I've been on the road with my family and parents since last week and havent had regular access or inclination to blog. Regular service should resume next week!

Why is it that, in Vietnam, people in a classroom cannot speak above a whisper but in my hem(alley) I can hear the neighbours have a normal, full-throated discussion at 2AM?

Oooh, the deadliest personal grudge of the twentieth century now in a very cool-looking black and white Russian language comic.
With English translations in footnotes.




via Metafilter

"Of course if they want sickness to improve, they need to stop sending us to people who are ill."
This reminds me of my own kicks against bureaucratic pricks and their belly flops of logic. It also had the benefit of giving me the best belly laugh I've had in ages.

Currently I'm engaged in a battle of wits with IT about the use of a USB drive. I can use it only if I go to their office up three flights of stairs and tell them exactly which file I want to copy. Rather than sitting at a teachers'workstation and making a couple of mouse clicks. Perhaps I should pat my head and rub my stomach while hopping on one foot for good measure. A solution that is more difficult than the problem doesn't really seem like a solution.

MMMM.Soviet Kitsch!

I've been waiting for this story from the the Guardian. it explains how the Americans are funding and engineering regime change in Eastern Europe and ex- Soviet states. Practice seems to be making perfect, with the exception of Belarus. oppositon there is too isolated and/or intimidated to organize effectively. They are also under the Russian media footprint without other external sources of news. One of the big differences for Ukraine is the diaspora, which although mostly clueless, does provide a link with the west.

Hopefully, they can get the same type of movement rolling in Kyrgyzstan first,then Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan will be much tougher, because Karimov has has a Lukashenko-like control of the government.

Vodka Science With scientific use of special "science" implements like the "science" funnel and the "science" pole. I'm glad some one is doing this so I don't have to. The best vodka related pieces of advice I recieved in my years in RUK* were "eat" and "rub the bottom of the bottle. If your hand is black, the bottle has come off an assembly line and is probably safe, If your hand is still clean, it's probably samogon(homebrew)
or poison."



RUK=Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan

This Peace corps Volunteer has some words to live by

"Don't scrimp when buying electrical adaptors in Kazakhstan."


How true, how true. that goes for anywhere in the former Soviet Union. Where else in the world do you have to test light bulbs before you buy them?

Some of my own advice would be: You can repair leaky taps with string.



link
via The Argus