Time Magazine on Lebanon

Thanks G.

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I read things like this, and suddenly lose all appetite for words.

Why I love lebanon

Link.

I don't know if I've said this before, but if Lebanon was a stock, I would have advised everyone I know to short it.

I realized that it's been almost three weeks since I've posted anything here. One of the reasons is that I don't have much to say, and just posting for the sake of posting will only add more to the already explosive background noise. I don't see myself returning to blogging soon, but as I've already experienced, blogging is a completely stateless activity, and I may actually succumb to the urge of blogging within a day. (In which case I would feel like Jim Cramer when he paraded on his show telling viewers that Bear Sterns is a great investment ... a week before it imploded.) And so unlike my first adventure in blogging, I'm actually going to keep this one open.

Take care.

April Fool's

My kind of science

Most people can tell you if the person they are looking at is attractive, but they can't tell you why they think so. Now, a Tel Aviv University student has developed software to crack the age-old problem of identifying facial features that would be considered beautiful by most people.

Ah, the simple pleasures of being a geek. Too bad this work was developed in the land that shall not be named.

30 Seconds

A two-year relationship ends several months ago, a few months after it turned long distance. You always knew it would not have a happy ending for various reasons, but good things are never easy to walk away from. At first, you fill in some of the lingering silence by spending time working or with friends, and eventually, the nights fortunately no longer have a lonesome quiet nuance to them. After some time, you start meeting new people and going out with others, and you stop comparing other women to her. Chatting with her is no longer awkward, hearing others mention her doesn't make you briefly look away, and eventually, her name doesn't enter your thoughts on a daily or weekly basis. Then one day, you see this picture of her. She is absolutely ravishing in this picture. Of course, her nail polish, as on most days, doesn't match her clothes, which was something you would often tease her about, just as she would poke fun at your periodic absent-mindedness. You stare at that picture for 30 seconds, slightly incapacitated by the stunning surge of memories. Some memories are trivial, such as you working at your desk and she reading on the couch behind you, or the both of you waiting outside the theater for the police officer to file his report on your stolen car radio, or the note she slid under your door pretending to be a flirtatious girl next door (fortunately, you didn't fall for that), and others are less trivial, such as her sudden fragility when her grandfather died, or how it felt to watch her walk away when you dropped her off at the airport one last time. Then those 30 seconds pass, and you put the picture away. Those 30 seconds pass, and you feel slightly tired because of this unexpected nostalgia. Those 30 seconds pass, and you wonder. You wonder if there will ever be a time when you can absolutely say you no longer miss her.