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I would like to thank everyone who has read Blogo Slovo, I look forward to seing ya'll on the other side. Please update your blogrolls accordingly. This is the last post here at Blogspot.

There's a New Sheriff in Town...

Per the Slovak Spectator, Slovak Justice Minister Daniel Lipšic has finished reworking his country's criminal code, which must now be approved by parliament. Here are some highlights:


The new code, which will take effect in 2005 if approved by the parliament, introduces tougher penalties as well as a greater range for inevitable defence, enabling the use of guns by potential victims attacked in their homes.

The new legislation also lowers the threshold for criminal responsibility from the current 15 years of age to 14, enabling even young convicts to be sent to jail for life for especially serious crimes like pre-meditated murder.

...

Rather than going to jail, people convicted of minor crimes may either be sentenced to unpaid community service raging between 40 and 300 hours or given the option of redeeming their crimes in home confinement.

The code also introduces legal responsibility for companies with punishments set as high as Sk500 million (€12.5 million). Currently it is only possible to punish individuals, but the new code will allow firms to be held responsible if it proves impossible to identify the individuals guilty in business-related crimes.

Lipšic also wants to unify the state's criminal policy so that courts issue standard verdicts for similar crimes.

I'm glad to see that in a formerly communist country with minimal respect for the rule of law, they are addressing crime by rewriting the laws and revamping the courts, not kicking down doors or cracking skulls.

Culture Need Not Be Inaccessible

Will Baude at Crescat Sententia is pleasantly surprised that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a pretty good book, much as Matthew Yglesias was surprised to learn that Casablanca is actually a good movie.

Perhaps the University of Chicago has failed in its mission to indoctrinate me with the elitism and snobbery of the post-moderns, but I'm of the opinion that truly great works of culture should be able to please both the snooty maven and the curious dilletante. *Great Works Of Art* don't need to be beyond the comprehension of the unwashed masses to be considered great. Casablanca can be a nice action/thriller to watch with a date, or one can wax eloquent about the use of shadow, the archetypes, the characters and their relationship to the war, etc. There's something for everyone. Unlike Citizen Kane, which is a nice enough art movie, but I can't imagine just kicking back and watching on a rainy afternoon.

And by the way, Will, if we're going to talk about Conrad, I prefer The Secret Sharer to Heart of Darkness. The latter can be hard to disentangle from Apocalypse Now.

UPDATE: Will Baude chides me for mentioning that in my mind, Heart of Darkness is tied up with Apocalypse Now. Obviously, someone hasn't been paying attention in his postmodern humanities classes. Of course A.N. is different from H.o.D., in narrative structure, characters (Colonel Kilgore wasn't in the book), and just the backdrop, Vietnam instead of colonial Africa. Nonetheless, A.N. was written by Coppola as a riff on H.o.D., in much the same way that Chekhov's Lady with the Lapdog was his own version of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (there, I worked the Slavic in, my PhD won't be wasted). More to the point, everyone believes that A.N. was based on H.o.D., and at a certain point, if enough people believe something about a work of culture, it takes on a life of its own. Georgia O'Keefe once told an interviewer that her paintings were actually meant to be seen as *flowers*. Nonetheless, her work has been described up by feminists and others as celebrating the female body. Enough people look at O'Keefe's flowers and see genitalia, whether O'Keefe means them to or not, that critics of her work can't overloook this aspect of her art.

Seriously, read The Secret Sharer, it's a great book, it deserves more credit than it gets. And for those who don't know, Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski.

Meanwhile, Some Countries are Getting Along Quite Nicely...

Fifteen years ago, most of Eastern Europe lay behind the Iron Curtain, subservient to the dying Soviet empire. Even after the Berlin Wall came down and Eastern Europeans began to speak of freedom, democracy and self-determination, there were many skeptics who noted, quite accurately, that such countries had been ruled of dictators for several generations and even prior to that they had had little or no experience with democracy. It was far from certain that countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, and even Russia would turn out as well as they have. Many scholars feared that the Yugoslav experience would have been more widespread throughout Eastern Europe.

