الجمعية الوطنية للتغيير - الموافقون على التغيير

الجمعية الوطنية للتغيير - الموافقون على التغيير

مش باقى منى

شعر / جمال بخيت

مش باقي مني غير شوية ضي ف عينيا
أنا هاديهوملك
وامشي بصبري ف الملكوت
يمكن ف نورهم تلمحي خطوة
تفرق معاكي
بين الحياة والموت
مش باقي مني غير شوية نبض ف عروقي
خُدي.. وعيشي..
وافتحي لي تابوت
أفرح بريحة ورد فرعوني
وربنا ف عوني
إذا دخلت الجنة ولاّ النار
هاشتاق إلي ضحكتك
وقعدتي ف الدار
والقهوة متحوجة
من طيبة العطار..
ف كل يوم الصبح
باشرب حليب قبطي
وف النهار والمسا
بامسك ستار الكعبة لو سبتي
واثبت إذا هربتي
أهديكي عمري وحسي وجوارحي
أهديكي جرحي
هو اللي باقي ف دنيتي لما خلص فرحي
مش باقي مني
غير شوية لحم ف كتافي
بلاش يتبعتروا ف البحر
بلاش يتحرقوا ف قطر الصعيد
ف العيد
بلاش لكلب الصيد.. تناوليهم
خدي اللي باقي من الأمل فيهم
وابني لي من عضمهم
في كل حارة مقام
وزوريني مرة وحيدة
لو كل ألفين عام
ألم الجراح يتلم
مش باقي مني غير شوية دم
متلوثين بالهم
مُرين وفيهم سم
كانوا زمان شربات
والنكتة سكرهم

شربتهم الخفافيش
في قلب أوكارهم
مش باقي مني غير شوية دم.. ماأقدرشي
أسقيكي.. مواجعهم
وبرضه ما أقدرشي
أرميكي..
وأبيعهم
يمكن ف مرة تعوزي تطلبيني شهيد
هاحتاج يوميها الدم
يمضي علي شهادتي
مش باقي مني
غير شوية قوة ف إرادتي
علي شوية شِعر من خطي
حاسبي عليهم وانتي بتخطي
وانتي ف صبح الدلال
بتعطري شطي..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية ضي ف عينيا
أنا مش عايزهم
لو كنت يوم هالمحك
وانتي بتوطي
في معركة مافيهاش
ولاطيارات ولاجيش
وانتي ف طابور العيش
بتبوسي إيد الزمن
ينولك لقمة
من حقك المشروع
مش باقي مني.. غير
شهقة ف نفس مقطوع..
بافتح لها سكة
ما بين رئة.. وضلوع..
ما بين غبار.. ودموع..
وأنا تحت حجر «المقطم»
ف الدويقة باموت
أنا.. والعطش.. والجوع..
يئن تحتي التراب
وانا صوتي مش مسموع..
ياحلمنا الموجوع..
من المرور ممنوع..
مستني لما يمر
موكب سلاطينك..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية رحمة من طينك..
علي شوية صبر من دينك..
مش باقي مني غير حبة غُنا تايهين
ف الضلمة مش لاقيين
حس الفواعلية..
ولا صوت مراكبي عَفي
فوق المعدية..

ولا صوت بناتي العذاري
في كل صبحية..
والغنوة.. أمنية
«ياما نفسي أقابل حبيبي..
وانا ع الزراعية»..
صوتك وصوتهم غاب..
وانا تحت حجر المقطم.. باموت لوحديّا..
الليلة راحت عيوني
تطل ع البستان..
وجناين الرمان..
رجعت لي توصف عناد الغل والدخان
وسحابة سودا تضلل
علي الغُنا الغلبان..
رجعت لي توصف هبوب الموت
علي الألوان..
رجعت لي توصف….
خيال الذل..
ف موائد الرحمن..
مش باقي مني غير شوية كُفر بشروقك
وأنا..
منبع الايمان..
مش باقي مني..
غير شوية ضي..
وعينيا
مش قادرة تلمحني..
في وحدتي محني..
خايف أموت م الخوف
والضعف يفضحني..
السجن عشش ف قلبي
وماشي ف شوارعك..
نفس اللي باعني وخدعني
بالرخيص بايعك..
هاشيل حمولي انا
ولا هاشيل حملك ؟!
ماعدت أملك شيء..
فيكي.. ولا فيّا
ولا قيراط ولا بيت..
ولا نسمة صافية تلاغي النيل بحرية..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية حب جارحّني
ولا باقي مني
غير شوية ضي ف عينيا

The Blade Itself

A flashy name for a novel I read a few months ago for Joe Abercrombie.

