Dmitri Tabachnik is the Minister of education in the new (Yanukovych team) government.
He is well-known for his anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and for the denial of everything Ukrainian.

The other day he canceled obligatory Ukrainian language university entrance exams, proving again with his actions that he does intend to enact his phobia of Ukrainian identity.

A social response website tabachnik.net.ua has a number of materials on the perception of Tabachnik’s assignment as a Minister of education. The video below is a nice artistic interpretation of the organic resentment of this assignment.

Support from Volodymyr Lytvyn fraction, the Party of Regions and the Communist party helped Dmitri Tabachnik to stay in the Minister’s seat for a while longer: his removal by the Parliament was short of only 24 votes.

Hopefully, sane representatives will keep pushing for the removal of Tabachnik from the position he should have never been to in the first place.

Fortunately, I haven’t lost anything valuable, and don’t plan to. However, I did come to realize that false leads may and actually do obscure some simple happiness bits we fail to notice in our everyday life. Especially when that happiness comes from someone close, someone you literally got used to as to something inseparable from your life – but still fail to give value to.

Take care of your happiness and inner peace – do stop sometimes to thank and praise and value the oh-so-inseparable people around you.

Copyrights note: this is not my image, and I do not know who is the proper copyrights holder. It is used here for illustrative non-profit purposes, with a proper disclaimer. Contact me if you own the copyright and wish this image removed.

A total of 80k people were registered with respiratory infections (not classified by flu type). Several small samples tested for A/H1N1 (which is the cause of swine flu pandemic) indicate that 30-50% of all cases could be swine flu (with other cases being “seasonal flu” – that is, previously known influenza types and subtypes). It is reported that ~37 died since Monday, with symptoms matching those of swine flu. Most of the statistics come from the Western regions of Ukraine, which were the first to face rapid daily temperatures decrease – which could have been the trigger of massive infections.

Today I’ve seen a number of people in Kyiv’s underground railway wearing medical face masks (or just pulling their scarfs up to cover noses). Drug stores were literally stormed for anti-virus medications, immune system stimulators, medical face masks, vitamins, etc.

If not the virus, then panic is definitely in the air. I do not recollect seeing something like that before.

an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety.

DIYbio also has a google group, where a wide range of questions – from bio-patents to DIY gel electrophoresis shopping list and model organisms is dicussed. There is also a DIYbio/biohacking FAQ.

Today for me is the day of discoveries. I learned about the International Open Space Initiative (to give robotics enthusiasts a way to send their tele-controlled and/or intelligent robots to the Moon and Mars), about the DIYbio and biohackers, about OpenManufacturing (which doesn’t seem to have produced enough content to link to), Open Source Medicine (ouch!), BioBrick Assembly Kit (with an assembly manual), OpenWetWare, and a whole bunch of other awesome and inspiring community efforts, which do not belong here.

Do you feel the wind of change?

The Crisis of Credit Visualized by Jonathan Jarvis.

I’m now registered in both systems (and getting “verified” in CS), and so far I stayed with three people (at two places) found via HC and CS. Both experiences were highly positive. Actually, my world outlook changed quite a bit after my first stay: I heard from someone that

it’s better to trust wrong person once, than always distrust all the people

But building trust, despite being central to HC ans CS, is only one – basic – component. Cultural exchange and knowledge sharing are also important, though so far I was unable to comprehend these components sufficiently to write on them.

At the CouchSurfing.com website, it appears to be popular to put some test/quiz results into profiles. These are the tests:

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

And two kinda funny Nerd Tests, version 1 and version 2:

On Sunday, the 10th of December, 2006, the grandmother of my wife died – almost three days after she had a cardiac infarction.

She was a kind, calm, warm-hearted old woman. She was just a little bit over 79 years old.

What did she leave behind?

She had brought up and educated her children and grandchildren to be People. None of her offspring went the way of crimes, or even disrespect towards others. The likes of her children could form a quasi-ideal ethical society, with no exaggeration – given she would be able to teach and bring up all of them.

She served the society well, working as a psychotherapist at a hospital. She helped people regain peace of mind, she cured mental diseases in the best way she could. She happened to meet her old-time patients in the street from time to time, and they expressed gratitude for her help.

She left a memory of a good, reliable, helpful person. This memory lives with all the people who were lucky to know her.

———

Death is the final evaluation for the person’s deeds during life.

What are the measures for this evaluation? What is really important? What matters after death?

First, it appeared to me that human memories are what matters. Memories of good deeds, memories of helping others, memories of being valuable for the society and mankind. “To put the mark on history” and “to be placed on record” are the expressions of the desire to have people remember someone even after death.

