for_sv's blog

February'04 BlogThoughts

Eternal Egypt, which brings to light over five thousand years of Egyptian civilization, it is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions. The stories of Eternal Egypt are told using the latest interactive technologies, high-resolution imagery, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, three-dimensional models and more.

An Air Force report is giving what analysts call the most detailed picture since the end of the Cold War of the Pentagon's efforts to turn outer space into a battlefield.

Discover each tomb in the Valley in this interactive Atlas which includes details of each tomb, compilations of more than 2000 images, over 250 detailed maps, etc.

Check the 3D tomb tour.

Very few people have the power to make an impact on anothers life. One such person whose words have had profound effect on me is Thomas Easley. To me he is not only a great painter, writer but a down-to-earth human being with whom one can talk. His series on 'Roosters' is definitely fowl play. Hold your breath when you see 'Passion Play Series' or 'King of Feasts Series'. Very few artists can do justice to different mediums. Under his expertise they are just an expression of life. His work will be on display at Artexpo New York: Booth #1459 Someday I'll be on 'THE LIST'.

Barbara Walters of 60 Minutes (USA) did a story on gender roles in Kabul several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked about 5 paces behind their husbands.

She returned to Kabul recently and observed that women still walk behind their husbands, but now seem to walk even further back and are now happy with the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked. "But why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you used to try and change?"

"Land mines," said the woman.

He is the scion of the most celebrated family of Modern India. He has one of the most revered Indian surnames, Gandhi. He is, however, the first member of Nehru-Gandhi family who writes poetry and has already published his first collection, The Otherness of Self. Varun talks right, thinks forward and is at the right age at the wrong time. He could have been elected to Parliament had he been a year older. Those who have heard his first public speech are highly impressed. Cong by birth, BJP by choice?

The Federal Communications Committee and the Justice Department are at loggerheads over a new problem in the war on terror: how to listen in on Internet phone calls. Thanks to the blistering growth of VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol—services, which have been adopted by approximately 10 million people worldwide so far, law enforcement officials now worry that wiretapping may one day become technically obsolete. If traditional phone lines go the way of the horse and carriage, will the FBI still be able to listen in on Internet phone calls? How would it go about tapping one? Is it even possible?

Willy Wonka had his never-ending gobstopper and Harry Potter is partial to Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans - but the maker of KitKats has proved that truth is stranger than fiction.

Behold "TouchGraph GoogleBrowser," a visualization tool that interfaces with Google and creates a linked map of the search results.

A similar product is Kartoo, a meta search engine which too presents its results on a map.

Word has it that we Yanks are linguistically challenged. Luckily, our English-speaking brethren across the Atlantic have devised this Berlitz-like primer to boost anyone's French, German, Italian, and Spanish speaking skills in no time flat. Whether you know very little or ascended to college-level language courses, each of these language courses is geared so you learn at your own pace. For adventurous pupils, there are even Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish tutorials. Affable native speakers like German teacher Andrea Hoffmann walk you through conversation scenarios in which you meet people, get around Berlin, eat out, and go shopping, while Giovanna Vaccaro helps you master the Italian tongue with guided tours of Venice. If all this is just too much choice for the monolingual mind, test the waters with an essential talking phrase book in 34 languages.

Half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, as smaller societies are assimilated into national and global cultures, scientists have warned.

Microsoft ASP.NET, Web Matrix, ASP.NET Heaven

Heidi Swanson is a San Francisco photographer and graphic designer struggling with a delicate dilemma. She stockpiles cookbooks like "Once Upon a Tart" and "The New American Cheese," yet sticks to the same 20-odd recipes in the kitchen. As she sums up, "The intent is good, the follow through bad." Early last year, she decided to convert all that potential into something edible, and the result is a clean, well-lighted place on the Web for cooking stories. Since Ms. Swanson is a professional food photographer, all of her gastronomic adventures come with beautiful pictures. Visitors are invited to post comments, as well as browse the list of upcoming attractions. Dig in.

