Missing Mary Road

rss might be broken. actually it is broken. please bear with me while i try and repair and see why it’s broken.

UPDATE: Issue is resolved now. Thanks.

Kevin Warwick’s new robot behaves like a child. “Sometimes it does what you want it to, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he says. And while it may seem strange for a professor of cybernetics to be concerning himself with such an unreliable machine, Warwick’s creation has something that even today’s most sophisticated robots lack: a living brain.

Life for Warwick’s robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. “It’s an innate response of the neurons,” says Warwick, “they try to link up and start communicating.”

For the next week the team fed the developing brain a liquid containing nutrients and minerals. And once the neurons established a network sufficiently capable of responding to electrical inputs from the electrode array, they connected the newly formed brain to a simple robot body consisting of two wheels and a sonar sensor.

even luthercorp needs a bailout every now and again. starring the wonderful jon hamm of ‘mad men‘ fame, which you should go watch immediately if you haven’t. it’s probably the best show on television i saw last year. anyway, click below for a humorous time.

Crucial, coveted and increasingly scarce, water has become the latest issue to stoke tensions between India and Pakistan, with farmers in Pakistan’s breadbasket accusing Delhi of reducing one of the subcontinent’s most important rivers to little more than a trickle.

A group of more than 20 different UN bodies warned earlier this month that the world may be perilously close to its first water war. “Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” said the report. “Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity and conflict at various levels.”

The crisis in the agricultural heartland of Pakistan relates to the Chenab, one of a series of waterways that bisect the Punjab, which means ‘five rivers’. The Chenab is fed with glacial meltwaters from the Himalayas and for centuries has provided crucial irrigation for the region. But last summer farmers began to notice the levels of both the river and groundwater begin to fall.

Pakistan blames India, saying it is withholding millions of cubic feet of water upstream on the Chenab in Indian-administered Kashmir and storing it in the massive Baglihar dam in order to produce hydro-electricity. Its Indian neighbour, Pakistan declares, is in breach of a 1960 treaty designed to administer water use in the region. After initial talks to try and resolve the issue, the matter has been put on hold since the Mumbai attacks last November in which 165 people were killed, fuelling tensions between the two quarrelsome neighbours.

Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari warned: “The water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India. Resolution could prevent an environmental catastrophe in South Asia, but failure to do so could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism.”

via shahan mufti.

fact about shahan, he can solve a rubik’s cube in under a minute.

The Egyptian government has sought to dispel rumours that a mobile phone text message “from unknown foreign quarters” is spreading around the country and killing those who receive it.

The extraordinary move by Egypt’s health and interior ministries follows press reports that an SMS containing a special combination of numbers killed a man in the town of Mallawi south of Cairo.

“He died vomiting blood, followed by stroke, shortly after he received a message from an unknown phone number,” the Egyptian Gazette reported on Wednesday.

here’s an image of the largest slums in the world. karachi even outdoes mumbai apparently. clickety to further enhance/detail etc.

World’s poorest countries are the ones hit hardest by the global credit crunch.  Ukraine has run out of money, inflation has run away with the money in zimbabwe, and umm… ethiopia has run out of coca cola.

The East Africa Bottling Share Company, which produces the soft drink in the region, last week temporarily shut its bottling operation in Ethiopia.
It said they had the Coca-Cola – but did not have the bottle tops.
Our correspondent says it sounds almost as if the Coca-Cola shortage is being treated as a national emergency.
When she visited a local bar she found it had run out of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite and Fanta. Mirinda was the only soft drink on offer.
It has been estimated that around 35,000 outlets throughout Ethiopia will be unable to serve Coca-Cola and sister brands until the shortage is resolved.

read it here.

all things pakistan have an interesting post which i was reflecting upon here. i hope they don’t mind me posting the whole thing here but it’s worth reading and i really think you should. it trivializes the whole islamization (which i have no issue with) along with extremism (which i do have an issue with), process spreading like a disease in pakistan. the so called ‘maulana’s’ have infiltrated most of the major cities as well and are now clashing with the local political groups. what i did want to bring to light is trying to give an understanding of how close minded and narrow minded such people are and how hard it is to reason or converse with them. and this is also why negotiations with them has been extremely hard as well.

As the politics of intrigue and rumor heats up, even more, in Pakistan and after the recent dramatic political events, the news of Pakistan’s most important existential battle – against the extremism of the Taliban and their ilk – seems to have slid off the front pages.

Yet, a news item in The News reminds us that the murderous militants are now setting their eyes towards District Dir, after gaining control of Swat. One got a better glimpse into the mind of one of the key players in the Swat saga, Sufi Mohammed, in an interview given to Daily Times’ Peshawar Bureau Chief Iqbal Khattak. Speaking in Mingora, the 74 year-old father-in-law of militant leader Fazlulah gives many important glimpses into his own thinking and priorities.

Here is the interview published in Daily Times:

You said in a 2005 interview with us that what Al Qaeda and the Taliban are doing in Pakistan is haram. Are Fazlullah’s activities over the last sixteen months also haram?
Sufi Muhammad: Yes, I said that about Al Qaeda, but not about the Taliban. Let me say…that debate on past happenings is disallowed in Islam. A hadith sharif says, what has happened in the past should not be discussed.

But how can we proceed without debating the past?
The hadith sharif says a Muslim should not discuss past happenings because he may not remember all the [details] and, therefore, he may…sin by not speaking the truth.

A majority of Swat residents do not think the peace deal recently signed between the TNSM and the NWFP government will last long.
God Almighty does everything; he builds and destroys countries.

Residents also doubt whether peace is possible in the presence of armed Taliban.
Everyone keeps weapons. People in Peshawar have weapons with them.

You support keeping weapons?
Yes, you can keep weapons with you.

Did you ask Fazlullah to surrender weapons after the sharia law deal?
Keeping weapons is halal in Islam.

President Zardari said recently that force would be used if the Taliban do not surrender weapons in Swat.
His statement is childish…immature.

With sharia law in Swat, there will be a complete ban on music and girls’ education, and people will be forced to grow beards?
There are five subjects — judiciary, politics, economics, education and the executive. The judicial subject will be with us, the rest is beyond our control.

The Taliban are kidnapping government officials and killing soldiers, yet you still hold the army responsible for ceasefire violations.
Kidnapping cases are taking place all over the world. The military violated the ceasefire.

The military says some of its soldiers were shot dead while bringing water.
No. This is not the case. The soldiers were not killed near any stream.

Are soldiers moving freely in Swat after the peace deal?
No. The military cannot move freely unless peace is restored.

After peace is restored, will the army leave Swat?
This is Pakistan’s army and Swat is within Pakistan’s borders. I will have no objection if a military cantonment is established here.

Locals say innocent people have been killed. Will the aggrieved families be able to get justice?
I have told you already: we will not discuss what has happened in the past. Sharia law does not allow this.

If a court summons a key Taliban commander, will he appear before the court?
If Caliph Umar (RA) can appear before a court, then why can’t others?

So Fazlullah will also appear in court if summoned?
If he does not… he will be acting against the sharia law.

What you did in Malakand in the 1990s and then in Afghanistan in 2001 you called ‘jihad’. Are Fazlullah’s activities over the last 16 months in Swat also jihad?
I do not want to speak on this.

What are Fazlullah’s plans after the peace deal?
He will support imposition of sharia law.

You have termed democracy ‘infidelity’. But Maulana Sami-ul Haq, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad are taking part in the democratic process.
Democracy is not permissible in sharia law. I will not name [these leaders] but they are taking part in infidelity. I will not offer prayers if one of [these leaders] is leading those prayers.

Do you intend to export sharia law to other parts of Pakistan?
If people help me, I will. Otherwise, no.

randall munroe hit’s the ball out of the park with today’s xkcd and points out how news media doesn’t properly report news with a complete picture.

even though i’m not defending them, but they seem to have made a scapegoat out of aig and are butchering them to no end, yet their idea of numbers is beyond reason. see previous post about bad math skills.

Artist and designer Kentaro Nagai has crafted images of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals by re-arranging the shapes of countries and continents on the world map. The idea behind the campaign is to craft a stronger and more united global community that counts for more than just the sum of its parts.

A man who was wheelchair bound due to a motorcycle accident twenty years ago gained the ability to walk again after being bitten by a recluse spider. ‘I can’t wait to start dancing,’ he said as he looks forward to a full recovery after experiencing what some call a ‘true miracle.

art and bmw’s have gone hand in hand ever since the car has been manufactured.

clickety here.