It's too good to be true: The Batman Equation.
This comment is hilarious:
In the Dark Knight Rises, Batman will add the TI-83 calculator to his arsenal. He'll whip that thing out and chuck it at the bad guy, it has serrated blades on both ends of it.
England fought back. Broad took a hat-trick to severely limit India's advantage. It follows that we got plenty of low scorers on the Indian side: Mukund 0, Dhoni 5, Singh 0, Kumar 0.
Rahul "The Wall" Dravid has had an exceptional series so far. The poor guy is just not getting enough support from the rest of the team. Laxman has been alright but Tendulkar has got to score big soon. India will have to bat in the fourth innings. Let's see how the Big Three manage.
These four players had a miserable day: AN Cook 2, IJL Trott 4, EJG Morgan 0, MJ Prior 1. England likely lost the game with those scores. I'd be mighty impressed if they win now. Dravid and Laxman are going to be at the crease on the 2nd day. It'd be nice if they pull off a Kolkata 2001 in the Test. The spectators will certainly get their money's worth.
Terrorism update via Infidels are cool:
The Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) militants killed a volunteer of local peace committee by tying his body to a vehicle and dragging it in Mann Talab area of Akkakhel in Khyber Agency of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on July 17, reports Dawn.
Peaceful resistance is appropriate when you're up against a people who respect human rights. Such is not the case in Pakistan.
Oslo police chief of staff Roger Andresen told the San Francisco Chronicle that the maximum prison term suspected killer Anders Behring Breivik could face is 21 years under Norwegian law.
I can understand arguments against the death penalty but a maximum limit of around two decades in jail? That's asinine. A mass murderer deserves, at the very least, life in prison.
Link via Damian Penny.
On the greatest cricketer of the modern age, Sachin Tendulkar:
Many players are capable of producing the occasional moment of brilliance but very few can sustain a level of performance that is truly outstanding for more than 20 years. This is not achieved through possessing a god-given talent; it is achieved through having a deep love of the game, a passion that drives you to regularly spend two hours quietly batting on your own away from the spotlight and millions of fans.
When he started playing international cricket, India weren't the best team in the world. They weren't even close. West Indies, Australia and Pakistan were the top three at the time.
Today, after two decades of professional cricket, his side is at the pinnacle. In a few short years they've won two World Cups and their Test ranking is number one.
I watched him on TV in the early 90s when he was just a baby-faced teenager. His talent and technique even then was truly exceptional. Along with over a billion Indians I will miss him too when he retires in the near future.
Muslim "child-marriage" — euphemism for pedophilia — is making headlines again, at least in Arabic media: Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, just issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married "even if they are in the cradle."
At least he's a consistent Muslim. He knows that by setting a reasonable minimum limit he'll indirectly condemn the evil man at the heart of Islam.
Fawzan insists that nowhere does Sharia set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relies on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam's role model, married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, "consummating" the marriage — or, in modern parlance, raping her — when she was 9.
And yet there are more than one billion people who "think" that Muhammad was a perfect man. To criticize him is to invite death.
Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light -- demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.
Dang. It would have been nice, though. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by going back and giving advice: Do not send money to that crazy Nigerian!
The Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer.
Nolan and his team have done a fantastic job on the series so far. If the third one is good, then it'll make for the best comic-based trilogy ever.
"We wish to tell our friends, the Malaysian Christians . . . if they respect us, we will also respect them," he told some 200 BN supporters at Kompleks Bunga Raya here.
"This is our message. Islam is fair to all. Islam is beautiful, Islam is grand, Islam is pure, Islam is noble."
The message doesn't match the action:
Putrajaya’s relationship with Christians remains strained following the Home Ministry’s decision to bar the Catholic Church here from using the word “Allah” in the Malay-language version of its newpaper, The Herald.
More:
Matters were further brought to a head when 35,100 Malay-language bibles were seized by the Home Ministry, causing outrage among the Christian community.
Can you imagine the global Islamic meltdown if the dirty infidels of a Western government were to take away Qurans from Muslims among their midst and then ask the Muslims to respect them? It sounds like a Monty Python skit.
Several other Ontario cities, such as London and Hamilton, also saw their hottest nights ever, said Environment Canada senior climatologist Dave Phillips.
"Back in the famous heat waves of the past you could always count on the nights cooling off so the body could build back," he said.
"What's becoming more characteristic of our kind of heat waves now is not so much the excruciating high temperatures, it's the elevated minimum temperatures."
Indeed, it does suck. Though, I have experienced far worse.
When I was eight years old in Saudi Arabia, I had to take a bus to school -- a Pakistani institution of cruelty to be honest. The school bus assigned to my route was not air conditioned. Along that route was a giant electronic billboard which displayed the time of the day and then the temperature in Celsius and then the time and so on.
One ultra hot day, the bus stopped at a traffic signal. I had my seat window open and I could see that billboard.
The time was 2:49 and then the "2:" disappeared!
Thanks to Tambi Dude who emailed this link:
Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice."
My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.
My grandparents were born in what's today called India. They migrated with their children to Pakistan. In hindsight, it wasn't a smart move.
Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.
That's strange to read because all my life Pakistan has been deteriorating relative to India but before 1980 quite a few people would go to Pakistan for work. I've met many in Canada who once worked in Karachi -- the largest city in Pakistan with a view of the Indian ocean.
The reversal in the fortunes of the two countries—India's sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal's unrealized utopia—is what explains the bitterness of my father's tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a part—a culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.
I can't remember a single Pakistani movie but I know the story lines of hundreds of Indian filims. Pakistan never had a unified culture. It was based on the foundation of a decrepit religion and that it seems is all they have. "We are Muslims, therefore we're awesome!"
It is noteworthy that Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni says that one who insults Muhammad must be killed, but not one who insults Allah. For all the indignant rejection by Muslims of the old term "Mohammedan," Islam is actually quite Muhammad-centric.
Indeed.
It's sad and funny at the same time.
The gif above is from this link where we get this comment:
May God kill the people who did this.Ameen.
You will be punish hard for this!.. Allahu Akbar.
There's a new rumor about the upcoming Nikon DSLRs.
It's basically: D4 + D800. Two full frame cameras. The D4 will likely sell for $5,000 and the D800 for $2,800. I'll be shocked if Nikon goes ahead with this strategy.
The more likely outcome: D4 + D400. The D400 will not be a full frame camera but it'll be less than half the price of the D4 which should make it a hot seller and likely the DSLR camera of the year.
We'll find out next month when Nikon will make their announcement of the next even generation DSLRs.
What the gamma needed here is Indifference Game, which is all about letting the wookie win. Did it matter what she said happened or didn't happen? Did he care one iota about the matter before she brought it up? It's hardly unheard of for women to say absolutely stupid and provably false things for no reason. So let them. You are not the Reality Police. Unless a woman has asked you to refine her mind or is showing an active interest in improving her capacity for reason, always leave her to her Happy Unicorn Land.
Wow. I've been doing that for quite a while -- leaving them in the HUL. Works like a charm.
Is there a way to get femininity back? For women and men to work productively side by side without sublimating their natural differences? If women return to acting feminine, and ultimately being feminine, will men respond positively?
They likely will which can't be said of some women:
“Feminine tone of voice? What the fuck is that? “Yes I’d love to make you dinner while rubbing your feet after your long day at work. Oh my poor, poor man!” Um…no.”
It takes me too much time to read a book than I initially think it would. Why? Work -- some of which I have to bring home, viewing blogs, keeping up with tech news, and so on eats a lot of time.
But now I have a few weeks off. I've been meaning to read a few books during the summer. I will go through some of Neal Stephenson's earlier work, for example, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I've read good things about John Keegan but haven't decided on which book to start with.
Earlier this year, I read The Lord of the Rings and now I want to start and finish The Chronicles of Narnia. Though, strangely, there's a lot of debate about in what order the series ought to be read. I'll stick to the publication order of the books.
It's cool and damn loud:
Even for non-fans of Batman, the infamous Batmobile has come in many different shapes and sizes and have all become synonymous with the ultimate dream car. Sure there are plenty of impressive replicas and models out there created by die-hard fans and enthusiasts, but Casey Patsch has created what he claims to be the first and only 'turbine-powered Batmobile' in the world.
Mental note: Do not pack the ingredients to this when travelling.
It just doesn't seem elegant.
Update
Would you believe it? The very next item I view on the net is this! I like it more, especially the part with Mario.
A nice two-second capture.
Munawar Hasan is the President of Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, the country's largest and most powerful pro-Sharia party. This video is not in English, unfortunately, but in it he says that a woman should not report being raped unless she has four male Muslim witnesses who saw the act.
Munawar Hasan, it seems, is being interviewed on a TV show in Pakistan. The language is, naturally, Urdu which I understand.
The interviewer repeatedly states the absurd logic behind the Islamic rape laws and says that DNA evidence and such ought to be enough for a rape conviction. The Islamist Hasan disagrees. He states, 02:43 to 02:46, that if a woman doesn't have the [four] witnesses, then she should remain silent.
That's another way of saying that rape is not a crime.
The interviewer persists and asks Hasan to explain his logic. Hasan, the sly Islamist, states, 03:30 to 03:35, that he's talking about Quran and Islamic law whereas the interviewer is arguing against the Quran and Islamic law and he wants to discourage that.
That's another way of saying that Hasan doesn't want anything, er, bad to happen to the interviewer since opposition to sharia can be very hazardous to one's health in Pakistan.
What do you see?
It seems that any monkey can be a photographer.
Farrah Khalil converted to Islam:
I read books explaining why men could have up to four wives and books about how the Holocaust was just one big lie (conspired by the Jews, of course). I read books about the life of Muhammad, Islam's final prophet, and how to emulate his life on a daily basis, like drinking in sips of three (this was better somehow) and allowing a fly to fall into your drink (apparently, fly wings cure diseases). I read about the "evil Jews" and the "infidel Christians" – Christians who erroneously thought Jesus was the Son of God.
However, certain events in her life made her see the truth. Here's the first one:
After spending an hour just looking, I decided to buy a single pink toothbrush. With purchase in hand, I got in line behind a man wearing a long, black robe. I was used to seeing people in long, black robes. The Middle East was full of people in long, black robes. Thus, I didn't bat an eye or furrow a brow at the man's outfit – until he began to speak. The robed man in front of me was telling the cashier about the wonderful bar mitzvah he had just attended. Bar mitzvah? My eyes immediately flew to the top of the man's head. How had I missed the yarmulke (Jewish skullcap)? I couldn't believe it! I was standing behind an "evil Jewish rabbi." Ironically, right as this thought entered my mind, the "evil Jewish rabbi" turned around and said, "Why don't you go ahead of me. You only have one thing."
To say that I was shocked is an understatement. Why was this "evil Jewish rabbi" being nice to me? Jewish people, especially rabbis, were supposed to be mean and nasty, weren't they? That's what I had been told. That's what I had read. In fact, more than one person in the Middle East warned me not to buy products that may have "passed" through Israel. Why? Well, it was quite obvious. Everyone knew that Jewish people poisoned food, especially baby food, that was on its way to Islamic nations. This was common knowledge, wasn't it?
Indeed. Jew-hatred is in the DNA of Islam. One can't be a good Muslim without loathing the Jews.
Farrah decided to learn about Muhammad and see just how "perfect" he really was:
Muhammad married a 6-year-old? Really? Muhammad had a pregnant woman killed for mocking him? Really? Muhammad had thousands of Jews killed and thrown in a mass grave? Really?
Yes, really. Amazing how much one can learn with a little research.
Advice Goddess via Instapundit:
Men "sexualize" women. Ladies, they want to have sex with you, your sister, your sister's friend, your sister's friend's friend, the cashier, the waitress, the lady with the big luscious ass who's crossing the street, and her sister and her sister's friend. If men weren't like this, the planet would be filled with plants and cockroaches instead of human beings.
If it is troubling to you to be sexualized, stay home, or only leave the house in a big black burka.
More:
Here's how this plays out for a woman whose entire existence doesn't revolve around being a victim, women as victims, and seeing men as victimizers of women every time they open their mouths or so much as salt their food:
A guy asks you out. You're not interested. Say, "Thanks, think I'm going to turn in." Forget it happened.
I don't think the core issue is that someone asked her out per se. It's likely she's upset that a nerd dweeb type personality had the nerve to approach her. If a Brad Pitt clone had asked her out, then she likely would have been flattered.
Women "forgive" a lot if you have looks and status but Lord help you if you're an average beta male and you cross the (oh so mysterious) line.
I've never spent much time considering how new ships are launched, beyond the traditional smashing of the champagne bottle against the bow. I guess I assumed most of them were simply rolled backwards into the water from a gently-sloped ramp. But as this video demonstrates, at least some of those big boats are simply tumped (look it up) into the water sideways, in a sort of sink-or-swim maneuver.
I want to see a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier put in water the same way.
Intikhab Alam, the manager of the Pakistan team, has said a small clique of players within the national side have interfered in the team's management, leaked confidential information and contributed to the divisive culture and controversies that have dogged Pakistan cricket in the last few years.
"There were times when, 15 minutes after a team meeting, television channels were running tickers about things that happened or were discussed in the meeting," Intikhab told GEO Super, a local television channel.
I bet some Pakistani players were being paid by the media to provide juicy details about the team meetings. It's not like one has to pay them a lot.
But this time in America!
A very interesting look at Apple's strategy:
Apple is not just crushing its rivals through superiority in design, Steve Jobs's deep experience in hardware mass production (early Apple, NeXT) has been brought to bear in creating an unrivaled exclusive supply chain of advanced technology literally years ahead of anyone else on the planet. If it feels like new Apple products appear futuristic, it is because Apple really is sending back technology from the future.
We've been using the USB 2.0 standard for a decade now. A few years ago, Apple went to Intel and pushed them to create a standard with incredible bandwidth throughput. Finally, this year that new standard was unveiled -- it's called Thunderbolt.
Of course, one can only get Thunderbolt ports with Apple products today. We won't see this on PCs till 2012.
Link via Code Monkey Ramblings.
Karl Denninger provides a summary of the recent past:
First, we build a Ponzi in the tech industry. Companies with no profit (and no reasonable expectation of ever having one) sell for hundreds of dollars a share, get 100% (or more) first-day price ramps and then, when the bubble bursts, crashes.
Not content to accept that we built a Ponzi Bubble in tech during a Democrat Presidency, and that the fluff had to come out of the economy, we do it again under a Republican one, this time in houses. This culminates in giving people $500,000 loans with no income, no job and no assets, creating price ramps of 100% or more in significant parts of the economy. At the same time we accelerate the offshoring of our job base to an insane degree, decimating the tax base.
The situation has been made worse in the last three years. The inevitable crash will come -- the great depression of our time. The only question is: When?
The audio here ruins one of the greatest action scenes of the 90s.
Also, this isn't a remix but a sad, sorry ripoff. Who knew that in India, Akshay Kumar is the one!
A reader story at The Thinking Housewife:
Thirty years (and another life) ago, I sent my firstborn, a boy, to a “gender-free” preschool. One of the ‘gender-free” features was that the boys and the girls took turns arranging the daily snack and serving each other, nutritious and sugar-free, of course.
I went there one day, the reason now long forgotten. What I saw when I arrived, however, has stayed with me – is “seared in my memory”, as non-president Kerry would put it. The girls had appropriated the pitcher and cups, and were in the corner having a proper tea party. The boys had taken all the bananas, and were chasing each other around the room, “bang, bang” using the bananas as guns.
But some continue to believe in one of the most strangest ideas: Males and females are equal. The only difference is their physical construct.
Therefore when one sees unequal numbers of women in a profession, it has to be because of discrimination, sexism and, of course, the patriarchy. Such people who think this way are filled with rage and anger. It rarely occurs to them that their premise is false. Men and women are not equal. Their behavior is so dissimilar. What attracts them is not the same. It would be ludicrous to think that with so many varied jobs and arenas, men and women ought to be equally distributed in each one.
But that's exactly what some dim people think. They'll be perpetually miserable unless they accept the truth.
He seems to be ... grinning!
The music is meh but the manner of its creation is A+.