To my readers, this announcement had to be made sooner or later, this will be my last post...


Well, my last post until I settle in my new place in North York. Monday will mark the end of my brief holidays, and the beginning of the four month work term. I made sure that the room I rented has internet, after all how can you live without it? And more importantly how can I blog without it?? The next few days will be quite busy, moving in, getting comfortable with the city, and hopefully getting to meet my new roomies. I plan on moving in on the weekend, so if everything goes smoothly, I will be able to post something by Sunday or Monday night.

Until then, ciao

Galileo Thermometer

It's time for another science post.

Seen in the picture above is the Galileo Thermometer. Each one of the coloured'things' in the tube has a little plate, with the temperature engraved on it. You can tell the temperature in the room by looking at the lowest floating indicator, in the picture it's the dark blue one.

So how does it work?
Well, the tube is filled with water, and each one of those glass pieces inside the tube is filled with a mix of water, food colouring and alcohol, the density of the coloured liquid is the same as that of water.
What makes some of the pieces heavier (more dense) than others is the size of the temperature tag. Since objects that are denser sink, and less dense float, this thermometer essentially works according to changes in density.

How does the density change? The density of water changes with temperature, so when the temperature increases, the density of the water decreases and some of those coloured pieces fall down. When the temperature decreases some of the pieces float, and the temperature reading is therefore changed.

This thermometer is quite popular around here, many people have it their offices, but I'm sure that 90% of the people don't know how it works. My description of how it works is compressed. If you didn't get it, and still want to know how it works visit this website http://www.howstuffworks.com/question663.htm

Rockwood Conservation Area

Lakes are scattered all over Canada. You will find at least 3 lakes in any 30 km radius. One of my favourite lakes is Rockwood Lake. Rockwood is a conservation area, where you can go camping, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and of course make mashawi (BBQ). I like this lake particularly for the great scenery it offers, especially with the cliffs seen in the picture above. Below are two more pictures taken during the same visit last summer


Here we are canoeing

I love the mixed trees seen in this picture

Cheesy joke, related to previous post

You guys probably know this one but here it goes:

Open god wrote his book on In In

Translation

Fat7 Allah katab ktabo 3ala FiFi

I find it funny my self, hope you enjoyed it.
Do you have any simillar jokes?

English-Arab Accent

Living in a multicultural country exposes a person not only to different cultures, but also to the accents associated with those cultures. If you watch The Simpsons, then you already know the Indian accent through Apu. Being an Arab I pay special attention to our accent, with the ultimate goal of deciphering what we say and how we should say it. To my surprise, people who have been here for over 10 years still have a heavy accent, as if they didn't even try to adapt to the culture. Here are some things which I think Arabs should tackle first when trying to change their accents.

First, Don't let your tongue do too much work when it doesn't have to. It's not RRRRR, it's R.
Rule number 1: R not RRRR

Second, this especially annoys me with "modern" Arab-Canadians. As we know it's not cool to say Thawra (revolution) in Arabic, but it is cool to say "Sawra." Um Kalthoum's name is Um Kalsoum, and the list goes on with any word containing A7rof Lathawaya (letters containing the sound THis, leTHal etc) Sadly Arabs continue this coolness into English. So we get people who say:

What is zis? Zat over zere?
And the classic
Habby birzday to you, Habby birzday to you….. you are now sree years old!

Rule number 2: say THis, and say BirTHday, it's cool in English to pronounce these sounds.

Habby Birthday reminded of the most common mistake for us. There's the P, and there’s the B. I know we don’t have P in Arabic, but that does't mean we can't try to learn to pronounce it. For those who persist, just imagine saying Pandora instead of Bandora (tomato), see, it sounds odd.

Rule number 3: pay attention to you B and P, they can make a difference.

Oh, and this word was especially popular during the beginning of the war on Iraq. People would discuss the war saying "they drobbed BOMBs on the airport" what's wrong with that you ask? They pronounce the B at the end of Bomb. For those who have that problem, imagine the word was spelled Baum, and there, you have the perfect accent for that word.

I cannot come up with any more rules at the moment, but I'm sure there are more, which I may add later. I know that this was a bit satirical, but I do not intend to make fun of anyone here, I had many problems too. I am trying to get a point across. We should try to improve our accent, it's way a of submerging our selves in the culture. With a better accent, you can be more convincing during interviews, you wouldn’t get a bias towards you in everyday life, your communication will improve…

I hope that some of readers benefit from this, and I hope some of them live around here. Be honest with me now, do you notice the same problems with our accents? Do you think that it's crucial to improve our accents?


The picture on top is perfect..

The CN Tower, the concrete giant

I thought I would share with you one of my favourite tourist attractions in Toronto, the CN Tower. The tower which can be seen from ~30 km radius, towers above the other sky scrapers surrounding it. The white stadium next to the tower is called the SkyDome, and it has a retractable roof, on this particular day, the roof was open. The tower is 553 m high, which happens to be the highest free standing structure in the world. It is said that the tower sways in the wind 9 meters to each side. The tower has a revolving restaurant at the top, so while you're eating you get a 360 degree view of Toronto. When you go to the "Space Deck" (right where the grey ends and the white antenna starts) you are the highest person on earth, on a man made structure. One of interesting things about the inside of the tower is the glass floors. When you go to the top, some sections of the tower's floor are made of glass, for some reason most people are scared of stepping there, fearing any major accident. Last time I went there my friends and I, being complete show offs, started jumping on the glass to show the scared people that it was safe.

For those who care about the details, the tower is a reinforced concrete structure. The concrete was poured non-stop from day one to the end of constructions, any delay in the delivery of the concrete and the structure would have been unsafe. The antenna was lifted into a place using the "Sky Crane" helicopter. Periodically, the tower is checked for any cracks in the concrete, so you can always be sure that it's in top condition.

Overall, I think the tower is a must visit especially on a clear day. On cloudy days you can only see half of the tower, the other half seems to shoot up into no where, it's an amazing sight.

A picture of the glass floor, looking at it now, I can see why people get scared.

Is there life other than here? A possible answer

If there's an obsession that I have it's astronomy. To me nothing is as amazing, mind boggling and limitless.

I'm not sure if you share my enjoyment of staring at a clear night sky, and watching the twinkling stars. Looking at such a star filled sky logically begs the question, is there someone else looking at the sky from their planet and wondering if there is anyone else out there. Which brings me to the topic of this post: is there life somewhere else? I'll tell you right now, I don’t have an answer but I will speculate with the help of a simple equation I ran across about 5 years ago. Before you continue reading this, I ask you to look at the picture above and give the question a bit of thought. Every dot and bright spot in the picture represents a star, just like our sun, perhaps with little planets orbiting them as well. What makes us so special that our tiny planet is the only planet to harbour life from this vast ocean of matter? Or are we not special after all? I believe that our planet represents one of many planets harbouring life throughout the universe. Here’s a little (and simple) calculation to show how many different "advanced civilization" exist in our galaxy alone. An advanced civilization is defined as one that is technical, in other words possesses technology. The calculation is statistical, here are the different parts of the equation and what they represent:

- N, the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way
- N*, the number of stars in the Milky Way
- fp, the fraction of stars which have planetary systems
- ne, number of planets in a given system that are ecologically suitable for life (not too cold, too hot…)
- f1, fraction of otherwise suitable planets on which life actually arises
- fi, fraction of inhabited planets on which an intelligent form of life evolves
- fc, fraction of planets inhabited by intelligent beings on which a communicative technical civilization develops
- fL, the fraction of a planetary lifetime graced by a technical civilization

The equation is then N = (N*) (fp) (ne) (f1) (fi) (fl) where the brackets represent multiplication. It is important to note that just from reading the parameters of the equation you can see that the calculation is pretty thorough and well thought of.

So what are the numbers to be placed into the equations?

Well, we know N*, which is 4 X 10^11 (four with 11 zeros after it). Fraction of stars with planets is approximated at a third of all stars. We estimate ne, to be 2, just by looking at our own planetary system. We estimate f1 to be a third. The estimate of fi and fc are combined to equal 0.01. Which means that only one percent of planets on which life arises eventually produce a technical civilization. Lastly we estimate fL as one millionth of a percent. Which can be seen from our civilization, it took us hundreds of thousands of years to develop a highly technical civilization.

Multiplying all those numbers together we get about 10 civilizations. That is, 10 civilizations in the Milky Way alone. Consider now that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe, and the number of civilizations becomes too much to comprehend. By the way, if you wonder how the estimates in the above paragraph were made, I can send you the full details or post them on the blog.
It took the author of Cosmos about 4 pages to describe what I have compressed in the last two paragraphs.

You may ask the question: so why haven't seen any of those life forms. I can think of two simple answers. One is that the furthest we have (closely) investigated for life is Mars, which is very close, especially when we talk about astronomical distances. The second explanation is that the universe is too large for two civilizations of actually meet by sheer coincidence. One other explanation is that civilizations may not use 'earthly' ways of communication, such as radio, or sound waves. So we may not be able to detect those civilizations.

Anyhow, I thought I would bring you into my mind and my interest. I hope it wasn’t too boring. But I do want to know what you think. Did the above information change your mind about life elsewhere? Strengthen your belief? Left you snoring out of boredom? Does any one care about this issue? Isn’t it boring to be the only existing life out there?

Sources: my thoughts, the equation and the numbers from Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The picture came from astronomy picture of the day website

Fibonacci and His Sequence

Here you go Dina, hope you like the explanation.

First some info on Fibonacci

Fibonacci was born in Italy but was educated in North Africa where his father, Guilielmo, held a diplomatic post. His father's job was to represent the merchants of the Republic of Pisa who were trading in Bugia, later called Bougie and now called Bejaia. Bejaia is a Mediterranean port in northeastern Algeria. It was in Bejaia where the famous mathemetician got his education.

Second where his sequence comes from

The original problem that Fibonacci investigated was about how fast rabbits could breed in ideal circumstances. The problem set was:

Suppose a newly-born pair of rabbits, one male, one female, are put in a field. Rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits. Suppose that the rabbits never die and that the female always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on. How many pairs of rabbits are there after one year?

The Solution:
-At the end of the first month, the pair of rabbits mate, but there is still only one pair.
-At the end of the second month the female produces another pair so that there are now two pairs.
-At the end of the third month the original female produces another pair so that there are now three pairs of rabbits in the field.
-At the end of the forth month, the original female produces yet another pair and the female produced two months ago produces her first pair so that there are now five pairs of rabbits in the field.
- By one year there will be 233 pairs

Hence the sequence 1,1,2,3,5…(the next number is the sum of the previous two)

It is important to note that the population of rabbits is just one aspect of nature and life that these numbers relate to. There are many, many others including spider webs and even dripping taps and suspension bridges.

Sources: many, I originally read this in a book on the number Zero written by Charles Seif

What's cool about turning 21? Check these out!

Well I Googled the number and the following "cool facts" came up.. I think some are lame but I thought I might share them, with commentary.

21
= 3 x 7 <-- ooooh, I didn't know that before

A triangular number.
= 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 <-- who cares

A Fibonacci number.
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21.. <-- ok, that's cool, I'll post something about Fiboncci someday


The total number of spots on a normal die. <-- good to know when stranded on a desert island

Formerly the legal coming-of-age when you received the `key of the door'. <-- now we're talking

A game of table tennis is won by the first player reaching 21 points. <-- I love ping pong

We live in the twenty-first century. <-- another useless one, who made this up, ok my blog's name is Earth to Omar, but I'm not that confused

Incase you want learn some "cool facts" about your age be sure to visit this website. And maybe post your cool age facts on your blog with commentary.

Stats down, 2A down, Summer has officially BEGUN

So I'm finished, fini, rifinito, acabado with school for another four months. I must say the 4 months seemed like a few weeks, the term always comes and goes in a flash. I have added 6 courses to my transcript (hopefully), and have become 1/3 mechanical engineer, and it feels good. Statistics was my last exam; I couldn't even bring my self to start studying over the weekend. Partially because I got all the hard exams out of the way, partially because stats is boring... In fact I have a 95% confidence interval I will never take stats again (that was a stats joke by the way). I finished 3/4 of the exam in 45 minutes, so I had 2.25 hours to do the last two questions, and boy was that beautiful. After the exam me and my close buddy went to Williams (local Starbucks), it has become our after midterm/exam tradition. We then played soccer for a good few hours. Tomorrow the real party will begin, most of my friends are in electrical engineering, and they finish their exams tomorrow. I will take some pics to share with you.

Curious Teachers

This is post is more on the serious side.
As I was outside today, I remembered one special detail about my schooling in Syria, that particularly bothered me. During the first day of every school year, almost every teacher that made us introduce our selves and tell him/her what our parents did for a living. I was always proud to say that what my parents did, but others in the class weren’t as proud. One kid especially was always shy when answering the question. His dad was disabled and didn’t have a job. I’m still not sure whether he was more embarrassed of his dad not working, or being disabled. When ever the teacher would ask, my friend would say “my dad doesn’t work”, then the teacher being as ignorant as he is would ask “well, why not?” like if it was any of his business. My friend would then say “ he’s disabled.” A few months before finishing school, and coming to Canada, my friend’s dad passed away. I wonder if he feels worse now when being asked the question.

