Saturday, October 18, 2008

Decision to vote

Well the elections to choose the next president are fast approaching and so far, we have had three debates that have focused on topics of little importance. Senator Obama connected to Ayers and ACORN and all kinds of radical groups, i guess the neo conservative establishment got tired with the Muslim terrorist angle. Senator McCain being too old and not focused on the right issues like economy and portraying Barack Obama in a highly negative fashion? Yes, all these accusations have been flying around. Dave Letterman joined in for a bit with some truly hilarious outakes on Senator McCain and Sarah Palin!

Who do I think will win this election? Well, if you asked me that question a month back, I would have said John McCain by a narrow margin, Right now, Obama has the best bet of uniting both parties and gaining support from formerly Republican fortress states. McCain unfortunately, has probably lost nearly all the 'Hillary women' votes plus nearly all Democratic votes by his pretty strong negative rhetoric of Obama which for all intents and purposes, has become personal.

The Troopergate Scandal, SNL and countless interviews and conservative op-eds have dampened Sarah Palin's initial fireworks if I might use the word. She started out as a possible Hillary Clinton wannabe who could bring a lot of female votes for McCain but strangely enough, I do not feel that she is experienced enough. There are certain pre requisites to becoming a vice president and since she has a good chance of becoming president, not knowing what American foreign policy has been a.k.a Bush Doctrine and ignorance of basic geography can be a great hindrance to the nation.

Right now, America needs a tough leader who can unite the nation under one flag and not under Red and Blue states. A nation that can stop its pointless political bickering, strengthen the economy and pursue better relations with the world. Easier said than done but President Bush has made life difficult for the next president and whether it will be Barack Obama or John McCain, it is imperative that we support whoever wins!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Kill me Ando

just finished watching the fifth episode of Heroes. I have to say, one of the main reasons Heroes rocks is because it is so unpredictable. Hiro killing Ando, Angela Petrelli's husband in control of a rival company, a hero with vortex powers!!! The amazing bit is Sylar who is apparently reformed.....well i guess he might be hiding something. The worst bit was the Hiro killing Ando, oh cmon Hiro could have run away for all i care, why THE HELL did he have to kill his best friend, his only friend!

Oh yea and Mohinder Suresh, ouch..that guy definitely did not have the genes to be a hero, got some crazy power....some spiderman power. Great to see Maya has controlled her power, although it really came at the wrong time cause she should have killed Mohinder, lets see how everything goes though. Heroes is all about prophecies although the second season did not have many bad omens. I guess the second season was all about getting together, realising potential after the climatic events of the first where New York City was nearly blown up.

People keep asking, why is Heroes such a big hit unlike other special ability series like Mutant X? well, mutant x had a similar storyline BUT there was never really any character development and the storyline kinda dragged on with the same recurring theme....which was fighting some evil company. Heroes does have that theme but there are sooooo many sub plots which culimate into one huge climax....thats where Heroes is different. It isnt so evil to have a real bad ass in Sylar too. Heroes will air for at least five seasons but hopefully, it will go on and on and on....ranks right up there with my all time favourites.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Vibrating strings of matter

String theory, the theory of strings, M-theory (god knows what the M stands for). These are all names of a scientific principle that has yet to be proven, see the oxymoron here? String theory explains that matter is actually vibrating strands of energy and are classified as either open or closed. Based on their vibrations, they give rise to properties of matter like the charge of an electron. Sounds just about insane and after twenty years of intense research by some of the finest minds in theoretical physics, I would have to agree.

What is wrong with String theory and why has it not been proven yet? Well proving string theory may be a bit hard because of the fact that strings are a billion times smaller than the smallest thing a physicist can think of and that is SMALL! Secondly, the equations of string theory contains an infinite amount of solutions??!! WHAT??! NO WAY! yes..it does! The hard part is figuring out which one suits our universe the best, might take a while to figure that one out. The mathematics of string theory is also pretty challenging, in fact it is so challenging that they probably need a whole new branch of mathematics for it!

