Just wanted to strengthen pure-agnostic's views on torture with a post of my own. Ask yourself: what have I done to prevent my government from torturing detainees? As a citizen of a democratic nation, aren't I, at least partly, responsible for my nation's actions ( Read more... )

Avecilla
Ya vez,
Ya vez candora avecilla
que cogida prisionera.
Será preciso que sepas
que desde hoy en adelante
vas a ser mi compañera,

cantando como cantabas
perdida entre la maleza
a orillas de un arrolluelo
y en el fondo una arboleda.

Coro:No te dejes avecilla ( Read more... )

I messed up -- forgot to go to the university today as I promised -- pissed off people who I didn't mean to hurt and who are doing everything they can to help me -- can't concentrate on studies. I'll try to be more practical, but it's so difficult to get everything right all at once. Difficult and necessary. I'm so sorry.


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For all you asian film geeks out there, lately I've seen:

- The first season of Damo, known in English as "The Undercover Lady Detective." The main character is Jang Chae-Ohk, a tea-house worker who moonlights as a crime scene investigator, set in 17th century Korea. She is also a kung-fu expert. Yes, it is one of those type of series. While ( Read more... )

First some background (non-software types may want to skip this post): my thesis project is to form images using a camera without optics, only the raw CCD surface. Naturally, there are limitations to what this kind of sensor can do, but it turns out it can be surprisingly effective. The problem can be found by solving a huge global optimization ( Read more... )

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Just wanted to share my latest Wikipedia diggings regarding a sensation I've observed while playing flute in breath-intensive music (especially when blasting out notes in the lowest octave against other instruments). After playing for several minutes my fingers and feet start tingling and I begin to feel dizzy. Then a feeling of euphoria takes me ( Read more... )

A friend of mine recently found out that their pre-school teacher was striking some of the children of the pre-school on the face, and immediately took her child of the the school and moved her to one of the city's pre-schools with more accountability. Even though my friend reported the offending teacher to the police, there doesn't seem to be any ( Read more... )

As you may have guessed from my last post, final exams were not the amazing success I had envisioned. In fact, my life has been full of anxiety and stress during these last few months.

However, today I received some good news. After two and a half years of effort and studying, work and pain, I've passed my Hebrew language requirement that I need for ( Read more... )

If you don't know about this little gem:

From Windows, click Start->Run and type msconfig. Click on the "Startup" tab and de-select whatever you don't want running every day.

You can un-click all these annoying programs that embed themselves in your system tray and don't give you the option to turn them off. Mostly they are auto-schedulers ( Read more... )