My daughter (on right) and her best friend. Can you tell that they are only 11 months apart!?!?
Rhea and her cousins. Kids doing what kids do best……being kids!
My wife. She loves posing and her daughter loves taking pictures!
Rhea and Surya engrossed in a movie.
Monika and Charu. Wine tasting escapade!
At Moose Wonooski’s. Birthday special is a pie in the face. My daughter insisted that we go there for my birthday.
She got me pretty good!
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Here is what I see when I try and go to the site : Skeptics Guide To The Universe at my work place. I think Steve Novella will blow a fuse when he sees this :)
Who ever thought of this needs to be presented with the highest medal in India :)
South Asian politics explained in two sentences (http://girishshahane.blogspot.com/2010/11/matter-of-conviction.html) :
One problem with India’s political and legal systems is that no top leader is ever convicted.
One problem with Pakistan’s political and legal systems is that all top leaders are convicted.
I have always loved Walken’s comic timing. It never ever fails. Even when he is playing a bad ass, it seems his inner comic is just bubbling under the surface. Here he is reading out the lyrics of a song Poker Face by Lady Gaga. First the original :
and here’s Christopher Walken :
Isn’t that hilarious!!!
This video demonstrates why The Onion is the best non-news news site out there.
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Not only I do think that, Mike Conway, Assistant Professor at Indiana University says so after conducting a quantitative data based research to back up his and his partners’ claims.
The research team analyzed 105 segments of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo,” a segment that opens his nightly show on Fox News Network. The segments were recorded from shows airing between the first week of January to the last week of June 2005.
In these segments, they looked for the seven elements of propaganda previously identified by the IPA: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking and band wagon. Techniques were measured by the number of times they occurred in a minute, a strategy Conway said he thought would counteract the different lengths of the two men’s broadcasts.
The data shows that O’Reilly used all seven of these techniques. Most prominent in his verbiage is the use of name calling, occurring an average of 8.88 times per minute, or close to once every seven seconds.
A pattern also exists in the subjects of this name-calling. The “left-leaning media” led the pack, receiving 21.6 percent of the name calling during the studied time. Illegal aliens and terrorists also held prominence, receiving 26.8 percent and 21.4 percent respectively, with academics rounding out the top four, the study stated.
On the other hand, Americans, the U.S. military and the Bush administration were most commonly alluded to as victims in O’Reilly’s nightly commentary.
….and this is why we make soooooo much fun of them.
Conservatives labeled Bloc Québécois “separatists, socialists, leftist” when the Bloc was part of the coalition to bring down the conservative government, but when the Bloc supports the Conservatives, they are partners!!!
Pathetic.
I will be spending this week in New York, in Manhattan, and I have already seen a few things that in the normal course of daily life in Toronto would be “strange”.
> I and Rhea were on our way to my friend’s house in a cab and, not surprisingly, the cab driver almost crashed into a cyclist! If you have been for a ride on a cab in New York, you know what I am talking about. It’s literally a roller coaster ride. Anyway, it was clearly the cab driver’s fault and the shouting match that ensued after the driver stepped out of the cab was bound to end up in someone getting beaten up. I stayed in the cab for a minute or so, with my daughter and asking her to look away as I was sure that, based on the anger of the cab driver and the cyclist, a fight was about to start. But a minute later, both the cyclist and the cab driver were shaking hands and giving each other hugs!!! Only In New York!!
> Went for a run along FDR to Brooklyn bridge and back. It was a super duper hot day but it as it was one of the few hot days in New York (so I was told), the running route was crowded with runners, cyclists and walkers. The funny thing I noticed was almost 7 out of 10 walkers who were dressed like they were out for a power walk, were smoking away!!! It was the strangest oxymoron I ever saw. Out for a healthy walk and smoking at the sametime. Only in New York!!
I don’t understand.
These fucking people holler and howl when Taliban /Iranians / Saudi Arabians force their populace to adhere to a dress code but then ho-hum when it comes to deciding what people should wear in their own communities.
Stupid and dumb.
Update : At least they had the brains to repeal the ban.
An article from LA Times is posted on Slashdot :
The LA Times is running a story about Earth Speaks, a companion project to SETI, which focuses on how we would communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life, should we happen to discover it. Far more effort has been devoted to searching for signals or a means to communicate than the question of what we might say once contact is established, and the folks at SETI have set up a website to gather opinions on what the best questions and statements are. “So far, the messages break down into a few distinct categories. Some people want to throw a block party to welcome the aliens to the neighborhood. Others, less trusting, would warn the aliens that we’ve got guns and know how to use them. Another group, possibly influenced by having seen too many movies, would have us hide under the bed until they go away. ‘If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, we should not reply — we should freeze and play dead,’ wrote one contributor.” What would you say first to an alien?
