ThePanda

A friend held on 2 me until 2:30 last night, reducing the meagre amt of sleep I get neways to a mere 3 hrs (have 2 read b4 me can go to sleep so went to sleep @ 3), and I was reaaaaalllllllly sleepy yesterday. But me lack of sleep wasn’t ze interesting part of yesterday night’s events… The school’s (as opposed to the comp club) organizing a little computer quiz for 11thies and this guys is supposed to be the quiz master. Earlier this yr I had acted as a quiz master for 8thies and 9thies mostly becoz that particular competition was organized by the comp club, & I generally try to help out with the comp club. Unfortunately the moment a quiz is school sponsored, every section in a particular class is forced to send two membered teams to the prelims (from which 6 or so teams r selected) and this essentially implies that most guys who end up participating in these quizzes r not really interested in computers, its just that they happen to have high marks in computers, or that they r their class teacher or comp teachers pet, or something similar. Now this guy got an ugly reaction to his prelims with everyone (other than 2 teams which had regular quizzers from the comp club as team members) getting awesomely low scores. Unfortunately since its skool sponsored this guy has to make sure that in the finals (which r gonna be conducted on stage with participating sections watching on) ppl r atleast able to get 40% of the questions and thats gonna be hard to implement. U can c the questions I asked to 8th & 9th by clicking on the “Me, Quiz” link on (what is hopefully) the left, and well lets just say the questions for 11th r wwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy below this… What makes a school sponsored quiz worse is that when u have a quiz organized by the comp club quiz masters pretty much have free reign & we’re allowed to joke ‘round with the participants, show funny antics & entertain rselves, however in case of a skool sponsored quiz u have to be all formal and well behaved since teachers r at hand to curb ur style… My school is also supposed to be liberal in terms of its outlook and is supposed to have accepted modern society as it exists however its acceptance is still conditional. For instance its a well known fact that Alan Turing (the guy who led the Bletchley Park effort to break the Enigma cypher, after whom the most essential test for artificial intelligence is defined and the guy who gave the world one of its first definition of a logical machine by defining what Turing Machines were and proving the Church-Turing Thesis) was homosexual and well died because of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) which he was forced to undergo by a London court, becoz he cudnt declare his war hero status since the British Government until then hadn’t revealed the fact that Enigma had been broken… Now u can’t ask questions about Turing Tests & Turing Machines becoz ppl don’t know abt these, now some ppl do know abt his sexual orientation however asking them something like this wud lead to extreme reactions from teachers at skool ‘coz they somehow weirdly believe that 11thies don’t know abt such stuff… Now this thing is a fact, its not a mockery of the guy, infact he’s far 2 important in the development of modern computing to be actually mocked, but try explaining that 2 teachers at skool… Zis quiz is supposed to be sometime this week Monday or Tuesday I belv so I wish the quiz master best of luck with that becoz I seriously wudnt know how to enjoy myself in a quiz such as this…

Yorktown Technologies is gonna be releasing GloFish in the US markets on January 5th, though currently limited stocks r available in certain regions. The GloFish is a transgenic Red Zebra Danio fish which contains genes from a certain Coral which makes it fluorescent. It’ll not be sold in California because the State of California refused to grant permission for the sale of such fish since it didn’t make sense to modify an organism for purely ornamental purposes. While its unlikely that we’ll ever create transgenic monsters of the kind that science fiction writers have imagined in the past, this development cud open up the doors for a large number of such modified organisms. While I support modifying an organism for improving its survival chances, modifying for ne other reason is stupid (u wudnt want a Glow in the dark Panda now wud u)... However GloFish seems to have become immensely popular in the United States with demand reaching a stage where Yorktown actually pre-poned release in certain areas… While its unlikely to reach European (too many controls against genetically modified organisms) or Asia (too little money to buy such products) its profitability in the market cud set a precedent for newer weirder modifications to organisms… And this is a lot worse than breeding speciality dogs…...........

Me also watched the BBC lecture on Iraq given by ‘Stud Scud’ Rashid abt the state of Baghdad, and well some of what he said was very true. As he put it the pulling down of Saddam’s statue was neither important, nor the absolute or only symbol of regime change in Iraq, however it was the TV crews present on site which made it important, & if it wasn’t 4 them it’d never have been the most haunting images of the war. Some of ze other images which he showed including one of doctors guarding a hospital in Baghdad, guns in hand, to protect it against looting. Personally me still feel ze image of the dead soldier on the tyre treads was the most haunting one fer me…

A friend of mine whose helped me thru much of my application process thruout this yr, introduced me to Columbia, Duke & well generally helped me thru out this yr, celebrates his birthday today and well like a good little Panda me wish him HAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY B’DAY….

Ze Panda
Pitying ze poor Glow in the Dark fish while waiting to c a real GloChimp, & thanking ze heavens zat he didn’t have 2 go 4 ze Intra-School quiz tomorrow…..............