Per Ardua Ad Astra

Getting rid of CD scratches.

An academic insider joke for for all those who ever had to endure hours of presentations:

If you’re thinking fowl play, the presentation was given at the 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) humor session, themed ‘Chicken’ (naturally). Thankfully, even though I found it funny, at least I was not totally incapacitated by the video.
For a closer look at the slide brought up during the Q&A session,

The paper and ppt files are available here and here.

Paper citation as follows:
Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken, Zongker, Doug, Annals of Improbable Research, Volume 12, Number 5, September-October 2006 , pp. 16-21(6)

Finally, the EC or SPR has released the election results showing that the opposition has seized Kedah, Kelantan, Perak, Penang and Selangor and has made inroads into practically all the other peninsula states!

Better yet, there has been no reports of disturbances so far!

We have conclusively shown that:
1) we, the people DO HAVE A SAY! and
2) we are capable of moving past 1969!

Well done fellow Malaysians!

P.S.: If the federal government is gonna cut off our finances like what happened in the East Coast back then, I doubt that the reprecussions would be that drastic as the West Coast states are much better off financially. All that needs to be done is to cut down on useless refurbishment of those Majlis Perbandaran buildings and we should be fine.
Besides, I’d bet that they won’t dare to do so, because then we’ll have a reason to give them another 8th of March that shall never, ever be forgot! This round’s bloody blow is for playing the race card at the expense of economy, and they’ll be as sure as hell not to provide us any more reasons to deal another bloody blow such as this!

Image sourced from here.

Be sure to exercise your constitutional right this March 8!

For something that is worth spending my precious time on, here’s me doing my small part in ushering change into our country’s decadent politics!

This time, we have more reason than ever to do something, and new faces that we can trust in.

Loh Gwo-Burne, the whistleblower in the Ligamgate scandal is contesting the Parliamentary seat in SJ as PKR’s representative! Considering the harassment his family got from the ACA just for doing the right thing, I’d say he deserves the chance to get even. There’s also this weird independent guy making it a three way fight, but apparently he’s not to be bothered so hopefully there won’t be a vote split. The only problem is I won’t get to vote this round and help Mr. Loh have a go at the corrupt authorities.

As for the state seat, DAP is contesting that one so we’ll have a place to put our votes. But seriously, DAP’s idea of dangling a RM35 billion (yes, BILLION!) election carrot for the poor is pretty much ridiculous. I’m sure there’s a much better way of using the money for the better good instead of simply throwing it to the poor just to get elected! Besides, this tactic is all too familar to Singaporeans. Nevertheless, in the spirit of anything but BN, we’ll have to overlook that problem and hope that DAP won’t keep that promise.

I hope that all of you out there will do your part in upending the status quo! Obama showed us how our generation can enact change. We can do it too! Vote and urge your family and friends to vote BA!

Do not let the 8th of March pass unmarked! Remember, people should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

EVERY VOTE COUNTS!!!

Finally, the time to do a brief post and have a video to properly send 2007 off.

Had a bad year? Watch it and have fun! Like they say: But there’s still ‘08!

And keep a lookout for a poor polar bear, China’s toys, Blackwater, A380, Ahmadinejad, Senator Larry Craig, Halo 3 and the iPhone! Be warned, you might not see some things the same way again after this!
So what are you waiting for?

P.S.: If the video reminds you of We Live In Singapura, that’s because the 2 songs used Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” music.

…to ‘backup’ my bookmarks. Neglecting to do so earlier made me lost some important links, especially those I cannot immediately recall. The links to lecture notes on specific topics under aeronautics, physics and mathematics from their respective depts in other universities are all gone. Now I need to recall the search strings I used and the page rank (but hey, if you got a good one, pls toss the lifeline to me!). :S And of course, links to the wonderful video archives out there.

Crap!

BTW, as the total number of links is fast approaching the century mark, I’ll be trying to streamline the sidebar interface soon. Most likely, it’ll cost an extra click’s worth to save the space.

And for those still waiting to see the innards of my fried Vaio, please bear with me some while more. I hope I can remember where I placed the photos too.

I’m supposed to be studying, but New Scientist’s “War has historic links to global climate change” caught my attention. Written as a follow-up to “Climate change linked to a millennium of war in China”, it turns out that climate change and warfare is a vicious cycle. And yet the irony is that war also gave us modern technology (well, not all of it).

That brings the question: Is our ‘pristine’ environment really so-called untouched by humanity? An example is the American Prairie, thought (it’s just one of a few alternatives scenarios in academia) to have been an African savannah look-alike but has been reshaped by human activity towards the end of the Pleistocene epoch. So, if that’s true then what the hell are we conserving? Mother Nature or our predecessor’s handiwork? Like Y2K (still remember what that was?), sometimes we seem to be stuck with the muck the previous generations left us. Who knows that our attempts to stop global warming is simply a rearguard action to prevent our extinction and setting the stage for the next species’s global donimation. Time will tell, but our species’s selfishness and inability to plan for the future is starting to hurt us all. Let’s hope that we’re smarter than these frogs.

As a solution to our problems, geoengineering or planetary engineering is starting to make the headlines once again. Sun’s warming us too much? So just make a huge sunshade for Earth! I’m not saying that it’s a foolish idea, but given historical precedence, it might just be a good idea to thread carefully. From what I know, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a pioneer in this field (as well as rocketry). Thankfully, even though his ideas fit with the Soviet communist ideal of man subjugating nature for his needs, they were never carried out (although Soviet disregard for EIAs did cause environmental disasters in the former bloc). Well, sneer at the commies for their stupidity, but some Christian evangelicals adhere to the same idea as well (that might just explain the Republicans’ apathy). Besides, I think that individualism isn’t as environmentally friendly as we might want it to be.

Why so?

SImple. A lot of call-to-action has been issued for us to do our part in reducing our environmental footprint. But let me ask you, what have YOU done to reduce consumption? More likely than not (and I applaud the rare exceptions out there), I’ll wager that you would most probably be more concerned about the rat race or having fun.

In contrast, while the Chinese are bleching out plenty of carbon their government is quite efficient in enforcing green ideas. The enforcement ranges from the humourous, inconvenient and not very effective idea of cutting vehicular traffic by half in Beijing (find out how here) to the deadly serious blowing up of coal factories not compliant with SEPA (China’s EPA) standards in Linfen. Collective behavior is not that bad after all (if executed correctly). Even if governments and corporations are slow to react, the masses can still drop carbon emissions quickly if given the right incentive to do so (so far, sticks are far more effective than carrots). Only thing that remains now is for you to decide whether you want to wait for the stick to fall on you first or start working now to harvest the carrots later.

It certainly makes you feel important isn’t it? But it’s no big deal, it’s given to all USP students who wants to go and listen.

Hell, now I’ll have to wear formal on Fri. The one with PM Lee only needed smart casual wear, but just because it’s someone more important we have to upgrade. Ceesh. Well, if it rains on Fri aft then it’ll make it much more bearable.

Hmmm, from the title it’s probably going to be about either the UN, global warming and the Israel-Palestine issue, or even energy security. Might be an interesting talk…