An excerpt from the 1954 Albert Einstein letter that was recently sold at auction for £170,000.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

She was a petite perfectionist in an age of muscular athletes. She possessed a backhand from heaven and shot-making abilities second to no other female tennis player. She was the person who ended the Williams sisters’ dominance in such stunning fashion and then went on to usurp their role. 

Justine Henin. Always number one. Thanks for the beautiful moments. And good luck.

(Photo by Glenn Thomas. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.)

Aamir Khan writes in his blog that the caretaker of his Panchgani house has a dog named Shahrukh. He emphasises that he had nothing to do with the naming of the dog.

I’m sitting under a tree, on the edge of a valley, approximately 5000 feet above sea level. The river Krishna flows far below us snaking its way among the Sahyadri mountains. A cool breeze is blowing, jannat ki hawa (breeze from the heavens), as my mother calls it. Ammi, Ira and Junaid are by my side and we are in the middle of one of our favourite board games ‘Settlers Of Catan’. Shahrukh is licking my feet and I am feeding him biscuits every now and then. What more can I ask for?

Now, before you jump to any conclusions let me add that Shahrukh is the name of our dog. And before you jump to any further conclusions let me add that I had nothing to do with naming him. In fact Shahrukh is the dog of the caretakers of our house. When I bought this house it came with the caretakers and their dog! Apparently Shahrukh (the actor) was shooting for a commercial in this house a few years ago, and that very day the caretakers bought a pup…, and named him Shahrukh. What are the chances of me buying a house which comes with a dog called Shahrukh!!!

Shah Rukh’s supporters (who clearly can’t read) react:

The shocking display of insolent humor has sent shock waves in the otherwise-insulated and unconcerned film industry. Says a very popular character-actor who has worked with both the actors, “I guess the freedom provided by a blog tends to loosen tongues. Amitji has never been known to be as undiplomatic as he’s on his blog. Aamir must have thought it’s time to increase the odds, what if Amitji’s blog gets more eyeballs! Also, his nephew’s film is around the corner. During the release of Taare Zameen Par, Aamir created a controversy by taking on Amitji and Black. Now for the nephew it’s Shah Rukh being called a dog. All I can say is life’s a bitch.”

Shah Rukh remains characteristically unfazed and humorous in the face of his colleague’s uncharitable and tasteless remarks. When this writer expressed shock and indignation at Aamir’s remarks, SRK responded, “Earlier on, people used to name their children after famous people. Somebody naming a dog after a known person is a new beginning in that direction. I don’t have a copyright over this name if used non-commercially.” But a close friend of SRK on promise of anonymity reacted far more aggressively. “Aamir’s megalomania has been brewing for a while. Earlier he declared himself No.1 as compared with SRK who took it smilingly. Now Aamir is down to street-level provocation…”

But it is not just excitable fans who indulge in such mischaracterisations. Big political parties are equally adept at it.

Or perhaps I should be generous and put it all down to cognitive dissonance.  

Intellectual property laws, such as those relating to copyright or patents, are a source of considerable disagreement among libertarians. The reason is not hard to see. In the words of Rodrick Long,

When libertarians of the first sort come across a purported intellectual property right, they see one more instance of an individual’s rightful claim to the product of his labor. When libertarians of the second sort come across a purported intellectual property right, they see one more instance of undeserved monopoly privilege granted by government.

In this fine article, Long argues against intellectual property laws from a libertarian perspective and points out there are other means (such as laws against fraud) to achieve many of the same results. My position on the matter is less extreme than Long’s. I believe that a case does exist for some intellectual property laws; however I also believe that current laws are more restrictive than is necessary. For instance, there is no justification, in my opinion, for the absurdly long copyright laws that currently exist in the United States (and were passed incidentally, under pressure from media corporations).

The matter is complex and deserves a longer post, which I hope to attempt some day. For now, I’d like to point the reader to the fact that Neil Nataniel is currently guest-blogging at Volokh on what he calls the “copyright paradox”, a reference to the fact that copyright simultaneously enables and restricts free speech. The first two posts are here and here.

Now, affirmative action based on political ideology!

The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile political conservatives to teach on the left-leaning campus.

CU officials want to create an endowment for a Visiting Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy.

The program would bring a rotating cast of scholars, historians, politicians and media personalities to a town often ridiculed by the political right as “the People’s Republic of Boulder.”

The first scholar could be on campus next year for a one- or two-year stint, CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said. University officials said they hope the fund would yield the $200,000-plus per year necessary to provide a stipend and a staff person.

“A good campus is always trying to find ways to add diversity of thought and scholarship,” Hilliard said.

I can’t think of anything more ridiculous or unhelpful, but then, affirmative action is almost always unhelpful. I only hope this does not give Arjun Singh any new ideas.

Hat tip to the Volokh Conspiracy, where I saw this story. Also Ilya Somin discusses here why affirmative action based on ideology is a bad idea. An excerpt:

However, whether or not the discrimination is the cause of the problem, affirmative action for conservative academics (or libertarian ones) is a poor solution. Among other things, it would require universities to define who counts as a “conservative” for affirmative action purpose, a task that they aren’t likely to do well. Affirmative action for conservatives would also give job candidates an incentive to engage in deception about their views in the hopes of gaining professional advancement. Moreover, conservative professors hired on an affirmative basis despite inferior qualifications would find it difficult to get their ideas taken seriously by colleagues and students. They might therefore be unable to make a meaningful contribution to academic debate - the very reason why we want to promote ideological diversity in hiring to begin with.

Indeed.

For more weird face-swap pictures, check out Manbabies.com

(Link via Boing Boing)

The Vatican’s chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

Link. And I am too amused to add any meaningful comment.

(Link via Reason Hit and Run)

Rachel Hoffman was a college student and a bit of a hippie. She tried drugs and got caught. Police threatened her with prison time unless she agreed to become an informant and set up a meeting with the supplier to buy $10000 worth of drugs and weaponry, a purchase drastically out of character for a person used to buying a few grams of weed once in a while.

She did as the cops told her to. The suppliers, not surprisingly, smelt something very fishy. She never came back from the meeting.

Her body was found last week.

Welcome to the gruesome workings of the war on drugs, where collateral damage is normal and acceptable, where the enforcers are so steeped in morality that they would rather have people dead than high, where the only measure of success is how many people the cops arrest.

And where a young girl loses her life for daring to have a bit of fun.

(None of what follows is intended to be of any use to geeks, experts, macboys or linux fans. All I have attempted is to lump together some advice that might help a typical windows user. )

1. BACKUP, backup, backup! I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to do so. Not only do you get the insurance of never losing critical files, you can also, by making a full system backup, get back to all your painfully installed programs and optimized settings in a heartbeat. (Let’s face it, all hard-drives die one day.) I recommend backing up important files to an external hard drive or USB stick every week, and backing up your whole hard drive onto an external drive every few months. The former can be done manually or via several free programs, for the latter you will probably need to get a program for the purpose. If you are a user of Vista Business or Ultimate, you already have such a program built into the OS.

2. Do the research, read the reviews. But also keep your bias detector on. Notwithstanding the criticisms you may have heard from friends, Windows Vista has some excellent features (search, backup, security, organization and lots more) which make it the best Windows version yet. If your computer has a dual core processor and over 1.5 GHz of RAM, and you are still stuck with XP, upgrade! But don’t fall for Microsoft’s bs about ‘in-place upgrades’: always do a clean upgrade when you can.

3. Hack your browsers to become faster! Follow this tip (works with any version of IE or Firefox). And yes, if you are using IE 7, do disable the phishing filter. Warning: In changing the registry value as described in the linked tip, you will be violating internet standards. Proceed at your own risk.

4. Want a one-click DVD ripping software that just works? Try DVDFab. It is shareware (you can use it for free for a month, after which you will need to buy it). But there is no program that matches it in quality of output, configurability or ease of use. Highly recommended! Warning: Ripping copy-protected DVDs is illegal in most jurisdictions. While DVDFab removes copy protection from commercial DVDs, this post in no way encourages or endorses such illegal activity. Proceed at your own risk.

5. Use VLC media player for playing video. Nothing, simply nothing, works better. Anything that plays, can be played on VLC. No silly codec messages, no freezes. Of course, VLC can play music too, but you’d probably prefer a good music organizing program for that. I use Windows Media Player 11 for hearing and organizing my music.

6. If you have Windows Vista, make sure you are using the sidebar to its full potential.

7. Annoyed by the prompts by Vista’s User Account control? Prefer that such messages disappear when your are logged in as an administrator? Follow these steps. They get rid of the annoying prompts, moreover, IE and programs continue to run in standard user mode, keeping your computer secure. 

8. This is a simple feature of Windows but many people seem to be unaware of it. When you want to view two program windows simutaneously on your screen, select them both on the taskbar (by selecting one, holding down ’shift’ and selecting the other) and then right-click. You will see options like “show windows side-by-side”.

9. Another Vista tip: use the search feature for opening programs and files. Much faster than going to the individual folder.

10. If you mess up anything while using a text editor, or press the wrong key, just right click and select ‘undo’ (or simply press Control+z). This tip works in loads of programs and can be a real time-saver.

11. Do you have stuff on your computer you dont want others to access? If you want to encrypt files, folders, or entire partitions into password-protected entities unviewable (and indeed undiscoverable) by anyone but yourself, use the amazing program called Truecrypt.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald