This looks like fun

Some guy went into the London tube with skis and a camera strapped to his head, and skied down the escalator. Pretty insane stuff.

Alright, so I know that it gave the police and subway staff fits, but still I'd like to see somebody try this on the HK Ocean park escalator. Maybe they could consider it as a publicity stunt?

Inhumanity?

This NYTimes.com article sent shivers up my spine today. In case you don't have time to read it, here's the gist: a car with two children in the back seat, drove up to an American checkpoint in Iraq. The Americans let it through without a thorough check, I suppose because children don't quite fit the profile of insurgents or suicide bombers. The car went through the checkpoint, parked outside a school, and then the adults got out of the car and ran off, then detonated the bomb with the children still inside the car. The bomb killed the children and some other civilians and wounded a bunch of others.

Since part of my background can be described as hyper-liberal and anti-establishment, let me state here that I am aware that the US superbombs have killed tons more kids and maimed thousands others, so in the big picture, the insurgents are actually more merciful. I do understand and sympathize with that point of view. However, I can't help wondering: I assume that since the children were inside the car, the insurgents either knew them personally, or somehow tricked them into taking a ride. In any case, they must have had some interaction with the kids.

What drives people to the point where they could interact with another human being -- at close range, too! -- only to dehumanize them mentally to the point where they could simply be used as pawns to be killed?

No wonder why David said, "Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." (2 Samuel 24:14, ESV)

Amen!

Do unto others...

There was an article in NYTimes.com today about refugees from the Sudan who have found refuge in Israel. Apparently, Israel, born out of the ashes of war and genocide, feels an obligation to take in refugees, for example the Vietnamese boat people; and also, I suppose that they would feel an affinity with the victims of genocide from Darfur.

What touched me the most was that many of the Sudanese refugees that have been taken in by Israel are Muslim. Given the historic animosity between Israel and its neighbors -- now that truly is commendable.

The article included a couple of stories from refugees that left me moist-eyed (okay, I am in an emotional mood today). Check it out, it's worth a read.

Hard Drive Freak-out

Okay, this isn't going to be one of those thought-provoking posts, but my hands are still shaking from this scare and maybe posting it will help calm me down...

I was working on my Mac tonight and the TV was off, so it was very quiet all around. All of a sudden, I noticed this clicking that sounded like it was coming from my hard drive. Having suffered through 3 (yes, read that, three) catastrophic hard drive crashes since returning to HK, the first thing I thought was that my HD was about to crash.

Major panic. Check everything. Looks like it's working fine. Drive back to school, pick up backup drive, back up immediately. Do SMART disk check. Everything fine.

Puzzlement. Thought it was coming from the new DVR. Check that. Seems okay, hard drive's not really churning, therefore clicks shouldn't be coming from there. Starting to get really confused.

Turn off everything. Still hear clicks. Finally track down clicks to... my alarm clock.

I felt pretty stupid after that. Oh well, doesn't hurt to be careful, I suppose. But maybe I should have a backup drive at home as well, to save me the drive to the office next time...

P1000708.JPG

Okay, so now that I've bored you stiff with my escapade, here's a pretty picture of the Church of the Good Shepherd in New Zealand. When I went in there, I immediately wanted to start singing the worship song "I lift my eyes up to the mountains -- where does my help come from? My help comes from You, Maker of Heaven, Creator of the Earth..."

No need for a stained-glass window for this church, not when they have such a wonderful reminder of scripture right there in front of them!

Married, Divorced, Single

At lunch today, one of my colleagues brought up this story about a female convict, who fell in love with a male convict, and after she was released, applied and was granted permission to go and marry him in prison. The male convict is serving a long-term sentence, and it will be years before he's even eligible for parole. So for a number of years, the woman will be married to somebody whom she can't see or touch, except on supervised prison visitations.

My colleagues were quite puzzled as to why any woman would choose to put herself into this situation. A few years ago, I would have felt the same way. However, surprisingly, I felt that I understood how the woman must have felt. Having a criminal record, she must have been thinking that her chances at marriage were slim. Faced with the possible alternative of a life as a single woman, she chose to at least be married, even if she had to be telling people that her husband was a criminal serving a prison sentence.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend some time ago. This friend, who is by *any* standards a well-educated, logical person, told me that he/she "would rather have been married and divorced, rather than still a single". The reason being that divorced meant that one had made a mistake, while being single implied that one was weird.

The sad thing is that, even though I have very strong views against divorce and, compared with many of my peers, I feel less pressure to get married, I actually can empathize with that view!. How terrible it must be for some other people, I can only imagine.

Chimney-Climbing Robot

Okay, so I have an obsession with robots. Check out this new Chimney-climbing robot that I found on the NXTblog. If only I had the time, I would actually go and try to build one.

Speaking of time, I really suspect that one of the reasons why my back is acting up so badly these days is because of the unearthly amount of time that I have been sitting on the couch, writing up that workbook. Went for a massage last night but that darned muscle doesn't seem to want to let up. Owwwww..

Anyhow, enough of my troubles. Here's the robot:

FLL competition

Today was the FLL Hong Kong competition. Overall, I think the teams this year performed better than last year's set: I guess that the added year's experience made a difference.

Having said that, I think that it'll be a long time before any of the Hong Kong teams achieves anything like this. This is a US high school team from New Hampshire that managed to achieve an amazing 400 points on the Robotics Challenge portion. Their robot even went and changed its own parts. Absolutely amazing.

Jesus' Tomb: Proof by Brute Force

NYTimes.com had an interesting article titled Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film says, about an upcoming Discovery Channel "documentary" which purports to have found a tomb with several ossuaries inside, with names of the Holy Family... including that of Jesus Himself, a son called Judas, and somebody whom they are alleging is Mary Magdalene.

My first thoughts on reading this were: (1) If the proof was really all that strong, they wouldn't need to have it shown on the Discovery Channel, of all places; and (2) being an avid Discovery Channel/Animal Planet watcher, why in the world did I not see it being advertised before, if it really were that compelling.

I did more research into the whole thing, and it seems like another one of those "proof by brute force" (to borrow a phrase that we coined back when we were studying algorithms) theories. Or proof through slick marketing and storytelling, I suppose. It's really not that difficult to poke holes in their theory (beyond the initial ones that I had). Here's one of the best of the analyses that I came across. (If you decide to read that, go through the comments as well as the blog post. Some of them are amazingly well-thought out, and rival the original post in terms of scientific rigorousness.)

The most disturbing thing to me, however, is not so much that somebody would come up with something like that. Proofs and claims like that have surfaced before and I am sure that we'll see plenty more in the future. The thing that disturbs me is: why are works like these so popular all of a sudden? First it was the "Da Vinci Code", then it was that Judas Gospel thing, and now this. I don't know enough about eschatology, but is this one of the signs?