But this did not happen. Throughout most of formerly Communist Europe, democracy is taking hold quite nicely (if still a bit shaky in Russia, and rather uncertain in Ukraine and Belorus'). Even in Macedonia, which had been part of the former Yugoslavia, things are progressing nicely, as posted by Douglas over at Halfway down the Danube, who tells us about the presidential elections in Macedonia yesterday.

"Nobody pays much attention to Macedonia. It's small, it's isolated, it's one of the poorest countries in Europe.

But there are some interesting things happening there. Here's one: Macedonia had presidential elections yesterday, and they were peaceful and clean. Nobody got shot or intimidated or even threatened, and the general consensus of observers was that the election was pretty clean."

For a country which had long been trampled by one empire on its way to fight another (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Nazi, Soviet, Yugoslav), Macedonia is doing OK. Perfect? No, there are still ethnic conflicts between the Macedonian Slavs and Albanians, among others. Nonetheless, for a country with so little experience with self-determination, they're doing OK. It makes one optimistic about the spread of democracy.

Academic Integrity in Russia

It seems that's becoming a bit of an oxymoron. Too bad, for a long time, a strong system of education was all Russia had going for it. Tom at Digenis.org has a series of posts on the topic:


Part I discusses how his teacher told him it was OK to insert whole text, uncited, from another source.

"The first experience that I’ll mention is that several other students and I have been told by professors that it’s okay to plagiarize to an extent in our research papers. The consultant/advisor that I have for my project is a great instructor, academically qualified, and I love her to pieces......So I was surprised when in one of our meetings she commented that she couldn’t understand why Americans are so afraid to copy someone else’s words. “If somebody else has said something well, why should you go and paraphrase it?” she asked me, after I had asked for her help in reworking a paragraph long sentence on the 1917-18 language reform. She then advised me to simply insert the paragraph into my paper, word for word without any citation."


Part II discusses the creativity Russians show in their cheating methods.

"If you’re still not convinced that Russian students put more thought and imagination into their cheat sheets, then perhaps you should visit the Museum of Shpargalki in the Russian city of Yarovoe. There you’ll find such wonders as a cheatsheet written on a cigarette and a normal pencil with ten physics equations written on it."


In part III, Tom talks to a woman selling research papers in a metro station.

"Pulling a tiny notebook out of her purse, the lady told me that prices varied depending on the topic, length of the paper, and how soon it was needed. I asked her how much a 15 page paper on the Octoberist Revolution would cost, but she just scribbled down a telephone number and the name Vlad, ripped the page out of the notebook, and told me to negotiate a price with this fellow. I asked her again how much something like that generally costs, but she just told me to call this guy."


Yup. Par for the course.

Round and Round she Goes....

Carnival of the Vanities #84 is up at WOLves.

Moonlighting, Moonshining....

The Chicago Quill, an "independent, nonpartisan magazine of politics, culture and the arts, run by students at the University of Chicago" just published my article "Whiskey for the Uninitiated." In fact, at this moment, it is the feature.

"Many people, especially young adults only just learning to appreciate alcoholic beverages that don't come in plastic cups, fail to grasp the beauty and complexity of good whiskey. Some see whiskey as the drink of blue-blooded snobs who sip Scotch at the country club. Others see whiskey as the drink of the hammer-headed hillbillies or working-class ne'er-do-wells who gather at the local watering hole. Still others spurn whiskey because it is harder to develop a taste for its fiery potency than for cold beer or white wine."

Ahh, I'll be so proud when I sober up.....

Trackback Test

This is a test of the trackback system for the new site. Here is a post.

EU Q & A From Cz

Arellanes.com has a post in which he discusses the immediate, street-level effects of the Czech Republic joining the EU in a few weeks.

"In short, sugar, bananas and Internet get more expensive, but French and Italian wines and imported chocolate drop their price by 1/3. Woohoo! Wine and chocolate are two of the four basic food groups, no?"

Yes, wine and chocolate are two of the basic food groups. The other two are oysters and beer.

Meanwhile in Bratislava....

