The 2011 Formula One season has finally started, with the first official practice sessions taking place earlier today, but this year this unfortunately means yet another reason for me to be unhappy. That’s because a certain TV station from here, the one that’s buying just about any sports event that anybody might be interested in except those few that are required by law to be made available to all, got the rights to broadcast this too. As a result, for the first time since 1993, which was a season that wasn’t broadcast here, I will be missing an entire Formula One season. In fact, the last race I missed was, I believe, the 2004 United States Grand Prix, because it was before getting the TV tuner and, being in the evening for us, Andra and her mom wanted to watch a TV series that was on at the same time, so I had to give in and just follow the timing and commentary on-line, only asking them to switch to it for a couple of minutes to see what happened to Ralf Schumacher.
What this all means is that, due to the awful laws of capitalism, I’ll be stuck just following the live timing and what little commentary is available on-line for the entire season now. Of course, if I’ll find a trustworthy site live streaming the races, whether legally or, most likely, “pirating” the broadcast, regardless of the country that broadcast would be meant for, I’ll watch it all there. But sites that “pirate” TV broadcasts never seemed trustworthy to me, or at least all those I found required you to install things that immediately raised red flags for me. Then again, I never particularly searched for something like this, so it may just be the time to do so.
Speaking of “piracy”, I just want to add here that a piece of shit I stumbled upon a few days ago means I’m planning yet another rant on the topic soon. Then again, considering how my planned posts have been faring recently, you shouldn’t hold your breath for it.
Thing is that it is very relevant now because just this sports channel proves my point when it comes to the “losses” claimed due to “piracy”. I was following pretty much every match in the Romanian football championship when they were broadcast on channels that were available to all. When channels offered by just one cable provider, which isn’t the one I’m on, started offering them, I simply stopped watching. And you can’t say that the decision was entirely out of my hands because dad was considering switching back then, if at all possible, and I was firmly against it. Granted that there were other reasons for avoiding the switch as well, mainly the fact that it’d mean a switch to digital and needing to get a separate control set for each TV, since over here they don’t even give you the option to only get the smart card, if you have TVs or TV tuners that can use them to decode a digital signal, but my first argument was simply that I won’t give in.
The rule is simple: If they require me to do something I don’t care to do in order to gain access to some content I want, I’ll simply look for other options and, if none are available, instead of giving in I’ll just learn to do without it. As a result, if I “pirate” something you can be pretty sure that I wouldn’t buy it even if that’d be the only way to obtain it. I’ll simply learn to do without, so my “piracy” doesn’t cause them any losses whatsoever. But I’ll leave it at that for now, because this rant is not the purpose of this post.
To move on, the final versions of both Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 have been released, so I should make those minor changes to this site that I had planned to make right after these releases. Nothing to do with the blog, which still uses this very old theme and would be too much trouble to change right now, but just with the games played list and fantasy art gallery. Speaking of which, I really should make some additions to those sections as well, because they’ve been neglected pretty much ever since I created them. But good luck with that, seeing as I’m hardly even writing here anymore, much less coding…
Keep in mind that these changes, whenever they’ll be made, are meant to take advantage of some very basic but useful HTML5 tags and will not have any noticeable effects whatsoever for anyone using a browser that supports HTML5, only making it simpler for me to set some things up. As a result, they are likely to cause those sections of the site to display oddly for those who use older or different browsers. As usual, my only advice to you if you have problems viewing this site is to upgrade or change your browser.
As for the personal updates part mentioned in the title… Nothing I haven’t said countless times before. As worried, sad, frightened and frustrated as usual. Still dreading to wake up; still starting to whimper whenever I go to the kitchen to eat… Still missing her just as much; still needing a best friend, or at least a very close friend, just as much; still not finding anyone even remotely close to what could really make a close friend… People keep living in the “real world”, which has nothing to do with me and I want nothing to do with it, so a gap between me and them automatically appears and then keeps widening, seeing as our paths can have next to nothing in common.
Otherwise, the usual health concerns keep piling up, as expected. For example, since I woke up today I keep experiencing some pain that’s worrying due to its location and troubling due to its intensity. In this case, I may know the cause and, if I’m right, it’s nothing to worry about, but otherwise it’s not like any such issues are going to go away on their own if they’re not somehow fixed, or at least checked out. Such things either stay the same or, much more commonly, only get worse if left alone, so that’s just what happens. And since nobody’s picking me up, dragging me to where I’d need to go and doing all the talking for me when all I’ll be able to do will be kick and scream, I’ll only end up there when it’ll really feel like an emergency, as always.
Saw this line in a comment someone posted when it was first announced that MESSENGER has been successfully inserted into orbit around Mercury and couldn’t help but use it as the title of this post. Indeed it seems like an achievement worthy of such a title, mainly because of the way in which it was achieved. You probably couldn’t make a trip from Earth to Mercury more complicated if you tried, so it’s that much more amazing to see that such an apparently insane plan worked out in the end.
But let’s take a moment to go through this mission’s timeline… After the planning, preparations and actual construction took over five years, on August 3, 2004, the MESSENGER probe was launching, with the aim of becoming the first to orbit around Mercury. It then flew by Earth on August 2, 2005, and by Venus on October 24, 2006 and June 5, 2007, before finally encountering Mercury on January 14, 2008. However, at that time it was traveling much too fast, so this was only a flyby meant to slow it down even more, just like the three before it and the two others, also of Mercury, that came after it, on October 6, 2008 and September 29, 2009. Only then was it slow enough for its thrusters to be able to complete the final braking maneuver, during the next encounter.
Prior to this mission, such a feat appeared prohibitively expensive at best, if not even highly unlikely to even be possible with our current technology, because of the huge amount of fuel necessary to slow down the probe enough to be caught in the gravitational field of such a small planet this close to the Sun. However, this utterly insane trajectory, apparently designed in 1985, proved to be the solution. Even so, nearly a third of the total amount of fuel was used for this final maneuver, which required firing the thrusters for 15 minutes in order to slow the probe down by just over 3100 km/h and insert it on a highly elliptical orbit around Mercury.
Fuel is necessary for the actual mission as well, as adjustment maneuvers are planned at least once per Mercury year, which lasts just about 88 Earth days. These maneuvers are necessary because otherwise the minimum distance from Mercury would increase past 500 km, which is the maximum permitted by the mission plan. However, each such maneuver, meant to reduce the minimum distance back to 200 km, has the undesired but unavoidable side effect of reducing the orbital period by about 15 minutes, which means that some more fuel needs to be burned soon after, at the other end of the orbit, in order to get the orbital period back to the planned 12 hours.
Though the distance between the semi-major axes of Earth and Mercury is just under 91.7 million kilometers, MESSENGER traveled nearly 7.9 billion kilometers over more than six and a half years in order to get and stay there, orbital insertion being achieved at around 1 AM GMT on March 18, 2011. It will now remain in history as the first man-made satellite of Mercury and only the second probe to directly observe the planet. And it already imaged the planet almost completely and shocked everyone by discovering significant amounts of water in Mercury’s exosphere during the previous flybys. As a result, anything it will discover during its primary mission, which is scheduled to properly start on April 4, can at this point be considered a bonus.
After long and, at best, utterly pointless discussions, the United Nations’ Security Council finally voted to approve establishing a no-fly zone in Libya and also to take “all necessary measures short of an occupation force” to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas from Gaddafi’s attacks. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal and South Africa voted in favor and there were no votes against the resolution, but China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstained.
Of course, I’m not at all surprised by China not agreeing with this, in fact perhaps being a little surprised that they only abstained, while Russia’s position was exactly the one everyone expected them to have, but the other three countries that abstained leave a very bitter taste in my mouth. Brazil actually was a slight surprise, because I hadn’t seen anything these days stating that they were against such a resolution, though it may just be that I missed those reports. India and, even more so, Germany were known to oppose any sort of military action, though it’s no less unpleasant that nobody managed to change their stance.
I’m actually pleased by the rather permissive wording of the resolution, which allows for all sorts of attacks against Gaddafi’s forces if they so much as approach a city, seeing as that’d certainly count as a “civilian-populated area”, and probably even allows for assassination attempts, as a small team of assassins certainly couldn’t be considered “an occupation force” and therefore could potentially be deployed. Now it all depends on what exactly will each country do and when, because the rebels may well have only hours left otherwise. After all, Gaddafi’s son stated Wednesday that “it will all be over within 48 hours” and some hours ago Gaddafi himself said that the full assault on Benghazi will begin tonight and there will be no mercy shown to anyone who is armed or has fought against his troops.
