I was checking out my friend's blog and found a link to a news article. I try to avoid posting news article links on my blog, unless it's related to my rantings but this one had to be linked:
World's most infamous cannibal becomes a vegetarian
If you go to meet someone, it's an appointment. But if you deliberately avoid someone, is that called dis-appointment?
I read today in Finnish evening magazine that one Professor and one Psychologist got scammed in Finland. The good ol' Nigerian e-mail scam.
I've been writing about common sense before, and how we only believe what experts say. What do we do now when even experts, who are the sole source of our common sense, are incapable of using it? Like after one school incident in Finland one psychologist told us that 'childhood is very important for the development of a person'. Really? If I would say 'if it snows, the roads might be slippery' is completely useless if I do not have a decree in meteorology and/or physics...
I give you a free tip, which not only works in 99.999% of all deals in the internet, also applies to many many life situations. (You know, the so-called "real life".)
HUIJAUSKIRJEITÄ
Professori menetti noin 20 000 euroa tavoitellessaan yli
20 miljoonan dollarin perintöä. Rahat hävisivät, mutta miljoonaperintö jäi
saamatta.
Tapauksen juuret juontuvat viime vuoden kevääseen, kun
professoriin otettiin yhteyttä sähköpostilla. Kirjoittaja väitti olevansa
afrikkalaisvaltion entisen presidentin poika, joka joutui poliittisista syistä
piileskelemään.
Hän halusi kuitenkin paeta maasta ja oli valmis lähettämään
professorille perintönsä 27 miljoonaa USA:n dollaria. Siihen liittyvien asioiden
hoitamista varten piti kuitenkin lähettää rahaa.
"Ei tosiuskottavaa"
Tilanteet etenivät niin, että professorin piti mennä Sveitsiin
Zürichiin hakemaan pankista rahat tietyn henkilön nimissä olevalta tililtä.
Hänelle selvisi, ettei annetussa osoitteessa ollut kyseistä pankkia, mutta sen
sijaan toinen pankki.
Professori ei Sveitsiin mennyt, mutta lähetti vielä kolme eri
kertaa rahaa. Professori teki elokuussa ilmoituksen Helsingin
poliisille.
Poliisi katsoi, ettei petosrikoksen tunnusmerkistö jutussa
täyty ja lopetti tutkinnan. Se katsoi myös, ettei yleisen elämänkokemuksen
mukaan ole tosiuskottavaa, että täysin tuntematon ulkomaan kansalainen
lähettäisi nimellistä kulukorvausta vastaan toiseen maahan tuntemattomalle 27
miljoonaa dollaria.
Psykologi haksahti
Helsingin poliisille tehtiin toinenkin ilmoitus
vastaavantapaisesta tapauksesta, kun psykologi menetti 10 000 euroa
havitellessaan suurta lottovoittoa.
Hän sai kesäkuussa 2007 kirjeen, jonka mukaan hän oli
voittanut Espanjassa 615 000 euron lottovoiton. Lottovoiton lunastamiseksi
hän lähetti kolmena kertana rahaa Espanjaan yhteensä noin 5 600 euroa. Osa
rahoista ohjautui Etelä-Koreaan.
Psykologi sai muutaman viikon kuluttua puhelun, jossa
kerrottiin, että häntä oli huijattu, sillä hänen voittamansa lottopotti olikin
786 000 euroa.
Tämän lunastamiseksi psykologi lähetti vielä neljä kertaa
rahaa Espanjaan, yhteensä noin 4 000 euroa. Luvattuja voittorahoja ei
tullut, mutta sen sijaan hän sai väärennetyn 400 000 euron shekin. Poliisi
päätti tässäkin jutussa esitutkinnan.
JARMO LUUPPALA
Today's been a busy blogging day for me...
No, no, remember, remember the 22nd of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot.
Exactly 20 years ago WGN-TV's News at Nine was hijacked by still unknown pirates.
Read more about Max Headroom Pirating Incident in:
Wikipedia - Damn Interesting
Today is the 44th anniversary of The Nightmare On Elm Street, where the 35th U.S. President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald. I feel for Jacqueline, but I have a personal demand, too. I believe the official story is the correct one. Lee Harvey did it alone, no doubt about it.