I am not a critic (and god send that I never become one), and I hate being harsh on writers, but the novel is mediocre at best. Weak plot, flat characters that are anything BUT original, no premise I could detect, and peculiarly, I couldn't (by reading the book) discover what blade the title was referring to. The book has all the typical elements and characters of the fantasy genre without any effort to dress them up or customize them.

But for some reason I went for the second part of the book!!!! ... And then the third!! No not some mysterious indiscernible reason, I know what it was. One character "Inquisitor Glokta" was so original, so brilliantly depicted, his dialogues and thoughts so intense and intriguing that all the flaws of the book can be set aside (if not forgiven). Whenever this character appears, the writing gets brilliant, and the scenes, the dialogue, and even the secondary characters get rich and enjoyable.

Inquisitor Glokta - a broken and deformed torturer - works under a loathsome head of the inquisition, drags confessions and information from prisoners. You have every cause to detest him, but you don't. Maybe because he is truthful, maybe because he has depth and he made the book worth reading, I don't know but for some reason Glokta gets your sympathy and intrigues you to follow him though his own quest. Up until the end of the third book of the trilogy. Indeed, even following him getting up a flight of stairs with his deformed and broken legs and listening to his internal ramblings is rewarding on its own.

Inquisitor Glokta alone and his thread in the plot are not enough to make the book a good book, but is enough to make it worth reading and to make you forgive the author and suspect some latent potential to write brilliant books in the future.

Persistent Dictionaries (a.k.a. disk backed key-value store)

I recently faced the situation where I needed to employ an on-disk dictionary that supports O(n) or O(log n) lookup complexity. The need for a dictionary (aka map, associated array, etc.) is clear enough and very common, I can hardly remember any piece of software I wrote that was completely free of one, but the requirement of this data structure to be on disk is the less frequent one. So I set out to look for solutions.

[for those who absolutely have to know why I needed it to be on disk, it was because my program was a web service that will get loaded in memory to satisfy a request, then dies, and I didn’t want to load the whole set of elements [stop word list for those that love details and yes, what I really really needed was a set data structure not a dictionary] every time. But really, there are many different scenarios where you would need such a thing. Imagine a really huge dictionary, … I mean REALLY huge. Imagine a dictionary that you want to share between different processes.]

I knew vaguely that the python community had several solution, and they do. They mainly have an interface that can do this backed up with various database options, usually, simple, small and embedded DBMSs like dbm or Berkley DB, and the DBMS is responsible for indexing and fast retrieval.

But I needed that in C#, or at least .net.

And I thought that I can do the same, I can use some embedded database (e.g. sqllite, BDB, or Microsoft’s SQL Server compact) and wrap it in a dictionary interface:

Dict. Add(key, value);
Dict.Get(key);

But I still thought that employing a DBMS is too much, like killing a bee with a bazooka, and introduces external dependencies.

So I looked some more …

I searched for things like: “persistent hashtable” , “persistent map” , “persistent data structures” , “file indexing” , etc.

… and I found this: http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/600531

A java code sample that uses the filesystem itself as the indexing structure:

So Dict.Add(key, Value) will actually create a file (in a specified folder) with the name=key and the value written inside.
And Dict.Get(key) will simply ask the filesystem to open the file(key) and deserialize its contents.

Quite devious!!! I loved the idea. But it was a bit shabby, and it assumed that the filesystem is an efficient one that handles folders with thousands of files efficiently and guarantee fast lookup, which is probably the case with some filesystems (reiserFS perhaps? EXT3? ZFS?) but not with NTFS, at least I wasn’t confident enough.

What I needed was a disk-backed balanced tree! And surprisingly, when I searched for that I found exactly what I wanted:

http://bplusdotnet.sourceforge.net/
A B-Plus tree implementation that support exactly the interface that I want, well, actually it supports the more elegant interface:

Dict[key] = value;
Value = Dict[key];

Turns out that the “disk-backed” is the right term to describe what I wanted, not “persistent”, for “persistent data structures” has a completely different meaning that has to do with mutability, as opposed to “data persistence” which means disk-backed 

Other notable libraries found in the way:

C5 collection library from the University of Copenhagen
http://www.itu.dk/research/c5/
Which has a persistent red-black tree implementation that almost fooled me.

Wintellect’s PowerCollections for .Net
http://powercollections.codeplex.com/

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

Richard Feynman on doubt,uncertainty and religion

I am a tomb raider ...

I am a tomb raider, a grave robber, and I do it with great pride.

For hundreds upon hundreds of years our kings have devised techniques, architectural, mechanical and magical to prevent their tombs from being robbed. I derive my pride and satisfaction from unravelling these puzzles and smashing these barriers one after the other. Of course the loot is a welcome bonus, I don't just work for the fun of it. Anyone that might come upon these diaries (if anyone ever did) would think me crazy at best, or damned and sacrilegious at worst. But I stand proud and tall, for I killed no living soul, I robbed no food from the mouth of hungry children, and I didn't force thousands of poor peasants to toil from dawn till dusk for my personal glory. I live free, ... free of their dirty governments, free of their contrived religion and their nasty - always angry - gods.

But my start was not tall nor proud, I started as conscript in the glorious army of the great Pharaoh, and before that I was even lower, a street urchin that was shunned by the lowest and and pitied by the poorest. I lived most of my childhood on the streets and of the streets. And it was in those days that I learned how harsh the gods can be, and in my days as a soldier that I learned how vain our kings are.

العائد

الجزء الثاني من الملل

لم يكن يدري على ما أظن أني لم أكن أقصد السلطان محمد الظاهر، فلم يكن خبر وفاته إنتشر بعد حيث ابحرنا. كان هذا قبل أيام قلائل من وصولنا إلى ميناء الزرقاء في عاصمة السلطنة الألفية. ودعت البحارة على عجل وحزمت حقائبي وكتبي وأخذت أول مركبة متجهة ناحية القصر السلطاني. لم أنزل بالقصر ذاته وانما تركت حاجياتي ببيت لي على مقربةٍ من القصر وسرت راجلاً دون أنا أغير ملابسي أو اغسل عني أثار السفر حتى وقفت أمام بوابةٍ صغيرة بالجانب الخلفي من القصر، لم يلبث حارس البوابة أن رأني حتى فتح فاه أثر الدهشة. أمهلته إلى أن انقضت دهشته ثم فتح لي الباب مسرعاً كأنه أفاق من حلم مررت به مسرعاً ورباط على كتفه ولكنه لم ينطق بكلمة واحدة.
مررت من عدة ممرات شجرية حتى وصلت إلى الباب الخارجي لمطبخ القصر. دخلت ومررت بالمطبخ المزدحم بالناس والروائح دون أن يعيرني أحداً أي انتباه. قلما ينتبه الناس إلى دخيل إلا إذا كان يمشي كدخيل، أما أنا فقد كنت أمشي في المطبخ كأحد عماله كما كنت أمشي في الحديقة كى أحد أهم الضيوف. أظن بعضهم كان ليتعرف وجهي إن حاول.

وصلت إلى القاعة المركزية بالمستوى الأرضي ووجدتها خالية على غير العادة. سلكت أحد الدهاليز ومنه إلى دهليز فرعي أخر وطرقت خمس طرقات في توال سريع. فتح لي شيخ قصير إختبأ نصف وجهه خلف لحية بيضاء. وقفت مبتسماً كالابله لا أعرف ماذا أقول. "هأنذا قد جئت" قلت أخيراً بعد فترة صمت لا بأس بها. أخذ الشيخ شهيقا وزفره ثم تحركت يده في لمح البصر لتلطمني على وجهي لطمة لم اتوقعها و لم اتوقع قوتها.

"سحقاً لك، أين كنت كل هذه السنين؟ فيم غيابك وفيم رجوعك؟"

Suffix Tree Clustering

I recently stumbled upon this very interesting paper:

Web Document Clustering: A Feasibility Demonstration , by Zamir and Etzioni. PDF here

The paper presents an attractive technique for clustering documents using Suffix Trees, the merits of which can be summarized as:

• The algorithm is incremental, meaning that documents can be added at any time and clusters can be re-evaluated accordingly
• Does this in linear complexity O(n)
Deals with documents as strings, not as Bags of Words, which allows for accounting for context
• The algorithm actually produces sequences of words that represent each cluster (with no extra cost)
Can produce clusters that are not mutually exclusive (fuzzy clusters)
and finally the authors claim it can work efficiently on search engine snippets

Suffix Trees are data structures that are very suitable for indexing text documents (for search purposes), and I think it very devious to exploit the same structure for clustering.

Two Technical Lectures

I try to watch a technical lecture or two every weekend, this week I actually stumbled upon two good lectures.

http://videolectures.net/is04_munro_sds/

About succinct data structure, … how to index stuff without using much memory, … in other words, … compressing trees.

http://videolectures.net/solomon_langford_fenna/

Spatial data structures for fast and exact nearest neighbor queries, in high dimensional spaces. I was originally interested in special data structures men ayam el physics engine wel collision detection in games, but they can also be used to speed-up some data clustering algorithms.

Dangerous Beans

“I thought, … there would be an island”, said Dangerous Beans (a rat) in a crestfallen and resigned tone, and I started to cry, weep and howl openly. I was driving to the CMIC Maadi office. Listening to an audio-book, written by Terry Pratchett. In less than ten minutes the book (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents) made me laugh again, an effect only Sir. Charles Spencer Chaplin achieved before. And in my opinion, one of the marks of true craft and art.

“I thought there would be an island” reverberated in my heart as the stood for e very forlorn dream, every dying hope, and every fallen idealist. I wept, not only for Dangerous Beans, I wept for the whole world (and obviously myself before all).

Steven Spielberg usually gets such an effect with his climax scenes at or near the end of the movie, (e.g. Schindler’s List, E.T., and Empire of the Sun) but there is as well another way to touch the audience, another form of high art, the kind that makes you on the brink of tears from the beginning to the end of the work, without actually having to have a climax, or needing to make you cry. Examples of this latter are “The Way we Were”, “Slumdog Millionair” and the book “Doublestar” for Robert. A. Heinlein. In “Slumdog Millionair” I literally had tears in my eyes for the whole movie. And in “The Way we Were” I felt a state of elation/heartache the whole length of the 2 hours+ movie. The state was not bound to a certain scene, but to the theme of the movie. Robert Heinlein is a totally different story, .. better saved for later.

الملل

سحقاً، كم هذا ممل!
لطالما حلمت وأنا صغير بالإبحار والسفر، ولكن لم يخطر ببالي أبداً كم يمكن أن يكون البقاء معلقاً بعرض البحر شيء غاية في الإملال. توقفت عن التفكير في الدقائق والساعات، أجوب سطح السفينة جيئة وذهابا حتى مل البحارة رؤيتي وأصابهم بعض من توتري. اللعنة، بل إن الأيام ذاتها تفقد معناها بهذا الشكل، ليس فقط الدقائق والساعات.

ولما كنت قد أوشكت على الإنتهاء من الكتب التي جلبتها معي، وبما أنه لا يسع الانسان أن يقرأ طوال النهار والليل (فأنا أجد صعوبة فال نوم أيضاً) فها أنذا جالس أفعل ما لم أفعله منذ حادثتي: اكتب، أدون، لا لشيءٍ إلا لإزاحة الوقت الجاثم كالجبل.

ماذا اكتب، ماذا اكتب، . . . اه، ساعدت البحارة اليوم على ظهر السفينة. كنت قد طلبت من عبدلله (ونصف بحارة هذه المركبة يدعون عبدلله) أن يعطيني شيئاً لأفعله، فجلس في اليوم التالي ساعة يعلمني خمس طرق مختلفة لعمل العقد من الحبال وطلب مني أن اتدرب عليها جميعاً وأجيد عقدها كأسرع ما يكون. وكنت ظننت أنه إخترع هذه الحيلة ليتخلص مني ويفرغ لعمله، ولكنه أكد لي بلهجة العاتب أن عقد العقد هو أول ما يجب على البحار اتقانه.

