** Segway Human Transporter 1

How to render the Segway Human Transporter obsolete:

Every once in a while someone invents something so simple and elegant that it makes you say "damn, why didn't I think of that?" Then there are the other inventions, the ones that make you say "man, I know exactly why I didn't think of that: that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen." Introducing Segway, transporter of humans. Of all the places you'll inevitably be transported to, the first place will be the bank because the Segway will cost you one healthy kidney, $4,500, and a pint of virgin blood.

The reason for this cost: superfluous bullshit like high-voltage field-effect transistors or FETs. What the hell does a FET do? Nobody knows, but I guarantee some nerd spent months writing a graduate thesis on why it's important (and failing). The Segway is packed full of useless, but important-sounding extras like "angular-rate sensors" (or "gyroscopes" to anyone with something better to do than to look up obfuscated $6 words to describe a spinning wheel), and two digital signal processor controller boards with enough processing power to give even the beefiest desktop PC penis envy.

The controller boards monitor the system 100 times per second for conditions that require a response, adjusting the motors up to 20,000 times per second (give or take 19,000), making calculations based on information from five solid-state gyroscopes. You'd think all of this technology would be able to do something useful like cure cancer or make an episode of "Will and Grace" funny, but alas, all it does is balance a pole.

Much like the introduction to an IMAX film, the Segway engineers boast about the inherent inefficiencies of their "innovation:" redundant sensors, microprocessors, and controller boards that cost a fortune, and all for what? A balancing act? Well I came up with an innovation of my own that will help balance a Segway without years of research and millions of dollars invested in obscure technology. The secret?

.....

Tune in tomorrow to find out... same bat time..same bat channel...
:)

** If Dogs were teachers:

Lessons to learn from DOGS : :))

• When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.

• Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.

• Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.

• When it's in your best interest, practice obedience.

• Let others know when they've invaded your territory.

• Take naps.

• Stretch before rising.

• Run, romp, and play daily.

• Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.

• On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.

• On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.

• When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.

• No matter how often you're scolded, don't buy the guilt thing and pout! Run right back and make friends.

• Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.

• Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.

• Be loyal. Never pretend to be something you're not.

• If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.

• When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.

Pour mon cher ami, Pierre.

Grosses bises de T & T .

~ Rads ~ :)

** Humour

LOL!!! :D

** Don't Worry, Be Happy :)

Do not worry about Tomorrow, for Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has troubles of its own. After all, Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday.

These are most certainly pearls of wisdom worth listening to :)

~ Rads ~

** Carvings

This is.... believe it or not...a rose carved out of yam :)

** Thought **

"If you love somebody, let them go.
If they return, they were always yours.
If they don't, they never were."

-Anon.

** Love

"In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."

- Erich Fromm

** The Stoics

[photo: Zeno of Citium]

Stoicism as a philosophy continued as an organised movement for some 500 years. With it, and through it, Western philosophy ceased to be specifically Greek and became international. This was a direct result of Alexander the Great's conquests having spread Greek culture throughout the so-called civilised world - the early Stoic philosophers were mainly Syrians, the later ones mostly Romans. The voices of the most famous of them came from an entire gamut of the social hierarchy, one even being a slave (Epictetus) and another a Roman Emperor (Marcus Aurelius). Stoicism seems to have had a special appeal for emperors. According to a leading authority, "nearly all the successors of Alexander - we may say all the principal kings in existence in the generations following Zeno - professed themselves "Stoics."

Zeno (334 - 262 BC) of Citium, in Cyprus, was the founder of Stoicism. The core of the Stoic philosophy lies in the view that there can be no authority higher than reason. By unpacking the consequences of that belief we arrive at most of the important tenets of Stoic Philosophy.

First, the world as our reason presents it to us as being, that is to say the world of Nature, is all the reality there is. There is nothing "higher." And Nature itself is governed by rationality intelligible principles. We ourselves are part of Nature. The spirit of rationality that imbues it and us ( and that is to say everything ) is what is meant by God. And thus conceived, God is not outside the world and separate from it, he is all-pervadingly in it - he is, as it were, the mind of the world, the self-awareness of the world.

EMOTIONS ARE JUDGEMENTS

Because we are at one with Nature, and because there is no higher realm, there canbe no question of our going anywhere "else" to die - there is nowhere else to go. We dissolve back into Nature. It is through the ethics evolved from this belief that Stoicism achieved its greatest fame and influence.

Because Nature is governed by rational principles there are reasons why everything is as it is. We cannot change it, nor should we desire to. Therefore our attitude in the face of our own mortality, or what may seem to us personal tragedy, should be one of unruffled acceptance. In so far as our emotions rebel against this, our emotions are in the wrong. The Stoics believed that emotions are judgements, and therefore cognitive: they are forms of "knowledge", whether true or false. Greed, for instance, is the judgement that money ia a pre-eminent good and to be acquired by every available means - a false judgement. If our emotions are made subject to our reason they will embody none but true judgements, and we shall then be at one with things as they actually are.

People who adopted the Stoic philosophy were often able to endure life's vicissitudes with calm and dignity. But even for them there might come a time when they would no longer wish to go living - for example in circumstances of personal ruin or disgrace, or in the agonies of a terminal disease. In those circumstances, they believed, the rational thing to do was to end one's own life painlessly, and this many of them did. So a high proportion of the well-known Stoics ended their lives by committing suicide.

The most vivid and compelling of all the expositions of Stoicism are to be found in the writings of the latter Stoics, which were all in Latin. The outstanding figures here are Seneca (c. 2 BC - AD 65) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180). They were not original thinkers in the sense of adding significantly to already-existing Stoic doctrines, but they were such good writers that their works are read to this day by people who are not academics. It is to them that anyone who wants to study Stoicism at first hand should turn.

Stoic ethics have always been widely found to be impressive and admirable, even by the people who do not wholly go along with them. They are not easy to practise - but perhaps it is bound to be a characteristic of any ethics worthy of the name that they are difficult to put into practice. They had an unmistakable influence on Christian ethics, which were beginning to spread at the time when Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius were writing. And, of course, to this very day, the words "Stoic" and "Stoicism" are in familiar use in our language, with perhaps grudgingly admiring overtones, to mean "withstanding adversity without complaint". There must be many people living now who - even if they have never consciously formulated this fact to themselves - subscribe to an ideal in ethics which is essentially the same as that of the Stoics.

The fact that in recent centuries the best available school education in many European countries was based on the study of Latin literature had, as one of its side-effects, that many generations of well educated European males absorbed some of the values of Stoicism. The famous "stiff upper lip" of the public-school educated Englishman was precisely an example of Stoicism in practice and in action, partly rooted in a classical education.

~ The Story Of Philosophy - Bryan Magee

** Happy Birthday Mum

"Mother You filled my days with rainbow lights,
fairytales and sweet dream nights,
A kiss to wipe away my tears,
Gingerbread to ease my fears.
You gave the gift of life to me,
And then in love, you set me free.
I thank you for your tender care,
for deep warm hugs and being there.
I hope that when you think of me,
A part of you, you'll always see. "

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY MA.

WITH ALL MY LOVE

~ SHER :)

** Love & Insanity

"It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity."

-The Matrix - Revolutions, character Merovingian

** Pi

WOW!!!!
Did you know that Mathematicians actually observe a "Pi Day" ?

AHA See!!!!!!! She went and claimed Ria's poster as her own personal mat! :) She's such a schweetie :)

** Simpsons Quotes

[photo: Lizzy looking like she has the world of worries!!! She's prolly wondering what mischief she can get herself into, and how to set it up so that Zic gets the blame :) ]

Quotes...

• "All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" - Homer
  

• "That's it, from now on I'm not looking forward to anything! Oh my god! Tomorrow there's a two for one sale on piano benches. I can't wait, ooh, ooh, ooh!" - Homer
  

• "A man who envies our family is a man who needs help." - Lisa Simpson
  

• "Life is a paradox, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't" - Bart

** Lizzy

Lizzy in the savannah. [In the background, that's the canefield on fire. The canes are burnt before cutting.]

~ Rads ~

** Fruit and Vegetable carvings

Pumpkin art :)

** Weather Watch: Monsoon

Serious weather

Monsoon rains have come again to India, and they're dropping mind-boggling amounts of water on the land. On Tuesday, 37 inches (94 cm) of rain fell around Mumbai--a.k.a. Bombay. The city, a bustling financial hub packed with 17 million people, came to a halt as floodwaters flushed the streets. The city's chief meteorologist said, "Most places in India don't receive this kind of rainfall in a year. This is the highest ever recorded in India's history."

Of course, while monster monsoon rains don't always drop three feet of water in one day, India's monsoon does come every year. But don't think monsoons are all wet. Monsoons can bring drought as easily as floods.

What Are Monsoons?

Say "monsoon," and most people think "rain." But monsoons aren't rainstorms. They're wind systems that reverse direction when the seasons change, bringing dry weather as well as wet. In fact, the word monsoon comes from the Arabic mausim ("season"), which ancient Arab mariners used to refer to seasonal shifts in sea breezes.

