2 B || ! 2 B ® AKA minneapolis

Prayer Bug :)

2009-08-12T12:23:00.001-04:00

Two Thumbs Up And One More Up :)

2009-07-24T02:36:00.008-04:00

دكان شحاته

2esm Khaled Youssef kefaya inno yeshedak le ay film, bas bardo el wa7ed kan me2ala2 min Haifa Wehbe, el film kolo momkin ye2leb wawa we papa 2a7 :)

El wa7ed 2al yedeelo shewaya we ye check "Dokkan Shihata" reviewes after a while and surprisingly el reviews ibtadet moushage3a fa el wa7ed gammed 2albo we itfarag be 2alb we el sara7a istamta3 be kol 7aga ;)

Kont bardo 2al2an masaln inn kol el 2a3'any 7atkon le Haifa, la2a ma7asalsh bel 3aks kan wade7 inaha da7'la tethbet nafsaha we as I can tell she left a very good impression.

El 7ak yokal: El film mesh 7'afeef abadan (Two thumbs Up) we Haifa (one more Up) 3ala awel tagroba leeha (excluding Sea of Stars by Pepsi) gamda we yegy minha as usual ya3ni lol, Enjoy...

إثارة...متعة... و تشويق

عيون بهيه - يا حضرة العمدة

2009-06-09T17:11:00.005-04:00

Listen to the song here, you can share the full album on my Box.

كلمات اغنيه
يا حضرة العمدة
يا حضرة العمده ابنك حميدة حدفني بالسفندية
اهيي وقعت على صدري ضحكوا علي زملاتة الافندية
ازاي كده !
يرضيك يا عمدة علشان ابن عمدة يعمل كدة كدة فية
يا ابو حميدة .. جرى ايه
متحوش حميده .. عمل ايه ؟
ده عيون وسحرها .. هيروح ضحيه
يرضيك يا عمده ؟ .. لا لا لا
علشان ابن عمده .. لا لا لا
حبيبه حلوه .. غنيوه حلوه
طب وانا مالي ؟؟
دي سيرتها حلوه فى البلد مهيش رديه
احنا غلابه .. ايوه ايوه
ومحناش غلابه .. ايوه ايوه
قيمه الغلابه وسعدهم شرف الصبيه

2009 UEFA Champions League Final Poll!

2009-05-25T14:24:00.005-04:00

27 May 2009
Stadio Olimpico, Rome at 20:45
Barcelona vs. Man. United

Share your thoughts using Zoomerang.

And Barcelona is the new champion against all the odds :)

A Glimpse Ahead...

2009-05-19T17:52:00.001-04:00

Please check Microsoft Sustainability : Productivity, future vision if you can't see the plugin.

Slice and Dice Your Search Results

2009-05-14T12:53:00.002-04:00

Please check out this link if you can't see the plugin: Google Search Options.

13,500 singing Beatles' "Hey Jude" in Trafalgar square, London

2009-05-02T17:03:00.003-04:00

Hey Jude don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better

And any time you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
Na na na na na
na na na na

Hey Jude don't let me down
You have found her now go and get her
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

So let it out and let it in
Hey Jude begin
You're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you
Hey Jude you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder

Na na na na na
na na na na Yeah

Hey Jude don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you'll begin to make it better
Better, better, better, better, better, Yeah,Yeah,Yeah

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na
Na Na Na Na, Hey Jude!

Life's For Sharing :)

2009-04-27T00:36:00.002-04:00

Diigo: Highlight and Share the Web!

2009-04-26T21:02:00.001-04:00

Chess Game: Audi vs BMW

2009-04-20T01:24:00.005-04:00

Posted on FB by Miro and it worth sharing: Brilliant advertising. Look at the advertising on the left from Audi, and the one on the right from BMW. Priceless!

Is Time a Measure or Quality?

2009-04-11T01:35:00.005-04:00

by Paulo Coelho

I correspond a lot by e-mail with Stephan Rechtschaffen, a doctor who founded the successful Omega Institute in New York. I was invited to give a talk there but I had to cancel it at the last moment. Then Stephan and I were contacted to talk together in Vienna, Austria, and this time I decided to cancel because I found the price they were charging absurdly high. The fact is that these upsets, instead of separating me from him, have ended up drawing us closer (the world has very odd situations).

In one of these exchanges, he told me he was going to send his book. To my surprise I received a copy in Portuguese (Timeshifting – “Reorientando o Tempo”). I read it in one afternoon and have re-read it several times more, since all of us, every day of our lives, always have some problem with this theme. In the text Stephan offers some comments that I have listed below (edited on account of the size of the column).

Time is not a measure: but rather a quality. When we look at the past we are not rewinding a tape but remembering a gift of our passage on Earth. Time is not measured like a road is measured, since we take gigantic leaps backwards (memories) and forwards (projects).

