La Vie En Rose

Imagine Earth without people

2006-10-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

By Bob Holmes

Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet.

Click to enlarge

Read full article here.

free balochistan?

2006-08-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

This article, written by Ralph Peters, was published in US Armed Forces Journal in June 2006 and it shows a geographic picture of Middle East after 50 years.

The map shows NWFP as part of Afghanistan and Balochistan as a free country. I am not sure what exactly will happen after 50 years but the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti (repercussions of which we will have to wait and see) will no doubt facilitate the ongoing insurgency.

Not that I am a fan of late Mr. Bugti but Free Balochistan movement needed a martyr and, thanks to Musharraf, now they have one.

Current Map

After 50 years

Click on image to view full map

:P

2006-07-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

This is just too funny :D. It's a 12 minute movie and once again, you need a good connection.

Enjoy :)

1400 80s music videos!!

2006-06-30T03:01:00.000-07:00

Somebody has collected an awful lot of YouTube links here.

Requires a decent internet connection.

2006-05-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

A very interesting read :)

Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)

I wish I live to see this.
New solar system 'increases chances of finding life'

iPod owners are thieves - Real Network CEO

2006-05-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Rob Glaser , CEO of RealNetworks, is dubbed Jackass of the week by DaringFireball.

No wonder - when he makes statements like this:

"If you want interoperable music today, there is a very easy solution: it’s called stealing.

The average number of songs sold for the iPod is 25, and there are many more songs on iPods than 25. About half the music on iPods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends’ CDs, which is illegal. But it’s the only way to get non-copy protected, portable, interoperable music".

Huh? Its not illegal to rip a CD that you bought for your own use.
That comes under "fair use" law. What a wonderful way to alienate potential customers Mr Glaser.

Goerge Winston ....

2006-04-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Right click and "Save Target As Or Save Link As" to download.

Autumn Woods
Summer Solstice
In Your Mind

Why IT and Users hate each other

2006-04-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

"This reveals one of IT peoples' worst behavioral traits. They assume that because users don't understand IT, they must be stupid. It's a fatal flaw because generally, IT people are very smart. It's harder to major in computer science than marketing. But some math majors aren't interested in IT. They get their MBA's instead. They're smart. And it really frustrates them that they can't be smart about IT."

A very very interesting article. Read on here.

3D-alien plasma tunnels screen saver

2006-02-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

Now here is another amazing image that I found from here

This image moves in a mysterious ways if you look carefully :)

2006-02-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

One of my latest discoveries. Check out Sheila Smart's incredible photography here.

2006-02-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog,

I have been ignoring you for sometime and I am sorry for that. For a change I am posting a poem by Faiz so enjoy :)

Yeh Haseen Sham apni
abhi jis me Ghul rahi hai
terey paerihan ki khushboo
abhi jis mein khiL rahi hai
merey khuwab key shagufay
zara daer ka hai manzar

Zara daer mein ufaQ peh
khiLey ga koi sitara
terii simat dekh kar wuh
karey ga koi ishara
terey dil ko aaye ga phir
kisii yaad ka bulawa
koi qissa-e-judaii
koi kaar-e-naa'mukamaL
koi khwab naa'shugafta
koi baat kahney walii
kisii aur aadmii sey

Hamein chahiye tha milna
kisee ahd-e-mehrban mein
kisee khwab ke yaqeen mein
kisee aur aasman par
kisii aur sar-Zameen par!

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

2006-01-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

Conann FitzPatrick's blog. Absolutely amazing stuff. Go check it out.

2005-12-31T04:24:00.000-08:00

Source: NASA Web Site

This huge puff ball was once a star. One thousand years ago, in the year 1006, a new star was recorded in the sky that today we know was really an existing star exploding. The resulting expanding gas from the supernova is still visible with telescopes today, continues to expand, and now spans over 70 light years. SN 1006 glows in every type of light. The above image of SN 1006 was captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory in X-ray light. Even today, not everything about the SN 1006 is understood, for example why particle shocks that produce the bright blue filaments are only visible at some locations. SN 1006 is thought to have once been a white dwarf that exploded when gas being dumped onto it by its binary star companion caused it to go over the Chandrasekhar limit. Foreground stars are visible that have nothing to do with the supernova.

2005-12-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

34th anniversary of seperation of East Pakistan. There are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis still trapped in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) because even after 34 years, they are not willing to give up their Pakistani identity.

It's a sad day for me personally.

Download Hamood-Ur-Rehman Report

2005-12-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

Across the Universe (ultra rare version)

YOu know it ain't easy

2005-12-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope

I’m sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama’s little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I’ve had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
It’s money for dope
Money for rope

Ah, I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

Just gimme some truth by John Lennon

Aurora - Secret Hypersonic Spyplane

2005-11-22T00:39:00.000-08:00

Does the United States Air Force or one of America's intelligence agencies have a secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance?

Very very interesting read. Full article here.

2005-11-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

The Game of Life (or simply Life) is not a game in the conventional sense. There are no players, and no winning or losing. Once the "pieces" are placed in the starting position, the rules determine everything that happens later. Nevertheless, Life is full of surprises! In most cases, it is impossible to look at a starting position (or pattern) and see what will happen in the future. The only way to find out is to follow the rules of the game.

Pakistan Earthquake Pictures

2005-11-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

Take a look at some of the pictures from my visits to the quake affected areass here

2005-11-07T01:25:00.000-08:00

Time changes everything. New traditions replace old ones. Human beings change with time, move on and it’s a pity that we change so much and so quickly that sometimes we even forget who we were. Like anyone remember this dance called Kikli? Have you seen it before in real life? Yeah .. No? Some of you old enough, who spent a part of their childhood in the old city like me, and who are familiar with the village life must have seen Kikli which used to be very popular dance among young girls. My Nana had a big haveli nama house in old Anarkali, near now-a-days food street. I have forgotten many things about that house, I was too young, but there are a few things/people that I still remember very clearly.

Source: http://www.thepunjab.com

One of them is an old man who used to visit us very often with his family. They used to bring us large boree's (bags) which usually had wheat or rice. According to my mother he was an old class mate of Nana and they went to primary school together in Amritsar and when Pakistan came into being, they migrated in same military truck. I don’t remember his name but for the sake of convenience let’s call him Khuda Bakhsh. He was a tall man with dark complexion and I always saw him wearing a very clean white tehmed (a kind of white dhoti and no, there isn’t any English word for it), a white qameez (a shirt) and a pagri (turban) which was golden fom the top (traditional Punjabi dress). So Khuda Bakhsh lived somewhere in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and once or twice each year, brought us boree's of wheat and rice. He and his family used to come in their tractor. In the evenings the elders used to have a Huqa session which was also a time for a little gup shup (chat). They were served with Gurh (sugar bars?) and tea; though Khuda Bakhsh never had tea as far as I can recall.

We had two huge trees in our Sehn (courtyard), one of them was Jamun (is there a word for Jamun in English?), and the other one I don’t remember. The whole Muhalla (neighborhood) used to come and eat those Jamuns in our house and yet the fruit was in such a huge quantity that we used to send buckets of them to our relatives in Gulberg. In afternoons a few teenage girls, probably Khuda Bakhsh’s daughters and two of my cousins, used to do Kikli in our courtyard. We, the under ten kids, used to watch them and there was always a loud cheer when one of the girls fell on the ground. It was not anything like embarrassment though. Just one minute of laughter, cheers and catching breathe and then back to Kikli again. Yeah, it was fun and things were very simple in that old house. Most of my happy childhood memories, that I can still recall, are from that period.

For those of you who still don’t know what Kikli (also called Keekali in East Punjab) is and wondering what the hell I am talking about here is something about Kikli. It’s an old traditional dance, or sport should I say, which is done in pairs of even numbers. Before beginning the dance, the two participants stand face to face with their feet close to each other’s and their bodies inclined back. Standing in this pose the arms of the dancers (or sportswomen should I say?) are stretched to the maximum limit and their hands are interlocked firmly. The dance is performed when the pairs, maintaining this pose, wheel round and round in a fast movement at the same spot with the feet serving as the pivotal points. The girls sing as they swirl around with colorful ‘orhnis’ or ‘daupttas’ flowing from their heads and anklets producing tinkling melodies. There is a rich repertoire of traditional songs available that are used to accompany the Kikli dance. Most of these songs consist merely of loosely rhyming lines without underlying theme. One of the examples that I found from here is:

Kikli kleer di,
Pag mere vir di,
Daupatta mere bhai da,
Phitte mun jawai da.

I know many modern Lahoris will find it very funny and ‘paindu’ enough but I guess we were not worried about it during those simple days. Almost everyone was paindu :) or there were a very few Babu's should I say :). The TV invasion in villages, dish antenna, cable, computers, video games and all the related modern things were just beginning to reach us. It was the late 80’s and the 90’s that changed our lifestyle.

So anyways coming back to Kikli in our courtyard, this beautiful tradition continued for a few years as far I can I can remember. But after Nana passed away and our family sold that old house (later somebody turned it into a small shopping center) and moved to new modern kothi (modern house), this family tradition ended. There was no courtyard with huge trees in our new home and I guess Khuda Bakhsh had no one for his Huqa session and the little gup shup. I never saw him again.

