Dahab

Had a bunch of things all lined up for a post, but then I learned of the news about Dahab and I just didn't feel like posting anything else.

I really don't know what to say, reiterating what a tragedy this is stating the obvious.

Between this and what was (is?) happening in Alexandria, I really don't know what Egypt is coming to. Are things going way down or is it just me being out of touch and watching things from afar?

The worst thing about this trend of explosions is that they are occurring at a frequency that's low enough so that whoever who did it can get away with it, and yet high enough that they are effectively killing tourism all year round.

I really can't see how anyone whatever his motives are can justify killing/injuring hundreds of people and effectively screeching economy to a grinding halt.
If you're opposing the government what good is it killing tens of people with a bomb and then killing hundreds or even thousands more over the course of the following years with unemployment, starvation, and despair.

For some reason it seems developed countries go in a spiral upward towards more development, while developing countries take the plunge towards... errrm, I don't really know where we're heading, but it's definitely down.

*sigh*

Interest meter

What is it that makes us call a person "interesting"? Are we born interesting/boring or is it acquired?

Chicken and Egg

Are we good at doing what we like or do we like what we're good at doing?

Autocross

One more new thing for me. I participated in an Autocross! If you're not really sure what an autocross is this link should help.

A couple of people from MS were going and they were asking if we would caravan there together as the track is 70 miles away. It looked really fun and I asked the more experience people about it. At first I thought I'd go and watch first before participating but everyone told me I'd be kicking myself if I go and do not drive the track. It really didn't take much convincing for me to do it so I just went for it.

I went out and got a helmet, and based on many people's advice some blue painters tape to protect my bumpers from accidental "meetings" with cones. Sunday morning I headed to the track. I was really surprised how serious some people can get. Lots of people were running on full slicks and rain tires, some people even came with 2 extra tire sets, race tires and rain tires.

After all the preparation, this is how the car looked like:




I didn't end up turning really great lap times, but it was good enough for a first timer I guess. Worst thing is that I had 3 "fun" runs at the end of the day after my 4 official timed runs and every single one of them was far better than the best of my official ones. The best I managed on official runs was 62 seconds. On the fun runs I ran 60, 59 and 58 second laps!

The video here(divx 6.57MB) is for one of my official laps. It doesn't really look that fast on video but it's a totally different thing inside, on the fast parts you'd be hitting 60mph (100Kmh) doing slaloms. Also a part of the track is not on the video because it's obstructed from view by the timing car.

All in all it was such a great time. I'm definitely gonna be goin back for more. Next event is in May and I'll probably be there.

Ethics

You've probably seen it in a thousand movies, read it in hundreds of novels, but do you have an answer?

The question and (mini) discussion was started after Helal and I saw the movie "Saw II", it's kinda hard to know how we went from Saw to ethics but we made the jump.

And the question is, would you go beyond what's normally considered ethical to achieve a seemingly ethical/righteous/good goal? Were you a cop, would you plant evidence to get a conviction on a drug dealer? One that you know for sure (and actually) is a drug dealer. Would you steal your stolen car back from the thief who stole it provided that you can't get it through the lawful and ethical channels?
Would you vote to punish someone who did?