What I would like to know is when do we get enchantments? The "magic bullet" that killed Kennedy and seriously wounded Connally had to be enchanted, or it was shot from an enchanted rifle. And since the U.S. government got hold of the weapon, they must have figured out what kind of magic or enchantment was casted on that rifle by now. Please release the information / spell / enchantment / technology for the good of mankind!
Imagine what this kind of technology could do?
- Heart patients. When one of the veins that feed the heart gets blocked, we send a tiny probe injected in blood and it finds its way to the blockage and clears it out!
- Airplane safety. No more collisions with another planes nor with buildings when airplanes can stop mid-air, linger there for a second or two, take dramatic, more than 90 decree turns and fly away from danger!
- Car safety & bullet proof vests & other protection. When the bullet that had broken collar bones, bones in wrist, ribs, etc. and it still was in pristine condition, it must have an armour we have never seen before. They have the bullet, just check what kind of material it was and how it was made virtually indestructible. We need that for our safety.
- Baseball, basketball, soccer, football. Imagine how interesting ballgames would get if we have course changing, levitating balls.
- Flying cars and interstellar space travel. When objects don't need to obey gravity nor inertia and are virtually indestructible regardless of the impacts it endures, we could easily use the same technology first to flying cars and maybe later for interstellar space travel. If not interstellar, at least interplanetary.
The list can go on and on!
Of course this technology could be used for bullets as well, to make super-snipers that can with average skills shoot several bullets faster than normally possible towards moving targets with little or no aiming hitting several targets with one bullet, but I don't think we need that kind of technology.
Another thing, in order to be able to run home, run to kill Tippit, change direction, run to the theatre faster than humanly possible without losing breath must indicate Oswald was using very efficient performance enhancers. U.S. government had the body, too. By now they must have figured out which chemicals was in the body and how to reproduce them in order to improve human performance.
Release the new technology already!
My colleague has even worse lighter than I do. Same brand, simpler model, yet it has instructions. If I can interpret correctly, the instructions are as follows:
Step 1: Press the button.
I don't know how I can manage this complicated set of instructions. My head is exploding!
This reminds me of a quote by Jack Handy:
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: 'Mankind'. Basically, it's made up of two separate words: 'mank' and 'ind'. What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
I wrote yesterday about another optical illusion. (Saw it in Digg.) I guess it's time to explain how to do it. When I saw the image, big gears started to turn in my head, and it took me about 4,58863462564562 seconds to figure out how to do it in Photoshop. The lines makes the faded image on the background to lose contrast when you're close and to gain contrast when you are far away... Similar mechanics behind this illusion as in the first illusion, but not quite the same. I tested it and it worked. (Somehow.)
Oh, and a tip: You can look at the image from the side to see the effect from a closer range.
Preparations - Making A Texture
1. Make a new image, about 6px x 6px. Transparent.
2. Take black pen and draw vertical line from the top left to bottom left. 3px wide.
3. Save as PSD.
Making Of The Illusion
1. Take an image. Any image you like.
2. Desaturate. (Make it Black and White.)
3. Take out all the parts you don't like from the sides. Ie, the background.
4. Use Burn and Dodge tools and Brightness/Contrast to make the image as low in contrast as possible. (Don't mind about the brightness yet. Just make it gray(ish) and very low in contrast.)
5. Create a new layer and fill it with white.
6. Filter/Texture/Texturizer and load the PSD file. Light direction left, scaling 100% and relief 50 or as high as it goes. (From this point on your zoom needs to be 100%.)
7. Select/Color range/Pure white.
8. Press Delete.
9. Switch back to the bottom layer, with the image you want to vanish when you're close and appear when you go further away. Using Brightness/Contrast you can lower the contrast and make the brightness higher. Go far and close while having the Brightness/Contrast dialog open so you see from the preview when it's nice.
A vot. Horosho!
I saw another optical illusion today. I made a rough draft of it when I got home. It actually kinda works.
I like it when you see an image and pieces start immediately falling to their places.
Click to enlarge.
