Thursday, December 9, 2010

Rights to a name, Lotus-gate

If you follow f1, you would realize that 2010 was a radical year, 2008 and 2007 were pretty cool but not the same. The addition of the three new teams and cosworth engines, five championship contenders till the last race, The rise of the red bull team, the various innovations like the f-duct, double diffuser, pull-rod suspension e.t.c. made this season one to remember.
Already though, there is a scandal that is of interest in the 2011; The Lotus-gate. There will be a new name on the grid, Lotus-Renault GP which will give F1, two lotus teams since last years lotus entry will be renamed Team Lotus Racing. A good article on this is to be foun

The Lotus-Lotus situation

This is essentially because of a marketing dispute. Tony Fernandes,Malaysian Entrepreneur and Director of Air Asia through a series of succesful business moves was able to acquire the lotus name and an entry into F1( very hard things to come by). He has succesfully contested the 2010 season and is now going on into the next season with a bootfull of money, new engine manufacturer(Renault) and a mission to rank higher.


Lotus was founded by Colin chapman, A genius car designer, Seen in this picture sporting a super awsome mustache. He founded two SEPARATE divisions. The Racing division and the Car division. Each an independent corporate identity only sharing a name and a legacy. Tony Fernandes obtained the rights to the name of the racing division.


Lotus Cars, the car manufacturer underwent a series of buyouts and is now controlled and wholly owned by Proton, a malaysian car company. The company has invested heavily in lotus, It is now revamping the whole product lineup, a process that is expected to cost about 480 billion. It is kinda mad about how this Tony Fernandes guy is hogging up all the fame and glory associated with the Lotus name all to himself, and it also wants to advertise its product in the light of f1. So using a ton of money, it has acquired 25% of the Renault GP team and has
planned its entry into F1


Proton’s subsidiary, Group Lotus plc has bought a major equity stake in the Renault F1 team which will be renamed Lotus Renault GP team from the start of the 2011 Formula season onwards. With the acquisition, Group Lotus will become the title sponsor over the next several years. Picture shows a model of the Lotus Renault GP racing car. — Bernama
















Lotus cars concept of it's new Espirit.

So now there will be two lotus names in f1 next year, and that is about the gist of it. This fight has dragged on to other aspects. They were fighting for color,and by declaring their 2011 livery almost a week after the final 2010 race, Lotus-Renault won that getting the black and yellow livery associated with the successful ground-effect cars of Colin Chapman. They are fighting for engine power, with Lotus cars reportedly wanting to cutoff Renault power from Tony Fenarndes's Team Lotus. They are having a huge propaganda war, with proton-owned lotus seemingly belligerent about Team Lotus and with Tony Fernandes's team under attack trying to do all it could to fight back, check out the cheeky Save Team Lotus site they created.The fight goes on and on.

Question is, which entity is the rightful owner of the colin chapman legacy in F1, Which is the real Lotus in F1 and with Team Lotus using red bull transmission and consequentially a pull-rod suspension next year, which will be the faster one?

Its like the return of the white lotus, except with F1

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Wikileaks cable; Kenyan corruption

A cursory look at wiki-leaks yielded this report.

US embassy cables: US pushes for political reform in Kenya [2]

Tuesday, 12 January 2010, 15:13
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 NAIROBI 000059
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
FOR A/S CARSON AND NSC SENIOR DIRECTOR GAVIN FROM THE AMBASSADOR
EO 12958 DECL: 2020/01/12
TAGS PREL, PGOV, KCOR, KE
SUBJECT: U.S. POLICY TO ADVANCE THE REFORM AGENDA
REF: 09 NAIROBI 1811; 10 NAIROBI 31; 10 NAIROBI 50; 10 NAIROBI 11 09 NAIROBI 2485; 09 NAIROBI 2483; 09 NAIROBI 2475; 09 NAIROBI 2401
CLASSIFIED BY: Michael E. Ranneberger, Ambassador, DOS, EXEC; REASON: 1.4(B), (D)

1. (C) Summary: Our highest priority efforts are focused on advancing implementation of the reform agenda, which is key to the future democratic stability and prosperity of Kenya. While some positive reform steps have been taken, the old guard associated with the culture of impunity continues to resist fundamental change. Most key reforms are yet to be carried out, and the future of the constitutional review process is uncertain. We are employing public and private pressure, engaging broadly with the senior-most levels of the government and other political actors, and reaching out extensively to the Kenyan people, youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, and religious groups. We also laying out incentives for positive action on reforms and supporting significant steps when they are taken. Continued intensive U.S. efforts - using our unique influence in Kenya - is essential to propel implementation of the reform agenda. U.S. efforts are viewed very favorably by the Kenyan people and are helping generate increased domestic-driven pressure for reforms. This message discusses the current state of play, the dynamics affecting the reform agenda, and U.S. policy and actions. End summary.


2. (C) Advancing implementation of the reform agenda is the central objective of U.S. policy in Kenya. Achieving this is key to ensure the future democratic stability and prosperity of Kenya, a strategically important partner of the United States. Failure to implement significant reforms will greatly enhance prospects for a violent crisis in 2012 or before - which might well prove much worse than the last post-election crisis. Bringing about implementation of the reform agenda poses a large challenge because doing so threatens the culture of impunity and the entrenched political class that has existed in Kenya since independence. Most of the political and economic elite (to greater and lesser extents) compose the vested interests that benefit from and support impunity and the lack of accountability with respect to governance, state resources, and the rule of law. This includes President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga, who signed the coalition agreement, as well as most of the members of the Cabinet and leaders of the political parties.

The report then goes on to talk of the whole Wako scandal, "kwe kwe" death squads, the joke that is Police reform and their heavy lobbying in kenyan politics


This was in between the leak on Moi's alledged corruption leak in 2007, An American Cable from Shell 's VP reporting of Shell's complete domination of the Nigerian government to the US Government and a report on the complete mutual understanding between the Ugandan dictatorship and USA Intelligence with regard to war crimes.

This report even seems to imply that the US is willing to help museveni with "problems" in his cabinet

TWISTED!!


WikiRebels: The Documentary | WikiLeaks & Julian Assange


Skip to 7:50 on the video to hear about the initial corruption leak on Moi.

C'etait Rendezvous



C'était un Rendezvous ("It was a date") is a short film (under 10 minutes) made in 1976 by Claude Lelouch, showing a high speed drive through Paris.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Social Networking

Online Social networking is the invention of the decade. There are greater inventions that are present like the Integrated circuit or the computer networking that are key to this tool but in the years 2ooo till now or otherwise known as the Noughties decade, The world has been revolutionized by social networking sites.

It is not only me who is of this opinion, The telegraph published a survey asking people which inventions they thought revolutionized the decade and a great deal of the listed Items had something to do with online social networking Facebook(73%), Twitter(58%) and Youtube(40%) not counting MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Yahoo Messenger and the many other networks out there(Spacebook , adult friend finder e.t.c ;D). If you wanna really know the impact felt by people as a whole by social networking you could use correlation to find online socializing as whole, but it is obvious that in total the most significant innovation to regular people in this decade is undoubtedly social networking.

"As Facebook undoubtedly is the most infuential social network today, it’s not really an original invention of the decade. I’m afraid the trophy should go to Friendster and MySpace which were ‘invented’ in 2002 and 2003 respectively. Facebook merely took the fundamental ideas from Friendster and MySpace and made it better. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004. As far as technological inventions go I’d say mp3 is way ahead of the bunch."

Kris Olin, MSc (econ.)


Computer networking is such a huge part of living today, there are so many tools and implements that we have come to rely on that rely on the interwebz. Think of all the internet tools that we rely on, All the information utilities and tools, communication tools for interpersonal use, group use or for the masses or reference sources that we depend on.



The web as such is a great part of modern life and one of its most widely used functions is most certainly social networking, but where did social networking arise from? How did social networking come to be what it is?

“Regardless of what may be the hot social media property of any particular month or year, social networking has become a core part of our daily lives.”

Amy Kean, senior marketing manager, Internet Advertising Bureau

There are many networking tools in place today from forum, sub-forums, blogging, irc, but this was not always the case. Due to the advent of facebook and myspace, Being online is not a depressing and isolationistic prospect any more, these sites seem to encourage people to be at ease and have the ability to make, shape and spur online communities. But such was not the case at the eve of the internet. You can not say that the internet was an unimaginable technology. Even before DARPA ever created the IPTO or the first foundations of ARPANET or Telenet were created, there was a clear picture of the goal, A method that would use computers to foster the exchange of information.The internet, intranet, other networks like fidonet, compuserve, prodigy were all technologies in this line.

The pioneers of social networking on the net prior to www, was undoubtedly Bulletin Board Systems(bbs) thought of in the 1970's, initially, It was essentially a bulletin board you could get access to over a phone line. It was a big part of spawning the concept of social net. Then as the internet took over ,better social networks were created that were easier, more convenient and and gave better integrated meaningful arrangements for their consumers. It began slowly with ethnic centered sites like Black planet, community Connect but spread now to the cornucopia of sites available. Sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter,LinkedIn, Nexopia,Tagged, XING, Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch and so many more.


How is social networking defined anyway?
Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about golfing, gardening, aesthetics and cosmetic surgery, developing friendships or professional alliances, finding employment, business-to-business marketing and even groups sharing information about the end of the Mayan calendar and the Great Shift. The topics and interests are as varied and rich as our society and the history of the human being.


Why are we so attached to myface, spacebook, orkut and the rest of the "new" social sites? What makes them so attractive? One of the reasons seem to be the ease of use in these sites unlike other sites which leave you grappling with complex html code or need the confusing electronic protocols of past networks needed(phone modems and such), the other reason is that the more the users a site has, the more successful it is .These sites are actively engaged in the trading of personal information for profit. Facebook was for example recently involved in privacy (1) concerns due to this matter, there was the Facebook Beacon scandal, facebook app producers like Zynga, causes, Quiz planet and IHeart have all been traced to selling user data to advertisers and online trackers . The more users these companies illicitly gather and pawn user data, the more advertisements and the more success they seemingly enjoy.


What kinds of problems have arisen due to social networking? As social networking has gained traction, Many existing boundaries have simply been washed away ,pre-existing conceptions of privacy have been eroded. Post stuff online and you should not expect any modicum of privacy or control at viewership. Even though this is a huge exaggeration, That is the mindset that people are advised to go with into the public domain because there is nearly no simple way to keep full control of your information and very easy to lose the little control you have. Tracker Companies, The very sites you entrust your info to, the friends you want to share you info with, complete strangers whom you don't know,Data Thieves and Hackers who do such stuff for a living, Governmental agency looking for tab on you, Almost everybody seems to be after your private data with the intention of taking advantage of it in some way you do not want them to.





Different problems like addiction, misuse and workplace corruption have also arisen, an increase things like social networking( the fancy lying type not political science), productivity loss; virus, rootkits ,DoS attacks and malware; the number of social shut-ins(Hikimori's) has been directly attributed to social networking.


As the world advances and today's technology become optimized, refined and improved, The main question becomes, How is social networking going to change in the future?

I really don't have a clue.


A review on Social Networks Around the World

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Sam Harris talks to Jon Stewart



The moral landscape is a book about morality based on scientific principle. I have not read it but I sure want to now!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sam Harris
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorRally to Restore Sanity

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Need For a Higher Power and Morality


Nehamashira:

I think that any society that is not accountable to a benevolent 'higher power' will eventually fall into moral decay and violence. Humans have shown time and again that they tend to follow the path of the least moral resistance. What are our greatest needs? They are to be fed, clothed, protected, and loved, and we need to be challenged to become our highest and best selves. In order to do that, we require a standard to be upheld. It is not easy to do the right thing, and in the midst of moral dilemmas, we need ethical guidelines that will help us make the right decisions. A society is best judged by the way it treats its weakest and most vulnerable citizens. Is it 'life-loving/preserving', or does it glorify death?

Some of what you say is true. Almost all People indeed do follow "the path of the least moral resistance" and rarely like to invest any effort in anything greater than the primal needs. For a society to function and excel, its residents need to have moral standards, ethical guidelines, basic discipline and on top of that a template of character that they can emulate. The easiest and most reliable service provider who if available can render these services to a society has always been religion. Take for example most societies today based on any of the three major religions. These religions always give birth to organizations which have the skill, ingenuity and posses the required resources and experience to make a relatively good society

But is it true that the only thing that can shape a society well is religion? Is it true that any society that does not believe in the supernatural is undoubtedly evil? Seriously? You say that a society that does not believe in a "higher power" will undoubtedly end up in a state of moral decadence and violent anarchism, but this is just not true! Religion does give us standards to measure up to but there are many other things that can give us standards to measure up to, and as a requirement to function as an integral part of a society even a godless one, you have to have some standards . Some people use great figures, revered figures, history etc as a guide or role model, some people think of dreams, goals, ideals or just other people as references for moral decisions. Just because a society's residents do not think that some "higher power" somewhere is looking over their shoulder at what they do all the time, everywhere does not mean that the society is decaying.


Ndigilia2
:
The real issue isn't whether an atheistic society can have moral people, rather, the issue is whether the atheistic society has the "language" to justify the morality.

For instance, it was Christianity that gave post-Christian Europe it's definition of what a human being is, (a creature who has the image of God as it's essence). It is this definition of a human being that made all human life of equal and infinite value. (Of course, there's periods in Christendom when Christians didn't live up to this standard). It is from this understanding that the concept of human rights developed.

So if a 2-year old child is trapped in a building being razed by a fire, Christians have no problem believing that an atheist firefighter will run into the building and try to save him. The real issue is whether the atheist firefighter can rationally justify that action.

I am not sure i really do understand what you are saying. I am assuming that what you are trying to prove is that without god there can be no morality, since your position is that god is the one who defines morality or puts it in our hearts. I however do not think that morality is hinged on god, at all. I Think of it as a product of human civilization, humans evolved to require a sort of code to differentiate the intentions, decisions and actions that can be helpful(good) to the individual, family, community and society with the harmful(bad) ones.

This is a common disagreement with many people, you are a divine command theorist while i am something else.

There are many reasons that one can 'justify' a moral action, this is not an issue, If mad men like hitler can base their insanity on morality then it should be relatively easy for other nobler and more justifiable actions to be morally defendable. If it is in the case of the atheist firefighter, Logically you can give reasons about society, opportunities of life, blah blah blah. But the best course of action in a case like this, is to make an appeal to emotions. Because humans have an ability of empathy(which i also think is not from god), we can empathize with the kid in the fire. I don't think anybody would want a toddler to be roasted in burning building for no reason.I wouldn't want it, you wouldn't want it and this is because we can imagine the kids pain and sorrow and if we don't want to endure it, we wouldn't wish it happening on the kid.


Ndigila2:
This is where the slippery slope gets. You've identified society, logic and emotions.

If society judges creates it's own morals, then by what standard would an individual look at another society and say that slavery and child sacrifices are wrong?

Before you talk of opportunities of life as a reason for the fire fighter to save the child, you first have to define what human life is and what makes it very valuable.

When it comes to logic and emotions, if they coincide, there's no problem. But what happens when appeal to logic contradicts appeal to emotions? In the case of the firefighter, what if a stronger argument could be made not to save the child. Which one do you side with?

It is not a slippery slope because there is no natural high ground. Many people who believe in divine command(morality from god) also believe that god has an absolute moral law which is infallibly righteous or always right. But I do not believe such a thing exists. Morality is what it is because people have built it up to where it is.

I don't believe there is such a thing as an infallible moral law.All moral law is man made law and not free of wrong, thus I choose to decide on the definition of morality that I see as good. I'll then use rational thought and logic to build the moral framework that is appealing to me. You gave an example of slavery and child sacrifice. I do not see any benefit to those things in modern life, I abhor violence and value freedom and I am afraid of me and my dear ones falling prey to these terrible things; these positions I hold logically force me to take a standpoint against slavery and child sacrifice. I will therefore build and adopt a moral framework for myself and my society that shuns these things.

I will also use emotion to reinforce or make strong the framework I have adopted. If I am told to justify my reasons for thinking slavery is wrong or rushing into a burning building to save a child, I could use the emotions in question to justify myself. This is how the morality seems to work for everyone. Even people of religious leanings will have a moral framework that they choose to adopt and will use anything including emotion to keep this framework steady.


