{art.photography} It's not about digital!

They may use the term digital to refer to a superior performance in any modern meida, but that has little to do with Sam Javanrouh's sharpness and novelty. Of course he uses computerized methods (let's not call everything digital for a change) to enhance and sometimes modify his images.

He definitely is an inspiration for many and a nice presenter of urban photography. If you are not from Toronto, you can get a good grasp of how the city looks like (especially the downtown area). If you live in Toronto and you are curious to know how an artist perceives the same views we pass by everyday, you will still enjoy his art work.

{art.poetry}

I came across this poem and liked the humor. I am sharing it with you:

Genius by Mark Twain

Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth.

It is probably on account of this
that people who have genius
do not pay their board, as a general thing.

Geniuses are very singular.

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress,
you may set him down for a genius.

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world
which courts vulgar opulence
and neglects brains,
he is undoubtedly a genius.

If he is too proud to accept assistance,
and spurns it with a lordly air
at the very same time
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life,
he is most certainly a genius.

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry,
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him,
he is a true genius.

If he throws away every opportunity in life
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot,
and finally persists,
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense
but not any genius,
persists in going up some infamous back alley
dying in rags and dirt,
he is beyond all question a genius.

But above all things,
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse
and then rush off and get booming drunk,
is the surest of all the different signs
of genius.

{cyber.search} print.google.com

I wonder how Amazon.com feels about the master's new service! Probably, they are happy, because you can't buy books from Google, but there is a link to Amazon (and other distributors) once you click on the book.

Finding similar books, reviews, related information such as table of contents, where to buy it, and even which library to find it from, are the cool features. It is still the BETA version and if you were puzzled why there were no search boxes available, click on this. This should get you through.

{quotes} No border line

"Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality." Goethe

I so much wished this was true in the 21st century.

{entertainment.movies} Sin City

Bruce Willis's interview with Jon Stewart at the Daily Show is without a doubt a bad advertisement for his best movie. In fact, everything that promotes the movie and is not the movie itself (even this post!) is not worth the time. You should go and watch it to find out for yourself. No matter if it was all-digital (there were no real locations), the black-and-white (some things still in colour) comic of Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino is expectedly one of the bests, but you should like their style to enjoy the movie. This time, white blood is sprayed at the camera more than the red and yellow bloods. The yellow bastard (TYB) stinked! Wouldn't it be nicer if there was really a stinky smell in the theatre hall at the scenes where TYB was present?

{cyber.search} Do You Google Yourself?

Some of us have the weird habit of googling our own names to ... ummm ... well ... you know ... is there really explanation for this? Maybe it's just curiosity to see where we have been referred to elsewhere. Anyways, I know it is as bad as looking in the mirror everyday, but I should say that I've had this habit. Recently, I encountered a sudden raise in the number of pages that google finds!

Except for me and my cousin , google finds the newest member of our family, the head honcho of all of the evil Navis in the new season of Rockman.exe Axess.

Welcome on board, scary guy!

{quotes} Simplicity

" Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler." Albert Einstein

{quotes} Science vs. Wisdom

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." Immanuel Kant

Mensch! Live an organized life.

Quoting from Hommer

In this house, we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!

{friends} Favorite Quotes

I have always enjoyed reading a favorite quote from someone who not only knows his/her specialty, but also is keen to convey a philosophical message to human kind.

I came upon a great piece of manuscript, a high-quality PhD thesis, written by a friend I got to know in Toronto. On top of the highly sophisticated subject area (which I do not quite understand, at least for now!), I pretty much liked his writing style. He clearly articulates the idea, and provides adequate reasoning of why this work has been done and how it has been accomplished. Yet another nice feature of his thesis, is quoting from other writers and scientists at the beginning of each chapter. I have seen this style in many books and theses, as I have been reading more these days to get ready to put my my own piece of work on paper. It is not easy to pick a relevant quote when what one is writing is his/her own novel idea. From what I can understand, Omid has picked the very right quote to motivate the reader to proceed with the rest of the chapter. It is indeed a great learning experience for me. Well done, lad!

{quotes} Apples, Ideas, and Publications

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." George Bernard Shaw

How about this: I am writing a paper and you are writing a paper. If I put your name as the co-author, and you put mine as the co-author, we will both have two papers.

While I strongly agree with the GB Shaw to exchange ideas, I do not think that the common trend in most research institutions adds any value to academic excellence. Some categorize it as excellent team work. Equally worse, I have even heard it as a win-win situation, but I think most of time it should clearly be categorized as academic fraud.