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August 30, 2006
"We Will Not Be Silent"
Interesting story on the BBC's website today about Arabic on T-Shirts.
Excerpt: 'I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen. But I'm shocked that they happened to me here, in the US."
Posted by Dipika at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2006
Ancestry of a Purple Dinosaur
K: You know, I think this dinosaur was the precursor to Barney. Someone looked at that and said, 'There should be a kids show hosted by a big purple dinosaur.'
D: ...
K: I bet that's what happened.
D: ...
K: ...
D: Can I take a picture?
*
A: Wow! That's the dinosaur? That thing is huge!
Posted by Dipika at 7:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2006
Bunch of Lines from H.W. Longfellow: "A Psalm of Life"
What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Posted by Dipika at 5:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2006
The Pain of Moving
Yes, D+A moved twice this summer, and that is a story of its own. But this is to announce that we have moved this web site to a new server, and finally upgraded it to the newest version of Movable Type, 3.3. The new server is working out very well so far, but moving all the sites have been, well, a royal pain in da A. Right now, I am still trying to reconcile the encoding problem with our Japanese entries (something to do with different version of mySQL, I think), so know that's what's going on if the site suddenly disappears...
ただいま日本語エントリーが壊れております。もうしばらくお待ちくださいませ。。。
Posted by Akira at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 15, 2006
"You Don't See What You're Seeing Until You See It"
A story in the International Herald Tribune today claims some people proved an expansive century-old math problem revolving around the nature of space.
It's called the Poincaré conjecture. [IHT explains it this way: "If any loop in a certain kind of three-dimensional space can be shrunk to a point without ripping or tearing either the loop or the space, the space is equivalent to a sphere."]
A guy named Grisha Perelman apparently published some stuff on the Internet in 2002 to get people on the trail to prove this, but then he disappeared into the Russian woods.
Now that everyone else has caught up, math bigwigs wonder if Perelman will come out of the woodwork to claim a bunch of prizes. Even though he's already turned down zillions of other kinds of recognition. Including cash!!!
Interviewed in the story was a guy named William Thurston of Cornell University. Lending his insight on how humans arrive at solutions to perplexing questions, he said: "You don't see what you're seeing until you see it. But when you do see it, it lets you see many other things."
Full story: Elusive proof, elusive prover: A new math mystery"
Posted by Dipika at 6:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 14, 2006
Half Chinese in Kabuki-Cho
D: Dude. It's 1:17am.
A: Oh.
D: What are you reading?
A: This book about Kabuki-cho. In Shinjuku. And the Chinese mafia.
D: Japanese novel?
A: Yeah. And I'm at the climax, too.
D: ...
A: [returning to book]
D: ...
A: ...
D: You really burn through those Japanese novels, huh.
A: そうね。
D: ...
A: ...
D: So what's it about?
A: This guy, he's half Chinese. And he has to hook up with all these different Chinese mafia groups in Tokyo. Hong Kong group. Shanghai group. You know. And he has to figure out how to deal with all of them and go behind them and guess who's on his side.
D: Sounds action-packed.
A: Yeah, you'd like it. They made a movie.
D: There a love interest?
A: Yeah. This girl. You don't know if he's going to betray her, too.
D: ...
A: She's half-Chinese.
D: Is the author half-Chinese?
A: I think so, yeah.
Posted by Dipika at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 4, 2006
Os Mutantes: "They're like a Brazilian Stereolab"
The other day I hung out with some young people who wanted to go see this Brazilian psychedelic rock band. I'd never heard of Os Mutantes, but this was a loud and happy bunch, with a bouncy light show, dancers, and all around brilliant color.
Kind of like being at the circus, with a couple of jazz numbers tossed in to mix it up.
Posted by Dipika at 7:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 2, 2006
"Pho with Extra Tendons, Please"
J: Tendons?
A: Yeah. All Asians eat them.
Posted by Dipika at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack