Year: 2004

What you get when you marry a programmer

Husband : (Returning late from work) “Good Evening dear….I’m now logged in.”
Wife: Have you brought the groceries?
Husband: Bad command or filename.
Wife: But I told you in the morning
Husband: Syntax Error. Abort?
Wife: What about my new TV?
Husband: Variable not found . . .
Wife: At least, give me your Credit Card, I want to do some shopping.
Husband: Sharing Violation. Access denied (I believe in Biodata)
Wife: Do you love me or do you only love computers or are you just being funny?
Husband: Too many parameters . . .
Wife: It was a great mistake that I married an idiot like you.
Husband: Data type mismatch.
Wife: You are useless.
Husband: It’s by Default.
Wife: What about your Salary?
Husband: File in use . . . Try later. (I believe in Biodata)
Wife: What is my value in the family.
Husband: Unknown Virus.

[Thanks to my friend Yassine for sending this to me.]

Master of English

I just took this quiz called: “How grammatically sound are you?”.

And well, here are the results:

You are a MASTER of the English language!

While your English is not exactly perfect, you are still more grammatically correct than just about every American. Still, there is always room for improvement…

Now, I never expected that.
I mean, ok, I know my English is quite good; It practically was my mother tongue. But I know that I have some weakness in grammar sometimes.
And God do I hate punctuation!
I always feel I’m putting my punctuation marks in the wrong places and I probably am.

Anyway, now that I read the result again and see that I’m being compared to Americans, I think I’m starting to agree 😛

Marriage & Genetics

Something that has crossed my mind often ever since I got married is how much the laws of genetics can apply to marriage.

Being a science wiz at school, I was very interested in genetics, in fact I even wanted to study genetics in university, but didn’t. I ended up doing computer science instead, now that’s close.

Anyway back to marriage.
What I’ve observed from my personal experience and those of others around me is the following.

Before marriage each person has their own unique character, their own set of goods and bads about them, their own way of living.
After marriage, things start changing, and both sides start passing certain features to their partner while picking some other ones from them.
And here the laws of genetics kick in, the strongest features from either of the partners are the ones that come through and rule the couple.

Not only that, but from taking a snapshot of the couple after a given time, you might also be able to determine what their children will be like; after all the same laws will probably apply to them too.

For example, my wife was always a very active person, always running around doing something and keeping busy. As for me, well I’d like to think I’m active enough, but the truth is that I’m one of the laziest people on earth.
Result ? Well you can say we’re one of the laziest couples I know of 😛
And I don’t expect my children to be any better 😛

Of course, this doesn’t hold for all couples nor for all features.
But I guess what does follow these laws determines how much chemistry there is inside the couple.
After all, any couple needs certain points of difference to have a healthy fight about every now and then 😉

STOP E$$O

Recently while looking for the Esso logo online, I came across a website called StopEsso. This is a campaign by Green Peace against Esso (a.k.a ExxonMobil in the US).

Why Esso ? What makes it worse than the rest ?

Here’s what they answer to that:

The company that has done more than any other to keep the US hooked on oil is Esso (known as ExxonMobil in the USA). This addiction is causing global warming.

Esso has spent the last decade sabotaging international action on climate change and directing US climate and energy policy. Esso paid the Republicans $1.2 million up to the 2000 elections – and sure enough President George W Bush pulled the US out of the international global warming treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.

Esso has consistently questioned the accepted scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels like oil is causing global warming. It is still misleading the US public and policymakers over the economic implications of tackling the problem.

It funds ‘industry front groups’ to lobby on its behalf. In turn, they promote climate sceptic scientists to question the science of global warming.

I don’t use Esso anyway as I try to always use Agil, a Tunisian company, as a way to encourage local companies and investments.

Anyway I think other people should consider Esso’s actions and see what little step they can do towards protecting our world.

Sex makes you clever

Sex stimulates the brain and makes people more intelligent, according to a top German researcher.

Werner Habermehl, from the Hamburg Medical Research Institute, says that regular sexual intercourse promotes intelligence.

He said that love making not only excited the body but also the brain and the increased amount of adrenaline and cortisol hormones that are produced stimulates the grey matter, reported magazine Unicum Campus.

“Sex makes you more intelligent in that experiences are collected that can be used later on in areas of life not linked to sex,” said Habermehl.

He added that the added injection of endorphins and serotonin that resulted from an orgasm strengthened self-confidence – giving the body a mental as well as physical work out.

[Source: Ananova]

Is that interesting or what ?!
But, wait a second, that should make pornstars the world’s smartest people and the biggest geniuses!
Now that’s something…
No wonder they chose to have sex for a living. It’s fun, they get paid for it and it makes them smarter 😉 That sure is smart 😛

Free Culture

Today I’ve started reading Lawrence Lessig’s book “Free Culture” about how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity.

Up to now it seems like quite an interesting read.
I’m rather interested in the topic the book discusses.

Lawrence made this book available for free download here.

I really like the initiatives writers like Lawrence and Cory Doctorow are taking by making their books free to download under a Creative Commons License.
I hope more people follow, not because I like to have stuff for free, but because this way I can learn about these books and get a chance to read them.

US knew al-Qa’ida would attack cities with aeroplanes !

‘I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa’ida would attack cities with aeroplanes’
– Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa’ida’s plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was “an outrageous lie”.

“I gave details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.”, She said.

She added: “There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used

Star Academy LBC : And The Winner Is…

The last prime of Star Academy on LBC just ended, and after wrecking everyone’s nerves, the winner was announced.

The last 2 students left were Bashar El Shatti from Kuwait and Mohamed Attiah from Egypt.

And the winner of the first arab Star Academy was: MOHAMED ATTIAH !

I didn’t really follow the previous primes, so I don’t really don’t know the students well, but from today’s prime, I felt Bashar should have won, and most probably would have voted for him.
Anyway, I’m sure that if Attiah won, then he deserved it for some reason or another.

Congratulations to Mohamed Attiah, and congratulations to all the students for the great time they spent.

One thing is for sure, I’ll be watching every prime of the next Star Academy.

Amr Khaled

I’ve heard a lot about the Islamic preacher Amr Khaled over the past couple of years. And I’ve known or seen a lot of people who were really touched by him. From women who have started praying and wearing the Hijab (Muslim Head Scarf) to men who have started praying and stopped their bad habits.

Even though I heard a lot of talk about him and about what he has to say and how he says it, I never really got to catch him on TV and see the show he hosts on the Iqraa channel. Not until this past week.

The first thing that struck me was how nice the guy is and how smoothly he talks. He’s nothing like other preachers who frighten people and tell them that this or that is the right thing to do or else God will punish them. In fact what he does is the complete opposite, he talks to people in a very friendly manner and explains everything in detail; showing the good sides of things and making it more a matter of the people wanting to do certain things than having to do them.

The show I saw him in is called “Life Makers”, in which he talks about Islamic values and principles, how they can help in life, their benefits, goals and reasons behind them.

I truly enjoyed the couple of episodes I saw because I like the way he presents things and the fact that he really knows what he’s talking about inside out.

Another thing I like is that he presents Islam as it truly is, a religion of peace, high values and strong principles.
He’s no radical or fundamentalist, he’s extremely moderate and what every muslim should naturally be.

For anyone who’s interested, the show is aired on Iqraa channel, both on Hotbird and on Nilesat.
Iqraa on Nilesat also provide English subtitles.

Kinja

Kinja, a new web portal for aggregating and reading blogs has launched as a beta.

It enables the user to create a digest of his favourite blogs which is displayed like a blog itself and which the user can share with other people.

If you’re interested, here’s my current digest. I’m still working on it though, and not all my faves are in yet.