I got a new lighter. Didn't even look at it. Was having a ciggie, and noticed that this one has some sort of "child resistant" mark on it. And - get this - instructions how to use the lighter!
Child resistant mark, and a little holder on top of the scrolling bit to "protect" something. No it doesn't. You just have to apply like 0,5 Newtons more pressure when using the lighter. I think even a 3-year old child can apply that much pressure. Kids get picture-books before they learn to read. It's counter-productive to put instructions how to by-pass the child protection in images.
Besides, if an adult is too dumb to use a lighter, do we really want to give him fire?
This whole idea of child protection in a lighter is a dumb idea. It changes the responsibility of protecting the child away from parents to the cigarette lighter manufacturer. A parent who is too dumb to learn how to use a lighter on their own, and who has a 4-year old child should not have lighters in the house and especially should not have a child.
Yesterday I made some pizza. Anchovies, banana, green olives with basil and parsley. Yummy. Anchovies and banana are a killer combination.
My housemate, Jussi Niemi a.k.a. Ronsu had an idea. We were writing An Universal Peace Treaty between us, and this is the second clause in the peace treaty.
"All humans have the right to be super-heroes, as long as they don't hurt any innocent people."
I think this can be a tagline for the Watchmen movie...
Finland's Prime Minister was admitted to hospital last night for kidney stones. This must be karma. Just in time for the strike and mass-resignation you, Katainen and others caused! Have fun without proper health care.
Helsingin Sanomat (Fin) - Iltalehti (Fin)
Y Net (En) - YLE (En)
For those who don't know what's going on in Finnish health-care, here's an article.
I've been writing about common sense before. Why is common sense a privilege of only higher educates? We do not believe anything, unless the person who says it is an expert in this area. You see it in every possible news article where any professor or any other "expert" is stating the obvious.
For example a psychologist descended from her pedestal among us mortals and stated that the 7/11 Jokela-School Shooting survived victims, families and the pupils of the school may need their privacy to recover from the tragedy. Really? We couldn't believe the pupil who said he doesn't want to give a statement, but needs his privacy instead? He's only a kid. What does he know? We actually needed a professional psychologist to give her professional opinion that in great tragedy it might not be helpful to have a media gore-galore running the lives of the involved...
Experts say that in very low temperatures it is recommended to dress warm. Really? My mom said that when I was a kid, I figured it out myself, too, when I was out in winter without enough clothes on, but still I didn't believe it until I heard it from a medical expert.
Can we please try to use our brains every now and then? Yes, I do know hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts. I don't need an expert telling me this, and I do not need hammer-usage regulations either.
I opened a new blog, as I needed to write some things in Finnish. There are some things that cannot be translated, and some cultural issues that only native Finnish would understand. This will still remain my main blog, but every now and then there's going to be a post in the Finnish side as well. Perhaps.
http://sammakoitasuussa.blogspot.com/
The Finnish salaries in health-care are a joke. For years our nurses have moved to Sweden or Norway, even to United Kingdom, after graduating, since the salaries in health-care are so ridiculously low it's better to move away from Finland.
3rd of June Bilderberg-meeting finished, which also our Minister of Finance, Jyrki Katainen attended. Prior to that meeting Katainen had been quite silent in the media. First thing he started to advocate after the meeting was to ease the heritage taxes for huge heritages. The second thing he started to push through was when 31st of July he announced that health-care won't be getting the salary increase he promised them during his campaign before the elections. He is the chairman of the Finnish National Coalition Party. (Conservative middle-right-wing party.)
The health-care professionals were promised a salary increase prior to the elections, which they were denied after the elections. (Big surprise there.) The negotiations went so sour they are threatening with a strike and mass-resignations. In spite of all of this, they still performed better than expected in the Jokela School Massacre or 7/11 Shootings. Within one hour from the info there's been shooting in the school the local hospitals had 18 operation rooms ready and dozens of ambulances there. They performed without a glitch.
They still won't be getting any salary increases. I really would like to know how Jyrki Katainen is feeling right now. What went through his mind when all went bad in Jokela, and still the underpaid, demotivated health-care specialists performed class-A treatment.
