"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
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.
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.
On the 21st and 22nd of September the 8th Agricultural Ontology Service workshop took place in Rome at FAO HQ. This workshop was particularly aimed to shape the AOS community and to outline the future of the Initiative. More than 40 people from more than 10 countries participated.
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.
...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.
I am at the moment in Singapore at the DC2007 meeting. I delivered a keynote in the first session after the introduction by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore's Minister for Community Development, Youth & Sports and Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts.
"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.
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.
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!