A lot of things should be happening before dawn, though I’m currently seeing that US and NATO “sources” are disputing claims that warplanes will be in Libyan skies tonight. Still, the US did hint towards airstrikes aimed at tank columns and military vessels heading towards Benghazi and was reportedly already moving its own vessels in the area, France stated that aircraft will be ready to launch “within hours” of the resolution being passed and Canada already pledged six fighter jets to the efforts. Also, since the United Kingdom and Lebanon, alongside France, co-sponsored the resolution, one would assume that those countries would be swift to act as well. Especially the United Kingdom, as the British authorities still have a lot to atone for regarding their slow response when it came to evacuating British citizens caught in Libya at the start of the crisis.
But now I’ll have a slightly different question: If it’s wrong to start a war without the UN’s approval, wouldn’t it be equally wrong to openly refuse to take part in one that actually is started by the UN? I’m talking about Germany’s stance of course, saying that they will not take part in any sort of military action regardless of the UN’s resolution and instead advocating “measures” that’d be laughable if there wouldn’t be so many lives and likely even a part of the world’s future at stake, such as “targeted sanctions, political pressure and international isolation”. I mean, those are the things that the world has tried so far, since the start of the Libyan conflict, and the current situation should be proof enough that they’re not only not going to work, but in fact attempting such things only buys Gaddafi and his forces time to get back in control, making removing him even less likely in the future!
Thing is that I somehow doubt that anyone wants him back in control now. Well, all right, other dictatorships, including China, most likely wouldn’t mind, but otherwise… I’m not sure if Russia cares one way or the other right at this moment, while other countries that are too far from the conflict to possibly be directly affected immediately and that have rulers blind enough to fail to see the implications may think that it’s not their problem, but think that even they are somewhat bothered by the prospect, just not enough to actually want to get involved right now. But there is a very real danger that Gaddafi himself, who was, with great difficulty, ostensibly turned away from terrorism and converted into an ally against al-Qaeda, will get back to his old ways if allowed to win this war, especially considering all the recent violent outbursts aimed at the United States, France and various other countries that openly opposed his attacks.
There was this pretty blunt statement from his defense ministry earlier: “Any foreign military act against Libya will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger, and civilian and military [facilities] will become targets of Libya’s counterattack. The Mediterranean basin will face danger not just in the short-term, but also in the long-term.” I believe that a significant number of countries will not take kindly to that, but also that they will not take kindly to any other countries that will refuse to help them defend themselves from this threat, especially when said countries are generally considered to be allies…
Still, let’s wait and see how this will play out. Considering the number of casualties and the destruction caused by this conflict so far, it’s undeniable that the UN’s resolution came too late for far too many. But, mainly thanks to the sacrifice of the rebels who desperately, and improbably, managed to hold on to at least a part of Ajdabiya in face of Gaddafi’s continued onslaught in order to ensure that the vote will come before the start of the full and final assault on Benghazi, it may still be just in time to win this war… Assuming it’s not too little as well… And Libyans do seem to think it’s not too little, as current reports state that celebrations and demonstrations have started in various Libyan cities, including the capital Tripoli. Of course, such reports can’t be verified, but we’ll see what kind of information will trickle in over the next few hours.
This would be more of the same, a Sunday post thrown in just to have two written this week, but it would appear that I have something to say today, due to a strange visitor I had here last night. Not that I wouldn’t have plenty of things to say otherwise as well, but not something suitable for such a rushed post on the last evening of the week. In fact, don’t have something suitable for rushed posts at any time, though I somehow managed to do a relatively decent job with the last one, as well as with last week’s serious post…
Anyway, the point is that there is a person who stumbled upon my OkCupid profile some days ago, poked around the blog a little as well and then sent me a message there asking if I have anxiety problems. I ignored the message, but he was back last night, first visiting my profile and then back on the blog. (By the way, I’m saying “he” because he lists himself as male on OkCupid, but the profile is otherwise empty and the required information is fake, such as showing up as being 101 years old, so that’s just for convenience’s sake.) First he had what appeared to be a couple of unsuccessful attempts of searching for posts in Romanian, then did searches for “dad” and “money” and went rather thoroughly through the results. Which could indicate that he’s not actually looking for me, but knows who my dad is and is gathering information, particularly financial information, about him? Or was he just checking to see if he could figure out how much I could possibly pay for something, the search for “dad” being a result of seeing that I have no income of my own?
