Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in?

You scored as Babylon 5 (Babylon 5). The universe is erupting into war and your government picks the wrong side. How much worse could things get? It doesnâ??t matter, because no matter what you have your friends and youâ??ll do the right thing. In the end that will be all that matters. Now if only the Psi Cops would leave you alone.

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)

88%

Moya (Farscape)

75%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)

75%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)

69%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

69%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

69%

SG-1 (Stargate)

69%

Serenity (Firefly)

63%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)

63%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

56%

FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)

50%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)

38%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Identity (cont.)

"The only identity we have is “I” or “me”; all other labels are externally imposed." - Where There's a Will There's a Way by Laurie Maguire

The quote is taken from a book subtitled "or All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Shakespeare"

"We are different people at different times in our lives. We are encouraged to believe that life is about destinations; in fact, it is about definitions, about who we are at different times. This is
true from a very young age: a new baby turns an only child into a big brother or sister, a younger child into a middle child. As relative positions change, as hierarchical positions change, so do we."

"Feeling unloved is as damaging as being unloved."

"But as John-Roger and Peter McWilliams point out in Life 101, there comes a point when we have to acknowledge that we are adults, in control of our own lives. “Your childhood is over. You are in charge of your life now. You can’t blame the past, or anyone in the past, for what you do today. Even if you can formulate a convincing argument, it does you no good at all. It’s past.” They offer the useful example of glass and gravity; we break a glass but we don’t blame gravity, although without gravity the glass would not have fallen. “Your childhood is like gravity. It was what it was. Your life today is the glass. Handle it with care. If it breaks, it’s nobody’s fault. Clean up the mess and get another glass from the cupboard.”"

"John-Roger and Peter McWilliams add: “You don’t have to like your parents. But it can help heal you if you learn to love them.”"

"Sometimes the categories of friends and family overlap. Sometimes they are related by contrast. Hugh Kingsmill viewed the first category as compensation for the second: “Friends are God’s apology for relations.” The seventeenth-century writer and physician Sir Thomas Browne anticipated this sentiment when he confessed in Religio Medici that he felt more allegiance to his friends than to his family: “I hope I do not break the fifth commandment [honor thy father and thy mother] if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood.”"

"Ideologically, of course, this is an unviable situation: friendship is offered, not earned; it is involuntary, not subscribed. When two people are friends, they simply cannot help it. This is
the situation described by the Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, in his essay “On Friendship” when he describes his feelings for his friend La Boétie:
'If I were pressed to say why I love him, I feel that my only reply
could be: “Because it was he, because it was I.” There is,
beyond all my reasoning, and beyond all that I can specifically
say, some inexplicable power of destiny that brought about
our union.'
This is the language we associate today with romantic love: an external power, an unexplained attraction, feelings that cannot be expressed except by acknowledging that two individuals are one: “it was he, . . . it was I.”"

Identity

Who is it that can tell me who I am?
—King Lear

The future...

“You can only predict things after they have happened.” Eugène Ionesco

Wisdom


Monday, October 23, 2006

Ruben's tube

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5614877943718237184

Friday, October 20, 2006

Arctic life - your questions answered

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/6065512.stm

NZ vicar in 'knickers-run' rescue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6069224.stm

tee hee

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Oslo gay animal show draws crowds

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6066606.stm

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Experts create invisibility cloak

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6064620.stm

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Beast in sediment is photo winner

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6063862.stm
There are some pretty neat shots in here.

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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Geek Trivia: Space-opera singer

Oh this is just amusing!

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10881_11-6126712-2.html?tag=nl.e010

"In Season 1, Episode 9, "Tigh me up, Tigh me down," an operatic soundtrack underscores a particularly portentous scene. If you didn't recognize the particular aria, don't be surprised—composer Bear McCreary wrote it especially for that episode. Dubbed "Battlestar Operatica," this faux-epic has some notably humorous lyrics, provided you speak Italian.

...

What are the lyrics to the faux-aria "Battlestar Operatica," written specifically as a subtle in-joke for an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica television series?