As a college physics student, I always thought that something was fishy about strings. Firstly, it does not predict anything, all it does is try to combine quantum mechanics and relativity. Is that so hard? Well look at it this way. Quantum mechanics explains the behaviour of the very small while relativity explains the behaviour of the very large. Quantum mechanics is filled with uncertainty and relativity relies on exact predictability. Its like oil and water, well not quite because it isnt impossible....well at least we all hope so! String theory is a bit like me during study revision taking a peek at the answer and then trying to build towards it, not caring whether or not the method is acceptable as long as I get the answer. And the scary thing is no one wants to give up just yet, the very nature of string theory requires drastic revisions to our current thinking about the cosmos like eleven dimesions, gravitons, Calabi Yau manifolds etc etc. Yea, it is a strange theory, well if it does fail, what a waste. Twenty years and some of the finest minds wasted on some wild goose chase that kept on going in desperation.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Censoring my eyes and ears a.k.a the Internet

What can we do without the Internet? Well, according to some Amish folk, a lot! Well I love the Internet because it is the free-est form of information there is.....well obviously if you end up in Fox News or Hate [insert hate object here]. com, you may be surprised. But hey, for the most part....a person who generally knows his way around the Web can find a host of free, unbiased IN YOUR FACE material. Then again, there are doomsayers who think otherwise.....they believe that the Internet will soon be controlled by a shady group of individuals bent on world domination and enslavery.......

Surfing through Google News, one can find over a thousand, THOUSAND articles on a particular news topic, a hundred thousand if its on Paris Hilton. So many people writing about a newsarticle, there is a high probability that there are some truths in each of those articles, so from that, you can piece together the information on what really happened. People say countries block people from seeing certain websites....countries have been so brazen as to ban Myspace and even Facebook....youtube in some cases! What is the world coming to? Then again, im guessing blogs have been blogged, bloggers beaten to death for spreading information......why is that? Countries may try and block sites BUT people have their ways of getting info......and no, it does not involve bribing or blackmail. Im talking about proxies.....ohh yeaa its the God of free information and entertainment if you know what i mean.

Countries may be able to block websites but at what cost? A country like Burma would have to literally stop providing Internet to their people........in other words, you may be able to block what people see, but you cannot CONTROL THE INTERNET. controlling the internet means blocking posts by bloggers, stopping videos just before upload completion etc.....even if the most powerful company bought the whole Internet, it is way to vast to control. There will always be a site or blog or article that will diss them. Yes, the Internet has grown and in ways unimaginable to some of us, it is a universe of information and you cannot stop its continued growth or ever hope to control all of it. A good example is Google; you type in google sucks and the first site it takes you to is googlesux.com.......this tells me that there are still companies out there who want to preserve the freedom of the Internet.......long live my eyes and ears of the world. the World Wide Web

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Where are the little green men and my picnic baskets?

Aye, i want an answer....an answer to who stole my picnic baskets? couldnt have been yogi bear cause he cant be in every country of the world. So i believe it was aliens who stole my picnic baskets.....the little green men in flying saucers with ray guns and ways to make u fly. Such a cliched statement is it not?

Aliens have been hounding us for centuries, oh wait, alien sightings and UFOs. are they really out there? Do they really abduct us and perform weird sexual experiments on us.......i dunno but ill try and answer those questions. Firstly, its a bit hard to believe that ET is out there, teasing us with the occasional appearance. If aliens do exist, why do they keep coming in small bursts and disappearing after the photo shoot? might as well hover for an hour over New York and end the pointless speculation? Secondly, why does every alien have to be small, green with large black eyes and a thin frame.....i would put on my bet on different races of aliens.....u know white black yellow whatever....and they cant all be thin! Some of them gotta eat too eh?!! The point is its kinda easy to disprove 99% of alien sightings simply on the fact that all the sightings are too common to each other, same alien bodies, same flying saucer story and the occasional anal probing without lubricant for abductees.

Of course, Hollywood seems to have jumped on the bandwagon and released hundreds of movies and TV shows.....and fortunately most of them were miserable failures. Fortunately cause a man can only watch a certain amount of alien movies before going totally insane! The flying saucer story caught my eye because i always thought, out of all the cool, mad shapes and technology, why the HELL would aliens use a flying saucer......there was a doco out sometime back on reverse engineering an alien spacecraft (hypothetical situation). An aerospace engineer pointed out that a flying saucer, shaped as it is, would be pretty darn useless and not easy to fly, hmm....intelligent alien creatures that can travel at light speed and or create wormholes, but cant construct an efficient flying spacecraft!

I have never seen or met an alien and honestly, i reckon the number of alien sightings are decreasing.....havent heard many this year! might be a good sign that we wont get invaded in the new future.........ahhhhh thats great news for me cause i can still plan my trip to the Bahamas in 10 years time. well ciao and peace out!

