I recently became very interested in the research of Prof. Andrea Ghez and stumbled upon the following animation of the very core of the Milky-Way. The orbits of the stars there suggest the presence of a very massive black hole.
I was very young when I wrote a program to show a similar animation (that's how I understood gravity assist)

C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.
Scott McKay

There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied mathematics.
Archimedes

Maybe the world is simply waiting for a man who would do for Evolution, what Newton did for the orbit of planets. He may not be born before several centuries in the future...

Tried to donate some money to Japan-A-Radio (that I listen to a lot), but their online credit card form would not submit without my phone number and thinks that my mobile phone number is not correct (even in its international form). It is just sad how some web designer just screw everybody else lives...

This picture suddenly became highly amusing when looking at the badge of the woman, I suddenly realised that this could happen to me one day :-)

我愛你

Pascal's scientist of the week: Cheryl Hayashi (I don't remember how I came across her page, but it's been sitting on my inbox for few days waiting for me to do something with it....)

God is no excuse Religions that believe in omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent gods or supreme beings, provide the supreme excuse to exploit, and accept as divine intervention, the fruits of past and current greed and lust. Religion is a barrier to human cooperation and shared prosperity. As humans, we are all in this together. We are equal. We share the fundamental experiences of birth, human frailty and death. We need to recognize this shared responsibility for all of our needs and challenges as well as our potential and achievable successes. The only way to ensure the safe, secure and mutually prosperous sustainable development for any of us, is to work towards it for all human beings. No more excuses, tricks or confidence schemes. We are the only answer...

So now, we know. It wasn't entirely Gödel's fault ...

Spend time last night correctly recovering the Equivalence Theorems with Compact Spaces (Bolzano Weierstrass theorem and Heine-Borel theorem). Re-discovered how painful it can be to try and prove Bolzano Weierstrass wihtout first proving that the BW property implies total boundness and that thing with the Lebesgue number....

Lady Gaga's (outrageous) outfits. I had never noticed that she is actually quite pretty...

Kimo's high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me "the standard pace is for chumps" - that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you're more driven than "just anyone" - you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life - not just school.
There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.)

That's the best idea of the month. I wish that more people could do that!! Complete Strangers Married in Florida to Protest for Gay Rights.

I wonder how many girls would die because of me if that thing was to become true (^.^)

Squeaky Clean Brushes!. I am so glad I am not a girl! I would not have time to do anything else!..

If I knew I would see the day a company from the land of copycats, with no respect for intellectual property, would want to sue for copyright infringement... How Ironic. link. Not to mention that the iPad being just an oversized iPod Touch and the iPod having been around for a while, if their recently released product is similar to Apple's, who is the copycat then ?

In fact, that Chinese company is just seeking attention, just trying to get people notice their product, without having to pay for a proper marketing campaign.

Rejecta Physica.

Finally! GOP Dismayed by Obama’s Strong Performance, Say it Was a ‘Mistake’ to Let Cameras Roll. Some video extract here.

Two years old, but still funny. Man throws his computer out the window, police sympathize.

On the iPad: It's nice to see that Apple has eventually (re)invented the way I have been using my laptop since the beginning (December 2003).

Just loved it!! Michael Jackson Filipino Inmates Strike Again (I wonder if that would work at Guantanamo Bay...)

This has pretty much expressed everything I felt about SOAP for having spent too long using it (after having been forced to) The S stands for Simple.

Smiley from a friend from Hong Kong on GTalk, biggest I have ever received ....
Asian girls (^.^)

So now, I am confused. First we were told that it was a bug in Internet Explorer, and now Bruce Schneier (in which I have more trust than classical news outlets) comes up with this U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google. Could it be that the US government invited Microsoft to take the blame (after all, one more security hole in IE, would would care, it's like one more suicidal bombing in Iraq -- I lost count years ago), to hide the fact that the success of those attacks are noting else than the work of the government's own incompetence ? Now, no wonder why the US State Department is all over the Chinese government on the case. I thought that for once the US started to really care about human rights, but in fact they just carry on doing what they do best: manipulating the public opinion. *sigh*

German TV highlights failings of body scanners. Worth watching, even if you don't understand German.

Microsoft admits IE flaw caused Google hack.

Chinese Internet users praise Google's threat to exit.
Google... Doing what American "leaders" SHOULD be doing...., ....but are too neutered and feminized to do. [digg.com, l3leed]

Schneier on Security: The Comparative Risk of Terrorism

Google might leave China over Human Rights issues.

15 Sexiest Female Musicians (That Don’t Suck): http://www.popcrunch.com/15-sexiest-female-musicians-that-dont-suck/

Ping...

10 Operating Systems you've never heard of. I guess my favourite is really KolibriOS, and entire OS written in assembly. So now, that's geeky beyond belief....

Woman Domesticated, just for the pleasure of being on the black list of every single feminist in the world :-)

Researchers finds hidden sensory system in the skin. The human sensory experience is far more complex and nuanced than previously thought, according to a groundbreaking new study published in the December 15 issue of the journal Pain. In the article, researchers at Albany Medical College, the University of Liverpool and Cambridge University report that the human body has an entirely unique and separate sensory system aside from the nerves that give most of us the ability to touch and feel. Surprisingly, this sensory network is located throughout our blood vessels and sweat glands, and is for most people, largely imperceptible.

I knew there was something "different" with the Google page today! Just figured out :-)

Open letter to President Obama by Michael Moore.

The Go programming language: website [golang.org], video [youtube.com]

Greenzone. Three Jason Bourne were not enough, they had to make another one !... God, I can't wait :-)

Whatever you do in your life, you really don't want to see the Dutch version of American Idol.

The thing with hotel rooms is that you always end up watching the most stupid TV shows that you would never ever watch at home.

How big is an atom ? http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/

Apology for singing shop worker. The morons behind that all harassment episode have fucking lost it !