I'm sorry, but you present a quite slanted view. You are forgetting that during the decades of occupation, thousands upon thousands of innocent children, women and palestinian men have been killed by Israeli soldiers, often by sniper fire when just walking to school or playing in the garden.
You are forgetting the apartheid-like policies by the Israeli administration against palestinians, the arbitrary changes of rules, border zones etc, followed by destruction of farming property, houses and so on. The constantly moving forward of "Israeli only zones", the sporadic automatic fire from Israeli pillboxes towards farmers trying to earn an honest living.
You are forgetting the daily oppression of road blocks (that were there long before any terrorist threat) that prevent traffic flow out of no other reason than to frustrate and agitate. You forget the countless people who have died, even newly born infants, while waiting in the ambulances at the road blocks. In many cases, the ill and wounded, women in labor etc. are even mocked by racist Isreali border guards while suffering in the lines.
Even the small things, like Palestinians (and arabs in general) frequently having to endure racial slurs such as "the two legged beasts", also from high ranking politicians in the media.
The fact that the whole infrastructure of the occupied territories has over the decades slowly been ground to pieces by Isreali attacks, often (but of course not always) unprovoked. The then quite secular and culturally minded Palestinians having their cultural heritage, books, movies, paintings etc shat and pissed on (smeared with faeces), ripped to pieces.
Everything above, and countless more attacks on the Palestinian people are well documented, if somewhat hidden in mainstream media. I'm not just pulling something out of my ass here.
I'm sorry, but peace loving as I am, if I was a palestinian in the occupied territories, my daughter killed by sniper fire, my friends grandmother killed while trying to reach the hospital to treat her broken leg, my attempts at dignified life shot dead by deliberate destruction of enterprises and workplaces in my society... I would be pissed beyond all reason. (all real world examples) And quite likely to vote for the guys with the AK-47 and Kalashnikovs, no matter what their other policies are. The fact is, most palestinians are only want peace. But the Isreali policies, often driven on by a significant group of right wing religious nutjobs in the Isreali society, are actually playing right into Hamas hands. One wonders if this is a coincidence.
In short, what I'm trying to say is that the Israeli government are just as bad as Hamas when it comes to terrorism, the act of striking fear into the heart of the enemy. Don't for a second believe that they are some kind of innocent victims in this conflict, only wishing to establish a democratic, multi-ethnic western state in the area. That is blatantly not true.
As far as I know, no restrictions. Anyone can come here and study for a Masters or Bachelors programme. In some programmes we have over half of the students from other countries.
In fact, you can even get paid from the Swedish government through the Student Grant system! All you need to do is to find a nice Swedish guy/girl to live together with. When you share address, and "live under conditions similar to marriage" then you are automatically in "registered partnership", and eligible for national student grants (ca 350$ a month, with optional extra 600$ as loans)
Not true. However, the government is thinking about implementing a fee for foreigners, since so many come here to study. I don't think the bill will pass, since many believe Sweden get so many foreign students (which is beneficial since many competent people choose to stay) just because it is free to study here.
The welfare part can be annoying, but I for one have only benefited from the free healthcare and education. Sure, I "lose" 50% of my salary to the state, but on the other hand I don't have to pay e.g. medical insurance. I think it evens out in the end.
One major thing I'd just like to mention: If you have an ATi card, run a laptop of any kind and use the preloaded open source drivers, compiz will refuse to start. This is a check that was put in for some reason during the beta stages.
To prevent this (especially if you know your card works) you have to comment out the lines 270-278 in the compiz config script.
Don't ask why they did it, no one knows...
Hm, technically you are wrong (But you might have somewhat of a point in a way I think you dont realize =)
The classification of organisms in the 3 domain system is based on 16s rRNA sequence similarity studies, pioneered by Carl Woese in the 70:ies. In short, the sequence of the small subunit of the ribosome is compared between organisms to differentiate and define microbial species. The 16s rRNA sequence is used since it rarely takes part in interspecies horizontal gene transfer, and also shows a constant mutation rate. The reason being it is so integral to the life of the organism, as it is involved in cell replication.
When starting these studies, Carl Woese discovered that the previously used "prokaryote" group consisted of 2 distinct groups, now known as Bacteria and Archaea. With the addition of Eukaryotes he had identified 3 ancient lineages of organisms which were equally distantly related to each other, forming the basis of the "3 domain system".
Now, around this time the only known Archaea were so called extremophiles living in physically extreme environments. Until just a decade ago, it was thought that Archaea only consisted of these peculiar extremophile species. With the advent of metagenomic and enviromental sequencing studies we now know that Archaea are present in virtually all environments, and also in quite large numbers. In fact in some habitats the Archaea are even the main organisms, such as in the deep seas. The reason we are realizing this only now is that Archaea are very difficult to culture, and have therefore not been seen in studies where culture dependent methods are used.
So, just to clarify: Being an extremophile has nothing to do with being evolutionary grouped in the Archaea domain! (This is unfortunatly a very common misconception, and I think it does the perhaps most successful organismal domain on our planet great injustice.)
Finally, touching upon the perilous field of the microbial species concept, in some fields it might actually make more sense to define a species from what it does in the environment, and not from evolutionary relatedness. The reasoning is that even in what we would define as a species by ordinary studies, many different varieties of metabolism can be found. This is because the major way of adaption for microorganisms is not in fact classical hereditary evolution, but exchange of genes between different species; so called horizontal gene transfer. Quite simply, most of the time microorganisms dont adapt to a new environment by mutation -> natural selection, but by uptake of useful gene packages from the environment followed by natural selection. Therefore, in fields such as microbial ecology, defining a species from what particular set of metabolical pathways and reactions it can perform makes more sense than from which other cells its evolutionary related to, since this says very little about the actual features of the organism. And that is why you might have a point, although of different reasons than I think you imagined =)
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I'm sorry, but you present a quite slanted view. You are forgetting that during the decades of occupation, thousands upon thousands of innocent children, women and palestinian men have been killed by Israeli soldiers, often by sniper fire when just walking to school or playing in the garden. You are forgetting the apartheid-like policies by the Israeli administration against palestinians, the arbitrary changes of rules, border zones etc, followed by destruction of farming property, houses and so on. The constantly moving forward of "Israeli only zones", the sporadic automatic fire from Israeli pillboxes towards farmers trying to earn an honest living. You are forgetting the daily oppression of road blocks (that were there long before any terrorist threat) that prevent traffic flow out of no other reason than to frustrate and agitate. You forget the countless people who have died, even newly born infants, while waiting in the ambulances at the road blocks. In many cases, the ill and wounded, women in labor etc. are even mocked by racist Isreali border guards while suffering in the lines. Even the small things, like Palestinians (and arabs in general) frequently having to endure racial slurs such as "the two legged beasts", also from high ranking politicians in the media. The fact that the whole infrastructure of the occupied territories has over the decades slowly been ground to pieces by Isreali attacks, often (but of course not always) unprovoked. The then quite secular and culturally minded Palestinians having their cultural heritage, books, movies, paintings etc shat and pissed on (smeared with faeces), ripped to pieces. Everything above, and countless more attacks on the Palestinian people are well documented, if somewhat hidden in mainstream media. I'm not just pulling something out of my ass here. I'm sorry, but peace loving as I am, if I was a palestinian in the occupied territories, my daughter killed by sniper fire, my friends grandmother killed while trying to reach the hospital to treat her broken leg, my attempts at dignified life shot dead by deliberate destruction of enterprises and workplaces in my society... I would be pissed beyond all reason. (all real world examples) And quite likely to vote for the guys with the AK-47 and Kalashnikovs, no matter what their other policies are. The fact is, most palestinians are only want peace. But the Isreali policies, often driven on by a significant group of right wing religious nutjobs in the Isreali society, are actually playing right into Hamas hands. One wonders if this is a coincidence. In short, what I'm trying to say is that the Israeli government are just as bad as Hamas when it comes to terrorism, the act of striking fear into the heart of the enemy. Don't for a second believe that they are some kind of innocent victims in this conflict, only wishing to establish a democratic, multi-ethnic western state in the area. That is blatantly not true.
As far as I know, no restrictions. Anyone can come here and study for a Masters or Bachelors programme. In some programmes we have over half of the students from other countries. In fact, you can even get paid from the Swedish government through the Student Grant system! All you need to do is to find a nice Swedish guy/girl to live together with. When you share address, and "live under conditions similar to marriage" then you are automatically in "registered partnership", and eligible for national student grants (ca 350$ a month, with optional extra 600$ as loans)
Not true. However, the government is thinking about implementing a fee for foreigners, since so many come here to study. I don't think the bill will pass, since many believe Sweden get so many foreign students (which is beneficial since many competent people choose to stay) just because it is free to study here. The welfare part can be annoying, but I for one have only benefited from the free healthcare and education. Sure, I "lose" 50% of my salary to the state, but on the other hand I don't have to pay e.g. medical insurance. I think it evens out in the end.
One major thing I'd just like to mention: If you have an ATi card, run a laptop of any kind and use the preloaded open source drivers, compiz will refuse to start. This is a check that was put in for some reason during the beta stages. To prevent this (especially if you know your card works) you have to comment out the lines 270-278 in the compiz config script. Don't ask why they did it, no one knows...
Hm, technically you are wrong (But you might have somewhat of a point in a way I think you dont realize =)
The classification of organisms in the 3 domain system is based on 16s rRNA sequence similarity studies, pioneered by Carl Woese in the 70:ies. In short, the sequence of the small subunit of the ribosome is compared between organisms to differentiate and define microbial species. The 16s rRNA sequence is used since it rarely takes part in interspecies horizontal gene transfer, and also shows a constant mutation rate. The reason being it is so integral to the life of the organism, as it is involved in cell replication.
When starting these studies, Carl Woese discovered that the previously used "prokaryote" group consisted of 2 distinct groups, now known as Bacteria and Archaea. With the addition of Eukaryotes he had identified 3 ancient lineages of organisms which were equally distantly related to each other, forming the basis of the "3 domain system".
Now, around this time the only known Archaea were so called extremophiles living in physically extreme environments. Until just a decade ago, it was thought that Archaea only consisted of these peculiar extremophile species. With the advent of metagenomic and enviromental sequencing studies we now know that Archaea are present in virtually all environments, and also in quite large numbers. In fact in some habitats the Archaea are even the main organisms, such as in the deep seas. The reason we are realizing this only now is that Archaea are very difficult to culture, and have therefore not been seen in studies where culture dependent methods are used.
So, just to clarify: Being an extremophile has nothing to do with being evolutionary grouped in the Archaea domain! (This is unfortunatly a very common misconception, and I think it does the perhaps most successful organismal domain on our planet great injustice.)
Finally, touching upon the perilous field of the microbial species concept, in some fields it might actually make more sense to define a species from what it does in the environment, and not from evolutionary relatedness. The reasoning is that even in what we would define as a species by ordinary studies, many different varieties of metabolism can be found. This is because the major way of adaption for microorganisms is not in fact classical hereditary evolution, but exchange of genes between different species; so called horizontal gene transfer. Quite simply, most of the time microorganisms dont adapt to a new environment by mutation -> natural selection, but by uptake of useful gene packages from the environment followed by natural selection. Therefore, in fields such as microbial ecology, defining a species from what particular set of metabolical pathways and reactions it can perform makes more sense than from which other cells its evolutionary related to, since this says very little about the actual features of the organism. And that is why you might have a point, although of different reasons than I think you imagined =)