Undead Astronauts

ah muslims… i know it’s crass to take pleasure in laughing at and denigrating other ppl’s culture or religion b/c i know it can so easily go both ways at the extremes. but sometimes things break through, if this is indeed not a joke. (and no, i’m not jumping on a bandwagon just b/c some muslims want to put a community center/mosque near ground zero. i have no dog in that fight.)

recently, there was a fatwa issued by a sheik in the saudi justice ministry that concerned women breastfeeding grown men. b/c of strict rules governing interaction between men and women, an adopted son was not allowed to be in the same room alone with his mother. he was adopted after growing too old for breastfeeding, which is the only exception by which a grown man can be in private w/ a woman.

other inconveniences would include a grown man who was hired to do some continuing housework in an occupied house. his presence would necessitate all the females vacate the house if no male family member was home.

so in apparent response to these problems, the sheik’s fatwa allowed the women of the household to breastfeed the grown, unrelated man so that he could be in their presence without them fleeing the home.

hmm.

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well this is just dandy. the 9th circuit just ruled that you have no right to privacy in your driveway or on the road. so police can legally put a gps tracker on your car and track you w/o a warrant. this ruling affects anyone that lives in the western US. okay, not everyone. anyone who lives behind a gate, such as a celebrity has an expectation of privacy based on the fact that they live behind a gate. but driveways, they don’t count.

on principle, i think this ruling is abhorrent as i think ppl have a right not to have their property invaded and tracked however police want. but since it’s legal, i think the first thing ppl in the west need to do is to attach gps devices to all the cars of judges and their families on the 9th circuit, and then all the law enforcement and government official vehicles and have the info linked to some service like foursquare. let’s see how you like living life under a microscope motherfuckers.

i don’t pay for many apps, but this… this i’d pay for. perhaps alot. comes out sept.

a Texas A&M study found 70% of middle grade students didn’t fully understand the equal sign.

“The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,” Robert M. Capraro says. “The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and “less than” and “greater than” signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.”

The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes.

“Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,” he explains. “So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.

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i listened to this TED talk today by Sheena Iyengar, a blind sikh-american researcher. her identity perhaps contributed to her insightful work.

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Skybird X has previously said that asian discrimination in education (universities and even high schools!) is less important today than it was in the past b/c many asians simply gave the finger to big business after college and founded their own companies. the data somewhat vindicates this view. cb insights is a business intel company that has just released a survey on venture capital companies. included in the questions posed to these companies was what was the racial makeup of the teams getting funded. the results are as follows

race | population % in US | recipient of capital

white | 77% | 87%

black | 11% | 1%

asian | 4% | 12%

additionally, the survey found that teams comprising completely of asians were the ones that received the largest amount of capital. the reason given for such low black representation is that were hardly ever black entrepreneurs who pitched ideas to begin with. 92% were male, harvard grads edged out stanford grads in number, and surprisingly, mba’s outnumbered master of science degrees.

Travel + Leisure magazine’s August 2010 issue put Point Clear’s Grand Hotel Marriott Resort Gulf Club & Spa at the No. 31 spot on its list of the best resorts in America and Canada.

The list was dominated by resorts in Flordia and California, which took up 25 of the 50 spots.

Yay…another AL city on a list of something.