Last week’s TIME had an article about the diary of Rutka Laskier, a Polish Jew whose diary had been found and kept by a friend for 60 years. It outlines four months in 1943, before Rutka and her family were sent to Auschwitz and killed.

If you’ve read the diary of Anne Frank, you’ll find haunting parallels between their lives: the innocence, the despair, the first glimpses of romance.

People were thirsty, and there was not a single drop of water around … Then … it started pouring. The rain didn’t stop. At 3 o’clock Kuczynsky arrived and the selection started. “1″ meant returning home, “1a” meant going to labor, which was even worse than deportation, “2″ meant going for further inspection, and “3″ meant deportation, in other words, death.

Then I saw what disaster meant. We reported for selection at 4 o’clock. Mom, Dad and my little brother were sent to group 1, and I was sent to 1a. I walked as if I were stunned … The weirdest thing was that we didn’t cry at all, AT ALL … Later on, I saw many more disasters. I can’t put it in words. Little children were lying on the wet grass, the storm raging above our heads. The policemen beat them ferociously and also shot them.

I sat there until 1 o’clock at night. Then I ran away. My heart pounded. I jumped out of a window from the first floor of a small building, and nothing happened to me. Only my lips were bitten so bad that they bled … When I was already on the street, I ran into someone “in uniform,” and I felt that I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was spinning. I was pretty sure he was going to beat me … but apparently he was drunk and didn’t see the “yellow star,” and he let me go.

Around me it was dark like in a closed cabin. From time to time flashes of lightning lightened the sky … and it thundered. The journey that normally takes me half an hour I did in 10 minutes. Everybody was at home except Grandma, whom Dad released and brought home the next day …

Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy.

I am writing this as if nothing has happened. As if I were in an army experienced in cruelty. But I’m young, I’m 14, and I haven’t seen much in my life, and I’m already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see “uniforms.” I’m turning into an animal waiting to die …

Now to everyday matters: Janek came by this afternoon. We had to sit in the kitchen … I told him that I had given away all my photographs. He got very upset. We were joking around; we spoke about “Nica and the gang.” While we were talking he suddenly blurted out he’d like it very much if he could kiss me. I said “maybe” and continued the conversation. He was a bit confused; he thought I was Tusia or Hala Zelinger. I would have allowed [myself] to be kissed only by the person I loved, and I feel indifferent towards him.

Then Dad sent me to deal with something. I had to leave. Janek accompanied me. While going downstairs I asked him, is kissing such a pleasant thing? And then I told him that I had already kissed before, what a taste it has (that’s completely true). He burst out laughing. (He has a nice laugh, I must admit.) He said he was curious too. Maybe, but I won’t let him kiss me. I’m afraid it would destroy something beautiful, pure … I’m also afraid that I’ll be very disappointed.

Ahmadinejad should get a copy of her diary.

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, a testament to how much ideology can shape humans. How could there have been soldiers willing enough to carry out those orders? It might be a bit twisted, but I’m glad to see the human race has come far enough that the thousands who have died in Iraq have a much louder voice. I hope that there will never again come a day where we lose sight of our conscience or take lightly a human life.

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While waiting to take a mid-term test this week, I happened to peer into one of the neighbouring lecture halls and noticed the students dressed up and the lecturers watching. It was that time of year…

About the only time I’ve ever had geniune interest in a subject in my years in MMU was during my foundation year, in English III. Every group has to select from a pool of classic short stories, and produce a 20-minute sketch. Other than contributing towards our final grade, the best sketches would also be narrowed down and IIRC a final ten would be invited to present in the Main Hall.

In our case, the story was “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl - no, he didn’t write only children’s books, he produced quite a few short stories for adults that were appreciated for their dark humour.

For the uninitiated, the story revolves around Mary Maloney, whose husband confesses to an affair. In a fit of rage, she seizes the nearest object at hand - a frozen leg of lamb - and buffets him over the head with it, causing his death. After regaining her composure, she calmly goes to the grocer for peas and potatoes, returns, prepares a supper of roast lamb, and calls the police. Upon their arrival, she feigns grief, the grocer provides her alibi, and the story ends with the police joining her for a supper of roast lamb.