About 3 years ago I visited Lyallpur (Faisalabad) to attend a colleague’s wedding and I specially spent a couple of days in two nearby villages but I couldn’t find anyone doing Kikli in fields or anywhere. TV, VCR and Dish had reached those villages too and most of the young people were more interested in spending their afternoons and evenings watching programs, cricket matches or Indian movies on VCR. Somebody told me that in West Punjab (Pakistani Punjab) these traditional dances are slowly becoming extinct but Kikli atleast, is still very popular in Indian side of Punjab.

I don’t know if it is good or bad thing that many of our old traditions are diminishing slowly (not just dances); some already have in my view. But I think kids and teenagers of this modern time are probably missing those simple, beautiful little things that we used to enjoy.

2005-10-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

Source: NASA web site

On another October 19, in 1899, a 17 year-old Robert Goddard climbed a cherry tree on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Worcester, Massachusetts. Inspired by H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and gazing out across a meadow, young Goddard imagined it would be wonderful to make a device that had the possibility of ascending to Mars. Forever more he felt his life had a purpose and in the following years his diary entries record October 19th as "Anniversary Day", the anniversary of his ascent into the cherry tree. By 1926 he had designed, built, and flown the world's first liquid fuel rocket. Mars is just visible through the trees at the lower right in this dramatic sky view that also features the Moon and Venus -- all visited by liquid fuel rockets constructed on principles developed by Goddard.

2005-10-06T00:40:00.000-07:00

haha, I saw this in 2002 live on CNN, Donald Rumsfeld during his press briefing came up with these unbelievably stupid remarks. Have you ever heard or read more stupid remarks than these? :D. Only President Bush can match him I guess.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."

DoD Press Briefing.

2005-09-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

So finally the construction work is over. Our home was a complete mess during last two weeks. Mazdoors, mistri's, plumbers, paint wala and ufff so many other people qabzafyied it. It's been such a difficult, tough, crazy, hectic, horrible, terrible, miserable, pathatic and etc etc week for me. I want to add more words but my vocab is limited. Kaash mein ne angrezi achi tarah seekhi hoti ;). But anyways it's over now and the house looks neat which is always a great feeling. But we had to cut some parts of that huge Aam ka drakht (mango tree) just outside my room which I am going to miss.

It was a learning experience for me. I can safely get any construction work done in future. From hiring to firing (now thats really tough ask.. me?), mistri's disappearing in the middle of work I went through almost everything. Most difficult thing is to manage labor. They basically dont want to work but still wanna get paid. Oh well dont we all want it most of the times and our bosses make us work? ;). And even more difficult if you try to do it nicely, one has to become a bit harsh and only then things are done the right way.

In another news I couldn't sleep well for 5-6 days due to this work thingie and now I will be leaving for isloo tomorrow morning for a day or two, driving by myself. mera kia bane ga. So many things are happening in such a short span of time but I am hoping things would slow down sometime next week.

I need a break from everything and I can't seem to have it. I think I am stuck for now. Oh and one great thing is that my sister and brother have finally decided to come and visit us right after Eid in their Christmas holidays. It's been three years since we sat on a dinner table, all of us. I am really excited. I miss the time when we were together but I guess thats ok :)

2005-09-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

heh .. :P

2005-09-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me a few breathe taking pictures of hurricane Katrina. Not sure who took these but fascinating :).

The Dome of Rock - Jerusalem

2005-09-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most holy city in the world. Equally important for Muslims, Christians and Jewish people. While highly charged with intense religious devotion and visited by countless pilgrims and sages, Jerusalem has also been ravaged by thirty centuries of warfare and strife.

It is a place of beauty and divinity, mystery and paradox; a sacred site which no modern spiritual seeker should fail to experience.

If given a choice Jerusalem will be the first city I really wish to see atleast once in my life time. Which 5 cities you have in your hit list? :)

Roman Villa Discovered Via Google Earth

2005-09-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

What a cool story this is. If you are even a little bit interested in Archeology then go and read this.

2005-09-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

Some random pictures from my Swat trip in June 2003.

An early morning in Swat.

Saido Shareef

View from the room I was staying in. That black spots are because of the passing by clouds.

random stuff

2005-09-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

The Ten Stupidest Utopias!
from Plato to the internet
By Jeremy Adam Smith
Read Here

Iqbal Bano - Live

A Lake Michigan Sunset - Taken from Mushtaq Ali's blog with thanks .. :)

This one reminds of River Swat - September 2004

tag shag

2005-09-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

hmmm ... tagged by psnob so had to do it :)

5 years ago:
Was still trying to understand how to be a good enough Nokar. Resigned from my first job and joined forces with a bunch of crazy people who shared their dream with me. Killed a young 21 years old hacker and became all-serious professional.
Was in process of self discovery, realized later that it was a never ending process so still doing the same :P

1 Year ago:
Was back in University and really enjoying this time around. Realized that it was time to leave a few things behind and move on. Discovered that I didn’t need a full time job anymore which was most satisfying feeling. opening up a bit more. got interested in the blogging world .. atrophying and gorpy were the first ever blogs i found.. made a few friends

5 songs I know all the words to:
Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen
River of dreams – Billy Joel
Unforgettable – Nat Cole King
Dreams – John Lennon
I can’t make you love me – George Michael

5 songs i wish i knew all the words to: (couldn't resist adding this one)
If I ever feel better – Phoenix
Higher Ground – UB40
Don’t think twice, it’s alright – Bob Dylan
La Vie En Rose – Patricia Kaas
In this world - Moby

5 Snacks I enjoy:
pineapplecake
anything with chocolate
pringles
Shwarma (if that counts? :D)
Pakore, Ramadhan is near ;o)

5 Things I'd do w/ $100 million dollars:
Build a safe heaven for beggar children
Do something to clean this country
see all the places in that movie Out of Africa :D
Visit Malta, Sicily & Spain
Buy a jet plane and Hitler’s 1940’s castle in Germany

5 places I would run away to:
North Pole :P
The 11th or 12th century
My messy room
White Palace in Swat
Lahore

5 things I would never wear:
funky pant
A red shiny shirt
baggy jeans
Those tight funky t-shirts which I call machar daani
Anything chamakdaar :D

5 favorite tv shows:
Alf
Mind your language
Perfect Strangers
Friends
Mr. Bean :P

5 greatest joys:
Driving 80km/h+ on a rainy day, one hand out from car window and feeling the rain drops and air on my hand.
An occasional walk in the rain. Barish mein bheegna :D
Escaping from Lahore once in a while
Watching sunrise in Hunza valley from PTDC motel.. wish i could stay there longer
Watching discovery channel :D

5 favorite toys:

hmmm.. that’s a rather difficult one ..
computers
little kidz :P
my cat brutus
umm and anything fluffy and shiny

5 People I'm Tagging:
thats the most difficult one .. ;)

Austeeg,ordered chaos,gorpy,heewa,Hell is other people

2005-09-14T00:58:00.000-07:00

haha, isn't it such a cute little fight? :D

For a change ....

2005-09-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Something unusual happened today. I could have saved someone from something and I did not. Even though I know that person didn't desrve it BUT I am supposed to be considerate. The true test of character is when you have power and you choose not to exercise it. This is what I have been taught.

For the first time in my life, I was cruel. I was one of them and it doesn't feel good.

There is still a long way to go, a lot more to learn :)

In other news, my boss wants me to come back full time. He thinks I am the most valuable technical asset his company has. He also thinks I inspire people I work with which is probably the best compliment one could ever get. Though I know that every boss says something similar when they need you and my boss must have said exactly the same to, i dunno, 10-15 people? :D. Liars. But I would like to believe he is telling the truth, for a change. Let me enjoy this for a brief moment :)

Afsoos that I will have to turn down such a tempting offer. I know am a fool. But I can't help it, I am in love with my fake darwaishi, freedom and the feeling of NOT being Nokar of anyone :)

The Other Wanderer

2005-09-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Once on a time I met another man of the roads. He too was a little mad, and thus spoke to me:
"I am a wanderer. Oftentimes it seems that I walk the earth among pygmies. And because my head is seventy cubits farther from the earth than theirs, it creates higher and freer thoughts.
"But in truth I walk not among men but above them, and all they can see of me is my footprints in their open fields.
"And often have I heard them discuss and disagree over the shape and size of my footprints. For there are some who say, 'These are the tracks of a mammoth that roamed the earth in the far past.' And others say, 'Nay, these are places where meteors have fallen from the distant stars.'
"But you, my friend, you know full well that they are naught save the footprints of a wanderer."

Khalil Gibran

Fossils reveal flying prehistoric giants

2005-09-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

A palaentologist points to fossilized prints from a pterosaur, a distant cousin of the dinosaur which flew 75 million years before birds took to the air, in the inland of Crayssac, southwestern France(AFP/File /Georges Gobet).

Read the full story here

2005-09-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

These are the days of the open hand
They will not be the last
Look around now
These are the days of the beggars and the choosers

This is the year of the hungry man
Whose place is in the past
Hand in hand with ignorance
And legitimate excuses

The rich declare themselves poor
And most of us are not sure
If we have too much
But we'll take our chances
'Cause God's stopped keeping score
I guess somewhere along the way
He must have let us all out to play
Turned his back and all God's children
Crept out the back door

And it's hard to love, there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope
When there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much too much too late
Well maybe we should all be praying for time

These are the days of the empty hand
Oh you hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

This is the year of the guilty man
Your television takes a stand
And you find that what was over there is over here

So you scream from behind your door
Say what's mine is mine and not yours
I may have too much but I'll take my chances
'Cause God's stopped keeping score
And you cling to the things they sold you
Did you cover your eyes when they told you
That he can't come back
'Cause he has no children to come back for

It's hard to love there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much too late
So maybe we should all be praying for time

Praying for Time by George Michael

Sunrise

2005-09-02T00:03:00.000-07:00

What could cause such rays of dark? Dark sky rays were caught in spectacular fashion earlier this month above Utah, USA. The cause is something surprisingly familiar: shadows. Clouds near the horizon can block sunlight from reflecting off air, making columns outward from the Sun appear unusually dark. Cloud shadows can be thought of as the complement of the more commonly highlighted crepuscular rays, also visible above, where sunlight pours though cloud holes. Sometimes, on the opposite side of the sky, anticrepuscular rays can also be seen.

Source: NASA Web Site

2005-08-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

Great Buildings - A 3D Walkthrough

Go check it out. Its really amazing.

2005-08-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from earleist youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our sould becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people. Likewise, hatred must be leanred and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater: otherwise the germ for that, too, will gradually wither.

nietzsche

2005-08-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

I might be your best friend, and you don't even know it.

2005-08-21T01:33:00.000-07:00

Watching Israeli troops forcing Jewish settlers out of Gaza strip was absolutely amazing. I have seen Israeli bulldozers destroying Palestinian homes many many times but this time it was the same bulldozers demolishing Jewish Settlements. Although it's not something as big as being projected in western media but still (Israel still controls Air and Sea around Gaza), not many people expected this from Sharon. To me it marks the beginning of an end. One small but historic step towards peace in Middle East perhaps? Only time will tell.

Source: Cincinnati.com
A goodbye note is painted on the side of an abandoned home in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, in the southern Gaza Strip Saturday, Aug. 20, 2005.

For some reason these events take me back to 11th century battles between Christians and Salahuddin Ayubi. Salahuddin started liberating the occupied lands one by one and eventually Jerusalem fell in 1187 after 90 years of Christian occupation. It's been 54 years now (since 1948) and I really don’t see any Salahuddin Ayubi around but my sixth or seventh sense tells me it is that beginning that many of us were waiting for. I don’t know how it will happen and who will do it.

Crusades have always been my special area of interest and I am glad atleast something has happened in my life time similar to what I read in history books years ago. May be I will live to see another fall of Jerusalem :)

2005-08-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

You Know That I Want To

Lover don't love too much
It's a bad thing, a sad thing
And it's heaven to the touch
Hey, everybody's got some moment in their life
They can't change ( don't they baby?)

I know you don't care what's right or wrong
All that I know
Is that love don't belong here
And so it's better to turn the page
And watch me walk away,
My dear, watch me walk away

But you say

I can't stop but you know that I want to
I can't stop don't you know that I want you
I want you baby (more than ever)

I can't stop but you know that I want to
I can't stop don't you know that I want you
But it's never gonna be that easy child

Lover don't love too much
I'm a bad boy, I'm a sad boy
And I'll never give you much
Hey, everybody's got some moment in their life
They can't change

So I do not dare to take you home
All that I know
Is that something is so wrong with this heat
Why do you touch the flame?
You know you feel the pain, my dear
You always find it here

But it´s never gonna

So it happens every time
it´s so easy to forgive myself with
A little wine
And you want more
And the pleasure will be all mine
Can´t see you
Oh I´m using you baby

But you say

I can't stop but you know that I want to
I can't stop don't you know that I want you
(please don't say it)
I want you baby (more that ever)

I can't stop but you know that I want to
I can't stop don't you know that I want you
But it's never gonna be that easy child

You need a lover
And I am just a friend ................

From George Michael's unplugged album

2005-08-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

New Scientist Reports on a remarkable runaway process of global warming that has been going on in Siberia for the past few years. 'Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3C in the last 40 years.' As a result, a million square kilometers (the area of France and Germany) of frozen peat bog have been found to be melting, according to Russian and international scientists. This releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which contributes to further global warming.

Read Full Story

2005-08-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

The Space Shuttle Discovery is up in orbit, safely docked to the International Space Station, and for the next five days, astronauts will be busy figuring out whether it's safe for them to come home. In the meantime, the rest of the Shuttle fleet is grounded (confined to base, not allowed to play with its spacecraft friends) because that pesky foam on the fuel tank keeps falling off.

Read on (By Maciej Ceglowski):
A Rocket To Nowhere

2005-08-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

So finally it's time for the BIG THING. I have just been informed (and the timing is most unexpected, 10:50 PM on a Sunday night) that it's approved and those bureaucrats have accepted that proposal. hmmm seems like a great thing, oh well it is. I worked so hard to take this chance and finally when I have succeeded, I am not feeling the excitement anymore. I am supposed to be jumping around in excitement and I am not, it's strange but true. Perhaps I was not at all expecting this to come true? May be I am a little afraid which is unusual. I dont remember if I have ever been afraid of anything in all (ok may be once or twice but not anything like that). So what is it then? Or may be its normal, somebody told me not to thiunk about it, IT happens sometimes.

Anyways in ths world of uncertainity, there is one thing I know for sure, someone/something is controlling my life and there are many things that I do not understand at this moment. Everything happens for a reason so I guess its gonna be alright :). I will figure out what it is all about one day. For now, my quest has taken me to yet another level.

It's time to celebrate and surprise myself one more time :)

2005-08-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

Damn hotmail!!! I signed in just a minute ago and its showing me that I have 25MB storage space instead of 250MB. What the hek is that, without any prior notice?

I am gonna sue them 2 million bux!

2005-08-05T01:38:00.000-07:00

Scenes from Kabul - A portrait of Kabul and its people by Ariana Delawari

Most pictures are from post Taliban era.

Getting the Monkey off Darwin's Back

Evolution is poorly characterized by certain commonly used phrases. Properly communicating how evolution works requires careful attention to language and metaphor.

2005-07-30T01:16:00.000-07:00

"Everything flows, everything
is in constant flux & movement,
  nothing is abiding, therefore
    we cannot step twice
    into the same river
when I step into the river for the
second time, neither I nor the river
            are the same"

            HERACLITUS
            540-480 B.C

I took this picture back in June 2003 (River Swat), precisely the first time I ever used manual camera. I am going there again in September, and I dont think it would be the same :)

Trust Nobody .. :P

2005-07-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

This is an animated GIF so wait for all the other images on the page to be loaded and then you 'll be able to see some movement :)

Bingmayong

2005-07-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

The Terracotta warriors (bingmayong) are among the top archaeological excavations of the 20th Century. This incredible collection of 6,000 men and their horses was actually discovered completely by accident by a group of peasants in 1974 who were digging a well! In a bizarre twist, the man who supposedly discovered them now sits in a hall at the site signing postcards of the stone army. The Terracotta Warriors represent only a small portion of the eight thousand strong underground army buried in front of the Emperor Qinshihuang's tomb (r. 221-207 BC) to defend him in the afterlife.
T
he craftsmanship attested by each of the statues is as stupendous as the scale of the project. So who was the Emperor Qinshihuang to merit such magnificence?

One of the most important rulers in Chinese history, this Emperor leaves a legacy as morally complicated as that of Peter the Great. For, like the Russian Tsar, he is as well-known for his contributions to the modern state as he is for sacrificing the lives of thousands of laborers to his visionary projects. Made King of the state of Qin at the age of thirteen, by the time he was thirty-eight he conquered the six neighboring states to unify China for the first time.

Although reviled for his tyranny, Qinshihuangdi is also admired for many radical and insightful policies which subsequent dynasties employed. To synthesize seven separate states into one nation, he standardized a common script and established uniform measurement and monetary systems. For effective government, he codified a legal system and replaced hereditary rulers with a centrally appointed administrative system. To improve industrial productivity he encouraged agricultural reforms and constructed many roads. And in an effort to limit the inroads of barbarian tribes, he supervised the construction of a defence fortification along the northern frontier, the first Great Wall. Although China benefited from these policies, thousands of Chinese workers died in completing this far-reaching public works program.

700,000 forced laborers were sacrificed to construct his tomb which was begun as soon as he ascended the throne. All workers and childless concubines were interred with him to safeguard its secrets. According to Sima Qian's "The Historical Records" written a century later, heaven and earth are represented in the tomb's central chamber. The ceiling, inlaid with pearls, represents the starry heavens. The floor, made of stone, forms a map of the Chinese kingdom; a hundred rivers of mercury flow across it. And all manner of treasure is protected by deadly booby-traps.

The main tomb (where archaeologists believe possibly a larger and more impressive army is buried) has still to be excavated - partly because archaeologists are still uncertain of its exact location. Often Emperors amassed huge burial mounds simply to divert robbers' attention from the true site of their tomb. So the artificial mound that today marks the Emperor's tomb does not necessarily indicate the location of its wondrous central chamber. However, because high mercury levels have recently been reported nearby, archaeologists think they may, at last, have discovered it. The Terracotta Warriors, that you will see today, form just one of the many barriers the ruthless Emperor employed to protect his tomb for eternity.

The limestone and marble Kouroi and Kourai of the Greek Late Archaic Period (535-480 BCE) refute the claim that the Terracotta Warriors were the first free-standing statues in the history of world art. This, though, does little to undermine the ingenuity of the Terracotta Warriors' design and manufacturing process. For whereas the Ancient Greeks meticulously carved individual statues out of stone, the Qin dynasty project held all the problems of production on a mass scale. Tens of thousands of individual human and animal statues were manufactured within a series of processes that began with the molding of solid legs.

It was by constructing each of the hollow statues upon solid legs that the Ancient Chinese craftsemen solved the perplexing problem of how to make a statue free-standing. Hollow heads, arms and legs, made of coiled earth, were joined together with strips of clay and set upon the solid legs. After this rough model was assembled, a fine clay slip was added, and details such as eyes, mouth, nose and details of dress were carved into the clay while it was still pliable. Additional pieces such as ears, beard and armour were modeled separately and attached, after which the whole figure was fired at a high temperature.

Sources: CHINAPICTURES.ORG (most images are taken from that web site)
Archeology.net
Chinatravelclub.com/topsight/10.asp

Welcome to What The Hack!

2005-07-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

What The Hack is a largely self-organizing outdoor hacker conference/event taking place on a large event-campground in the south of The Netherlands from 28 until 31 July 2005. Events such as WTH take place every 4 years, and have been described as 'the Woodstock of the hacker scene'. For an impression, check out some pictures or browse the conference program. (A slightly longer introduction can be found here).

Mosaic Art

2005-07-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

Mosaics are designs or pictures created by embedding small pieces of glass, stone, terracotta etc. into a bed of cement or other form of fixative. This form of decoration is often used for panels or on floors, but is especially effective on curved surfaces, such as ceilings and vaults. Mosaics are found both indoors and outdoors.

The art of mosaic, in one form or another, has been practiced for thousands of years, but mosaic as we know it was invented by the Greeks (probably sometime around 4th century BC), who then passed their skills on to the Romans. By 200 BC, specially manufactured pieces ("tesserae") were being used to give extra detail and range of colour to the work. Using small tesserae, sometimes only a few millimetres in size, meant that mosaics could imitate paintings. Many of the mosaics preserved at, for example, Pompeii were the work of Greek artists.

The Chora Church, home to some of the best preserved Byzantine mosaics in the world.

Closeup of some of the mosaics.

The Romans in due course became the Byzantines, who are renowned for their superb wall and vault mosaics. If you compare mosaics from Roman Britain with Italian ones you will notice that the British examples are simpler in design and less accomplished in technique. Typically Roman subjects were scenes celebrating their gods, domestic themes and geometric designs. The inter-twined rope border effect here is called "guilloche". With the rise of the Byzantine Empire from the 5th century onwards, centred on Byzantium (now Istanbul, Turkey), the art form took on new characteristics. These included Eastern influences in style and the use of special glass tesserae called smalti, manufactured in northern Italy. These were made from thick sheets of coloured glass. Smalti have a rough surface and contain tiny air bubbles. They are sometimes backed with reflective silver or gold leaf. Whereas Roman mosaics were mostly used as floors, the Byzantines specialised in covering walls and ceilings.

The ceiling of the Chora Church

Byzantium fell in the 15th century AD, and mosaic went into a decline until the great revival in the 19th century, a revival which has continued to this day. Modern developments in materials and techniques are evidence that mosaic is very much alive as we approach the Millenium. Computers are of course ideal for designing contemporary mosaics, and are increasingly used for that purpose.

Another shot of ceiling of the Chora Church

In the west of Europe, the Moors brought Islamic mosaic and tile art into the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century, while elsewhere in the Muslim world, stone, glass and ceramic were all used in mosaics. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Ummayad Great Mosque in Damascus are excellent examples of Islamic Mosaic Art. The Dome of the Rock was built in the late 7th century and is decorated with floral mosaics depicting acanthus leaves, palm trees, cornucopias, vases, and tree-of-life motifs. The tesserae are set against gold backgrounds in dominant shades of green and blue, with accents of red, silver, gray, mauve, black, and white.

Originally, colored glass and stone mosaics covered the outer walls of the Dome of the Rock. Of any building still remaining from the 7th century, this shrine has the largest area of original mosaic. During the Ottoman period (1517-1918), the outer walls were recovered with brilliant blue, green, yellow and white ceramic tiles in either Arabesque design or with Qur'anic verses. Original tiles can still be seen on the outside of the drum. The rest of the tiles were restored in 1964.

The Ummayad Great Mosque in Damascus (see the above picture and notice the similarities between this one and the 3rd picture from top - interior of chora church) was finished in the early 8th century. It has mosaics on both the exterior and the interior of the building that depict floral and tree motifs as well as buildings and an imaginary city. In the 13th century the Seljuk Turks of Asia Minor developed a mosaic technique using glazed tiles. These mosaics are dominated by turquoise blue, yellow, green, and white against a cobalt blue background; they are set in geometric patterns with Arabic inscriptions.

Sources:
1. My memory & old HD :), most of the images in particular
2. Harvard Fine Arts Library
3. http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/history/index.shtml
4. http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/israel/jerusalem.html
5. http://encarta.msn.com/text_761575462___4/Mosaics.html

2005-07-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans

John Lennon

Google ka moon shoon :o)

2005-07-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

"In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing."

And when you zoom right in, the surface changes to Swiss cheese.

Googly Moony

2005-07-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved

Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved

Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
We can be

Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needing to be loved

John Lennon

Uploading these three lennon songs to educate a friend, listen and enjoy :)

Love

Beautiful Boy

Dreams

Srebrenica - 10th anniversary

2005-07-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

July 11 marked the 10th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since WWII. 8000 Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered by Bosnian Serbs after they took over one of the United Nation's Safe Areas.

"They killed my entire life and the only thing I want now is to see the guilty ones pay for it," Fatima Budic, whose 14-year-old son Velija was one of the victims, told AP news agency.
Her husband and another son are among the missing.

Read the full story

Google Earth

2005-07-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

This is really amazing, a 3D interface to the planet. Fly around the Earth courtesy of Google. Works with Windows.

Google Earth

Since I am not in a mood to sit in front of my damn machine tonight so I am just gonna put a couple of quotes I read somewhere, and then probably gonna watch Roman Holiday (black & white wali). It's been a while :)

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

Elbert Einstein

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

Cyril Connolly

WWI - Color Photography

2005-07-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

I was searching for some facts anf figures about WWI last night when I found these amazing pictures. These are color photgraphs of French soldiers fighting on various fronts.

Although color photography was around prior to 1903, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, patented the process in 1903 and developed the first color film in 1907. The French army was the only one taking color photos during the course of World War One.

Senegalese soldiers

Without knowing more, it is impossible to tell which French Colony these soldiers may have come from or, in fact, if they are French soldiers. But France had a number of colonies in Africa at this time. In fact, almost one-third of Africa was under French rule in 1914.

Troops at rudimentary fortifications

Anyone able to read the sign?

A church building after shelling

How do I know it is shelling? The air-to-ground war as it realtes to bombing did not really come about until WWII.

Notice the camouflage netting.

Outside their bunker cleaning

Taking a break

Guardhouse

Appears to be cooler weather, given their dress

Rail car under an overpass

Looks like there may be some minor damage to the car

Source: I am sorry I have lost the link to these pictures :| .. I 'll put it here as soon I find it.

Kingdom of Heaven

2005-07-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven is the one movie I am really looking forward to see. Finally hollywood has come up with something related to my favorite subjects. Sultan Salahuddin Ayubi is probably one of those very few Muslims whom Europeans have usually treated with great respect in their history books.

The film's most striking message (as I have read in various reviews), that Muslims and Christians can live together in peace, will provide an opportunity for increased interfaith dialogue.

Very very highly recommended.

Why your brain has a ‘Jennifer Aniston cell’

2005-06-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Obsessed with reruns of the TV sitcom Friends? Well then you probably have at least one “Jennifer Aniston cell” in your brain, suggests research on the activity patterns of single neurons in memory-linked areas of the brain. The results point to a decades-old and dismissed theory tying single neurons to individual concepts and could help neuroscientists understand the elusive human memory.

“For things that you see over and over again, your family, your boyfriend, or celebrities, your brain wires up and fires very specifically to them. These neurons are very, very specific, much more than people think,” says Christof Koch at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US, one of the researchers.

In the 1960s, neuroscientist Jerry Lettvin suggested that people have neurons that respond to a single concept such as, for example, their grandmother. The notion of these hyper-specific neurons, coined “grandmother cells” was quickly rejected by psychologists as laughably simplistic.

But Rodrigo Quiroga, at the University of Leicester, UK, who led the new study, and his colleagues have found some very grandmother-like cells. Previous unpublished findings from the team showed tantalising results: a neuron that fired only in response to pictures of former US president Bill Clinton, or another to images of the Beatles. But for such “grandmother cells” to exist, they must invariably respond to the “concept” of Bill Clinton, not just similar pictures.

Wired up, fired up
To investigate further, the team turned to eight patients currently undergoing treatment for epilepsy. In an attempt to locate the brain areas responsible for their seizures, each patient had around 100 tiny electrodes implanted in their brain. Many of the wires were placed in the hippocampus - an area of the brain vital to long-term memory formation.

They first gave each subject a screening test, showing them between 71 and 114 images of famous people, places, and even food items. For each subject, the researchers measured the electrical activity or “firing” of the neurons connected to the electrodes. Of the 993 neurons sampled, 132 fired to at least one image.

The team then went back for a testing phase, this time showing participants three to seven different pictures of the initial 132 photo subjects that hit. For example, one woman saw seven different photos of the Jennifer Aniston alongside 80 other photos of animals, buildings or additional famous people such as Julia Roberts. The neuron almost ignored all other photos, but fired steadily each time Aniston appeared on screen.