Interestingly, there was a guy who started chatting with me on OkCupid some months ago and the nick does ring a bell, but I really couldn’t tell you whether it’s the same one or just a similar one or my memory is really playing tricks on me. That guy also asked about my anxiety problems and seemed to prepare, in a somewhat roundabout way, to start telling me about some miraculous solution for such issues when I cut in and directly asked what exactly was he trying to sell me. He said he wasn’t exactly selling anything, but wanted to let me know of a potential solution that he used himself, at which point I said I’m not interested and ended the conversation as politely as I could while mentally sending him to various highly uncomfortable places and locations. So of course I’m wondering if this is not the same person, only apparently much more determined this time around.
The above paragraph isn’t why I say “another” in the title though. That’s because of some other person who stalked me on-line for weeks, if not months, back in 2007. Also coming from OkCupid, but either browsing secretly or not even having an account, because I never saw profile views related to the loads of quite thorough visits to my blog that came from there, all by the same person. That ended after said stalker apparently got bold and posted this comment (the one under the name Gabi, to make it clear) and I gave the reply that, due to some weird issue, shows up above it on that page. Probably didn’t like it anymore after seeing that I was in on it.
As a general note, I have few visitors on this site. I didn’t have many at the old location either, but they were still usually three to five times more than I usually have now, since many people apparently won’t update links even after six months… Either way, the vast majority of visits are strictly for the Perfect World International Information Dump page, so anyone taking any sort of interest in the rest of the site stands out right away, and anyone taking that sort of interest repeatedly even more so. Which means it’d be awfully hard for me to miss any such, shall we say, events, don’t you think?
So… Ahem… Dear stalker: If you’re trying to sell or otherwise promote some sort of “cure” for anxiety, I’m not interested, so move along and don’t come back. If, on the other hand, you want to know something about my dad, kindly go ask him. If neither of these is true, then would you kindly explain yourself? Because your course of action is rather peculiar and suspicious to say the least… Especially if you’re the same person that contacted me last time as well.
But enough about that. Can’t end a personal post these days without saying something about Forsaken World, right? So I will say that the open beta did launch pretty much right on schedule and that the European English server is thankfully PvE, so I can use it for my characters. Lots of people are extremely angered by that decision and they can make quite a mess on the forums, seeing as those who want PvP servers are the extremely competitive, violent and/or simply frustrated ones, so just the ones who can generally complain very much and very loudly. In fact, the server’s not even listed as PvE when you’re asked to select servers, indicating that they could eventually go forward with a controversial leaked plan stating that, on the European servers, some realms would be PvE and others PvP, but so far it seems to just be PvE and I’m happy with that.
As for my characters, I recreated my human mage and my vampire. I really liked playing my marksman, the skills seemed to work really well with my playing style, but mage remains my top choice in any game and vampire had to be the second because being able to play a vampire was what made me interested in this game in the first place, so the marksman got left behind because I didn’t want to struggle with three characters again, considering that plenty of the items you obtain early in the game expire after a certain number of days. So it’s these two and so far it’s going surprisingly well. I got both to level 21 basically without getting out of Freedom Harbor and have just started the main quest chain now. Sold the obsidian shards you get for free for pocket change, so I’m trying to do this second part of the main quest without proper gear, being far higher level than I should be while doing it. Then I’m even considering skipping straight to the kind of gear you get for sapphire shards, so going over the ruby ones as well, because now I know I can get to level 30 without significant problems, though it certainly will be difficult to do the final part of the Sea of Oblivion quests with such awful equipment…
A couple of days ago, the Greens’ Movement from here posted a link to an article about the Romanian government desiring to allow a large number of genetically modified crops to be grown in the country. Basically, they seem willing to allow everything that’s not for some reason banned by the European Union, supposedly in an attempt to make Romania’s agricultural sector once again competitive on the common market. Which, of course, didn’t surprise me, but did remind me that I should write something about this issue. Just know that I’ll sort of rush this post, so don’t expect links or too many details…
Let’s start with that economic perspective that is usually the main point anyone trying to support GMOs makes. They say that, since GMOs either directly resist pests and diseases, withstand the use of products that kill said pests, or both, the yields are much higher and therefore so are the farmers’ profits. Which seems quite true at first, until you sit and think about it for a moment.
For one, those yields tend to drop off after a while. Such intensive farming depletes the soil really fast, making it unsuitable for constant large yields, not to mention that those diseases and pests tend to evolve as well and possibly end up beating the GMOs’ resistance after some years. But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that a farmer using commercial GMOs is basically handing over control of their life to certain companies, and particularly to Monsanto. That means they’ll have to stick to the contract signed with said company, that they’re liable for lawsuits that they can do little to nothing about if for some reason said company feels like making an example out of someone, and, most importantly, that they’ll need to buy seeds from that company every single year. And, incidentally, that company will remain in a position to set the price for those seeds, as well as all the other products farmers need, as it sees fit, but high crop yields for GMOs imply a large supply of a product that many people try to avoid anyway, which results in lower income per unit for the farmer who still has to pay just as much per unit to use the company’s products. Therefore, while the total production may look like an increase in competitiveness overall and could likely also benefit the very large farms, the situation is certainly not lucrative for the average farmer, not to mention the average farm worker.
And we reached the issue of people. Another point those who support GMOs tend to make is that many people are starving even now and the population is set to increase further, so GMOs are the only way to ensure the yields required to feed everybody. Which is where I have to agree with them, as I don’t believe there could possibly be any healthy and environmentally-friendly methods of supplying even half of the current population with what they’d need to live decent lives. But that only means that the problem is the population, which is the main roadblock on the path to solving pretty much any major problem the world is currently facing anyway. As a result, anything meant to support a growing population instead of gradually reducing it in a rational and ethical manner is in fact extremely harmful, which means that this argument blows up right in the faces of those who support it.
Then again, considering the potential negative effects GMOs may have on people’s health, using them may actually be a method of reducing population, but in a very unethical manner. Whether that is in fact anyone’s intent or not is besides the point, what matters is that it may happen. And don’t bother pointing out the fact that every single one of them is only allowed to be used after passing supposedly rigurous tests, because the trustworthiness any laboratory or researcher who deems such products safe for human consumption has in my eyes is slim to none, seeing as they usually are paid, directly or indirectly, legally or illegally, just by these companies that have every interest to have all of their products on the market as soon as possible. Besides, it would be utterly impossible to properly approve such a product for human consumption right now because, when it comes to food, such tests can only be truly valid if done on a representative sample of the human population and covering decades of regular consumption. Which, incidentally, means that they are being done right now, but that the test subjects didn’t sign up for them…
And then you have the environmental impact, which should be the most important issue to consider and which is being completely ignored by GMO advocates because there’s nothing they can say on this topic that would put them in a good light. Quite simply, plants have evolved the way they have over millions of years for certain reasons, but that all changes, with potentially devastating consequences, as soon as GMOs end up pollinating them or spreading among them, which is unavoidable if any GMOs are allowed to be cultivated in the open. And don’t say that farmers have been genetically modifying crops ever since the advent of agriculture, because all those who carefully select the best seeds and mix the best types usually do is give evolution a helping hand, improving and strengthening the plants in question without altering their makeup in any potentially dangerous way, as the current methods of genetic modification do.
From this point of view, GMOs should only be cultivated and stored in perfectly sealed places and every person who enters such an area should be scanned very thoroughly before exiting to ensure that not even one seed or one grain of pollen is left on them when they go back out. Anything but that makes no sense whatsoever from an environmental perspective. And, incidentally, doing it like that could ensure a proper testing environment, which is required if any such crops are to ever be properly verified and, after the decades mentioned above, if by some odd chance one or two of them would actually happen to truly be fit to be released into the world, eventually approved.
In all, I can only hope that the approval of any GMOs will be delayed for the decades necessary for proper testing and that by then enough of us will have woken up for this perceived need of them to no longer exist, those who would still support them being immediately seen for what they really are. And what they are is either extremely selfish people fueled only by greed who would directly benefit from these approvals and don’t care about any other potential effects in the least or poor dumb people brainwashed by the ones I just mentioned into believing their fallacious arguments.
