughts and feelings that have been expressed in the above blog. my bad.

what rss reader do you guys use?

we are not afraid.com, versus i am fucking terrified.com, following up in the style of when everybody was sorry after bush got re-elected.

Muhammad Hassan might be out of a job. Well, actually his real name is Mark Copani, and he’s Italian American, but he plays an Arab on TV, on World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Smackdown” to be exact.

On July 7th, the day of the London bombings, WWE ran a 7-minute segment on its popular wrestling program that, according to the New York Times:

included a group of Mr. Hassan’s henchmen, wearing ski masks and camouflage, who ran into the ring to beat up the Undertaker, a popular wrestler and Mr. Hassan’s rival. The same men carried the body of Mr. Hassan’s sidekick, Shawn Daivari, over their heads, evoking a martyr’s funeral. Mr. Hassan then came into the ring and choked the Undertaker.

Needless to say, the episode was in such bad taste that BSkyB, the British network that airs Smackdown in England, refused to air the segment.

And the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) launched a protest against WWE over its portrayal of Arabs and Muslims.

At first, WWE defended the show. In a comical yet valiant effort that would have made any Public Relations veteran proud, WWE spokesperson Gary Davis tried to portray the segment as pro-Arab:

Mr. Hassan, he explained, is not a terrorist, but an angry, disillusioned Arab-American, embracing his roots after experiencing racism from other Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Nice try.

Yesterday, WWE contacted the ADC to let them know that is withdrawing the Hassan character from future episodes after this Sunday.

Thanks MWU!

Princeton has announced winners in its Art of Science competition in which scientists from many disciplines were invited to submit beautiful images generated by their research.

Shown below, This graphic comes from a dynamic asset allocation problem in railroads. The system, which is now in production at Norfolk Southern railroad, is the first production implementation of a stochastic, dynamic programming model in freight transportation. The model is based on the Ph.D. dissertation of Huseyin Topaloglu (now a professor at Cornell University) for stochastic, integer multicommodity flow problems. The original research was modified to handle multidimensional attribute problems, with millions of asset types.

Police in Brazil arrested 10 people near Rio today on charges they sold drugs via Google’s social networking site Orkut. The 7MM+ member service became wildly popular in Brazil last year. Nothing too shocking in this news. As more people connect with one other in virtual space, logic follows that more will engage in unlawful activity there, too. Link to Reuters story (via BB)

and if you think there are a lot of desi’s on Orkut, you have no clue how many Brazilian’s there are. As of yesterday, these were the current demographics.

Brazil 73.87 %
United States 6.24 %
Iran 4.55 %
Pakistan 3.08 %
India 1.95 %
Japan 0.86 %
United Kingdom 0.77 %
Canada 0.70 %
Estonia 0.60 %
Portugal 0.49 %

before you click on the link or image, try and guess who this guy is.

40 things that only happen in movies.

18. If a microphone is turned on it will immediately feedback.

27. A single match is usually sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

9. Guns are like disposable razors. If you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. you will always find another one.

20. All single women have a cat.

in celebration of the 36th anniverary of the moon landing, google has announced google moon with a lovely easter egg.

rest in peace scotty. may you always have a bottle of scotch by your side. the words “i just can’t do it captain, i don’t have the power!” will remain immortal in my memory.

you will always have the power.

The multi-part sci-fi Star Trek TV and film series (first telecast as a one-hour TV show in 1966 and lasting until 1969 before syndication, and inspiring numerous feature films, beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)), popularized the common phrase, “Beam me up, Scotty.” Contrary to popular belief, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) never uttered the line: “Beam me up, Scotty”. The actual command, “Kirk to Enterprise. Beam us up, Scotty” was voiced by Captain Kirk (voice of William Shatner) in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek animated TV series from 1973-75. The closest Kirk ever got to saying the exact line was “Scotty, beam me up!” in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

go over to david ford’s rant about saddar’s pedestrian traffic. it’s rather amusing.

also i’ve decided to go with this font size since people complained about having trouble reading all my previous posts.

Loud rock concert causes teen’s head to explode.

“It was completely gross,” said Tiffany Bonner, 16, Gerry’s girlfriend. “The music was really loud during ‘In the Dark Hole’ and Gerry looked a little scary. Then during the next song his head suddenly exploded.” She added, “And don’t say I’m, like, his ‘former’ girlfriend because even though Jerry’s skull fell all apart and he’s dead, I’ll love him forever. I saved a piece of his — what did they call it? cranieminem? Something?”

Dirt Weasel is a five-man combo known for its towers of amplifiers — called “Marshall stacks” in the trade — and ultra-loud delivery. Band frontman and lead guitarist Jake “Snake Eyes” Ballard said nothing like this had ever happened before at a Dirt Weasel show.

“It was in the middle of the solo to ‘Sit & Spin,’ said Ballard, referring to one of the band’s songs. “I went out into center stage like I usually do, to just, you know, blaze away. And this kid in a Goth T-shirt starting having like some sort of seizure. I thought he was just trying to start a mosh pit, right? But that’s so retro and our auds are cooler than that.”

“He was holding Tiffany’s waist,” said Gerry’s friend Esteban. “We both were ’cause we, like, share her. And I thought he was having like this totally rad time when he blew up real good. The thing is, he wasn’t the only one. I heard two other melons pop somewhere in the crowd.”

In fact, five young heads ceased to exist that night according to the Winthrop Sheriff ’s Department. The local D.A. is considering manslaughter charges against the band.

Prof. Calvin Mittridge from Indiana Polytechnic Junior College theorizes that the explosions had something to do with loud noise interacting with a specific electrical frequency in Gerry Tillis’ brain.

“The five victims were ‘heavily into’ a certain wavelength, to use the vernacular,” said Prof. Mittridge. “The music was on the same wavelength and amped the teens up. The result was like having your head in a microwave oven.”

Read on about the christian church groups picketing outside. They’re even funnier.

So today I do my daily run of Timmy’s and end up with my usual morning large steeped tea with a plain toasted and buttered bagel. Nothing unusual for any regular 9-to-5er.

And just as ordinarily enough, my order came to $2.29 and just as ordinarily I handed the lady in the drive thru window my $2.30 expecting a penny in return.

Instead, I get this.

Looks pretty similar to a Canadian penny, but it really isn’t. This is what I should have recieved.

The difference between the two is that one is a Canadian 1 cent coin, and the other a Pakistan 1 rupee coin.

I understand this is a multicultural society, but shortchanging a company by giving them wrong currency really doesn’t help our community in any way whatsoever. I myself am of Pakistani origin and us Pakistani’s have a pretty stained name within the international community to begin with. Saving yourself a penny when that rupee is useless to you in this country is pretty low.

Technically I ended up winning this round because as Google informs me, One Pak Rupee is worth close to just over two cents and whenever I travel back to Karachi, I can end up using that rupee, but not everyone would benefit from this.

The point of this whole ramble is that if you wish to enjoy the benefits of a multicultural society that accepts you for who you are, you should accept them for who they are as well and accept their ways of being and not try to shortchange them every place you get.

It really isn’t appropriate to try and scam the people who have given you a second home.

courtesy teeth maestro,

A US Congressman while giving an interview to a radio station (WFLA-AM Orlando, FL) advised the US Military to “Take Out” Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.