What bothers me, is the origin of such questions. Is it that Arabs ask too many question in general? Or was I just unlucky with the teachers I had?

Here’s another occasion where a dumb question was asked. My friend, different guy from the one mentioned above, had a problem with leg. He was born with this problem which disabled him from being able to bend his knee to a great extent. So when he walked, he would always stiffen one leg, and therefore limp slightly. I still remember the pressure that he used to place on my shoulder when we walked to school. Anyway, one time my friend didn’t do his homework, and the teacher called him to up to the front of the class, so he would punish him (usually by being hit on the hands with a stick). On the way up to the front of the class, the teacher noticed the limp, and he thought that the limp was being faked by my friend. The teacher thought of that as an insult, after all he couldn’t wait forever waiting for my friend to slowly limp to him. The teacher screamed at him “why are you limping? Are you trying to fool me?” Some of us stuck up for the poor kid and informed the teacher of the truth behind the limp. The teacher didn’t care, he didn’t even care to apologize to my friend who was embarrassed by the whole situation.

Perhaps I’m focusing on the bad stories here, I had some great teachers as well. Teachers that I’ll remember for a long time to come. Perhaps I’ll have a future post about them as well.

P.S Pardon the poor grammar, I don’t have time to edit :(

MODS 1 Down - Stats to go

It's Friday and I'm done my most feared exam, Mechanics of Deformable Solids. Very cool course, very uncool Prof. The class average for the midterm was roughly 40%. He goes out of his way to complicate matters, nevertheless, I think I did well. I was half way through the 3 hours, and only on the second question (out of 5). I panicked a bit, but then I did the three other questions much quicker. One more left….. Stats here I come

Syrian Blogger Meet Up

So we had our first Syrian Blogger Meetup, I enjoyed it very much... apparently. Sinan was a good sport and accepted to take me along to the meeting, in the form of a picture placed on the body of his choosing. I believe it's Ken's body, Barbie's man. From what I remeber Ken was pretty built, so I guess Sinan did me well on that choice. It seems like I was the clown of the party as you can see below

Here I am dancing

I was also well Accessorized, did you notice the hair clips?||

So today I had my Calculus exam, how was it you ask.. it was as pretty as Newton's hair in the picture above. Overall all I think I did OK, so I know I didn't ace it. Maybe because the hardest question was actually the first question, which by the way, took 4 pages to solve...... or not. It turns out that in my 4 page solution, one parameter was missing. Which means the solution had to be re-calculated from step uno. Of course I conveniently found out about my mistake after I had finished the question. So I made a bold decision to go on, and leave note saying "I know I forgot the parameter." The Prof. said he would have to deduct (3 to 4 marks out 10) for such a mistake.... and that was only the beginning. The rest of the exam was actually better, but when you stumble early on, it leaves you moral in the ground, which leads to more mistakes and... you get the picture. On the bright side, I got one of my harder exams over with. Two exams remain

Leno and Science

Aside from making jokes, Leno often carries scientific studies on his show. For example, on one show he attempted to understand women and what they look for in a guy. In a carefully planned experiment, he sent a guy into LA streets three different times. Once with an expensive car, the other with a dog, and the third with a baby. Surprisingly, the car got the least attention from women, followed by the dog. So it turns out, your best odds at meeting women on the streets of LA, is by carrying a baby around. CAVEAT, you should make it clear that the baby is not yours, but rather your sisters or some other relative.

You can always depend on Jay to make you laugh, and most importantly teach you the latest in science discoveries

Does anyone know a good source of Arabic MP3's.. Mazika has gone gay, and will allow only poeple in Egypt to download certain songs.. and I couldn't figure out demna.com ?? help please

So I succeded in grabbing your attention.. at least the guys' attention. Today I had my Materials exams (hence the steel). I thought I would share some of what I learned this term.. Do you know that the shiny surface of stainless steel, is actually stainless steel rust? It turns out, that the reason that stainless steel doesn't stain is since its corrosion by-product (rust), is quite unreactive, and it also sticks to the surface really well, hence stainless steel does not erode.. Second cool fact, is that your car is not only painted for protection but it also has a layer zinc, which corrodes quite easily compard to steel, and hence protects your car from rust.. I can't think of any more "cool" facts.. I know you want more, and I know you enjoyed those last two facts, but I can only come up with so much...( that last sentence was sarcastic)

SOC 232 down and history. I actually mentioned blogging in my essay. The essay question was: In your opinion, and based on material covered in class, does the internet connect or isolate poeple, does the internet help in creating communites? My answer was yes it does (connects poeple that is), and I used blogging as an example of connecting poeple.. Do you think the internet isolates, or connects?

I just finished my ME 269 Exam, and I think it generally went well. I have 8 hours to study for my next one :(

Pimp Her Ride!

The other day while I was playing soccer I couldn't help but notice the sheer ugliness of this car, so my friends gave me the required courage to take this picture. Where do I start? The car is ugly even without the paint job, but with the paint job it exceeds known limits of ugly! Some may call it original, to others it may be art, to me it's an ugly car. I was lucky when i took the pic, since about a minute after I took it, the owner came by and drove away.. I hope she doesn't read my blog (x_x)

Since Arabic has more letters than english, Arabs use some of the numbers that slightly look like the actual arabic letter when writing arabic words with english letters.. hope that wasn't too confusing.. For those that know what I'm talking about, do you know any more symbols?

As you can see I will be very busy in the next two or so weeks. My exams are VERY near, and the feeling of nervousness is creeping up on me. I have spent the last few days catching up on missed work, and hopefully by today I will be able to start studying old material.. if there's a lack of posts, you should know why... Things wont be so bad, as my friend put it (as his MSN name) April 18th is gonna be one crazy party... Indeed it will.. Especially since it's also my birthday.. I'll be turning 55 :(

Yet Another Israeli Crime

I initially read this on Subzero's blog (www.subzeroblue.com).. I thought I would echo the message further

Amidst stark warnings of potential outbreak of chronic and deadly diseases, Israeli occupation troops have recently set up a "radioactive" glass room at the main Rafah crossing through which Palestinians have to pass to enter or exit the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian medics said that potential diseases include thrombocytopenic, sterility, congenital anomalies, cancer, leukemia, mental retardation and ductless glands disorder, warning that Palestinians are slipping toward slow death.
"I was forced by Israeli occupation troops to enter this scary room-like radiating device, which consists of glass and barbed wire," Mohammad Al-Sadoudi, 40, says.
Walid Al-Salhi, the director of preventive security at the Rafah crossing, said the room is made of lead-coated glass and is holding inside it a one-meter high cylinder-shaped device.
"Doctors warned that this device produces life-threatening, bone-piercing rays and Israeli troops can easily see the body parts of Palestinians, using the infra-red technology," Salhi said.

TLC.. what happend?

Whatever happened to good quality documentaries on TLC? TLC stood for The Learning Channel, but anymore it seems. I remember a few years ago, where TLC carried all kinds of documentaries ranging from engineering feats to history. Teachers at my high school taped many of those documentaries and used them in class, which shows how informative they were.. But not anymore!
It all started with trading spaces, a show where two families trade houses for two days where they decorate one room in the house for each other. Now, there’s every single variation of those “decoration shows” imaginable. Let me list a few, While You Were Out, Town Overhaul, Trading Spaces Family, In a Fix, Clean Sweep…. And the list goes on. All of the mentioned shows revolve around re-decorating a space in someone’s house. I’m not sure about this, but I think TLC now stands for The Living Channel. I guess all those TV stations nowadays are capitalizing on those great “reality shows.”
To make matters worse, Discovery Channel is getting more and more involved in those amazing and informative reality shows. Except that Discovery is doing more of the motor cycle/car building shows. I’ll admit, at first, watching a motor cycle being built from scratch was fun, but after watching a million episodes, and a million different shows about the exact same topic, things got boring quickly. Let me summarize what the those shows are about, the shows usually involve some sort of new project, usually a cool bike/car, and a deadline that is just too short to be true, yet, like usual, the team pulls it off in the last minute. What’s worse, those shows try to get the viewer emotionally involved in the feuds between the team members, such as in the case of Paul Jr and Paul Sr in Orange County Choppers. I know some of you are going to say, but those designer shows are fun, or I love watching cars being built. I say to you I agree with you, but enough is enough, and please not on my favourite channels.

Since my last post was about a great singer, I thought I would make it a theme and post about Fairuz. Ahh, Fairuz.... she does not need an intro, Fairuz is the definition of perfect. I wake up to her music everyday, I study to her music, I even drive to her music. Let's put it this way, if she needed a kidney, I would give her mine. One of my all time goals is to attend a concert of hers, if any of you know if she's comming anywhere near North America, LET ME KNOW.