Embryology

A few years ago, a group of men in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia collected all of the verses in the Quran which discuss embryology - the growth of the human being in the womb. They said, "Here is what the Quran says. Is it the truth?" In essence, they took the advice of the Quran: "Ask the men who know." They chose, as it happened, a non-Muslim who is a professor of embryology at the University of Toronto. His name is Keith Moore, and he is the author of textbooks on embryology - a world expert on the subject. They invited him to Riyadh and said, "This is what the Quran says about your subject. Is it true? What can you tell us?" While he was in Riyadh, they gave him all the help that he needed in translation and all of the cooperation for which he asked. And he was so surprised at what he found that he changed his textbooks. In fact, in the second edition of one of his books, called Before We Are Born... in the section about the history of embryology, he included some material that was not in the first edition because of what he found in the Quran was ahead of its time and that those who believe in the Quran know what other people do not know. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Keith Moore for a television presentation, and we talked a great deal about this - it was illustrated by slides and so on. He mentioned that some of the things that the Quran states about the growth of the human being were not known until thirty things that the Quran states about the growth of the human being were not known until thirty years ago. In fact, he said that one item in particular - the Quran's description of the human being as a "leech-like clot" ('alaqah) at one stage (Surahs al-Hajj 22:5; al-Mu'minun 23:14; and Ghafir 40:67) - was new to him; but when he checked on it, he found that it was true, and so he added it to his book. He said, "I never thought of that before," and he went to the zoology department and asked for a picture of a leech. When he found that it looked just like the human embryo, he decided to include both pictures in one of his textbooks. Although the aforementioned example of man researching information contained in the Quran deals with a non-Muslim, it is still valid because he is one of those who is knowledgeable in the subject being researched. Had some layman claimed that what the Quran says about embryology is true, then one would not necessarily have to accept his word. However, because of the high position, respect, and esteem man gives scholars, one naturally assumes that if they research a subject and arrive at a conclusion based on that research, then the conclusion is valid. Cited from The Amazing Quran by Dr. Gary Miller

UEFA Champions League 2009 final in Rome

I hope this night Manchester United can beat Barcelona and will become a fantastic game. Both are my favourites club. This is the preview from Andrew Haslam from Rome

Great expectations surround the final at the Stadio Olimpico (©UEFA)

FC Barcelona and Manchester United FC are ready to put on a spectacle worthy of a place in history when they meet in the UEFA Champions League final in Rome, the Eternal City.

Stirring finale Two of European football's most evocative names, the newly crowned champions of England and Spain, cross paths at the Stadio Olimpico with United aiming to become the first team in 19 years to successfully defend the European Champion Clubs' Cup and the first in the UEFA Champions League era. Having already lifted the Liga and Copa del Rey this month Barcelona have the chance to claim an unprecedented Spanish treble. It promises to be one of the more stylish gladiatorial contests staged in the city of the Colosseum, with Sir Alex Ferguson saying simply: "It has the capability to be a fantastic final."

History help United have never lost a European Cup final while two of this competition's three previous showpiece matches in Rome ended in an English victory. According to Sir Alex, another success is essential to justify his club's ever-growing stature. "I've repeated many times we should have done better in Europe. To be in the pantheon of great teams, the prerequisite is to win this cup. It's an opportunity for us to go alongside a lot of the great teams. This team has that type of future – it's a young squad with the right type of experience which can do well in the next few years. Hopefully we can endorse that."

Ferdinand return Captain Rio Ferdinand is fit again after a calf injury, although United will be without the suspended Darren Fletcher as they bid to become the first side since AC Milan in 1989 and 1990 to land back-to-back European Cups. "We're good at doing things for the first time," Sir Alex added with pride. "It's interesting and unusual that no one has defended the trophy since the Champions League started, because in the history of the European Cup it was done regularly. We have an opportunity to change that and hopefully we can take it."