Monday, October 6, 2008

The art of couch potato-ing

There is nothing better to do than sit ur ass on the couch, switch on the TV and have a huge bowl of potato and / or pizza with you....oops did i forget the occasional coke bottle. Yes, that is how we watch television these days, in fact i doubt many of us could watch through a film without eating something.....and yes, garlic bread while watching terminator is not something to envy. But is it so much of a disease? Would the process of saying 'hang on, i cant watch a Steven Seagal movie without pizza' actually an illness?

Alrite, lets cut to the chase.....ppl say obese people spend too much time on the couch. well thats true but what do they do on the couch......watch TV!!! so tv has a link to obesity.....now you might say, wow einstein...how did u figure that one out, i am so totally impressed with ur sherlock holmes like logc! honestly, i think being a person who watches tv while eating a snack cannot be classified as a link to obesity.....look im sure everyone of us eats food at times while watching a movie....but not all of us are fat!

There are things called exercise, work, walking around that all factors in....i hate it how ppl say ohh u sit on the couch and eat stuff, ur fat or ur leading an unhealthy lifestyle! So next time the doc or ur parents tell u, dont be a couch potato, u tell them that hey, just because i sit next to the tv and eat doesnt mean that i will be fat.......unless u are already fat which......can create a bit of a problem. So to conclude, exercise, do ur normal stuff BUT DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SIT ON THE COUCH AND EAT UR FAVOURITE PIZZA AND CHOCOLATE FUDGE......

Friday, October 3, 2008

Science for all the right reasons

ever held a calculator in your life? if you say no, i understand. apparently there are quite a few people in the world who have NOT held a calculator in their life. There are also quite a few people who have not flown on a plane, had a needle poked in their ass and watched TV. it got me thinking.....sometimes we take things for granted. yes, im talking about all those ppl who seem to have a bone to pick with science. Science is polluting, science is not perfect...and blah blah. The same people who use a calculator and drive a car will tell you that man and dinosaur coexisted a thousand years ago, YES A THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

I came across a blog which asked the question....can religion and science coexist peacefully? the answer is no....no because religion depends on faith and science depends on evidence. No because religion is a sort of dictatorship where your lives are controlled by an all powerful God who seems to detest his subjects ever learning things. Hell, they should have added a sentence in the holy books saying 'God does not want you to learn but rather, he wants you to bow and serve him at all times'.

There was a time when I used to be scared of swearing in case the man upstairs was listening, there was a time when I used to put the mat on the floor, sit down and pray fervently. There was a time when I used to recite a small prayer that my mom told me to say when I heard things in the dark. Not anymore, now I just listen to reason and logic. We will always have religion because man fears death and the unknown......if we conquer death, religion may eventually disappear, until then......the so called clash of ideas will continue.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

waking up to the sound of blowing horns and shaking TV

well, today I managed to watch an episode of Fringe, the latest TV series by JJ Abrams about pseudoscience (weird experiments on mind reading, teleportation etc). Seems like heroes without the hot chicks and X-Files without the spooky music but hey, beats watching shows that clearly are past their prime....yes im talking about Lost and prison break. One thing i have to bring up about Fringe is the seemingly angry look on Olivia Dunham's face (Anna Torv), she looks like she swallowed dog shit, i mean CMON, have a more joyful expression on your face. Apart from that, the show has its exciting moments coupled with bouts of insanity and utter confusion; im talking about the parts where Dr.Bishop starts explaining his weird experiments..............

Ok, lets move on a bit. Well, the news seems to be filled with Senator Obama having a lead over Senator McCain. Wow, now was that really a surprise? Obama has spent the last few months with his 'yes we can' messages and how McCain is simply Bush version 3. People keep saying that experience matters when choosing your candidate, thats UTTER BOLLOCKS! both the candidates have not been president before, how could one possibly say that the other is inexperienced....being president is totally different from being a relatively insignificant senator who just goes with his respective party and occasionally helps form a new bill! The thing that will shape this election is economy, race (anyone who says otherwise is just trying to be politically correct) and foreign policy. Lets face it, we are the most hated people on the planet and i really do hope the next president can help people like us more, ohhh god im sounding a child yearning for his mother! im also looking forward to the VP debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, seems like the bets are flying on who will make the first goof up....i wont reveal my bet due to reasons of impartiality.

well, i gotta pack up and head to college now, s'long folks.