First thing was to replace the “leg of lamb” with a whole chicken from TESCO. Lambs are expensive in Malaysia…
I thought it would be interesting if the whole script rhymed. That took up a lot of effort! But we liked the result.

Read rest of post…

Popularity: 29% [?]

Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.

My “time” machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.

Sounds like the start of a science fiction novel or movie, doesn’t it? It’s not. The above is a post made on an Internet message board by “John Titor” on January 27, 2001. Over the next few months he talked online with skeptics and believers before stating that he was returning to his own time on March 24, 2001. He was never heard from again.

People claiming to be time-travellers are not unheard of, especially with the anonymity of the Internet. What made John stand out was his ability to describe the theories and physics behind time-travel that fit into existing concepts of spacetime, and black holes. He even posted pictures of his device, and technical manuals accompanying it.

He stated that time paradoxes like the grandfather paradox did not exist, but that the Everett-Wheeler model (Many-Worlds Interpretation) - of a multiverse in which all possible actions are carried out - is correct.

Most people were of course very skeptical about Titor’s claims. He in turn would often state he was not concerned whether people would believe him, and rather assumed people wouldn’t - “What would it take for you to believe in a time traveller?” Skepticism, he said, was what made discussions interesting, rather than people accepting every word he said. He stated his purpose was to gauge the reaction of people to him. Some critics observed he would often parry the most direct questions posed to him, and reflect them on the questioner. But to his credit he did answer many questions about time and time travel, and the future.

Titor made a number of predictions about the future. Some, set in the near future, appeared on surface to bolster his claims as they came to pass. He mentioned that CJD (mad cow disease) would become more widespread but be played down, that Iraq would be accused of possessing nukes, and that the US government would begin to sacrifice civil rights for security (bear in mind his posts predated 9/11). He also knew obscure details, like certain UNIX systems having a year 2038 bug, and the IBM 5100 having hidden functions. He even hinted that the anticipated y2k bug problems did not come to pass because of future invervention.

He often described the philosophies and cultures of his time:

The war had very profound affects on people and how they relate to each other. As individuals, almost everyone in 2036 is very familiar with death. We all have stories of loved ones that have died from disease, war or acts of inhumanity. Most of us have even taken part in dishing the same thing out to the other side. As a result, we have become far more compassionate to the ones we love but mush less forgiving to those who don’t pull their weight. We are more accepting of other’s differences in our community because we depend on them to survive. We are also more conservative with our resources and closer to God because for a period, life on Earth was Hell.

The other major difference is in the concept of good and evil. With multiple worlds come multiple decisions and outcomes. For every good act, there is an equal and possible bad act on another worldline. Taken to the extreme, this must mean that in God’s eyes, there is no total good and total bad in the superverse. It balances itself out to infinity. I believe we are judged on the decisions we make as individuals and the good/evil I see on my worldline is an illusion that has no worth to God. My reaction to it is what’s important to God. Although this may seem rather heartless, it does allow me to see past the evil that people do and acknowledge the core of potential goodness inside them.

He also made apocalyptic statements about the future: Civil war in the US starting 2004-2005, and a third World War in 2015 which would see the US barraged by nukes. At the same time he stated that because worldines diverged (he estimated a divergence of 2% between our world and his), nothing was set in stone and we still could avoid the bleak future he knew. Skeptics observed that this made most of his claims impossible to verify, others said he was bringing a message of hope.

Was John Titor a hoax? Probably. His depiction of the future suspiciously mirrored popular science fiction themes, 2005 has passed with no signs of an American civil war, and his explanations of how his time machine worked was mercilessly shot down by science experts. But his story still entertains, and sparks thought about the direction that the human race is taking, sort of like what War of the Worlds did on radio in 1938. Time-traveller or storyteller, the tale of John Titor remains a memorable Internet legend.

Popularity: 39% [?]

The transplant does not give the patient’s face the appearance of the deceased donor’s face because the underlying musculature and bones are different. Facial movements are due to the brain so the personality as expressed by the face remains that of the patient. Only the skin of the face is transferred from the donor, not the three dimensional shape nor the personality it expresses.

Popularity: 20% [?]