Just imagine that there is this religious order that has a holy book that tells people to bash children on a rock.(I was trying to be corteous in the forum but are passages in the bible that say to do this) Even though I am sure that they would have a meaning behind such a twisted, cruel and terrible edict, If I criticize any person of the given religion with this edict, they will undoubtedly get mad since I am attacking their moral framework which is based on the holy book. I can very well imagine their logic going against their emotions as they try to reason on the reasons for what they believe. I have experienced this very conundrum myself, where good people are trying to defend such malevolent statements in the bible. Can you imagine trying to defend against slavery or bashing children's heads on rock. If you are a christian, you could say that the passages should be interpreted in context of their time or something of that nature, but some things like killing little kids by bashing their heads into rocks is just wrong, no matter what time or place you are from. In the end however peoples decisions can rarely be linearly interpreted to logic or emotion or calculated choices after evaluation of options, The people who are stuck basically usually do two things, they will either choose to follow their cruel moral framework/code or decide to abandon that version of morality for another better morality.

Psalms 137:8-9

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.


Hosea 13:16

16 The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open."



This is basically from one of the tenants of Cultural relativism
There is no objective measurement that can be used to tell whether one culture’s moral norms are better than another’s. There’s no moral laws or truths that hold for all societies all of the time.


This excerpt was gotten from discussions on Mashada

'The Evolution of Confusion' by Dan Dennett, AAI 2009



What do you make of this confusion?

Friday, August 27, 2010

Piracy

Online piracy in the form of p2p and other file sharing using means like online hosting and IRC's is one of the largest sectors of crime in today's world. "One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes" according to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). To combat this, Organizations like the EFF, RIAA, MPAA, MPA, GVU and others have mounted a considerably huge legal campaign which we now call the The Intellectual Property Wars.



A long time ago, when the prepubescent adolescent hormones of stupidity ruled my friend's mind and he didn't have a computer,he got caught shoplifting. Of course, this was horrendously stupid , not advisable and will never be repeated; but for the 20 buck movie,he got a year of probation, had to pay close to 1000 dollars in legal fees and almost went deaf for a month due to the yelling his got from my parents.

Today, all around me people are doing much worse and getting off Scot free. I watched the movie that he tried to steal so long ago on a computer for free(not on my computer off-course!) I even know a couple of online hosting sites where you can watch the movie and many others illegally without any legal recourse possible. In the engineering department, There are so many people in the engineering department carrying laptops around with pirated softwares like Orcad, Allegro, Matlab, Proteus, Autocad that have licenses that can go for about 1000 to 3000 dollars without any sort of guilt whatsoever. I am basically shooting myself in the foot right of the bat in my studies and in real life if i choose not to use warez software. There are open source options like KiCad and others and, legal options like student licenses, other options like exclusively using school computer but to be able to compete in the academic world and even in the real world, you gots to be rich or do some pirating.

For quite a while, I used to regularly buy a magazine called racecar engineering. This is a UK magazine that analytically talks about the technology in High-performance cars and automotive racing machines. It was one of a kind. They would talk about F1 technologies like the J-damper, F1 aero devices like barge boards, diffusers and double diffusers, ground effects skirts. They would analyze aero on open and closed wheel prototypes in detail. rake angles,ride height effects for front and rear, effects of aero devices like the splitter, canards e.t.c. One of my favorite issues was one where they were able to get detailed plans of the BloodHound SSC, almost a year before the builders even made a scale model. It was SO COOL!


But the fact of the matter is I am an unemployed sap, Even though I used to try and buy the magazine monthly, I stopped due to financial problem, and as a result due to low demand for the magazine, the only bookstore selling the magazine (Barnes & Noble) stopped stocking it. It is now simply impossible to find the magazine in Mobile Alabama. All of this drama could have been avoided if i simply torrented the magazine instead.

The intellectual property war has now become such a stupid fight with lawyers, governments, companies, and legions of people fighting out this battle that cant be won. What possible reason can exist for fining a single mother 2 million dollars for a single cd. We have got to get to a middle ground. Pirating on one level is wrong, if people in a society do not have a basic respect for other peoples intellectual property then that society is not really healthy. However the current copyright and patent laws are illogical and hopelessly outdated, some of the most prominent laws have gone unchanged since the early 15'th century, and the RIAA and other western organization in lieu with America and other western countries are using these laws as a vice to perpetuate neocolonialism on the rest of the world. So humanity is stuck and will stay stuck in this web for quite a while.

There are many such reasons that people pirate. It is simply unwise to follow some given antiquated sense of morality that is not defined by you to your own detriment. You simply do what you got to do. However a good guideline to use is to still retain a basic respect for intellectual property, don't blatantly flaunt the law like for example hosting a server in your basement or blogging about piracy :D and pray to Jebus or whomever you choose to that the RIAA, MPAA or the many other big bullies don't choose to pick on you.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Emotions

Emotions are the enemy of reason. Get swept up in emotions and you are bound to lose the goal in your mind. You get swept up in your angst, despair, ecstasy or desire and you are bound to want to act them out, you are bound to start taking steps to fulfill these feelings. Your behaviour, thought-patterns, ideals, goals and dreams will all eventually heavily corrupted in one way or another by an emotion if let it completely overrun you. So, Control your emotions!!!

You should however treasure and cherish your emotions. Many people choose to suppress and hide what they feel due to the effects that such emotions have. Such a reaction could be highly detrimental. Love, Joy and other enthrallments seem to change reason, logic and basic psychological balance; Sadness, anger and fear tend to do something in the same line. Depending on the situation or atmosphere you are in, you might not appreciate the effects. For example, a romantic interest might distract from a given task or anger might get you too steamed up to work properly. You must however remember that emotions are the fuel behind all our actions. You must value this fuel wherever it is from. Cherish your feelings for they might be of use in your future.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Isaac Asimov, greatest sci-fi writer yet

There have been many great science-fiction writers. The golden age, the birth of Hard sf had many great writers like John Campbell,Robert Heinlein and many more . The greatest writer for me however is undoubtedly Isaac Asimov. He was essentially a claustophilic, aviophobic coot who was born in the Soviet Union. When his parents emigrated to the United States. Isaac (three years old at the time) stowed away in their baggage. He has been an American citizen since the age of eight.