Government is planning a force-law to prevent nurses leaving the hospitals. Nurses are planning that if the law is passed, they leave health-care and won't be coming back. Nice going.
Tell me, Jyrki, what went through your mind when you saw from the news an ambulance, after an ambulance arriving to the school and altruistically helping the shocked children? How are you feeling today? Are you planning to give credit to our heroic health-care personnel?
Words are not enough at this point. I want to see some action.
And fast. They started to close down hospitals already!
I was reading Violent Acres fan-forum today and there was a lot of praise for her writings. Plenty of people said they love her, etc... Somehow this thing about her just popped in to my head today... I thought it was funny. (If indeed this is my idea... maybe I got it from somewhere and my subconscious just tells me it's my idea.)
She's my wet dream. Too bad the liquid is piss and vinegar.
Partly blue sky, partly black, partly sunny, partly hail storm, partly heavy rain. Since this morning the sea level at the dam has risen three metres. (Higher than ever before.) Today in pet stores some animals have died. At first they thought it was gas leak, but now they know it was due to stress.
I wonder why I can't see even birds in the sky.
Just in case I'm at the moment 1.8 metres below the sea level.
I'll post an update a day after tomorrow...
Found news in English, too.
Really traditional. - From 50's I think. Around the time when pasta came to Finland. If you've looked at any of my recipes, you might notice they are a bit vague. It's because I don't use a clock, nor measurement tools in kitchen. I measure with feeling, and the clock doesn't know when the food is ready. So bear with me...
Makaroonilaatikko - Macaroni-box
2 onions
3 eggs
A lot of garlic
About 0,5l of macaroni pasta (the 1/3 of a circle type tube thing)
About 0,6 - 0,7l milk
About 500g minced beef
Cheese
Paprika powder / chili powder (you decide)
White pepper
Set the oven at about 200°C. Take an oven-tray about 20cm x 30cm x 7cm in size. (This is just an estimate, I have no measurement tools, remember?) Boil the macaroni. Chop the onions. Chop the garlic. Fry the beef. Add those spices to the meat. A lot of both. Fry the onions.
Yep, separately if you bought your meat from a shop. It contains so much water you need to pour that away, so do that before adding spices. If you are lucky enough to live next to a butcher, then you can add the spices immediately and fry the onions at the same time. In this case, put the onions first to the pan and add meat on top.
Mix the meat, macaroni, onions and garlic together in the tray. I guess a tray to make meatloaf or a cake is quite ok size. Add some more white pepper and paprika powder. Mix some more.
Take about 0,6 - 0,7 litres of milk, add 3 (or 4) eggs in the mix and stir with a fork. Pour the stuff on top of the macaroni-meat-mix, so it just barely don't cover it completely. Add cheese on top.
Put in the oven for like ... the time you can listen to Notkea Rotta: Kontula - Koh Phangan All Night Long album completely. How long is that? 45 minutes? About. Well... as long as you see the milk has been sucked from the sides, if you use glass tray. (I like glass trays, you see when the food is ready.)
There was an American-style school shooting in Finland today. (I guess we can call it Seven Eleven shootings from now on.) This is the first (and hopefully last) of its kind. (I think there was an incident couple of decades ago when someone shot couple of bullies in one school, but that wasn't random madness.) I guess one of the safest countries in the world is no longer that safe. Pekka-Eric Auvinen took his Charlene (the same idea as in the movie Full Metal Jacket) a Sig Sauer .22 Mosquito pistol (same model than in Columbine) to school.
This guy had some issues. It's weird his parents didn't notice it. He was writing about this massacre weeks in advance on forums, his blog, his Youtube account etc. Unfortunately only preparing a crime is not illegal in Finland, excluding preparations for terrorist attack or illegal surveillance. In this modern world, where mothers carrying their babies and breast-milk bottles are suspected terrorist, how come planning a mass-murder in school can't be counted as an act of terrorism? Especially when he said "Attack Type: Mass murder, political terrorism (altough I choosed the school as target, my motives for the attack are political and much much deeper and therefore I don’t want this to be called only as “school shooting”)." - ...So why they couldn't stop him in advance?
