Outraged

Commentary

The year is 2008.

  1. A young Iraqi woman falls in love with a British soldier.
  2. Her father hears of this and subsequently, assisted by his two sons, stamps on, suffocates and stabs to death his own daughter.  He is outraged that she has shamed his family in this way.  Furthermore, he claims that she deserved this, as what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion.
  3. The father is not prosecuted for his barbaric behaviour.  It is apparently on honour killing, and therefore tolerated.  In this case, the police apparently congratulated him.

Read the full story here.

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Recording screencasts on Windows with free software

tech

(This post was first written in May of 2008, but I’ve been updating it periodically. See also the updates right at the end.)

What are screencasts?

Screencasts refer to video recordings of screen activity, often with narration. These can be used to demonstrate software or to serve as a kind of visual HOWTO. We often make screencasts of software we design in the Medical Visualisation group at the TU Delft to use in presentations at conferences or to distribute online.

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I have an official course code!

education

I am currently designing a new master-level course at the TU Delft, creatively named Medical Visualization, and it’s just been assigned an official course code: IN4307. Whooo!

Keep an eye out for IN4307: This 5 ECTS course will run in the 3d period (February to April) of the 2008/2009 academic year and it’s going to rule. I’m integrating more modern educational techniques (thank you TU Delft BKO for the inspiration) in that the whole course will be run as an interactive workshop (I lecture, you immediately try it out on your computer machine), and assessment will be based on weekly practice exercises as well as a more extensive project that will have to be orally defended at the end. In other words, there will be no written exam.

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Dr Werner, you are a singularity of stupid

Commentary

We all know that homeopathy is really stupid, just like most alternative medicine. However, when I saw this “lecture” by Dr Charlene Werner, I was astounded by the depths of stupidity that she is able to attain. It’s almost like she’s a kind of Superheroine of Stupidity, with the special power of creating a singularity of stupid. This is of course stupidity that’s so extreme that it tends towards infinity and temporarily makes all reason disappear into a black-hole of scientific incompetence. Wow.

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I’m in love

life

… with Vienna.

As mentioned elsewhere, I’m in Vienna at the moment for ECR 2008. Tonight started with a heavenly dinner at the Vital Images party in the Sky Bar. By 22:00, my night was already more or less perfect, mostly due to great company and beautiful food. However, we (an intrepid group of Medical Delta scientists from Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden) decided to go to Der Roter Engel in the Bermuda Triangle, mostly because I insisted that the night would only be complete after some cocktails. Their Long Island Tea was delectable. All of them, as a matter of fact.

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Soulwax

entertainment > life

Last year I acquired this:

So I could go here:

… with some exceptionally cool individuals.

Thanks to one of these individuals who has developed the amazing ability to stop time in his close proximity and, as if that wasn’t enough, to possess a pair of the coolest spectacles this side of the equator, you should be able to find me on the photo to his left.

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