Hulleye Comes By!

bloody addictive game. damn good. easy to play. hard to master. i can’t seem to get past level 9. got about 194,000 points. i guess i’ll spend the next few hours trying to master it and reach level 10.

while the art of hand writing and calligraphy is a fast disappearing skill, speed typing is replacing it. let’s face it. computer’s are everywhere in this day and age and you can’t avoid them. no matter what, you have to learn to type. take the typing test to see how well you fare.

i made it to 102 words per minute with 98% accuracy for a span of three minutes. to get more accurate results, you should select three minutes for the test duration. it’s fairly simple, just click on begin test and choose a story to type.

- Test Name: The Wonderful Wizard of OZ
- Date: 2005-09-27 15:16
- Test Time: 03:00
- Gross Speed: 102 WPM
- Errors: 6
- Accuracy: 98%

you know these days, it’s not even safe to be a terrorist nerd. safe from whom? safe from the cops. you’re more than likely to get arrested if you have a terrorist nerd profile. on the other hand, nerds terrorists generally will never get profiled, since they have the power of adaptation! i guess nobody really gave these cops a lesson in sociology. here’s a terrorist nerd who had some trouble lately.

in the mean time, joss whedon and neil gaiman defend some nerds for time.com. transcript to their entire interview here.

one of my favourite bloggers reviews serenity. and he wasn’t even a firefly fan to begin with or knew anything about the show! how’s that for bad ass. anybody else aside from me counting down till the 30th! woo hoo! good going tony.

Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea…

i guess douglas adams was onto something, eh?

If you think you’ve spent time in a lavish WC, you’ve obviously never spent any time in Japan and gone for a pee pee there.

some japanese artists rendition of mario and luigi. these are brilliant. i have no idea what the site reads but since i’m on this kick of linking about japanese stuff, check it out.

so i’m still fascinated by the japs. after that whole post about them sleeping any which way, i came across this site that lists all sorts of japanese vending machines. to list just a few of the things these guys vend, they got porn, condoms, rice, flight insurance, beer and hard liquor, fried foods, flowers, lobsters, used panties, toilet paper, eggs and video games! check these sites out. they’re nuts.

oh and in context to my previous post about the japs needing rest, here’s a place in kobe that allows human’s to park for thirty minutes to catch a power nap for thirty minutes along with a cold drink!

from crooks and liars, we get this brilliant piece. phil donahue of talk show host fame, destroys bill o` reilly.

DONAHUE: You saw the pictures! (reasonable tone of voice) Now listen - listen. You wouldn’t send your children to this war, Bill. O’REILLY (very angry, pointing): My nephew just enlisted in the Army. You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!!!

DONAHUE: Very good. Very good. Congratulations! You should be proud .. O’REILLY (starts to lose it, shouting, pointing finger, hand shaking): And he’s a patriot, so don’t denigrate his service or I’ll boot you right off the set!!!

DONAHUE: I’m not … I’m not …

O’REILLY (very, very loud): That boy made a decision to serve his country!!! Do not denigrate him or you’re outta here!!!

link to transcript. link to video.

honour is a funny concept if you think of it from a sociological and anthropological perspective. there are some very unique cultures that revere one’s honour quite highly. they range from japanese samurai, to criminal underworlds, to the klingons, to feudals, to aristocrats to the bedouins and other nomadic cultures, to cowboys of the wild wild west and so on and so forth. one of the most striking usage of the word today is in context with “honour killings“. the irony behind that phrase is just plain weird and extremely oxymoronic, just as oxymoronic as the term “muslim terrorists”. in any case, thats another rant all on it’s own. i came across a post on danial’s blog which i had to share with the readers here. we all know exists, but exactly how aware are you. so danial, if you don’t mind, i’d like to paste your post here.

A 15 year old girl from Dharki in Sindh has requested General Musharraf to protect her from honor Killing.

A cousin of mine watched The national geographic documentary about Zahida Perveen, one of many women who get tortured and killed every year in the name of honor here in Pakistan. My cousin was horrified and mentioned that the National Geographic channel reported some other cases as well. They also talked to a women’s rights activist in Karachi who took them to meet another victim. This new victim was burnt by her husband and in laws and they didn’t even take her to the hospital. The victim was still refusing to file complain against her husband and in-laws. I wish I could catch a rebroadcast of this documentary. Erudition Online has an article on Honor Killings and the story of Zahida. Rozaneh Magazine has Zahida Perveen’s interview here. Her husband brutally attacked her alleging she had been unfaithful & brought shame to the family. He cut off her ears, tongue, nose, eyes, & left her for dead. The husband is in prison and Zahida’s lawyer Nahida Mehboob Elahi is still campaigning for an appeal to lengthen Zahida’s husband’s sentence.