Composer Bear McCreary gave permission to the Battlestar Wiki Web site to reprint these lyrics, which we quote below.

In Italian, the lyrics are:

Maledetto sia tuo cuore Cylone
C'è una tostapane nella tua testa
E porta tachi a spillo
Numero Sei ti chiama
Il rivelatore Cylone impone
La tua ragazza è un tostapane
Maledetto sia tuo cuore Cylone
Ahimè, disgrazia! Ahimè, tristezza e miseria!
Il tostapane ha un bel vestito
Rosso come la sua spina dorsale ardente
sussura Numero Sei:
"Per tuo commando"
Maledetto sia tuo cuore Cylone

This translates in English to:

Woe upon your Cylon heart
There's a toaster in your head
And it wears high heels
Number Six calls to you
The Cylon Detector beckons
Your girlfriend is a toaster
Woe upon your Cylon heart
Alas, disgrace! Alas, sadness and misery!
The toaster has a pretty dress
Red like its glowing spine
Number Six whispers:
"By your command"
Woe upon your Cylon heart

"

Friday, October 13, 2006

Fly Air Slovakia for Punjabi experience

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6047262.stm

This is just amusing!

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

whitney music box

http://www.coverpop.com/whitney/index.php?var=v0

Fun and Easy How to Guide to Binding Your Own Paperback Books At Home…FAST

http://www.persistenceunlimited.com/2006/03/fun-and-easy-how-to-guide-to-binding-your-own-paperback-books-at-homefast/

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'Dilbert' deserves the economics Nobel

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE57F0AA%2D03D9%2D4320%2DBC4D%2D83363B6372F6%7D&siteid=myyahoo&dist=myyahoo

In case the link dies, here's the most important part:

"Adams' secret nine-point formula was finally revealed in "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels." Notice its simple brilliance in the exact reproduction of his formula:
1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Adams boldly states that this is "everything you need to know about personal investing." In just 129 words, nine simple points, one page you have the unabridged "Unified Theory of Everything Financial." That's it. Everything!

Thanks to Adams' formula, the average irrational investor can ignore Wall Street: "Everything else you may want to do with your money is a bad idea compared to what's on my one-page summary. You want an annuity? It's worse. You want a whole life insurance policy? It's worse. You want to invest in individual stocks? It's worse. You want a managed mutual fund instead of an index fund? It's worse. I could go on, but you get the point." "

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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Chimps 'are people, too'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6036281.stm

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Jelly sparks toxic waste alert

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6035821.stm

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Ambassador, you are really spoiling us

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6034687.stm

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Giant camel fossil found in Syria

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6035113.stm

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Monday, October 09, 2006

Molecular spiders grab nanograss

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5413658.stm

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Outback driver caught in reverse

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5412814.stm

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Star Trek sale stuns auctioneers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4801631.stm

$500,000 for a model of the Enterprise-D?!? Wow!

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Elect opponent, US candidate says

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6031611.stm

I wonder if people are voting for him because they know he doesn't want the job. Poor guy.

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Friday, October 06, 2006

Teen repellent is Ig Nobel winner

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5411816.stm

See also... http://improbable.com/ig/

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How can limbo just be abolished?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5406552.stm

Its funny how people seem to forget that the principles of their faith were passed on by people and not always accurately no matter where in the line you think they may have originated God left out a lot of details that have been filled in over the years. Silly people.

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

'Monster' fossil find in Arctic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5403570.stm

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Black tea 'soothes away stress'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5405686.stm

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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

A Night at the Museum Sleepover | American Museum of Natural History

A Night at the Museum Sleepover American Museum of Natural History

What a neat idea!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

BBC NEWS | Americas | Armstrong 'got Moon quote right'

BBC NEWS Americas Armstrong 'got Moon quote right'

Something else I never thought about, but now that I have -"One small step for a man..." makes much more sense.

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BBC NEWS | In pictures: India's African communities, Mystery

BBC NEWS In pictures: India's African communities, Mystery

Wow. I wasn't aware of this at all, but now that I think about it I guess it makes ssense that such villages exist.

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