At the age of nine, he found the love of his life (in the inanimate sense) when he discovered his first science-fiction magazine. By the time he was eleven, he began to write stories, and at eighteen, he actually worked up the nerve to submit one. It was rejected. After four long months of tribulation and suffering, he sold his first story and, thereafter, he never looked back.

Isaac Asimov was unlike any other writer in his age in that he used real life scientific truths to think of introspective and intriuging possibilities for the future and that in almost all his science fiction works, he used these to build up a universe, with such interesting and intricate technological, social, political structures that till today, many authors still use his fictional universe in their works(the three laws of robotics,positronic brain, the galactic empire,e.t.c.). He invented the term robotics, Psychohistory(which is an actual study), wrote over 500 pieces of work, won over 20 different awards and had 14 honor doctorates. His foundation series and the robot series still are the greatest works of fiction to date, though some may say that other title like the lord of the rings fiction are better or maybe David weber's honorverse build a greater story, I fervently disagree.


Here is a Quote from one of his robot series books, Robots and Empires


My death, Daneel,” he said, “is not important. No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists. --Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Daneel said, “Yes, Partner Elijah.”

“The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives--past and present and to come--forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

“Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you. There are so many other threads, each valuable, each contributing--”



Sunday, June 27, 2010

BP oil spill update

Well, It is now 69 days into the Deep water horizon oil spill, What's happening?

  • BP's Oil cap is still in place although the amount of oil collected is less than half than is leaking from the sea floor.
  • The efficiency of the whole oil collection operation is still in question. Never mind that an underwater robot is somehow able to knock off the cap, while filming! There is no emergency plan if a storm were to come near the operation, Even though it is hurricane season and there is a tropical storm(alex) on the way; Official procedure is just to abandon collection of oil if there is a storm.
  • BP has replaced their CEO in a futile attempt to placate the American public. After BP CEO Tony Hayward's recent inconsiderate remarks about the spill "eating up his personal time", being caught on his luxury yatch sipping mohitos in the heat of the crisis, and his frankly awful gaffe at the hearing in congress



    , and not to mention unleashing the obama on himself, the British dude had to go. He was replaced by a man who BP calls a real "southern guy" someone who was "affected" by the spill like the rest of us, Mr. Bob Dudley
  • There have been attempts from the US. to gain more control. BP has been essentially forced to not pay dividends to its shareholders and set up an independent entity with 20 billion dollars in funds for compensation
  • Their public repoire has gotten so low that their own twitter account is supposedly being eclipsed by one dedicated to mocking them.They are on a very weak limb and can be pushed around by anyone marginally influential. Kevin Costner was able to get BP to buy 32 of his crap centrifuge things that separate oil from water. They were basically badgered into submission for alabama , florida and louisiana for money to be used in advertisments(stupid ones at that)

  • BP is still a Supermajor oil company, Even with all the money they are supposed to be shelling out, They will still be at a profit.The company is probably still run with finances being the first and foremost priority.

    The gulf is seemingly first and foremost a financial headache, then a legal one and then maybe a social one. That is why for example when a crowd-sourcing effort such as InnoCentive comes up with nearly 1000 usable ideas for review on a task that BP itself set up for them. The Oil giant can totally ignore the effort with only the feeblest excuse and not be straying from its goals.

  • Its gotten so bad that people are starting to question BP's Value. Gulf Fund Administrator, Kenneth Feinberg might say that there is no sense bankrupting BP but that stand point along with other related ones are now questionable.

    Should we continue pressuring British Petroleum even though we are causing damage to the cooperation? Should America begin planning on seizing BP assets in America(in case BP wont pay) to ensure that the damage to the gulf is fixed even though this might (at least temporarily) actually bankrupt the company? Should the US government have put a moratorium on deep sea drilling to re-assess the dangers involved and revamp regulation in the sector even though we are now putting some hurt on an already fragile industrial sector?e.t.c.



UPDATE: The flow of oil in the well has now been officially really capped

Friday, June 25, 2010

Well, the US and England made it into the round of 16.


I understand some of the anger that American fans have at the football referee who called a foul just before the U.S. team scored. I even think that the foul really was commited in the match aganist Slovenia but commentary from the ESPN coverage was douchy and slightly asshold-like.

World Cup: blaming the 'incompetent African'

I would hope that future criticism would be restricted to non-flammatory,non-arsenine comments that don't insinuate that african referres are by and large 'third rate' and were included in the world cup just for political correctness.

Mind you that in their match aganist Algeria, the same thing happened to the demsey player(8) and i did not hear a peep aganist the Belgian refs.

That being said, I am uber excited about tommorows match of USA vs. Ghana. I would like to cheer for the US. but I just have to support the only african team now in the world cup.

Go Ghana!

Friday, June 11, 2010

BP HQ.

USA! USA! USA!

There appears to be alot of briton blowback that is on the side of British Petrolium. The british seemingly dont want BP to have to pay for damages in the Gulf. They are wary of any US. governmental pressure on "Their Company" and some of them even want the U.S. government to finance cleaning up the Gulf instead of BP.

The language and rhetoric of this dispute is going into the danger zone, is becoming too highly personalized. The interpretation over here, not just by me but others, is that it has a certain anti-British rhetoric to it — and that has to be of concern,

John Napier


You want the oil, America ......You clean up the Mess!!

South Carlifornia Public Radio



The British government's response so far has been much more measured. Speaking on a visit to Afghanistan, new Prime Minister David Cameron said he understood the U.S. government's frustration over the spill. But then the famously jingoistic Daily Mail newspaper ran a front-page headline that read, "Stand up for your country, Mr. Cameron."


