How True, Dr. Asimov

I am now re-reading Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves published in 1972. The events in the book take place in 2100 AD. A maverick scientist is warning a resistant establishment about his discovery of the dangers of Inter-Universe Electron Pumping, a new found supply of abundant free and clean energy that had revolutionized humanity. He wanted it abandoned. This is his exchange with a senator in the International Congress.

"It is a mistake," [the senator] said, "to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience with in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines."

Inter-Universe Electron Pumping is not a danger to humanity as MANBEARPIG is though :).

The World Won't Blow Up and Here's Why

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

Freedom Fry — "Happy birthday to GNU"

I was introduced by my brother to Stephen Fry, an English humorist, actor, novelist and filmmaker. He presents a show on the BBC called Q.I. (Quite Interesting). Allan Davies, the "permanently installed guest", is one of the funniest comedians I've ever seen. Fry is featured in a short film that celebrates the 25th anniversary of the GNU operating system and talks about free software. Free as in "free speech", not "free beer". See link for video and more information.

Back from the Lake

This picture should sum it up. I miss it already.

Photographing the Science Museum

I took dozens of pictures at the Smithsonian National Museums (Air and Space, and Natural History) this summer when my parents were visiting. I enjoyed it so much that I nearly declared taking photographs in science museums an official hobby. I love taking my time at museums. Having a camera in my hand establishes that and gives me an excuse to linger and wander around. I came across this article about photographing the science museum (via Boing Boing) that gave me a lot of validation. I promise to put more pictures up from previous and (hopefully) future trips. Here's a link to the set.

Music City Star

Juggling for Jugs

I will be running in the Komen Race for the Cure with the Juggling for Jugs team. Please join us or support this very good cause by donating here.

Nashville is Second Least Walkable City in America

Second after Jacksonville. Yay Nashville.

Hat tip, Akarael.

Location

I Have a New Toy

... and it is awesome.

Foreign Grad Student

Get Firefox 3

White People and Bumper Stickers

Stuff White People Like

When a white person drives an older car (6+ years old) that has a resale value under $2000, they will coat the entire backside of the car in bumper stickers. Because of the abundance of space they are free to include stickers from all areas of white support: music, politics, the environment, insults to right wing politicians, and various movements that tell people to keep a city 'weird'.

But when white people have a nice new car such as a Prius or an Audi station wagon, the fear of losing resale value prevents them from applying more than one sticker. Therefore that one sticker must properly capture the essence of the car and the political views of the driver.

I feel lame... my choice of the one bumper sticker is WPLN... and it's hanging on an SUV...

Rambo Sambo is Nashville's Starbuck

That's a combined Roller Derby - Battlestar Galactica reference for ya. Yesterday, we blew away Atlanta 150-65. Rambo Sambo (ramb0 samb0) is my favorite athlete in Nashville. Fullstop. I love how she towers behind the other jammer when - rarely - she's behind and intimidates them. She did that with those tiny devils from Alabama. She also has great spirit and showmanship. I happened to be ringside in the second jam of the third period when she "pulled off" umm... a stunt. I was *gay voice* ecstaaaaatic! After the show my girlfriend, because she is the awesomest girlfriend in the world, asked her for a picture with me. This picture will hit the web soon

ps: I'm deliberately not blogging here about the shituation in Lebanon. I am not in the mood for negativity and comment wars.

pps: Here's the picture

I'm Going to See HER Today

Third world democracy. Represent.

Dog Mauled by Stray Dogs

Oh man. Meerah and I were walking this morning when we ran into a woman who witnessed two stray dogs (one of which is probably a pit bull) attack a medium size one. The poor dog was still there wrapped in a blanket. It was bleeding and was not able to move. When I was talking to her, animal control came and took the dog away. She will follow up on its situation, but I think that they will have to put it down. It is a brown-yellow medium size dog with a red collar and no tag. The exact location of where we found it is on the map below. I should have taken a picture to hopefully help the owners find it and rescue it. The two stray dogs had wandered off, and another animal control unit was looking for them. Very sad.

View Larger Map

This is Where I Work

Sorry for not blogging.