In rural Punjab, another man cut off his 19 year old sister-in-law’s nose in the name of honor.

BBC NEWS: Pakistan’s Islamic girl schools…they are taught subjects like maths and geography, they are not tested on them. Their exams are only on matters relating to Islam… …The teachers were eager to show me the computer room. With five computers, they have one for every 400 girls. When I ask if they have access to the internet, the teachers laugh. “No, that is not possible for us,” says Binte Rafiq. ”[We teach them] just only how to shut down the computer, and how to start it. Basic IT.” The teachers say they cannot afford more computers because the madrassa relies completely on private donations. But at the same time they showed me construction work to add extra rooms, so they can take in even more students… …”They’re not allowed to think for themselves, to question, they’re not allowed to reason. Their spirit of inquiry is stifled”, said Tahira Abdullah, women’s rights activist…

There is something terribly wrong. We need to take immidiate action. I ask all fellow bloggers to follow these cases and write more and more about it. Also send messages to the General Saheb. Instead of hiding by blaming these crimes on to forgien propaganda, take some action, Please raise your voice against injust.

speaking of dialing painful phone numbers, here’s something of interest to all.

the find-a-human database is a collection of touch-tone recipes that get you through big companies’ voice-jail systems and through to a live operator.

Astoria Federal Savings 800-ASTORIA When you hear the womans voice press zero. Will transfer right away to a human.

Bank of America 800-900-9000 Hit zero twice, after menu choices play

Bank One 877-226-5663 Press 0 thru the options to get a live person

Chase 800-CHASE24 Hit five, pause, then hit one, four, star, zero

CIBC 800-465-2422 Enter card# and pin, then press 0

CitiBank 800-374-9700 Zero

and so on…

via bb

‘I’m staying in a fancy hotel and they’re having a convention. It’s a convention of mathematicians and they’ve done it up real nice. My room number is pi. It’s easy to remember but it takes forever to call me on the house telephone’

* Billy Martin

how hard do you think it is to predict the future? science fiction authors for the most part have done a remarkable job of it and for the most part, have hit the button right on the money. everyone from orwell to verne, swift to shelley, huxley to clarke, roddenberry to asimov are in a league all on their own and they recieve almost no credit when a new technology is developed which could have been very easily have been inspired by them. when they wrote the literature that they did, people thought they were fools to begin with and for having written the nonsense they did, they were considered even bigger fools.

for example, jules verne in 1865 wrote from the earth to the moon. read that date again if you missed it the first time. 1865! just the notion would have sounded prepostorous. there was not even a concept of an airplane back then.

five years later he came up with 20,000 leagues under the sea. then again around the world in 80 days two years later. all these feats are easily accomplished by common technology today.

similarly, orwellian societies are propping up everywhere (not necessarily on a large government level scale - with some exceptions - but definitely in corporate environments and other forms of institutions) it seems and with orwell, aldous huxley hit the nail as well in thinking of a brave new world.

roddenberry’s concepts and technologies are so commonplace today that i won’t even bother getting into them. the idea of a computer everywhere with monitors, two way wireless communication, floppy disks, space travel itself, shuttlecrafts, speech recognition etc. were far beyond their time.

which is why, knowing all of this, it boggles the mind that people, the same people who we consider our technological heroes and innovators of today would say things like this. they should just sit and read or watch sci-fi all day long.

‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’ - Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

‘While a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 10000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.’ - Popular mechanics, 1949

‘I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year’ - Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

‘But what… is it good for?’ - Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968

‘There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in the home’ - Ken Olson, Present, Chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

‘640K should be enough for anybody’ - Bill Gates, 1981

Now, who can tell me what’s happening in the year 2080?

engadget is a technology blog that gives the latest and greatest in current technology. here’s the best leading and cutting edge technology from the 80’s.

so we all know the people from the orient are hard workers. japan is a case in point. that country has built it’s reputation for the hardest workers of our generation. they have embraced technology that north american’s or europeans have never seen. they slave at it and they are professionals. the enjoy their drinks, they love baseball and they fly all over the world with kodak camera’s taking pictures and playing golf. doing a ten to twelve hour work day plus a four hour daily commute is quite the norm for them. don’t they ever get tired you ask? sure they do. here’s a whole bunch of tired japanese getting some rest.

this is for all the married men who work for a living and occasionally need to sleep at half decent hours.

how to vanish in the united states of america, without a trace.

this post from last year in the onion is damned hilarious. and this makes for a picture perfect finish. thanks sean.

can this man save the planet?

