acc!!!

this morning I woke up at four o'clock. some clever person in the building has decided that they need heating at four o' clock in the morning, I can't fathom why - old people having sex over the blanket? urgh, that's disgusting...

anyway, thanks to this unknown, my bedroom had a nice thrumming noise since four o'clock (I better repeat, freaking four o'clock in a bicycle!!!), so I couldn't sleep.

what do you do when you can't sleep? well, I wasn't hungry, didn't really want to read, so I decided to advance a lil bit my work. so went in the salon and started working at my thesis, cataloguing the files in my 250GB LaCie hard drive... sometimes I just loose some of them and it's a pain in my bum when I still have to write them up in the thesis... I also ealised how many missing pieces there are... found a few errors here and there too late now to correct... I'll just have to gloss over them...

all in all, a proficuous day until now...

now I am off to the postoffice to get two registered mails, which I strongly suspect to be more parking fines... or may be God (if there's any) has decided to stop hassling me and may be my appeal has had success... I really am through with turning my money over to the state for a misplaced road sign not complying EU regulations. rant!!!

well, you all, have a nice day!!! ;-)

How long can you drive in reverse gear???

That is, before the police pulls you over? An aussie tried to do this... he was stopped by the police after only 20Km, but his p;lan was to do the full 500 which separated him from Perth... the guy justified himself saying that his gearbox had broken...



it is true that service stations are few and far between in the australian outback, but come on!!!

(click on the link for the full details)

and what about weddings?

regarding my bro' wedding, my other younger bro has put up some piccies online... enjoy the view of me wearing a suite... and a typical (modern) sardinian wedding. peace and love, brothers and sisters...

tonight is relax time, will watch "The Constant Gardener", which seemingly portray Pharma industries as big ugly multinational corporation bent on exploiting poor people in developing countries... which may be the true... Only, may be they don't exploit just developing countryman... how about young post-docs? just kidding mate... or may be not? hasta la vista!!!

and here we are again...

it's the weekend. I've given a very interesting presentation (no shit, really) to the MedChem board here at Jans(s)enn... my work of the last six months did cause quite a lot of buz (sorry that I can't show it, it's classified). I liked that, kicking a wasp nest...

now it's the weekend, with my girlfriend busy working (night watch in the hospital) and voting (back to Liege) I'll try to concentrate on my thesis writing the whole of saturday and sunday... so that next weekend will be able to spend some quality time with her... good weekend to everybody reading, then...

Gnam!!!

here comes a nice dragonfly... but there's something else on the flower...

lost my counter and all other customisations...

Damn, I switched over to the new blogger/google/beta and have now lost everything... will take some time to recover them, hopefully my counter wioll not have been reset.

On The Nature of Marriage

Realising that my brother was getting married (for real!!!) got me thinking... Mind you, I've never been adverse to it as some friends, but talking to my girlfriend I tried to explain her how i did saw the marriage in my very personal, atheistic, humanistic view of the world...

Marriage is not about being christians. It's present in all cultures of the world. or at least, 99.9%. It's not certainly about GOD, since atheist chinese and japanese still marry... the way I see it, it is a vow, you taking responsibility of caring about your broom/bride, in front of those who constitute your immediate society. Parents, friends, everybody you care about and whose opinion you deem important. It's a pledge that you make to other person, in my case a pledge of exclusivity (being faithful to him/her), a reassurance that once she's pregnant I will not escape with another one, no matter how strong the temptation... As a matter of fact, a very mundane thing. An insurance policy for her. it's my way of saying "Don't worry, I'll be there for our children to grow responsibly."

So, when I'll take the big step (or plunge?), I'll go to church (for very social reason, namely my gf and family being catholic), gleefully lie about all that GOD stuff, and be sincere about loving her and taking care of her until death do us part... I guess it's a reasonable and honest compromise... 'nuff said...

let's go back to space/science/funny things now... ;-)

Speedy Planets...

Astronomers have discovered Jupiter sized planets orbiting their home stars in less than one days... this means they're so close that their surface is heated at 3000 Celsius!!! If we had one of them here, it would probably appear like a bulge on the sun ball... wouldn't that be cool?

Isn't it unfair?

Another year goes by, and yet I haven't won the Nobel... Physics went two days ago, Chemistry yesterday...

it's really depressing... makes me think that may be a career in finances would have been more proficuous... especially noting that at my same age or less, young finances people here have their car and home bills footed by the company... grrr... as if they were the one who make the drugs... enough ranting, I better get back to work, or the prize will escape me next year too :-)

Sticky, Stinky, Fishy, Piggy!!!

the four adjectives which me and Marie were serving to each other during our holidays in sardinia... it was damn hot and we were coming back home after one day spent out touring the northern coast... badly in need for a shower, as you can guess...

Piggy was added at the last minute, when a couple of wild boar crossed our path as we were driving back to the B&B... While one of them cruised along my car, I half thought about hitting him for the barbecue the day after... Luckily I didn't do it. First, we were inside the borders of a national park, so big fine... Second, even if i did hit him, our landlady told us, it would probably have killed la macchinetta but wouldn't have done much harm to him - this was the fate of my landlady car when she did the same.



incidentally, here's the powerful moyen de transport we used during the epic holidays...

let's come back to the boar now:
Third, had he/she been in heat (the pig, not us), the meat would have been very disgusting...

so, long live the wild boar!