However, I have doubts that memories are what is really important. (I cannot explain what I mean with really important at the moment – I’m risking to get into circular argumentation. So let us consider this property to be something metaphysical, which isn’t directly related to the majority of phenomena we come to know during our lives, but which is a constituent component of all the deeds and actions.) Take stage, movie and music stars, for example. “Stars” often have huge numbers of people remembering them for decades and sometimes even centuries. But these are memories of “performers”, of “personal abilities to play well”, of “being able to live a role, not play it”, to “bring enjoyment to the lives of others” etc – these are not important per se. To put it simple, I consider “fame memories” generally not really important.

Thinking of fame memories, I can’t reject the notion of brightest stars and best artists directing the development of culture and pushing “into the masses” the understanding and the measure of the beautiful, the aesthetic side of existence. In my opinion, this is especially true of the Renaissance artists – taking into account the pre-Renaissance notions of culture and beauty, and the drastically different Renaissance art. Note the difference here: it’s not the artists we remember, but their art and the whole period. Of course, the names of Da Vinchi and Michelangelo cannot be forgotten – it’s just that their creations had outgrown the authors. What was done – was a massive change, and change is important. If it were for a single artist, not making the change happen – yes, we would probably still know his name, but that would only be primarily a part of the history book, not mankind’s heritage.

If I do ignore (personal) stage fame, and also drop memories within smaller groups and communities, then memories can be excluded from the list of really important attributes, following one’s life. Not to mention that “fame” also needs lots of manual refinement – e.g. the case of the “famous Herostratus”.

Let’s make an intermediary point: fame is not important, change in society is.

———

Let’s continue the never-ending search for the sense of life.

Evidently, anything valuable/material/physical you earned and spent during your life doesn’t matter – salaries, bonuses, dividends, etc – that was to support your body during life.

Any property you had during your life is not a measure as well. Your property might be inherited by your children, if you have them – but it is not a measure of your deeds. Being a land-owner, an industrialist, or a multi-billionaire is not a thing to write on a grave stone (in my opinion).

A thing to consider is charity. There is an idea that charity is good. Gifting fully-equipped computer-room to your school will likely bring benefits to the quality of education of the quite a number of pupils of that school. Not all charity is beneficial, though: only that is, which does change (improve) the state of things. However, I do not recollect any act of charity, which would exit the bounds of an enclosed society (be it even the whole country) or the time-frame of two generations. What I mean to say is: charity is the way to convert your financial wealth into the well-being of many others, if it makes a change. And the bigger the change, the longer its effect – the more real importance was created.

Another intermediary point: changes are really important for the final evaluation. The larger the scale of the changes you make, the longer the effect of those changes – the more value, the more real importance you create. (Granted, of course, that the changes you make aren’t against the principles of morality, ethics, and well-being.)

———

What do people consider important to do during their lives?

I know a number of people who live “for new impressions”, who want to “try everything” and gain as much as possible of “new experience”. However, these impressions and experience are personal – they die with the person. Thus, they cannot be a measure of one’s final evaluation, one’s “value-added real importance“.

A lot of people consider travelling to be a synonym of self-development. They think that travelling is worth the time. Is it so, when it comes to the death still? Evidently, it’s not – travelling is just one of the types of gaining personal impressions, personal experience. It (mostly) serves the selfish, traveller-centred desire to soak cultures and impressions, and only rarely produces “value-added real importance“.

The importance of self-development and gaining experience becomes evident when it comes to the actual use of one’s knowledge. If the knowledge/experience/impressions just cannot, or will not be used – then it’s a waste of time.

———

There are four points, serving as real importance approximations for me: strive for the changes to the better in whatever you are doing, do the good in your everyday life, pass on your worldview (principles, ideas, the best you could come to during lifetime), and exercise useful self-development (which is necessary to grasp more features of the world, for a more complete and reliable view).

———

This is clearly incomplete. Additions and corrections are due, for a lifetime.

In 2007 in Ukraine, there were over 62 000 road accidents with over 9 000 killed and 77 000 injured.
This is 20% increase comparing to 2006.
And this is also almost two people dead from road accidents per 10000 of population, and 16(!) people injured per 10000 of population.
Based on these numbers, every Ukrainian is (on average) at 0.16% risk of being injured and at 0.02% risk of being killed in a road accident.

(An increase in the number of new cars sold in 2007 relative to 2006 was 46.1%: from 371000 sold in 2006, up by 171000 to 542000 new cars sold in 2007.)

On average, road kill accidents take 3-8 times more lives in Ukraine, then in other European countries.

If you visit Ukraine – watch out for reckless, drunken, stupid, blind, ignorant drivers and violating, unpredictable, dummy pedestrians.

The further from the Kyiv’s downtown you are – the more watchful you should be.

This post used the numbers from this press-release (in Ukrainian).

