Going Through the Photography Backlog

I came home two hours ago and I don't feel like sleeping. Thus, I am using this occasion to go over my photography backlog and process some pictures:

Antwerpen Station

This is cheesy.

And funny.

It reminded me of the Frozen Grand Central by improveverywhere.



I understand it may be a commercial to something.

A Study on the Effect of Reiki on Cells

I found a post on The Reiki Digest that Gloria A. Gronowicz performed a vigorously designed three-year study on applying Reiki treatments to test-tube cells. The study was designed so the application of Reiki did not involve touching the tubes, heating them, or manipulating them phisicaly in any way.

The results showed (against her expectations) that Reiki had no effect on cancer cells, "but that the process improved bone cell growth by a statistically significant percent. Skin and tendon cells also grew under the Reiki regimen.".

The study was performed by the University of Connecticut Health Center and financed by the US National Institutes of Health Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and apparently* published in the Journal of Orthopedic Research.

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*) "apparently" means that I could't find or access the study dirrectly (but then again, I didn't want to pay for access on the CCAM website).

A Disaster ,,,

Is this a comedy?

duckling

A duckling I shot last week in Josaphat Park.

I Didn't Come to See You Naked

An elderly man in Texas had owned a large farm for several years. He had a beautiful large pond at the back of the property next to the road, and he’d fixed it up real nice with picnic tables, horseshoe pits, and he’d planted some nice flowers and fruit trees next to the pond. One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond to look it over, as he hadn’t been down there for a while. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard splashing and female voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw that 5 young women had parked their car at the side of the road, climbed the fence and were skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went hurriedly splashing to the deep end.

One of the women shouted to him, “We’re naked and we’re not coming out until you leave!” The old man frowned and yelled back, “I didn’t come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond.” Holding the bucket up he said, “I’m just here to feed the alligator.”

(taken from twitfall)

biking / beer outing

R&G


A. on the phone

Please Rephrase

Removing the hostiles
collateral damage
remove the target
hit a target
remove the threat
... and I'm tired of the bullshit.

If you happen to channel-surf over Discovery Channel (and some others) while documentaries on weapons are playing, you are bound to hear one or more of the expressions above.

These shows try to show you how cool new weapons are, how advanced their technology, and how they are superior, while glossing over a simple truth: they are perfected for killing people.

All of the euphemisms above mean the exact same thing: killing people. The problem we have here is "killing people" doesn't sound cool, and it's more difficult to have a show on how cool the weapons are, if we actually put on the table that they are better tools for killing people. Instead, it's "we protect our country" [that usually means the US, since the guys in the shows I've seen are American].

I'm not arguing here that these weapons are not helping in the protection of your country (whatever that may be). I'm sure they help, but cut the bullshit! They are killing instruments.

It's not cool that you have them, it's sad that you may need them.

A Letter from Bill Gates

BoycottNovell has a posting on a letter on strategy, written by Bill Gates. The spin they put on the story is on how Bill Gates is afraid of linux, but I want to focus on something else: is it interesting?

First, a small paranthesis: Is the letter authentic?

I'd say yes, for the following reasons:
1. I'm not very familiar with BoycottNovell and their sources of information, but from what I've read of the letter (provided in it's entirety in the article) I would say that it's either authentic, or whoever made it is very insightfull and has lots of "vision".

2. If they published a fake letter, they be very open to attacks (which would only serve them in the short run - publicity stunt/shock value/whatever).

The letter talks (among other things) about linux and java being Windows' largest competitors and the need to preventing commodization by linux (you may be too late on that) about taking good ideas for improvement from a variety of sources, about a major overhaul of the file/storage system (the points being made there sounded to me both revolutionary and obvious at the same time), about a need (stated explicitely) to improve system monitoring enough to be better than on linux, difficulty of setting up windows for a speciffic purpose, unifying the application platform technologies to win back Java and J2EE developers, improving Windows boot time and improving asynchronous communication (email, Gmail, CRM, scheduling, etc) - maybe they should take a look at Google Wave.

All in all it's an interesting letter, and if they manage to achieve all that, it will make for interesting times.