Posts from — January 2003

Posters for Peace. Just got this link from Metafilter. A collection of posters, in PDF format, to protest against the mindless and needless war that may erupt in Iraq.

On my part, I’m not going to print the posters. Instead I’ll put up a poster here on this site with a link to http://www.protestposters.org/

If you believe that the Bush’s campaign against Iraq is unjustified, then maybe you could do the same. :-)

Think you can crack this one? Take this quiz and see if you can crack it. C’mon, take Supersam’s challenge!! … and no Googling, mind u!! :)

1. Lets start with a swig of alcohol to warm you up. Which alcoholic beverage is derived from Scottish Gaelic ‘Uisge beatha’ which incidentally means ‘the water of life’?

2. With which athletic sport would you associate the “Fosbury Flop” or the “straddle”?

3. Where would you find ‘the lovers’, ‘the chariot’, ‘justice’, ‘the wheel of fortune’, ‘the hanged man’, ‘death’, ‘temperance’, ‘the devil’ and ‘the tower’?

4. If a ballerina is a female ballet dancer, then what do you call a male ballet dancer?

5. According to the Bible (The Old Testament), what was the first command of God?

6. In the story, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, what caused the Beast to turn back into a prince?

7. Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man are the alter egoes of which comic strip character?

8. There are forty-three trillion wrong ways to arrange what?

9. In which film did Marilyn Monroe’s dress billow up over the subway vent?

10. Made from the dried stamens of the cultivated crocus flower, what is the most expensive cooking spice?

You can send me the answers by email. For those who don’t know my email-id, just ask! ;-)

Just Hum! That’s exactly what Fraunhofer Institut of Germany (the creators of the ubiquitous MP3 digital audio format) would have us do.

It’s called “Query by Humming,” a type of melody recognition software program on display at this week’s Midem music conference in Cannes that identifies a song by title and composer based on a person humming a few bars into a microphone.

Sounds like a cool thing, doesn’t it?! Read more here.
[via Metafilter]

If you still need a reason as to why wars are inhuman, have a look at this. The Unseen Gulf War is a photo exhibit from the Gulf War that shows an aspect that I doubt many people have had a chance to see… the “human consequences”!.

A warning, though! Some of the images can be pretty disturbing.

[via Metafilter]

Big Brother wants to fry your computers. While the whole world witnesses a tirade by a Bush-led US against Iraq’s so-called non-compliance with the UN diktats, the US Air Force is working on developing a man-made bolt of lightning powerful enough to fry sophisticated computers and electronic components in weapons.

US researchers are looking at ways of putting so-called High-Powered Microwave (HPM) beams on aircraft and cruise missiles. The short, intense burst of energy would be lethal to electronics but have no effect on people.

Aerospace experts have suggested an experimental version of the weapon could be used in a war against Iraq, carried on a cruise missile or unmanned aircraft.

Ahhh!… is that why US wants a war with Iraq???… to test its weapons systems prototypes??… and to keep its war industry in business!

Read more here