This is Eskind Biomedical Library

It's Snows in the South Too Y'all

Leaving Town for the Weekend

Short personal note: I'll be out of town, and possibly out of cell phone range for this weekend, on a small get-away trip. Check out Jude's eclipse photos taken from Edwin Warner Park area. Cheers.

Don't Miss the Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

This hemisphere will see a complete eclipse tomorrow, Wednesday February 20, the last one before December 2010. The partial eclipse will begin at 7:50pm. The total eclipse will start at 9:01pm and end at 9:51pm (CST). I want to be outside to watch it, might go to Lover's Circle or even Edwin Warner as one of my friends wants to take pictures with her fancy SLR. The Adventure Science Center will be open with telescopes. Hope you enjoy it.

Progress to Reach Bell's Bend

Please sir, don't turn Bell's Bend into concrete. [Where Meerah and I have been spending Sundays recently with human and canine friends]. The developers proudly proclaim that:

Their vision includes an amphitheater, a hotel, stores, condos and offices clustered around a central area designed to attract corporate headquarters.

... BUT they need a little help from the governement...

Access to the area also may prove to be a problem. May's proposal is contingent on the construction of a new bridge across the Cumberland and a new interchange with Interstate 40, projects that would need government approval and funding.

... more details (emphasis mine)...

The developers' $4 billion concept, called May Town Center, would create a dense commercial and residential district near the southern end of the Bells Bend area.

It calls for building up to 5,000 townhouses and condos and at least 5 million square feet of office space mixed in with street-level stores. A hotel would stand at the center of the development, and four building sites for corporate headquarters would be created on its western end.

Construction would cover 453 acres, leaving 981 acres as a conservation area. That area would be connected to the 808-acre Bells Bend Park, which lies to the west. Equestrian, bicycle and footpaths also would connect May Town Center to areas to the north.

The design is meant to preserve as much of Bells Bend as possible while giving Nashville a new site to attract big corporate development in the same way that Cool Springs has drawn companies to Williamson County, said Giarratana, whom May hired to advise him on the project.

Yes, just like Cool Springs! I can't wait to have a place with a unique character that doesn't look like anything else in the United States. I'm a techie, a scientist, and an avid believer in the boundless opportunities of human ingenuity, but somehow this doesn't strike me as progress. Sorry. I do also have a strong libertarian streak. That's why I can't really understand how building and maintaining expensive roads and bridges to nowhere [to seed economic growth and tax base expansion, i know i know] isn't a form of government community engineering. I really can't see how subsidizing such endeavors helps existing and neighboring communities. I'm not saying it's necessarily harmful or wrong. I'm just pointing that increasing land value, expanding the tax base, and creating jobs aren't sufficient indicators of the future wellbeing of the existing population there, also known as the current constituency.

My argument is stupid, of course, if we assume that the goal of local governments is to swap the existing constituencies that elected them with others that are more willing to produce and to consume.

Wi Free Market Tip for Nashville

I have a mathematical-spatial brain that is good at detecting trends and patterns. I have stumbled upon a discovery that can make money to anyone with good taste and capital in our fair city of Nashville. I would have kept it to myself, but I don't have the time or capital. Plus, there is this small issue of a dissertation in progress. Ready? Here goes:

The Hillsboro / West End / Vandy / Belmont area is ready for more coffeeshops with wireless internet

Bongo Java is always full. Fido is worse with no wall outlets, a probably calculated move to keep a constant turn-around of "campers" (their word, not mine) who will eventually have to go somewhere to charge their batteries. JJ's is my favorite, but they suffer from poor lighting. They do have a lot of extension power cords. Their staff are awesome: friendly, laid back, and foregoing a lot of the pretensions that are requisites for high profile jobs like front men/women in the Bongo Java empire. No shticks, no hipster mullets or skinny jeans, no checking people out or dressing to be checked out... just a bunch of people typing away quietly on their laptops sipping on caffeinated beverages, or enjoying quiet conversations over excellent beer or tea. Also, unlike other places, they let you open a tap i.e. they don't see you as a one-transaction customer. There are others such as: Portland Brew, Frothy Monkey, Cafe Coco.

