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Brad “replantabil” de Craciun

Super idee pentru bradul de Craciun. Pacat ca (cel putin anul asta) este aplicabila doar in Bucuresti.

Terra Ecologica si EcoAssist iti ofera acum varianta ecologica: brad in container de la Institutul de Cercetare si Amenajare Silvica. Iata ce trebuie sa faci tu:

Pana pe 15 decembrie te hotarasi si ne trimiti o comanda ferma (pe aceasta adresa) din partea ta sau a cunoscutilor tai din Bucuresti.

Oferta este urmatoarea:

  • Brad in container = 150 RON
  • Molid in container = 100 RON

Inaltimile din care veti putea alege:

  • sub 1 metru
  • aproximativ de 1 metru
  • peste 1 metru (1,5 m, 2 m sau 2,5 m)

Apoi, in weekendul 20/21 decembrie vor fi adusi in Bucuresti brazii sau molizii solicitati de voi (in cel mai scurt timp vom anunta locul exact in care acestia vor fi adusi). Mai mult, odata cu bradul primesti si instructiunile de „pastrare in casa” astfel incat el sa nu moara. (temperaturi scazute, departe de surse de caldura, udat zilnic, mentinuta umiditatea aerului in incaperea in care il tii.. sau ai putea sa-l tii direct pe balcon)

Pe 10 ianuarie 2009 (a doua sambata a lunii) vom merge sa-i plantam, alaturi de toti cei care au solicitat brad in container. Plantarea se va face pe un teren din Mogosoaia (obtinut tot de la Institutul de Cercetare si Amenajare Silvica).

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Oscars Video Online via YouTube

UPDATE: since more and more people are coming here looking for Oscar YouTube broadcast, I have to tell you that this is the last year deal YouTube had. I heard nothing about a 2007 similiar deal. But you can check something here.

In case you missed/sleeped the Oscar’s ceremony last night, YouTube got the rights to air the Oscars. Ads free. Sequence by sequence. Here.

via

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2007 Index of Economic Freedom

The 2007 Index of Economic Freedom measures and ranks 161 countries across 10 specific freedoms, things like tax rates and property rights.

The 2007 methodology has been revised to provide an even clearer picture of economic freedom by using data-driven equations rather than performance brackets which allows countries to be graded using a percent score rather than a 1.5 rating. In addition, labor freedom has been added as a variable. We continue the tradition of blending “Ten Freedoms” equally to produce a simple, unbiased overall score for each country.

The new methodology (probably) helped US to climb back in the Top 10 after 2 years of absence.

The 10th criteria the top is based on are:

  • Business Freedom
  • Trade Freedom
  • FiscalFreedom
  • Freedom from Gov’t
  • Monetary Freedom
  • Investment Freedom
  • Financial Freedom
  • Property Rights
  • Freedom from Corruption
  • Labour Freedom

Romania managed to get to the 67th place in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, climbing from 125th position in 2005 and 92nd in 2006.

Out of these Romania scored below world average on Monetary Freedom, Property Rights and Freedom from Corruption.

Here is the top 10:

  1. Hong Kong
  2. Singapore
  3. Australia
  4. USA
  5. New Zealand
  6. UK
  7. Ireland
  8. Luxembourg
  9. Switzerland
  10. Canada

Read more about it here.

Related posts

2006 Index of Economic Freedom
2005 Index of Economic Freedom

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2006 Corruption Perception Index

cpi2006 mapAs the 2006 Corruption Perception Index is out, Romania is just one place up from the last year survey and still behind countries like Bulgaria and Moldova.

The 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index is a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the world, the greatest scope of any CPI to date. It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption.

Also, the top 10 remains virtually unchanged from last year:

1 Finland 9,6
1 Iceland 9,6
1 New Zealand 9,6
4 Denmark 9,5
5 Singapore 9,4
6 Sweden 9,2
7 Switzerland 9,1
8 Norway 8,8
9 Australia 8,7
9 Netherlands 8,7

Noteworthy examples of countries whose scores suffered biggest deteriorations from CPI 2005 to CPI 2006 are Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Seychelles, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia and the United States. In these cases, actual changes in perceptions occurred during the last two years. On the other hand improvements can be observed from 2005 to 2006 for Algeria, Czech Republic, India, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mauritius, Paraguay, Slovenia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uruguay.