“of my friend, i can say only this. of all the souls i have encountered in my travels…his was the most human.” - james tiberius kirk. star trek ii: the wrath of khan

“…A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law…” used the wristband cellphone.

Link

WHY DO WE RESIDE IN A THREE-DIMENSIONAL UNIVERSE? Andreas Karch (University of Washington) and Lisa Randall (Harvard) propose to explain why we live in three dimensions and not some other number. Currently, the popular string theory of matter holds that our universe is actually ten-dimensional, including, first of all, the dimension of time, then the three “large” dimensions we perceive as “space,” plus six more dimensions that are difficult to see, perhaps because they are hidden in some way. There is reason to believe, therefore, that our common 3D space is but a portion of some membrane or “brane” within a much more complicated higher-dimensional reality. Specifically, Karch and Randall address themselves to the behavior of three-dimensional force laws, including the force of gravity. Having several dimensions rolled up is one way to explain why gravity if so weak. Another view, pioneered by Randall and Raman Sundrum, holds that if gravity is localized on a 3D defect in the larger multi-dimensional universe and if spacetime is sufficiently warped, then the other spatial dimensions might be large after all. But why is our “local gravity” apparently a 3D defect in a 10D universe? Why not a 4D defect or some other dimensionality? In the present paper, Karch (karch@feynman.phys.washington.edu) and Randall show that the cosmic evolution of the 10D universe, involving a steady dilution of matter, results in spacetime being populated chiefly by 3D and 7D branes. Several versions of string theories require the existence of 3D and 7D branes; indeed, the particles that constitute matter—such as quarks and electrons—can be considered open strings with one end planted on a 3D brane and the other end planted on a 7D brane. (Karch and Randall, Physical Review Letters, upcoming article )

THE “CHEERIOS” EFFECT. The tendency for certain floating things to clump under the action of surface tension—things such as Cheerios cereal bits in your breakfast bowl, bubbles in a glass of beer, pepper flakes on water, even strands of hair up against a washbasin—has important potential engineering implications, such as for the design of self-assembling circuits and devices. Study of the clumping phenomenon has a long history. For example, an excellent summary was prepared by no less than James Clerk Maxwell for the Encyclopedia Britannica as long ago as 1875. Now a Harvard professor, Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, and an undergraduate student Dominic Vella (now a graduate student at Cambridge University), have taken up the subject and written a pedagogical review, hoping to rescue the subject from the obscuring algebraic complexity that has settled around it (as Mahadevan argues) and concentrate on the pertinent relatively simple physics principles. They emphasize that contrary to general belief, chemical interactions are oftentimes not paramount in determining whether clumping occurs; instead a simple equilibrium of forces and torques—including things such as buoyancy and surface tension—are the deciding factors. Even objects denser than water can float if the geometry is right: see http://www.aip.org/png/2005/236.htm for a picture of a floating thumbtack. Even more interestingly, one can control the strength and sign of this interaction; indeed, there are indications that insects that live on the air-water interface might even use this effect to great advantage. (Vella and Mahadevan, American Journal of Physics, September 2005; lm@deas.harvard.edu, lab website at http://www.deas.harvard.edu/softmat/ )

(courtesy aip)

Turtles, tortoises and terrapins do not have teeth. They have hard, horny jaws that are able to cut and tear food.

The voice of Tony the Tiger is Thurl Ravenscroft.

In Ivrea, Italy, thousands of citizens celebrate the beginning of Lent by throwing oranges at one another.

The now extinct ancestor of the horse, eojippus, had a short neck, a pug muzzle and stood no higher than a medium sized dog.

The hippopotamus has the world’s shortest sperm.

The female green turtle sheds tears as she lays her eggs on the beach. This washes sand particles out of her eyes and rids her body of excess salt.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in an interview with The Washington post in New York said, he has “totally turned around Pakistan” and had made key advances in fostering democracy. He defended his democratic credentials, saying the steps taken by him included protection of freedom of the press, empowerment of local government, improvement of position of women in the society and grant of greater representation to minorities. ”Leave the developing world aside; I think we are better than all of them,” Musharraf declared. “Bring the developed world and let us compare Pakistan’s record, under me, a uniformed man, with many of the developed countries. I challenge that we will be better off”. “Let me assure you that President Bush never talks about when are you taking your uniform off,” he said, when asked about his uniform. About Mukhtar Mai, he said that Mai was free to travel now, and that he had no regrets about how he handled the incident. He said, Mai had come under the sway of organizations determined to harm Pakistan’s image and he did not think Pakistan “should be singled out when the curse is everywhere in the world.” He noted that he had seen reports or figures about rape in the United States, Canada, France and Britain showing that “it is happening everywhere.”

“You must understand the environment in Pakistan,” President Musharraf added. “This has become a money making concern.

“A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.”

(DAWN/ NEWS/ NATION/ JANG/ NAWA-E-WAQT/ DAILY TIMES/ POST/ KHABRAIN)

maybe the artsaypunk can define this a bit better, but if anyone ever asks you outside of the sub-continent, you could redirect them here to explain what a desi is.

finally the kilogram is getting a redefinition. it was the only unit left that was not defined by a fundamental constant found in nature, but instead used a physical object as measure. it is currently defined as the mass of a plum sized platinum-iridium alloy which is stored in climate controlled conditions in a vault at Le Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) near Paris.

the other six fundamental unit’s of measure are the meter (unit of length) which is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in an absolute vacuum during a time interval of exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second.

the other six units are defined below by natural constants and have moved from being defined by physical objects:

the second (unit of time) is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at zero kelvins.

the ampere (unit of electric current) is defined as the constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed one metre apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 10−7 newton per metre of length.

the kelvin (unit of temperature) defined by two facts: zero kelvins is absolute zero (when molecular motion stops), and one kelvin is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water. The Celsius temperature scale is now defined in terms of the kelvin, with 0 C corresponding to 273.15 kelvins, approximately the melting point of water under ordinary conditions.

the mole (unit of substance) is the amount of substance of a system and is defined as the amount of substance that contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in exactly 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12. This quantity is known as Avogadro’s number and is approximately 6.0221415 × 10²³.

the last unit, the candela (unit of luminosity), formerly known as the candle, is defined as the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of (1/683) W per steradian.

for further definitions, go here. intriguingly, this is the history behind the kilogram.

browse through the bipm website to understand why we cannot use physical subtances to measure basic units anymore. it’s quite fun if you’re at all scientifically inclined.

tags are a funny concept. they can be defined in a myriad of ways. to be honest, in the context of blogging, it’s a pretty stupid concept, just as much as email forwards and chain letters. the redundancy of the whole idea is a bit weird. it kinda defeats the whole purpose of this blog, which is rarely personal, and more for the sharing of wisdom. either which way, i have been tagged by the articulate sumera gul and the flossing maestro himself, so not to be a spoilsport…here goes nothing.

5 years ago: hanging out at the university of waterloo, not really being successful in very much that i studied there, that being physics and economics and going through a terrible bout of insomnia, and driving more than anybody i’ve ever known.

1 year ago: waiting to be with my wife. all year.

5 songs which I know the complete lyrics to:

1. janay woh kaisay loag thay from the movie pyaasa, sung by hemant kumar
2. wonderful tonight by eric clapton
3. yaadein by falak
4. jamaica farewell by harry belfonte
5. bohemian rhapsody by queen

5 places I’d hide away to:

1. the republic of the maldives
2. the bathroom
3. sandspit
4. open sea
5. mary road, bath island, karachi

5 favourite TV shows: not really a big fan of television, but anyway…

1. firefly
2. battlestar galactica
3. star trek: the next generation
4. fawlty towers
5. fifty fifty

5 favourite toys:

1. my computer
2. my now broken microscope
3. my duncan yo-yo
4. my snooker cue
5. my hands

5 people I am tagging: to be honest, I wouldn’t want this wished upon anyone else. though if anyone is bored enough, i’ve also responded to something similar here.

check out where you guys are coming from. get a geographic look via the google maps api of where everyone is. quite fun. notice satellite/hybrid buttons + the zoom slider on the left.

I wonder if SkyNews regrets this byline?

guess what this is and win $15.