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.