A few links I found interesting

http://www.hooverdigest.org/051/applebaum.html
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050228crat_atlarge
http://www.theparisreview.com/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5447
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html

ok ok .. it can't be empty, happy now, stupid?
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0.15 seconds into explosion
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A sight of the first snow of the year, not matter how little and
evanescent, had always enliven my mind with a sense of wakening
spirits and imminent adventures.

The immediacy of the first snow so determinedly ushering the incipient
winter is unique among seasons; there is no such a resolute phenomenon
that harbingers the spring -- temperatures creep up slowly, one never
knows when the last snowfall of the season is going to hit, and even
thawing doesn't happen in one day. The upshot is, the spring never
happens overnight, and the winter does on the day of the first snow.
With my welcomingly eager impatience for new things (which are simply
well forgotten old ones) and a need for instant satisfaction, I would
take a day of the first snow over weeks of muddy puddles, longer
daylights and sharpening mating grievances.

Yet there is the Fall. Lovely, colory and soulful, it invariably puts
me into a reflectively introspective mood often bordering on ennui and
hibernation. Having said this, the Fall solitude precipitates
creativity. The Winter, however, puts a tinge of blithe insouciance on
the introspection and creativity. I manage through the Fall's blues
looking forward to the first snow with alacrity for the winter's first
day.

What can be better waking up seeing the world changed overnight -- it
stirs, challenges and whets, all at once. Blues are over, winter rocks!

Test:Mike; Date:October 31, 1952;
Operation:Ivy; Site:Elugelab Island, Enwetak atoll;
Detonation:Surface; Yield:10.400 Mgt; Type:Fission/Fusion;

The device called Sausage, detonated in the Mike test was the first true thermonuclear bomb ever tested. However, the Sausage was not a deliverable weapon. It was an enormous, complex device, 80 inches wide and 244 inches long. The entire assembly weighted 82 metric tons. Sausage was built using Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion. Interestingly Teller himself didn't participate in development. Los Alamos Panda Committee, directed by J. Carson Mark did the job. TX-5 fission bomb was used as a fuse(primary stage). Super cooled, liquid hydrogen was used as a thermonuclear fuel. The Cab, building which was housing the device was located on the zero island. A plywood tube was assembled from the Cab to the furthest island, where the detection station was, some 2 miles away. The tube was filled with Helium, to allow radiation rays travel faster before it was consumed by the fireball.
The explosion yielded 10.4 Mgt. Mike's fireball measured 3 miles. The cloud formed by Mike shot was immense. Stabilized, it reached 135 000 ft high, and stretched 60 miles in diameter, which eventually spread over 1000 miles.
Mike destroyed the entire Elugelab island. The crater formed as a result of the explosion measured 6240ft(1.5Km) across and 164ft(53m) deep. Following the test, high levels of radiation covered most of the Enwetak atoll.
This was 4th largest test ever conducted by US, (the largest at that time). For comparison, this is more then all allied bombs dropped during WW II together.


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http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?041101ta_talk_editors

What do _you_ think?

My own take is not hard to guess. I'm a staunching advocate. There are a number of good scientific and ethical reasons to allocate fedeal funding for the stem-cell research. But one rhetoric stands out, especially in debates on stem-cell ethics: What is more (or rather less) ethical, slaughtering scores of Iraqis in a meaningless and shameful war having had lost over 1000 of own people, or NOT looking for cures of terminal deseases that kill millions.

Laura Bush, whose father has Alzheimer's (and thus dying from it), opposes the spending of federal funds. Mind you, she might not, deep in her heart, oppose the research that can eventually help her father and millions of other inflicted. She opposes the federal spending on the basis of inevitable destruction of embryos, never mind that they were made in a lab's petri dish, and not via an intercourse, as she'd like it to happen.

Catholics who obviously are not fond of anything what's going on in the labs will have another chance to choke off the hope for people. First they were afraid of God's wrath when first petri-dish babies were made. Now, they decided, it's OK to do that. Of course even Catholics benefit from the IVF -- it works even on them, and they are happy to be mothers and fathers when all other options are exausted. So now those embryos which, according to law, belong to no one, are being made into a cure. And this is a big no-no. What are they going to do when, god forbid, their boys and girls develop juvenile diabeties or muscular distrophy. I wonder if they have ever seen a child and a parent going through 3 or 4 agonizing years of slow death from the muscular distrophy? What really saddens me is when a paraplegic Catholic with Parkinson's votes for Bush; it's not unlike voting to be euthanized.

And how pathetic and insincere it looks when the administration runs around arguing for the preservation of reserach ethics and showing off its allegiance to the stem-cell research with an appropriation bill of $35M for its funding when $200B !!!! is committed to the war!!!

In the end it all boils down to fundamentalism vs. progressive thinking. There is no place for the ideology in the midst of science.

George Fifer, "Moscow Farewell"

Why do we need our significant others?

if we assume that we're ends in ourselves, why do we need to be with others?

Erich Fromm, Man for Himself

Ethics and morality of egotism and realization of man's self

Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead.

Enough said.

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.

Ann Beattie

Wow.....Incredible movie. Down-to-the-wire storyline, slicing action that penetrates deep down and screeches against your viscera leaving marks of the terrible emotional pain......

Definitely not a date flick, but for a thoughtful mind.

Loved it. Simple. SIncere. Lovely.

The quality of the connection is almost ephemeral .Yet it's the surprisingly
callow and at the same time fulfilling depth of sensibility and affection in a
sea of shallow reality of pragmatism, routine, ingenuine feelings and trite
relationships that makes this connection so special.

On Desserts.

Are you feeling truly committed when you start working on your steak?
What are your preprandial thoughts? With that steak? Hardly. At best,
is there something in the after-steak life? What is on your mind when
you are overwhelmed with satiety, and that steak has no more room to
go? If you think about the check, tips and the state of the
post-coital hebetude, your mind is in need of a serious rewiring.

In a proper line of thinking, you should take a jaunt to the
Dessertland.

Regardless of how good the meal is, it is no more than foreplay
(although in the rare event of steak-inflicted borborygmus that is all
it takes succumb to desultoriness of being) leading to a climacteric
realization that like all roads lead to Rome, all proper meals end up
with The Dessert.

Desserts we love to hate come in a variety of shapes and forms. Cakes,
candy, cookies, ice creams and sorbets, fruits and smoothies,
puddings, taffies, custards, and the list goes on. Even though the
toothsome dessert is an honorary culmination to the halcyon evening,
it is undoubtedly an ultimate source of sugar and mega-calories you
will see next morning making appearance everywhere, perhaps not
limited to the mirror. So just a friendly piece of advice -- being
indulged, be mindful of your long-term life goals, (stress on "long
life"), diabetes and dental aspects of pleasure; be moderate, humble,
and not overly rapacious. And when you find a desert you'd love to
date more often than your actual date, make sure you don't become the
dessert's significant other.

(C) Alpine 2004

"was good to have near...and pretty sad - not have u here"

Who in the world sent me this? There are not too many folks talking to me around here. More so, in English. So please spare me, just come out, would ya.

There is a unrelenting sensation of solitude in a penetrating and burning unity with the world, especially when the world is not overly receptive to such a feeling. What am I talking about?

Weekend blues... Even though got well asjusted to, weekends are very challenging time for me. For a while I was trying to pretend weekends are jusy any other days and time of the week. For some time it was working, especially during crunch times, when I move faster then the world. However slowing down just enough to take a breath I feel the stinging drag.

For the second day I'm doing nothing. Watching movies at friends' cable loaded house. Just watched "Kissing Jessica Stein".. Blossom Dearie has a song on the soundtrack (I wish you love, (a very appropriate for my current status :)))..... just a lovely movie.


hm.. Couldn't find lyrics for I WIsh You Love on the Net...
So I jot them down myself

I wish you bluebirds in the Spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, but more than this,
I wish you love.

And in July a lemonade,
to cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health, and more than wealth,
I wish you love

My breaking heart and I agree
Then you and I could never be
So with my best, my very best,
I set you free.

I wish you shelter from the storm,
A cosy fire to keep you warm,
But most of all, when snow flakes fall,
I wish you love.

the best way to get to know Panjabi bhangra music and live :) is to listen to Panjabi MC "Beware"

hey, if you enjoy good laugh, intellectual jokes and good music, tune to

http://www.prairiehome.org/

and listen to Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. This month they broadcast from New York every Saturday 6pm EST. if you miss the live broadcast, they have an old shows archive:

http://www.prairiehome.org/listings/

Everyone who ever liked "kapustniks" should give PHC a try. Enjoy. :)

PS. Those who live in US can catch PHC on NPR stations over the country.

Whiteout conditions, sustained winds of 35 miles per hour, a foot or more of snow is forecasted by the time it's over.

I love it!

It means I'll go ski sooner thatn I thought, that I can refresh my snow driving skills, and emjoy a pristine virgin snow in the woods... Ahhhhh.. What a treat to have so much snow at once!

It also reminds me to get on X-mas present shopping :)