Conceptual connections
The team found similar results with another woman who had a neuron for pictures of Halle Berry, including a drawing of her face and an image of just the words of her name. “This neuron is responding to the concept, the abstract entity, of Halle Berry,” says Quiroga. “If you show a line drawing or a profile, it’s the same response. We also showed pictures of her as Catwoman, and you can hardly see her because of the mask. But if you know it is Halle Berry then the neurons still fire.”

Given more time and an exhaustive list of images, the team may well have landed upon other images that spiked the activity of the “Halle Berry” neuron. In one participant, the “Jen” neuron also fired in response to a picture of her former Friends cast-mate, Lisa Kudrow. The pattern suggests that the actresses are tied together in the memory associations of this particular woman, says Charles Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US.

These object-specific neurons may be at the core of how we make memories, say Connor. “I think that’s the excitement to these results,” he says. “You are looking at the far end of the transformation from metric, visual shapes to conceptual memory-related information. It is that transformation that underlies our ability to understand the world. It’s not enough to see something familiar and match it. It’s the fact that you plug visual information into the rich tapestry of memory that brings it to life.”

By Anna Gosline
Journal reference: Nature (vol 435 p 1102)

2005-06-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

... :P

2005-06-23T01:15:00.000-07:00

Music is in my head these days... random downloads.. now reached total of 737 MB in 2 days..thats when i love my office DSL :P.. from Faiz by Abida to Jamie Cullum and Phoenix. Here is something I can definately relate myself to.

On a different note..this is really funny... :P
Pulp Fiction in 30 seconds - angry alien productions btw flash required for this.

How I Became A Madman

2005-06-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen -- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives -- I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

Khalil Gibran

2005-06-18T02:01:00.000-07:00

I am no fan of rap or bhangra music which is trade mark of Juggy D. But he really surprised me with this. It hit me for some unknown reason.

Laughter and Tears

2005-06-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.

When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen.

After he looked about in every direction, I heard the young man saying, "Sit by me, my beloved, and listen to my heart; smile, for your happiness is a symbol of our future; be merry, for the sparkling days rejoice with us.

"My soul is warning me of the doubt in your heart, for doubt in love is a sin. "Soon you will be the owner of this vast land, lighted by this beautiful moon; soon you will be the mistress of my palace, and all the servants and maids will obey your commands.

"Smile, my beloved, like the gold smiles from my father's coffers.

"My heart refuses to deny you its secret. Twelve months of comfort and travel await us; for a year we will spend my father's gold at the blue lakes of Switzerland, and viewing the edifices of Italy and Egypt, and resting under the Holy Cedars of Lebanon; you will meet the princesses who will envy you for your jewels and clothes.

"All these things I will do for you; will you be satisfied?"

In a little while I saw them walking and stepping on flowers as the rich step upon the hearts of the poor. As they disappeared from my sight, I commenced to make comparison between love and money, and to analyze their position in the heart.

Money! The source of insincere love; the spring of false light and fortune; the well of poisoned water; the desperation of old age!

I was still wandering in the vast desert of contemplation when a forlorn and specter-like couple passed by me and sat on the grass; a young man and a young woman who had left their farming shacks in the nearby fields for this cool and solitary place.

After a few moments of complete silence, I heard the following words uttered with sighs from weather-bitten lips, "Shed not tears, my beloved; love that opens our eyes and enslaves our hearts can give us the blessing of patience. Be consoled in our delay our delay, for we have taken an oath and entered Love's shrine; for our love will ever grow in adversity; for it is in Love's name that we are suffering the obstacles of poverty and the sharpness of misery and the emptiness of separation. I shall attack these hardships until I triumph and place in your hands a strength that will help over all things to complete the journey of life.

"Love - which is God - will consider our sighs and tears as incense burned at His altar and He will reward us with fortitude. Good-bye, my beloved; I must leave before the heartening moon vanishes."

A pure voice, combined of the consuming flame of love, and the hopeless bitterness of longing and the resolved sweetness of patience, said, "Good-bye, my beloved."

They separated, and the elegy to their union was smothered by the wails of my crying heart.

I looked upon slumbering Nature, and with deep reflection discovered the reality of a vast and infinite thing -- something no power could demand, influence acquire, nor riches purchase. Nor could it be effaced by the tears of time or deadened by sorrow; a thing which cannot be discovered by the blue lakes of Switzerland or the beautiful edifices of Italy.

It is something that gathers strength with patience, grows despite obstacles, warms in winter, flourishes in spring, casts a breeze in summer, and bears fruit in autumn -- I found Love.

Source: A Tear and A Smile by Khalil Gibran (1914)

Computer Problem Report Form

2005-06-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

:o) .. okay so i got this in email from a friend of mine... finally the day has come that a single form has been designed to solve ALL computer/website related problems :P

Describe your problem: ________________________________________

Now, describe the problem accurately:
_________________________________________________________

Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
_________________________________________________________

Problem Severity:
A. Minor__
B. Minor__
C. Minor__
D. Trivial__

Nature of the problem:
A. Locked Up__
B. Frozen__
C. Hung__
D. Shot__

Is your computer plugged in? Yes__ No__

Is it turned on? Yes__ No__

Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes__ No__

Have you made it worse? Yes__

Have you read the manual? Yes__ No__

Are you sure you’ve read the manual? Yes__ No__

Are you absolutely certain you’ve read the manual? No__

Do you think you understood it? Yes__ No__

If `Yes’ then why can’t you fix the problem yourself?
________________________________________________________

How tall are you? Are you above this line? _______

What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?
________________________________________________________

If `nothing’ explain why you were logged in.
________________________________________________________

Are you sure you aren’t imagining the problem? Yes__ No__

How does this problem make you feel?
________________________________________________________

Tell me about your childhood ___________________________________

Do you have any independent witnesses of the problem? Yes__ No__

Can’t you do something else, instead of bothering me? Yes__

2005-06-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

So according to Budget 2005-2006, every MNA, MPA will get Rs 40,000 as "Entertainment Allowance" ... wtf!!! ..

Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an

2005-06-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

Of all the British Library’s collection of Qur’ans, this is the most magnificent. Each of its seven volumes is written in gold and has a superb frontispiece combining intricate geometric patterns with ornamental script. It was made in Cairo between 1304 and 1306 (704-5 in the Islamic calendar) for a high-ranking court official called Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Jashnagir, who later became Baybars II, ruler of the Mamluk Sultanate. This manuscript is the earliest dated Qur’an from the Mamluk period.

And if you you wondering about Sultan Baybars, he was the Mamluk Sultan who defeated Mangols in the famous battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260. As a child he saw his parents killed during a Mangol invasion of Damascus and he fled to Egypt. As a Mamluk Sultan he defeated Mangols in battle of Ayn Jalut and stopped their invasion of Middle East once and for all. This battle is considered by many historians to be of great macrohistorical importance (greatest battle in the history of Mangols indeed), as it marked the highwater of Mongol conquests, and the first time they had been decisively defeated. (where they had previously been defeated, they had always returned and avenged the loss -- this marked the first occasion they were unable to do so) Hulagu Khan never was able to advance into Egypt, and the IlKhanate he established in Persia was never able to defeat the Mamelukes.

The text was copied out by a highly talented calligrapher called Muhammad ibn al-Wahid. Sadly, this Qur’an is the only known surviving example of his work. He wrote in gold, using the ‘thuluth’ style of script usually reserved for ornamental headings. Thuluth is characterised by curved letters with barbed heads, often linking and intersecting in complex flowing forms. Its use throughout a whole Qur’an is very rare – an indication of the high status of this commission.

Ninjam - Skype for musicians

2005-06-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

Justin Frankel (the creator of Winamp) has a new project called Ninjam. He announced it here today and it’s extremely cool.

Ninjam allows two or more people to jam through the net with real audio (no MIDI goofiness like past internet jamming software). It’s like Skype for musicians, though the music is delayed a few measures to keep everything in sync. You plug your instruments in, the software provides a beat. Then you find out what a crappy guitar player you are.

Suicide

2005-06-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

So today was a birthday party for S. When people started filing into Crystal's room for the party, conversation soon turned to the topic of a freshman who had apparently killed himself. Further inquiry revealed that he had hanged himself, and that apparently he was not doing any schoolwork, which suggests that he had much worse problems than his grades.

I didn't even know the guy and I feel bad for him. If he felt his problems were so great that there were no other way out... I've been in that mindset, and it's not a pretty place to be. I know there was some other way, that he didn't have to go and do this, but I don't even know the guy, so I can't say what.

If any of you reading ever decide to do something like this, you'd better talk to me first. I'm serious.

More people than I expected have referred to the kid who killed himself as a "coward" and refused to express any remorse whatsoever about his death. To some extent, I can understand their point of view. Suicide is considered the "easy out" - the way to make it all go away for good without having to actually solve any problems. And all of the pain from that moment on is left to the survivors.

However, I have two problems with this line of thought. The first is that people don't just wake up and decide, "My toast didn't cook just right today. How depressing - I think I'll kill myself." It takes a LOT to push someone to the point where they feel that the only escape is death. I feel bad for this guy, mostly because I know how it is to be pushed to that edge. I've stared into the abyss, and the only thing that has kept me from going over is realizing how much pain other people would be in from my death - at the worst times, when I felt everyone was against me, only the thought of what my death would do to my mother has stopped me from committing. I know the mindset of wanting to escape, and I know how hard it is to deal with the pain of life when you're at that breaking point. A lot of people downplay the pain from beforehand that the committer had endured, and nobody knows just how much pain that was.