أه ه ه . . .
يؤلمني كل شبر من جسدي بعد مجهود البارحة. ولكني شاركت في العمل اليوم أيضاً، فالألم أحب إلي من الملل، ثم انني خجلت أن يظهر انني أجهدت من عمل ساعتين في حين يعمل البحارة طوال اليوم. ثمة عزاء ما في العمل البدني. وكأنه علاج لالام النفس واضطراباتها.


بعد ساعتين من الشد والعقد، ذهبت لاغتسل ثم قمت بزيارة غرفة قبطان المركبة (يسمونها قمرة لسبب ما) لندخن الأنبوب ونلعب الشطرنج ككل يوم في وقت الظهيرة.

شيء غريب هذا الأنبوب، لم أره قط قبل أنا أقابل القبطان زاهر. لكم هو صغير وعملي، ولشد ما هو مختلف عن الأرجيلة، كما أن التبغ الذي يستخدمه لحشوه على هيئة مسحوق مختلف في اللون والرائحة عن أي شيء رأيته من قبل. زعم أنه يأتي به من جزيرة قرب بلاد الروم، فعزمت على أن أخذ منه عينة لتحليلها حال رجوعنا الى بلادنا، إن رجعنا.

جلسنا ندخن التبغ عطري الرائحة ونلعب دور من الشطرنج، أطيله قدرما استطيع، فهو أحد أهم أحداث اليوم، ثم انني كنت استمتع بتعابير وجه القبطان المتذمر وهو يحاول الافلات من مصيدةتلو الأخرى.

"لا أعرف هل أحبك أم أكرهك أيها الأمير الصغير" قالها وهو ينفث الدخان

فأجبته ضاحكاً: "اكرهني إذاً ولكنني لست بأمير، صغير كان أو كبير"

قلتها ثم وضعت الوزير بحيث يستحيل على ملكه الفرار. لو أجلت هذه الحركة أكثر من ذلك لصار تلاعبي به واضحاً ومهيناً. تعلمت هذا من والدي، وقدكان الوحيد الذي يهزمني مذ كنت في العاشرة، وكان يهزمني سريعاً، بل كان يسحقني سحقاً، ولم يكن يسمح لي باللعب معه إلا مرة كل أسبوع. وكنت خلال هذا الأسبوع ابذل قصارى جهدي لأرقى بمستواي. كنت كذلك أرقب مجيء الضيوف الى منزلنا، متمنياً أن يواجه احدهم أبي، فاستطيع مراقبتهما. وكنت الحظ كم كان يطيل من الأدوار ويترفق بمنافسيه فاشتعل غيظاً. واجهته بذلك بعد أحد الأدوار التي كان يسحقني بها، فضحك بصوته الغليظ، وقال "بعض الرجال عقولهم أصغر من عقلك، لو انني انتصرت على وزير بيت المال في عشر خطوات لوجب علي أن اتخلى عن أي خطط تحتاج إلى تمويل حكومي، لكن إن أوهمته بأن كان في امكانه الفوز ، فلسوف ينتظر أقرب فرصة لمواجهتي ثانية، ولسوف يدعوني إلى بيته، ولسوف يستشيرني في مشاكله"

أخذ القبطان في جمع القطع العاجية "بل قد أصبحت أميراً على بحارتي، على الأقل يعاملونك كاميرهم" قالها وفي صوته نبرة حقد لا علاقة لها بخسارته فى الشطرنج "فيم اصرارك على العمل معهم كل يوم؟ ما لمثلك ولعملٍ كهذا؟"

شعرت بخطورة الموقف، ولعنت نفسي أن لم ألحظه من قبل "إنه الملل لا غير يا سيدي القائد، إن وافقت أن تعلمني مبادئ الملاحة، لكان أفضل لي، فقد مللت عقد الحبال على كل حال" قلت مترقباً ردة فعله، فليس من مصلحتي أن أخسر صداقته. للقبطان السلطة الأعلى على سفينته وباستطاعته أن يحبسني في غرفتي حتى نهاية الرحلة إن أراد، الأدهى أنه سيكون مصيباً في ذلك إن كان وجودي يهدد مكانته عند البحارة.

