romunov’s blog et al

I thought this was pretty funny, in a funny way.

The disgraced head of China’s food and drug agency was sentenced to death today amid a wave of consumer safety scandals that have rippled across the world.

Zheng Xiaoyu was found guilty of accepting 6.5m yuan (£433,000) worth of bribes from pharmaceutical companies to expedite the approval of new drugs.

Well, not the death sentence, but rather WHO is sentencing. China isn’t the most “human rights/environmental friendly” place on Earth and it strikes me as odd that they’re pushing the button on this one. Well, communism works in mysterious ways, I guess.

And another point. If communisms is so deplored in the States, why do they want to sell them their meat? I guess when money talk, beef walks.

I’ve added a few extra pictures I didn’t publish here to the butterfly society web page.

I’ve been meaning to do a post on “top inventions” or something to that sort, but never got around and actually do it. Now, FOKA (italian word for a seal (Phoca spp.), but probably written differently) did a piece of “top 5 items”, which gives me a nice punch line for my top five items. I will say mine are better and I think everyone will agree. I’ve added one for comedy value, and quite a few were left out due to “editor limited” space. Read more under the fold.

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It’s getting hotter every day in the Ukraine, and i’t not just global warming. I’m not sure I can understand how can some people convince themselves to be physically harmed on someone’s good word. Like the “special forces” (link) tied to Yuschenko and the police loyal to the x-commie. Can they get any dumber? If they wanna fight and show testosteron, let them sort it out for themselves, naked mud wrestling for all I care.

And face it, Palestinians will become ecologically extinct. Well organized Israelis will see to it. Here’s a leaflet that shows how more organized Israelis are. For now, the Palestinians are being supported by neighboring Muslim nations, but that will stop as soon as the oil stops flowing in appreciatable amounts.

There is no other option but to launch a ground offensive in the northern Strip to reoccupy it, Yesha Council says in leaflet distributed ahead of Shabbat.

I found this one when rushing to catch my ride.

We had a field trip with our butterfly society to Mlake near Ajdovscina. Some pics inside. I excluded butterfly pics and am posting the most “interesting” ones.

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I’m just going to say hello, because I’m off again. Studying for a colloquium in genetics. Quite some material to digest till Thursday.

I haven’t had the chance to peruse through the news, but I did manage to find this one. I found it very interesting:

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51″ and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.”

The White House released it on May 9.

A second 9/11 would be no surprise, knowing it would give Bush supreme powers. Kiss me goodbye and write me while I’m gone goodbye my Constitution, hello Vietnam.

link

I recently switched to linux (Ubuntu, 4.02) and one of the problems I encountered was that I wasn’t able to write or delete from my USB key (Kingston, 1 GB).
Luckily I found this page that took me here. I just followed the easy walkthrough tutorial and the key works fine. At least on my machine. For now.

The problem is that you might have formatted the USB key in NTFS, but linux has problem writing to that system. You’re better off with FAT32.

Someone reminded me of a page I thought long extinct. It would seem it’s alive and well. Give Intellectual whores a read. If you’re a person in a similar situation, you’ll click with it right away. If not, you’ll be turned away and claim the person’s an idiot.
I liked it very much a few years ago. Hadn’t had the time to give it a thorough read, though.

This is a nice read, especially in the context in light of the date published - 2002. That’s before the war and just in the of the drum-up to it.

I have mentioned Memri in the past here.

A beautiful pic of Hermodice carunculata, a kind of polychaete worm, taken by Jaka Ferjan.

Well, there you have it. I got through Dawkins’ The selfish gene, and I must say, I’m not impressed. Perhaps that is to be expected of a 3rd year biology student? I didn’t really learn much *new* about the theory of Darwinian evolution. I did get some nice exerps, followed below:

I recently learned a disagreeable fact: there are influential scientists
in the habit of putting their names to publications in whose composition they have played no part. Apparently some senior scientists claim joint authorship of a paper when all that they have contributed is bench space, grant money and an editorial read-through of the manuscript. For all I know, entire scientific reputations
may have been built on the work of students and colleagues! I don’t know what can be done to combat this dishonesty. Perhaps journal editors should require signed testimony of what each author contributed.

This probably happens more often than we might think! I’m against such “joint authorship” being practiced, even if the person provides grant money and doesn’t do any “actual” work. In the long run, this really isn’t healthy for science. One person is occupied with applying for grants, and everyone else just sits around, waiting for the cash to flow in.
My understanding is that at our Uni, scientists are paid monthly, while scientists around the world are paid out of grants - and when those stop flowin’, they better get typin’.

Observe the elegance of the next sentence from page 1:

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun, but the full implications of Darwin’s revolution have yet to be widely realized.

From page 4:

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Indeed, deep down, most of us are kind of like that. Of course, we also think “what goes around, comes around”, may that be bad, or _good_. It makes sense to be “good”, as Dawkins shows in one of his chapters.

… and it gets pretty dull after page 4.

Would I recommend the book? Only if you haven’t really done any brain time about evolution. If you have, you’ll learn very very little and really isn’t worth the time.

Well isn’t this funny! I still can’t stop laughing.
A University of Connecticut is planning to open a Campus in Dubai, but the deal has been brought to a hault ever since they found out that Israeli citizens won’t be able to enter.
I wonder why is that?

