Kids be kids

σε κάποια φάση σταμάτησα να διορθώνω, με ενδιέφερε το σενάριο πιο πολύ

Wild Duck by Yiannis Sakaridis

Μια ταινια η οποια με εξεπληξε ευχαριστα με το θεμα της, καθως το σεναριο ηταν, τουλαχιστον για’μενα, πρωτοτυπο και οι ερμηνειες καλες. 

Δυστυχως, δεν υπηρχε κατι παραπανω. Χωρις ενταση, εως και υποτονικο σε αρκετα σημεια. Ενοιωθες πως μπορουσες να δεις πολλα περισσοτερα, πως σε αυτη την ιστορια θα “κολλουσαν” πολυ πιο σημαντικα κομματια απο αυτα που υπηρχαν.
Ο σκηνοθετης ηταν πολυ ευγενικος, συμπαθητικος και απαντησε με προθυμια σε ολες τις ερωτησεις, μαζι με τον πρωταγωνιστη της ταινιας.
3 αστερακια. Για τα πλανα των τοπιων, για τον υπεροχο καταρρακτη και για τις πολυ καλες ερμηνειες.
Θα προτιμουσα να ηταν εκει και οι αλλοι πρωταγωνιστες, νομιζω το οφειλαν στο κοινο.
ΥΓ.Προσωπικο χαιλαιτ ηταν που ειδα συμφοιτητη μου σε ρολακι μερικων δευτερολεπτων. Αχωνευτος. Γλειφτης. Καριολακι. Αρα επρεπε να το περιμενω, αφου δε χωθηκε στην πολιτικη, οτι θα χωνοταν στη σοου μπιζ. Γεια σου ρε Α. αθανατε παπαρα.

Ηταν μια κοπέλα στο TDF14

Ηταν μια μέρα μία κοπέλα που έγραψε κριτική για ένα ντοκυμαντέρ που είδε ( στα αγγλικά, για να μπορούν να το διαβάσουν και από το εξωτερικό γιατί ήθελε να κάνει διεθνή καριέρα).

Και μετά από μέρες αποφάσισε να μιλήσει στον σκηνοθέτη ο οποίος ήταν παρεπιπτόντως και cute -αλλά είχε κομπλάρει να τον συγχαρεί από κοντά και τις 3 φορές που τον πέτυχε μετά-. Τον βρήκε λοιπόν στο Vimeo και έμαθε ότι έχουν σπουδάσει το ίδιο αντικείμενο και μοιράζονται τις ίδιες ανησυχίες και ενδιαφέροντα. 

Ο σκηνοθέτης και παραγωγός λοιπόν της δίνει το FB του για να τον κάνει add και όταν το κάνει η κοπέλα συνειδητοποιεί ότι αυτός έχει ποστάρει στο Fb του το λινκ για την κριτική που του είχε κάνει η ίδια. χωρίς φυσικά να ξέρει ότι είναι αυτή με την οποία μιλούσε στο Vimeo και Fb. 

H κοπέλα νοιώθει τεράστια χαρά, συγκίνηση και περηφάνια που ο κύριος αυτός θεώρησε την κριτική της σημαντική και την έβαλε στην προσωπική του σελίδα.

!

Give Up Tomorrow by Michael Collins

Premiere of  the 14th Documentary Festival held in Thessaloniki today, so I decided to pay a visit. The film I chose after serious consideration was "Give up Tomorrow" by Michael Collins, as mentioned above.

This documentary narrates the true story of a young Philippinese boy named Paco who, along with 6 other people, was wrongly accused of rape and murder thus being given the death penalty, A.K.A the "Capital punishment". According to the story, he was sentenced to life imprisonment due to two teenage girls' disappearance followed by the discovery of a dead body that could not be identified, not even by the parents of the girls. In spite of the testimonies of approximately 30 of his classmates about his whereabouts the night of the alleged murder, the Philippinese police arrested Pako after having led him to the police station under false pretenses.

Being a troublemaker himself, it was relatively easy to be tied to the crime as the police desperately needed a scapegoat because of the pressure put on them. Of significant importance was surely the immense influence exerted on the law enforcement and justice system by the victim's family, which led to a judge's suspicious "suicide" after condemning Paco to life imprisonment and not death (which was the initial request of the victim's family). 

After a long and exhausting period of continuous struggle of the members of his family and after the Supreme Court ruled against him twice, it took the United Nations intervention to examine Paco's case and demand that he be pardoned due to lack of evidence and multiple violations of his constitutional rights during the trial. The Philippinese president did eventually pardon him and arranged for his transfer to a Spanish prison.

To this day, 13 years later, Paco refuses to plead guilty even if this means that he is deprived the opportunity of walking the streets of Spain a free man. What he has to say is that he would very much rather be condemned to death once more than admit to a crime he never committed.

All in all, this documentary sets a bright example of how documentaries should be made. It is also exemplary of evidence, objectivity and cross examination, three key elements to a man's conviction yet missing in Paco's case.

It is a constant reminder of the fact that freedom is often taken for granted  by most people. And of course, of how easily innocence and human rights can be trampled  when dealing with biased authorities.

I highly suggest that everyone watch it. 

5,5 Budάκια

Prime Numbers

A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number that has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself. The smallest twenty-five prime numbers (all the prime numbers under 100) are:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97

Despite being intensely studied, there remain some open questions around prime numbers which can be stated simply.There is no known useful formula that yields all of the prime numbers and no composites. However, the distribution of primes, that is to say, the statistical behaviour of primes in the large can be modeled. The first result in that direction is the prime number theorem which says that the probability that a given, randomly chosen number n is prime is inversely proportional to its number of digits, or the logarithm of n. This statement has been proven since the end of the 19th century. The unproven Riemann hypothesis dating from 1859 implies a refined statement concerning the distribution of primes.

The Millennium Prize Problems are seven problems in mathematics that were stated by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. As of January 2011, six of the problems remain unsolved. A correct solution to any of the problems results in a US$1,000,000 prize (sometimes called a Millennium Prize) being awarded by the institute. Only the Poincaré conjecture has been solved, by Grigori Perelman, who declined the award.

The seven problems are:

1. P versus NP problem
2. Hodge conjecture
3. Poincaré conjecture (solved, see solution of the Poincaré conjecture)
4. Riemann hypothesis
5. Yang–Mills existence and mass gap
6. Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness
7. Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

Riemann hypothesis

In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, proposed by Bernhard Riemann (1859), is a conjecture about the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function which states that all non-trivial zeros have real part 1/2. The name is also used for some closely related analogues, such as the Riemann hypothesi s for curves over finite fields.

Americans are NOT stupid

Δεν θελω να γινω υποτιμητικη. Φαντάζομαι ότι πολλές παρόμοιες απαντήσεις θα έδιναν και στην Ελλάδα. Αποδεικνύεται όμως περίτρανα ότι η βλακεία και η άγνοια δεν έχουν όρια. Παρακαλείστε μετά το βίντεο, να διαλέξετε τοπ απάντηση. Εγω θα πω ότι διχάζομαι ανάμεσα στο τετράγωνο τρίγωνο και τον Κόφι Ανάν.

Απλα υποσχεθειτε οτι θα το δειτε. ΟΛΟΚΛΗΡΟ!!!!!!

Global warming is probably not our fault!

I was watching a South Park episode when I heard something about global warming and the green house effect that got me into serious thinking... I paused the episode and googled "no proof of global warming" and this is what I found (just some of the most important parts,for the rest just click here ):

What do the global warming crowd believe?

The global warming folks think that the man's output of CO₂ is causing the climate to grow significantly warmer due to a ill named "green-house" effect. (The glass in a green-house prevents convection -- obviously CO₂ does not limit convection and its effect on global temperature should go by a different name.) This warming is referred to as AGW(Anthropogenic Global Warming). The word 'anthropogenic' meaning 'caused by man'. The warmers think that the slight warming seen in lower troposphere satellite data above is in error and problematic ground station temperature measurements that show a slightly larger warming trend is caused almost entirely by a slight elevation in CO₂ levels. The warmers state that solar effects are insignificant.

Is Global warming a scientific theory or a belief?

There are many claiming to be "climate scientists". What does it mean to be a scientist? I think it is agreed that it takes more than a college degree, lab coat, and computer to be a real scientist. Science requires experimental controls - something not found in the statistics about an open system with confounding variables. There is no doubt that increasing the opacity of the air by the added CO₂ causes an increase in global temperature. There is also no doubt that changes in solar radiation changes global temperature. The question is if the amount of increase contributed by man's emissions of CO ₂ is significant compared to changes due to the sum of the confounding variables (see list below).

I remember reading a news article when I was in 5th or 6th grade by "scientists" that predicted that we were going into a new ice age because of man made pollution. Here is a later one. I thought it was true and worried about it for years. I followed every global climate article I got my hands on, until I realized they didn't have any way to truly support the claims they were making. Some of these same people are in the global warming business now.

