Good for Czechs to oppose to US rocket bases

The news has just reached Bulgaria. The US wants rocket bases in the Czech Republic and Poland and has sent official requests to the governments of the two countries. They would serve as a shield against attacks from the Middle East.
The good news here is the reaction in The Czech Republic - many protests against the bases. Hopefully, the same is heard from Poland.
I truly understand the desire for control over the world which is rooted in the minds of the US officials. Europe doesn't need protection by opening rocket bases. Defense actions when there are no official threads is the worst strategy. The collective negative image of the "West" could be a good reason for attacks, but don't we make the things worse as we install expensive equipment? Don't we trigger the hatred by ourselves???

Kyrll - a hurricane with a Bulgarian name

If you're wondering what Bulgaria has given to the world, wonder no more. The latest news was that the hurricane that's been sweeping Europe for the last few days is named after a Bulgarian - Kyrill Genov! He's living in Germany and some friends decided to make a present for him and bought the right a storm to be named after him. And now the turn has come for his name to be used.
Thank God it wasn't name because of Western Europe's attitude to Bulgaria's accession to the EU. :)

End of the funny part now. Seriously, it's been a hard week for many countries in Europe. While the UK and Germany suffered huge damages and people lost their lives, here in Bulgaria the hurricane is just passing by "quietly" - mild wind and heavy rain. Compared to the 200 kmph winds several thousand kilometres away, this is nothing. I hope this is a big reminder of what expects us if we stop thinking about the present only and forget the long term effects of our activities. Europe is doing something, but the US, India and China...

More news here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,461003,00.html

Ivo - the path continues :)))

You can be anything you want to be. Just turn yourself into anything that you think that you could ever be. As if this text was written for you. :) Congratulations, Ivo! I'm so happy that AIESEC Bulgaria elected you as the new MCP!!! LOL , it's not even the news of the day - few days past since the elections. But you know, exams...sleep after that... :-D
I know that many people have already congratulated you, I also did it twice. And now - the third time. :))))
Many people have already told you together with their congratulations what you should consider in your term as MCP. They are most probably right to say that, but yet I think you you know the best what to do - just to follow your "inner voice" :)

Out of range

Hmmm I'd rather have received the other colourful message "No signal input". This time it was much more exciting. What would you do if you see such message on your PC screen? Yes, that's right - you'll throw the whole machine from the window... And no more Windows... :-D
If any other interesting messages arrive, I'll definitely post them here... for the future generations. :) Till then - hopefully my PC will keep out of MY range... Otherwise... You've read about the windows already... :)

Global warming, local impact

Today is the 14th of January, 2007. I am in my home country, Bulgaria which is in the northern hemisphere at latitudes with temperate climate. Normally, at that time of the year it's winter, there's snow and ice and temperatures hardly reach 3-4 C the most.

Now the temperature outside is about 15 C... It has snowed only twice since the beginning of the winter season...

It's kind of something new for these latitudes for the people to speak more about global warming. While at other places such as Africa the changes are much more influential on the every-day life, here it hasn't been the case. Not until major climate changes started to occur, such as the heavy summer rains and the floods in the last two summers.

Probably the first local changes I've noticed but at that time didn't understand were the increase in sea level on the Black Sea coast. I've been going on summer holidays to Varna for many years in a row. There is a small beach in the central part of the city called Ribarski plaj (Fishermen beach). So year after year the piece of sand is getting smaller and smaller and since 1994 it's shrunk by few meters!

And now the heavy rains during summer and the mild winter which resembles more to spring than a real winter.

The negative impact on weather in Bulgaria is probably due to the global rather than local pollution with CO2. Indeed, the local industry has got a long way to go to be nature-friendly and huge areas have been deforested to meet the high demand for wood for construction, heating and export. But what we can do is to "clean our own house" and then demand this from the ones who really can make a huge positive impact. We are a small country and it's ridiculous to think that Bulgaria alone can do it but as a part of the European Union things could be a little bit more optimistic.

I don't agree with the ones who think that countries shouldn't spend money on still intangible future risks rather than help people in need in the present. We should do both. The real obstacle we need to overcome is short-term thinking...

Till then... happy snowless winter holidays!

About a coincidence and a test

It's been a sad day, a true Saturday 13th (not Friday 13th, unfortunately). I've been wondering whether I really can't feel empathy and sense my frieds' feelings and give them exactly what they need. I'm not good in that yet.
And here comes a test to which Sve gave me the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/results.shtml

It's about defining the type of a person's brain - whether it's "male" or "female" or something in between. Well, I couldn't find the final answer - and, of course, this is not as important as the details.

So, it turns out that my brain is more systematic than emphatic (what a surprise). Yes, I even have got sound proofs for that - even fresh ones from yesterday... but nevermind. The point is - if people know that about me, would they be more symathetic or just the opposite? What would YOU think of people who reveal their true personality which is not always pleasant for the others? Would you cross them out of the list of friends or greet them about the courage to admit it?



P.S. More similar tests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/

Erase and rewind

Human memory is something very interesting and unpredictable. We most often tend to forget the good memories while the bad ones continue to influence our decisions. We take many things too personally to be able to be objective.
Haven't you heard yet? There's nothing like objective decision. And will never exist.

We tend to forget that in front of us stand just PEOPLE as well, people with their own unique points of view.
Haven't you understood yet? You very often forget that.

If we could only forget the bad memories... There always will be bad memories. In your point of view. But from another's perspective it could be a good memory or at least not that bad one. Or definitely a memory one can make conclusions from and learn from.


Just imagine. You are in a mountain. Silence, emptiness, noone there. You want to reach the peak by car, but it hasn't worked properly some time ago or your friends have told you that it would fail you in your journey. Yes, sometimes it really stops working properly, but everytime it stops, it starts again.
While you're driving to the peak, you see a person standing by the road who stops you. "There's a car over there which you might prefer to buy", he says. The car looks similar to yours, but you haven't even tested it. You don't know the brand, you know nothing about its capabilities.
"If I change the car, it would probably help me reach the peak without the problems of my current one", you might think.

What's the risk here? You know your car, and you know the risks of driving it. How about the other car? You don't know the current owner, you don't know anything about the car, nothing about the possible risks as well. It might work, but it might also stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

What is your choice?

Murphy laws in action

Yes, I'm using the last capacity of my PC write this post and who knows why I use it for this instead of writing my thesis in Finance of Holding Structures.
But one thing should be pointed out - what could go wrong inevitably does or something like that. Murphy or who else has said it was right. In my current situation the version will be "If a PC could break down just when you start writing your thesis, it would definitely do so."
If I had enough time to make a thorough analysis, I would have found the exact correlation between the scale of damage of a PC and the time left before the thesis presentation.
But I don't have. I'm running out of time... Sorry... This one will be without a proper end (if there has ever been a proper one...)

:)

EU-yey

Yeyyyy!!! Bulgaria is finally a member of the European Union!


This should be written with golden letters in the otherwise thin history book of the Bulgarian people, nation and state.. Yesss, we're finally back where we belong - back together with our European family.
Hmmm, a sound proof to justify huge celebrations. Oh, if only we didn't really have such long, rich andgreat (sometimes not so) history on this continent. So now it's so difficult to explain to the little children why the hell we say that from now on we're Europeans - while we've been here for almost 14 centuries.

Have we really been "Oriental" country for centuries till 1 January 2007, 12 a.m. CET? Let's see... Nothing has changed much since then. (No transformation with majic sticks, sorry) Therefore, if we were "Oriental" till then, we're still such. Or the opposite - if now we're "civilized Europeans" then we should have been ones since much longer...

To all people who read this blog

Dear Friends,

If you have wondered what has been happening around the world while you were graduating school, having university studies, working, getting retired, etc., then you should pay attention to something which has been going on for almost 8 years. In 1999 five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in Libya were arrested and accused for having inoculated hundreds of children hospitalized in the Benghazi Pediatric Hospital (Libya) with the AIDS virus. Although their innocence is supported and proved by many Bulgarian and international scientists, among which Professor Luc Montagnier who played role in discovering the AIDS virus, the Libyan court sentenced them with capital punishment.

If you strongly believe in freedom, if you want to contribute to fighting with injustice, then take a moment, read more about the case and sign the petition at:

http://www.podpiski.org