Each year, a jury headed by a Nobel Prize winner awards five female scientists — one from each continent — US$100,000 for their research in what are called the L’Or
Year: 2006
Oscars 2006, 78th Academy Awards Winners
So the Oscars are over and the winners in the main categories are:
– Actor in a leading role: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)
– Actor in a supporting role: George Clooney (Syriana)
– Actress in a leading role: Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line)
– Actress in a supporting role: Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener)
– Animated feature film: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
– Best Picture: Crash (Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman)
– Directing: Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
– Music: Brokeback Mountain (Gustavo Santaolalla)
– Visual Effects: King Kong (Joe Letteri, Brian Van’t Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor )
For the rest, check out the Oscar Winner List.
King Kong totally deserved the best visual effects award, and it’s nice to see Crash took away the best picture award.
Green Party is born in Tunisia
A new political party was born Friday, March 3rd, in Tunisia. The new formation, named
Ave Maria, The US’ New Roman Catholic Town
Domino’s Pizza founder, Thomas S. Monaghan, aims to create a no-sin city, by the name of Ave Maria, in the US.
The pizza magnate is bankrolling the project with at least $250 million and calls it “God’s will.”
The town of Ave Maria is being constructed around Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in about 40 years. Both are set to open next year about 25 miles east of Naples in southwestern Florida.
The town and the university, developed in partnership with the Barron Collier Co., an agricultural and real estate business, will be set on 5,000 acres with a European-inspired town center, a massive church and what planners call the largest crucifix in the nation, at nearly 65 feet tall. Monaghan envisions 11,000 homes and 20,000 residents.
Monaghan said that in his community, stores will not sell pornographic magazines, pharmacies will not carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will have no X-rated channels.
[Source: CNN]
Civil libertarians are already threatening to sue, saying that the plan is unconstitutional.
Personally, I’m amazed at how many people are convinced they’re carrying God’s will and listening to his voice!
George Bush suddenly became a war prophet, this guy is creating his own kingdom of heaven, Pat Robertson is from a weird other planet, and this is just talking about the US.
The same can be seen all over the world, and of course we have our share of weirdos.
What’s really weird is that in the end it’s the same God, but everyone seems to be tuning in to a different broadcast!
Open Google Exams
Open book exams just rock, don’t they.
I mean, maybe they should not be applied for all topics and specialties, but for IT students, I personally think most exams should be open book.
On the other hand, I don’t think anyone would feel comfortable having a doctor who sat through open book exams operate on them. No time to rush off and read through a bunch of huge books when you’re in the middle of a serious operation and your patient is barely hanging on.
Back to IT students, something that just crossed my mind is that soon they should start having Open Google Exams (or well just Open Online Search Exams) instead of open book ones, in which students get to search for whatever information they’re looking for online to reach the answer.
As I wrote before here, we’re more or less moving towards an era in which no one really needs to know much more than some core principal basics in a certain topic and how to search and find the information they need for the rest.
Basically any IT person today knows all the principles and ideas, but he’s always going back to references or searching online for complimentary information.
I think that should be taken into consideration when teaching IT students today.
This idea also reminds me a bit of a game show on Tunisian TV some years ago, in which the contestants were asked certain questions and had to use the internet to search and find the answers.
The idea was cool, but the problem is that it was all setup and the answers were already given to the people beforehand, or at least that’s what an insider told me.
Anyway, I think Open Google Exams would be cool and would get IT students, at least, practically ready for the work life they’re on their way to.
Road to Freedom
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
[Via: Swobodin]
Tunisian Blogger Meetup 11
It’s time for another blogger meetup, and this time it was organized by our friend Tom.
The next Tunisian blogger meetup, which will be our eleventh, will be held this coming Sunday 05/03/06 at 4PM in Latina restaurant in Les Berges du Lac.
And drinks are on the house, so yes, they are free 😉 A big thanks to Latina for their hospitable offer 🙂
Adib is also offering free salsa lessons to anyone interested 😛
We’re counting on you all to come and make this an even greater success than the last meetup.
Everyone is welcome, even non-bloggers who just want to know what the hell it’s all about 🙂
Nuvvo, Free On-demand eLearning
I just found this really cool new online service called Nuvvo (pronounced like the French word “nouveau”, meaning new).
Nuvvo is a Learning Management System (LMS) powered by Savvica and designed for the individual instructor. It’s the first system of its kind to offer individual teachers, professors, tutors, and trainers their own Online Learning Portal from which to run courses and teach students.
“Whether you’re a K-12 teacher, a corporate trainer, a university professor, or an amateur who knows baseball cards inside out, Nuvvo can help you reach students all over the world”, says their website.
The courses you offer can be for free, but if you
The Price of Anything
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
I just came across this little quote and it just struck me how true it is.
After all, in everything we do, we’re giving away some of our precious time, some of our lives, some of the time we could be spending with our loved ones or doing other things that we truly enjoy.
I guess we rarely stop to think of the true price of things, and to ask ourselves if what we’re doing is worth the price we’re paying.
From now on, I personally promise myself that I’ll ask myself that question, every now and then, and that I’ll try to only do things that are worthy of the price I’m paying.
We only live once after all, and if we waste it all on things we deem unworthy, would we consider ourselves to really have lived?
Zaghouan Blog Presentation
In our regular blogger meetups, one of the issues that always comes up is what we can do to spread blogging even more in Tunisia.
An idea that we came up with is by giving presentations about blogging in cultural, internet or youth centers.
We also thought it was important that we give such presentations in places outside the capital city where most Tunisian bloggers are from.
Last wednesday, we were able to take the first step in that direction, by holding a presentation about blogging in Zaghouan, a city that lies 55Km outside Tunis.
The presentation was held in the ISET institute in Zaghouan, in the presentation/activity room of one of the dormitories.
Around 50 students showed up, mostly girls, for the presentation, in which we tried to explain the basics of blogging, a bit of it’s history, how to go on about it, …etc.
We also gave a little overview of the Tunisian blogosphere and the community of Tunisian bloggers.
We were four bloggers (Tom, Karim, Marouen and myself) and one non-blogger Moez, who is a friend of Karim’s.
The themes we covered were:
– Introduction, definition and history of blogging: By Me.
– Blogging approaches and objectives: By Tom.
– Blogospheres and the Tunisian blogosphere in specific: By Marouen.
– Simulation of how to create a blog: By Karim.
And Moez kicked in after the presentation with his views of a non-blogger about blogging and his understanding of it all.
After that we held a little Q&A session in which we answered some questions by the students .
We think that the presentation went pretty well and got the message across. We did see a few eyes sparkle and felt some interest stirring in some of the crowd.
Hopefully, some of them will try and explore blogging even further and maybe start a blog.
After the presentation, I had the chance to talk to some of the students and some of them were already thinking of ways to use blogs to help in their studies, which I thought was great.
I would personally like to thank everyone who helped make the presentation a reality, as well as the students who showed up and listened to us, and of course my fellow bloggers who believed in the importance of this presentation and came. Last but not least, a big thanks to Moez who was so generous to drive us to Zaghouan and back and added a valuable non-blogger insight to the presentation.
Hopefully we’ll get to do this again soon in other places around Tunisia.