Glorious campaign While the United boss is at the end of his 35th season as a manager, Josep Guardiola is concluding his first and, though two trophies are already in the Camp Nou cabinet, the 38-year-old – 29 years Sir Alex's junior – is not finished yet. "It's been a great season but it can still finish badly, there's a lot still to do. In football things can change very suddenly. I've been very lucky to have a squad of players who are very good tactically and technically. We want to show how good we are and how hard we've worked by winning tomorrow."

Defensive reshuffle Barcelona's usual full-backs Daniel Alves and Eric Abidal are suspended and Rafael Márquez has a knee injury so Yaya Touré will drop back to central defence with captain Carles Puyol filling in at right-back, Seydou Keita on the left and 20-year-old Sergi Busquets replacing Keita in midfield. Andrés Iniesta and Thierry Henry should be fit after thigh and knee problems respectively, with Guardiola adding: "If they're OK they will play – if they're not, they won't. I think they'll be there. I would have liked to have more players at my disposal but that's how it is. It's going to be a great final."

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SUDOKU

SUDOKU I have a new puzzle collection, that is sudoku. Sudoku is a mind game and a puzzle that you solve with reasoning and logic.The puzzle is very popular now. You can see in many newspapers and magazines to replace the crossword puzzle. It comes from Japan. Sudoku means 'single number'. 'Su' is japanese for 'number' and 'doku' translates as something like 'single' or 'bachelor. Newcomers to sudoku can stretch their minds with puzzles that are breazy easy to diabolically difficult. No math required to solve it. Sudoku rules: - Each column, each row, and each box must contain each of numbers 1 to 9. - No column, row , box can contain two squares with the same number. The aim of game is to place a number from 1 to 9 in each blank field, but every row, every column and every 3x3 box accommodates the digits 1-9, without repeating any. You can play this game in here or in Indonesia language www.p4tkmatematika.com

The Smallest Thing

The Smallest Thing Many centuries before the onset of Muhammad's prophethood, there was a well-known theory of atomism advanced by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. He and the people who came after him assumed that matter consists of tiny, indestructible, indivisible particles called atoms. The Arabs too, used to deal in the same concept; in fact, the Arabic word dharrah commonly referred to the smallest particle known to man. Now, modern science has discovered that this smallest unit of matter (i.e., the atom, which has all of the same properties as its element) can be split into its component parts. This is a new idea, a development of the last century; yet; interestingly enough, this information had already been documented in the Quran (Surah Saba', 34:3) which states: "He [i.e., Allah] is aware of an atom's weight in the heavens and on the earth and even anything smaller than that..." Undoubtedly, fourteen centuries ago that statement would have looked unusual, even to an Arab. For him, the dharrah was the smallest thing there was. Indeed, this is proof, that the Quran is not outdated. Cited from The Amazing Quran by Dr. Gary Miller

Impossible Fork

The impossible fork also known as the devil's pitchfork, blivet, or poiuyt, is a classic impossible figure originally due to Schuster (1964). While each prong of the fork (or, in the original work, "clevis") appears normal, attempting to determine their manner of attachment shows that something is seriously out of whack. The second figure above shows three impossible figures: the ambihelical hexnut in the lower left-hand corner, tribox in the middle, and impossible fork in the upper right.

Source : http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ImpossibleFork.html

Delboeuf Illusion

An illusion due to Franz Joseph Delboeuf, a Belgian philosopher and expert on hypnosis. If the same circle is placed inside two different concentric circles, its size will apparently vary.

Source: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DelboeufIllusion.html

Cafe Wall Illusion Building

The café wall illusion is an optical illusion produced by a black and white rectangular tessellation when the tiles are shifted in a zigzag pattern. While the pattern seems to diverge towards the upper and lower right corners in the upper figure, the gray lines are actually parallel. Interestingly, the illusion greatly diminishes if black lines are used instead of gray.

The image above shows a picture of a building in Melbourne, Australia designed to exhibit this illusion (C. L. Taylor, pers. comm., Aug. 5, 2006). The building, completed in 2006, is part of Melbourne's Digital Harbour Port 1010 and houses the Australian Customs Service (Ashton Raggatt McDougall 2006).