Managing is not living: “time is money” is nonsense. We have to be aware of each moment and know how to take advantage of each single moment in what we are doing (with love) or in just contemplating life. A day has 24 hours and an infinity of moments. If we slow down, everything will last much longer. Of course, washing the dishes can take longer too, but why not use that time to think about pleasant things, singing, relaxing, being happy at just being alive?

In tune with life: Arthur Rubinstein (one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century) was once approached by an ardent admirer, who asked him: “How can you use the notes with such mastery?” The pianist answered: “I use the notes the same way that others do, but the pauses … ah! That’s where the art lies.” My divorce process was extremely painful and I thought that by keeping busy I would manage to get over the difficult moments, but it did not work out as foreseen because I could not see the pain in my soul. As of a certain moment I began to “use the pauses” – sit down, let the pain come and reach me and then pass. Little by little I re-structured my life and understood better the reasons for the separation. Today my ex-wife works with me in the Omega Institute – because I was able to face pain, not just hide it behind my work.

Deal with experiences in more depth: a study on the visitors to the National Zoo in Washington showed that the average time that people spend looking at an animal show is less than ten seconds. So why go to the zoo? Better just to leaf through a book with photographs, right? A guide explained to me that people complain that the hippopotamuses are always under the water, but as a matter of fact the average length of submersion is between 90 seconds and a maximum of five minutes – so, the urge to rush ahead is what makes the visitors miss all the enjoyment.

Knowing when to reflect or act: a patient of mine with an obesity problem said she was prepared to do anything to get better. I asked her, whenever she felt the urge to eat, to observe the feeling and not act. “But I feel hungry!” she answered. “Exactly,” was my comment. “If you can manage to live with that feeling, observe the hunger, let it come in all its intensity, suffer occasionally – but without acting – soon you will manage to attenuate the anxiety and you will the master of your will rather than the slave of your impulses.”

Acting in the face of negative emotions: when we sit down on the sofa, we turn on the television (which is actually a way to “turn off” from the world). Or else we grow very anxious, feel we are wasting time, that we need to call someone, do gymnastics, tidy up the house. Why? Because if we stay quiet, all the wave of repressed emotions will assail us, depress us, leave us feeling sad or guilty. But the more we “keep busy” the more these emotions pile up, until one day we run the risk of seeing them explode out of control.

Yes, we all have our problems, which have to be faced – why not do this today? Stop. Think. Maybe suffer a little. But in the end, understand who we are, what we feel, what we are doing here at this very moment – instead of wanting to determine the Agenda of Life.

Eros, Philos and Agape

2009-04-11T01:15:00.004-04:00

by Paulo Coelho

May you never lose your enthusiasm at any moment for the rest of your life: it’s your greatest strength, intent on the final victory. You cannot let it slip through your fingers just because as time passes we have to face some small and necessary defeats.

In 1986, when I was on the road to Santiago with my guide Petrus, we passed through the city of Logroño while a wedding was taking place. We ordered two glasses of wine, I prepared something to nibble on, and Petrus discovered a table where we could sit down together with the other guests.

The wedding couple cut an immense cake.

They must love one another, I thought aloud.

Of course they love one another, said a man in a dark suit sitting at our table. Have you ever seen anyone get married for any another reason?

But Petrus did not let the question go unanswered:

What type of love do you mean: Eros, Philos or Agape?

The man looked at him without understanding a word.

There are three words in Greek to designate love, Petrus said. Today you are seeing the manifestation of Eros, that sentiment between two persons.

The bride and groom smiled for the cameras and received compliments from the guests.

The two seem to love one another. In a short time they will be fighting alone for life, establishing themselves in a house and taking part in the same adventure: that’s what makes love grand and dignified. He will pursue his career, she probably knows how to cook and will make an excellent housewife because since she was a little girl she was brought up to do that. She will accompany him, they will have children and they will manage to build something together, they will be happy for ever.

Al of a sudden, however, this story could happen the other way around. He is going to feel that he is not free enough to show all the Eros, all the love that he has for other women. She may begin to feel that she has sacrificed a career and a brilliant life to accompany her husband. So, instead of creating together, each of them will feel robbed in their way of loving. Eros, the spirit that joins them, will start to display only his bad side. And what God had meant to be man’s most noble sentiment will begin to be a source of hatred and destruction.

I looked around me. Eros was present in many couples. But I could sense the presence of Eros the Good and Eros the Evil, just like Petrus had described.

Notice how odd it is, continued my guide. Despite being good or bad, the face of Eros is never the same in all persons.