I'm not dissing the existing establishments. I am also realistic and aware that the dissertation writing, online-poker-playing, study-group forming crowd is only part of the market. You see all sorts of people there: chess playing geeks, post-church sunday brunch crowd, let's make our Saturday-night regular hookups public now crowd, music business folks, real estate business folks, meet-up.com and moveon.org political meetings (so 2004 btw), awkward first meeting match.com folks... These establishments are doing their best catering to everyone while making a decent profit. If you don your laptop backpack to Fido during weekend brunch time, then you either have Asperger Syndrome or are the kind of person who spends 2 hours making yourself look good-without-appearing-to-have-spent-that-much-time-on-your-looks before going out to "study".

I'm just saying, there is room for expansion. Demand is clearly more than supply. Trust me. You broadcast it (802.11g signal), and they will come.

Who Needs the Nanny State

First of all, we're all fine. No tornadoes touched down near us.

So we've had an old couch, that we had to retire to the front porch once a new roommate moved in with his nicer, comfier, couch that is not riddled with holes. It was nice having it out there in the fall. I had a few afternoon naps on it. It's really ugly though, not to mention that keeping it out on the porch conjured regional stereotypes. So we decided to get rid of it. We carried it out to the curbside yesterday morning. I went back inside and ended up napping for 2 more hours. When I woke up, I remembered to call Metro Public Works to schedule a free bulk item pick up. After being on hold for 10 minutes, I gave the information and all was set. They said it should be picked up within 5 business days starting the next day (today). AS SOON AS I hung up, I looked outside to find that THE COUCH WAS TAKEN! Who would have guessed that giving your stuff away for free is faster and more efficient than calling the government?! Actually, it was probably taken by other starving grad students who could use a bed/sofa. Here's a thought, don't subsidize higher education, so you save money on tuition AND on bulk item pick up. Don't under estimate the resourcefulness of graduate students. That's all I'm saying.

Seriously though. I think that Nashville Metro is a very progressive local government. From curbside recycling to the array of metro parks (including the little known Bell's Bend Park - where Meerah and I have been spending Sunday afternoons) and their Nature Centers.

When Your Roots Hurt

I was very busy in the last couple of weeks for me to properly update this blog. Something weird happened to me today upon hearing of the news from Lebanon. I stopped caring. I just don't care either way. Really. The only thing I care about is the safety and well being of my family and friends there. Other than that I am completely apathetic about the entire country. The Syrians and their hoodlum can have it. Same goes to the Israelis and their war machine. Sa7tein. I am neither angry nor scared. I am numb. The Lebanese have treated each other (17 years of un-civil war) and others (Sri Lankan maids, Palestinian civilians, Syrian migrant workers) so badly that the country is made to suffer. Even the environment is plundered. Last time I visited, I couldn't find a green spot away from noise and pollution to show off to my tourist friends! We went to the top of Mount Sannine. There was an empty restaurant there that was blasting Najwa Karam all night all the way into the hotel rooms! I was livid! What goes around comes around. Everyone pays for their sin somehow. The very sad thing for me is not having seen my family in long time. I miss all of them a lot.

Update: When your mother gives you tough love on not giving up on your country, you listen. I humbly see the folly of some of the sentiments above, especially the scratched part. They've seen much worse than I have, AND they still live there without their children, YET they haven't given up... Who am I to whine.

My New Brain Extension

So I finally got it! It took around 10 days to build. It was shipped from HONG KONG last Saturday. It was in SOUTH KOREA on Sunday night, and in ANCHORAGE, ALASKA on Monday evening. When I went to bed on Monday, it was en route to some American airport. I thought that if I was lucky, I would get it by Wednesday. My roommate's estimate was gloomier, estimating the arrival on Friday. I woke up on Tuesday morning, and as usual, I tracked the package (which I had bookmarked). To my surprise, IT WAS OUT FOR DELIVERY! It landed in LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY a little after midnight, and was on a truck to NASHVILLE shortly thereafter. It arrived at dawn and was out to delivery. It was in my hands at 10:30am. I have to say that I'm really amazed by UPS. Thank you UPS!

My thoughts so far on the Lenovo IBM T61 Thinkpad: The screen resolution and image crispness is very good. I use 1680x1050 resolution. It did not ship with any recovery CDs. Thinkpads have this feature called ThinkVantage. They store the OS (in my case Xp Professional) and drivers and other utilities in a separate partition. You can boot from that partition and do various recovery and backup stuff. You can, if you want, wipe the active partition and restore it to factory settings (i.e. clean install of OS). I am not too comfortable with this setup. What if I buy a new hard drive? I think you can pay for the software to be shipped to you if you need to. I love the keyboard size and the rebound of the keys. The whole ThinkVantage(tm) suite of utilities seemed complicated at first but grew on me. The connection management stuff (wireless profiles etc.) were good enough for me to use instead of the native Windows applications. The 15.4" screen makes the whole thing heavy, but I am okay with it. Overall, I like it very much so far and would recommend switching to Lenovo from DELL like I did.

I am working on a post with all the software installs and customizations that I do for every computer I own.

Computer Woes Turned Opportunity

Last month, my laptop (DELL Inspiron 600m) seemingly kicked the bucket. It wouldn't power up, and when it did, it didn't boot. There were hard disk errors, affecting the Windows files. After further troubleshooting, I found an independent power problem. The battery was charging, but pressing the power button didn't seem to power it up, not even the BIOS screen was showing. This power problem had started back in October. It occured roughly around 1 in every 10 times I turned it on. It become more frequent and more consistent over the next couple of months.

As for the hard drive, retardedly, there were some research related stuff on the laptop that I had not backed up. Luckily, it was not affected by the hard drive errors. I took the drive out and copied that stuff out of it using a USB enclosure.

So I was resigned to my fate over the holiday. After all, I did not have a single problem with it since I bought it in May 2004. Khadam 3askareeto (=it served its military service) as we say in Arabic. It didn't take me long, though, after I came back to work to realize that I needed to buy a new laptop. I thought I can tough it out over the next few months and reward myself later for finishing a PhD milestone or something. By then, I would have saved enough money for another one. I am teaching Matlab (applied math software) this month and that requires that I have this software up and running in class (on a laptop). My boss loaned me one of the labs' laptops to prepare lectures and use in class, but I already feel extreeeeemely uncomfortable with that. Objects that don't belong to you, usually have a higher probability of breaking or being stolen. Basic Murphy's Law Thermodynamics. Especially if they belong to someone who has absolute power over your graduation outcome. I took this laptop home to finish preparing for Friday's lecture. It was housed in a very padded laptop case, but I was so paranoid that I set it horizontally on the passenger seat cushion, padded on all sides. I also drove reaaaally slowly over pot holes for fear of "shaking it up."

Being captive to my desktop at work was also getting to me. As a graduate student hoping to finish his PhD this year while working part-time for an unrelated grant... and teaching, my day doesn't typically end at 5pm. It's a hassle coming back to the office after dinner just so I can use a computer. So I broke down and bought a new laptop on Wednesday: IBM Thinkpad T61 with Inter Core 2 Duo T7500, 2 Gbs of RAM, 15.4 wide inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050 resolution), 100Gb HD, DVD-burner, Bluetooth, and NVidia Quadro NVS 140M (128MB) graphics card. Hello neighorhood coffeeshop with free wifi! I can join the ranks of hipsters again! Of course I have been checking the order status every 10 minutes until it ships, which the website says will happen on January 28! It will probably ship earlier, and Lenovo is simply covering their asses with respect to timing.

Then, after I placed my order, the old laptop powered up! I repartitioned the drive and installed Windows again. It's still extremely unreliable as far as choosing or not choosing to power up, but at least when it does, it boots a clean install of Windows. I don't encounter the power problem when I restart from within Windows. I will keep it running all the time, and leave it in my cube as a second desktop for testing/debugging stuff. Definitely won't rely on its failing hard drive.

The Road Trip Served Its Purpose

We had a great time. The road trip was exactly what I needed: getting away from my everyday life to get perspective on goals, life, work, etc. The drive was not bad either. I clocked around 2500 miles. I am compiling my gas receipts to figure out the mileage, but roughly my gas guzzler SUV was doing around 18 MPG. It's so easy packing for a road trip. Over-packing is NOT a problem. Carrying your girlfriend's ginormous suitcase up and down stairs is. You have to budget for a massage after the trip for that.

