Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Anyone in need can obtain food to meet nourishment needs. Similar organizations help with free clothing. Anyone who does not have enough money for food and clothing can get them for free.

What you get if you cross Brubeck’s Take Five with Bach’s Prelude in C minor (BWV 999 — that’s why Club Nine)

I am currently reading about Rubens. I liked the text of the passport issued by the mayor of Antwerp in the year 1600 to Rubens for his entry into Italy. Check out the text (Rubens Peter Paul. Letters, documents, judgments of contemporaries. Translations. Compiled by K. S. Egorov.):

“To all and everyone who reads or hears this document read, the mayor and magistrates of the city of Antwerp wish happiness and prosperity.

We vow and hereby confirm that in our city and region, by the gracious providence of God, one can breathe healthy air and that neither the plague nor any other contagious disease is raging here.

Furthermore, as the below-mentioned Peter Rubens, the son of Johannes, formerly a syndic of our city, has told us that he is currently planning to travel to Italy on business, and in order that he may enter and exit everywhere freely without suspicion of being afflicted by any, and especially a contagious disease, because he himself and our entire city, by the grace of God, are spared from the plague or any other contagious disease, – the aforementioned mayor and magistrates, called to testify to the truth, have issued him this document, sealed with the seal of our city of Antwerp.”

P.S. I even managed to find the original. It was not easy 🙂

Universis et singulis praesentes litteras visuris sive legi audituris, Consules et Senatus civitatis Antverpiae salutem. Votum facimus ac harum serie testamur, apud nos et in confinibus nostris, divina favente clementia, salubrem spirare auram, nec ullam pestis aut contagii labern grassari. Tum quoque die in calce praesentium scripto, ex parte Petri Rubbens, quondam Magistri Joannis filii, expositum nobis esse, eumdem Petrum nunc temporis ex hac civitate Antverpiae Italiam versus profecturum, negociorum suorum causa, et ut absque ulla difficultate et suspicionc morbi praesertim contagiosi, ubicumque admitteretur et venire possit, cum nimirum ipse et tota haec civitas (Dei beneficio) sit immunis a peste similique morbo contagioso, idcirco nos Consules et Senatus praedicti, ad veritatis testimonium prohibendum requisiti, eidem has praesentes litteras nostras concessimus, sigillo ad causas huius civitatis Antverpiae munitas, die octava Maii 1600. (

It might be useful for some of you to know that “Siri, delete all my alarms” exists

Reading “Life’s edge”. I liked Carl Zimmer’s “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity” and could not stop myself from buying his new work. As the book’s name says, “Life’s edge” is about what life is, and why scientists have struggled to draw its boundaries.

(Side note… I bought this book after returning another one, which appeared to be not interesting. It turned out that books are returnable at Barnes and Noble, 30 days after the purchase)

So, what I want to say is… there is an interesting story with which the book begins. That story is about John Butler Burke, a physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, who performed experiments in which he introduced a radium salt into the sterilized beef broth. The result was the creation of lifelike forms that he called radiobes. These radiobes started out as small spots, some less than a micrometer across and barely visible under Burke’s microscope. These spots gradually grew and changed shape over a period of a few days, developing internal structures that made them resemble bacteria. Burke came to believe that these forms were not quite alive but existed somewhere on the border of living and nonliving. They were perhaps evidence of an ancestor to life, one that predated the earliest life forms.

That was happening in far 1904. Interesting that his theory had surged in popularity so that he quickly stopped continuing his research and instead he started giving public lectures which helped to monetize his popularity.

Excited newspaper headlines were proclaiming that Burke had found the “Secret of Life,” but skepticism from scientists came quickly. Another Cavendish-trained physicist, W. A. Douglas Rudge, repeated the experiment and concluded that the radiobes were sulfate precipitates and therefore purely physical. By the time Burke published a book in 1906 summarizing his work, he was widely dismissed as a physicist with a weak knowledge of biology.

Interesting that both Burke’s radiobes and Burke himself have not earned even a Wikipedia page. The story of radiobes is hardly covered on the Internet. While Burke went wrong, he did so in an attempt to make sense of life itself, and it is quite surprising for me to see him virtually unmentioned.

A link to his book is in the comments.

For the first time in I don’t know, twenty-something years, I’ve got a TV. Yesterday, I designed and printed a soundbar holder for the TV – see photos in the comments. Printing on a 3D printer is somewhat akin to being a botanist – you plant a seed and then check every hour to see what’s happening. The holder took 40 hours to print.

In the video, Yuki is watching a cartoon

Sakura Flowerfall // It’s kind of like snow for us too

100% concentrated happiness // The dog’s joy

Harry Potter is leaving Russia

“As reported by the TJ publication, Russia’s largest ebook sellers LitRes and MyBook will remove the entire series of novels by J.K. Rowling about Harry Potter from access starting April 8. Both stores stated that the removal was mandated by the copyright holder.”

It reminds me of Splean

Great lecture in Russian on Francisco Goya