Finished phase IIIa of the Research Orientation Course. It was a fascinating experience as usual. This time we had Shawky Galal, Youmna Tareef El-Kholy presenting and discussing with us Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's philosophy of science. In an earlier session we watched Ordinary Fascism by Mikhael Romm and discussed it with Mrs. Arab Lotfy. Those sessions made the course very special.

Other sessions were about scientific reasoning, data management, tabular and graphical presentation of …

Whoa, a very minor quake happened few minutes ago (19:17). My heart dropped for a moment, I remembered October '92. I guess I am seismophobic. It probably lasted around 20 seconds. Till now there is no information at the USGS website. May be it was so mild that it will go unreported. For sure it was due to the usual secret Israeli A-bomb test conspiracy theory.

Anyways, here is an entertaining list of phobias …

The following is an excerpt from a series of lectures titled The Evolution of Modern Medicine delivered in 1913 by Sir Wiliam Osler. He is one of the founders of 20th century medicine and known to the masses by several Eponyms carrying his last name.

Unfortunately, his statement '''"No such hospital exists today in Cairo as that which was built by al-Mansur Gilafun in 1283"''' is still true today, which is based on an account …

Starting from Thursday 28/07 at noon, in the garden of el sakkia (in Zamalek), you can leave anything to express your feelings about what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh and about terrorism. Just put anything you want, a picture, a poem, a candle, flowers...

It will be open for sometime after this Thursday, so come anytime you like!

بدءاً من ظهر الخميس 28 - 7 - 2005

في حديقة ساقية الصاوي

اتركوا وردة ، أقيدوا شمعة ، خطوا عبارة …

Rumors about Habib El-Adly and other top security cheifs leaving:

"An imminent change in the leadership of the Egyptian security services is expected ..."

"...the most senior national security directors are expected to resign or be replaced, possible along with the interior minister, Habib al-Adly."

link to the source

I hate them all on a personal level. But I would loved to see them go away with peacful dissent that comes from us. And not from …

Ok, I am starting to recover from my shock. Here are some links related to the Sharm El-Sheikh bombings.

• Around 130 photos till now from various news sources and wires at Yahoo! News
• Yahoo! News results from various Arabic newspapers and media, rss feed on the right hand side
• Reactions in the blogosphere (via technorati) people linking to bbc story, more people linking to the bbc, tags,keyword search
• Reactions from Egyptian bloggers can be …

Since this is probably the largest terror attack to hit my home country in my lifetime. I think I have to post something.

My reaction is very different to other attacks, I am avoiding the news, television and other sources of information. On other similar events I would be glued to the TV and the Internet. Trying to follow every news piece or report.

I am glad, I didn't lose anyone I know. But still …

Although, I am glad they are going to leave kids alone and use robots. Take a look at the robotic jockey. It is finished and ready for racing.

But look at it from another perspective. Something looks terribly wrong, evil and sick. I don't accept the idea of controlling living things with a remote control for leisure.

A technological singularity is a predicted time at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict.

'''from the Wikipedia'''

I don't know if the political climate before the technological singularity have ever been discussed. But I am sure someone did and I am probably not aware. Which in itself means that we are still far from the singularity.

I speculate that today's democracy (in the world, I am …