Source: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CafeWallIllusion.html

Angle Illusions

Shapes such as segments or angles appear larger when placed inside a larger angle.

Source: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AngleIllusions.html

Wolfram Alpha

by Patrick Altoft

Today marked the official launch of Wolfram Alpha, a research engine designed to offer instant information about almost anything you care to ask it.

People are calling it a Google killer but that’s like calling Wikipedia a Google killer when the two work perfectly hand in hand. Wolfram Alpha is a tool to give you all the information you want to know about a particular “thing” whether it’s a company, town, chemical element, person or date.

The reason Wolfram Alpha is so good is that it uses a cross between algorithms and people to ensure the accuracy of it’s data, kind of like Wikipedia would be if people weren’t allowed to edit it.

Wolfram Alpha has been running very slowly all day today which means they are already hugely successful - any service that can’t cope with traffic on day 1 is surely going to be something amazing, especially when you consider the servers they are running:

We’ll service Wolfram|Alpha from five distributed colocation facilities, which we somewhat unimaginatively call locations 0, 2, 3, 4, 5 (1 as a backup). What computing power have we gathered in these facilities for launch day? Two supercomputers, just about 10,000 processor cores, hundreds of terabytes of disks, a heck of a lot of bandwidth, and what seems like enough air conditioning for the Sahara to host a ski resort.

What does it all add up to? The ability to handle 175 million queries (yielding maybe a billion) per day—over 5 billion queries (encompassing around 30 billion calculations) per month.

The fact that this service was built to cope with 175 million queries per day and is already struggling on day one is quite staggering.

Hand in hand with Google

Wolfram Alpha is quite rightly going to be a big force in the search results (notice how Google is already indexing search pages?) because people will love to link at the answer pages with keyword rich anchor text, just like they do with Wikipedia. The potential traffic Wolfram Alpha can get from Google is immense and Google will be more than happy to send the right type of queries straight to Wolfram.

Source: http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/wolfram-alpha/

How to Use Your LCD Projector to Watch TV

By Chris Moore, eHow Editor An LCD projector can project any video image with liquid crystal clarity---including television. If you already have cable or satellite TV installed, an LCD projector can give you the equivalent of a big screen TV set. You just need to make sure the projector can connect to your receiver box through an RCA component (red, green and blue) or composite (yellow, white and red) cables. Add speakers to project the sound, and you can turn your entertainment room into a small, personal cinema. Things You'll Need: LCD projector Cable/satellite TV receiver Speakers Component/composite cables Extension cord Bed sheet Instructions: Step 1 Connect your LCD projector to your cable or satellite receiver box. Use the best cable connection available to attach the box's output to the projector (it will likely be the RCA component connection). You shouldn't need to disconnect the receiver box from the TV if it's using a different connection. Step 2 Have the receiver box connected to external speakers, since the projector won't transmit audio. If you already have a surround sound system installed, that will work. Otherwise, get a set of speakers and connect the cable/satellite box's audio output to them. Use component cables if possible, but you may have to settle for composite. Step 3 Clear a wall in your entertainment room of any pictures, decorations or anything else hanging. Drape a large white bed sheet over the wall. You may be able to use a very light color like sky blue if you don't have white. Step 4 Make sure you can plug in all three of your main components---the projector, receiver box and speakers. The biggest challenge should be the projector since it likely won't be in the same location as the other two. You may need an extension cord or extra surge protector. Step 5 Find the best spot to place the projector. You want the best combination of size and clarity with the picture projected onto your bed sheet screen. Use the projector's focusing lens also. Once you have the best location, keep the projector placed there. Step 6 Turn off the lights in the room. Turn on the cable/satellite box, speakers and projector to watch the TV image project onto the wall. Source : http://www.ehow.com/how_4797192_use-lcd-projector-watch-tv.html

Blog for Gowk

Do you feel gowk (stupid)? That's better than a person you feel smart. With feel like that, you will continue to learn and explore the knowledge that you did not know. This blog contains the new knowledge that was gotten by the author may also be useful for you. Enjoy this blog