The band struck up a waltz. People moved to a small paved area in front of the band-stand to dance. The alcohol began to show its effect and they all became merrier and drenched in sweat. I noticed a girl dressed in blue who must have been waiting for this wedding just for the moment of the waltz to arrive because she wanted to dance with someone she had dreamed of embracing ever since she entered adolescence. Her eyes followed the movements of a young man, well dressed in a light-colored suit, who was sitting with a bunch of friends. They were talking away merrily, they had not noticed that the waltz had started, nor had they noticed that a few yards away a girl in blue was staring at one of them.

I thought of small towns, of marriages with the chosen boy, dreamed of ever since childhood.

The girl in blue noticed me looking at her and moved away. And as if the whole movement had been rehearsed, now it was the boy’s turn to seek her out with his eyes. Discovering that she was close to other girls, he went back to his lively conversation with his friends.

I drew Petrus’s attention to the two of them. He watched them exchanging glances for a while and then returned to his glass of wine.

They act as if it were something shameful to demonstrate that they love one another, was his only remark.

Another girl was staring at us, she must have been half our age. Petrus raised his glass, made a toast, the girl laughed in embarrassment and made a gesture pointing towards her parents almost in apology at not coming closer.

That’s the beautiful side of love, he said. Love that challenges, love for two older strangers who have come from afar and tomorrow will already have parted down a road that she too would like to travel. The love that prefers adventure.

Then he continued, pointing to an elderly couple:

Look at those two: they haven’t let themselves be affected by hypocrisy, like so many others. They look like they are a couple of farm workers: hunger and need have obliged them to overcome many a difficulty together. They have discovered love through work, which is where Eros shows his most beautiful face, also known as Philos.

What’s Philos?

Philos is love in the form of friendship. It’s what I feel for you and others. When the flame of Eros no longer able to shine, it’s Philos who keeps couples together.

And what about Agape?

Agape is total love, the love that devours those that experience it. Whoever knows and experiences Agape sees that nothing else in this world is of any importance, only loving. This was the love that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so great that it shook the stars and changed the course of man’s history.

During the millennia of the history of civilization, many people have been smitten by this Love that Devours. They had so much to give – and the world demanded so little – that they were obliged to seek out the deserts and isolated places because love was so great that it transfigured them. They became the hermit saints that we know today.

For me and you who have experienced another form of Agape, this life here may seem hard and terrible. Yet the Love that Devours makes everything lose its importance: these men live only to be consumed by their love.

He took a pause.

Agape is the Love that Devours,” he repeated once more, as if this was the phrase that best defined that strange type of love. “Luther King once said that when Christ spoke of loving our enemies he was referring to Agape. Because according to him, it was impossible to like our enemies, those who do us harm and try to make our daily suffering all the worse.

But Agape is a lot more than liking. It is a sentiment that invades everything, fills all the cracks and makes any attempt at aggression turn to dust.

There are two forms of Agape. One is isolation, life dedicated only to contemplation. The other is precisely the opposite: contact with other human beings, and enthusiasm, the sacred sense of work. Enthusiasm means trance, ecstasy, connecting with God. Enthusiasm is Agape directed at some idea, something.”

When we love and believe in something from the bottom of our soul, we feel stronger than the world and we are imbued with a serenity that comes from the certainty that nothing can conquer our faith. This strange force makes us always make the right decisions at the right time, and we are surprised at our own capacity when we fulfill our objective.

Enthusiasm usually manifests itself in all its power in the early years of our life. We still have a strong tie with the divinity and we give ourselves with such zeal to our toys that dolls take on a life of their own and little tin soldiers manage to march. When Jesus said that the kingdom of Heaven belonged to the children, he was referring to Agape in the form of Enthusiasm. The children reached him without paying any attention to his miracles, his wisdom, the Pharisees and the apostles. They came happily, driven by Enthusiasm.

May you never lose your enthusiasm at any moment for the rest of your life: it’s your greatest strength, intent on the final victory. You cannot let it slip through your fingers just because as time passes we have to face some small and necessary defeats.

يا زيزافون

2009-03-26T22:02:00.004-04:00

بعمل سيرش ع اليوتيوب بكتب جدعان راب

لقيت بنت سابت كومينت اسمها كول ماهيتاب
قالتلى مكى مش هتصدق لما سمعنا الاغنية
تيتا قامت قالت يو يو وتس اب
بس ماما كان ليها رد فعل تانى وباعته عتاب
لما سمعت منها شوية سرحت صرخت ذوقكوا هباب
فين ايامه فريد او شادية والست وموسيقار الاجيال
ولا حليم وطلال مداح وفايزة فى قلبي اليك ميال
مش هنكر مدى عظمتهم وزمانهم ده بجد جميل
حتى احنا بنتعلم منهم ازاي يبقي الفن اصيل
كل زمان بيكون له ادان وكل اوان بيكون له فنون
تخيل لو داخل علي واحدة وبتقولها يا زيزافون
وصدقينى وماسك وردة وفارق شعرك والببيون
تعمل كده في الاربعينات تاكل جدا وتجيب جون

وتلقى البت تأفور ترعش وتقول بينا ع المأذون
بس في الالفية التالتة عليك هتشد البنت سيفون
ماهي اسألى مامتك هتقولك عاللي اتقال فى ظهور عدوية
قالوا ساعتها ده هابط هابط بأه ملك الغنوة الشعبية
وانا بتكلم لغة الشارع لو الفاظى دي شوارعية
عايزك تعرفى انى براب ومليش دعوة بالاغنية
ولا بتقطع شوق وعذاب وييجي يرشوا عليا المية
ولا ع الخضرة كمان بتمرمغ ولا بتنحنح فى الاغنية
ولا بدلع ولا بتمرقع ولا الكاميرا تجيب رجليا
ولا نفّخت وحطيت سيلكون ولا كبرت فى تتتتيت شوية
ولا بتريق انا علي بلدي أو علي ناسها واقول حرية
ولسانى كمان مش معوج بتكلم بطريقة عادية
مش زي الراب الموجود فى كتير منه بلكنة غبية
المولخية مية مية ويا سلام لو بالتقليه
شهية شهية وهي دي القضية
انا لا مجرم فحت ومش بقلد الامريكان
مسقط بنطولنى وكل البوكسر بان
مدرسة المشاغبين قابلوا ساعتها معارضة قوية
قالوا دي تافهة ومش فاهمين وعملوا عليها بجد قضية
اهو دلوقتي وبعد سنين فى تراث المسرح وهمية
قولى يا طنط لو انا غلطان ممكن اجبلك امثال تانية
بس الاول هشكر نقدك اصل كلامك اثر فيا
فى اللي بينقد نقد بجد ده علي راسي ومية المية
وفى اللي يسب ويشتم فيا ده مش ناقد لا نفسية
يو يو يو
م الاخر مهما هكون مش هعجب برضه شوية
وهيطلع كام مليون يقولى عنى ده تييت مقلية
يشهد جحا ويا حماره واللي بيحصل حاجة عادية
ومثلى الاعلى بأه هيكون شاب ديليفرى عزيمته قوية
لابس خوذة وراكب فيزبا ولا بيخاف تخبطه عربية
ولا بيهمه كلاب الشارع بس يوصلكوا طلبية
وانا هعمل كده بمحبه وهكمل والناس حواليا
حاجة أخيرة انا عايز اقولها للى شتموا اظن لذيذة
كل واحد فينا ليه استايله واي واحد فينا له ميزة
فى اللي بيعجب واللي ما يعجب واللى ما عاجبه ياخد فيزا

Bang Exploitable!

2009-03-20T14:16:00.003-04:00

Microsoft to release exploitability tool
Robert Lemos 2009-03-18

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Aiming to better identify bugs that could lead to security issues, Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it planned to release a tool to help developers classify and assess program crashes.

The tool, known as !exploitable and pronounced "bang exploitable," is a plugin for the Windows debugger that categorizes crash information using two hashes, members of Microsoft's Security Science group told SecurityFocus in a briefing. Using the hashes, which Microsoft called major and minor hashes, the tool can group crashes that are caused by the same bug, even if the program executed in different ways to produce the crashes. The tool also estimates the exploitability of the vulnerability, rating them as Exploitable, Probably Exploitable, Possibly Exploitable, and Unknown.

"It helps to define what exploitability means among researchers," said Jason Shirk, Microsoft's program manager for fuzzing technology. "It's saying, how do we want to talk about these things, so we are sure we are talking about the same thing."

The program is the latest software tool that Microsoft has released to help third-party developers better secure their software. In 2006, the company announced it had added three security features to Vista: address space layout randomization (ASLR), data execution protection (DEP) and kernel patch protection. In 2002, Microsoft released new versions of Visual C++ development platforms, which included an anti-buffer-overflow feature known as the GS flag. On Wednesday, Microsoft also announced that it would be improving the GS flag technology in Visual Studio 2010, allowing it to protect against integer overflows and database array overflows.

To demonstrate the usefulness of the !exploitable program, Microsoft's Security Science group asked internal testing groups to run four different fuzzers against a recently acquired software program. The !exploitable tool identified 15 security issues among the 57 different crashes produced by the fuzzers and classified only one issue Exploitable.

"Internally, if someone comes across someting that is Exploitable or Probably Exploitable, then they have no choice, it has to be fixed," said Shirk said.

Microsoft plans to release the tool at the CanSecWest conference on Friday after a presentation to attendees on the technology.

Good is overrated :)

2009-03-02T11:23:00.001-05:00

So how do you think they will fix it?

2009-02-18T17:00:00.003-05:00

The Canadian Press

February 16, 2009 at 12:19 PM EST

PORT HOPE, Ont. — The latest case of an Ontario driver nabbed by police for smoking in a car carrying a minor is raising eyebrows about the new law.

A 20-year-old Port Hope, Ont., man has been ticketed for smoking in a car in which a 15-year-old girl was one of his passengers.

While Tory Ashton was waiting for his $155 ticket, the girl — a smoker herself — got out of the car and legally lit up a cigarette of her own.

The provincial politician representing the riding says this may represent a glitch in the law and wants it be examined.

Liberal Lou Rinaldi is asking for a meeting with the province's health promotions minister later this week to find ways to improve the fledgling law.

Mr. Rinaldi says one improvement might be changing the age limit on how young the passenger has to be for the smoking ban to kick in.

“In 99.9 per cent of cases, the legislation is doing the job,” he said. However he described as a “glitch” the scenario where a 20-year-old could be fined for smoking while his 15-year-old passenger could stand by the side of the road and light up.

There is no law prohibiting a 15-year-old from smoking. It is only illegal to purchase or sell tobacco to anyone under 19 years of age.

The law, which took effect last month, is designed to shield children from highly concentrated levels of nicotine while they are being driven in cars.

Mr. Rinaldi, who represents the Northumberland-Quinte West riding in eastern Ontario, also said he'd like to discuss the law with Port Hope police to see what challenges they've had in enforcing it.

Statistics on how many charges have been laid since the law's inception Jan. 21 won't be available for several weeks.

But reports have surfaced about people being fined, including separate incidents involving a 29-year-old Sarnia-area woman and a 53-year-old Kingston man. Both where nabbed at RIDE spot checks which normally check to see if a driver has been drinking.

راديو محطة مصر, عيش جو مصر

2009-02-15T12:15:00.011-05:00

The new entrepreneurs

2009-02-03T19:01:00.002-05:00

by Paulo Coelho

Pamela Hartigan, director of the Schwab Foundation, drew up a list of ten points common to people whose dissatisfaction with the world around them drove them to create their own work. I think that Pamela’s list reaches far beyond this new mechanism called “social enterprise” and can be applied to many of our everyday activities:

Impatience: those who seek their dream do not wait around for things to happen: they see yesterday’s problems as today’s opportunities. Their impatience often makes them change course, but this adaptation is what matures them.

Conscience: those who seek their dream know that they are not alone in the world and that each gesture has a consequence. The work that they are doing can change the atmosphere around them. By understanding this power, they become an active element in society, and this sets them at peace with life.

Innovation: those who seek their dream believe that everything can be different from what it is, but it is necessary to pick a path that has not yet been traveled. Although always surrounded by old bureaucracy, the comments of others, and the difficulties of penetrating an unexplored forest, they discover alternative ways to make themselves heard.

Pragmatism: those who seek their dream do not hang around waiting for the ideal resources to start their work - they roll up their sleeves and get to work. No matter how little progress is made, it increases their confidence and the confidence of those around them, and the resources eventually turn up.

Apprenticeship: those who seek their dream usually have a deep interest in some particular area that can reveal new solutions to old problems when looked at in detail. But this apprenticeship can only be achieved through practice and constant renovation.

Seduction: no-one can survive alone in a competitive world: those who are aware of this and seek their dream manage to interest other people in their ideas. And these people become interested because they know that they are in the presence of something creative, committed to society - and above all else, economically lucrative.

Flexibility: those who seek their dream have an idea in their head and a plan to turn it into something real. However, as they move forward they realize that they have to adapt to the realities of the world around them, and from that point on their social responsibility becomes an important factor in changing the environment. For example, in order to reduce the rate of child mortality in a given city, it is not enough just to care for the children’s health - one has to change the sanitary structure, the nutritional system and so on.

Stubbornness: those who seek their dream may be flexible in their ways but at the same time concentrated on their objective. On account of their innovative ideas and because they are always moving in unknown territory, they never say: “I tried, but it didn’t work.” On the contrary, they always seek all the possible alternatives, and that is why the results eventually appear.

Happiness: those who seek their dream undergo difficult moments, but are happy with what they do. The occasional confusion and mistakes have nothing to do with their inability, and they are capable of smiling when they make a mistake - because they know that they will be able to correct that mistake further ahead.

Contagiousness: those who seek their dream have the unique ability to make people around them realize that it is worthwhile following their example and doing the same thing. That is why they will never feel alone, even if from time to time they feel misunderstood.

Pamela Hartigan closes her study offering the example of a Brazilian, Fabio Rosa, who developed a system to use solar energy after seeing that his community was spending a lot on non-renewable fuel. Fábio’s work, which contains the ten points listed in the study, is now known all over the world, has “contaminated” large corporations, and will soon benefit millions of people in addition to contributing to preservation of the environment.

