romunov’s blog et al

Well, perhaps we shouldn’t worry that much about the GIs that get sick. If they’re not smart enough to get away from the dust, well, it’s their loss, ain’t it? Also, notice the attitude.

Lieberman-Kyl’s Iran amendment passes.

By a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”

Link here. The list of nay-voters is short, predictable, and yet, still holds some surprises.

Well, there you have it. You pay almost 300 euro for repairs and materials, and this is what you get 2500 km later. Piece of junk. :/

Those of you who haven’t been following the Iraq war (you are probably dead) at least from a distance, know, that the “Allies” are using a neato weapon - at least from a strategical and tactical point of view. Armour piercing rounds made from depleted uranium go through a tank like hot knife through butter, that’s why some people just love them. But as you might imagine, the radiactive waste has a downside. Inhaling those particles will brand you for life - or at least what’s left of it. Apropos DU, I’ve come across this article.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, May 2007, Gulf War Veterans Information System reports the following:

Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846
– Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847
– Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999

Why the discrepancy?

What the government is doing is only counting the soldiers that die in action before they can get them into a helicopter or ambulance. Any soldier who is shot but they get into a helicopter before he dies is not counted.

Has anyone heard anything to the contrary regarding this method of counting?
If true, this means that the U.S. is severely under representing the body count, which will, eventually, bite them in the ass. It’s just that this time there will be no hippies to protest. Interesting times we live in, my friends!

Last Sunday I attended a clean up duty in Piran. It was planned by Project AWARE foundation through Project Adventure. You can check out some pictures here and here.

While we walked around Piran in full gear and sweating like mad, we finally made it to the “pipe”. We were searching for a fishing net that was dumped near the pipe years ago. While descending, the visibility went quagmire on us pretty fast. I was a hand’s reach away from the bottom and I could barely see it. I would guess that my buddy above me saw nothing. I think he was looking for the 12 m mark the organizer gave us. We swam right of the pipe, and the “smog” eventually cleared. We couldn’t find the net either because we didn’t swim pass it or it was already removed. In any case, I had a garbage bag with me, and we collected some bottles and other litter. We emptied it once and then retired to the diving base where we changed to civilian clothes and got our souvenirs, kudos of the sponsors!

Thanks to all the people who tolerated my presence while staying in Piran.

Through Deep sea news (yes, I’m that behind with reading posts), I’m linking to “Fish guys”. The short film was made in less than 48 hours!
I especially like the “She’s like Wilma going to the Scooby doo funeral” bit.

If you’re a linux beginner like me, and want to install InkScape (see a few posts back) that is not prepackaged in a .deb file per se (like the developer version), you’ve come to the right place!

First of all, you need the “package”. jiho at #inkscape (freenode servers) pointed my ass over to http://inkscape.modevia.com/ap/?C=M;O=D (a list I’ve encountered through my search on how to set source.list to unstable… but that’s another story). I’ve downloaded the most recent 5+ mb file on my desktop… and now what?

I went into console, logged in as root (You many not have to do that - try it without first? The command to go root is “su” as in super user?) and typed “install
” (it looked something like this: install inkscape200709061136.package /data2/inkscape). And nothing happened, but there were no errors either. Just for shits and giggles, I went to check out the destination to see if anything appeared. And by golly, there was a script file there. I clicked that and god have mercy, it installed automatic package manager for me and installed InkScape - developer version!

Hopefully this helps another newbie. Be sure to drop a line if it helps.

Ah, I knew I’ll have to do a near 9/11 post about 9/11, because so many news and blogs rotate around it. Just let it go, it happened long time ago.

This is from a fairly recent story from The Independent (emphasis mine):

Then, the videotape of the September 11 hijacker, Waleed al-Shehri appears. Al-Shehri was one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the World Trade Centre.

And now check the old, really old BBC piece from 2001:

A man called Waleed Al Shehri says he left the US a year ago

This is why the “Muslim hijackers” theory is called into question, which raises a red flag about everything the Govt and the MSM are telling you. As you can imagine, there are a lot more of these “discrepancies” as you read.

Ah, like a clockwork! “Bin Laden” has, as you’ve probably heard, got another hot video. There is some evidence that this is fake, just like a bunch of videos that have been produced recently.

Next time you see an “anti-Semitic” attack, I want you to think of this. Things sometimes aren’t what they’re made out to be by the media and the Big Brother.

Police said Sunday they have broken up a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused of a string of brutal racist and anti-Semitic attacks, videos of which were played on television to a stunned national audience.

I’ve drawn this in a couple of minutes with a program that can handle vectors - InkScape. The whole gig [of the program] is that you can resize freely without (almost) loss of quality). I’ve dubbed this one “BioLove”.

Back from a three day field trip to the mountains. We went to (near) Krn (see below), a mountain in Julian alps. Our mission was to collect samples from three mountain lakes. My job was to filter the samples and carry some of the instruments. We had luck with weather. We did have snow just under Krn (~ 1800 m) - and thank good as well. Far better than rain. We slept in a cottage very near one of the lakes we sampled. Some pictures just bellow the fold.

(more…)

A few of presidential hopefuls have responded to a few questions from Students’ organization of Slovenia. You can grab their response here. I think Türk made best arguments. Peterle is still a sleaze bag and is lagging behind with his short-attention span answers.
(Unfortunately?), presidents hold very little power and are more or less symbolic and money holes.

It would seem, Veterans Administration is putting U.S. cancer surveillance and research in jeopardy by withholding cancer data. Makes you ask the question “why”, doesn’t it? I would say it’s a safe bet that it has something to do with the “cool” weapons the soldiers have been using in Iraq and Afghanistan, as they’re made from depleted uranium. The Industry has found a way to recycle toxic nuclear waste, and people of mentioned countries, recruits and soldiers are breeding this stuff in. At least you have to admire the irony. The weapon doesn’t take sides. We are all equally worthless to it.

And how about this piece off the PrisonPlanet.com?
What rotten dumb minded SOB uses a taser on pregnant women and children?

More on the Haditha rampage here.

Recently, a critique paper on methodology of evaluating long term coral reef decline by Ridd came out, and was later succeeded by Bruno & Selig’s PlosOne article (see here). The first claims that GBR (Great barrier reef) is the most pristine coral reef on Earth, and Bruno & Selig take the matter a step further:

The general absence of quantitative data on reef health has led to several misconceptions about the causes, patterns, and best remedies for global coral decline. For example, in 2003, coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), considered the “best-managed” [25] and “one of the most ‘pristine’ coral reefs in the world” [21], was not significantly greater than on reefs in the Philippines and other subregions that are often thought to be highly threatened and poorly managed [13]. Additionally, based on the impression that Hawaiian reefs were “far further down the trajectory of decline” [than reefs in the Caribbean and Australia] a recent essay [25] argued for a total overhaul of U.S. coral reef management policy. But our analysis suggests that coral cover in the main Hawaiian islands, including frequently visited reefs close to urban and tourism centers, appears to have been as high as GBR cover over the last two decades (Fig. 2A; also see Fig. S5).

Kudos to coral bones.