Total Waste of Time- Random Nothings

Article from history.

2009-03-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

A very interesting article written about India and Pakistan 10 years after independence- here.

Ron Paul continues to impress..

2009-03-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

"Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base...". Full article here.

From Jordan

2009-03-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

Awesome shots of female police officers in Jordan here.

Ukrainian Army Ad

2009-02-27T20:56:00.000-08:00

Awesome ad on why join the Ukrainian Army.

U2 performs an inpromtu gig on a roof.

2009-02-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

Video here. New album releasing March 2nd!

Darwin at work.

2009-02-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

Robbery by sudden snatching- here. And drowning while proving you can hold your breath for a long time under water -here.

Kiss of life? Umm death.

2009-02-21T22:34:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if this is true but even making up something like this is hard. Random nothing from Sweden here.

Ironic

2009-02-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

One good thing about the financial crisis

2009-02-01T08:57:00.000-08:00

As you may know, the Icelandic economy collapsed a couple of months ago, and was recently followed by the Icelandic government. Well, they have a new government now, and it's headed by the modern world's first openly gay prime minister! Sweet! Her name is Johanna Sigurdardottir. Here's a news article, and here's her Wikipedia entry. She is Iceland's longest serving MP, and a former airline stewardess.

Blind teenaged phone-hacker arrested

2009-01-31T22:22:00.000-08:00

Matthew Weigman, better known as L'il Hacker, may be put away for up to thirteen years. His crimes include fooling Swat teams into bursting into rivals homes. Also causing cops to detain the father of a girl who refused to have phone sex with him. And eavesdropping on Sprint customer support calls to steal credit card numbers.

Apparently, there's a whole underground subculture of "phreakers", "swatters" and "party lines". Here's the latest news report, and here's a more detailed story on him and his scene. Fascinating stuff. Anyone else see a movie deal in the offing?

Italy outlaws “foreign’ food

2009-01-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

It started in the town of Lucca this week and spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, this campaign against foreign food. The center right government is trying to ‘preserve tradition’ by ‘making the Italians eat Italian food’. Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture has never eaten a kebab or a non Italian dish in his life, he even refuses to eat a pineapple.

“Davide Boni, a councillor in Milan for the Northern League, which also opposes the building of mosques in Italian cities, said that kebab shop owners were prepared to work long hours, which was unfair competition.”

This would be funny if they weren’t serious. Article here.

The child actors of Slumdog millionaire paid $500

2009-01-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

This is not cool. For a years work, Rubina and Azharuddin ( who play, Latika and Salim in the movie) were paid $500 and $1500. They continue to live in abject poverty in the slum. Azharuddin's illegal hut was demolished recently and now he sleeps under a plastic tarp.

The director and producer of the movie are not embarrassed by this, they think sending the children to a $20/ month school was more than enough compensation. Complete heartbreaking story here.

I send an email to www.foxsearchlight.com to let them know how disgusting this is.

Child abuse by math teachers

2009-01-28T11:12:00.000-08:00

A shocking story, courtesy of America's Finest News Source. It's amazing that teachers can get away with crap like this...

funny

Obama's interview on Al-Arabiya

2009-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Obama continues to impress in these early days of his presidency. His first formal television interview after taking office was to the Dubai based Arabic-language news channel, Al-Arabiya.

politics

We all live in a giant hologram, giant hologram...

2009-01-27T08:57:00.000-08:00

From The New Scientist

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan. If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

More here...

Lies of Omission

2009-01-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

What men and women are really thinking, according to the Abstruse Goose.

Going green on a budget.

2009-01-26T11:29:00.001-08:00

Starting today I will be looking at grad-student-friendly ways to be green.

Step one: Stop receiving Junk Mail.
Cost: Free
Cost of inaction: 100 million trees are ground up each year to produce junk mail.

How to:

You could go to Green Dimes and for $20/ year they remove you from all direct marketing services. No Junk mail and for every new account they plant 5 trees.