The first suggestion?
got any new porn we haven’t seen yet ???
LOL!!!! Great start to the day!!!
I can’t stand atheists — but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores.
Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (“The End of Faith”) and Daniel Dennett (“Breaking the Spell”), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as “God Is for Suckers,” “God Is Imaginary” and “God Is Pretend”), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse — again and again — the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.
Then there is the smack down of the afore mentioned bone headed dumbness.
Charlotte Allen is very, very angry with us atheists — that’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from her furious broadside in The Times on May 17. She can’t stand us; we’re unpopular; we’re a problem. What, exactly, is the greatest crime of modern atheists?
We’re boring.
I can’t actually argue with that. It’s true. We’re all just ordinary people — your neighbors, your friends, your relatives. I know atheists who are accountants, real estate agents, schoolteachers, lawyers, soldiers, journalists, even ministers (but don’t tell their congregations!). Our leading lights are college professors, scientists, philosophers, theologians and other such pedantic, scholarly riffraff. For entertainment, they read books, and if they want to do something ambitious and dramatic, they write books. I’m one of them, so trust me, I know — we don’t exactly live the James Bond lifestyle. Calling us boring is a fair cop.
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Following President Obama’s May 5 visit to Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Virginia, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Mark Steyn criticized Obama as an elitist because he ordered a burger with “spicy mustard” or “Dijon mustard.” Hannity claimed that Obama ordered a “fancy burger” with a “very special condiment,” while Steyn asserted Obama is trying “to enlighten us” through his order. Ingraham asked of Obama: “What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard? … The guy orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? What is that?” In their discussions of Obama’s burger order, Hannity, Ingraham, and Steyn all referenced a Grey Poupon commercial featuring actors portraying wealthy British men expressing desire for the mustard.
Oh my dear god.
As has been discussed over and over again in the last 5 months or so, this is a prime example of the stupidity of the conservatives/right wingers. Picking over the fact that guy ordered a cheeseburger without ketchup and with DIJON mustard – which means he is an elitist. Holy fuck. That is by far the dumbest thing I have heard.
And if you ever say Canadians are not that stupid, our very own Mark Steyn displays his utter lack of intelligence in the accompanying video clip.
The relevant question is, why is the right acting this way? Is it because they know they have lost the fight (for the moment) and the way they can maintain their dignity is to fight back at everything and anything? It will be interesting to see what happens to the conservatives/republicans. Will fresh new blood bring in about sanity to the conservative movement? Or will the right wing implode and some new movement/philosophy arise out of the ashes?
BTW, I will donate $5 to a charity for every person who can sit through the video! You have to tell me what Mark Steyn said in the end that sounded so deranged that any doubts about Mark’s insanity can now be put to rest.
UPDATE : I was going ignore this (via CC) as a comment by some run of the mill blogger like me but :
About Me
Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY
Mother of god, professor you are stupid!!
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The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
Or should I say, I am not one bit surprised about this.
I am proud to say that I contributed to naming of the node as Colbert!!
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They said it had all gone wrong for Nasa when nearly a quarter of a million people voted to name the Space Station’s new node “Colbert”, following an appeal to viewers on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.
But has it? Nasa officials received more than a million votes in total, and the contest to name the module has surely raised awareness of the orbiting outpost.
Nasa put forward “Serenity” as its favoured choice of name, but it came in a distant second after being backed by only 40,000 votes.
The new node is due to be taken up to the space station later this year. It will provide room for astronauts’ life support systems. Attached is a unique work area with six windows around the side and one on top.
Nasa isn’t saying much yet, but agency astronaut Sunita Williams is appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show tonight to announce the new name. Some have speculated that the new ISS module’s toilet might be named after Colbert.
Update: well, all that effort went to waste. The node was not named after Colbert after all :(
Oh Lars, see? How easy it was to download something you created and payed for? I have all the first 5 albums on CDs of your band but ever since my daughter was born, I have had to move all my guy stuff to the basement. So, to avoid digging up the albums for some project (new iPod, making a collection of songs for my car), I do what’s easiest. I download your music using torrents. I know you think it’s illeagal but if you come knocking on my door and try and arrest me, I will produce the copies I already paid you for…….so please join us common folk. We really do not steal.
We borrow and propogate your music.
BTW, I am glad you have moved you concert in Toronto into ACC. The last time you were here you and you band members performed in the Roger’s Centre, I could barely see you and had to stick to watching you drum on monitors which I could have easily done at my home. See you in October!!
That’s got to be the dumbest meeting ever!!
Two sects conferring and telling themselves how great their sect’s teaching is, while people around the world are killing their neighbours because they happen to be from the opposing sect.
Here are two quotes from religions of peace :
Koran Sura 8:12 I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.
Bible: Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
And they say atheists have no morals!!!
Desi In Toronto 
