Paulo Coelho's book 'The Alchemist' has been the top favorite of the Pakistan Network on Facebook for a few months now. It is not surprising, as the story has a lot of things in common with the mystic/symbolic fairy tales that my generation (or at least a subset of my generation) was brought up on. This post, though is about Paulo's blog, which is usually filled with though-provoking positive content (and these days, we can surely use all the positivity we can get). A couple of days ago, I read an interesting observation on Paulo's blog about toads, that reminded me of this nation called Pakistan (and it had nothing to do with toads being green). He says:
Brainnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns
Its been one year since I started working with the Blue Brain Project team. Dr. Felix Schürmann, the Project Manager of the Blue Brain Project, informed me last week that the project is officially entering its next phase very soon, which has got me pretty excited.
Meanwhile, here's what the rest of the world of Brains (aka. neuroscience) has been up to recently:
- Neuroscientist can see your dirty thoughts.
- Our brains are hard-wired to appreciate the golden ratio.
- Neuroscientists can turn parts of your brain off and scramble it!
- Your initials affect your intelligence?!
- Neuroscientists create pretty Rat 'Brainbow'.
- If you can't afford the IBM BlueGene, there's Blue Jean to model a brain.
- Your hat size is directly proportional to your intelligence, or vice versa.
- Your brain cells are movers and shakers.
- They're mapping the neural connections.
- The Blue Brain Project Produces Pretty Pictures.
- More pretty pictures.
- Measure your musical abilities (Fun test).
- We try to counterbalance thoughts of death.
PS. On the number of 'n's in the post title (18), I became curious how people actually spelled brai(n)+s, and spent the next 5 minutes charting out the Google hits. Here are the results:
Which Dire Straits song does this image remind you of?
Answer in the comments please… (or check the image name).
Mush Address at 2300, Blog While You Can
I just got news from a reliable army guy that we are all set for martial law. The cable news channels (including PTV – "Baakhabar Pakistan") are going off after every few minutes, so I'll wait till 11PM before checking again.
The President of Pakistan address is scheduled at 2300 – probably so that people have had their dinners (and their tea, and after-meal smokes, and maybe a shot or two of whiskey to celebrate, if they are in the ruling class) and are too drowsy to complain or start protests. Also, its a weekend. Nice use of psychology there. Its a wonder the internet is still working, the first time Mush ousted Nawaz Sharif, I was in my office and had a satellite connection, but most of the dialup ISPs were shut down.
PS. I am surrounded by army guys (and ex-army guys) from all sides – my home address says "Officers Colony, Lahore Cantt" – with a huge ammo depot a few meters behind my house. All the land in Cantt supposedly belongs to the army, and could be reclaimed in 'states of emergency' according to the lease agreements.
Musharraf’s Two Hat Tricks and Pro-BB CNN
Despite my aversion to political commentary, I couldn't help checking out the couple of remaining news channels that are still online. One of those channels has a news ticker saying:
"Chief of the Army Staff Pervaiz Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency…" and immediately afterwards:
"President of Pakistan Pervaiz Musharraf will address the nation anytime tonight".
Wicked.
CNN, on the other hand, in [this] post, thinks that its a euphemised Martial Law, and says "Emergency declared by president" … confusing me on whodunnit.. the President or the COAS? The CNN report seems to be more about portraying BB as a hero than Pakistan actually, claiming that "…Bhutto, who has defied death threats, is working to lead…" and "Bhutto received light wounds, but escaped largely unharmed [in the suicide attacks]". I had the impression she was safely towed away from the mess in her armored vehicle. Stop confusing me CNN!
I guess I should start watching TV again. :-/