What I’m taking you to: Google sends out PIN codes to AdSense account holders, to verify that the postal address is correct. As you already understood, this binds your postal address to your Google account (with all it’s services), and if police decides to check your search history, and finds some nasty query, they will already know where to go and get you.

So, if you are one of those how-to: nuclear bomb searchers, and you accumulate money for that bomb using AdSense – then either use “on demand” postal address (which is slightly more secure – but you’ll have to hire bodyguard services, when checking mail), or move regularly

Or, ask everyone you know to search for the linked phrases from the post above . In this case, the “noise” may just well overcome the “signal”, to render “Google search profile” verification practically useless.

Also, you can just use filtering alternatives like scroogle.

Via webplanet.ru – reddit.com.

Also: 5 content theft myths, and why they are false.

And more links:

• free internet fax
• anti-spam email 1 (recommended)
• anti-spam email 2
• create on-demand snapshot (archive) of the cited web-page

On the other hand, Lytvyn’s block did jump the 3% barrier. By the way, if we take the absolute number of votes Lytvyn had in 2006 elections (619 905 votes), and the number he had at the 2007 snap elections (924 538), the difference is only 304633 votes. When multiplied by 20$, it gives 6 million USD – which isn’t too high a price for getting into the parliament, isn’t it?

Overall, I’m satisfied with these elections. Politicians this time were wise enough to avoid prolonged court trials over the miserable, non-differentiating numbers of votes in distinct voting districts. It saved both time and money. It’s also good to hear that immediately after the official results announcement, the Our Ukraine – Self Defence block and the Block of Yulia Tymoshenko agreed upon the coalition treaty. It’s not yet evident if the treaty will hold, or if it won’t be beaten by the PR – Lytvyn – Communists probable political block – but that is still a good sign of political agility, unseen since the end of 2004 between the two political forces.

I’m also glad that society intelligently handled these elections, which were unfavoured by many. Everything went overall smooth and with no troubles.

The only thing, which is not directly elections-related, is the fighting over the status and interpretation of the OUN-URA (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Rebel Army) during the World War II. But I hope that in part with the help and actions by the President, this issue will be settled and finally resolved as soon as possible (I expect this to happen within 10 years from now).

Early in the morning, I heard from my wife’s sister that some of her friends were offered 100 UAH (20 USD) for promising to vote for the Lytvyn’s political block (based on his People’s party – “Narodna partiya“, in Ukrainian only). I said “that’s ugly, and they could just take the money and vote for whomever they want, as it’s impossible to enforce them to vote exactly for Lytvyn”. But that was it as for my reaction in the morning.

Later in the day – when I voted – I learned that my grandma was approached by her neighbour pensioner and offered 50 UAH (10 USD) to vote for Lytvyn’s block. My grandma didn’t know that the “true offer” is at least twice as big, and agreed. Clearly, that neighbour pensioner decided to earn some extra by robbing her fellow pensioners for at least 50 UAH each when offering to sell their votes (offering 50 UAH to just a hundred pensioners gives 1000 USD of pure profit; there are at least 150 pensioners in my grandma’s house).

After paying the “half-price”, that neighbour pensioner woman wrote down my grandma’s passport number and the serial number of the invitation sent by the local elections committee. She also asked to report to her the number of the bulletin after voting, so that they can check if my grandma really voted for Lytvyn. (This is yet another violation of the law, as it is supposed that voting is anonymous. It also indicates that the local committee’s representatives of the Lytvyn block, instead of just counting the votes, may also keep record of all the bulletins, which is also clearly illegal.)

But the worst thing in all this is that my grandma actually… voted for Lytvyn’s block, because she’s honest and she has promised to do so! (Clearly, the Lytvyn block didn’t go far enough to actually check if the bought voters really voted for Lytvyn, as my grandma wasn’t asked about the bulletin number after the voting.)

I can only guess how many honest pensioners were simply bought by Lytvyn to help his party/block jump over the minimal barrier for parliament representation. I strongly doubt that Lytvyn will make into the parliament: his chances were slightly below marginal, based on pre-election polling.

I must say that the practice of buying votes (either with money, goods or some privileges) is quite widespread during elections to local governance bodies; the recent example was the election of Igor Balenko in 2006 to the Kyiv city council. I do remember that a number of 10% discount cards valid in the “Furshet” supermarkets chain (established and owned by Balenko) were distributed among the pensioners all over the city before the elections; there is no doubt that it helped Igor Balenko to enter the city council as people’s deputy.

However, for pan-Ukraine parliamentary or presidential elections, most of the money is put into advertising and agitation tours, not into buying individual votes. If someone’s buying voters, this indicates the disbelief of the corrupted political force in it’s own victory unless marginal and unethical measures are taken.

I believe this is exactly the case with Lytvyn’s block. They do not believe they will make into the new parliament, and try to primitively buy votes.

Frankly speaking, I would expect the Socialist party (headed by Oleksandr Moroz) to do something of the kind, taking into account several critically unfavourable steps undertaken by Moroz, which were (correctly, I presume) interpreted as treachery by his electorate. After the highly successful previous elections, Moroz did everything he could (but shouldn’t, really) to stay in the power. This led to the Socialist party losing 90% of electorate (based on pre-snap-elections polling). Another factor pushing socialists rankings down is that Yuri Lutsenko, the highly charismatic and honest-image minister, left Socialist for his own party, but didn’t have eough time before snap elections and had to join some well-established political party to make it into the parliament. I’m sure this was the second factor for decreasing the ratings of Socialist party.

Finally, I won’t dare predicting the results of the elections, but I think there will be nothing vividly unexpected. The three leader blocks will clearly pass the barrier, also with probably two of the smaller parties (hope not the socialists and not Lytvyn’s block). I leave it to political analysts to predict who will form the coalition with whom in the new government.

Generally, I think these elections were necessary. The least they do is stimulating the development and purification of the Ukraine’s political system.

At the end of the video, when future supercomputers are described, it hinted me at two distinct long-living ideas: that of singularity (in the sense of a breakthrough leading to the immediate exponential growth and even probable abrupt mankind transformation), and that of Artificial Intelligence. The video suggests that this will happen somewhere between 2013 and 2049, which is hard to believe.

Information overload is definitely a feature of the modern world. There’s still space for further overload, but what will be the result? Psychotic workers, or super-intelligent and hyper-efficient “infohumans”?

China, India and their bordering states (sorry, no offence here – just to shorten the list) were long known to constitute the largest mono-national parts of world population. It’s clear that after fairly recent joining of the Asian states into a superstate cooperation commonwealth, half of the world’s population already resides in that commonwealth. This projection for the future seems the strongest of all shown in the movie.

I would strongly doubt the “largest English-speaking country in 10 years” to be China. Imagine: you live in a 1+ billion people country, and you are financially stable (we all know that China is the fastest growing world’s economy); why would you need to learn English, which is so different from your native language? Chinese language is the way – so start learning it as soon as you can (BTW, seen somewhere that the number of Japanese blogs, as expected, became larger than the number of English blogs. Now waiting for Chinese blogs? )

If it’s convenient and well-designed, I wouldn’t mind visiting such a fast food once in a while. Though it’s hard to imagine having breakfast there every day: too dull, I suspect. But have to try first to be sure.

Some more videos of delivery and disposal:

I do not yet know (and might never know for sure, actually), if this is a true spam-campaign, or a “black PR”. Though “black PR” scenario seems highly unlikely – the party didn’t get into the parliament during two previous parliamentary elections, and has a negligible expected electorate percent (I’d say below 0.2%).

If it’s not “black PR”, then we’re seeing a new trend leading us to the truly “electronic government”.

We now only need some web-resource to become sufficiently popular and conduct law-enforced elections on-line – of course, with IP blocking to disallow repeated voting, and other pseudo-secure whistles

I wonder if other countries have the experience of true (non-fake, non-black-PR) political unsolicited bulk mailings.

Anybody? Examples, study references?

I am an advocate of the official position: that is, HIV causes AIDS. In the movie description, I put my comments which dis-approve the point set and mentioned in that movie. I would strongly recommend that you stick to the official position in everything that is related to your health!

And now, with all the warnings, you may want to see it (326 MiB):

On the 28th of February, 2007, I ordered a book from them, and paid for it with a credit card at the time of order. Soon I had a confirmation email, which said that the book will be delivered not later than the 16th of March (they promise 10-working-days delivery, so the date looked fine).

At the end of March, after writing several emails to BamBook, they responded with an official-looking “sorry for delay” and “we’ll do our best to deliver soon”.

After calling them on the 3rd of April I came to know that they at the moment actually do not have the book I ordered. They asked if I’m willing to wait for around two weeks, so that they “try” to order that book and then (add 10 working days) deliver it to me. I said NO, I WANT MY MONEY BACK with that kind of service you have! OK, they said.

Nothing changed until April, 23. So I called them again. They promised to return money again.

Another call was on the 3rd of May. They said that “refund is being processed”. I hope you imagine what kind of a company they are, if a simple refund processing requires whole month to be complete… or not complete, as nothing changed as of today, the 5th of May.

Update: as of May, 27, there are no changes, despite some more efforts put into getting anything from this real crappy Bambook internet-shop.

Conclusion: avoid BamBook internet-shop at all costs. Better go give your money to the beggar on the street – faster, with no troubles, and no waiting for anything.