for_sv's blog

"Try not to be a gullible country girl in the big city of ideas, or you are likely to fall for all the smooth-talking counterfeit spiels, and end up with a lot of illegitimate notions you can't support."

So true, often we succumb to the placebo effect. Ideas, notions, theories are so personal that it is always hard to live by and adopt with someone elses. Each one of us have to search for our empyrean.

The problem is believing things that flatter your self-image, preconceptions, prejudices or other needs, without thinking enough or checking them out: accepting things at face value, not exercising such critical faculties as you have. There is certainly a tendency among Americans, if not humans in general, to approve of "faith" and "dreams" and "beliefs" and to think the word "critical" is a put-down and "rational" a turn-off, that "skeptic" is the same as "cynic", and to equate "doubt" with weakness. Americans, if not humans in general, prefer the fool rushing in to the angel fearing to tread, the "native hue of resolution" to the "pale cast of thought".

The trouble with life is that it usually takes a whole lifetime to learn how to live it.

City "blog maps" enable point-and-click sightseeing.

The premise behind a blog map is simple: Some industrious blogger posts a subway map of his or her city (if you live in a city without a subway, well, that's your problem) and then organizes the city's blogs by the stop to which they are closest. If residents want to explore their neighborhood blogosphere, they simply click the section of the city that strikes their fancy. The result: Local bloggers find each other, exchange e-mails, meet up for drinks, and then generally do the same things as neighbors who stumble upon each other in the real world.

There's one for Washington, D.C., Metro, New York and London, too

French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, whose work has been published in the top international magazines (Geo, Life, National Geographic...), in 1995 undertook a project that had long been close to his heart to produce, on the eve of the 21st century, a real photographic inventory of the planet from an altitude of between 5 and 2,000 meters.

This project, sponsored by Unesco, led to a book, The Earth from the Air (La Terre vue du ciel), of which almost 800,000 copies have been printed worldwide a first for this type of book.

The Earth from the Air is not only a spectacular aerial portrait of our planet and its changes, whether or not these are due to human activity; it is also a geographical and scientific survey thanks to the contribution made by specialists (geographers, demographers, sociologists and others), who comment on the photographs referenced by precise geographical coordinates.

Photography: process of producing images through the action of light on sensitised surfaces.

Having deciphered dog barks and won 300,000 pet-lovers with its hit "Bowlingual", Japanese toymaker Takara Co. is planning a similar gadget for cats, "Meowlingual".

An interesting website from Stanford (a students own website?) that talks about taking aerial photographs with the help of a balloon.

Never again in your (or my) lifetime will the Red Planet be so spectacular This month and next Earth is catching up with Mars, an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years but it may be as long as 60,000 years. The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. But by the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history.

So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this! No one alive today will ever see this again.

When you are exasperated by interruptions, try to remember that their very frequency may indicate the valuableness of your life. Only the people who are full of help and strength are burdened by other people's needs. The interruptions which we chafe at are the credentials of our indispensability. The greatest condemnation that anybody could incur - and it is a danger to guard against - is to be so independent, so unhelpful, that nobody ever interrupts us and we are left comfortably alone.

Fools Paradise, a friend who introduced me to blogging.

E-mail, the Internet, and mobile phones, help "flash mobs" gather to perform silly tasks — spontaneously clap for 15 seconds or make silly faces — in a public place and then suddenly scatter. - ABCNews

Sentinel says : "Its the latest big thing from the Internet- Creating a crowd on a moment's notice for no particular reason. It's a hit in New York, and the practice is starting to get around."

Cartoons - A wonderful combination of language and art. Some classics:
Tarzan by Edgar Rice BurroughsTarzan originated in Burroughs' short story "Tarzan of the Apes," published in 1912. And since 1912 Tarzan has been swinging through the trees.
Asterix and Obelix by Goscinny and UderzoThe year is 50 BC, and a Gaulish village in the west of France is still holding out against the Roman conqueror. Thanks to the druid's magic potion, the little group of dauntless Gauls succeeds - among other things - in irritating Caesar and his proud legions to the utmost degree! Their only fear is that the sky may fall on their heads. Les Gaulois. Tintin by HergeCreated by Hergé in 1929, Tintin is one of the great international comic strips of all time. The Belgian Hergé (Georges Rémi) is among the best known, and most influential, of the European artists. Tintin is a teenage reporter who travels the world in search of adventure with his faithful fox-terrior Snowy (Milou). Along the way, Tintin meets the twin, and bumbling, detectives Thomson and Thompson, the rum-guzzling Captain Haddock, and, the absent-minded Professor Calculus.
Modesty Blaise by Peter O'DonnellEven to this day it is reprinted as a daily comic strip in "Mumbai Samachar", the oldest newspaper in India founded in 1822. Who is Modesty Blaise?

- No, sir, this famine has not affected us. We have always starved here, you see.
- Here is my resignation! Our partymen have no faith in me. They think I am corrupt and incompetent. Still they want me to continue! ...
- OK, the PWD has no funds. But couldn’t they ask Mr Bill Gates to finance the repair of roads?
- Just say I’ll serve people loyally and faithfully...not necessary to add till I am toppled...
- I defected because I find in this party, funds, cars, houses, servants and other facilities to help me serve the people better!
- Nobody comes now -- they work from 5pm to 11pm because they get overtime.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman, India's most celebrated cartoonist. Forty years of cartooning have dimmed neither Laxman's brilliance nor the bafflement of his check-coated man who blinks at the political scene from his front-page corner in The Times of India.

Andy Borowitz The brilliant satirical Web site.
Current Affairs Whats going on.
Knowledge at Wharton Bi-weekly articles and essays on business.
National Geographic for amazing photos and articles.

Lord make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born
To the eternal life.

Amen.

... Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. (From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994) Earth (the dot in the middle) as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on 6/6/1990.

Since 4th July, Microsoft is giving away three free eBooks a week. They'll be doing this for 20 weeks, making for a total of 60 free eBooks. And these just aren't any old books; they're current commercial titles by established authors.

Hoping to encourage more avid readers to try eBooks, Microsoft this summer will offer a series of compelling best-sellers in the Microsoft Reader eBook format for download at no charge. Some 60 premier fiction, non-fiction and reference titles -- from authors such as Amy Tan, Bill Bryson, Margaret Atwood, Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, Douglas Adams and John Updike -- will be available from the Microsoft Reader Web site.

Microsoft Reader runs on desktop and laptop PCs, Tablet PCs, and of course Pocket PCs, so if you have any one of these devices there's no reason not to try it out.

Sorry friends for giving you Hell about 'Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?' by repeatedly deleting and posting the blog. I was trying to get MozBlog to work.

Note: MozBlog is a tool to enable people to blog with mozilla while surfing.

Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, Final Exam question for May of 1997. Dr. Schambaugh is known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, We postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.

Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:

1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic."

The student, Tim Graham, got the only A.

And later...

Nobel Prize
The Prize: Controversy and Landmarks

The actors in the long drama of Civilization could not know the full consequences of their thoughts and actions. It is no slight task to follow threads spun unwittingly by the multiple hands of history. And one cannot fail to notice a similarity in the disparity of different Civilizations.

You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you a new way. - Will Rogers

Exploring Ancient World Cultures. Don't forget to check the Chronology section.

Civilizations in History

A detail Itihass(history) of India.

History of the World - Timeline

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. - Bertrand Russell

Nobody knows it but me
by Patrick O'Leary

There's a place that I travel
When I want to roam
And nobody knows it but me.

The roads don't go there
And the signs stay home
And nobody knows it but me.

It's far far away
And way way afar
It's over the moon and the sea

And wherever you're going
that's wherever you are
And nobody knows it but me.

Julie, the blonde, was getting pretty desperate for money. She decided to go to the nicer, richer neighborhoods around town and look for odd jobs as a handy woman.

The first house she came to, a man answered the door and told Julie, "Yeah, I have a job for you. How would you like to paint the porch?" "Sure, that sounds great!" said Julie. "Well, how much do you want me to pay you?" asked the man. "Is fifty bucks all right?" Julie asked. "Yeah, great. You'll find the paint and ladders you'll need in the garage."

The man went back into his house to his wife who had been listening. "Fifty bucks! Does she know the porch goes all the way around the house?" asked the wife. "Well, she must, she was standing right on it!" her husband replied.

About 45 minutes later, Julie knocked on the door. "I'm all finished," she told the surprised homeowner. The man was amazed. "You painted the whole porch?" "Yeah," Julie replied, "I even had some paint left, so I put on two coats!" The man reached into his wallet to pay Julie.