Petr is putting his money where his mouth is. Some Czechs are complaining about the cost incurred by the government for sending an airplane to retrieve some Czech journalists that had been taken hostage in Iraq. Petr says:

"I think the three are among the best war reporters we have in this country. What happened to them could have happened to everybody.

The cost of the flight to Basra, Iraq and back was estimated by the ministry at 250,000 Czech crowns, which is some $10,000.

Let's shut the voices up: if 250 journalists donate 1,000, then the taxpayer's money is back and nobody can say a word. I would donate the amount, if such drive is organized. I know it could have been me if my employer had sent me to Iraq, too."

Hey, Petr, count me in. If you organize this drive or find someone else who does, I'll send you $10.

Found: Michael Jackson's Biggest Fan......In Slovenia of All Places

Over at The Glory of Carniola, Michael interviews Tanja Kovac, perhaps Michael Jackson's biggest fan in the world.

"Things may not be going well for Michael Jackson in California right now, but here in Slovenia he has the unwavering love and support of a fan named Tanja Kovac. The 23-year-old financial assistant from Ljubljana runs MJSlo.com, a Slovenian portal dedicated to the king of pop."

Bring the Boys Back Home?

Per the Sofia Echo, in the wake of violence in Iraq, many in Bulgaria are calling for their troops to be brought back to Bulgaria. Another possibility is that the Bulgarian contingent might set up base camp outside of town.

Demographic Time Bomb

In today's Izvesita, an article about Russia's declining population. According to Anatoly Vishnevski, leader of the Center for Demography and Human Ecology, Russia will need between 700 thousand and a million net immigrants per year to maintain its current population. Otherwise, Russia's population will from the current 145 million to 125 million by 2025. Professor Vishnevski worries that a falling population, occupying a large land mass, is a geopolotical catastrophe, and he's probably right. Russia's neighbor, China, has a huge population, and a very dynamic economy, I'm sure they'd love a nice big chunk of Siberia, both for the living space and for the natural resources.

However, immigration may be just as troubling for Russia. It is very much a blood and soil nation, it can be rather xenophobic, especially towards those who are not just a little different (Europeans), but a lot different (Asians, Caucasians, Africans). Also, immigrants can certainly benefit an economy (witness the US), but in the short term they can cause social, cultural and economic upheaval, something the Russians really don't need right now. The US and Europe are experiencing bouts of immigration-related headaches, and those countries have far more experience dealing with immigrants, especially the US. Russia will certainly have even more trouble managing the assimilation of newcomers. Not to mention, and I don't mean to be harsh, but we must call things as we see it, but who would immigrate to Russia? Few people from The West, as that would likely be a step down. Perhaps those who want to leave their countries, but can't get into the West? These would be less skilled people, perhaps refugees, meanwhile Russia will continue to experience an outflow of her most talented citizens towards the West. Immigration may be better than a shrinking, aging population, but it is far from ideal.

Personally, I think that Russia needs to find a way to increase its internal birth rate. Hard to do? Yes, given the state of the economy and the horrible medical care and excessive abortions that have left many women infertile. Nonetheless, demographic trends aren't permanent, the US birth rate fell pretty sharply in the late 60s and early 70s, but then rebounded quite nicely, and currently stands above the replacement level, unlike most of Europe. Russia needs to convince her citizens that they can afford to have kids, that it is desirable to have kids. Perhaps a booming economy might help. That is already happening. It might take some subsidies and benefits and some political reform, but the alternatives aren't pretty.

Some Things Never Change

Per Siberian Light, Vladimir Putin has given the deputies of the Duma a raise, "so that they'd no longer have a need to take bribes"

Peter the Great tried the same thing, he raised civil servant salaries so that they would no longer need to leech off the population (the old kormlenie system), but that didn't take, either, he ended up hanging several of them to make his point. Old habits die hard, then and now.

Euro-Land!!!!

My friend Jeff, who is otherwise a good liberal, has the opinion that Europe is turning into theme park. Well, the Weekly World News has reported that this is, in fact, the case. Perhaps the management at Stalin World in Lithuania can give these guys some advice (Don't laugh, it really exists)

"With nothing new to offer visitors, the European countries decided to stop pretending they were still relevant, and to start celebrating their colorful pasts.

"Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades," explains an unnamed EU representative. "Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality."

Each country will now be an exhibit within the park. For example, what was once known as Germany will now be the Germanland exhibit. Only traditional German foods such as bratwurst, sauerkraut and beer will be permitted in Germanland.

The citizens of each European country will now be considered "Euro hosts." The Euro hosts will be required to dress in traditional ethnic outfits from their respective homelands to better entertain visitors."

Kinda sounds like the Democratic Party could follow the same path....

Hat tip to EURSOC, who got it from Tim Blair, who got it from Combustible Boy.

Slavs in Iraq

From the CENTCOM homepage, a webpage for each country operating operating under their command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan.

Czech Republic

Macedonia

Poland This is WAY understated...

Russia

Slovak Republic

Slovenia


These two pages are new and still under construction as I write this.

Bulgaria

Ukraine


Some of these countries have sent soldiers. Others have sent relief workers. Others have sent supplies and aid. Thanks to every last one of them, plus all the other countries who are helping to pacify and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am trying to get information on how to send care packages to our allies' soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'll make that available as I get it.

The Great Migration

Hi all. Work on migrating to the new site continues. For those who wish to see my progress, click here. I hope to complete the transition by May 1st and have a big May Day party. New content will appear here until then.

Racism in Russia

Lex Libertas discusses his personal encounters with racism in Russia. Let's just say it is not the most tolerant place in the world. I've heard Russians refer to African students as "monkeys" and seen the harassment. Dark-skinned people who look like they might be from Turkey, Chechnya, Georgia, etc were often treated with suspicion bordering on contempt and occasionally becoming abuse. I got very tired of this whole thing, and being a firm believer in MLK's dream, I would argue with the Russians who wanted to tell me that all Muslims (Jews, whatever...) are criminals or troublemakers. I hate to admit it, though, but I encountered so much of this bulls**t that after a certain point I just stopped arguing. I certainly wouldn't participate, but I just didn't have the energy to constantly fight that battle.

PC Help

Language Hat needs help getting his computer to handle Polish input from the keyboard. This page, courtesy of the German and Slavic Department at George Washington University, explains how to install Russian fonts and keyboard drivers. The same technique can be used for Polish, Czech, anything the basic operating system can handle. Once you have the keyboard installed, you can switch from English input to something else, usually by clicking on a little icon on the system bar at the bottom of the screen. Also, you can always open Word, then use Alt-Insert-Symbol, which will display all of the characters you can input, including stuff from other languages, plus mathematical symbols and other such goodies. You can then cut and paste from Word to an input field at a search engine.

BTw, Mr. Hat mentions all of this in the context of pointing out this excellent site, a Polish dictionary with cool etymological info as well, but it's all in Polish.

Carnival Time

This week's Carnival is at Southern Musings.

If You are Ever in Vladivostok and Need a Taxidermist.....

Then Vladimir is your guy.

Sound and Fury

The Moscow Times reports that at a recent retreat for Russian business and political elites, there was a lot of hand-wringing, and a fair bit of sabre-rattling, over Russia's role foreign policy:

"Russia's loyal cooperation with the West and Western interests makes it the naive wife to the West's unfettered husband, or so goes the colorful analogy proposed Saturday during a characteristically dry discussion of foreign policy priorities.

...

[O]ne pro-Western speaker noted, there will be stiff competition between the United States and Russia for influence in the former Soviet space, where the United States has parlayed its military presence in countries like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Ukraine into economic ties. Meanwhile, for Moscow, cooperation and free-trade zones with the CIS have rarely been more than a lukewarm priority.

Russia should assert its position in the CIS, since it has too few allies to carelessly allow relations with the states in its backyard to deteriorate -- not least because those nations are a key export market for Russian goods, several attendees said."

At least they are being realistic about things, recognizing that they 1> have few allies; 2> need to emphasize economics; and 3> will find themselves in competition with the US in some spheres.

On the one hand, Russia has few allies because, historically, they have been rather imperialistic towards their neighbors. Poles, Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians and the like have been kicked around by Russia often enough that they are wary of The Bear. Just look at how happy the Baltic states are to be safely in NATO. On the other hand, in other neighboring countries, such as the 'stans, Russians and russified locals form the elite, without whom the countries would lack the knowledge and connections to manage their affairs.

These countries have a better relationship with the Russians. However, because these countries are at or near the front lines in the war on terror, the US has been building military bases, providing economic aid, and creating commercial links and relationships. This is, understandably, making the Russians nervous. If the Russians want to increase their influence in these areas, they must leverage their existing commercial, military and cultural history and show these countries that their relationship can be mutually beneficial and profitable. The old saber-rattling won't work, everyone knows the Russians are having a helluva time in Chechnya, and are not in a position to really do much of anything negative. Nonetheless, all parties could benefit from sharing of intel, pooling military resources, training together, etc. If the Russians accept that the Americans don't pose a threat to their influence in Asia, and if the Americans respect Russian history and influence in the area, then the "competition" mentioned in the Moscow Times article needn't anything more than friendly rivalry...

Another Verse, Same as the First

The Best of Me Symphony is up over at SneakEasy. Look for me next to the picture of Brahms. Hmm, why Brahms? Nothing against him, of course, but I've always been rather partial to Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Bach. Anyway, go check out the musical menagerie and say Hi to Kiril and Nikita.

I expect to have new content tonight.

Spot On

I found this at American Digest, care of Swanky Conservative (what a great name...).

"But that was then and this is now. Now I have come to the place where the whole sorry spectacle and circus of the Democrats over the last year has finally angered me. The party whose ideals once excited me has become a parody of itself, a dangerous parody. Instead of inspriation it delivers either numbing boredom or sheer despair at its intellectual and spiritual poverty

....

From the party that gave us FDR, Truman, JFK and even, yes, LBJ, the Democrats have gone through a process of gradual but increasingly shrill devolution to the party of such weak, tepid and compromised souls as Carter, Clinton, and now Kerry. And the men the Party puts up are only the shadows of the compromises it has made with itself. And it has made many compromises over the years.... and become the poorer for each one of them.

...

Politics is a profession founded on hypocrisy. This we all know. But, at the same time, we also need a politics that somewhere within it has a shred of uncompromised decency and more than a little courage. Neither of these qualities is self-evident in the Democratic Party today. There's not a lot in the Republicans either, but it at least is measurable even if it still is in short-measure.

...

In a way, what the Democratic party is now is somewhat like a first wife thought about at a safe distance from the divorce. You know you loved her at some point but you can't really remember why. You know she was beautiful to you then, but now you can only see the ruins of that beauty, and you are glad you got the best years. You know that, yes, you must have been happy with her and had a lot of good times. But now you can't remember where or when. In fact, when you think about her now you can't really believe you wasted all those declining years with here just because you believed that somehow, some time, she would grow sane, beautiful, and young again."

Wow. Yeah. Right on the money.

The Party that hoots and hollers about racism has become racist (Uncle Tom Powell?). The party that supposedly cares about "the little guy" opposed welfare reform, keeping the little guy dependent on big government, and they won't give that little guy educational choice, so at least his kids can get a decent education and move up the social ladder. The party that gave us the Berlin airlift and committed American might to containing communism is full of defeatists, appeasers and self-loathing wannabe Euroweenies. What's left to fight for when all you can do is rail and rant?

To be honest, one of the main reasons I hope the Dems get crushed this year (besides Kerry being completely vacuous) is that such a defeat might provoke the sort of soul-searching that could restore some vigor to their party. I consider myself a conservative, nonetheless I see value in an opposition party keeping us sharp. Not to mention, there are some problems that the Republicans most likely won't address on their own, so we need the two-party system, even if I don't agree with the other party.

We Interrupt This Broadcast....

Hi all, sorry that blogging has been spotty the last few days. Blogspot was misbahving for a while, they took over 24 hours to actually post something I published, then my cabe modem crashed last night. Yeah, I know, bitch bitch bitch. I will get some more content up soon.

Also, I have agreed to do some writing for the Chicago Quill, a web magazine started by some folks in the University of Chicago community

"The Chicago Quill is an independent, nonpartisan magazine of politics, culture and the arts, run by students at the University of Chicago. "

I'll post links as they come up.

Pan-Slavic Round-up

1> Siberian Light discusses the possibility that Chechens are testing chemical weapons.

"The idea that Chechnya itself is a training ground for the use of chemical weapons is pretty laughable. The place is a war-zone, crawling with Russian troops. I'm not suggesting that the Russian's are in anything approaching control of Chechnya, but their presence makes it prohibitively difficult for the Chechens to spend time training in the use of a new, relatively technologically advanced weapon."

2> Rob over at The Alaskan Bulgarian holds up a cultural mirror for his Bulgarian students to look into:

"For the last couple of days the different classes have done different activities around the opinions of Americans visiting Bulgaria. I made clear that none of the essays they read were mine--I give them enough of my views--but I encouraged them to take them seriously. They ate them up. After seeing them focus more on these essays and the activities I'd assigned them than they had on anything else this year, it occured to me that they don't often get an outside perspective."

3> The yahoos at the Exile, Moscow's "alternative" paper give us the "bardak calendar," baically a list of events and concerts that their readers might enjoy. Heavy on hip-hop, punk, grunger, and other music I rarely listen to. "Bardak," by the way, is a Russian word that means something like "the chaos you get when all hell breaks loose."

4> Over at Ghost Town, we have Elena's adventures biking through what was once Chernobyl and the surrounding region, which, as you can well imagine, is deserted.

"I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads. "

So sad, such a waste of life, of nature. Some of my wife's ancestors came from this region, about a hundred years ago. I guess we won't visit the ancestral homeland for a good long time (600 years, +/-)

5> Carniola.com discusses economic freedom.

"Looking through the results, a few things caught my attention. The first is that Slovenia did poorly. Among incoming EU members, only Poland fared worse. Estonia, by comparison, is ranked sixth in the world -- ahead of countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. Although Slovenia leads Eastern Europe in GDP per capita, its economic freedom ranking is below countries like Armenia and Botswana."

Checking in with Slovakia

Sorry the posting has been light. Here's something to tide you over.

"THE MUCH-anticipated meeting of the ruling parties following the first round of presidential elections, which saw Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) candidate Eduard Kukan flop to the surprise and even shock of some observers, did not result in any shake-up of the right-wing government."

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Film at 11.

From the Silly Solutions Department

Arellanes.com gives us this gem.

The Circus Comes to (West) Hollywood

Carnival of the Vanities is up at Boi from Troy. Go take a walking tour of Boi's neighborhood and the blogs that inhabit them.

Slovenian Blog

Wow, a blog, in English about Slovenia. Go check out "The Glory of Carniola."

"When I started The Glory of Carniola in January of this year, my goal was to make a site that would document what life in Slovenia was like at the turn of the millennium. My referral logs, however, tell me that people aren't interested in what life in Slovenia is like at the turn of the millennium. They're interested in Natalija Verboten, preferably naked."

The good news is that there's much more than just pictures of Natalija Verboten. The bad news is that in none of the existing pictures is Ms. Verboten (great name, huh?) naked.

BEST OF ME SYMPHONY

Welcome to the Best of Me Symphony at Blogo Slovo. I hope you enjoy tonight's thematically arranged sonatas, and I have taken the liberty of recommending something intoxicating to accompany each piece. For our first selection, I suggest a complex and hearty Cabernet. Followed by a shot and a beer for Part Deux. Our third offering is best enjoyed with a bold Cognac or Armagnac. And the last piece cries out for a good snort of model-airplane glue, or at least a nice green magic marker. With that...

Maestro....

Who's Playing Out of Tune?

From Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority, this post. He wonders why the ACLU will defend even the most repugnant use of free speech by NAMBLA, but won't take second amendment cases at all (they're both in the Bill of Rights, you know....)

From Andrew Ian Dodge at Dodgeblogium, this post. He upbraids Stanley Kurtz for being an uptight yahoo with faulty logic, too. Ya gotta love a post that includes East European death metal as Exhibit A. Preach on, Brother Beavis....

From Gary Cruse at The Owners Manual, this post. What'd I do with my lime Diet Coke? Nevermind

From Mike Pechar at Interested-Participant, this post. Subbtle, very subbtle.


Bang the Drum

From Pietro at The Smarter Cop, this post. He takes John Kerry out into the backyard and beats him like an old rug. (Figuratively, of course, for any Secret Service agents reading this post...)

From Owen Paun at Lex Libertas, this post, a sparkling slice of satire aimed squarely at Saddam Sympathizers.


Liner Notes

From Susie at Practical Penumbra (I love that name, "Practical Penumbra," that is. "Susie" is nice too....), this post. She tells of the trials and travails of pre-coffee blogging. You actually got the computer turned without coffee, Susie? I don't know how you do it, I need to choke down a mega-mug before my feet hit the floor in the morning.

From Jim Peacock at Snooze Button Dreams, this post. Gold, Silver, Copper, Tin. (I thought it was straw, wood and brick? Wrong metaphor, *Bad Dave...*)

WTF?

From Harvey at Bad Money, this post. Salvador Dali would love your prose. Or is that Sigmund Freud? I get those two confused...

From Kiril Kundurazieff (now THERE is a name a Slavophile can like) at The Cycling Dude, this post. Makes me wonder if April Fools Day is in June.

From Goldie at Drama Queen we get this post. Nothing pithy I can dream up beats this interesting quote "are women finally coming to realise what men have known for years: that opposite sex coupling of the naughty variety is just plain yum?"

FINI

We hope yo uenjoyed tonight's show. Just remember, when you go the REAL symphony, at the end, you should applaud politely. No hooting and hollering and your shirt should NEVER come off. And for God's sake, don't do The Wave, you cretins...

Be Vewy Quiet, I'm Hunting Snark...

The Snark Hunt is up over at Electric Venom. My post about annoying politicians is up. Tell Kate I said Hi.

Best of Me Symphony

Entries are coming in. I hope to post the symphony late tonight or early tomorrow.

What Makes Europeans so European?

Arellanes.com has one answer.

Warning, there is NO, repeat NO defamation of the French in this post. Sorry to disappoint. It's a nice post, though.

Move it on over, Saddam.

Take the quiz: "Which Playing Card Are You?"

The Ace of Spades
Competative, dark, and ominous, You are the Ace of Spades!

Anyone Can Bitch.....

Dean Esmay hits this one on the head.

"Indeed, without exception, every partisan Democrat I've talked to has been incapable of answering me whenever I've said, "what precisely would you be doing differently? What policies could Bush follow or change that would make you happy?" Instead I get more crap about how Bush "lied," or bloviating about incompetence and failure."

OK, so what needs to happen?

"This country needs a sensible, moderate Democratic Party. My late friend Gary Utter, a staunch McGovern Democrat and a fellow member of Vietnam Veterans Against The War alongside John Kerry (who, by the way, he also grew to despise), said last year that we need a new Democratic Party. I more or less agree, although I think that that it requires reform from within the current party. But the only way to do that is to fire everybody at the top of the DNC and DCCC as well as the House and Senate leadership, which is probably too much to hope for until after the election--an election Democrats very much deserve to lose badly."

I agree. I hope the Democrats lose bad, bad enough to prompt them to go to the woodshed and come up with some new ideas. We need a real two-party system, so that the tension between the two will keep our nation vital and dynamic. What we have now is one party, plus a bunch of spitballers who oppose that party.

Again, I ask my readers, what Big ideas do the Democrats have? They're on defense, trying to preserve crappy public schools, affirmative action and failed old-style welfare. The only new idea they have is gay marriage, and that's not an idea to build a platform around.

So, guys. Go read The Atlantic and think about the next great idea, some new version of the GI Bill or a way to reform public education and make it not suck. Until then, stop wasting my time.

New Digs

FYI, I will be migrating this site to a new address and server in the next week or two. I hope this means better services, better graphics, and a nice community for Blogo Slovo. I will post details as they become available.

