The Idiots

The author of the first article in Romanian forgot to bring to Romanians' attention one of the most important paragraphs in the original article, "None of Romania's universities are ranked among the top 500."

I wish The Economist the best of luck in deciphering the complexity of this issue. I'm sure with the today's advancements in psychology, sociology and other disciplines many of the scholars of their own major universities could explain for us many of the aspects of the phenomenon, given time and motivation. And maybe they are already doing it for private or privileged entities, for the right compensation.

But the author just tackle the issue and brings to us only the short term with possible economic effects implications leaving place for many interpretations and of course, as many other press articles do, with no suggested solutions.

We are also noticing here the irony of the question in the title quoting a president that he uses himself a very old and advanced type of twisted psychology pointing sarcastically a problem that himself helped create.

Nobody is an idiot. But people, many times do exploitable, idiotic things. Sometimes on subconscious demand.

However, there are enough people in Romania who may understand well this problem but choose not to talk or whose silence have been bought or whose voice have been covered by well targeted noise or corrupted by political forces  that make confusion, corruption, mass ignorance, some of their tools in taking over that country.

Interestingly enough, i think they also have some kind of philosophy that covers their own conscience, thinking slowly eliminating "the garbage" or those who give in to the pressure of corruption they create, or "bury themselves" in sweet ignorance, for the future good of the country, (but not necessarily the people of the current generation) ("Uneori ca să îţi salvezi poporul trebuie mai întâi să salvezi ţara") (We all so well heard that for generations... "Generaţii de sacrificiu").  And when they do not fully succeed, they threat, frame and blackmail, trying especially to show to their own that is doable.

But if somebody would ask me i would say the problem has even deeper roots. It starts simply with the interdiction of talking of certain things, during the harshest period of the communist era. People were fearing their own family members as being possible informants. Once the habit formed, in a generation or two they relaxed the repression and started using softer methods and made the country look in many aspects similar to western countries and the habit was handed down throughout generations and changed form and became part of the culture. I don't know if it's not too obvious what i will try now to say, but by not talking about certain things in time generations stopped thinking at those things and those things were so related to the exercising of the most basic of human activities or rights that it lead to an atrophy of some area of personality for entire generations.

For reasons that may be known to the authors of the original article, Romania, thanks in part to its above quoted president is more visible internationally than other ex-communist countries but i think is safe to assume the phenomenon is similar.

It is also possible that Romania was somewhat treated specially and prepared for the future within the eastern block due to its potential as being a closer resemblance with western European countries and civilizations.

Domnul preşedinte

Unul din motivele pentru care poate am ajuns ce-am ajuns este că pe vremea înainte mergătorului şi pregătitorului Ceauşescu, ce a creat situaţia şi (pregătit cadrele) în care am ajuns pe bazele puse de cei ce ne-au adus în occident (nu ştiu dacă au avut vreodată un plan să şi ne păstreze acolo) a fost că toată ziua înainte de decembrie 89 criticam regimul. Găsisem o şmecherie, cum nu mai aveam program TV la care puteam să ne uităm, mi-am făcut şi eu ca tot băcăuanul antenă de ruşi şi prindeam Chişinăul, Moscova I şi II. Cu pureci şi aleatoriu. Şi ascultam Europa Liberă, îmi legasem o sârmă subţire de antena vecinului, care trecea prin faţa geamului meu (mai târziu am aflat că era ofiţer în armată) deci îi piratam antena. La servici comentam tot ce auzeam la Europa Liberă şi dacă mă întreba cineva de unde am auzit chestiile alea spuneam că de la Chişinău. Începuse perestroika şi glasnostul şi se auzeau şi la ei multe chestii neauzite la noi dar nu chiar ca la Europa Liberă. Într-o zi un tovarăş Felix (Nume real, altă coincidenţă) angajat de la IIRUC m-a chemat la el în birou, era de fapt o cameră plină cu aparatură unde lucrau cei de la IIRUC detaşaţi la IMU şi m-a prelucrat. Asta a fost cu puţin timp înainte de decembrie 89.

Dar ca pedeapsă, probabil că tovarăşii s-au gândit să-mi arate mie cum e democraţia şi peste ani chestia a contribuit cel puţin pe plan etic probabil la decizia care m-a trimis unde sunt acum. Dar cu handicap, fiind sabotat de la început de un alt tovarăş care a venit înainte cu vreo 2 luni din Florida în Oregon şi a trimis CV-ul meu peste tot spunând că e al lui. Şi probabil o poveste antemergătoare de speriat copiii de atunci.

La Chişinău la televizor vorbeau o limbă puţin diferită. Bunel în loc de bu-nic, micuţi în loc de copii, dar mai important, ziceau prezident şi nu preşe-dinte. Nu ştiu cum ziceau la paşa-port. Cred că pe atunci foloseau cuvântul rusesc. Iar toate formulările de adresare se terminau cu другие друзья.

Iliescu azi a apărut iar în presă cu cravată roşie, de pionier. Dar eu tot nu mai cred că Iliescu e pionier sau pro rus. Iar dacă vrea cineva să vadă o statuie de pionier reală, să se uite la poza de mai jos. (poza are rezoluţie bună, merită un clic)

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Deconstruirea numerologiei

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Ion <george.ion.email@gmail.com>
Date: 2012/8/4
Subject: Fake information, polution
To: xyz@yahoo.com


Nu ştiu dacă ştiai de jocul acela mental, era aşa. Trebuia să-i spui cuiva "spune repede un număr cuprins între 12 şi 5" sau ceva asemănător. (primul număr era între 11 şi 19 iar al doilea între 1 şi 9 dar astfel alese încât rezultatul scăderii între primul şi al doilea să fie o singură cifră). Bun. Deci pe orice persoană neavizată pe care am întrebat (să nu ştie despre jocul acesta) dacă nu a stat să se gândească sincer de loc răspunsul a fost absolut totdeauna diferenţa între primul şi al doilea număr, în cazul de mai sus 7. Eu am citit asta de mult într-un ziar românesc normal comunist şi (LOL îmi întârzie cursorul pe ecran când scriu am spioni la greu în calc) şi explicaţia era că creierul sau acel proces din creier care face scăderi face automat scăderea între primul şi al doilea număr (LOL acu sună telefonul care este pe aceeaşi linie cu DSL-ul) deci creierul face automat scăderea şi sugerează părţii conştiente un rezultat.

Deci 18.3. Ai să spui ce contează dacă era 18.2 sau 18.4 fiindcă oricum nu era real. Contează fiindcă creierul face automat împărţirea 18 la 3 şi rezulta 6, sau 18 e compus din 3 de 6, un număr sperietoare. Deci cine vede numărul acesta procesorul i se încălzeşte puţin, creierul îşi aprinde alte regiuni şi apare o distragere de la fenomenul real şi de la alte suspiciuni care ar trebui să le trezească.

Nu m-aş gândi la chestiile astea dacă nu aş vedea permanent pe maşini numere din astea. Eu cred că pe asta se bazează numerologia, pe operaţii aritmetice subconştiente din creier.

Ai să spui că e ok să foloseşti numerologia dacă are un scop bun şi pentru cei care o folosesc şi pentru mulţime care şi aşa nu ştie să se conducă singură şi aleargă mereu spre această iluzie care e democraţia. Iar eu am să spun că orice informaţie falsă transmisă poluează adică creşte entropia universului şi pe termen lung aduce ghinion iar dacă e transmisă în masă cu atât mai mult.
Şi mai naşpa când băieţii răi învaţă carte şi încep să folosească numerologia aceasta în alte scopuri decât nobile.

The Microwave as a Stove Top

Never use a microwave as a stove top. Why? because it gets full of shit and in a couple a years at most depending on how much you cook or heat up both on the stove and in the microwave. When i moved in here @March 2010 it was in the same position, i took it apart as i did today and put all the smaller parts in the dishwasher which by the way was in a similar state, and i cleaned the rest of it and put it back together. Didn't pay attention to the fact that by design the air from underneath doesn't go directly through a fan to the exhaust but through a labyrinth of ducts impossible to clean. And there is back flow from design with not enough sealing of the joints, besides the back flow at the joint with the exhaust. Never thought it was so important.

After washing just to show lack of sealing. There was no seal or gaskets on the high pressure side just the box itself in top of the fan housing sitting at an average of 1 mm distance after carefully tightnening all screw. By the way, the top of the box warps under weight near the two bolts that it hangs from under the the cabinet.

The last piece of duct of the high pressure part slides too easily in place with a play of mm. In the left side there was a big back flow both in front and rear. In rear you can see the stain on the wall. In front it was coming through the middle area of the upper grill (not shown in any picture) where was a large area of dead space  and in the room just above the stove where we were cooking. All cooked food was spiced up with up to 2 years old stuff. That combined with ohter factors were contributing to making me sick. You couldn't feel the smell because every time you start the stove there is a few seconds of smell from the spiral heaters until they heat up because they get sprinkled with tiny droplets of oil that cannot be washed and you mostly don't see.

Even if the microwave was new it was the same. I washed this one up two years ago as i said in the beginning. It was clean like new. Like right now. But it has a bad design and the whole concept of putting it in top of a stove is idiotic.

Ok  8/5 1:50 PM. While trying to install an extra fan in the duct i discovered the one way valve in top of the black square box in the picture above was only opening about 1/4 because it was hitting the adapter, visible above the oven in the cabinet in the first picture. Because of the misalignment with the duct they used an asymmetrical adapter. The curve at the corner is preventing the rectangular piece of aluminum that makes the valve to open all the way. Probably depending on how much you push the adapter in. When i removed that valve the flow grew a lot bigger. It probably wouldn't have back flowed that much.