romunov’s blog et al

Remember how the Dems filibustered, and then Reps bitched about it? Isn’t this sweet?

Bush and his Senate Republican allies, led by McCain and Lieberman, don’t want a vote on the anti-escalation resolutions — the non-binding anti-escalation resolutions. They’re planning to filibuster the resolution according to The New York Times.

More at Americablog.

Hum, sounds awfully familiar:

A driver’s body lies covered amid the wreckage of his car in Qahira neighborhood, northern Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007. The driver, an occasional cab driver, was killed after someone apparently planted explosives in his car, according to people at the scene.

link

Looks like we have our winner. The numero uno reason for war will be - Iran’s meddling in Iraq’s affairs. All we need now is for the military in Iraq to find shrapnels with “Kisses from Iran” written on them and banzai - you’re at another war, totally forgetting about the last one.

Bush’s warning was the latest move in a bitter and more public standoff between the United States and Iran. The White House expressed skepticism about Iran’s plans to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq. The United States has accused Iran of supporting terrorism in Iraq and supplying weapons to kill American forces.

Let’s not forget that the WH is not willing to talk, even though Iran is [about their nuclear program]. As for Iran’s presence in Iraq. I’m sure there is, at least some. But the media (White house talking mouths) have been talking about Iranian connections for the past few weeks a bit more intensley. I doubt that there’s more evidence than before (maybe there is), I think they’re just looking more at this, and I’m sure it’s for a reason.

I’ve decided to keep you up to date with the little snail project I started. I noticed two snails met on the front glass a few days ago, and I knew we’re in business - that is, that I’ll be seeing some egg capsules soon. Well, soon has come, and two appeared on the front glass a few hours ago. I’m adding a picture (from last year) of the parent and two capsules at day one.

Everybody knows I’m no big fan of art. At least not in the most broad concept, like opera, abstract art… What I do find very artistic are images like these. In my opinion, very beautiful. Of course everyone can draw like that, but talent cuts learning a few thousand hours short. I especially enjoy Da Vinci’s real-life drawings he did in his back room.

An act of war.

An Israeli plane was seen “circling at a low altitude” off the coast of Beirut early Friday, in violation of the terms of the cease-fire ending the war with Israel, a Lebanese Army source told The Daily Star.

Israel is totally out of line… again. I hope no one posts a commend along the lines of the “defence” bull biscuit. It’s BS. If Israel wanted protection, they would build a 100 m wall - well inside Israel, not on foreign land. Just to be clear, I support the segregation via the “iron curtain” Israel is erecting. However, it must be build on Israel’s land. History will judge the rest - the exclusion of Palestinians, terror against farmers, “racial” segregation in Israel, double standards… After all, it’s their loss.

Italy’s top criminal court has ruled that downloading music, movies and software over the Internet isn’t a crime if profit wasn’t the motivation, though analysts questioned Monday whether the ruling would have much effect on copyright laws.

But:

But analysts said violating a copyright, for example by breaking copy-protection technologies in place, remained illegal even if downloading the material had been decriminalized.

I’m all for downloading, as long as you buy a product if suited for your taste. For example, if you like Futurama, download their episodes, watch them, several times over, but support the author and buy his DVD. Same goes for music (except there you can buy individual mp3s, which is a thumb’s up, because let’s face it, a cd is a rip off, since most songs suck) and games. I don’t want to buy a game that I won’t like. I would for instance download Call of duty 2, try it, and if I liked it, I would purchase a legal copy.

Thinking about recorded series like Family guy, Futurama, House and others… makes you think - what’s the difference if someone tapes the show and lends you the tape to rewatch it, and you downloading a digitally recorded version and deleting it afterwards?

link to the original story.

You can watch/listen a conversation between the International space station and Alvin, the submersible, who is about 2 miles under the ocean surface. I don’t understand a word they’re saying, but is this neat or what?

A bunch of big shot publishing companies have hired the infamous Dezenhall Resources (nothing needs to be said about the company, check the link instead) to counter the open source publishing. Including such companies as PLoS, who, for a nominal fee, offer free access to your article online. LiLoLe has a lot of stuff (although in Slovene) on open source, and it takes only a shred of common sense to realise why this is a good idea.

Here are a few takes with such lofty arguments that a nine year old would see through them.

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as “Public access equals government censorship“. He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and “paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles“.

How can a government censor something that is freely available - anyone can publish it. If I recall correctly, PLoS website charges about $1250 to publish a single article. This is, I understand, quite standard. They will lower their price if your project didn’t have enough resources allocated for publishing. Sounds pretty fair to me.
Another trick that PLoS has up it’s proverbial sleeve is the “ranking”. Any article will get published, but that doesn’t mean that it will be successful. Users may rank the article and even post comments - think of it as open source peer-review with a carrot! I don’t have the facts, but I would venture a guess that most cited works are published in top journals, that don’t publish everything they see. This way, if your work is solid and popular, you are, statistically, more prone to get more citations than if your peer had to buy the article.

The publishers’ link with Dezenhall reflects how seriously they are taking recent developments on access to information.

