Romanian Projects

From time to time we put our jokes aside and write about Romanian projects that we believe you should be aware of. Read below.

1. startIT

After managing a stunning feat for a Romanian company - the sale of RAV to Microsoft - Gecad returns with more interesting stuff. If you've always had this fabulous idea about an application that everyone will want to have, then here's your chance to see it become reality:

Gecad's startIT initiative gives everyone the chance to turn a good idea into a great application. In our opinion this is good.

2. Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association

Another stunning project comes from ARCA, the Romanian Aeronautics and Cosmonatics Association. The project's aim is to test and launch a manned craft into orbit, at 100 km altitude:

In our opinion this is also good. Good luck, guys. Romania's flight tradition needs to be continued.

3. Project W

Finally, a Romanian movie project that looks very promising. It's about damn time something interesting happened in the otherwise laughable Romanian movie industry. These people have big ideas, take a look:

In our opinion, this is also good. Good luck guys. We look forward to watching this movie on the big screen once it's completed.


Recommended Readings

From time to time we also present interesting and unusual books that come to our attention. This month we have chosen a science book - A New Kind of Science, written by Stephen Wolfram. Why a science book, I hear you ask. Because ideas found in this book could have far reaching implications for many sciences. Or maybe just because it's unusual enough to be interesting and even useful. For now read some excerpts:

"I did what is in a sense one of the most elementary imaginable computer experiments: I took a sequence of simple programs and then systematically ran them to see how they behaved. And what I found - to my great surprise- was that despite the simplicity of their rules, the behavior of the programs was often far from simple. Indeed, even some of the very simplest programs that I looked at had behavior that was as complex as anything I had ever seen"

"Perhaps immediately most dramatic is that it yields a resolution to what has long been considered the single greatest mystery of the natural world: what secret it is that allows nature seemingly so effortlessly to produce so much that appears to us so complex."

"The principle of computational equivalence: whenever one sees behavior that is not obviously simple - in essentially any system - it can be thought of as corresponding to a computatuion of equivalent sophistication."

"One can always in princple find out how a particular system will behave just by running an experiment and watching what happens. But the great historical successes of theoretical science have typically revolved around finding mathematical formulas that instead directly allow one to predict the outcome. Yet in effect this relies on being able to shortcut the computational work that the system itself performs.And the principle of computational equivalence now implies that this will normally be possible only for rather special systems with simple behavior. For other systems will tend to perform computations that are just as sophisticated as those we can do, even with all our mathematics and computers. And this means that such systems are computationally irreducible - so that in effect the only way to find their behavior is to trace each of their steps, spending about as much computational effort as the systems themselves"

"The basic picture of our universe is a network whose connections are continually updated according to some simple set of underlying rules. In the past one might have assumed that a system like this would be far too simple to correspond to our universe. But from the discoveries in this book we now know that even when the underlying rules for a system are simple, its overall behavior can still be immensly complex. And at the lowest level what I expect is that even though the rules being applied are perfectly definite, the overall pattern of connections that will exist in the network corresponding to our universe will continually be rearranged in ways complicated enough to seem perfectly random".

"And all of this supports my strong belief that in the end it will turn out that every detail of our universe does indeed follow rules that can be represented by a very simple program - and that everything we see will ultimately emerge just from running this program".


Do Not Forget

December 22 2003 - 14 years have passed. Do not forget.
Elections are coming next year. We will be ready.


New RMRA Wallpaper

Here it is, folks: another original RMRA wallpaper you can add to your collection. This particular design comes from Edi - thank you sir, we appreciate it. Click here or on the image below to view and download (picture opens in new window):

Featured Sites of the Month

A new batch of featured sites for your mint rubbing pleasure. Click on each site's name - pages open in new windows:

- NaDa - a new concept. It doesn't take long to fetch. It doesn't take long to understand. It doesn't disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well. That's a lot !
- The Klingon Language Institute - We're here to promote and support this unique and exciting language. Our site has information and resources to interest both skeptic and enthusiast alike. Join us in our exploration of the galaxy's fastest growing language.
- Invitation to ETI - If successful our project could provide humanity with particularly high benefits because we aim to achieve a scientific, educational, and philosophical dialogue between humankind and ETI - not simply find evidence that ETI exists.
- ZetaTalk - ZetaTalk leads you through the vast amount of information being relayed by the Zetas in answer to questions posed to their emissary, Nancy. The ZetaTalk answers cover such subjects as how visitors from other Worlds are watched by the Council of Worlds, why we are only gradually getting acquainted with our visitors from other worlds, and what will allow the Awakening to occur faster, etc.
- Real Ultimate Power - The official ninja webpage. Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time.
- Virtual Bubble Wrap - Bubble Wrap has been a source of fascination for people of all ages since its invention. Now, finally, there is a web page dedicated to this most entertaining packing material .
- Chronicle of the Future - Welcome to your future - tomorrow's news today. We have mapped a path from the already familiar landscape of life in 2000 through to the uncharted territories of 2050 ...
- Old-Computers.com - Welcome to old-computers.com, the most popular website for old computers. Have a trip down memory lane. Includes specs and photos of models such as Electromagnetica Jet, the Electronica CIP series, the ICE Felix HC series and the MicroTim series.
- GiantMicrobes.com - The perfect gifts for your loved ones: stuffed animals. Includes microbes - The Flu, The Common Cold, Stomach Ache and Sore Throat, and maladies - bad breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete's Foot, Ulcer.


Mint Rubbing Journal Statistics for Dec 2000 - Oct 2003

- Number of issues: 35
- Number of pages: 245
- Number of articles: 133
- Number of practical guides: 15
- Number of featured sites: 155
- Size of text: 906,895 (about 350 standard A4 pages)
- Number of html files: 358
- Size of html files: 1,413,096 bytes
- Number of gif and jpg files: 1,254
- Size of gif and jpg files: 17,094,420
- Total number of files: 1,637
- Total Size for all files: 22,058,843


Other Lists

In the previous pages of this issue you've seen several lists of stuff that was featured in the mint rubbing journal over the years: best articles, research projects, webpages linking to us and ancient romanian wisdom.

Please note that several other lists can be found on the main mintrubbing.org site (links open in new windows):

- a list of the best featured sites can be found in the links section
- a list of all downloadable materials - wallpapers, tshirt clipart, etc - can be found in the download section
- a list of RMRA banners can be found in the link to us section
- a list of the coolest e-mail messages sent to the association can be found in the testimonials section.
- finally, a list of all previous Mint Rubbing Journal issues, as well as a complete list of materials published in these issues can be found in the archive

Hundreds of cool messages can be found on the RMRA forum. We didn't think anyone would give a damn when we first launched this forum thing. Boy, how wrong we were. Now there's so much cool stuff on it that it just blows our minds away. Some of the entries are nothing less than pure gems of mint rubbing widsom, knowledge or satire. For this issue we wanted to create a list of the coolest messages on the forum, but discovered a major problem: there were too damn many of 'em to fit on one page. Anyway, see for yourself - click here. And while you're at it, don't forget to type a few words. We'd appreciate it.


Finally - Quality spam coming your way: