Nash's world

I was reading up on the etymology of turkey on reddit and found out that

• Americans and other English speakers call turkey “turkey” because they thought it came from Turkey. There’s a chance they actually didn’t know where Turkey was, it just had this “far east” exotic appeal…
• Turks don’t have any Turkey, obviously, but they have the guinea fowl (“angolan chicken in portuguese”) which I godamn hope it comes from Guine because I don’t want to start this all over again.
• The turks call turkey “hindi” because they thought it came from India (so did the french – “Dinde”, hebrews and russians “indük” or “индейка”). And because everyone had no idea where India actually was, since they still believed it to be the same place as america.
• The Swedes, Dutch and Norwegian call it, respectively, “kalkun”/”kalkon”/”kalkoen” because they were smartasses that thought they were better than their other european friends and it did not come from just India, it came specifically from Calcutta.
• The greek called them Galopoula meaning French Bird, partly because they mistook it for the domesticated Guineafowl in southern france, but mostly I guess because they were really trolling the language at this point to see what other bullshit they could get in there. (continue reading…)

This a picture of Delta IV havey rocket that launched mars science laboratory (curiosity rovers)  to mars. On its back is a microchip with my name etched on to it. The official certification from NASA can be on viewed here.  Here is a picture of curiosity (continue reading…)

This is probably how Bella‘s hand looked after giving Sparkles the vampire a hand job. And since Hollywood has apparently taken my advice on why the breaking dawn must be made into a  movie [click here to read the post]   this really seems appropriate

while I was doing some server maintenance for a customer last night it required that i find out what cron jobs were in the cron tabs of all the users  on the machine. I found this handy script that will list out all the cron jobs for all the users

#!/bin/bash
for user in $(cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd)
do echo $user && crontab -u $user -l
echo " "
done

Soyuz 141 Ready for Launch in a blizzard

The R-7 rocket was originally designed as an ICBM. When America unexpectedly invites you to a friendly game of global thermonuclear war, it’s not acceptable to say “Not today thank you, it’s cold outside.” So they built a rocket with enough margins that it could launch in all weather conditions.

Ultimately the R-7 was a military failure since it required a day of prep on the pad before launch (compare with one month for the shuttle). So it was replaced in its ICBM duties with instant-launch rockets like the R-36 (known to the West as “Satan”).

The shuttle had so many moving parts/components that it was frail. It required ideal weather conditions. Even a slight wind would cause delays and God help you if it drizzled or a little rain — grounded for a week.The fact Soyuz launch regardless of weather conditions tells of unglamorous, pragmatic Soviet approach is the clear winner when it comes to space programs. As demonstrated with their ability constantly and reliably loft humans to LEO which Americans have lost

(continue reading…)

Image via Wikipedia

Linked here is a paper by Citi group that predicted the current climate of back lash  against the robber baron‘s of wall Street. I find the following except particularly haunting :-

A third threat comes from the potential social backlash. To use Rawls-ian analysis, the invisible hand stops working. Perhaps one reason that societies allow plutonomy, is because enough of the electorate believe they have a chance of becoming a Pluto-participant. Why kill it off, if you can join it? In a sense this is the embodiment of the “American dream”. But if voters feel they cannot participate, they are more likely to divide up the wealth pie, rather than aspire to being truly rich.

Could the plutonomies die because the dream is dead, because enough of society does not believe they can participate? The answer is of course yes. But we suspect this is a threat more clearly felt during recessions, and periods of falling wealth, than when average citizens feel that they are better off. There are signs around the world that society is unhappy with plutonomy – judging by how tight electoral races are. But as yet, there seems little political fight being born out on this battleground.

A related threat comes from the backlash to “Robber-barron” economies. The population at large might still endorse the concept of plutonomy but feel they have lost out to unfair rules. In a sense, this backlash has been epitomized by the media coverage and actual prosecution of high-profile ex-CEOs who presided over financial misappropriation. This “backlash” seems to be something that comes with bull markets and their subsequent collapse. To this end, the cleaning up of business practice, by high- profile champions of fair play, might actually prolong plutonomy.

Our overall conclusion is that a backlash against plutonomy is probable at some point. However, that point is not now. So long as economies continue to grow, and enough of the electorates feel that they are benefiting and getting rich in absolute terms, even if they are less well off in relative terms, there is little threat to Plutonomy in the U.S., UK, etc.

But the balance of power between right (generally pro-plutonomy) and left (generally pro-equality) is on a knife-edge in many countries. Just witness how close the U.S. election was last year, or how close the results of the German election were. A collapse in wealth in the plutonomies, felt by the masses, and/or prolonged recession could easily raise the prospects of anti-plutonomy policy.

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“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs

Rest In Piece Mr Jobs  you truly were a visionary and had the courage and the skills to change the world the way he wanted it to be.

I have upgraded to ubuntu 11.10 oneiric ocelot yesterday from 11.04  hear are my thoughts on it.

The good..

• The interface has been polished and the Unity interface is usable now
• I like the new login screen with its smooth animation. But some how when you lock the machine the old interface is visible
• The lock screen animation is much smoother now
• The icons that have been used look much nicer and cleaner
• search inside unity works and their no lag between pressing the windows key and the unity menu opening up
• The new Empathy and Gwibber looks really nice
• The new software center is really nice and easy to find applications

(continue reading…)