Worldviews

Opening Access - CGIAR meeting

During the e-agriculture week at FAO Headquarter, I participated in a CGIAR workshop on "opening Access to Agricultural research. I think there is big confusion among various stakeholders about the linkings between research, technology deployment and Extension. It seems to me that there is a tendency to apply criteria, which have value for extension and technology deployment (relating to the end users i.e) also on research. I still think that research should be as much as possible independent from application szenario, but should resolve scientific problems.

AGRIS Expert Consultation

September 23 and 24I took part in the organization of the second expert consultation on Information Systems in Agricultural Science and Technology was hold in Rome at FAO HQ.
A very interesting part of the conference were country reports from (among others) Egypt, Peru, Madagascar and Thailand.

CIMG1114

Sometimes superstition creates great culture, really only sometimes? And what is culture?

I am just back from visiting the "terracotta soldiers" at the tomb of Qin Shi Huan, the first emperor and representative of the Quin dynasty. As generally known he was buried with more than 7000 Terracotta soldiers to be mighty also in the afterlife. He was also buried with 100 s of acrobats, chefs and all the other people that were necessary to assure the used lifestyle of the emperor. I am not knowledgeable enough for being sure if at the end really only the terracotta duplicates have been buried or also the living people who had that function.

...from now on I should be mighty and rich

...and I should also have many girlfriends :-). I bought a big black Dragonhorse at the museum of the city wall of Xi'an. As I bought the big black one (for the office), I got also the smaller white one (for home) and I got also the little pink one for having many concubines. So I should be completely settled. At least if I would believe in Feng Shui theories; if it does not work out I will surely have failed to put the Dragonhorse in the right ankle to the sun, the moon, or the star in a specific day or some other site settings were wrong.

The parable of the celestial teapot

"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatics to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

Virgins? What Virgins?

Virgins? What virgins? | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

This Guardian article from Ibn Warraq is already from 2002, but I came over it only now. It is hilarious in pointing out the absurdity of religious martyrdom. But it is also very enlightened in how far religious scripture is only the product of certain socio-economic circumstances and not revealed by anything supranatural.

Amnesty decides to support women who fight for right of abortion after rape. The catholic church blackmails to withdraw support

BBC NEWS | Americas | Amnesty ends abortion neutrality

Please consider to become member of amnesty international to back its courageous decisions to defend women's liberty rights.
No surprise that the catholic church is blackmailing now amnesty and announce to withdraw support!

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American way of life

Trash production

One of the habits of US citizens I cannot stand very much is the production of rubbish my using disposable material whenever eating in a place for less than 50 Dollars/person. Even in the elegant Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles I had to beg to get my Cappuccino served in a porcelain cup instead in one of this disgusting polystyrol containers. I am not knowledgeable enough to decide if the environmental effect of washing all the porcelain cups is more severe than the disposal of all the rubbish, but I just don't like it.

Internal Globalization

I am Back to the United States. This time on holidays; we picked up Matilde at UCLA (which is the LA part of the same University to which belongs Berkeley) and we will travel California for two weeks. After 3 days in Los Angeles another difference between Europe and the States seems clear to me: The United States are much more "internally globalized". I had read, that going from one neighbourhood of LA to another is like crossing the border between San Diego and Tijuana.

Materialism, Actualism and Science

"Returning to the original question of Darwinism and metaphysics, I have argued that even the assertion of the special creation of organisms is not incompatible with the scientific theory of evolution, which explains how organisms evolve now, and that it is incompatible with the scientific fact of phylogeny only under the assumption that actualism is not just normative for scientific reconstructions but true of the real world. There may just be a sense in which scientific facts are not historical facts.

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