If at this very moment I had a chance to turn into a bird...

2008-12-10T16:13:00.004-05:00

Mogo and the meaningless feast
by Paulo Coelho

This story is a free adaptation of “Come and Follow Me” by Paul H. Dunn:

A certain man called Mogo used to see Christmas as a feast without the least sense to it. In his mind, the night of the 24th December was the saddest of the year, because many people realized how lonely they were or remembered their dearly beloved who had died during the past year.

Mogo was a good man. He had a family, tried to help his neighbor and was honest in his business. However, he refused to admit that people were so naive as to believe that God had descended to Earth just to console men. Being a person of principles, he was not afraid to tell one and all that Christmas, besides being sad rather than happy, was also based on a story that was not real - a God transformed into man.

As always on the eve of the celebration of the birth of Christ, his wife and children were getting ready to go to church. And as always, Mogo decide to let them go alone, saying:

- It would be hypocritical of me to accompany you. I’ll be here waiting for you to come back.

When the family left the house, Mogo sat down on his favorite chair, lit the fire and began to read the day’s newspapers. But he was soon distracted by a noise at the window, then another and yet another.

Thinking it was someone throwing snowballs, Mogo slipped into his coat and went outside hoping to give the trespasser a fright.

As soon as he opened the door he saw a flock of birds that had lost their direction due to a storm and were now shivering in the snow. Noticing the warm house, they had tried to enter, but then they hurt their wings beating against the window and would only be able to fly again when they healed.

“I can’t leave these creatures outside there,” thought Mogo. “How can I help them?”

Mogo went to the garage door, opened it and turned on the light. But the birds did not move.

“They’re afraid,” thought Mogo.

He went back indoors, fetched some breadcrumbs and made a trail to the heated garage. But the strategy did not work.

Mogo opened his arms, tried to lead the birds with affectionate cries, softly pushing one and then another, but the birds became all the more nervous and began to beat their wings flying around in the snow without any direction, wasting the little strength they still had left.

Mogo no longer knew what to do.

- You must be thinking that I’m some scary creature, he said out loud. - Don’t you understand that you can trust me?

He shouted out in despair:

- If at this very moment I had a chance to turn into a bird just for a couple of minutes, then you would see that I’m really trying to save you!

At that moment the church bell chimed midnight. One of the birds transformed into an angel and asked Mogo:

- Now do you understand why God needed to turn into a man?

With his eyes filled with tears, Mogo knelt down on the snow and answered:

- Pardon me, angel. Now I understand that we can only trust those that resemble us and live through the same things as we do.

~fin~

Big Bang OR Boltzmann’s Brain, "Fade to Black" is the answer :)

2008-11-26T14:46:00.004-05:00

from NY Times, Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who agrees this overabundance is absurd, pointed out that some calculations result in an infinite number of free-floating brains for every normal brain, making it “infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.” Welcome to what physicists call the Boltzmann brain problem, named after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who suggested the mechanism by which such fluctuations could happen in a gas or in the universe. Cosmologists also refer to them as “freaky observers,” in contrast to regular or “ordered” observers of the cosmos like ourselves. Cosmologists are desperate to eliminate these freaks from their theories, but so far they can’t even agree on how or even on whether they are making any progress.

If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists, who gave us dark matter, dark energy and speak with apparent aplomb about gazillions of parallel universes, have finally lost their minds. But the cosmologists say the brain problem serves as a valuable reality check as they contemplate the far, far future and zillions of bubble universes popping off from one another in an ever-increasing rush through eternity. What, for example is a “typical” observer in such a setup? If some atoms in another universe stick together briefly to look, talk and think exactly like you, is it really you?

“It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, “How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?”

The Boltzmann brain problem arises from a string of logical conclusions that all spring from another deep and old question, namely why time seems to go in only one direction. Why can’t you unscramble an egg? The fundamental laws governing the atoms bouncing off one another in the egg look the same whether time goes forward or backward. In this universe, at least, the future and the past are different and you can’t remember who is going to win the Super Bowl next week.

“When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing cosmology,” said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

Boltzmann ascribed this so-called arrow of time to the tendency of any collection of particles to spread out into the most random and useless configuration, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (sometimes paraphrased as “things get worse”), which says that entropy, which is a measure of disorder or wasted energy, can never decrease in a closed system like the universe.

If the universe was running down and entropy was increasing now, that was because the universe must have been highly ordered in the past.

