Category Archives: Random

Manchester United Fail!


I am a big football fan (not the American one, the regular international one). I do not follow every single thing related to it simply because I get way over excited, especially when it comes to teams I care about.

For instance, in Euro 2008, when Italy was playing Spain in the quarter finals and Buffon blocked a penalty shot, I shouted so loud in the restaurant that the owner still remembers me. Yes, I support the Azzurri. Another instance that comes to mind was the game Germany vs Argentina in the latest World Cup’s quarter finals. I wasn’t originally a supporter of either team but I decided to root for Argentina – and ended up doing so more vigorously than the original Argentina supporters present.

So I do understand how the game works and when a team doesn’t play well. I do understand most of the technicalities as well and after tonight, I know most of the players as well – even for teams I don’t root for. I mean, one glance at a substitute and I blurted out his name. Awesome, no?

So the Champions League Finale was on yesterday and it set Barcelona against Manchester United. I had no idea how the odds for each team stacked up but I honestly dislike Barcelona (the team, not the city) so I decided to root for Manchester United instead. Glory, glory Manchester United, right? Absolutely not, apparently. It should have been “pity, pity Manchester United instead”.

I was so horrified by how bad they played that it wasn’t even funny. The only goal they got in was due to a mistake from the other team and it wasn’t even a stellar goal for you to think that lots of work was put into it. Their possession of the ball was 33% and they got only 3 shots the whole game.

On the other hand, Barca had a 67% and had more than 15 shots, 3 of which resulted in goals. See? I’m not always biased. I give credit where credit is due – although I still think they’re not the best team in the world and I vehemently do not approve of the notion that Messi is the football incarnation of God.

So yeah, for all matters and purposes, Manchester United were a big failure tonight. They were absolutely atrocious. Their first half was less than stellar but it kept them in the game. The second half, however, was a disaster. You can’t even begin to fathom how bad it was! When the only team you see playing is the other team, dear Manchester United, you should maybe get a hint to pick up your game? Or maybe it was that the players had enough money and not enough motivation? Either way, I almost felt shame for deciding to root for them. Even more ashamed than the time I supported Argentina in that quarter final and they lost 4-0. At least back then I was more involved and therefore more pissed off than able to see how bad Argentina really was. And yeah, they were worse.

The Allure Of Free

There’s a response that is, I believe, inherent to human nature, transcending boundaries – almost unanimous. And it is the response to something that is free.

If I tell you I’m willing to give you something for free, what would be the first thing that comes to your head? Yes, there it is… “What’s the catch?” And what do you do? You don’t take the thing.

My cousin was telling me earlier today about her dilemma in Australia. She works at a leading TV station and is often given tickets to movie premieres. We’re talking about the star-studded events, involving red carpets and bling, not the excitement we feel when we watch the first screening of a movie on its release day. And more often than not, she can’t go to those premieres so she usually asks around if someone wants those tickets, only discovering that giving this tickets away for nothing is harder than her actual job.

And it happened to me when I was at AUB outdoors. There was some guy offering free hugs and the moment I saw him, the second idea the crossed my mind (the first one being how weird it was) was that there was definitely a catch somehow in those hugs.

But why do we have such a response to free stuff? Why is it that most people would take the premiere tickets from my cousin if she had asked for an insignificant amount of money but refrain from doing so if she was handing them for nothing in return?

Our mentality is apparently wired to go away from things that are too good to be true. Even for things that are not totally free. If you find a bargain online, you are as skeptical.
But in the world of today, do not underestimate the power of “free.” I am most definitely not an economy expert but with most things getting cheaper and cheaper because of competition, offering things for free has become a way for some companies to topple others. Offering things for free is also a way for those companies to introduce services.

When I started buying stuff off amazon, I was offered a free trial of “amazon prime” in their attempt to hook me on speedier deliveries. And if I had been living in the US, I would have totally gone for it. Amazon redid a similar thing with Lady Gaga’s latest album: they sold the mp3 version for $0.99 along with a free trial of their newly introduced “cloud” service, as a way to get ahead of Apple before they introduce their own version of cloud services, probably later this year.

According to Chris Anderson, “free” is the future of prices. He wrote his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price on a $250 netbook, running a free version of Linux, free Google Docs, which offer him free backup and on-the-go access and then he offered the work for free on iTunes. He argues that billion dollar industries are being formed today around the price of “zero dollars and zero cents.” And if you think about it, isn’t Google one of the leading companies in the world today and it gives almost everything for free? So don’t freak out when you’re offered something for free. Odds are, someone, somewhere, is making money off of it somehow – with no catch to you.

This Is What A Trillion Dollars Looks Like

During our scholastic years, we were taught that a zero is a bad grade to get, right? And we’ve all panicked nights and days over exams that we hadn’t studied well for (and yet, we all leave ourselves till the last possible  minute in order to study, every single time).

However, with age (some age, others mature, right?), you get to know that the more zeros you have, the better. Especially when it comes to dollar bills.

For those who don’t know, a trillion has twelve zeros. A billion has nine. So a friend sent me these pictures online to come to grasp with the US national debt. I decided to incorporate the Lebanese national debt in this as well.

Let’s start with $100, the largest US denomination in circulation. We’ve all seen it, not many of us have owned it.

A packet of 100 $100 bills is about 1.5 cm thick and makes up $10000.

Now the “little” pile of money next to the man is, believe it or not, $1,000,000. That’s more money than most of us will ever make in our lifetime.

A $100,000,000 pile, however, looks more impressive, right? Yeah, keep dreaming (or drooling). But we’re not done yet.

Now add together ten of those precious previous piles, and you get $1 billion. Now imagine the below picture multiplied by 50 and you have the Lebanese national debt.

But even after the 50x multiplication, you’re not even close to $1 trillion. Why’s that? because you are literally rendered insignificant compared to it. This is what $1 trillion looks like.

The US national debt is $14 trillion. Enough said, right?

Mac OS X – Lion Wallpapers

The thing I like about the wallpapers bundled in the Mac Operating System is that they are all soothing and actually very nice to look at. And the new ones bundled with the upcoming update to the famous OS X are no different.

Check them out:

My favorites are: Brittle Grass (last one), Lake (the one below the Lion picture) and Lion (self explanatory).

If you like the pictures, you can get them in full quality here.

Lebanon To Get LTE Along With 3G?

We all know that we have the worst internet in the world in Lebanon. Our politicians are mostly always full of promises and little action when it comes to almost every regard of our lives so treat this as yet another one of those “talks” that get you excited, but hopefully this time something will actually happen.

So 3G is coming to Lebanon come September, apparently. We will finally have decent internet to use, albeit it will only be on our mobile phones. But it’s a start. Many people, however, were critical of the imminent implementation of 3G saying that the world is already moving to 4G or LTE technologies, which offer much higher speeds. Lebanon implementing third-generation technologies while the rest of the world is moving on to fourth (or even fifth) generation stuff isn’t really stepping up your game in a competitive market.

However, it looks like Lebanon will be receiving LTE upgrades in some areas, while 3G is more spread out over the country as a whole – which is very, very good news. After all, even more advanced countries such as the US have not implemented LTE in all of the country, only in major cities so far. So what do you expect from a country with much more limited resources?

According to this article, MTC Touch (one of the two mobile operators in the country) has built over 850 3.5G stations in Lebanon, of which 200 will offer 3.9G services (giving you double the speed that 3.5G can offer, about 40 Mb/s) and 50 of which will be LTE stations, allowing download speeds of around 173 Mb/s.

And if this wasn’t good enough, the prices that are being thought of (and I’m sure this will apply to Alfa as well since this is a monopoly) are not bad at all. In fact, they look to be very promising. Prices could start from a mere $10 (and go to over $100 depending on the download speed of choice) allowing data quotas of about 2GB for smartphones (both upload and download) and over 15GB or even 20GB for laptops.

Alfa will issue a formal statement about the 3G services it will offer on Thursday, May 12.