Many countries have monsoonal climates, with strong seasonal winds, wet summers, and dry winters. Even the southwestern United States has a small-scale monsoon. But the Asiatic monsoon that washes over the Indian subcontinent every year is the mother of them all.

Like a Day at the Beach

If you've been to the beach on a hot day and hung around past sunset, you've likely experienced a mini-monsoon effect. During the day, the air over the beach heats up quickly, while the air over the water stays cooler (because water absorbs and retains more solar radiation than land). As the hot air over the land rises, cooler air from over the water rushes in to take its place, and you get a refreshing sea breeze.

After the sun sets, the air over the land cools off more quickly than the air over the water (again, because the water has absorbed more heat from the sun and can hold it longer). As the air over the water gets warmer than the air over the land, the breeze shifts. Now the warmer ocean air rises, while the cooler land air heads out to sea.

Getting Hotter, Getting Wetter

The same thing happens in and around the Indian subcontinent every year, but on a much larger scale. As March gives way to April and May, temperatures in India rise. By late spring, it's sweltering, with highs regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

But the mercury rises much more quickly above the land than it does above the Indian Ocean. Soon the cooler air moves inland, blowing in across the ocean and picking up moisture that falls to earth in torrential monsoon rains. Every year, those rains wreak havoc on the Indian subcontinent, even as they provide the water it needs to survive.

Cooling Down, Drying Off

Monsoon systems bring dry weather as surely as wet. In India, as summer gives way to autumn, temperatures fall, and they fall more quickly over the land than they do over the water. By October, India's winds generally blow out to sea, and they stay that way throughout winter and early spring.

When land winds prevail, India generally stays dry. Nothing wrong with dry weather, of course, as long as the wet season has been wet enough. When it hasn't, India's people face another of nature's killers: drought.

~ Steve Sampson

** Some very interesting puns :)

• Passionate kiss like spider web, soon lead to undoing fly.
• Virginity like bubble, one prick all gone.
• Man who run in front of car get tired.
• Man who run behind car get exhausted.
• Foolish man give wife grand piano, wise man give wife upright organ.
• Man with one chopstick go hungry.
• Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways, going to Bangkok.
• Baseball is wrong - man with four balls cannot walk!
• War doesn't determine who is right - war determines who is left.
• It take many nails to build crib, but one screw to fill it.
• Man who drive like hell bound to get there.
• Man who stand on toilet seat is high on pot.
• Man who fishes in other man's well, often catches crabs.
• Crowded elevator smells different to midget.
• Man who drop watch in toilet have shitty time.
• Man who sneezes without tissues, takes matters into his own hands.
• Constipated people don't give a sh*t.

I had me a good laugh there :)

~ Rads ~

** Black Muddy River : *

When it seems like the night will last forever,
And there's nothing left to do but count the years,
When the strings of my harp to sever,
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears...
I will walk alone by the black muddy river,
And dream me a dream of my own,
I will walk alone by the black muddy river,
And sing me a song of my own...

- - - Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead) "Black Muddy River"

** World Happenings

Today the government of Rwanda began releasing 36,000 people from overcrowded Rwandan jails. Most of those released have confessed to helping carry out the 1994 genocide that left a tenth of Rwanda's people dead.

But they have not faced trial, even after a decade in prison. So, Rwanda's congested courts will turn the people over to village tribunals called "gacaca" (meaning "grass," where these local courts generally hold court). Those found to have planned or led the genocide may go back to government courts and prisons. But for most, the gacaca system is about confession, apology, and reconciliation.

Of course, many survivors and relatives of victims are demanding stronger justice than community shame. And that's not surprising when you look again at what happened in 1994, before then, and even since.

Hutu vs. Tutsi

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 wasn't an isolated event. It was the most horrific in a string of mass murders perpetrated by the Hutu against the Tutsi, and vice versa, since 1962, when Belgium granted independence to Rwanda and Burundi, two neighboring nations in Africa's Great Lakes region.

Who's a Hutu, Who's a Tutsi?

Together, Hutus and Tutsis account for nearly all the people of Rwanda and Burundi. Roughly 90 percent of Rwandans are Hutu, while 9 percent are Tutsi. About 85 percent of Burundians are Hutu, and 14 percent are Tutsi. (The rest are mainly Twa, an indigenous pygmy people.)

Contact between the two groups dates back to the Tutsi's arrival in Hutu territory six centuries ago. But, until the 20th century, they apparently got along well--so well, in fact, that experts now disagree, sometimes vehemently, about the nature of the differences between them.

Nature, or Nurture?

Some say there are racial differences. Tutsis are supposedly taller, thinner, and lighter-skinned, while Hutus are supposedly shorter, thicker, and darker-skinned. Yet others say these biometric measures are groundless, if not racist garbage. They point out that years of intermarriage have long since blurred racial boundaries--if they existed at all.