Good, at least we know OO works.

Hat tip to Deltoid.

Check George’s speech at the Parliament he gave a few days ago. You have to hand it to him, he is an educated and well spoken person.

You’ll never hear stories like this on CNN or 24ur.com for that matter:

AWARTA, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli settlers vandalised a cemetery and smashed car windscreens overnight in a Palestinian village they had visited under military escort, witnesses said. ADVERTISEMENT

Dozens of settlers accompanied ultra-orthodox Jews from Jerusalem who entered the north
West Bank village of Awarta under military escort overnight to visit biblical tombs.

Witnesses, including the village’s mayor Adel al-Qadi, told AFP that the settlers vandalised the cemetery, breaking several tombstones and scrawling Hebrew inscriptions on at least one tomb.

The settlers also smashed car windows and shouted “death to the Arabs,” witnesses added.

An AFP photographer on the scene counted 10 broken tombstones and saw anti-Arab graffiti on tomb walls.

An army spokesman said the military was looking into the reports.

If they had beards and bath robes, they would be “terrorizing West Bank village”. See my point?

Went for a little stroll today, to check if I can spot some vertebrates for my school project. All of the insects were really really small, the lighting wasn’t all that great, so only these lousy pics came out.

These little springtails (at least I think they are that - they sprung away when I approached with the lense) were interesting! When I found them, they covered an entire hill, several ten square meters. There weren’t any on the snow that was building up on branches, and I reckon this was their breeding behaviour. And as you can see by the poor quality picture, they were really small, about 1 mm.

I also found some caterpillars and earth worms, but the pics turned out even worse, and I will not be including them.

This post from Mikrobiologov svet (Microbiologist’s world) promped me to write a bit about a subject that associates to studying, less to caffeine.

This year has been disastrous for me. One semester is over and I haven’t done diddly-squat regarding exams. I had two final exams and two colocviums and I still haven’t passed none of them. I’ve been noticing for quite some time now that I have trouble concentrating when I look at the test. Especially yesterday when I was taking animal physiology, I felt a rush of doubt. The question was what does ACh do to a K⁺ channels - and I wrote what they actually do - that they open them, prolonging depolarization time. But nooo, I had to erase it and write the opposite - that they close them. I have read this fact about five times and (I thought) I knew it. I think I’m becoming (if not already there) functional illiterate. If that’s true, I can kiss any research career goodbye. Too bad. :/

I’m really in a bad mood (because of the animal physiology colocvium that went really bad) today, I still have to study subjects to which notes are in my school locker four bus hours drive away, go to the doctor’s office and probably something else. BAH!

I hope everyone already realizes that politicians are just a proxy - they don’t make any decisions, they just follow the wishes of the highest bidder(s). See here, here and here. There isn’t enough room to list all cases. If there is such thing as hell, these guys have a VIP pass.

I’m a kind of person that isn’t exactly in shape. Well, depends on your definition, I guess. I’m a bit underweight, and since I don’t eat a lot of meat, I don’t see my numbers on the rise any time soon. At the moment, I’m out of shape due to lack of exercise, since I got hit by a car a few weeks ago. I just got my bike back from the shop a few days ago, but my bone-muscle machinery still won’t obey my every command the way I would want to. So, I’ve reserved myself from any hars activity that will just prolongue my recuperation.

I have never been fond of sports, so I never seriously trained any. It never seemed like a good idea to me. I’m slowly putting together pieces in favour of casual sports - something every person should be doing. Here’s a post on how high endurance sports could harm your health and/or life. I think we need to strive for “wild life”. I don’t mean drink till your liver turn to piss, but we should emulate primal conditions, where eating should be coupled with an appropriate ammount of exercise. This is what doctors advocate today, but I feel like they don’t offer much solutions. It’s hard for a single person to adjust his or her living arrangement, and I pitty the fool who tries to change the society.

I once heard of a theory that goes something along the lines that society tends to change when about 40% of the population actually sees the problem. Our society has a looong way to go in many fields. Global warming is hopefully not among them.

My study period is slowly coming to an end, and new semester will be knocking on my door soon enough. There are a few lectures I’m actually looking forward to. I have mixed feelings about genetics. It will be hard to top animal physiology lab work. Unfortunately I still haven’t passed the colocvium, but it’s my fault for being sloppy. I’ll have another whack at it tomorrow, so keep your fingers crossed.

Does anyone know any good publishers that would be willing to publish a slovene translation of a book on marine biology?

… and Kvatch has nailed it again. Iraq was about oil and making friends rich. Iran will be only the latter.

I thought this post from Deep sea news was hilarious! I have nothing to add, except that perhaps deep water may contain some not so essential elements from nuclear tests.

McClatchy reports that:

President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration’s statements about Iraq.

There’s no surge. George is just stocking up on cold bruskies and troops for the eventual march into Iran - or wait for the Iranians to “stroll” into Iraq on their way to Israel for - well, I’m not allowed to tell you yet - it’s a surprise!

I estimate there is about 480 euros worth of books.

And finally, the day of Oekologie is upon us. You can check a carnival partaining ecology here.