Supporters of global warming will say, "I've known of hundreds of scientists with diverse political backgrounds (from all over the world) who have come to the same conclusion", but taking polls on the opinion of people whose income is tied to the existence of a problem is not science. A poll of PC (Politically Correct) scientists from the year 1400 would have put the earth rather than the sun at the center of our solar system. While there are quite a few PC scientists today claiming to "know" that man is causing global warming, there are other scientists that honestly and humbly disagree.

A politically popular opinion doesn't make it correct. No poll of scientists has anything to do with science. Science is not a democratic process!

Supporters will further say, "Many of these scientists are established, world-renowned, tenured professors who do research in numerous areas and whose jobs are certainly not dependent on the existence of global warming".

But let us consider the peers of Copernicus; did their being "established, world-renowned, tenured professors" make them right? Would publication of balanced humble papers without dire conclusions effect the issuance of research grants? This link may be over hyped, but his detractors can only rebut with ad hominem attacks as he points out the difference between a scientific forecast and forecasts by scientists.

What is an Open System?

In real science, everything that can possibly be done to eliminate confounding causes are eliminated. The earth's atmosphere is an open system - no one knows with any certainty the amount of materials emitted by the earth or even additions from outer space. An open system is one where we can not control for confounding variables.

What good are the Collected Statistics?

Statistics often provides a scientist a good idea for a hypothesis, but statistical correlations do not prove cause and effect. A meaningful correlation has to be more than just two variables trending in the same direction. News reports about science often confuse correlation with cause and effect. The news media acts as if 'correlation' is proof of causality, to the confusion of the lay public. There is especially much muddled thinking in climate news reporting where we are talking about a simple trend with many confounding variables..

"There are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics, and computer models"

Climate science is often reported as if a 'run' of a computer model is an experiment (it is not!). A computer model can not discriminate theories into true and false because it is not measuring reality. (Such models may give one an idea where to experiment, but to claim they "prove" anything is pure fiction and should lead one to discount the source. At best you can use a computer model to disprove a theory.)

To infer a connection between man emissions of CO₂ and warming is not an easy jump for the scientifically minded

• First, you have to prove that the increase in CO₂ is caused by humans - the venting of CO₂ by volcanoes (including those under the ocean) and geysers and other natural sources (and also the natural absorption or sinking of CO₂) is a estimate that defies error analysis. To what error band are we certain of the amount of emission of CO2 by natural causes?
• Second, the elevation of CO₂ needs to be shown to be historically real, but there were no analytical tools to measure even crudely thousands of years ago - the best work has been done with ice samples, but there is a great problem with how to calibrate such measurements. What size should the error bands be? I believe that man is responsible for a small increase in CO₂ - this is supported by a lot of historical data.
• Third, there has to be a hypothesis that can predict the past (only then can we start guessing about the future) including the temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Any model that can't fit past data has to be called wrong.
• Fourth, as this is an open system where we can't build several earths and vary only one constant, any conclusion at best is still just a theory - a educated guess - it is not scientific fact. Science is more than looking scientific; just because things are measured to several decimal points means naught when there is no control or false logic.
• Fifth, to look at the past temperatures honestly, one would have to show no past periods of higher temperature. The idea that we 'know' the inferred data - is simply wrong. We only have accurate records of solar output from the recent past and we are ignorant of the magnitude of long term historic variations that are possible. Explaining the small drift (less than what appears to be the noise in the system) can be accomplished with confounding variables. It might help to remember that 10,000 years ago Milwaukee was under 40' of ice, so we really do know that temperature can vary on its own. See http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/space_weather/ We also have reason to believe that glaciers world wide have been shrinking for the last 300 years - this means that things other than CO₂ change our climate.
• Solar output has been shown as a link in weather.
  
  Also see a rigorous paper that clearly links changes in climate to sunspot activity : Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development
• Six, one really has to subtract the effects of variations of solar output, and changes in land use (irrigation) from any temperature trends. There is no way to do this with any meaningful accuracy.

Confounding Variables

Real science spends lots of time getting rid of or correcting for confounding variables. Confounding variables is THE reason that we can not 'know' that man produced CO₂ is driving climate change. (It is also the same reason we don't 'know' the opposite.)

The following list of confounding variables is a work in progress - at the rate that new ones are added it is quite likely that there are other climate drivers that have not yet been identified.