Chris and Martin Kratt have produced, written, filmed, and co-starred in two award-winning series for PBS -- Kratts' Creatures and Zoboomafoo. The Kratts examine six animals in the series -- the brown bear, lion, Japanese macaque, wild dog, lemur, and manatee -- offering in-depth lessons in the ways of the wild. The site's appealing Flash presentation, as well as the video clips and outtakes, make this adventure worth exploring in depth.

Great balls of fire! No, it's not images from Mars that have caught our fancy, but fiery portraits of our very own sun provided by NASA. That's right, as twin rovers romp around the red planet snapping up interplanetary postcards, the sun sends real-time greetings of its own in extreme UV imaging. What exactly is extreme UV light? It's the electromagnetic portion of the color spectrum between ultraviolet and X-ray that is not visible to the naked eye. UV imaging allows the volatile surface and textured weather patterns of our nearest and dearest hydrogen ball to be displayed without damaging our fragile peepers. Zoom, pan, and familiarize yourself with the surface of the sun, or take a look at detailed illustrations of its interior. Finally, don't miss movies of coronal mass ejections (aka magnetic blobs spewing from the sun's exterior), solar flares, and gigantic waves that roll over its surface. Why not soak up some sun?

The collision of two star systems has created a merged galaxy with an unusual appearance and bizarre motions.

Fear of Friday the 13th

Forget about red-faced rants and ketchup heiress spouses for a minute. PBS Online News Hour and Boston NPR affiliate WBUR invite prospective Democratic voters to blind taste test the candidates on the basis of their platforms rather than their personalities. The premise is simple: read unattributed statements from the seven remaining candidates on 14 topics (tax cuts, gun laws, national security, same-sex marriage, education, etc.). Click on the statements that you agree with most. At the end of the quiz, you're presented with a political report card revealing who said what. Tally up who got most of your votes, then decide if your candidate is actually electable. Voila.

In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap. - Napoleon Bonaparte

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. -Texas Guinan

Millionaire Hit with Record Speeding Fine
Finnish traffic fines vary according to the offender's income.
I love it. Wish US implements this!

Sampling of street painting's created by Kurt Wenner around Europe.

Unique environmentally conscientious way of disposing off the dead bodies...

"The primary focus of CrashRyan is to post random photos of a guy named Dennis Cernosia. Over time it has branched out to thingshim and his buds think about during the course of the day ... cars, photography, strange news, music, movies and politics."

building to extremes

In this episode, INNOVATION follows the architects and engineers who have dedicated their lives to reaching new heights, travels around the world to see giant buildings under construction, and investigates the risks and benefits of building tall. Can innovative materials and design techniques overcome critical new safety issues?

Premieres Feb 10, 9:00PM on PBS. Check local listings

Mont Blanc is one of the world's most popular destinations for Alpine climbers and scientists; no other peak has such a long record of mountaineering and glaciology. But 200 years of winter sports, science and tourism haven't tamed this mountain. This program follows a team of daring "glacionauts" as they explore the dangerous glacial lakes hidden inside Mont Blanc. (Closed Captioning) (Stereo) (Descriptive Video Service)

Airs Feb 10, 8:00PM on PBS. Check local listings

Aimed at experienced programmers and web developers, the new edition of Programming C# doesn't waste words on elementary programming topics. Information covered include: Classes and objects Inheritance and polymorphism Operator overloading Structs and interfaces Arrays, indexers, and collections String objects and regular expressions Exceptions and bug handling Delegates and events Development of desktop and Internet applications-- including Windows Forms, ADO.NET and ASP.NET Attributes and reflection Remoting Threads and synchronization Streams How to interoperate with COM objects Some good sites: MSDN, C#, C# Help, 15Seconds, w3Schools, Programming Tutorials, c-sharpcenter to name a few.

GOD, GOOGLED, EXISTS
59,900,000 Search Results Evidence of Deity, Experts Agree

Most flexible electronic paper yet revealed.