Which leads to my second point: people are too damn self-centered. These people don't think of how much this kid had already suffered. They don't know his point of view and they don't even try to understand it. They can't compare the pain of the one who committed suicide to the pain of those who are left behind. All they see is the present, the here and now and me and mine. All they see is "If I knew this person, it would hurt me right now, and how dare they put me through that?" It takes so much to push a person to commit suicide, but nobody thinks of the before - just the after.

Maybe I'm being a bit self-centered too. Maybe the only reason it bothers me so much is because I used to think of committing suicide myself. Maybe it bothers me to think that if I'd gone through with it, I would be a coward - and I truly believe that suicide is a cowardly act. However, I will never criticize someone who's done it - I don't think I have a right to criticize, after seeing what they've been through. I know how tempting the easy way out can be, and I know that it takes a hell of a lot of strength and/or selflessness not to take it. And while I have that inner strength and devotion not to hurt those that care about me, I know that not all people do. So many people are self-centered as it is, that it doesn't surprise me at all when a person committing suicide doesn't think about the other people it affects. As for inner strength - a lot of my own has been gathered only recently, and I still don't feel that I have enough. I definitely have no right to criticize someone who doesn't have that strength.

Once more, I'll repeat - anyone who wants to kill themselves, come to me first. I won't try and talk you out of doing it - I'll just see if you're making an informed decision. It may be the last one you make, and you may as well check to see if it's the right one.

Anonymous - December 2003

Rapid coloured afterimage

2005-06-07T00:40:00.000-07:00

On the right you see a circle of blue-violettish (=magenta) patches, one of which briefly disappears, circling around.

Let your gaze rest on the central fixation cross, but observe with your “inner eye” the patches just when they disappear. With good fixation, you should see a strong greenish colour whenever the violet patch has disappeared.

When you are fixating well, after a few cycles you will actually see a rotating green spot! If your gaze is really steady, the magenta patches will disappear, leaving only a rotating green spot!

Source: Jeremy L Hinton (2005-05-22, personal communication, jeremy dot hinton at bigfoot dot com)

Religion??

2005-06-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

Religion is really just a way to pacify ourselves and reduce our fear of the unknown. Because we really don't know and religion acts as a kind of security blanket for humanity. Many people think their religion is better but if you look at most of them, all of them are just as valid. The real truth is beyond our understanding, we just can't fathom the reality of existance and everything else and religion seems to like to tell it to us in a nice simple way how everything is. It treats us like children and tells us what we need to know. I'm sure many people would claim that their religion is true because of some time when they "felt God" or somthing of that nature and they just know that the way they are following is true. But people in every religion have that, and think that their religion is true.
Religion allows us an easier path in life for those who are willing to blindly follow. It gives us meaning and hope and it makes the world a better place but it isn't the absolute truth, there is no religion which has the absolute truth. Religion keeps the masses sedated and works well to organize our world.

2005-06-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Google maps Hacking - lods of lods of useful information

Belle & Sebastian

Conflict of Civilizations?

2005-05-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

In the Renaissance Age Man became more important than God and interest in Man’s relations with his fellow men became greater than interest in his spiritual connection with God. Man set nature and humanity, rather than metaphysics and divine perfection as his goal. More important became what Man could achieve in his life, rather than what is awaiting him in the hereafter. All Man was seeking in this life is, generally speaking, a rich personality, developed intellectual capacities and moral abilities, exploiting various aspects of beauty and a life adorned with worldly blessings and graces. In this way, Man moved from being the mirror of Divine Providence and an unchanging incarnation of Man into a stage where natural forces fight and struggle. Man has therefore no choice but to join this ring of rivalry.

Source: The Conflict of Civilizations from an Islamic Perspective by Dr Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri - p29

Araldo de Luca

2005-05-24T00:45:00.000-07:00

Royal riches discovered during World War II rival those of Tutankhamun, but remain virtually unknown.

Protective eyes of Horus adorn bracelets found on Pharaoh Sheshonq II's mummy, but engraved names indicate they were made for Sheshonq I, who is mentioned in the Bible. (Araldo de Luca).

Source: Archeology

2005-05-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

I can't believe after playing so well for 120 minutes we lost in penalty shoot-out. I am heart-broken!
Football is a beautiful game but it can be so cruel sometimes. Even Arsenal players couldn't believe their luck (though United missed so many chances).

I thought Milan were the luckiest team on Earth a couple of weeks ago but its no match to what happened yesterday.

Glazer is manhoos! I have no doubt about it now. I hate to say it but it seems club's glory days are over.

Anyways I am blown away by this . It is absolutely breathtaking after 2 minutes and 48 seconds.

A Historical Event

2005-05-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

George Galloway is a British MP, a long time supporter of Palestinian cause and one of the most prominant voices against war in Iraq. He was particualry vocal against the UN sanction against Iraq which led to the deaths of estimated one million Iraqi's (most of them children). United States has accused him of being involved in UN Oil for Food Programme scandal and therefore he was asked to appear before a US Senate committee on May 17.

Perhaps his re-election was the most interesting story of recent British elections.

From the transcript of George Galloway's testimony last night to the U.S. Senate. I was most impressed by his courage, haven't seen something like in long time.

"I am determined, now that I am here, to be not the accused but the accuser. The people who have been guilty of massive profiteering in Iraq is the US themselves and I intend to put them on trial."

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war."

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

"If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth."

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce."

2005-05-15T00:20:00.000-07:00

Some crazy mullah has written a book in Norway (apparently being sold at the streets of Oslo) which describes white people as the work of the devil. The book is written in Urdu/Punjabi and being sold by individuals on the streets who quietly approach potential customers. "Putar Shaitan Da" or "Son of Satan" does not call directly for attacks on whites but does call for them to be punished.

"This barbarian, this venomous snake, has poisoned humanity. The white man has set off a diabolical spiral on the entire planet to torment people."

The sad thing is that its being done in the name of Islam. Since when Islam teaches racism?

The next thing which really pissed me off when I first saw it was that cartoon published in Washington Times which had Pakistan written on a dog. Disgusting. But when I thought about it the next day I reallized it was, perhaps, the truth which many of us dont want to face. The ugly things we (The Military to be precise) did in Afghanistan, Tribal Areas (and to Dr Qadeer) justify Washington Time's publication of such cartoon. Afterall we do act upon instructions from Washington, dont we?

Government is spending billions of rupees on ad campaigns aimed to project a SOFT ('Moderate & Enlightened') image of Pakistan. You must have seen some of such ads already on TV or newspapers (along with those Parha Likha Punjab ads which are only aired to show that lovely CM). I really dont understand how these ad campaigns would help gareeb aur unparh log and how can we improve our image as a nation through ads?

There is no point in cleaning the mirror, when what we really need to do is to clean our own face

I wish we had some common sense to spend that money on clean drinking water or education or health where it is needed the most.

I think I need a break. I need to shut down my systems for a while.

2005-05-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Wired aims to be a professional music production and creation software running on the Linux operating system. It's in the very early stages of development, but based on the screenshots below, its certainly shaping up to be a terrific looking audio tool. Non-official Mandrake 10.1 rpms are available at Thac's audio rpm page

2005-05-11T00:15:00.000-07:00

ufone quotes are sometimes really interesting... :D... here is one i received today..

"Only once in life will you meet someone with whom you can spend your life time, share your happiness and sarrows. Till then enjoy with the wrong one" ...

2005-05-06T00:41:00.000-07:00

Finally found this song - Phoenix

Their songs... very very few that i am able to find ... always stuck in my head for some reason...

Noor Inayat Khan

2005-05-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

Ok so being an unofficial student of history I knew about this amazing lady from WWII but the fact that she was the great-great-grandaughter of the legendary Tipu Sultan was something new and astonishing for me. I HAD to do some R&D and figure out details of who she actually was. Her story will leave you with mixed emotions, a bit sad one.

Noor Inayat Khan was one of the most romantic of the SOE agents and one whose suitability to be sent into the field has often been questioned. The great-great-grandaughter of the legendary Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler who died in the struggle to stem the British conquest of Southern India. Her father was a leader of the Sufti mystic community. Her mother was an American related to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
Inayat Khan, Noor's father, took his family to pre-revolutionary Russia, where they were taken up by members of the Imperial Court and where a daughter was born in the Kremlin on New Year's Day, 1914.
She was given the name Noor, meaning 'light of womanhood', and would be known by her father's name, the patronymic Inayat, and the title Khan, an honorific denoting aristocratic birth.
Inayat Khan moved the family to London shortly before the outbreak of the First World War but poverty and prejudice led to another move, this time to the outskirts of Paris. Gentle, shy, sensitive, musical, dreamy, poetic Noor lived by what her biographer called 'a different rhythm' from the other children.
When Noor was 13 her father died, leaving her, as the oldest child, the mainstay of her grieving mother and younger siblings. On leaving school Noor studied music for six years, composing for the harp and piano, and little by little becoming more European and less oriental in her habits and dress. She moved about more independently than the veiled women of the tradition out of which she had come. She wore make-up that made her skin lighter.
She took a degree at the Sorbonne in child psychology, studied several modern languages, travelled on the Continent with her brother Vilayat, and began a career as a freelance writer. She became a frequent contributor of articles and stories to newspapers and magazines and her children's fairy tales were broadcast by Radiodiffusion Francaise. A book of her stories was published in England in 1939 and she was about to bring out a childrens newspaper in Paris when war broke out.
In the early months of the war Noor and her sister took a Red Cross nursing course, intending to join the war against the Nazis in the only way that seemed practical. With the Germans approaching Paris, the family joined the exodus from the city. They made their way to Bordeaux and, because Vilayat had been born in England, they managed to get on the last boat evacuating British subjects.
Noor was 26 years old and living in Oxford in August 1940. However, nursing didn't seem to her like enough. Her brother had joined the RAF and in November Noor joined the Womens Auxillary Air Force (WAAF). As Aircraftwoman 2nd Class Nora Inayat Khan she was posted to Harrogate with the first groups of WAAF's to be sent for training as wireless operators. In June 1941 she was posted to a bomber training school station, where she found the work dull. She applied for a commission and was selected for an intensive course of more specialised and highly technical signals training. That month a fairy tale she had written was broadcast on the Childrens Hour of the BBC.
Noor told her brother and her friend Jean that she thought she would not get her commission; she felt she had made an unfortunate impression on the officers interviewing her by becoming too emotional on the then problematic subject of Indian independence.
To Jean her brother expressed the concern of what he called Noor's unworldliness would be her undoing - that she was 'born for sacrifice'.
And then, 'out of the blue', as these summonses were always characterised, Noor was asked by the War Office to present herself at a room in the Victoria Hotel in Northumberland Avenue for an interview with a Captain Jepson. He told her about the need for wireless operators to work with other British officers organising resistance groups in occupied France, and made clear the risk of capture, torture and death at the hands of the Gestapo.
Early in February 1943 Noor was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to the FANY's, and sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey, to begin her SOE training. From there she was sent to Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory.
She would be the first woman to be sent over in that capacity, all of the women agents before her having been sent as 'couriers'. Having had previous W/T training, she had an edge on those who were just beginning their radio training. She was fast, and she was accurate.
From Aylesbury Noor went on to Beaulieu, in Hampshire, where the security training was capped with a practice mission - in the case of wireless operators, they had to find a place in a strange city from which they could transmit back to their instructors without being detected by an agent, unknown to them, who would be shadowing them. The ultimate exercise was the mock Gestapo interrogation, intended to give agents a taste of what might be in store for them if they were captured and some practice in maintaining their cover story.
Noor's escorting officer found her 'mock' interrogation 'almost unbearable' and reported that 'she seemed absolutely terrified .... so overwhelmed she nearly lost her voice' and that afterwards, 'she was trembling and quite blanched'. her finishing report, which the official historian of F Section found in her personal file long after the war, read: 'Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keeness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to the work in the field.' Next to this comment Buckmaster has written in the margin 'Nonsense'.
Events in the Paris region were rushing to a head and Baker Street were desperate for another radio operator to deal with the stepped-up message traffic. Noor had not finished her security course but she was the best prepared operator on hand, and it was decided to send her.
She was given the cover name and identity of Jeanne-Marie Regnier, a childrens nursemaid, and the code-name 'Madeleine'. She left from Tangmere, in Sussex, by the May moon, but the reception committee was not on the ground to meet the plane, and it had to return. After the build up of tension and anxiety, the anticlimax was a distinct let down.
Then it was the next moon period. When the time came for her flight, Vera Atkins accompanied her to the airfield. They had supper in the ivy-covered cottage that was the operational headquarters for 161 Squadron. In the party were an agent bound for Marseille to do sabotage and another on her way to the south-east countryside as a courier, as well as Diana Rowden, on her way to the Jura.
Whilst at the cottage Vera Atkins saw a paperback book beside one of the pilots' beds. Its title was Remarkable Women. She remembers saying that the book would have to be rewritten 'after these girls have done their stuff'. The date was 16th June 1943.
Early the next morning, Noor climbed out of a Lysander in a moonlit meadow a few miles north-east of Angers, near where the Loire meets the Sarthe, in a double operation that had been organised by an air movements officer. As the two planes came in, one agent climbed out of each while another handed out the baggage before following down the ladder. Within minutes the planes had taken on five returning passengers, three French political figures and two F Section agents and were heading back to Tangmere.
By that evening Noor had made her way to Paris to the address given to her. When she arrived, however, Noor was under the impression that the password with which she had been provided was intended for an old lady. The man who answered the door, Emile Henri Garry, who was anything but an old lady, found himself in turn bewildered by his visitor, who had arrived carrying a bunch of flowers for her contact, until finally one of them broke the ice and passwords were exchanged to their mutual satisfaction.
It was discovered that Noor had had nothing to eat since leaving England, twenty four hours earlier. She had been given a forged ration book, but she did not understand how to use it and was waiting until someone could explain the proceedure to her.
What happened from then on was pieced together by Jean Overton Fuller after the war from the accounts of those who had known and worked with Noor during the months between her confused arrival and her arrest in the autumn.
Noor was introduced to the Prosper group and Gilbert Norman, her fellow wireless operator, took her out to Grignon, north-west of Versailles, to meet other members of the network. At one point Noor casually left a briefcase containing her codes out on a table in the entrance hall, where, as it was pointed out to her, anyone might have come along and found it.
But, although they may have been more security minded than Noor, the groups caution had its limitations too, and the following weekend the whole group, including Noor, lunched together in Paris, waiting for another group of agents from Sologne who never arrived. It was the last such get-together. Barely a week after Noor's arrival in Paris, three agents were arrested.
The agents who survived were those who scrupulously obeyed the laws of caution. In cities, they took care that even their associates did not know where they lived or what their cover name and identity was. In the country they moved from one house to another every few days. If they were radio operators, they did not stay on the air for more than a few minutes at a time and transmitted from different places whenever possible. Those who eluded capture were seldom those who were seen dining together in black-market restaurants, talking things over in English !
With the wave of arrests washing over the various groups, Noor's was one of the few radios still operating. With a sense of the importance of her unique position which amounted to a sense of mission, she refused an offer to bring her back to England. And from then on, she was on the run, transmitting from a series of different houses and apartments, trying to avoid the direction-finding trucks, several times just managing to elude the Gestapo.
Noor refused yet another offer to get out and return to England. For the rest of the summer she moved around looking for places she could transmit from safely. She took a tiny room in an apartment block in Neuilly-sur-Seine, almost entirely inhabited by German officers, and a story has come down that one of them courteously offered her a hand when she was having difficulty hanging her aerial out on the branch of a tree.
Buckmaster's deputy, Bodington, was sent out to appraise the damage done to the groups following many arrests and he gave Noor instructions to lie low.
Throughout all of this Noor carried her notebook wherever she went. It was an ordinary school copy book and in it she kept a record of all the messages she had sent and received since arriving in France, in code and in plain text. This was a stunning breach of the most elementary security precautions and it appears to have been the result of a misunderstanding on her part of the phrase in her operational orders instructing her to 'be extremely careful with the filing of your messages.'
Evidently she was unfamiliar with the use of 'filing' in the sense in which a journalist 'files' - that is 'sends' - a story, and thought she was meant to keep them in some sort of filing system!
The tell-tale messages were on the table beside her bed when she was arrested in her room, along with her codes and her security checks. They would prove invaluable to her captors.
Noor had eluded the Gestapo all through the summer and into the early autumn and at the end of September told some of her friends that she expected to be going back to England very soon.
It was early in October when the Gestapo was contacted by a woman who called herself Renee with an offer to sell them Madelaine, a name they knew well as that of an F Section radio operator they had so far been unable to track down. The woman seemed to know a great deal about F Section and for a small price, much less than the Gestapo were prepared to pay to get their hands on Noor, she passed on the address where Noor was now living. Like so many others of the apartments inhabited by F Section agents, it was only a few minutes away from Gestapo headquarters on the Avenue Foch.
Noor put up quite a fight when she returned home and found a single Gestapo agent waiting for her, so much so that he had to cover her with his gun whilst he phoned for assistance in order to bring her in. They also retrieved her transmitter and the notebook containing all her messages, codes and security checks.
On arrival at the Gestapo headquarters on Avenue Foch she was taken up to the fifth floor and within an hour she had made an escape attempt, climbing out of a bathroom window onto a ledge where she was spotted and brought back in.
For the next five weeks she was interrogated daily but never mistreated although there was constant and increasing pressure on her to co-operate. She steadfastly refused and never told them anything of an official nature beyond that her name was 'Nora Baker' and that she was a WAAF officer.
Noor attempted a second escape, with two other agents being held at Gestapo headquarters, but they were soon recaptured and Noor was shipped off to Germany.
She was locked up in the womens section of the civil prison at Pforzheim where, as a 'very dangerous' prisoner, she was kept in chains, her hands and her feet chained together, with another chain connecting hands to feet, unable to feed or clean herself. She was kept in solitary confinement separated from the rest of the prison by two sets of iron gates. The governor of the prison, interviewed years later by Jean Overton Fuller, "said he thought the tranquility did her good."
Some Frenchwomen sent to the prison as political prisoners managed to communicate with 'Nora Baker', as Noor was calling herself. By this time it was summer and Noor's messages noted the Fourth of July and Bastille Day. The last words from her, in a shaky hand, were "I am leaving". It was the 11th September 1944.
That night, almost ten months after she had been locked up, she was taken by the Gestapo to Karlsruhe and from there, along with three other women, to Dachau, about 200 miles away.
The other three women were also F Section agents, Madeleine Damerment, Elaine Plewman and Yolande Beekman.
The two men, named Wassmer and Ott, who escorted the four women were the same two who had brought four other women to the camp at Natzweiler, two months previously, in the July.
They arrived at Dachau around midnight and they walked up the hill from the station to the camp, where they were locked up separately overnight, and in the early morning they were taken to a spot strewn with sand, stained with blood and told to kneel down.
They knelt in pairs, holding hands, as an SS man came up and shot them from behind............
Noor was 30 years old.

Woodpecker

2005-04-29T00:20:00.000-07:00

The ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, has been rediscovered in a remote part of Arkansas some 60 years after the last confirmed U.S. sighting, bird experts said Thursday.

You can read the full story here

Airbus: A380 Family

2005-04-29T00:11:00.000-07:00

Designed in close collaboration with major airlines, airport and airworthiness authorities, the A380 brings new standards of comfort and better economics in an aircraft that is more environmentally responsible. Whilst doing all of this, it allows growth and reduced congestion from today's airports with minimum change. Most importantly, the A380 introduces competition to the large aircraft sector, completing the Airbus product portfolio.

The A380, which will seat 555 passengers in a typical three-class interior layout, will enter airline service in 2006.

Source: www.airbus.com

2005-04-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

There is something fundamentally wrong with us... humans. Something that definitely works against paradise. Something that makes people stupid and destructive and greedy and shortsighted. We do three things that are never done in the rest of the community of life, and these are all fundamental to our civilizational system.

1. We exterminate our competitors
2. We systematically destroy our competitors food to make room for our own.
3. We deny our competitors access to food.

The beautiful game - No more :(

2005-04-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Manchester United 0 - 1 Everton ... dang!! ... plus 2 sending off's .. i have never seen anything like this happening in years. It seems like they are not the team I grew up watching anymore.

Fergie has done wonders in 90's with this United team but I dont think he can do it anymore. All good things must come to an end. What next? A defeat in FA Cup final by pathatic Arsenal.. i hate Arsenal. And I am NO fan of Mourinho's Chelsea (though they have shown money can buy everything... even the EPL title and who knows champions league as well)

Atleast Bolton are doing well so there is somethig to cheer about for me :o)

p.s: What is the best way to stay awake at work on hot summer afternoons ...specially after having a heavy lunch? :D ... it's been a very boring n slow month for me...not much to do in office n my brain seems to be functioning way below it's normal capacity... hence I find myself struggling NOT to sleep at work these days..very tough thing to do if you know what i mean...
is it jus me? :o)

Creativity? :D

2005-04-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

2005-04-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

"There is no dervish in the world; and if there be a dervish, that dervish is really non-existent. In essence he exists, but his attributes are non-existent within God's." Rumi - Mathnawi [III, 3669-3670]

One step up and two steps back

2005-04-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning my house was cold
Checked out the furnace she wasn't burnin'
Went out and hopped in my old Ford
Hit the engine but she ain't turnin'
We've given each other some hard lessons lately
But we ain't learnin'
We're the same sad story that's a fact
One step up and two steps back

Bird on a wire outside my motel room
But he ain't singin'
Girl in white outside a church in June
But the church bells they ain't ringing
I'm sittin' here in this bar tonight
But all I'm thinkin' is
I'm the same old story same old act
One step up and two steps back

It's the same thing night on night
Who's wrong baby who's right
Another fight and I slam the door on
Another battle in our dirty little war
When I look at myself I don't see
The man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
I'm caught movin' one step up and two steps back

There's a girl across the bar
I get the message she's sendin'
Mmm she ain't lookin' to married
And me well honey I'm pretending
Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms
The music was never-ending
We danced as the evening sky faded to black
One step up and two steps back

Bruce Springsteen

2005-04-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

Samuel Adams

Questions....

2005-04-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

You must have been watching programs on ARY/GEO and all other channels where people like Dr Mubarik Ali, Dr Israr, Dr Mehdi Hasan etc(the so called parhe likhe log i.e scholars) trying to paint this country in their own colors and school of thoughts. Some of them insist that Pakistan was supposed to be an Isalmic state and others say something opposite and blah blah. Some of them even deny the whole idea of pakistan and insist it would ve been better off staying as a part of India.

Mullah's want to impose their views, Mush has his view of "Roshan Khiyal, Moderate & Enlightened" Pakistan. Not to mention the governement is spending huge money on Ads to project Pakistan as moderate and enlightened country. Why not this money spent on education, health, clean drinking water? How can you change the image of Pakistan thru ads? Is there a point in cleaning the mirror, when what we really need to do is to clean our own face? How about kicking those ppl's a$$ who sent thousands of ordinary ppl to so called Jihad in Afghanistan and got them killed? How come we lost half of the country and no one was responsible for it (and we are probably about to make the same mistake in Balochistan) Why Zardari is a Hero now? We hear each day that BB is coming back since PPP is now an "acceptable n roshan khiyal" party. Or military has really created a mess... again...as they ve done in past and they want politicians to clean it up for them so that their holy cow status is safe? We seem to have lost our national dignity and free will somewhere in 50+ years of existance.

And where are ordinary people of Pakistan in all this fuzz? The truth of the matter is after more than half a century, the people of Pakistan do not know who they are, where they belong, what they believe in and where they want to go. Or are they even bothered about all this at all? Nothing can be more tragic than people becoming indifferent. Why are we so indifferent as a nation and why we are aware of the root of most problems we have and yet we dont do anything to change it?

hmmm... it seems our generation is stuck in questions n questions n more questions and no answers...

2005-04-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

If you have a Time Machine where in time would you like to be (past or future)?

This is where i wanna be (Spain between 12th n 13th century)...

2005-04-08T01:13:00.000-07:00

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This "progress" is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.
True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents.

Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: what ever is most damaging to life is there called "true," and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called "false."... When theologians, working through the "consciences" of princes (or of peoples--), stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that power...

Nietzsche (first paragraph is from "Human - All Too Human" and second one is from "The AntiChrist")

2005-04-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

Linux looks to Paris Hilton for exposure... hahaha ;)

Soft tissue found in T-rex fossil
For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Click here to read the full story

2005-04-04T02:07:00.000-07:00

after so many threats and warnings i finally cleaned up my room today... again... found this begum akhtar cd in my old 8x cd writer ..those were the Napster days n the result was 35 mp3's ...

here is something to listen to ...

Begum Akhtar - ZAMEEN PE REH KE DIMAGH AASMAN PE REHTA HAI

Begum Akhtar - Sar Mein Sauda Bhi Nahin

2005-04-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

hmmm.... do you remember this?

I never missed a single episode of this serial ... ofcourse it was many many years back.. ;)

anyways if you can't figure it out then click here

2005-03-30T01:45:00.000-08:00

There was a very famous book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn which I read a couple of years back. Something I read about something reminded me of that book and the idea behind it.

If you have seen that Anthony Hopkin's movie Instinct then you probably know what am I talking about.

Here are a few things to read:

"As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the way they've been acting for the past ten thousand years. They're going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property and they're going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds. And you can't just root out a harmful complex of ides and leave a void behind: you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they've lost-something that makes better sense then the old horror of Man supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn't server his needs directly or indirectly." [pg. 249]

"You've been in love with someone for a decade-someone who barely knows you're alive. You've done everything, tried everything to make this person see that you're a valuable, estimable person, and that your love is worth something. Then one day you open up the paper and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved one has place an ad... seeking someone worthwhile to love and be loved by..." [pg. 6]

"By contrast, this life was agonizingly boring and never pleasant. Thus in asking why, I was trying to puzzle out why life should be divided in this way, half of it interesting and pleasant and half of it boring and unpleasant. I had no concept of myself as a captive; it didn't occur to me that anyone was preventing me from having an interesting and pleasant life. When no answer to my question was forthcoming, I began to consider the differences between the two life-styles. The most fundamental difference was that in Africa I was a member of a family-of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas-but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.
I considered the matter of feeding. Human children dream of a land where the mountains are ice cream and the trees are gingerbread and the stones are bonbons. For a gorilla, Africa is such a land. Wherever one turns, there is something wonderful to eat. One never thinks, "Oh, I'd better look for some food." Food is everywhere, and one picks it up almost absentmindedly, as one takes a breath of air. In fact, one does not think of feeding as a distinct activity at all." [pg. 12]

2005-03-26T00:50:00.000-08:00

bought this novel by Abdullah Hussain (Udaas Naslen) on my way back home today. It was written in 1984 in London and takes you to pre-partition India of 30's and 40's.

Page1:
British India

"And (the people) shall look into the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness"

ISAIAH

2005-03-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The color composite image includes eight hours of exposure time with an H-alpha filter, transmiting only the light from recombining hydrogen atoms in the expanding nebulosity and tracing the regions of shocked, glowing gas. This supernova remnant has an apparent age of about 100,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 100,000 years ago - but this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.

Source: NASA

2005-03-25T00:30:00.000-08:00

Rumi 151 (from Divan-e Shams)

Why think this ethereal thing is the soul
And a nugget of gold a treasured goal?
In search of gold, digging deep, why?
Thinking the earth to be the sky
Why consider ghastly temptations
To be the beauty of the nations?
Why like a worm crawl with earthly lust
And consider lovers lower than dust?
Why drive love out with disgust
Think are in love, while immersed in lust?
Why let the smoke of ignorance fill the eyes with tears?
Why consider godliness the result of ignorant fears?
Submission to lust signifies a curse
Then why insist this sign will disperse?
All that I question, why, I asked of me
Like others you thought I asked of Thee?
Shams-e Tabrizi, show thyself, thy light
Thou who considers eyes have no sight!

Translated By:
Shahriar Shahriari
Vancouver, Canada

2005-03-23T19:49:00.000-08:00

heh... now this is a good one.. :P

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