vordhosbn

Rumors spread in Kremlin about referendum for accession of the Kuril Islands to Japan.

Putin calls his FSB agents:

- Comrades, what's going on in Sakhalin?

- Everything is good. We voted.

- What do you mean voted? What for?

- We held referendum for accession to Japan.

- So how were the votes divided?

- They weren't. 100% of people voted for...

- Wasn't there anyone against?!

- Well the Japanese are against, but its too late, we already joined.

You have in fact not, there is so much disinformation that is evident even in this; there were never any Russian soldiers occupying anything, they are what the media tends to call pro-Russian forces, who are citizens of Crimea who took up arms when they saw what was happening and still is in Maidan; clear distinction, they are not the armed forces of the Russian Federation. This is a good example how things get twisted so much in the media though...

Do they look like "citizens of Crimea who took up arms"? These are by no means "self-defense forces", but clearly professional military units. Perhaps by accident, they wear russian style uniforms and russian weaponry and drive russian army armored vehicles...

Armed civilians:

Professional military:

Difference?

ITAR TASS and RT are funded by the Russian state, so I wouldn't call them a true news agencies, they are more - the voice of Kremlin.

However, it is ussually very usefull to read them, as they give a mirror version of reality that one can interprete accordingly.

So they didn't like the government, but if they were elected the error is in voting preferences. Voting is a serious business, ignore completely any baubles offered near or at election time. Anyway, they then appeared to operate beyond accepted protest (throwing hand grenades causing serious injury from what I saw on TV) and effectively brought down an elected government. I'm sorry, but that is not how democracy works.

Just to give you some perspective:

1. Yanukovich was elected with strong pro-Russian campaign, but still promising of bringing Ukraine closer with the EU.

2. When approaching a date for signing a previously negotiated trade association agreement with the EU, he suddenly shifted his position and turns 180 degrees, speaking of prospects about joining the Eurasian Economic Union instead - a position affected by Russia, undoubtly, as Putin promissed $15 billion economic aid with 1/3 gas price discount.

3. People get angry at the democratically elected president (who already changed the constitution to gain more power) and go to the Independance Square to hold a peaceful protest, numbering arround 2000 people (21 Nov 2013).

4. In the next few days, people organize with social networks and on the 24th of November about 100 000 people gather at the square to protest. This time as they try to "occupy" a government building, there are clashes with the police, about 400 people are injured. (Here's a random video from this day, just to give you a perspective about the type of people on these protests and the kind of atmosphere there)

5. Protests continue in lower numbers in the following week, when on the 29th as protesters learn the news that the EU Trade Association has not been signed, people gather again and they begin to ask for the resignation of the Parliament and the President.

6. Early in the morning on 30 Nov the Berkut special riot police, executing orders of the legitimately and democratically elected President of Ukraine, disperse the non-resisting protesters. Here's another video, which I think really describes this better than any words I can think of...

7. The next days, people are outraged about the actions of the President and gather in larger numbers culminating on the 8 Dec, when about half a million people hold peaceful protest on the now dubbed Euromaidan (maidan = square in ukrainian). (video)

Without going into further details the next few months, people persist with the protests, eventually turning violent and toppling the President and the Government. When a president begins shooting at people, who want just his resignation, he ceases to be a democratically elected official and turns into a dic(k)tator.

I am deeply passionate about this topic, because here in Bulgaria, we also held for months everyday, popular protests against the blatant and corrupt government, against the oligarchs and against the government propaganda. We did so peacefully - I stood in live chain holding hands with others, while police in riot gear was beating unarmed old people and women in front of me, so I can not judge too hard people like the ukrainian citizens, who respond with violence.

Because democracy, my friend, is NOT voting for a ruler, who can do whatever he wants for his term, including breaking his promisses, which elected him in first place.

It is NOT sitting passively to wait for election day, when you see corrupted officials trying to boost their power and wealth.

It IS the combination of informed society, independant media and separation of powers to act as check and balances that best implement a modern day democracy.

Sorry about the offtopic but this is a good one:

Bartender says: "We don't serve neutrinos here."

 

A neutrino walks into a bar.

Yes, but why exactly like that, and not for example howling at the moon?

What about going without a plan and just let things happen?

www.couchsurfing.com

Also instead of stop drinking beer, you can just start exercising more...

I can think of one very fun and definitely not boring way of learning the human anatomy.

"So this is the pectoralis... how fascinating!"

Porn - the force which is driving the human progress!

What would we see? Well, it would depend on where we are in relation to these spiral bands. If we are entering a band with tightly packed galaxies, it would appear as though our known universe was slowing and shrinking. If we were leaving a band of tightly packed galaxies, we would see what we do today. Galaxies speeding away from each other...

Our universe (the observable part) can't orbit around anything else, because that will require gravity propagating faster than the speed of light, which is in violation of relativity.

That's why your hypothesis requires our own galaxy, along with all the observable universe, to be experiencing acceleration.

But acceleration is not relative and is measurable. Why then, don't we detect this sort of "universal acceleration"?

P.S.: I am sorry if I didn't put the words quite right, I hope you understand what I mean.

The level of taxonomic classification does not always represent the same genetic diversity across different branches.

Yes.

If I was a cat, I would much prefer a real, live tree.

To state what's bothering me more clearly - if the vessel is filled with inert dielectric fluid, rather than air with 1 atm pressure, the electronic components inside will be experiencing essentially the same hydrostatic pressure, as the vessel itself.

This will no doubt at least interfere with their normal characteristics, if not damage them permanently.

I don't understand if you don't agree with the above statement regarding the inoperability of the electronic components under high hydrostatic pressure, or rather with the premise that the vessel needs electronic components?

But the thing is that the Strong Man™ is so supa powerful, that he beats the shit out of the Weak Man™ even on a diet.

Perhaps you will state (again) that this kind of argument is not scientific?

If this is the case, could you elaborate a bit on the "inverting the values of the process"?

This is a really interesting idea, but I have a question:

Why there are so many stars that die (observed end of star life) - supernovae, white/brown dwarf, red/blue giants, neutron stars, black holes?

Well, "Remote controlled submersible" implies both control and communication module. At least some small electronic circuitry is required, imo.

You DO realize that poultry is meat, right? It was an animal before you could buy it in a shop.

(facepalm)

Excuse my poor English. I meant diary.

I am not sure that electronic components in the submarine's circuitry will be able to function properly under such pressure. In most el. component specification, standard atmospheric pressure is assumed, and that's the pressure it's tested on.

I am a vegetarian for four years now, and although vegetarian =/= healthy, I believe that it is an important step to healthy lifestyle.

I believe there is plenty of statistical and experimental evidence on healthy food habits, but I would like to just throw my personal perspective here.

Since I gave up eating meat, I have much lower occurrence of stomach discomfort, I feel much more energetic after a big meal (totally unlike the blissful apathy that followed after 6 pork stakes ), and last but not least - my monthly food budget decreased substantially (vegetables and poultry are much cheaper than meat).

Some people don't feel good when turning to no-meat diet, but then again some people don't feel good when they quit smoking. And essentially by removing meat (but not milk and eggs - this is what vegetarian means) you are not loosing anything beneficial.

I don't really like this obsession with calories, carbs and protein levels, that is promoted in articles on healthy lifestyle.

The thing is, if I do that, I am essentially in a constant process of food analysis, which may be fun for somebody, but not for me.

Just eat what you like (but in moderation), and do physical exercise (also in moderation). When a particular food does not go with your stomach, just try something else.

Is it possible (and probable), that from DNA, that did not originate from retro-viruses, a sequence can be extracted, that can function as one?

Way back, thinking about DNA, I always made analogy with source code... but now I am beginning to think that may not be good comparison...

Most modern computer languages are very context-specific and non-heuristic oriented.

Why are you separating the two bytes of the address? It is just a number.

Imagine the computer memory as a very large street. It has houses only on one side, and those houses are numbered 1, 2, 3... and so on.

0xDEAD is just a hex number. Hex numbers are just presented in other counting system. You can say "Humans have 0x20 teeth in general, but I lost one, so now I have only 0x1F."

So address 0xDEAD is just the 57005^th consecutive byte in the memory (assuming they start at 0x0000 which is not always the case).

To understand whether the previous or the next even address is the "corresponding one", you must learn a bit about memory organization. It can be big-endian or little-endian.

For example, little-endian is the memory organization in PC processors.

On little endian organized memory, the 32-bit integer 0x12345678 with address 0x1004 will be presented as:

Memory address: 0x1000 0x1001 0x1002 0x1003 0x1004 0x1005 0x1006 0x1007 0x1008

Value: 0x78 0x56 0x34 0x12

On a big endian organized memory it will be:

Memory address: 0x1000 0x1001 0x1002 0x1003 0x1004 0x1005 0x1006 0x1007 0x1008

Value: 0x12 0x34 0x56 0x78

I am not 100% sure what is meant by "corresponding", and I first assumed, the one that gives the word that contains the byte. If so, then in both endiannessess, the corresponding word address to the byte address 0x1005 is 0x1004, because the 32-bit number with address 0x1004 contains the four bytes ahead.

Hope I is not very confusing. Maybe I explained a bit extra, but I believe partial understanding is not understanding.

edit: Why the forum software is trimming the extra spaces? This is really anoying...