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Get Yourself (and Your Computer) World Cup Ready

World Cup is coming, and even if Romania is not there, again, I am preparing for it, so here is an interesting list of resources:

FIFA World Cup Official Website, in partnership with Yahoo!, for the second time (if I’m not wrong) is the place to start and to explore all official information for the tournament, games, the venues, etc etc.

WC Offficial Song – This time, the official song for the World Cup, “Time of our lives,” will be in charge of the opera-pop band Il Divo (who have mixed the bel canto and pop music), and six-time-Grammy-winner Tony Braxton.

World Cup Blog – We live in the 21st century so such an event couldn’t exist without several blogs around it. The worldcupblog.org seems to be the most complex one, and is dedicated to covering all aspects of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The site features 32 country-specific blogs, a referees blog and a blog covering general tournament news. Worth a mention the BBC WC blog and the NYTimes WC Blog.

World Cup Wallpapers – getting to your computer now, here is a list of great WC themed wallpapers for your desktop.

Microsoft’s Soccer Scoreboard – even though there are two words I kinda hate in this title (and scoreboard is not one of them 😉 ) this fun program allows you to access all the latest tournament news and information with the click of a button! Live game data allow you to monitor your favorite teams progress in real-time.

World Cup Firefox Extension – for those who, like me, are lazier, they can get all the information and results straight in their favorite browser.(the page is in german, but I have no doubt you’ll manage to install the extension)

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Romanian Blogging is Going Mainstream

Besides some long discussed and not that good articles in which romanian mainstream media talked about the growing blogosphere there are some good things happening lately.

hot news bloggingI’ll start with the last that I personally noticed: Hotnews.ro, my favorite news source, started blogging at blog.hotnews.ro. Excellent news and I hope the blog will be at least as good as the site itself. This blogging initiative is basically following the, probably better known, one of Evenimentul Zilei. And more than that there is another blogging attempt: Blogul lui Dinescu, which I was actually expected for a while now. It is a beginning and I’m still looking for some of the big names to jump in.

RoBlogFest 2005More than that, Dragos is hosting the RoBlogFest 2005 2006 . Check it out and go find out more about romanian blogs, read, make up your mind and vote, as you can do it until next thursday, March 9th.

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Danish Cartoons (part 2)

Even if I had the feeling from the very beginning that the whole wave of protests in the arab world was orchestrated I didn’t have any solid proof on this. Meanwhile, this post just gets me closer to this belief:

Egyptian newspaper, Al Fager (as pronounced in Egyptian Arabic) has published the controversial Danish Mohammed Cartoons five month ago on Oct 17, 2005. Any ideas why it might have taken the Muslim community so long to react?

See scans of the egyptian newspaper here.
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Weirdest CEO Moments of 2005

Well, it seems the CEO’s have their moments too. Here is a rather funny Fortune article, about some of the weird/funny/sutpid moments some of US CEO’s had to pass through during 2005. I am sure that there were more. Here’s one:

American Express filed suit against Savvis Inc. and its CEO, Robert McCormick, in October for failing to pay McCormick’s $241,000 one-night tab at Manhattan topless club Scores. AmEx claims McCormick said he rang up only $20,000 in charges (and blamed the rest on fraud), but Scores provided AmEx with signed receipts for the full sum. Savvis placed the CEO on unpaid leave in October.

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Super Size Me

I finnaly got the chance last night to see the Super Size Me documentary by Morgan Spurlock. For those who haven’t seen it yet it’s basically a 30 days experiment of a McDonald’s exclusive diet. I have to admit the movie is scaring, even if I don’t use to eat junk food more than couple of times a year, I sill got stomach ache only seeing it and thinking about it.

Well the movie basically is self explanatory about why more than 60% of american adults are overweighted. Even more weird the “funny”-ugly stuff is the detail about the Cheesburger Bill which would make illegal for people to sue food companies for making them obese. Huh, nice. Well most of all is a debate about the limits between personal and corporate responsability. But considering the cigarettes precedent, I don’t see too much of a debate actually.