Desi In Toronto

OK. Can someone explain to me a few things about the latest flare up in the
Mid East?

1. Why in god’s name did Harper not admonish Israel for killing Canadian
citizens? Is it because their names do not end with Smith or Jones?

2. There is no general outrage in the public because of these deaths. I see
the news of the deaths has now been relegated to page 4 (the lower right
corner column) of Metro. Again because the names probably don’t end in Smith
or Jones.

3. I am curious. Why are there 50, 000 Canadian living in Lebanon? I can
imagine a few are there for summer holidays but 50,000!!! And as soon as the
situation on the ground became perilous they decide they wanted to move back
to Canada? What crap. This should be investigated further.

4. Why is Israel letting citizens of other countries to leave Lebanon? Are
they planning some major ground offensive? For what purpose? They had to
exit Gaza after 30 years of holding it (and paying a heavy human price for
it), how will holding a country to hostage help their cause? I am confused
with Israel’s motives at the moment.

5. Are we heading for another oil crisis? Iran might tighten the screws on
it’s oil production (it will never ever join the current flare up actively)
and there by shooting the price of oil through the roof (it’s almost there
anyway). If that happens now (in a US election year) Republicans and the
Labour party in UK are in for a drumming.

Link.

Profits at Exxon Mobil surged 36 percent to a near record $10.4 billion in the second quarter as surging oil prices helped the world’s largest publicly traded company soundly beat Wall Street forecasts.

The company’s profit - which amounts to a cool $1,318 a second - is the second biggest ever reported by a U.S. company, behind only the $10.7 billion Exxon itself earned in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The $1,318 a second would buy enough gasoline, even at the current $3 a gallon national average, to drive a Hummer H3 between Los Angeles and New York three times.

One analyst said Exxon’s record fourth-quarter earnings in 2005 included a $400 million tax charge that analysts were not including as part of that quarter’s profit

Compounding matters, the company gave its outgoing CEO Lee Raymond a retirement package worth about $350 million around the same time.That combination of events led to a public outcry calling for restrictions on CEO pay and calls from lawmakers who wanted to institute a windfall profits tax on the oil industry or even break up some of the oil giants that merged in the 1990s

And this is what disturbs me the most.

“Apples to apples, this quarter is the highest by any organization ever,” said Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst at Oppenheimer.

Gheit said the company sent $7.9 billion back to shareholders in the second quarter in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

He said Exxon’s expenditures on exploration and production were sufficient, as most of the world’s oil reserves are by now widely known. Extracting those reserves, he said, is constrained more by politics than it is by lack of spending on exploration.

Gheit thought the company was striking a good balance with how it is spending its cash.

When asked about investing in renewable energy technologies, an Exxon official said that, apart from ethanol, it’s generally not part of the company’s plan.

“There are very few that are economical without subsidies,” said Henry Hubble, vice president for investor relations, on a conference call. “We don’t think it makes sense to invest in it at this point.”

Subsidies!!?!!! After earning USD 10.8 billion dollar profit they still need subsidies? Fuck!!

Ok. In one of my previous post’s I mentioned that we should investigate why were there 50,000 Canadians living in Lebanon and why they suddenly sought rescuing once the conflict started. I was totally out of line.

The conflict rages on. Israel is finally doing what it should have done in the first place. It’s now participating in a low grade war with the Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon. Not that I am advocating for a war, but why they didn’t start that way instead of pounding the civilians, I just cannot understand. In the meantime, US is firmly behind Israel and Lebanon, in other words, as usual, confusing the hell out of everyone involved.

A thought just occurred to me (usually happens before I have my first cup of coffee).

Awww, the little bully is all grown up!!

OK. Can someone explain to me a few things about the latest flare up in the Mid East?

5. Are we heading for another oil crisis? Iran might tighten the screws on it’s oil production (it will never ever join the current flare up actively) and there by shooting the price of oil through the roof (it’s almost there anyway). If that happens now (in a US election year) Republicans and the Labour party in UK are in for a drumming.

For a country that has the backing of the lone superpower, Israel is acting like a bully in the school yard who knows the principle, her father, will not admonish her at all. That’s what Israel has become after 58 years. A bully. And for the love of god, I am not being an anti-Jew. I am being anti-Israel. Let’s not even go into “they bombed us first” argument because it would be a never ending cycle of they did this first and they did that after.

The “they bombed us first” cycle is not over yet.

I have been posting for the last few days through the email and have lost all my posts!! I will try and follow up and see if I can retrieve them from my email folders.

Is this the Canadian version of “Mission Accomplished” photo op?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper surprised his staff and further complicated the Canadian evacuation from Lebanon Wednesday with a sudden decision to detour his jet to Cyprus and personally rescue about 100 Canadian evacuees.

Shortly after reaching Paris on return from the weekend summit of G8 leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia, Mr. Harper made the decision.

Here is a detailed explaination of why the current government is a bunch of complete idiots. Looks like there is something common with the Liberal after all.

Micromanagement by the Prime Minister’s Office and a lack of resources in Lebanon contributed to the confusion and anguish at Beirut’s port Wednesday as Canadians trying to flee Israeli bombardments watched boats chartered by other nations sail away, leaving them behind.

The perception of inaction was exacerbated by the lack of information flowing last week about Canadian efforts to organize a response.

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In fact, Foreign Affairs staff realized last week that there was an emergency situation involving tens of thousands of Canadians brewing in Lebanon.

But federal sources say there was an edict handed down by Sandra Buckler, the Prime Minister’s communications director, dictating that the situation was to be kept under wraps.

So one government steals tax payors’ money and the other government puts it’s citizens in harms way.

Ah, the great, deeply religious leader whom everyone looks to at time of peril is really a peasant when it comes to international diplomacy. I guess everyone knows by now that Bush was caught in an unguarded moment (similar to the one where he proclaimed a member of the press was a “major league asshole”) during one of the G8 discussions. He did not realise his mic was on and the world got a close look at Bush’s command of international diplomacy and his penchant for jumping from one topic to another without regard for other around him.

Here are some comments from the exchange.

His command of internation diplomacy :

• Bush turned to Blair and said: “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.”

• “What about Kofi Annan?” Bush asked Blair. “I don’t like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire and everything else happens.” “I think the thing that is really difficult is you can’t stop this unless you get this international presence agreed,” responded Blair.

His regard for his colleagues :

• In another segment in which the president was apparently speaking to an aide who asked about his plan for upcoming remarks, Mr. Bush said, “I’m just going to make it up, right here — I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them.” […]

His regard for patience in G8 settings :

• At another moment, Mr. Bush was clearly itching to return to the White House, saying to someone, “Good job, gotta keep this thing moving — I gotta’ leave at 2:15 — you’ll want me out of town so to free up your security forces.’’ .

• “Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight,” Mr. Bush said, then, apparently turning to Mr. Hu, adding, “How about you? When are you going home?”

Nothing in the entire exchange screamed “The President Of United States Of America”. This is the mind of the a redneck farmer who is trying to show everyone around who’s the boss and ends up making a fool of himself.

Mr. Harper, are we still going to continue toe the US line?

Seven Canadians, including several members of the same Montreal family, were killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon on Sunday as the Canadian government stepped up plans to evacuate the estimated 40,000 Canadians stranded in the war-torn region.

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Ambra Dickie confirmed the seven deaths and said three other Canadians were injured in the attack, but declined to provide names or hometowns of the victims, citing privacy laws.

Earlier reports had said that eight Canadians died and six were injured.

Man, we tax payers are subsidizing everything now!!

The number of taxpayer-funded condoms handed out to Canadian soldiers is on the rise again after an unexplained low four years ago.

Soldiers at home and abroad snapped up 306,522 condoms from January 2005 to March 2006, said the Canadian Press, citing figures obtained under the Access to Information Act.

Canadian Forces members are supplied with free condoms, paid for by the government and handed out through military dispensaries.

Link.

Pentagon and U.S. State Department officials are working on contingency plans to get about 25,000 people out of Lebanon to escape Israel’s military campaign, launched after two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah guerrillas.

An “air bridge” is the term for planes that would move in swiftly and ferry people out in quick succession.

So instead of trying to curb Israel aggression and saving their citizens, US is basically saying “wait, let us get our citizens out of Lebenon and then you can pound away.” So much for spreading democracy in the Middle East. And with this attitude, no wonder Israel thinks it has a right to pound away.

At a news conference on Saturday, Bush said, “In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place. And that’s because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.”

Bunch of fucking hypocrites.

So Harper has again shown the leash that’s on him. This is our prime minister, ladies and gentlemen, who looks at everything as “us and them”, as “good and evil” or in “black or white”. There are no shades of grey when it comes to foerign policy. The policy will reflect the US policy and nothing else.

LONDON — Responsibility for the escalating violence in the Middle East rests entirely with those who have kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.

Mr. Harper, on his first major international foray, hadn’t even touched down in Europe before aligning himself firmly with the United States and Israel in the latest conflagration.

“Israel has the right to defend itself,” the prime minister told reporters aboard a Canadian Forces Airbus en route to London, where he’s starting a week-long diplomatic mission.

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“I think Israel’s response under the circumstances has been measured.”

Mr. Harper’s unabashed pro-Israel stance, is sure to prove divisive at the G8 summit this weekend in St. Petersburg, Russia, which anchors Mr. Harper’s first major overseas foray as prime minister.

You have to see this to believe it.

A blog Mumbai Help was started to help people connect with their loved ones after the Mumbai blasts on 7th July. It’s amazing read how people have been helping out the best way they can. I urge you to go read the blog.

Link.

The average Canadian spends close to 12 full days a year travelling between work and home, a Statistics Canada study released Wednesday suggests.

The 2005 study found that Canadians spent an average of 63 minutes a day commuting. That compares to 54 minutes in a similar survey in 1992 by the federal agency. “Many Canadians feel that the time that they take in getting to and from work is continually increasing,” wrote the study’s author, Martin Turcotte, in The Time it Takes to Get to Work and Back.

So for once I am above average!! I spend close to 120 minutes on a commute each day. Why do I do it? I once calculated that I would spend 12 dollars each day if I took the car to work (commute and parking costs) and it costs me 6 dollars if I take the train. Moreover, the headaches that one gets when driving with absolute idiots like this and this, I’d rather take my chances on the public transit.

I have always wondered at the sheer disdain people have for a story after a few days. Why do people tend to discard a story (like the Mumbai blasts which are already off a lot of front pages) even though it is a continuing saga.

Apparently so did statisticians at the University of Notre Dame in the US.

Albert-László Barabási of the University of Notre Dame in the US and colleagues in Hungary have calculated that the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time in a power law, and not exponentially as commonly thought. Most news becomes old hat within a day and a half of being posted — a finding that could help website designers or people trying to understand how information gets transferred in biological cells and social networks

Talk about complexity!!

Their model reveals that a typical news site has a relatively stable “skeleton” — corresponding to the overall organization of the site — along with nodes (that is, actual stories) that are only temporarily linked to the main structure before being deleted from the site or not linked any more. In this sense, the network resembles a biological cell’s regulatory network, whose “wiring” can change rapidly during a cell cycle. It is also a bit like social networks: we each have a relatively stable core network of friends and acquaintances but the number of people we interact with can vary drastically from one day to the next.

To get a fuller understanding of such networks, Barabási and colleagues decided to study the visiting patterns on a popular Hungarian news and entertainment portal (origo.hu). Thanks to automatically assigned “cookies”, the scientists were able to reconstruct the browsing history of about 250,000 visitors to the site over the course of a month.

Question : Did they have permission from the 250,000 users on being lab rats? If not, what are the legal ramifications? Oh fuck, who cares, this is so interesting!!

The researchers found that the documents belonging to the skeleton of the website receive an approximately constant stream of visitors, which means that the cumulative number of visitors accessing these documents increases linearly in time. In contrast, the news documents receive the most hits directly after their release, and decrease with time. Thus, the cumulative numbers of visits here reach saturation after just a few days.

Barabasi’s team calculated the “half-life” of a news document, which corresponds to the period in which half of all visitors that eventually access it have visited. The researchers found that the overall half-life distribution follows a power law, which indicates that most news items have a very short lifetime, although a few continue to be accessed well beyond this period. The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released. While this is short, it is longer than predicted by simple exponential models, which assume that web page browsing is less random than it actually is.

So this post is relevant for exactly 36 hours. Oh well, at least I didn’t have to write this article. Long live copy-paste.

Ok, someone needs to tell these geniuses to not take hollywood so seriously.

Astrophysics taking off on Superman

With the release of the “Superman Returns” movie this week, you can bet there will be plenty of discussion (at least half-serious) about the limits and scope of the Man of Steel’s super powers. Rather than engage in uninformed speculation, we went to the experts — physics scholars at Cal and Stanford.

Unfortunately, a lot of them are baffled, too.

“The flying always bothered me,” admits Richard Muller, a professor of astrophysics at Cal and a Superman fan. “I think what he really does is leap and guide himself along the air currents. Or, if you can’t really rule out flying, maybe he has a mechanism for somehow forcing air backward — what if the pores on his skin eject microscopic amounts of excess moisture, like sweat?”

There are other problems. If, for example, Superman were to take Lois Lane in his arms and blast off “faster than a speeding bullet,” Muller says, “she’d be crushed.”

Also, if he is able to fly at near the speed of light there is a problem. Superman, flying off to parts unknown, doesn’t age. But those of us left behind do.

“There would be a huge change,” Chen says. “If he was gone two hours (flying at the speed of light), by the time he returned the world would be over.”

And his date with Lois Lane would be ruined.

Just when it seems that the focus of the country has changed, just when it seems that the hatred has ebbed away, just when it seems that human values for the common man means something more than just being pawns all the time, something like this happens :-

There was absolute chaos in Mumbai (Bombay) after seven explosions at different points on the Western Railway network during peak hour.

A slow day at CNN.com…..

A little too late for the “witch”, isn’t it?

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine gave an informal pardon Monday to Grace Sherwood, who 300 years ago became Virginia’s only person convicted as a witch tried by water.

“I am pleased to officially restore the good name of Grace Sherwood,” Kaine wrote in a letter that Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf read aloud before a re-enactment of Sherwood’s being dropped into the river.

And this is the most hilarious part. Only an idiot could come up with this line :

“With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice,” Kaine wrote. “We also can celebrate the fact that a woman’s equality is constitutionally protected today, and women have the freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams.”

For Monday’s ceremony, attended by about 60 people, the re-enactment took place on land — in front of the Ferry Plantation House, a historic home where Nash volunteers as director and, dressed in costume, tells visitors about Sherwood. The courthouse where part of Sherwood’s trial took place was located on the old plantation property.

Nash’s daughter, Danielle Sheets, was tied cross-bound, her thumbs to her toes, and placed in a small boat, just as Sherwood would have been.

“I be not a witch. I be a healer,” Sheets shouted, in character. “Before this day be through, ye will all get a worse ducking than I.”

Can we get back to reality now?

Big file so watch out dialers.

Link.