Or the free way, it takes longer, but just as effective.

Reduce the number of catalog you get- Go to Catalogue Choice and remove yourself from all the catalogs you do not want to receive. Sadly you have to do it for each catalog and can’t just opt out of all in one click. But it’s free.
Credit Card offers: Call 1-888-5 OPT OUT (or 1-888-567-8688) 24 hours a day and opt out of all credit card offers. You will need your name, address for the last two years and social security number. OR online at OptOut
Remove yourself from list of Direct Marketing association- here
Sign the petition to stop junk mail- here.

If you still get junk email, here are a few ideas:

Use as scrap paper
Recycle
Make your own recycled paper. These directions make it sound and look super easy.

Sunday hurrays!

2009-01-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

BBC gets owned for not broadcasting the Gaza appeal. Thank you Tony Benn. I love you. Video here.

And Fox is pooping in their pants after just 2 days of the Obama Presidency.

Forever -21- Do you shop there? Read what they are involved in before you spend a dime there please. The sweatshop controversy, the documentary on exploiting immigrant workers and copyright infringements.

Reusable shopping bags and how they can actually be worse than their thinner plastic cousins, full article here. So if you want to help the environment, please REUSE them.

Put them in the car,
Write take shopping bags on your grocery list.
If you find yourself in line without them choose paper or plastic depending on the one you think you'll reuse the most.

The times they are a-changin.

2009-01-20T17:10:00.000-08:00

And thank God for that. Here is the inauguration and its preparation-the big picture blog. And a satellite image of the crowd at the inauguration.

Also, Hilary Clinton was mouthing along with the presidential oath- the Onion reports. ;-)

Ever wanted to induce hallucinations? Hack your brain? Well here is a step by step guide to fool your own mind. Super fun!

Ever heard of the famed Google hiring process. Takes months, sometimes almost 6 months. I always thought that was weird, why does Google need 6 months to decide if it wants to hire you, sounds very inefficient to me. Sounds more like a marketing stunt than anything else. Sounds like they want you to feel proud that you passed the Google exam and can now work here. Now nothing wrong with that, except that pride can be used to give you less pay. You are now being paid in money plus pride. Just my thoughts. But then I found this forum-the Google ex employee meet and greet. Read it with a grain of salt.

Zen and the art of meeting people.

2009-01-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

I have blogged previously about this collective effort to avoid any connection with strangers around us. First there was the newspaper, pretend you are reading the newspaper and hope no one will smile or talk to you. Then the cell phone, call your voice mail and listen to your old messages. The iPod, put those headphones on and you don’t have to listen to the bus driver greeting you on the bus, or even acknowledge him. Add dark glasses and you are set for life baby. This eliminates all possibilities. You have now eliminated even the slight chance that you may meet someone’s eye on the road and have to smile at them.

And then we all crib about the fact that it is hard to meet people. I was reading some articles recently and found - MeetUp, a website that uses internet to get you off the internet. You meet other people with a common interest- running a marathon, writing perl code, atheism. You wear a name tag and show up and try to have fun. Scary? How did meeting strangers and trying to have conversations with them become scary?
I am going to my first meetup this Sunday!

Also, finally -"In an unprecedented blitz against social awkwardness, Meetup.com and The Huffington Post have decided to hand out half a million name tags to the crowd at Inauguration. The name tags read "Hello, My Fellow American, My Name Is..." and attendees are to write-in their name, where they're from, slap it on their coat in the cold, and have some conversations with Fellow Americans." Complete article here.

Weird taxes in history

2009-01-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

Salt tax, urine tax, beard tax, window tax, soul tax and the worst offender of all the crack tax. :-)

Full list here.

Saturday- Groom choices, grocery help and dancing

2009-01-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

Girls married to frogs in India and 8 year old girl married to 47 year old man in Saudi Arabia. Personally I would choose the frogs.

How to boycott ( if you so choose) Israeli products.- The Dutch are boycotting them-think about it, will you?