And things just get better after that.

Connecticut legislator Andrew Fleischmann told Gulf News he and his colleagues in the General Assembly would not allow such a deal to go through until the UAE “changed the way it deals with Israel” and improves the situation of foreign workers.

…

Nichols agreed that it was “extremely important” that Israeli students had access to the Dubai campus of UConn, a public-funded university.

And UAEU responds:

“If they’re so concerned about human rights why don’t we see them protesting Israel’s human rights violations against the Palestinians?” she said.

Touché.

And here’s the “burn” of the day:

Asked if Cuban nationals would be allowed easy access into the United States, Fleischmann admitted that it would be hard “but possible”, saying the comparison was not fair.

Can someone please explain to me, why the comparison isn’t fair?

Nichols said the University has discussed the matter with various interest groups including the Anti-Defamation League,…

Ah, that exaplains a lot.

It’s interesting how interested Americans are to put through schooling foreign nationals. And here’s the real kicker:

Israeli citizens are not allowed entry into the UAE, according to the Dubai Government’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing website, in line with the UAE’s policy of non-normalisation of ties with the Jewish state until the Arab-Israeli conflict is resolved.

Well there you have it. Resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict (so that one sides stays alive - if possible) and you can have all the Israelis you want in Dubali. And this is what it boils down to. UAE are supporting other Arabs in their struggle, and this is why Israelis are not allowed in. It’s not racism. It’s politics and economy. You know… Terrorism.

Oh, and here’s the link.

Some time ago I heard a fly sneak through the window. It tried to get out ever since, bumping into glass. I decided to take it out, as soon as I finish a chapter. Then all of a sudden, the sound of flying gained in pitch. I went to check it out and here’s what I found:

The spider (probably a pholcid) has been wrapping his strings of death around it for later. Or was it for later? It looked like he was injecting his poison:

That’s why I let spider webs be. Busy little helpers!

There are a number of free games available to download, and some even provide multiplayer experience.

Voyage century online is surely one of them. It’s an MMORPG, where you hop into a role of just about anything you want. Most people are of course pirate chasers, but others endulge in other, also prosperous, professions. Some are farmers, others are tailors, some mine or fall logs for a living. You highten your reputation by engaging pirates, bringing in unidentified objects, etc… You can forge weapons, clothes… or just sell raw material.

The experience can be enhanced by joining a guild, where you collectively contribute to various “branches”. You can bring in timber, minerals, crops, weaponry… Just about any end product. This helps gain points to the guild. Once you’re strong eough you can seige a city and eventually gain control over it.

Do not try this unless you have plenty plenty plenty of nothing to do time. If you have school, ship it.

Two minor points about the performance. It won’t work on linux and for some reason, it was slow on my pc, even though I have Athlon 1400 (or something) with radeon 9600 SE. I doubt half a gig of RAM is the cause.

I’ve been thinking about the current Iraq situation a bit. I should have been pondering other stuff, relevant to school, but I digress.

Who won in Iran? Does it matter? To whom?
Certainly someone won. First, the US military war machine invaded and struck down Saddam’s army (can’t really say Iraq’s army). They clearly won. But then they were made to stay by their Commodore el Chief. This is not what army is designed for, mmmkay? If you make it sit in one place with nothing to do, you’ll spill the beans in no time. Luckily the two cultures, the one of the invades and the resident one, differ greatly, so there isn’t a lot of fraternizing, but there are some “rebel insurgents” who make lives of the men/women in uniform a tad more miserable.

Up to this point, the military has done everything it can. The real losers are the Administration and military brass. The admins are playing politics with military, and the top brass has no “will” to take care of their body, the rest and the real substance of the military.

So pulling out, by this logic, would not only be not admiting defeat, but actually helping out the troops. The only people who stand to lose are coasy sitting in their offices. And by this I don’t mean just the politicians, but their bosses, too.

Some licence plates on one woman’s Piatus turned so evil, that if she won’t be able to manage them, the army will have to step in and decontaminate the vehicle.
This is what those plates wrote on themselves:

MPEACHW

link

Tito would be proud.

Looks like someone filmed an unknown “sea serpent” off the coast of Florida. According to the local diver:

A local diver says he’s found something not even the Smithsonian can identify and it’s right off the shores of Juno Beach.

But someone asked the Smithsonian experts about the video, and here’s what they had to say (paraphrasing):

He was very clear that it was a nemertean that couldn’t be identified even to family because the head wasn’t visible in any of the footage and that’s what he told the videographer. Looks as if the guy decided to make it sound a little more sensational. Jon’s just glad his name wasn’t mentioned in connection with the story…

Want to bet that at least some of these drugs are at least in part responsible for at least some shootings in recent times? I wonder if Dick Cheney is popping the pills…

I did an overhaul today. Did some backups of my files and installed Ubuntu. Really cool to install, I’ll tell ya! You download a “live-cd”, shove it in and reboot your pc. The system loads itself into memory, and you format and install the system AS YOU WORK. You can web browse while you watch the partitions being formatted. How cool is that? I just hope I can run everything I want, even if it means some tweaking.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys new things.