I grew up listening to Marcel Khalifeh; we had all his tapes and I knew all of his songs, when I 5 years old. During my last visit to Syria I bought all his CD's, including Jadal. Jadal is a 4 movement piece that embodies Middle Eastern music from every angle, it's played by a quartet called Al Mayadeen. What makes Marcel different from other great singers is his ability to write music; Marcel is a composer as much as he is singer. Another fact that seperates him from the rest, is his message. In my openion, Marcel did the most for the palestinian cause; he held many charity concerts all over the world. My favourite Marcel songs are Ummi, Jawaz Al Safar, Jadal 3rd movement, and Ittayara (kan fe marra tifl sgheer...) I recommend you go out and give his music a listen!

The snow is fully melted now, the weather is heavenly. Today I plan to play some outdoor soccer with a bunch of friends, especially since it's our last day of lectures. Exams are comming quicker than I hope for, by the 18th of April I will be completely finished!

Worth a read!

here's a very interesting and true story, please read on..Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.
I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.
In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.
While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.
"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.
For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I said, "and others?"
"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like.

In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method."
"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."
"On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".
"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
The name of the student was Niels Bohr." (1885-1962) Danish Physicist; Nobel Prize 1922; best known for proposing the first 'model' of the atom with protons & neutrons, and various energy state of the surrounding electrons -- the familiar icon of the small nucleus circled by three elliptical orbits ... but more significantly, an innovator in Quantum Theory.

This is a pic from an anti-war demonstration that we participated in prior to the war on Iraq. Since then we had many others, some for Palestine others for Iraq. Let's hope we don't need any demonstrations for Syria.

I thought I would share with you my "To Do" board for today.. We had a 3 day weekend here, for good friday/easter, and I still couldn't catch up with classes.. It's unbelievable the pace at which classes move. Did you notice my superior cut and paste skills in Photoshop?

Today after a long day of studying, I had to feed my stomach some true arabic classics.. Seen in the pic are kousa mehshi, salata, and the classic, mjaddara. If you're wondering, yes, the food is on the floor. If I had the choice between eating on the floor and eating on a table I would choose the floor anyday. I'm not sure why.. Maybe I feel more control over my food that way?!?!

This post is indirectly inspired by Sinan. Sinan mentioned that he is open minded towards homosexual issues, and I share that with him. While some may argue that homosexuals choose their sexual orientation to get more attention, or to be different, I believe other wise. My belief is primarily based on recent scientific findings, stating that there is a gene that is responsible for sexual orientation, commonly known as the gay gene.
More specifically this gene is thought to encourage the lust for men in individuals. In other words, women and men have this gene, which explains why this gene continues to propagate through generations.
In a study done by an Italian researcher it was found that “mothers and aunts had more children if related to a gay rather than a straight man. Mothers of gay men averaged 2.7 babies, compared with 2.3 born to mothers of straight men.” Which means that women with the gay gene had more sexual urges towards men, than ones without. The desire for men is then shown transferred to their gay sons. In the words of the researcher her self "We think of a gene for male homosexuality, but it might really be a gene for sexual attraction to men." The scientist does not believe that her finding explains men’s homosexuality but rather completes part of the puzzle of homosexuality. I think such findings should encourage us to give gay couples full rights, from marriage to being considered a family. It’s not fair for us to judge them and take away their rights just because we don’t have the same sexual orientation. I personally think that religion is the main reason behind the massive dislike of gay people, as can be clearly seen by American society, where the debate is still going on.

I always find those Male/Female representations funny. Although such pics are exaggerations, nevertheless they are still funny. I think they're funny because to some extent they are true.. I'll admit, some of those male brain regions are existent in my brain.. how about you? 

This is a picture of Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes.. It was taken today near the city of Hamilton. The signs of spring are evident in the picture. The lake has liquid water, not ice, and snow is melting off the rocks on the side. The temperature today was -1 in the morning, and progressed to +5 for the afternoon.. Spring is officially here! 

More math jokes

I couldn't resist the cheesyness of some of these jokes.. I'm not sure why but I love cheesy jokes. When hearing a cheesy joke you just have to shake your head, say "Why?!", and then laugh at how stupid the joke is..Here are some


Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components. this one refers to the expansion a + bi, where i is imaginary, a is real and b is a coefficient

Mathie pick-up line
pick-up line:
"I wanna be your derivative so I can be tangent to your curves"

And last but not least
"Never Drink and Derive"

If you didn't enjoy this post, then I'm truly sorry. I realize not everyone enjoys these jokes, but I was tempted.