In Boltzmann’s time the universe was presumed to have been around forever, in which case it would long ago have stabilized at a lukewarm temperature and died a “heat death.” It would already have maximum entropy, and so with no way to become more disorderly there would be no arrow of time. No life would be possible but that would be all right because life would be excruciatingly boring. Boltzmann said that entropy was all about odds, however, and if we waited long enough the random bumping of atoms would occasionally produce the cosmic equivalent of an egg unscrambling. A rare fluctuation would decrease the entropy in some place and start the arrow of time pointing and history flowing again. That is not what happened. Astronomers now know the universe has not lasted forever. It was born in the Big Bang, which somehow set the arrow of time, 14 billion years ago. The linchpin of the Big Bang is thought to be an explosive moment known as inflation, during which space became suffused with energy that had an antigravitational effect and ballooned violently outward, ironing the kinks and irregularities out of what is now the observable universe and endowing primordial chaos with order.

Inflation is a veritable cosmological fertility principle. Fluctuations in the field driving inflation also would have seeded the universe with the lumps that eventually grew to be galaxies, stars and people. According to the more extended version, called eternal inflation, an endless array of bubble or “pocket” universes are branching off from one another at a dizzying and exponentially increasing rate. They could have different properties and perhaps even different laws of physics, so the story goes.

A different, but perhaps related, form of antigravity, glibly dubbed dark energy, seems to be running the universe now, and that is the culprit responsible for the Boltzmann brains.

The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, making galaxies fly away from one another faster and faster. If the leading dark-energy suspect, a universal repulsion Einstein called the cosmological constant, is true, this runaway process will last forever, and distant galaxies will eventually be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. Being in such a space would be like being surrounded by a black hole.

Rather than simply going to black like “The Sopranos” conclusion, however, the cosmic horizon would glow, emitting a feeble spray of elementary particles and radiation, with a temperature of a fraction of a billionth of a degree, courtesy of quantum uncertainty. That radiation bath will be subject to random fluctuations just like Boltzmann’s eternal universe, however, and every once in a very long, long time, one of those fluctuations would be big enough to recreate the Big Bang. In the fullness of time this process could lead to the endless series of recurring universes. Our present universe could be part of that chain.

In such a recurrent setup, however, Dr. Susskind of Stanford, Lisa Dyson, now of the University of California, Berkeley, and Matthew Kleban, now at New York University, pointed out in 2002 that Boltzmann’s idea might work too well, filling the megaverse with more Boltzmann brains than universes or real people.

In the same way the odds of a real word showing up when you shake a box of Scrabble letters are greater than a whole sentence or paragraph forming, these “regular” universes would be vastly outnumbered by weird ones, including flawed variations on our own all the way down to naked brains, a result foreshadowed by Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, in his 1997 book, “Before the Beginning.”

The conclusions of Dr. Dyson and her colleagues were quickly challenged by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo of the University of California, Davis, who used an alternate approach. They found that the Big Bang was actually more likely than Boltzmann’s brain.

“In the end, inflation saves us from Boltzmann’s brain,” Dr. Albrecht said, while admitting that the calculations were contentious. Indeed, the “invasion of Boltzmann brains,” as Dr. Linde once referred to it, was just beginning.

In an interview Dr. Linde described these brains as a form of reincarnation. Over the course of eternity, he said, anything is possible. After some Big Bang in the far future, he said, “it’s possible that you yourself will re-emerge. Eventually you will appear with your table and your computer.”

But it’s more likely, he went on, that you will be reincarnated as an isolated brain, without the baggage of stars and galaxies. In terms of probability, he said, “It’s cheaper.”

You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains — or even a preponderance of them — floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment.

Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.

Some cosmologists, James Hartle and Mark Srednicki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have questioned that assumption. “For example,” Dr. Hartle wrote in an e-mail message, “on Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.”

In an e-mail response to Dr. Hartle’s view, Don Page of the University of Alberta, who has been a prominent voice in the Boltzmann debate, argued that what counted cosmologically was not sheer numbers, but consciousness, which we have in abundance over the insects. “I would say that we have no strong evidence against the working hypothesis that we are typical and that our observations are typical,” he explained, “which is very fruitful in science for helping us believe that our observations are not just flukes but do tell us something about the universe.”

Dr. Dyson and her colleagues suggested that the solution to the Boltzmann paradox was in denying the presumption that the universe would accelerate eternally. In other words, they said, that the cosmological constant was perhaps not really constant. If the cosmological constant eventually faded away, the universe would revert to normal expansion and what was left would eventually fade to black. With no more acceleration there would be no horizon with its snap, crackle and pop, and thus no material for fluctuations and Boltzmann brains.

String theory calculations have suggested that dark energy is indeed metastable and will decay, Dr. Susskind pointed out. “The success of ordinary cosmology,” Dr. Susskind said, “speaks against the idea that the universe was created in a random fluctuation.”

But nobody knows whether dark energy — if it dies — will die soon enough to save the universe from a surplus of Boltzmann brains. In 2006, Dr. Page calculated that the dark energy would have to decay in about 20 billion years in order to prevent it from being overrun by Boltzmann brains.

The decay, if and when it comes, would rejigger the laws of physics and so would be fatal and total, spreading at almost the speed of light and destroying all matter without warning. There would be no time for pain, Dr. Page wrote: “And no grieving survivors will be left behind. So in this way it would be the most humanely possible execution.” But the object of his work, he said, was not to predict the end of the universe but to draw attention to the fact that the Boltzmann brain problem remains.

People have their own favorite measures of probability in the multiverse, said Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. “So Boltzmann brains are just one example of how measures can predict nonsense; anytime your measure predicts that something we see has extremely small probability, you can throw it out,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations could consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternal inflation. In the latter case, as Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University pointed out, “The numbers of regular and freak observers are both infinite.” Which kind predominate depends on how you do the counting, he said..

In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones. The main way life emerges, he said, is not by reincarnation but by the creation of new parts of the universe. “So maybe we don’t need to care too much” about the Boltzmann brains,” he said.

“If you are reincarnated, why do you care about where you are reincarnated?” he asked. “It sounds crazy because here we are touching issues we are not supposed to be touching in ordinary science. Can we be reincarnated?”

“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said.

I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player :)

2008-11-25T14:55:00.002-05:00

Jordan's Queen Rania has received YouTube's first Visionary Award for a daily video webcast and blog in which she sought to challenge stereotypes of the Arab and Muslim world and encourage dialogue across cultures.

Accepting the award in a YouTube clip posted Saturday, Rania listed 10 reasons for her five-month YouTube series in a spoof of the Top 10 list segment on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Learning to be the other!

2008-11-18T17:01:00.002-05:00

by Paulo Coelho

We are so centered on what we feel is the best attitude that we forget something of great importance: in order to reach our objectives, we need other people. So it is necessary not only to observe the world but also to imagine ourselves in the skin of others and to know how to follow their thoughts.

This holds true for both love (golden rule) and war (game theory).

الوردة الحمراء

2008-11-13T16:02:00.005-05:00

لــ جمال مرسي

و في قلبِ الحبيبةِ فاسكبيها		ألا يا نَسْمةَ الصُّبْحِ اْحمليها
لمن أحببتُ كل الحُبِّ فيها		و لا تتباطئي، فاليومَ عيدٌ
و أشعاراً تجوبُ الكونَ تِيِها		ألا فلتحملي كُلَّ اشتياقي
حناناً من مُحياها و فِيِها		و قُولي ذي هديةُ مَنْ رَوَتْهُ
سواها ، يا أميرةُ فاقبليها		أُحِبُّكِ.. لستُ أملكُ في حياتي
و في أعماقِ قلبكِ خبِّئيها		أُحِبُّكِ.. فاملئي الأسماعَ منها
لديْكِ أسيرةً ، لا تُطلقيها		أُحِبُّكِ .. إنَّ لِيْ دَقَّاتِ قلبٍ
فيا كُلَّ المُنى لا تُطفئيها		شُموعُكِ قد أضاءتْ في الحنايا
و إسمي في عناقٍ ، فاتركيها		و أحرفُكِ الجميلةُ قد تلاقتْ
حروفَ أميرتي و يذوبُ فيها		دعي حرفي يُراقصُ في الليالي
و نجماتُ المجرَّةِ مِنْ بنيها		يُخاصرُ من لها الجوزاء أُمٌّ
على شُبّاكِها نوماً رفيها		إذا طلعَ الصباحُ تنامُ عيْني
دعيها في صبابتها ، دعيها		ألا ، لا توقظي أطيارَ قلبي
لبحرِكِ ، جاهدي أنْ تُغرقيها		و إن أرسلتُ أشرعتي تباعاً
كعينِكِ للفنا سَبَباً وجيها		فكم وَجَدَ الغريقُ إذا دَعَتْهُ
لهُ مأسورَ غانيةٍ شبيها		و كم بحبائلِ الصيادِ لاقى
إلى قصرِ الأميرةِ ، هنِّئيها		ألا يا نسمةَ الصبحِ اسبقيني
و قلبَ مُتَيَّمٍ ، فلتحمليها		أُحَمِّلُكِ الأمانةَ ، عِقْدَ فُلٍّ
عليها قُبلتيْنِ ، فوصِّليها		و أزهاراً طَبَعْتُ مِنْ اشتياقي

~fin~

Where Hope Goes To Die :)

2008-11-05T14:03:00.002-05:00

Ana Gada3 :)

2008-10-15T17:48:00.001-04:00

غمض عينيك و ارقص بخفة و دلع

الدنيا هي الشابة و انت الــــــــجدع

تشوف رشاقة خطوتك تعبــــــــدك

لكن انت لو بصيت لرجليك ....تـقع

عجبي !!!