The mood was heightened further by suggestions from Washington that BP should suspend its dividend to shareholders; some British news outlets say that will be announced next week.


NPR


The Labour party is seemingly deeply involved in the lobbying for BP in the name of the pensioners in britain and other people investing in the Oil giant. It is however still quite a far way for BP to the end of the crisis though. They still have to cap the leak and also pony up for damages.

It is with all this political upheaval that the World cup match of USA Vs. England occurs, Tomorrow at 1:30 Central time.

What do the Yanks have to say?

We Kicked Redcoat Ass at Yorktown, We’ll Kick Redcoat Ass in South Africa


Moondog






Landon Donovan, The U.S. captain has cranked up the USA's bid to beat England today by claiming the Yanks don't fear any team at the World Cup.

There's no reason why we can't compete with England. If we give ourselves a chance to make plays and we make them, we can beat them.

Donovan




All I can think of is what George Washington said

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind banished from the earth.




So lets whoop their farking asses!
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!!!!!!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Effects of Mystiscism and Religious fervor

Found this on a casual Bing search , This event happened in 2009 but I just had to post the video. Seriously fucked up if you ask me.
Five people suspected to be witchcrafts were bruterly murded in kisii Nyamataro Village after the accused them of possession of charms.

video

Why to Live

Why do we have to live?

In my philosophical quandries, I have thought up this question and I cannot for the life of me produce a convincing universal argument for this query. Of course My question is unanswerrable since it automatically assumes that in each and every scenario possible, The Human involved has to live.But in reality, Nobody has to live; you could get a 9 and put it on your noggin. It is not likely that you will continue to live. As such, There is no solution to this query since the underlying premise is false.So maybe i should rephrase my question



Why we should strive to live?
Why should we wake up each and every day and labour extensively to keep on existing? We all share some basic fears that help keep us living. The fear of death, fear of the unkown, fear of the afterlife e.t.c. These fears act as a negative reinforcement against giving up on life. But is there any positive cause that can help push a person into deciding to keep on living? is there any cause that encourage us to continue with life? Of course, there are many personal reasons or answers to this question. We all have dreams, aspirations, goals, commitments and many other ties to our existence that keep us moving or striving on for more life. For example, I want to single handedly revolutionize Africa to be on par with the western nations,I want to make east africa to be an economic powerhouse able to create and sustain growth at levels comparable to European countries and the USA. I want to make Kenya rich and keep it stable. I want to elevate the Kikuyu tribe to be more than just a tribal entity but a social, political, economic and corporeal group. I want to make Mbari ya Njagi super cool, and achieve super awesome things, I love my family and would want more power for them. These thing keep me tied to life, they are the fire on my backside, spurring me on to keep living and to keep striving.




Is there anything like this that can be applied universally to all humans to argue that all of them should keep on striving to live?

I am not naive enough to think that my goals can be applied to anyone else. Of course, some people share goals, dreams and ideals. I am probably not the only one trying to improve africa or east africa. I am not the only Kikuyu that is working to better the status of the tribe, My brother, sister, mother and father are all doing their level best to improve Mbari ya Njagi. But some dreams are not shared, everybody has some unique dream or aspiration in their life, for example nobody in my family shares my dreams of participating in rallying or race car driving, I dare venture to say that nobody in the whole of mobile, Alabama even thinks about going to Nyandarua, Kenya or Mucharage, Kenya to go swimming and mud bogging in the rivers there. Nobody in the entire world regularly daydreams about marrying a specific girl(who I wont name)in Kenya and then touring the US. and Kenya in an RV. Nobody does.

The world is so diverse that I cannot think of a single thing that is universally strived for. You might say happiness is a universal ideal but not everybody is looking for it, Some people are all too pleased to cause calamity and disaster. You might say that peace is the universal goal but some people derive profit,satisfaction and happiness from violence or war. You might say it is Order but i personally know more than one anarchist who will disagree with you profusely, You might think that everyone wants sunny skies but some people are actually praying for rain. This might go on and on for eternity and in the end would turn out fruitless.

Is there any clear goal, dream, aspiration or ideal that can be applied universally to all humans to argue that all of them individually should keep on striving to live?

No, there is not. If I find one, I will have to update this article.





P.S:
I try to update the blog as often as possible but as always when i try to document my ideas, they seem to get stuck in my head or in rough draft form ,uncharacterisable and unrecognisable to others. I thought that I would try to experiment with shorter posts but I don't want to turn my blog into something like twitter where half baked ideas coupled with irrational human impulsiveness has created a garrishly fickle social catastrophe.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

It's top kill time!



BP is trying a technique called top kill to plug the Gulf Coast oil leak
What is Top kill?

The top kill is a pretty amazing thing. It was devised over the past month by BP, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Energy Department, and the Minerals Management Service. It centers around the Helix Q4000 surface platform and encompasses three ships full of mud, one of which is the 381-foot HOS Centerline, one of the largest supply ships in the world. The process is somewhat involved, but it comes down to this: The Centerline uses 30,000-hp pump to shove between 40 to 50 barrels of mud per minute over to the Q4000, which then diverts it down to the leaking BOP through a mile-long pipe. The mud is stuffed into the well at such a rate that it overcomes the gushing oil, forcing the leak to taper and the well to become static. A concrete cap is then applied, sealing the leak permanently.




Will it work?

Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas at Austin, said he's cautiously optimistic that the top kill will work, saying: "There's always a trade-off between making it better and making it worse. This probably has the least amount of risk of making it worse."