The Ladies Man

So here I am searching the net, expecting to find a really good looking guy, who's synonymous with the term "Ladies Man" Yes, I was searching for Casanova's picture.. And this is what I got (above).. I'm either not up to date with what's hot, totally can't judge guys, or this guy is ugly.. I must say, the feeling I got when I saw the pic, is the same feeling that I got when I was told Santa is doesn’t exist, and there's no tooth fairy.. a feeling of disappointment. Some more research on his life yielded his fame. It turns out he published an autobiography sometime in the 1800's and he mentioned in there that had 122 different partners. Nasty? yes... Ugly? for sure.. this is Casanova for you ladies.
P.S if I were to get that kinda hair cut, would girls like it? hmm..
 

I took this pic while I was trying to study/do assignment, the only problem is noise. We have guests over, and they decided to bring their lovely kids, which when combined create enough noise to inflict damage in your ears (or mine)... Is there anyway to zone out? 

Captain Majid... Ba6al al mal3ab..

Captain Majid.. where do I start? Possibly the most popular Jap. cartoon in the arab world. It intrigued every kids imagination. I remember how all the kids on my street got together after the show, to practice our soccer skills in hoping to be the next Captain Majid. Next time I go to Syria, I'm going to try and find the show on cd's for my own watching pleasure.. Anyway, incase you're wondering, the actual name of Majid is Tsubasa. The show has quite a few seasons now, not to mention games for game boy and PS2 .. So the show is still popular in Japan, and will hopefully come back to the arab world..
I found this great website about the show, it even has the Japanese names for Bassam, Waleed, Omar, Nassir and the rest.. enjoy! http://members.tripod.com/~Cmi010/tsubasa.htm 

Mira was wondering why I think it's good to be nerdy, and here's why... some jokes that require nerdyness to understand..
Joke # 1 comes from vector calculus
Q: How is a PhD student in Theology like the Laplacian operator? A: div grad (of course this refers to a graduate student of divinity, as well as del^2.)

Joke # 2, actually comes from one of my lecture today, I'm proud to say i made it up..
what do u call a gay scientist? Homo-genius.
We were studying homogeneous solutions, and as usual I wasn't listening...

and last but not least joke #3 comes from geometry:
You hear the one about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and came back a tangent?  

If you are a true arab like me, then I am sure you consume large amounts of tea on daily basis. I usualy drink tea about 4 times a day, for an approximate total of about 1 litre/day. Tea provides me with relaxation, great taste, and just the right amount of caffeine. I like my tea sweet, just like the poeple of Der3a (syria). Incase you're wondering I wasn't born in Der3a, I was actually born in Homs.... ok go ahead and make your jokes, I make them too sometimes.. back to tea, here was the tea association of Canada says about tea on their website www.tea.ca NEW RESEARCH PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT TEA MAY HAVE A PROTECTIVE EFFECT AGAINST HEART DISEASE AND CANCER CAUSED BY SMOKING
FINDINGS PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER ISSUE OF
JOURNAL OF NUTRITION
SEPTEMBER 30, 2003 (New York, NY) - Consuming 30-32oz of tea daily over a period of time - the fluid equivalent of 2.5 cans of soda - may reduce Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol levels by more than 10 percent and decrease the risk of DNA damage caused by smoking, according to new research published as a supplement in the October 2003 issue of the Journal of Nutrition. These and other studies, including government research utilizing emerging biomarkers of cardiovascular health, are included in the supplement titled Proceedings of the Third International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health: Role of Flavonoids in the Diet and provide further evidence of tea's disease-fighting potential in the areas of cardiovascular health and cancer
 

Tip of the day

Never pee into the wind.. ahh... not that I have tried or anything.. gotta go

My Nerd Score

Well, I took the test and I turned out to be MIT material. Which is kind of true, since my school claims to be better than MIT. Sinan, you can have the biggest geek, if I can have biggest Nerd.

War of Terrorism

This is a thought that I had in my mind for a while, and I thought I would share it with you.
The 9/11 attack ignited the start of Bush's infamous war on terrorism. A phrase that we are so used to hearing nowadays. First of all I want to clarify that the attacks were wrong, and served no purpose, other than to launch a large American offensive against the middle east.
So how many people died in the 9/11 attacks? According to Wikipedia, 2985 people. Directly after 9/11, the US launched a military attack in Afghanistan, in which according to a University of New Hampshire professor "at least 3,767 Afghan civilians had died in the first 8 ½ weeks of the war." After Afghanistan, Bush launched an illegal and pointless war on Iraq, with civilian casualties on the rise everyday. According to iraqibodycount.net, there is a minimum reported civilian casualties of 16,389 people, as of today.
So let’s do the math here. +16,389 + 3,767 = 20156 which by the way is a conservative, and rising figure; this is 7 times as many as the 9/11 casualties. Of course those casualties were all due to accidents from highly precise weaponry, imagine if they weren't so precise. My point here is that the war on terrorism has become in so many ways, the war of terrorism. Does Bush realize that he has just created more terrorists than there was in 2001? Maybe he does. But does he care? That I can answer for sure 

We had a mini logo design contest for our class recently, and my design shown above, showed the most positive response. The design was to portray certain aspects of mechanical engineering.. The M has 2 tensile specimens, there is a "gear theme" carried in most of the letters. The H, is a wrench, and the 8 is comprised of 2 nuts (no pun intended). Incase you're wondering Mech 08 stands for the decipline and year of graduation.. 

