Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

This is the last day of 2010. The time to sum everything up.

I didn't read much as I had a problem with reading for a while after my move to US. And most of the books I've read were not at all that memorable. I think that the last book of Peter F. Hamilton's Void trilogy - The Evolutionary Void was the weakest of all Commonwealth novels (I liked Judas Unchained but this one- not so much). On the bright side I discovered Charles Stross's Laundry universe and I think I will like it. In the end my favourite book of this year is by default Ian Cameron Esslemont's Stonewielder.

I liked all the movies I've seen this year which means just that I choose the right movies for myself. From Kick-Ass to Easy A. I think I liked Inception and Tron: Legacy the most. It's probably because I easily fall in love with visually pretty science fiction. At least their plots were better then Avatar.

Of animated movies I've only seen How to Train our Dragon and I loved it.

I didn't truly fell in love with any of the TV shows this year. In fact since Dollhouse ended I haven't felt excited about anything. At least Dollhouse made me think. I still watch television of course and there are some shows that I like but  almost all of those got canceled or are about to be. The Gates, Persons Unknown, Happy Town had only brief summer lives. Caprica and Stargate: Universe had some interesting motives but never managed to capture audience. Chase is probably canceled. Fringe is hanging by a thread. All that's left are shows I watch for the "and then hijinks ensue' -  Chuck and Eureka. I decide about V when it comes back because before it went back and forth between horrible and awesome. At least Burn Notice, Leverage and Nikita seem to be watched by someone besides me so they are to stay.

In the end I think that the shows I liked most this year are both British. One is obviously Doctor Who the other as you've probably guessed is Being Human. I need to finally watch Misfits too. I also liked  the Dirk Gently pilot.

The Real Life was even more depressing this year. It started at the end of 2009 when the snow started falling on Europe just around Christmas and it didn't stop. It spread to all Northern hemisphere from Washington to Beijing. Except for Vancouver where the Winter Olympics had a large snow deficiency problem. Then came Eyjafjallajokull eruption that grounded whole airport travel to Europe. Then there were floods in Poland almost every month since May and some people have been flooded four times in one year. The floods in Pakistan were even worse as with poorer infrastructure and higher population density came much higher toll in lives. Same thing happened with earthquakes. The horrifying effects of Haiti earthquake made Chilean's seem lucky in comparison.

At summer Moscow baked in horrible heat and smoke. This summer was one of the hottest recorded both in Europe in America. In Poland people crowded the air conditioned malls. Here in North Carolina I preferred not to go outside. Then came winter with more unusually high snowfalls and the airports in Europe closed for the third time in one year. Then airports in US too. While Europe and Eastern parts of North America are turned into snowplains the West Cost was drenched in rain. In its last breath 2010 exits with the tornadoes ravaging parts of US today. Last winter I blamed El Nino. This year's rain and snow I blame on Eyjafjallajokull. More dust in the air - more rain/snowfall.

The Chileans got lucky again when the trapped miners turned out to be alive and the whole world cheered this one happy ending when they were rescued. It was still a disaster and being entombed is not a pleasant experience in any way but at least this story had a happy ending. This was happy tale of world cooperation and use of technology. Not all tales had such happy ending as my country still lives and will probably feel for years the aftermaths of the airplane disaster that killed our president, his wife and many of Poland's most prominent politicians and military leaders. Part of me still can't quite believe this.

And we shouldn't forget the greatest human fuck up of 2010 - the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. This is when everything that could go wrong went wrong and we will feel the effects for years to come. Certainly the environment of the Gulf will.

I hope next year will be better (I'd rather not imagine it being worse). So...

HAPPY NEW 2011 YEAR.
May all your dreams come true and all the bad things happen in fiction.

The IgNobel Awards winners were presented with the awards on Thursday:

Medicine: Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest of the University of Amsterdam for discovering that asthma symptoms can be alleviated by a rollercoaster ride. I have to try this next year.

Physics: Lianne Parkin and associates at the University of Otago in New Zealand for proving that wearing socks outside the shoes makes it less likely to slip on icy sidewalks. I wonder what kind of shoes they have in New Zealand that make less friction then socks. Or maybe what kind of socks.

Biology: Gareth Jones of Bristol University and his team from China who showed that in the short-nosed fruit bat females who performed oral sex on their mates copulated for longer. "It is the first documented case of fellatio by adult animals other than humans to my knowledge, and opens questions about whether female animals can manipulate males via sexual activity, perhaps in this case to improve their chances of successful fertilization." This one I've heard of before. I remember seeing it on TV and thinking about how tiring it must be when they hung upside down and they have to bend up to do it. During the ceremony Jones invited the Laureates to join him in a demonstration with fruit bat puppets, thus exciting the audience as well as the Laureates who seemed oddly reluctant to return the toys.

Peace: Richard Stephens and associates of Keele University confirmed that swearing relieves pain. So those who swore off swearing are just get extra point for suffering. I also remember reading that screaming helps too. it seems the worst thing to do is suffer in silence.

Engineering: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and collaborators at the Institute of Zoology in London for perfecting a method of using small, remote-controlled helicopters for collect whales' snot.  All the kinds of excrement contain a lot of information about the species. There are people specializing in studying them. At least these get to play with remote helicopters.

Transportation Planning: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero got their second IgNobel for playing with slime. This time they worked with other Japanese and UK scientists to show that slime mold could be used to model an effective railway network.

Management:  Alessandro Pluchino and collaborators at the University of Catania for demonstrating mathematically that companies work more efficiently if staff are promoted at random. This is also something I've heard about and I still wonder if any company will try to test that.

Public Health: Manuel Barbeito at the Industrial Health and Safety Office in Maryland for studies showing experimentally that  microbes cling to beards and thus bearded scientists are potential laboratory hazards. I wonder what PZ Myers will make of it.

Chemistry: Eric Adams of MIT and others, including researchers at BP for disproving a long-held belief that oil and water do not mix. Hey, I thought everyone knew about emulsions.

Economics: jointly the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Magnetar for "creating and promoting new ways to invest money – ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof."

The only awards that made fun of the work of their Laureates but still are attended by most of them. This year all only Manuel Barbeito didn't come due to health issues. Maybe it was the microbes in his beard.

The battle has ended and the Teutonic Knights were defeated. I watched the one hour reenactment of the battle. I was at the same time envious and felt sorry for the people who were there.

I felt the first because it looked truly awesome. Over 2000 people came to take part in the show. When those thousands of knights started to fight it almost looked like an actual battle and not just group of people who do it for fun and try not to harm each other. Basically it was like a historic movie but live. And with better costumes (people who take part in this are very, very insistent on being as historically accurate as possible).

BBC has some photos from the event. Some more photos from the battle.
And some battle moments from euronews channel:



I felt sorry both for the 150 000 - 200 000 crowd gathered to watch this and the actors as today was the hottest day of summer so far (for the last week it's been hotter in Poland then here in North Carolina). It was 35^oC in the shade (95^oF as internet calculator informs me). Probably over 40^oC (104^oF) in the sun. And I don't even want to think how hot it was in those shiny, metal armors. lets just say that the Teutonic Knights Grand master was happy to die and as he said himself get out of that hell. The weather during actual battle was pretty similar and the real battle took about 12 hours. And Poles made Teutons wait in the sun. No wonder some knights fainted in the battlefield.

In present time he spectators also had to spent hours in the incredible traffic jams to get and then leave battle field (and AC is not very common in cars in Poland - especially older ones). Paramedics had a lot of work today and the signals of ambulances were drowning the battle noise from time to time. Still most people looked like they had fun and enjoyed the show.

Today is the 600th anniversary of battle of Grunwald; one of the biggest and most important battles of Medieval Europe.

The Order of the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary's Hospital in Jerusalem was brought in to help convert Prussians - group of people who lived near Baltic Sea. After they subdued Prussians and took over they lands, they started to raid Lithuanians who were still pagan then. There were also border and trade conflicts with Poland. This led to Polish-Lithuanian union. Lithuania (or at least it's leaders) converted to Christianity and the Grand Duke Jogaila married the Queen of Poland so both countries were united under the same ruler. Or more precisely he became a co-King of Poland with his wife Jadwiga. Jadwiga was the rightful hair of Polish crown and, although the law stated the Queen couldn't rule by herself, it didn't say the King had to be male. So Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland and Jogaila was crowned as King along her. As Jogaila resided in Poland Lithuania was ruled by his brother Vytautas.

Unfortunately Jadwiga died in childbirth but her husband ruled Poland for many years after. During that time the relations between Poland and Lithuania and the Teutonic Order grew worse. Teutonic Knights even disputed sincerity of the conversion and used this to rally help from knights from rest of Europe. The tension finally resulted in war.

The Polish and Lithuanian armies met and then marched together toward the seat of Teutonic Knights Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen - the Malbork castle. The Knights decided to march against the incoming armies. The two forces met near village that is now known as Grunwald.

The Polish-Lithuanian forces were more numerous. The Teutonic order had more heavy knights and they were more skilled. The battle was one of the most important moments in history of the region. It was used in the national propaganda in all countries of the region from Russia to Germany. For Poles it's one of the defining moments in history. Our Agnicourt. Because we won.

This was the start of Golden Age. The Jagiellon dynasty started by Jogaila ruled over a country that stretched from Baltic to Black sea and was at that time biggest country in Europe.

The reenactment of the Battle happens every year on the Saturday nearest to the anniversary. What started as a few enthusiast getting together, now evolved into a full recreation of medieval battle with knights coming from all over Europe. This year the big event will take part on 17th and there going to be over 2000 people reenacting the battle. And thousands are expected to come and see it on site. Polish television will be transmitting the event. I hope some of it will land on TV Polonia's site. I want to see it too.

This year was always to be the year of presidential elections in Poland. In the 10th of April plane crash two of the presidential candidates were killed. One of them was the reining president. This means that the election has to be sooner - in June instead of October. It also meant that two parties had to chose new candidates. The social-democratic replacement candidate was chosen last week but in current Polish political situation that party's candidate never stood a chance. Everyone was waiting who will be chosen by the main opposition party from which the late president came. Today it was announced that it will be his twin brother.

President Kaczyński was buried in the Wawel where the kings and important historical figures were buried. Some people protested but I, despite agreeing that he didn't do anything deserving the honor, thought it was something people needed. Funerals are for the living. After such a great tragedy people needed a great gestures to help them to deal with shock and grief. After all some of the kings did to deserve it was to be born. He deserved it by dieing.

I however dislike the hypocrisy that followed his death. During the week after the crash everyone was acting like he was a great, misunderstood and tragic figure, even though just before he was often ridiculed and wildly disliked.

I didn't like president Kaczyński. I never voted for him. I think he was lousy president of Warsaw and bad president of Poland. Most people agreed. Warsaw didn't vote for him in last presidential election despite the fact that the whole region around it did. The only thing he did for the city was the Warsaw Uprising museum. Meanwhile roads and, communication problems just got worse. As a president of the country he was petty, self-centered and sulky. Again all the most positive thing that came from his rule is history related. Although I appreciate the fact that not only the Russians finally admitted the crimes that NKVD (Stalin's secret police) committed in Katyń but also that the rest of the world heard about it (even though I don't think it was worth all does lives). But a nation doesn't live on history and in current affair he was a disaster.  Many Poles, including me, were waiting for this year's election hoping he will lose. According to all pols he was set to lose. Just like his brother lost the Parliamentary election just two years after his party took the power.

Now his brother is trying to use pity votes to get his position as president. And I'm sure this is counting on sympathy of people because he was even more disliked then the late president. The late president who had almost no chances for second term. The thought that he may make it, makes me consider going all the way to Washington to vote against him in June. I got friends there that have already invited me to come sometime...

Today we wash the dishes and clean up our rooms. Or at least we promise to not waste and pollute. Like we promise to exercise and eat less on New Years Eve. The Earth Day. I spent the day traveling around as the buses in the region are free today. I also paid for planting a tree. I segregate the trash and try to preserve water and energy. I still feel it's not nearly enough and no one day event can really make a difference but if enough people try to do one small thing may at least slow down the changes. I try to treat this day as a reminder to try harder before the changes we started become to great to bear. Especially to polar bears - look what they have to resort to. All your fault. OK, ours.

I got the US census questions in the mail today. I checked and it seems foreigners are to do it too if we live here. So I read the questions and they are rather boring. All questionaries I had to fill in the past two months asked more detailed questions. They read like just and preface to the actual cencus so I kept looking for more but it turned out the other pages are for other people. I remember taking part in 2002 Polish census and the questions were pretty general but took few pages. This kind of data the US asks for could be probably pulled from the local government offices.

Still some questions seem pretty weir. In question 8 they ask if one is Hispanic, Latino or Spanish. The Hispanic and Latino bit seems a little redundant. As far as I understand Hispanic is a subset of Latino as Latino means not only Spanish speaking people of the Americas but also Brazilians and the French speaking South Americans too. And why are Saniards different to other Europeans? And if Spaniards then why not Portuguese? They had as much hand in the creation of Latin America as Spaniards. There are many foreigners as students or researchers from Europe here. It's a bit weird to treat every other European as being one group and Spaniards as separate ethnicity. And what exactly one means by Spanish origin? Does Spanish mother counts like e.g. Helena Bonham Carter's? Are her and hers and Tim Burton's children Hispanic in US? Good they don't live in Hollywood and don't have to answer such questions. And on othe hand why is noone interested in my ethnicity?

I also find it funny that they insist on mailing it back today in an attached letter dated March 15 but the census asks about the state of household on April 1. They want me to predict the future. Who knows maybe in 2 weeks there will be ten other people living here.