The danger is that the top kill could worsen the situation. The powerful injection of mud might destabilize the blowout preventer, or punch a bigger hole in the sharp kink in the riser just a few feet above the blowout preventer. If the mud doesn't beat back the spill, that could mean a mess of mud mixed with a larger flow of oil and gas.

You guys should have seen Mr. Obama at his Presidential meeting today. He was being flooded with tons of question on this matter. Still I am not really concerned, The Oil is not affecting alabama that much and it seems it might stay that way.
Jalopnik


Update:

Top kill has failed !!!

If you were looking at the feed on friday till sunday, you would have seen that the mud stuff stopped flowing out and the oil started back up again. Well over the last few days, BP officially gave up on the top kill and said they were moving to another method to try and stop the leak

The Petroleum Company have tried various methods to stop the leak or alleviate the damage and it is up in the air what they will try next.

  • They tried the oil dome thing


  • They tried the Top hat thing


  • They are actually now able to siphon off a percentage of the leaking oil even though it is only about 25% of it
  • They have dumped such a huge amount of dispersant into the gulf that the EPA is now on their tail to switch dispersant's or at least stop using as much(As if the EPA doesn't have bigger things to worry about in the gulf)
  • The current news is that they have succesfully cut the pipe and with their cap of sort to plugging the leak, they are able to get about hambyaku percent of the oil.
BP says it’s already preparing for the next attempt to stop the leak. Under the new plan, BP would use robot submarines to cut off the damaged riser from which the oil is leaking, and then try to cap it with a containment valve. The new attempt would take four days to complete.

AP
  • You have to remember that there is the last resort i.e. the relief well which is two months away but by that time alot of oil will have leaked and nobody wants that.
Hopefully they cap the well, or siphon the oil or do whatever to prevent more damage to the gulf

Monday, May 24, 2010

Justice!


On April, The latest
catholic stumbling block ,which was unsurprisingly linked to child abuse came to light. An American priest with a record of molesting children had been continually shielded from the public defrocking by the church. As it turns out, One of the people in charge of making this decision was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is now Pope Benedict XVI. This seems to have been a spark and ignited a huge backlash on the catholic church.

catholic sex Pictures, Images and Photos


The catholic church has had a lot of scandals,some with no other obvious purpose other than to create controversy . The church has been accused of alleged ties to the Nazi regime, the mafia and other clandestine organizations,It has been alleged to colluding to spark violence in Rwanda, Congo and Nigeria, the church has been known for controversial policies like barring use of condoms in AIDS ridden parts of Africa, and abortions, even in emergency cases. There have also been countless sexual crimes in clergy and you also have to remember that these ethically unacceptable actions or malfeasances are only in this generation of the church. The whole history of the catholic church is full of things like the inquisitions, abuse of authority, holy wars,anti-Semitism e.t.c.



Should the catholic church as a whole face some sort of litigation for their crimes? Can there be steps that can to achieve some sort of justice or some sort of penalty? To try and deter such questionable future actions.Is it possible strike back at the religious catholic society for the wrongdoings it has committed?

Richard Dawkins is planning to have the pope arrested on charges of crimes against humanity when he visits Britain on September of this year, of course this charge is brought on mainly due to the fresh charges of cover-up of child abuse after the 2008 scandal still involving the pope, and the endless litany of scandal after scandal involving the catholic church.Part of Dr. Dawkins task though is to obtain some legal reprieve from the catholic religious society for their collective crimes against humanity.

But some questions do arise.




How can you define a religious society?

A religious society as I see it is a self conscious, and self promoting organism in that the religious institutions that make up a religious society are mainly used to promote theology and to sell its respective religious dogma to the masses.


What is it that people accomplish in religious institutions, what are the detriments associated with these institutions?

There are many reasons that individuals choose to go to church, the mosque or whatever religious institution and/or practice a given religion, but we can derive one general purpose from almost all religious adherents. Each and every person is constantly always in the process of building and rebuilding their lives, or defining and redefining themselves. The church is a recognized temperate for an admirable, good and respectable character. When humans are building themselves, in a process somewhat similar to house construction i.e. brick by brick, many of them use the religious teaching, the religious community and such as building material for their personalities, minds and life outlooks. Like the Cornerstone analogy the Christians use,

Isaiah 28:16
So this is what the Sovereign LORD says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who trusts will never be dismayed.


Many believers of religion decide to use this religious stuff as a central support structure in their lives, buying into the religious society.For example, while the catholic adherents can claim to a lot of progress in the modern age to the catholic order, They are also stuck defining themselves using stuff like catholic sex scandals, inquisitions, torture,murder and genocide from the present, and the past. They either have to confront or ignore these wrongs, while the rest of us can accept their reality much more easier because they don't directly affecting our mindsets.

That is why when any atheist should for some reason choose to go to church, confrontational approaches to beliefs of these religious adherent in the church often becomes very explosive. Its like when you build a stack of cards or a brick structure and some dude just comes and takes a brick or card off the bottom and your structure comes tumbling down.


What can Dr. Dawkins hope to accomplish?

It is highly unlikely that Dr. Dawkins legal manoeuvre succeeds. I do hope that it does at least put the pope in a court or even succeed in assigning legal guilt for crimes of the catholic church on the Vatican, but all we can hope for is that the move puts religious organizations back under legal jurisdiction. Maybe then, in time people will be able to strip the Vatican of its country status, make religious organizations pay taxes and exert more legal oversight on religious matters.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Kiswahili tools

I wanted to do a full article on the blog in Kiswahili. I never get alot of people to talk with in the language and i didn't want all the skills that got drilled into me in primary school and part of high school on composition writing to go to waste.