إنفرج وجهه وابتسم إبتسامة تفوق "لا تستطيع المكوث ساكنا، أليس كذلك؟ إنه أول شيء تتعلمه في البحر. إن أردت أن أعلمك عن الملاحة فعليك ألا تقوم بأي نشاط لثلاثة أيام." ثم قال مستدركاً "بالطبع لا يعد الشطرنج نشاطاً"

في الواقع كنت أحب القبطان، أو بالأحرى كان يثير اعجابي، فقد كان صلباً قوياً كشجر السنديان، وكان نشيطاً مليء بالحيوية برغم كونه في العقد السادس من عمره على أقل تقدير. كانت عيناه تلمعان بالشغف عندما يمسك بالدفة ويقذف الأوامر يمينا ويسارا بصوت جهوري، شغفة كان البحر وسفينته، وكان البحارة يهابونه حقاً، برغم انني لم أره يعاقب احدهم أبداً. كان في ذلك يذكرني بوالدي. لعل هذا كان عيبه الوحيد.

مكثت في غرفتي أغلب الأيام الثلاثة التالية، وإن أوجعتني نظرات خيبة الأمل في عيون البحارة، فكنت أتعلل بألم في ظهري. وفي اليوم التالي بعض دور الشطرنج -الذي تركته يفوز به- قال لي القائد "اليوم تمسك أنت الدفة، وتدخل عالم الإبحار تلميذاً، فقط اتمنى أن تحدث والدك حين نعود بأن اسطولنا بحاجة للتجديد والصيانة"

في الواقع زادت هذه الجملة من احترامي له، رجل أخر كان ليطلب مطلبا شخصيا. لم يكن بإمكانه أن يعرف كم المتني جملته على كل حال، وليس خطأه انني أكرة والدي ككرهي للمرض.

"أفضل من ذلك، إن اقنعتني سأحدث السلطان بشخصه" وعدته مخلصاً

Project Halawes II: dreamers

Read part one first: Project Halawes

...

It was an instant success, the effect in workers' health and moral was beyond expectations, it was as if the spark of life was rekindled in the hearts of these men, for some of them lived every night in the middle-earth playing with hobbits and seeking for Gandalf, some lived each of the Arabian nights many times, enjoying the harem and the extravagance, some dreamed at being Jedi knights, samurai warlords, doctors, lawyers, politicians, people of conviction and significance.

After the initial success, a new rule was forged: "The length of the dream was to be determined by how hard and efficient one worked." The effect was dramatic and pretty much instant, the quality of labor quadrupled overnight. Workers worked with vengeance! Who would not work his heart out for an extra hour in heaven? Or even an extra hour between the arms of Calypso?

The dramatic success drew the advent attention of the Union, which decided to put more funds into the running research, as the whole case presented the potential to be successfully replicated on many other industrial facilities. The research resulted into many discoveries about human dreams and the different ways to control and supervise them. Among the great discoveries of that research, were the very impressive experiments about joint-dreaming, in which they were able to let two people -and later even more- share the same dream, not as in watching a movie together, but as in acting in a play together, so they co-dreamed, not just had the same dream. In which case one of the dreamers acted as the host, and was responsible for initiating the dream and setting up the scene, and the other dreamer(s) could then attend to his dream world and interact. This discovery was greatly hyped as one possible form for high efficiency communication, that can be utilized in the near future. This form of joint dreams was not however used with the red factory workers, for fear of strikes or organized rebellions. For as long as each of the workers dreamed separately in his own dreamworld, there was no foreseen danger to come of those dreams and therefore needn't be controlled or supervised (which was of course not without expense). The joint-dreaming was used instead to entertain the richest industrialists and guild-masters of the three colonies, and it met great commercial success.

But then, in a few years, the red factory met a problem that dangered the whole experiment. The workers simply couldn't dream anymore. In fact they dreamed, but their dreams became more and more convoluted and disturbed, and hence were less and less effective. The research team frantically investigated the almost epidemic problem, only to discover that it was almost unavoidable. Workers that spent years on the red planet naturally found it increasingly hard to dream of rivers or forests, they gradually forgot how such things looked like, felt like, smelled like. Photographs, video scenes and multimedia sessions didn't help much, and the option of giving them periodical vacations was simply too expensive (remember how dangerously new space-travel was at those days and how relatively precious energy was).