Massari (money in arabic) is the newest pop/R&B sensation in Canada and soon in the US. His songs carry a clear Arabic melody to them. When I first heard his song (smile for me) I didn't recognize the singers name, but I took a liking to it right away.. Anyway, I support the idea of Arabs to be involved in the today's pop culture. I think it's was to give North American's a new perspective to view Arabs from.. you can see the song and the video at http://www.capitalprophetrecords.com 

I was channel surfing today and almost every other channel had some sort of infomecial, mainly dealing with excersize. So I decided to capture that moment with this priceless picture. As a quick survey, who thinks those machines actually work effectively? I am skeptical. 

As part of my university program, I have to alternate between work terms and study terms through my five years of schooling.. The downfall of that is having no time off, not even during summer, the good thing is the work experience I'll come out with.. Just recently I was going through my interview phase for my summer job, and I landed a job at Multimatic Tech. Centre (http://www.multiinc.com/index.shtml) where I will assist in the design of hinges and/or suspension for GM and Ford vehicles.. The picture above shows Multimatic's race car which enters the Daytona race on a yearly basis.. Don't you just wanna drive it? 

Words to Live By

As a prelude to the “Science Way of Thinking” (one of my next postings) I thought I'd post this. I’ve always been a big fan of science; I always wondered why things worked the way they did. I started reading non-fiction science books as early as age 11. The first ‘real’ book I read was “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan. I recommend that you at least search through amazon.com through the reviews and see what people thought of it. Cosmos lead me into reading almost all of Sagan’s other works, and this post concerns the sequel to Cosmos, a book called Pale Blue Dot. The name Pale Blue Dot comes for the picture displayed above, which shows our beloved planet as seen from Voyager 1, 3.7 billion miles away.
If a picture says a thousand words, this say a million, and who would be better to describe it than the author. The description below, represents the most moving words I have ever read. There is so much thought, emotion, and wisdom in those words, please read on.

“... Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. “
 

Comming soon.. The "Science" Way of Thinking. I have been quite overloaded with projects lately... please keep posted 

The life of a north american teen

After listening to “Welcome to my life” for the millionth time, I was compelled to write this.
If you haven’t heard this touching song, I suggest you download it (legally or else Simple Plan will have something else to wine about) Otherwise, read on.

The song deals with the tough life of a north american teen. Upon close examination of the intensely sophisticated lyrics, I realized exactly what they’re talk about.. I mean as teen in north america you get to wake up at 7 am to eat breakfast and then take the ugly yellow school bus to school, where your friends will have more designer clothes on than you, and then proceed in learning about useless stuff like math and history, and to top it off you get to go home and play some boring video games, after which you’ll have dinner and maybe chat on MSN, surf the internet, and then go to sleep only to repeat the WHOLE CYCLE AGAIN… what a rough life… What are the kids in Africa complaining about with their skinny unhealthy bodies, deprived of the basic right of an education?.. or the Iraqi and Palestinian kids who are desensitized to blood from seeing it everyday as part of their normal life? Or more recently the tsunami victims who lost a father or a mother?.. they’re life is a breeze

See my point? What are those ignorant bastards talking about? What do they have to complain about? Making millions off of crappy pathetic songs? Or finding out Avril Lavene has copied they’re make up style?

Any how, I thought I would point out some of the great music that we here in NA, and maybe make you readers jealous, since you don’t have such a rich variety of crap to listen to on the radio.. provided you’re not from north america.

Here are some of the lyrics…
Do you ever feel like breaking down?Do you ever feel out of place?Like somehow you just don't belongAnd no one understands youDo you ever wanna runaway?Do you lock yourself in your room?With the radio on turned up so loud That no one hears you screamingNo you don't know what it's likeWhen nothing feels all rightYou don't know what it's likeTo be like me

Do you wanna be somebody else?Are you sick of feeling so left out?Are you desperate to find something more?Before your life is overAre you stuck inside a world you hate?Are you sick of everyone around?With their big fake smiles and stupid liesWhile deep inside you're bleedingNo you don't know what it's likeWhen nothing feels all rightYou don't know what it's likeTo be like me