Finally, a Fisking

I got one of those "Imagine if the world were a village with 100 people in it...." letters today, no doubt written to make you appreciate what you have and fell guilty that you're not sharing more of it with the wretched of the Earth. I'm all for appreciating our prosperity, I have lived abroad enough to know that we got it good. I also want to share it, by helping other nations increase their trade, build capital and put people to work. A few extra bucks in foreign aid will help at the margin, but it won't create real wealth and prosperity, only commerce can do that.

Anyway, bad statistics and maudlin stereotypes don't help anyone. So without further ado, a-fisking we will go.

"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans"

This is just plain wrong, there are 667 million Europeans, 800 million Africans, and 800 million in the Western Hemisphere. The proportions above don't work. If the author can't get simple, easy to check facts right, why should I trust him/her?

See here, here, here and here for data.


52 would be female
48 would be male

plausible

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

plausible, depends upon how you define "white." It might be even less.

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

plausible

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

Probably closer to 5 than 11. Nonetheless, this is within reason. See here for data.

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's
wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.

This is simply not possible. That means that the US possesses one and half times the rest of the world *combined*. Europe and Asia have a lot of wealth, as do the oil countries of the Middle East. I can't find reliable data, but this simply can't be true.

70 would be unable to read

That seems a bit high. See this map. Eyeballing it, this 70% figure doesn't seem right.

50 would suffer from malnutrition

According to the UN, 842 million people were undernourished in 1999 - 2001. World population is about 6.3 billion, that would be about 14%, not 50%

See here.

1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

plausible

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

Especially education, the person who originally wrote this needs to improve his/her research and math skills.

I don't think exaggerating problems brings us any closer to solving them. In fact, quite the opposite, since it may demoralize people and/or cause us to misallocate time, money and effort.

Globalization is Good for the World's Poor

Look at this article, a very clever writer uses this thing called *data*, and it gives some interesting results...

"Look at the data on per-capita growth rates for poor countries versus the growth rates for rich countries. During the twenty-year pre-globalization period (1960-1980), per-capita incomes in the poor world grew at 2 percent per annum compared with a growth rate of 3.4 percent in the rich industrialized world. That is, the poor world grew at a considerably slower rate.

.......

In the globalization period (post-1980), the poor countries began their long march toward catch-up. In sharp contrast to the previous 20 years, fortunes were reversed. The poor economies registered a growth rate double that of the rich countries—some 3 percent per annum compared with the rich countries' considerably slower growth of 1.5 percent per annum. And the poor in the two poorest countries, India and China, saw their incomes increase at an even faster pace—above 5 percent yearly for more than 20 years.

......

At the risk of being politically incorrect, I note that there are few brown, yellow or black people in the vanguard of the anti-globalization debate."
Yeah. That captures it pretty well.

Excuses, Excuses

I'll post tonight. Sorry I've been gone. My wife's been out of town, it's Holy Week, I had junk to do for my dissertation, blah blah blah, playing my own violin. Blogging will resume tonight, after the wife goes to sleep.

BestOfMe Symphony

I will be hosting the Best of me Symphony this weekend. Please address submissions to dwkaiser *AT* uchicago *DOT* edu. What is Best of Me? you ask. Follow this link and see. It also discusses submission protocols.

PC in Poland

From Critical Mass, here is an announcement for a conference in Poland on Political Correctness.

"See evil, hear evil and therefore speak no evil. The spectre of the Dead White Heterosexual Male is hanging over the world: biased, prejudiced, discriminative ways of perceiving and representing reality resulted in widening the gap between the dominant "traditionalists" and a multiplicity of undesirable others. But enough is enough. The underdog has now invented a weapon to secure his/her/its/their rightful place in culture and the long-silenced voices have a chance to be heard. Thus, Political Correctness or PC seems to have the function of safeguarding the principle of equality, which is a cornerstone of democracy."

This is such nonsense on so many levels. PC does NOT safeguard equality, and it sure as hell stifles freedom of speech and thought, which is also a cornerstone of democracy.

Anyway, one of the reasons I like Poland is that, for the most part, the culture, even academic culture, seems a bit more "grounded" and less prone to trendy and superficial silliness. Nonetheless, as we see above, Polish academic culture is by no means immune to it.