The fantastic T-Mobile advertisement which was filmed at 11am on Thursday 15th January 2009 at Liverpool Street station, London. The station starts playing music and dancers come on the station to surprise the commuters. They all dance and sing together. T Mobile- Life's for sharing. You tube video here-

Also, the girl scouts are here people. Stock up on those Do-si-dos.

I am so buying a new monitor.

2009-01-16T22:21:00.000-08:00

Using 2 monitors 44% more productive than using only one. Complete NYtimes article here.

Israel and Gaza

2009-01-16T11:09:00.000-08:00

Simple question- What exactly is Israel trying to achieve through the operation in Gaza? 45% of the casualties were women and children. 25% were children.

What is their hope? What? I do not understand. Let us bomb them, and then we will have killed the radical elements and we will all live in peace? Really? If you saw your children killed by Israeli rockets would you want to bomb Israel?

Interview here-Jeremy Paxman asks the Israeli Ambassador to the UK about the Israeli atrocities in Gaza

To answer my own question, here is a very interesting take on what Israel is trying to do- the education of the Hamas, like the the education of Hezbollah. Friedman says that, after the Hezbollah had declared victory over Isreal in 2006, the Lebanese civilians had come out of their houses and looked the the distroyed landscape and gotten angry with the Hizbollah for causing such havoc in their lives. That was the education of the Hizbollah, the cries of the civilians-" Was it worth it?" Read the complete article here.

Atleast starbucks will be cheaper now...

2009-01-14T18:32:00.000-08:00

Coffee from China-Link

Is our children learning?

2009-01-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

Jacob Weisberg of Slate compiles the top 25 Bushisms ( Bush's verbal slip-ups).
My favourite -
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000.
Rarely indeed. Read the complete list here.

Interesting article about what it takes to get a Police Officer Fired.

2009-01-14T12:39:00.001-08:00

Ed Brayton writes"How about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?"

The answer Nope, not that.

How about stopping by a woman's house to ask for directions and shooting her dog and then lying and saying the dog was trying to attack you. How about offering the owner of the dog money to keep quiet when she has evidence from home surveillance video. Nope, not that.

You need to be honest, outspoken with a knack for seeing both sides of an issue. That will get you fired.

Complete article here.

First they came for the Jews...

2009-01-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

I stopped breathing, it broke my heart and then it made me proud. To be human I guess. This is the letter written by the editor of a Sri Lankan Newspaper- Sunday Leader. It was written a couple of days before he was murdered in Colombo on his way to work. He writes about being murdered. He writes about choosing this life of danger when he is a father, a husband. He writes about who wants to kill him. He writes about the fact that now that we are reading this, his daughter and son have no father. He writes about how the president of Sri Lanka will make the appropriate noises which hold no meaning. He talks about living his life with his head held high. He talks about the call of conscience; he talks about speaking the truth and walking tall. Extraordinary.Humbling.

Golden Globes- The best and the worst

2009-01-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

The best dress-Christina Applegate in yellow-and the worst-Cameron Diaz in pink.

New Yahoo! CEO

2009-01-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

Wall Street journal reports: "Yahoo Inc. is expected to announce that Carol Bartz, former chief executive of software company Autodesk Inc., has accepted an offer to become the Internet company's next CEO, ..."

Hilda the hippo yawns and accidently eats a man.

2009-01-13T13:38:00.001-08:00

Bangkok: " A circus dwarf , nicknamed Od, died recently when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a yawning hippopotamus waiting to appear in the next act. " Go here for the news clipping from Pattaya Mail.

Mathematics teachers are hardcore.

2009-01-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

HeNan, China- An angry teacher rips off a student's cheek because he did not do his homework. She later picks up the missing cheek, puts it on the student and sends him home. More on Weird Asian News.

Worlds worst firefighters?

2009-01-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

Syke, Northern Germany:Well what will you have me call them? They did just burn down their own fire station. This was the second time the station was burned. More from Austrian Times