In New York, we stayed with my childhood BFF who lives in Middletown. My other childhood BFF flew in with his wife and stayed with her family in Manhattan. Naturally we drove everyday down to Manhattan... around 75 miles each way. Parking in the city was surprisingly easy on weekends. It wasn't so easy on Friday afternoon. I ended up parking the car in a garage operated by a blunt guy with a Russian accent. The way they vertically stack cars in parking lots in Manhattan freaks me out. I wasn't comfortable relinquishing my keys at all. To make things worse, we were hungry that afternoon and decided to have a late lunch at a place called "Burrito Loco" in Greenwich Village. I was told that I sounded like a grumpy midwestern dad that afternoon, complaining about slow service [or complete lack thereof] and portion sizes [literally 6 tortilla chips in an order of Nachos!] [and they charge for coke refills!], all while complaining about the cost of parking my SUV [16 cents-a-minute!].

Speaking of bad restaurants, our worst culinary experience happened in Scranton, PA, yes the imaginary location of The Office. I thought people there were friendly and quirky, just like they are in reality on TV. We wanted a quick stop on our way from Cleveland to Middletown. Although we were slightly running late, we decided to risk a delay in a nicer restaurant in Scranton rather than some generic roadside fast food joint. The internets on my GF's phone suggested a good Indian Restaurant called New Amber that got good reviews. So we called-in for directions and got off the interstate. We were there at 7:00pm. The hostess asked us to wait to be seated. We thought that was odd CONSIDERING THAT LESS THAN HALF OF THE TABLES WERE OCCUPIED. At 7:20 [20 minutes later!] we were still in the waiting area. It was just the two of us and the hostess who was shining wine glasses behind the empty bar. Angry-midwestern-dad-slash-Lebanese-male-with-short-temper stands up, pokes his head into the dining area and mentions something really loud to his girlfriend wondering about the delay. Luckily the hostess got the message and said that no booths were available, but she could seat us at a table. Booth?! Who said anything about a BOOTH?! We politely inform her that we would sit anywhere because we need to be back on the road. At 7:30, she takes our order, shortly thereafter, my Mango Lasse and the generic complimentary dip and bread thing arrives. At 7:50 the couple next to us were getting ansy and talked about getting a waiters attention. We asked them what the problem was. They had finished their food a long while ago but no one had come by to give them the check. The man stands up and goes up front to talk to the hostess. She follows him with the check a few minutes later. He had his credit card ready, and puts it in the folder while she was there to expedite the process. She PUTS THE FOLDER DOWN AND INSTEAD STARTS CLEARING THE DISHES FROM THE TABLE AND LEAVES. We all look at each other in disbelief. They decide not to wait anymore and stand up to pay the bill up front or something. They wish us a happy new year and I respond by saying that we will probably be still there to celebrate new year's eve. At 8:15 we were still waiting on our order. Fourty five minutes have passed and the appetizers still haven't arrived! We were starving. The mango lasse glass was clear from my sucking on every bit of goodness in it, and there were no more bread crumbs left because we had used our sticky fingertips to pick up every remaining grain on the plate. There were 4-5 other full tables at that point, and whenever the waiters emerged from the kitchen they walked around hurriedly, did whatever they had to do, and went back in. They were MASTERS at avoiding eye contact. At that point I wasn't just making eye contact. I was sitting sideways in my chair, right arms resting on the back of the chair, glaring, and waiving my left arm. Finally one waiter comes by and asks us whether someone had taken our order already! My girlfriend was explaining the situation and I rudely interrupt her to tell the guy more bluntly: "listen, we've been here for 1 hour and fifteen minutes and we haven't seen the appetizers yet. We are in a hurry and if the order has not yet been placed, then please just let us leave." He disappeared. The hostess returned with a crumbled order sheet in her hand, apologizing profusely and explaining that the crumbled piece of paper in her hand is our order that she forgot to place. The poor thing was horrified. She said they would take care of what we've had so far and promised that our order would be up shortly if we still wanted it. I don't know if she was high, or simply had an unusual evening of incompetence. We declined to place the order because (a) we were already late and (b) we were so claustrophobic from sitting in that place for so long. Luckily all went well that night, and my friend and his wife had not yet had dinner, and there was a delicious spread - Lebanese style - waiting for us when we got there an hour later.

That experience was not representative of the trip, however, neither in the culinary nor in the personal sense. I loved meeting all the family and friends that we hung out with. Like I said it served its purpose and I am ready to take on the New Year.