All his .doc files are titled: "Hate, I'm so full of it, and I love it." Sick puppy. OK, I understand that every teenager is frustrated.
When you are a teenager you are always right, and you will never be so right in your life. (My dad used to say that to me when I was a teenager, and I didn't really understand it then...) Every teenager goes through a period of healthy angstic misantrophy, but there's a fine line between that and a sic fixation on murder and death.
This guy was extremely fixated on violence, especially mass- and serial killers. He especially endorsed Columbine shooting, but other school shootings as well. "A child is healthy when he's playing, sick when he can't stop." His teachers have been saying in the media that he was "above the average student", "extremely bright" but "had interest in far-right and far-left movements". Far-left and far-right? What does this mean? He liked violence in general?
His rantings over the internet also express his hatred towards democracy and totalitarian regimes, his love for freedom and dreams of ruling class who decide over the "weak" majority of people is, to me, an indication that he actually needed to think his opinions and world view much more.
Majority of his writings were self-contradicting and full of repetition. Fancy words put together to sound intelligent. Train of thoughts if you will.
I read political texts/writings/books, and follow news around the world, I understand some of the reasons he explains why he was bitter. But violence on grass-root level is never a solution. It won't make a difference. Unfortunately government-level violence has been, is and will be a solution to many problems. He boasted about his self-awareness. Yet he didn't stop to think what this will do. If any changes are done, they don't change the system. Well, system, kinda yes. School system if any. And how we go to school. Current administration in the world doesn't believe in educating and guiding people. Instead they make rules, laws and force people to behave. The only difference what I can think of now is the school is going to be much more tough on other pupils in Finnish schools. This kind of "political terrorist attack" was only counter-productive for what he claimed to believe in.
He tried to shoot himself in the head at the end. Should've started from that. I believe if someone doesn't like this world, he or she has all the rights in the world to end it. I am not against suicide. If you don't want to be here, I think it's wrong if we force you to be here. Yet, the only time I accept killing another person is if the person is posing an immediate threat to your life and cannot be stopped otherwise. Who made him the "Natural Selector"? If you're sick of the society, move to Lapland and start herding reindeer. There are other options. "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." Yep, that's where we live. Democracy. Don't like it? Change the system from within the system. Can't? Move away from the country/society you don't like. Can't be bothered to? Then stop complaining and bite the bullet! (Figuratively speaking.)
Other thing I noticed in his Youtube videos and his writings was his hatred towards anti-depressants. Perhaps he suffered from some sort of mental disorder he had to use pills for? In some cases wrong medication only makes things worse. "When nothing matters, and nothing feels like anything." In Finland we don't try to prevent nor cure burn-outs or manic-depressive behaviour. Instead we like to give medicine to suppress the symptoms. Maybe he was suffering from mental illness? (Well, d'uh, but as in mental illness like borderline disorder or manic-depressive...)
Today is also the day when Russia celebrates the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution.
Scary thing was his love/hate list. I feel kinda the same way in most parts. I have similar interests... Bad humour is the best humour, etc. Also, his list of favourite books is almost identical to mine... Should I be scared of myself now? (Don't worry, I don't believe in violence. I won't be shooting you.)
I wonder how his blues-guitarist dad, and the rest of the family* take this... Although correcting a lost child should be firstly done by the parents, I still hope they have the strength to get over this.
And I have to give thanks and praises to the police who acted quite quickly with the Karhu-team (Bear-team, equivalent of S.W.A.T.) and around 100 police officers in total. For the medical staff working there. The local hospital had within an hour from the information of the fist gun blast 18 operation rooms ready and a battalion of ambulances at the school, and for the rapid evacuation of the neighbourhood.
More in the net: BBC LiveLeak
I won't be posting his dads web page nor his own writings due to respect for his parents. But they're not difficult to find if you really want to.
Addition @ 21:51 CET: The 18-year old shooter died in the hospital. According to Helsingin Sanomat he died in the hospital 22:14 CET+1, that's half an hour ago. The casualties are 5 boys, 2 girls and the Principal of the School.