Brilliantly done Flash animation from Vodafone. Highly recommend the "Work" section.

And that "one really good diet," should be founded on these "superfoods":

Beans
Blueberries
Broccoli
Oats
Oranges
Pumpkin
Salmon
Soy
Spinach
Tea (green or black)
Tomatoes
Turkey
Walnuts
Yogurt

Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
Knives were up sharply.
Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom.
Diapers remained unchanged.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Balloon prices were inflated.
And Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.

A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years.

A car full of ladies from the Temple Beth Israel fund raising committee is in a terrible accident. They arrive at the Pearly Gates where Saint Peter is waiting.

The women want to get into Heaven, so Saint Peter looks through the book, but can't find them listed in the New Arrivals section.

"I'm sorry," Saint Peter says to them, "but I can't find you in the book, there must be some mistake."

With that, he sends them down to Hell. A week later, God asks Saint Peter, "What happened to those Jewish ladies who were supposed to be here?"

"You mean the ones from Temple Beth Israel?" Saint Peter asks. "I didn't see them listed, so I sent them to Hell."

"You what?" God asks outraged, "I wanted them here. If you want to keep your job Saint Peter, you better call Satan and get them back up here ASAP."

St. Peter gets on the phone and calls Hell. Satan answers.

St. Peter says, "Satan you know those Jewish ladies I sent down there last week? Well I really need them up here. Could you please send them back?

"No way," Satan replies. "They're here two days and they've already raised $100,000 for an air conditioning system."

I actually laughed out loud on this one.

If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of coffee shop. Instead of charging 60 cents for coffee I'll charge $2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no free refills, no waiters, no busboys, serve it in cardboard cups, and have the customer clean it up for 20 minutes after they're finished." ...

Also check a similar version.

Coffee isn't my cup of tea. - Samuel Goldwyn

Suraiya was perhaps the last of the great singing stars. Born in Lahore, she debuted as a child star with Taj Mahal (1941). She did playback as a 13 year old for Mehtaab in Sharda (1942) under Naushad's direction. The barely-in-her-teens Suraiya had to stand on a stool to reach the mike! Suraiya Jamaal Sheikh's legend has endured for over four decades after her retirement post Rustom Sohrab (1963). Famous for some of the greatest hits of the 40's such as Anmol Ghadi, Pyar Ki Jeet, Badi Bahen and Dillagi, Suraiya was the first of filmdom's big marquee female stars who commanded among the highest fees in the film industry. Tu Mera Chand Mein Teri Chandni - in the earthy voice of Suraiya created a rage and captured the enigma and romance of the age.

BUSH ACCUSES SADDAM OF TELLING TRUTH

Evildoer Knowingly Came Clean on WMD's, President Charges

In his weekly radio address, President George W. Bush leveled his harshest charge ever at fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, accusing the former dictator of "knowingly telling the truth" about not possessing weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"After years of lying about his weapons, Saddam Hussein willfully decided to tell the truth about them," Mr. Bush said. "His treachery knows no bounds."

After Mr. Bush excoriated Saddam for his "wanton truth-telling," he reminded his radio audience that "thanks to the work of our coalition, Mr. Saddam Hussein will never be free to tell the truth again."

Mr. Bush argued that while the invasion of Iraq had turned up no weapons of mass destruction, preventing the former Iraqi strongman from telling the truth in the future was reason enough to go to war.

"In the wrong hands, the truth can destabilize regions and even destroy entire civilizations," Mr. Bush said. "In that respect, the truth itself is a weapon of mass destruction - one that Mr. Saddam Hussein will never be able to use again."

The President closed his speech with tough words for North Korea's Kim Jung-il, whom the President accused of telling the truth about his own weapons program.

Naming Mr. Kim a member of what he called "The Axis of Veracity," Mr. Bush urged the North Korean madman to cease and desist telling the truth and to "join the community of truth-fearing nations."

This is one of his (Andy's) very best.

The L game