Thursday, December 20, 2012

December 20, 2012

Shame on you, Saina:
Cocking a snook at the Badminton Association of India, a defiant Saina Nehwal chose to withdraw when holding two match-points against Russian Ksenia Polikarpova in the first round of the $120,000 Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold badminton championship here.
The World No. 3 cited a knee-injury that had troubled her from this year’s Denmark Open as the reason for her decision to withdraw when leading 21-17, 20-18 against a rival ranked 165th.
“With many important tournaments lined up next month, I decided not to aggravate the injury,” said a smiling Saina after she waved to the disappointed crowd for cheering her all the way in the 29-minute encounter.
and
“Throughout the year, the BAI does everything that Saina wants. Government allows Saina economy class (airfare) but BAI helps her travel First Class by paying the difference in fare. In return, BAI wants her to play in a couple of events in the country. But that is not happening,” said a senior BAI official on condition of anonymity.
and
By the end of the day, a ‘chastened’ BAI must have realised that it is better to accept a firm ‘no’ than a reluctant ‘yes’ from Saina. As one of the BAI official put it, “Sadly, the truth is, the Indian badminton needs Saina Nehwal more than Saina needing Indian badminton.” 
Methinks somebody's shoes are getting too small for them. To be fair, it could be advice from questionable sources that is causing this kind of behaviour.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

December 13, 2012

It may be possible to test whether we're living in a simulation.

An earlier article that says there may be a 20% chance that we do.

Via Rigorous Intuition, a mind-blowing argument.

Let's see:
  1. This explains the Big Bang. Things started when the simulator program was kicked off.
  2. Things are discrete in the quantum world because the simulation is, by nature, discrete -- whether it's event-driven or time-stepped.
  3. Non-local connections are explained as well -- the 'master controller' is the CPU running the simulation, and it has access to (and is able to maintain) all the simulation objects and their dependencies, irrespective of where they are in the simulated world.
  4. The usual paradoxes like wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, and so on are explained by the analogy of mathematical formulas and 'lazy initialization'.
  5. Karma and synchronicity? Global state/memory/logic in the simulator program.
  6. God is the entity running the simulation.
Of course, this still doesn't explain things like ultimate cause (is our God also a simulated entity? How many levels does this go?).

Related: good stuff from Reddit.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

December 11, 2012

fool  

/fo͞ol/
Noun
A person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person: "what a fool I was to do this".

id·i·ot  

/ˈidēət/
Noun
  1. A stupid person.
  2. A mentally handicapped person.
Effing idiots. Or are they fools? Now I'm confused.
Context: this and this.

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

December 4, 2012

Awfully decent of the Chinese, preferring to pay for stuff rather than pillaging and plundering the to-be-annexed Indian territory:
In 1962, for example, Deak warned the CIA that China was planning to invade India after his company’s Hong Kong branch was swamped with Chinese orders for Indian rupees intended for advance soldiers.