* @ 8/11 - Too much info edited out as irrelevant.
I noticed someone else have had the same idea!
Metric Time!
I'd support that. And this seems better than our idea when I was a teenager. Our idea was 100 hours in one day, 100 minutes in one hour, and 100 seconds in one minute. The rest normally, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
This seems much better.
10 days a week. This would make a year 36,5 weeks long. Months can be re-divided also to 10 (36,5 days per month), and those occultists who want to keep the Zodiac thing, can still use the old astrology charts if they want. Earth-month and Zodiac-month separately, if you need to do some spells according to the old astrology charts.
Should we update to metric time, we could also remove the old British relic, daylight savings time. If more daylight is required psychologically for people, then we can just change the starting hour of work during winters. I'd remove the entire daylight-based opening times anyways. People move to cities from countryside. Cities are full. Fine. We can't all be out at the same time. I've been working graveyard shifts and have had studying and work at the same time... My time off might've been from 2am to 6am, then 6 hours sleep and to evening shift at work, which would've been my morning. In the city with all the streetlights, who needs defined shop opening times? If everyone wants to live in a city, wouldn't be more useful to disband the old day vs night thinking and use the whole day. 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep for everyone and 8 hours of free time*. (* - With the current time standard.) The "daytime" just depends when you work and when you have your sleeping time. This would generate more jobs for people and would ease up rush-hour. Large cities should do this.
My housemates are gone for the rest of the evening. One working, other one to a birthday party. I've been left home alone. (Yeah, museum night tonight, but it's more of a bar night, than museum anything... I'll pass.)
Tomorrow, when everyone's here I'll be doing pork-medallions, green paprika - white wine - cream sauce, steamed vegetables with spices & herbs and potato-apple-rösti. Sorry, can't write the recipe yet, since I haven't done that yet so not sure of how to make it at this moment.
But for tonight's food.
What you need:
4 garlic cloves (minimum)
Black olives
Black pepper (preferably freshly ground)
Cheese
Flour
Olive oil
Paprika salami
Pinch of sugar
Shrimps
Tomato sauce
Tuna fish
Yeast
About ½kg flour and ½dl olive oil in a bowl. A thumb-size lump of yeast in a glass, a t-spoon of sugar and hand-warm water. Mix. Add the yeast-water to the bowl and mix with a hand. Add sum herbs if you like and crush couple of garlic cloves in the mix. Add flour and/or water to make it tight dough. Use a bottle or something to make it flat. Slightly bigger than the oven-tray. Oven to 50°C and the tray in.
Tomato sauce, a lot of garlic, spices of your choice, black pepper - cut garlic in small pieces, mix all together. Take the oven-tray out the oven and pour the tomato sauce-mix on top. Spread with a spoon. Cheese on top, a thick layer. Slice the salami on top. Add a lot of tuna, shrimps and black olives. Cover with a thin layer of cheese.
Oven, about 200°C for ... until the pizza looks ready. The amount of toppings... you decide. Your pizza.
Wait a second?! I forgot chili! Argh! And the pizza in already in the oven! Noooooooo!
I saw this article in Reuters. If this would be in some semi-funny evening magazine, I wouldn't be bothered to mention, but this news is provided by Reuters! Is this for real? It's not 1st of April now, is it? I really can't make up my mind whether this is tongue-in-cheek article or a serious article...
Here's the article, just in case:
Marx's erupting skin may have influenced writings
LONDON (Reuters) - Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.
Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands -- found mainly in the armpits and groin -- become blocked and inflamed.
"In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem," said Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.
"This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing."
While HS is linked to boil-like lumps, the painful condition also causes more widespread infection, swelling, skin thickening and scarring.
It could also explain a number of Marx's other complaints, not previously linked, such as joint pain and a painful eye condition which often stopped him working.
Shuster based his diagnosis on an analysis of Marx's extensive correspondence, in which he wrote to friends about his health and described his skin lesions as "curs" and "swine".
"The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day," Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867.
Marx, who died in 1883, was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century and his radical writings formed the basis of modern communism.
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
What a lame 100th blog post... To celebrate the 100th posting, I made a propaganda poster:
