Free Lantern

RickB has provided a list of agencies that provide aid for the Cyclon-ravaged nation. If you want to help you can choose one of the agencies to donate money to help the victims. Unfortunately the slow processing of visas is restricting the aid agencies to help. The UN has urged Burma to waive visa restrictions that it says are slowing efforts to bring in relief experts and supplies to help an estimated one million people affected by Cyclone Nargis.

Sometimes my friends who are not in the field of science ask me what is a PostDoc! Well I finally found the perfect answer for these questions!

Watch the series of PostDoc comics in PhDcomics to see what I mean comic1; comic2; comic3; comic4. I had also previously posted a comic from PhD comics here.

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Yesterday 1st of May was International workers’ day and RSS awareness day… Congratulations to all workers and for those of you who are still not too much familiar with RSS you can watch this Video which is RSS in plain English:

Thanks to Sologen.

With 100 days to go until the Beijing Olympics, Amnesty International today (30 April) launched the first in a series of four hard-hitting animated films highlighting human rights abuses linked to the Chinese authorities’ hosting of the Games, in particular the risks of peacefully protesting in China. Watch the first animation here:

Also see:

• Human Rights for China
• Summer Olympics
• Beijing’s Alternative logo

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A while ago I wrote about Amnesty Internationals campaign against Torture, Unsubscribe-Me. Amnesty is now launching a series of short effective films in order to spread the human rights message.
First add of these series is against waterboarding, a method that is used by the CIA in the “war against terror”. This is ‘The film the CIA doesn’t want you to see’. This film will be on 50 UK cinema screens from 5th of May.
Help spreading the word, by showing the video to your friends, posting it on your weblog/webpages or linking to it. You can also Unsubscribe yourself.
Warning: the video contains shocking content!

Also read:

• ‘The film the CIA doesn’t want you to see’: Amnesty launches new ‘waterboarding’ film
• Waterboarding: is it a slam dunk?
• Cheney Defends ‘Dunk in the Water’ Remark
• Ashcroft Compares Waterboarding To Being ‘Interviewed By Jon Stewart’

Well it seems that this comic explains why DNA, Collagen and alpha helix are all right handed.

Take a look at Madeline’s comic page you can find other funny scientific comics.

Three quotes on life and living… I find all three inspirational.

Life is not about finding yourself, Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist that is all.
Oscar Wild

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve also posted Persian translation of these great quotes here.

• New York times has a report about the Iranian blogosphere entitled: “Iranian Blogosphere Tests Government’s Limits“. The article refers to a research done in Harvard’s Law school that mapped Iran’s online public (See the resulting map here). The research and the report are both interesting. I have also translated part of them to Persian in my Persian blog.
• It’s been five years. Five years of bloodshed and displacement. Five years of fear and dread, and for children aged five and younger, war is all they’ve known. Since April five years ago, more than 200,000 have died and more than 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict in this vast region to the west of Sudan. Tomorrow there will be the day for Darfur in the UK.

A joke:

A Bee was passing next to the Nile River when he noticed a frog. He asked the frog: “I’d like to go to the other side of the Nile, is it possible that you take me with you?” The frog answered:”No, I’m afraid to die, you might sting me on the way”. The Bee said:”But I never would do such madness. I will die myself if I kill you!”. After thinking for a moment the frog said:”well you’re right; jump on my back and we get going”. In the middle of the river the Bee stung the frog. Frog shouted: “what the hell are you doing? You’re going to die too”.
The bee replied: “I know, but you seem to have forgotten, WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!”

This joke is originally in Persian written by Dr. Ahmad Okhovat and published in Gol-Agha magazine inside Iran. I read it in this Persian weblog and translated it to English.

This actually reminded me of an image describing the reason of all the problems in the middle east. I don’t know the origin of this image as there are no references. See this image in the rest of this post!

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Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. He was assassinated but his dream and legacy still lives.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Martin Luther King Jr.