The Hutu and the Tutsi aren't much different ethnically, either. They speak the same languages (which used to be the Hutu's), follow essentially the same clan and kinship systems (borrowed from Tutsi traditions), and practice the same religions. Many in both groups are now Roman Catholic.

Ancient History, or Recent?

Hutu language and customs were well established in the Great Lakes region when the cattle-herding Tutsi started arriving around 1400. But the Tutsi brought more than livestock. They also brought a more sophisticated understanding of war, which eventually helped them dominate despite smaller numbers.

The Tutsi social and political system centered on a quasi-divine king (the "mwami"), who was surrounded by chiefs and sub-chiefs, each in charge of a single hill. Scholars have compared it to a feudal or caste system, with Hutus at the bottom and Tutsis at the top of the socioeconomic heap. Unlike some such systems, however, there seems to have been a fair amount of movement up and down the heap--at least until westerners arrived at the turn of the 20th century.

The westerners--mainly Belgians--used race not only for classification, but also for colonial administration. They issued ethnic identity cards and discriminated in favor of the minority Tutsi, who they perceived as closer to white. They then repeatedly played the race card to divide and rule Rwanda and Burundi (which they administered as a single entity). Whatever animosity existed between the Hutu and Tutsi before, the Belgians made it much worse.

Scylla, or Charybdis?

By the time Rwanda and Burundi officially came into being in 1962, Hutu-Tutsi antagonism was causing trouble for both nations. A Rwandan Hutu revolt ousted the Tutsi king, who fled the country with some 200,000 other Tutsis. Many ended up in Burundi where, fearing a similar fate, the Tutsi powers-that-be cracked down hard on the local Hutu.

In 1963, a group of exiled Rwandan Tutsis returned home as a rebel army, attempting to overthrow the Hutu government. They failed, but the effort prompted a large-scale massacre of Tutsis by Hutus, followed by smaller-scale reprisals. Then, in 1972, a Hutu uprising in Burundi resulted in widespread massacres by Tutsi-led forces, who killed at least 100,000 people, most of them Hutu.

Worse Comes to Worst

Horrific as they were, these massacres pale in comparison to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Hutu extremists carefully planned, then led, the murder of some 800,000 fellow Rwandans, mostly Tutsi. Hutus who refused to go along were murdered, too. A Hutu-controlled radio station repeatedly urged the nationwide slaughter on, shouting "The graves are not yet full!"

Tutsi-led military forces eventually turned the tables, ousting the Hutu-dominated government and chasing the extremists (along with thousands of other Hutus) out of Rwanda. Across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the fighting continued, helping to precipitate a complex regional war that has claimed 3 million lives.

Officially, the Rwandan government now refuses to distinguish between Hutu and Tutsi. In this case, forcing everyone to toe the party line just might be a good idea.

~ Steve Sampson

** Comic Relief :)

LOL! Some people ask for too much eh?

~ Rads

** Tongue Twisters

Just a few words of advice: Don't bite your tongue!! :)

~ Rads : )
****************

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickles peppers
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

2. The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.

3. Betty Botter had some butter
"But" she said, "this butter's bitter".
If I bake this bitter butter,
It would make my batter bitter.
But, a bit of better butter -
That would make my batter better.
So she bought a bit of butter,
Better than her bitter butter,
And she baked it in her batter
And the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas Betty Botter
Bought a bit of better butter.

4. She sells seashells by the seashore
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells seashells on the sea shore
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

5. A Tudor who tooted a flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
So, said the two to their tutor,
"Is it harder to toot,
Or to tutor two tooters to toot?"

6. I am not the pheasant plucker;
I am the pheasant plucker's mate.
I am only plucking pheasants
'Cause the pheasant plucker's running late.

7. A bitter biting bittern
Bit a better brother bittern,
And the bitter better bittern
Bit the bitter biter back.
And the bitter bittern, bitten
By the better bitten bittern
Said: "I'm a bitter biter bit, alack!"

8. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could
And chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would
If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

** Unforgettable : *

Pra um amigo muito especial, quem esta sempre no meu coracao : *

**************
Unforgettable, that's what you are
Unforgettable though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before has someone been more

Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay
That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too...

- - - Irving Gordon, "Unforgettable"

** Vegetable artwork

Lotus flower carrots.... quite spectacular!

** Hope : *

One look at love
and you may see
it weaves a web
over mystery,
all ravelled threads
can rend apart
for hope has a place in the lover's heart.
Hope has a place in a lover's heart...

- - - Enya "Hope Has a Place"