Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va?
We had a very windy day here in MX City, I understand a good portion of the city is still without power (with me not being in that portion, fortunately). There were lots of leaves, some branches and ads scattered around everywhere. Even a few trees were knocked off.
I just love windy days!
Rêves Doux
So, yeah, I know it's a bit late for this kind of post, but hell, these are good things to expect!
Fallout 3. We've been waiting for this damned game for ten years. also, we had to suffer one half-good game and and abject misuse of the franchise name (Fallout Brotherhood of Steel for the Xbox).
Starcraft 2. Another decade of waiting, blizzard finally decided to publish the sequel.
Star Trek Online. A star trek MMORPG! Need I say more? It's a dream come true!
A new Star Trek movie. About the exploits of a young captain Kirk and company in their academy days, YAY!
Soul Calibur IV. The newest of the series. I'm impossibly bad at fighting games and therefore, I don't like them, but SoulCalibur has long been the exception. Can't wait to see what they can do with the newer hardware. Also, Yoda and Vader will be appearing! Who would have thought?
Rêves Doux
It is my impression that religious belief has a lot of similarities with schizophrenia or other mental ailments. In particular, fanatical belief, as is demonstrated by this lovely piece of news. So, this idiot sees what he believes to be the mark of the devil in his hand, and proceeds to lop it off himself because the bible tells him so...
So let's analyse this shall we?
Wikipedia defines schizophrenia as follows:
Schizophrenia, from the Greek roots schizein (σχίζειν, "to split") and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-, "mind"), is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction.
Now let us compare it with religious belief:
Auditory hallucinations: The most devout believers claim to hear their deity of choice.
Paranoid or bizarre delusions: Many believers claim they are under the watchful gaze of an all mighty but improbable god who will banish them to some fictitional hell if they do not behave according to some self contradicting book written millenia ago.
Therefore, their perception of reality is highly impaired. I wonder why that has not yet been classified as a mental illness...
Rêves Doux
Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! I was checking the Rational Response Squad website (I'll post about them soon) and I came across this social site called Stickam. Now, I don't care much for social networking sites, but this one has a particularly interesting function which you can now see on the right side of this blog of mine. It allows me to appear live for you every now and then. I intend to do this often, mostly around midnight -6 GMT. If you care to come visit, you are welcome to do so. See you around!
Reves Doux
Bobby Fischer, 1972 World Chess Champion at age 29, died in Reykjavik on January 17, 2007
Una anécdota del blog de Ryksz (No es para tanto, chequen los links) me llevó a recordar un par de encuentros con una fanática ignorante.
Para darle contexto al asunto, tengan en cuenta que es la clase de fanática ignorante que se avienta un viaje semanal a la basílica de la ciudad. Dicho eso, procedamos.
En una ocasión me dama estaba con ella en la cocina, observando con curiosidad cómo preparaba el pastel de atún. La persona en cuestión, antes de meter el atún al horno lo persinó. Si, leyeron bien, persinó el atún. No solo eso, sino que tambien dijo con una ufanía sorprendente: "El diablo está en todas partes". Mi novia respondío, con un sarcasmo que esta persona fue incapaz de percibir, "Si, hasta en el atún".
Ahora viene la buena.
Una vez me preguntó que si estaba yo bautizado, a lo cual yo respondí que si, pero no por elección propia y que ese hecho me molesta. Ella me dijo que es el deber de TODO EL MUNDO bautizar a sus niños (si, de los ateos, musulmanes, budistas, hindúes, wiccas, etc. también) y que las personas que no son bautizadas son como animalitos sin dueño. Al encontrar yo tan ofensivo ese estúpido comentario, le informé que lo que decía no era cierto, que nadie tene la obligacion de hacer eso, y le trate de mostrar como ejemplo los grupos arriba mencionados, y si, como se imaginan me dijo que no importaba, que todos tienen esa obligación y que yo no sabía de lo que hablaba.
Lo más triste es que hay mucha mas gente como ella.
Dulces Sueños
Without the need to burn to the ground, of course. What I mean is renewal, and as some of you may notice, this blog of mine has undergone some of it. Hope you like it!
So, dear readers, I have been away from you again, but I will try not to. What can I say. Nothing quite big happening around here aside from two spectacular failures an a need for me to rearrange my room to maximize useful space, but there is only so much you can do in a somewhat cluttered room. Also I may bite my pride a bit and get a regular job, seeing how clients appear to be absent and I therefore am low on economic resources. Inevitably there will be a few flights of fancy that will result in crash-landings of reality. Oh well, one must march on to the future, whatever that may be.
Rêves Doux.
Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va tojours? A dear friend of mine was kind enough to share his neil gaiman comic collection, so I've just devoured Death - The High Cost of Living. Gaiman is quite good.