• Irrigation (Why is so little in the press about irrigations effect on climate?)(There is no occurrence of the word irrigation in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers and only a few references in the full report - often expressing it as unknowable.)(The argument that the water vapor is only in the air for about a week is strange as some of the water re-evaporate as it hits the ground. There is also the fact that aquifers levels and river flows into the ocean really have gone down. Almost all of the Colorado river flow of 100 years ago now travels over the USA as water vapor.)
• Changes in solar output in the IR and visible spectrum space_weather (short term variations seem too small a factor on their own)
• Changes in shielding of cosmic radiation from the sun due to changes in magnetic storms (provides nucleation sites for condensation of water vapor)
• Changes in plant coverage (deforestation etc)
• The Milankovitch cycles; changes in earth's eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession over time. The way the earth orbits around the sun can create ice ages and warming periods. You might want to look at the wikipedia article and pay attention to the problems section.
• Ground level Ozone
• Changes in particles that come from the sun.
• Genetic changes in ocean algae over time
• Changes in earths magnetic field.
• Changes in volcanic emissions (CO2 and other substances)
• Changes in the amount and elevation of pollution particulate (provides nucleation sites for precipitation)
• Changes in CO2 absorption and emission due to changes in plant coverage and ocean temperature.
• Changes in ozone thickness (secondary to solar cycles?)
• Changes in methane emission by plants (genetic evolutionary driven changes).
• Changes in ocean salinity due to water use - (causing changes in ocean currents).
• Changes in land reflectivity
• Snowballs from space (an open system - and there is debate if these snowballs are only a sensor artifact - such material would introduce water vapor and nucleation sites at an unknown rate with unknown changes over time )
• Changes in ice crystal reflectivity due to the temperature, water saturation, mineral content and wind speed when they are formed.

(for the whole article, which is truly fascinating please click here)



Suddenly I feel really stupid.All these years I've been taught and what's more, I've been teaching about the harmful human effect on the planet's temperature without actually verifying it myself.I've been led to believe in theories claiming to be facts, not actual facts. If it weren't for South Park I would probably have never found out about it. Needless to say, I feel more than obliged to inform as many people as I can.

To 1ο post στο 1o blog που είχα κάνει....

Mythoughts

Friday 2nd September 2005

I don't really know where exactly i saw the blogger.com
I don't even know why i created my blog,i think because i need to communicate with other people,express my feeling,or even be a little cool :) (you can obviously note the joke here).
I think that the whole "society thing" is just a way from keeping most people away from the truth,the scary and terrible truth.If you had a better look,it would be just like the "Matrix",but unfortunately without Keanu Reeves and no hope that Good will finally survive.I mean, why do we live by certain rules?Why does one person's different opinion about religion or politics (subjects created by the same society) makes us argue so strongly?We all know deep down that everything,every single thing that we discuss,or disagree,or talk about,was created by us!We have to be in fashion(yeah right,one crazy fashion designer makes some clothes and many stars-freaks wear them,so IT IS FASHION!!!),be cool,have the latest technology like cell phones and computers and plasma Tv's etc!Why all that struggle for money to buy things we don't actually need?
Why children and especially teenagers are taught to behave like bullies to the so called "gigs" and pretend to be some important people?Why governments decide according to the national interests and not to every soldier's mother?I mean,after all,nothing lasts forever,so what if Pakistan gains Iran or Russia expands the barriers?Just for the "prestige"?
Society is nothing but a big wall which protects us from CHAOS.It feeds us with reasons to exist,so that we don't have to think about it.It makes us have needs and dreams and hopes without really any reason.Because if you think of it,why is it so important for someone to succeed?Would it be so important if there weren't others to make him feel good about himself?All that people do from the moment they are born is to try and keep up with the rest,try to be good like the rest,try to be just like them and certainly not disagree with them.If one has the courage to go in a different way,he is the bad one,the rebel,he is harming the society by his existence.Yes he is harming the society of course,but only because others might be convinced by him,to follow the same direction.That wouldn't be appropriate for the society...Right?
It's like the Pope and the Batikan(sorry for the spelling).Thousands hundreds people think that this old man is saint,has done nothing wrong in his life,just good deeds and has no sins,since he is believed to be God's representative!The more i think of it the more angrier i get!I mean,he and all the previous Popes have committed more crimes than all the thieves and killers in a prison!How did they gain so much power,by God????I don't think so,as far as i am concerned God teaches us to be neat,not desire luxuries and riches,or power and glory.Am i wrong?But of course that could never be for The Pope!!!He is above all,maybe he'll even replace God when he gets tired,who knows???
I have a lot more to say,but that's enough for today,so I'll just go to bed with my thoughts and complaints about the world!