"Oh, and by the way," said Julie, "That's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari."

In the critically acclaimed book "Phantoms in the Brain” that has been translated into eight languages and formed the basis for a two part series on Channel Four TV UK and a 1 hr PBS special in USA, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art.

BBC - Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2003 - The Emerging Mind

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. - T. S. Eliot (on Henry James)

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex. - Edgar Wallace

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. - Bertrand Russell

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. - Albert Einstein

For all Art Lovers this is a must click. Check out whats showing at your local museums.

Connect to ICQ®, AIM®, MSN® Messenger, Yahoo!® Messenger and IRC in a single, sleek and slim interface.

Trillian.74 is completely free, with no use limits, no spyware and no ads. 8 Million downloads can't be wrong!

Below is a quiz written by Einstein. He said that 98% of the people in the world cannot solve the quiz. Are you among the other 2%? Here you go...

Facts:
* There are 5 houses in 5 different colors
* In each house lives a person with a different nationality
* These 5 owners drink a certain type of drink, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet
* No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage.

Now from the hints below, you have to find out who owns the fish?

Hints:
* The Brit lives in the red house
* The Swede keeps dogs as pets
* The Dane drinks tea
* The green house is on the left of the white house
* The green house's owner drinks coffee
* The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
* The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
* The man living in the center house drinks milk
* The Norwegian lives in the first house
* The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats
* The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
* The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks Beer
* The German smokes Prince
* The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
* The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Matrix Reloaded

Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see,
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be.

"The Man Who Knew To Much"

Wood, shell and stone---circles, lines and rectangles. From these simple elements a game has evolved with enduring popularity over forty centuries. The game is so simple that it is profound---so profound that many have devoted their lives to its mastery.

Introduction to the game of Go
Go, an addictive game
American Go Association

WhatIs
Internet marketing reference

Be Tech Savvy

Celestial Fireworks

Today is "Guru Purnima" . A festival with a truly spiritual meaning and relevance, Guru Purnima celebrates the might of one's teacher or guru through respect and reverence. The true meaning of Guru is "one who dispels the darkness of ignorance". So today I pay my respects to all my gurus, my parents, my family and friends.

GururBrahmaa GururVishnuhu, GururDevo Maheshwaraha,
GururSakshaat Param Brahma, Tasmai Shri Gurudev Namaha.

The enlightened Guru is no other than Brahmaa the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.
Guru is truly the Almighty Brahaman; our salutations to Him, the Divine Spiritual Master.

Most of us are now increasingly forced into 'Privacy Paranoia' over the Internet. Check these out (at your own risk).

Mozilla: Blogging's Killer App
mozilla
Ad-aware
SpyBot

In a book review:
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown aside with great force."

"It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends."

"Salary is no object:
I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."

For her own epitaph:"Excuse my dust."

Ultimatum

Three persons on a trip agree to share the cost of a room, which is $60, and each pays $20 in cash.

Later, the manager realizes that the room is only $55, so the group has been overcharged by $5, which is then given to the bellhop to return. The bellhop realizes it is not possible to divide the $5 evenly, so only $1 is returned to each of the guests, and the bellhop pockets the other $2.

Now, if each guest originally paid $20, and they each got $1 back, that would mean they each paid $19 for the room, right? And 3 times $19 gives you $57, plus the $2 the bellhop kept, which now totals $59. So where is the missing dollar?

If you find the fuzzy thinking, here, you should find the missing dollar.

WORTH WHILE

It's easy enough to be pleasant,
When life goes by with a song,
But the Man worth while
Is the Man who can smile
When everything goes dead wrong.

http://www.ellawheelerwilcox.org/

http://www.ksc.nasa.gov

Kavita Daswani’s debut novel, For Matrimonial Purposes is hilarious and heartwarming.

For Matrimonial Purposes proves that while the search for love takes many forms, the heartbreak and exhilaration are universal. In a sensual whirl of silk and spices, Kavita Daswani takes us from Bombay to New York and back again - in what is sure to be one of the most welcomed debuts of the summer.

Must read.

http://www.hondomagic.com/html/a_little_magic.htm
http://www.cyberglass.biz/assets/Flash/psychic.swf

http://www.yankeegardener.com/birds/goldfinc.htm
watch out!

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http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/frames.html
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