So I am currently searching on the Interwebz for anything that can help. There have been a number of swahili projects. The most famous undertaking is the Kamusi project for an online kamusi. Then there was the open office project called Jambo .It was supposedly going to be open source revolution for the Kiswahili speaking masses but it has fallen off the radar these days. There has been a swahili packs in Microsoft office, A Swahili reiteration of windows but these commercial products have undoubtedly flopped. Zoho online documents offers swahili spellcheck capabilities but the service is not that good. There is even talk that google documents will have kiswahili settings in the near future. Check out the kiswahili translation of this site


I remember that the Kenya National Examination council not long ago was debating whether to keep the subject on the exams and even though the consensus was to keep it on, There was and still is a lack of real use of the language in professional and commercial circles. It is usually prescient just to use English which is not bad in itself but this might result in unintended marginalization of Kiswahili.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Tribal Politics

Hi. I am trying to explain to my pen pal from America why there is trouble between tribes because of politics. in America they don't have anything like it, its hard for me to tell him. My teacher said to look up info on the internet to help but how can I explain it to him?


Most people have difficulty understanding 3 things in tribal politics.

  • They don't understand what a tribe is
  • They view the tribe as a simple collective group and cant comprehend the tribe being an independent and self-aware entity
  • They don't see any relative worth that can be gained with tribal politics and don't know why these tribes don't just get along


Americans basically have very little understanding of a tribe or even an indigenous group is. They simply haven't had no exposure to them. The Indian American tribes are small obscure groups with that have no real group identities. Most of them come together only to invest in casino's and such.Try and clearly outline the tribe as an entity, it has a culture, has religious structure, has different lifestyles altogether, . A Tribe is a complex communal organism, and the more clearly you can explain this, The better the understanding.

A lot of people don't see any difference between one tribe and another and simply cannot imagine that one given tribe can act independently of its neighbours or political and social environment. To them being in a tribe is like the same thing as being part Irish or like when one of them is 1/24 Jewish or 1/16 Indian. It is a vague and inconsequential tie that at most serves as a feather for your good genes or something, how can such a thing affect daily life?.But in reality, Tribal identity affects family,community and society, Tribal ties affect who you trust, who you marry, who you do business with, How you feel, treat and live with other people, from your tribe or from other tribes. If you are able to impress the weight associated with a tribal identity, it would increase understanding of the tribal environment.

To many people outside Africa, tribal politics simply has very little merit due to the fact that most preconceptions they have of it assumes that most of the tribal bickering is primitive, "Ape with rock" type disagreements,Analogous to children fighting for candy. "If these tribes are trying to do something important, they would cooperate more". This type of statement has some truth but such a picture increases misunderstandings on the tribes and their dynamics. You have to point out that tribal politics is not just useless bickering. You could point to cases like the 2008 election or the Constitution reform or other cases. You don't have to restrict yourself to Kenya, you can use examples from other countries like south Africa Boers and apartheid, you could also use similar analogues from India, Pakistan and other countries out of Africa to show that tribal politics are used to obtain given objectives and can produce real and substantive consequences.

If the people get these three things, They should have a clear picture of tribal politics.

Options


I have had alot of problems with windows XP activation from just updating the RAM on my computer. I had to try dozens or so of activation bypass cracks until one worked, At times i was even shut out of the computer all together.


So, I'm trying to dual boot with ubuntu so that i cant be helpless once windows decides to act up again, but I'm having tons of trouble. No sound, tons of crashing even after updating, On top of all this, I am now in possession of a laptop that has an unrecovarable windows OS, so i have to make linux work on it or else i will be stuck trying to get windows 7 or something.it has now reached the point where I'm just doing google searches to find solutions.How have you guys encounters with Linux been?

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Impacts of The Giants

On April 20th, there was an oil rig explosion of the coast of the Louisiana and Alabama.




Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs

Gulf Oil Spill Could Eclipse Exxon Valdez Disaster

The immediate damage of this accident is minimal, as only 11 people are missing and not that much crude has leaked yet. The rig, owned by BP is theorized to have experienced a blowout which somehow caused the Fire that made it collapse. Now the metallic contraption is at the bottom of the ocean spewing about 400,00 gallons of crude into the sea per day.

There have been such two recent incidents in America that have caused a great review in energy policy. First there was a huge mine explosion in Virginia that killed dozens of miners then there was this explosion of oil rig in the gulf coast.This comes just as President Obama just threw his support into offshore drilling . This was obviously a compromise due to the health-care reform for blue-dog democrats so he might not exactly have been singing "Drill baby drill", but it is interesting to see the Mr. Super O squirm as his image takes such a hit . huh. He cut his wall street reform rallying short just to visit an Ethanol plant in Missouri to try and appease the country that he really "digs" new energy.With all sorts of stories going on about how this might be a diabolical plot by the supermajor oil players, i think this topic is going to become a point of conflict in the time to come.








OR







The long term damage of the accident is harder to gauge. Most estimates say that the clean up cost is going to be much higher than the Exxon valdez oil spill. The damage to wildlife and the enviroment is expected to be much higher with the Missisipi river delta and other sensitive costal areas with the oil slicks starting to arrive today on the last day of april.


The April 20 explosion of a BP rig killed 11 people and eventually led to the platform's sinking about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. But now the ensuing spill threatens 445 species of fish, 45 species of mammals, 32 species of amphibians and reptiles, and 134 species of birds, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries told AOL News. And when the massive oil slick makes landfall in Louisiana on Friday, it will hit 10 wildlife refuges or management areas, such as the Gulf Islands National Seashore.


I went across the bay on Tuesday and i could already see a little bit of oil on the shores and discolouration of the water. I think that the politics, damage and clean up effort will end up affecting very many people on the Gulf coast. I just wish i knew where my phone was so that i could snap some pictures.