Back to belgium...

Ehy I'm back... very very tired, so that I had to take one day more of vacation to sleep it over... not that it did help... being Belgium as gloomy as ever, today I still feel very very sleepy. may be because I had to wake up at 5.30 to dodge the traffic in the Brussels and Antwerpen rings? anyway, I'll try to get my act to gether, now, lil breakfast, lil checking my emails, lil tour saying hello to everybody...

then plunge myself into real work... well, more like powerpointing another idiot-proof presentation...

I leave you with a picture taken during my holidays...

Physics of Superheroes

an interesting read? I don't know... (EDIT: in fact quite a boring one. the first part with the history of superman powers is nice, but in the second one the author goes to infinite lenghts to explain how he computes the force necessary for superman to leap a tall building... or may be I'm just forgetting that most people don't leave as I do in the Mathemagic realm)

I'll be trying to finish Judas Unchained during the flight, and in the small bites of free time during my holidays...

time to go now...

see you soon!

Richard "Hamster" Hammond hurt in car crash

Many of you know of my fascination for the BBC program TOP GEAR. I do enjoy the mix of light entertainment and car news, get angry to their unreasonable stand against global warming (albeit some of their stances are reasonably put). anyway, it's possibly my fav program...

Today's news is that one of his presenter, Richard hammond has been seriously hurt during the filming of the next series of episodes.

what can I say? get well soon, Hamster...

My Pirate name is...

keeping up with yesterday's Talk Like a Pirate Day, here it comes!!!

My Pirate Name Is...

Cannibal Sultan of Timor

What's Your Pirate Name?

WOW!!!

a lots of visits (37 pageloads) yesterday...

it must depends from the fact that I posted a lot so it did often pop up in the 'recently updated' list of blogspot... let's see if I can repeat the exploit today...

before the hyatus of my holidays... I guess I will not be posting a lot during the coming ten days...

will try to put up some holidays pictures when I get back... :-)

How much does the National Security budget of the US amounts to?

I can't know (you have to pay to get access). I wish I did though. I have always been wandering what a drag the "Defense" expenses are on countries. How better will we be if we didn't have to spend all those money and energies in unproductive things? Of course we may niot be that better as our neighbours would invade us to rob our richs...

It is a sad, sad world...

Wii is wiith us...

No pesky PS3, thanks, I have been a Nintendo fans since I saw Pikmin on the gamecube... I love challenging, yet cute-looking videogames, and there's nothing like nintendo for them...

And Gamecube successor, the Wii, is coming out soon... featuring a new two-pieces, motion-sensitive, free-hand controller which I really believe is going to make games more fun... think about playing soulcalibur by really punching your opponents sitting in the sofa close to you... or most likely standing in front of the TV...

I can't wait to play next gen's Zelda: Twilight Princess



and Wii Sports:



and what else? well, I don't care. I play very rarely (not at all in the last nine months or so), so even very few (possibly PARTY/multiplayer) games will do for me.

But I hope they keep up a decent pipeline so that the user base will not switch over to the more muscular PS3 and X360... XP

Personally, I think M$ is going to loose anyway. Nintendo has shown with the DS that it can keep up and beat the crap out of Sony, let's hope tey keep up with the good job...

Project Bioshield: The Mess

No, it's not a new videogame title for PS2...

it's the US initiative to protect themselves from unlikely bio-weapons terrorist attack...

Tara talks about it. Original source from the NY Times.

apparently, big pharma companies are not interested in the deal (I wonder why), so small start ups with no proven track record are stepping in. I feel like making unsubstantiated allegations today, so I will put out mine: is this the truth? or is just simply that lots of these start ups sprouted from nowhere are just clocely linked to government personalities in charge of assigning the fundings? Are americans, once again, lining someone's pockets with public money? nothing wrong, mind you, if they were getting something in return... but... let me doubt this...

Now that I've sprouted non-sense, I can even read the article :-)

EDIT: read the article... it seems I wasn't so wrong. As Andreotti says, to think bad of someone is a sin, but you always get it right.

quote from the article:

“A torturous labyrinth of federal fiefdoms into which billions disappear,” Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said of the program. “Yet few antidotes have yet to emerge.”

I am a Tiger!!!

thanks to the chick

Men's issue with their body...

Too many hair, too smelly, too much... male? yep, that's it...

some scientists tackle the fact that we men are not all Brad Pitt

We smell, we fart, we have hair spread all around our bodies, and so on... some people are ok with it. I am ok with myself, but my GF sometimes complain about my body odour - strange, since previous acquantainces never raised the issue - age effect?
mah...

interestingly, the people most obsessed are those addicted to MTV and such 'entertainment'... not surprising... potato couches sitting on the sofa all day looking at beautifully sculpted male/female dancers. your self esteem isn't certainly going to go up...

again, I find strange that am not disturbed by the fact of spending my free time watching Desperate Housewives or Ally Mc Beal. it must be 'cause I enjoy the stories more than the picture (albeit the girls in the show are certainly hot). or may be I don't need to fantasize on them. I have a real woman sharing my life - kudos to her... ;-)