Now Frank -the youngest member of the research team- proposed a very daring remedy to the catastrophic situation (and it was very catastrophic indeed to the research team that was about to lose its funding and shut down). Frank thought that using the joint-dreaming (later called group-dreaming or co-dreaming) the problem can be solved, basing his theory on the fact that joint-dreaming was telepathic in nature, and therefore was not limited by conventional time-space rules and was out of the shackles of energy-matter physics. The idea was to have the host (the one who constructs the dreamworld) on a very different planet, and let the workers join his world experience the stimuli and effects that he can so fully and vividly reconstruct, after having personally and actually experienced just few hours ago. Taking the Idea further, there can of course be several hosts on several planets enjoying the marvelous nature of magnificent worlds, and not having anything to do but sleep and dream for 8 hours a day, that would be their work, besides maybe reading a fantastic novel or watching a nice movie now and then.

Now as strange and ridiculous as his solution might sound (and it was indeed met with skepticism and ridicule from his fellow researchers), it was quite inexpensive, and avoided space-travel as much as possible. The Union loved it! And as they saw it as the last hope for rescuing a huge venture, they pushed more money into the required research, and put Frank on the head of it all, neglecting the the envy of his seniors, and the heated scientific debate about the possibility of the experiment at all.

Frank's thesis stated that telepathy (and hence joint-dreaming) was unlimited by space as it was unlimited by time, that it was instantaneous! And thus the dreaming co-dreaming group can be thousands of light years away, without it affecting their capacity to co-dream or communicate, if proven right, Frank would have made a great leap, not only in the field on group-dreaming, but also in the field of cross-galactic-communications.


To be maybe continued ...

Project Halawes

Once upon a time, a time that is yet to come, at the second era of space-traveling for the human race, called by some The Colonial Age, a planet was found that was so rich with metals, energy sources and rare elements, that it was at once acquired by the Union of Enterprises to be turned into a gigantic factory, it was moreover in a strategically position that was almost equally distanced from the three human colonies like the center point of a triangle (at that time there were only three of course, the other unofficial settlements weren't approved yet by the colonial panel and did not pay any taxes to the universal government).

Unfortunately this planet wasn't that great for human life, or any life for that matter, true it did have a reasonable gravity (0.82 G) and true it had some oxygen in it's atmosphere, but the water was dire, and almost always frozen, the temperature was cold even on the equator, the landscape was mainly desert of rocks and mountains, and the color of the atmosphere by day was a deep shade of red. True there was some native life, but due to these reasons and many other subtle ecological reasons life forms were very rare and quite peculiar. Imagine a planet where the rivers are almost always frozen, so there was a fish-like creature that lived frozen and suspended for 3/4th of the solar year and then when the rivers melt it lived and "thrived".


So it was expectedly hard to find workers to man the factory (yes, human workers were still in use in some positions because they were simply cheaper than the robot alternatives), for even workers that were in the direst need refrained from working on the "red planet" (as the workers called it) for more than a year. Now don't you dare judge them, those were tough workers, used to the toughest conditions across the universe and to the then extremely exhausting space traveling buses (which transported workers at 7G to save time). But the red planet was really creepy, and it's nature was totally alien to any human wherever in the galaxy he was raised, the work was tough and all day long (to achieve the maximum productivity), and even the toughest of the workers went sick after no more than 20 months, the sickness was alienation, it had many different symptoms, and if not dealt with, was quite terminal.

So understandably the Union needed to solve this problem, because changing the staff periodically did cost them some money after all. And year after year, the plan to totally automatize the factory was proposed and rejected for its high cost. But then at the tenth year of the factory's operations one brilliant manager in the department of human resources did devise a radical solution. And truly, he was a nice guy and his solution seemed quite humane. He thought: "so they get sick? So what? Let's treat them, surely if there is a cure, it can be cheaply acquired in quantities, and why even wait for them to get sick, let's prevent their sickness, let's condition them psychologically to endure and even relish their daily work."

And thus the requirements were presented to the Union's chief psychiatrist, and thus the "Project Halawes" began. for the first two years conventional brain-washing techniques were used, with the effect of considerably increasing (almost doubling) the average worker-life-time, in addition to increasing the workers' enthusiasm and spirit. But this wasn't even close to the desired results, so in the following few years, different techniques were used singly and in combinations. Hypnosis, religion, and prostitution were some of the many things they tried with various degrees of success, until in the 21st year of the factory's operation, they started to use dreams. Yes dreams, artificially induced dreams of nice places and warm worlds, of rivers and rainbows, sirens and elfs, forests full of life, golden beaches, azure skies, and of course, beautiful women.

It was an instant success, the effect on workers' health and moral was beyond expectations, it was as if the spark of life was rekindled in the hearts of these men, for some of them lived every night in middle-earth playing with hobbits and seeking for Gandalf, some lived each of the Arabian nights many times, enjoying the harem and the extravagance, some dreamed at being Jedi knights, samurai warlords, doctors, lawyers, politicians or even prophets, people of conviction and significance.

To be revised and continued ... (probably not)

About Writing Books

"I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to read the Literary Supplement of "The Times". It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success."

from "The Moon and Sixpence" by Somerset Maugham

Conscience

"I take it that conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation. It is the policeman in all our hearts, set there to watch that we do not break its laws. It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego. Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd. It will force him to place the good of society before his own. It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the whole. And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster. He sits him in a seat of honour. At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience. Then he has no words hard enough for the man who does not recognise its sway; for, a member of society now, he realises accurately enough that against him he is powerless."

from "The Moon and Sixpence" by Somerset Maugham

People I look up to

For the last few years I've been looking up to some people, ... wanting to be like them, getting inspirations from their work or life, among those are:

Steve Jobs is the CEO, chairman and co-founder of Apple Inc., and is the founder of Pixar Animation Studios and was its CEO until its acquisition by the Walt Disney Company in 2006. Jobs is currently the Walt Disney Company's largest individual shareholder and a member of its Board of Directors. He is considered a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries. Steve Jobs is listed as Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Businessman of 2007, beating out of 25 other business leaders.





Quotes:

"Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could -- I'm searching for the right word -- could, could die." -- On his return as interim CEO, in Time, Aug. 18, 1997

"I want to put a ding in the universe. "

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new. "

Bertrand Russell is one of my favorite thinkers of all time. He was a writer, a scientist, a politician, and a philosopher. The world would not be the same without his simple style allowing even such people as myself to understand philosophy.

Quotes:

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong"

"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution."



Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr., under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. It's one of my highest dreams to write a novel as successful as that.

And some of them are even fictional:

Alan Shore is a fictional character on the television series Boston Legal, played by James Spader.



Quotes:

"I am such a slut for authority!"
"We plead not guilty by reason of the district attorney's insanity."
"Oh! You look so bored. I’m about to change that."





The pirate captain Red-Haired Shanks ;)


Shanks is one of the most laid back characters in the world of One Piece, preferring to take his time as he and his crew travels around the world rather than rushing from one place to another.

Quotes:

"Listen bandits, I can have food or drinks spilt on me or even be spat at and I'll laugh about it. However, for any reason if you hurt a friend of mine I will not forgive you!"

"On Fantasy"

by George R. R. Martin

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR (Bertrand Russel)

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy -- ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness -- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what -- at last -- I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Boston Legal

Living up to the bill of rights!

Forgotten Feelings

For years now I have been quite cynical about love, believing that it's a self imposed illusion, ... not deliberately of course, but self imposed nevertheless. Imagine 50 men and 50 women on an island. Each man will unconsciously choose a woman and target those feelings he needs to feel, feelings of need, trust, admiration, and sexual attraction towards her. Now let them be 20 men and 20 women, ... the same will happen. Let me say it another way, if a certain man has a variety space of 40 women in his social circle, he will choose one and "love" her, now let's cut this circle in half, removing his beloved in the process and leaving him just 20 women, I believe he will still choose one and direct his feelings towards her. In that sense, love can be viewed as a sophisticated, unconsciously self imposed illusion!!

But then, ... and few days ago, I was shocked off my feet. I met that girl, and I was totally impressed, felt some feelings I thought myself incapable of. Feelings I hadn't experienced their like in 6 to 7 years. This is not self imposed, or I would have imposed it on myself much earlier. Wouldn't be feeling void all that long. My theory has to be somehow flawed.

TAKTAKA

Among the ideas we have for our companies next computer game, is something GTA-like that heavily incorporates toktoks, So I was thinking about the game, how to make it challenging, and what to name it of course, ... so I thought about the plural of toktok, ... in arabic!! I came with TAKATEK :)