On other news, I happen to see a forced eviction today. Not a nice business. There were even some riot policemen, to prevent any confrontations, I presume.
oh, well. Rêves doux, chers lecteurs
Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va? Any of you both here in the city and elsewhere in the world heard of the ice skating rink they set up in the Zocalo (downtown plaza) here in the city? Its very pretty and over three thousand square meters in size, and a waste of money considering the other unattended needs. Not to be mean, it's nice to have pretty things like that in one's city. Not to be unfair, it's privately funded. But the cost of keeping it running until January 12th might as well be spent helping restore Tabasco which is still in very poor conditions, don't you think?
Rêves doux.
If you live in MX City. Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va?
I recently came across an Alcoholimeter Checkpoint (that's what we call breathalyzers here, Alcoholimeter) and the police officers there were kind enough to let me snap this photo of it.
The breathalyzer is an Intoxilyzer® 400 Made by CMI Inc. Breathalyzers are not 100% accurate and might produce abnormally low or high alcohol counts given a situation. Here in Mexico, if you believe you have been detained unjustly due to a wrong B-Alyzer test, you can request a blood test, which the state must provide. Also, so you know, onion, mouthwash or breathmints can fool a person but not one of these, before you try anything funny. Oh, mind you, the checkpoints have a towing truck readily available, so if you don't pass the test, I do believe your vehicle gets towed, so to add insult to injury, you would have to go get it an pay an extra fine too.
Rêves Doux, chers lecteurs!
I just did! Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! I was given tickets for a play named The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales (which was originally a movie).
I highly recommend it. It has a good deal of morbid humor, religious fanaticism is mocked, some very nice acting... all in all a very nice play.
Season's over but if you live in Mx City and wish to go, next season is in January.
Info on the original movie here.
Rêves doux!
Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! Comment ça va? See this? Imagine seeing how this dear galaxy of ours looked like in its early eons. Thanks to more advanced telescopes, astronomers were able to see small patches of faint light that will merge (have already? maybe they're so far away that what we're seeing happened an eternity ago and the galaxy is now as formed as ours) to form a baby galaxy.
Beautiful, is it not?
Rêves doux!
And I was hoping for a permanent shutdown. Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! So, they decided to reopen the cathedral at downtown MxCity, with mandatory searches on all those going in by the PBI (Industrial and Bank Police). And on top of all, some of those faithfully going to be told how to lead their irrelevant lives by their chosen imaginary friend representative complain about the extra security, go figure.
Oh well, someone willing to believe that the social standards from two millennia ago are the truth of truths, and that all other beliefs are false and therefore erroneous is not a very intelligent person to begin with, is it? Oh well, you all know how I feel about religion.
Rêves Doux
Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment allez vous?The limits to which idiocy can go, never really cease to amaze, do they? Especially religious idiocy. Today I came across this bit of news.
So the family believes these two women have been cursed and proceed to exorcise them, first damaging their eyes and then drowning one of them.
Just how much claptrap are these people willing to believe, and worse, act upon?
Rêves doux
And I'm not talking about the cartoon. Bonsoir mes ches lecteurs, comment ça va? look at this little curiosity I found.
By tweaking this rodent's genome (specifically the gene responsible for the PEPCK-C), they managed to enhance it, to the point that it can run at a speed of 1.2 Km per hour for about six hours. Talk about endurance.
This little achievement is explained by the extra mitochondria in their muscles, which also explains why they eat twice as much but weigh half as much as a normal lab mouse since they burn whatever comes in.
There is a little side effect, though. These overpowered mice happen to be rather aggressive.
The atmosphere, of course. Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! Remember that new module for the ISS I was telling you about? Well, the crew of the ISS just took a 7 hour spacewalk to properly install and connect the module. Watch:
Imagine the view! These two are the ones who did all the spacework, (right to left) Station Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Dan Tani:
Oh, I do envy them greatly, mes chers lecteurs!
More information here and here.
For now, I'll go dream of the stars
Rêves doux de'l espace, mes lecteurs!
Mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va? Any of you heard of or suffered migraine? For those of you who don't know, migraine is a neurological disease, commonly associated with horrible headaches, photo and audiophobia and many other ailments. It can go from annoying to life threatening. More info here for those of you interested.
Now, scientists have discovered that people who suffer migraine have some structural differences in the brain. To be specific, the somatosensory cortex (Click here if you don't know what that is) was about 21% thicker, specially the part that processes sensory input from the face and head.
I imagine it comes as a consequence of the migraine, given the fact that it is constantly stimulated by the recurring headaches and other symptoms.
Who knows, maybe this new information will lead to a cure for that ghastly illness! Meanwhile, Ibuprofen will usually do the trick.
More info on this new discovery here.
Rêves doux, mes ches lecteurs.
You are at least as old as me. Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! Time for a little nostalgia!
Remember these?
Yes, mes chers lecteurs, the 5.25" floppy! Considered a minifloppy by its time (its predecessor was 8 inches wide), it could store 360 Kilobytes ( .03% of a 1GB Flash memory). It was used from 1976 to the early nineties. By then the 3.5" floppy had all but eradicated the poor old 5.25"s.
And to top the evening, this is an anti software piracy video from 1992. Enjoy!
I'm getting old...
See the whole video, including the credits, I didn't know some of those companies were THAT old.
Info an all floppies here.
RIP, floppies.
Rêves doux!
