McCain's essay on torture

A very moving, cogent piece on why torture should be banned. An Excerpt:

Those who argue the necessity of some abuses raise an important dilemma as their most compelling rationale: the ticking-time-bomb scenario. What do we do if we capture a terrorist who we have sound reasons to believe possesses specific knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack?

-Sen. John McCain

The Red Sox win the world series

After 86 years drought, the Red Sox finally won the world series against their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees.

One fun part about this rivalry was the story of Pedro Martinez.

Hired by the Boston Red Sox, Pedro was one of the best pitchers in the league. But he consistently performed miserably against the New York Yankees.

One day in frustration he said "I just tip my cap and call the Yankees my daddy."

This statement would come to haunt him as Yankees fans would chant "Who's your DADDY?" at every game he'd play.

They would also hold up signs like this one.



But after the Red Sox won you would see signs all over Boston saying

  "Hey YANKEES! Who's your DADDY NOW?"

After the Red Sox won, people took to the streets. Me and my friend Pedze, joined the celebration. We're holding up a "Who's your DADDY NOW?" T-Shirt.

 

3-D Monitor and 3-D Printer

I visited Derek Nowrouzi a friend from Microsoft, who's now a graduate student. He gave me a tour of his lab and showed me two impressive demonstrations.

The first is a 3-D monitor (see video) -- which in this case is showing a 3-D molecule. I've seen 3-D TVs before but this system was truly 3-D in that you could walk around the object and see it from completely different perspectives.

The second demo was a 3-D printer (see video). Basically you send it a design -- and presto -- out comes a plastic, 3-D object. What's amazing is that can output complex, multi-part objects in one go.