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Thursday, March 10, 2005

So it's looking mighty unlikely that I'll make it to the Deep Dish gig tonight at The Garden in Munich. But if you want to go and say you're me, feel free. Apparently I'm on the guest list through a friend of a friend.

(Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharem Tayebi, a.k.a. Deep Dish, are two Iranian-born Americans from the D.C. area who are apparently so "it" that "it" hurts.)
Have I mentioned lately how incredibly friggin' cool this album is. I don't think I have.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

From the BBC's Wales news page:

A plan to convert a Swansea hotel into a Buddhist meditation centre has brought objections from neighbours claiming it may create too much noise.
Maybe you didn't catch that the first time. I'll repeat it.

A plan to convert a Swansea hotel into a Buddhist meditation centre has brought objections from neighbours claiming it may create too much noise.
You know those Buddhists. Waking up the neighbors with their raucous chanting...
Slugger O'Toole: IRA statement in full!: "The IRA representatives detailed the outcome of the internal disciplinary proceedings thus far and stated in clear terms that the IRA was prepared to shoot the people directly involved in the killing of Robert McCartney."

Sweet jesus!

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

On old friend of mine, a guy I knew at college, does this blog where finds stuff and writes about it.

Somehow I came across this rather humorous letter-writing incident involving him and one Keiko Okabe, Career Counselor, Japan International Cooperation Agency. He found her business card on the ground and wrote to her asking for career advice. The whole thing is actually quote touching.
Without consulting anybody, I removed the entire blogroll and the links on the left. Many of the links didn't work and others were just insulting to the viewer. If you want to read some other blogs similar to mine, just check the referring web pages to the right. I may put some links back, but only when I re-design the site.

This change has been made in parallel with other recent big changes in my life. For instance, after 15 years I started eating meat again. Also, I've decided to start looking for a job.
Note this highly readable blog from Cairo (if you hadn't already noticed the link to the right): Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K.
Those of us living in the post-communist world should be paying special attention to events in Ukraine, Lebanon,
Kyrgystan, maybe even Egypt, and of course Iraq. Future historians will probably see these events -- the wave may have started with the anti-Milosevic street party in Belgrade, 2000 -- as a "second wave" of "Velvet Revolutions" following 1989. People like Vaclav Havel should and hopefully will get the credit.

Of course, so will George W. Bush, and I'll certainly settle for that. Having doing everything else wrong, he's bound to do a few big things right. In Georgia, Ukraine and (hopefully) Kyrgystan, international election monitors from the OSCE (including my roommate) also played a huge role. Egyptian democracy is a bit of a farce, as Slate points out. On the other hand, the street demonstrations in Lebanon would probably not be happening were it not for the elections in Iraq. (On my third hand, Bush initially resisted having elections so soon, until pressure from Ayatollah Al-Sistani made him see the error of his ways. But we'll let that slide. He was also under a lot of pressure to delay the elections and didn't.)

Also, please note that the much-hoped-for revolution in Kyrgystan already has a name: The Tulip Revolution. Come on, come on, give some credit where it's due...

Monday, March 07, 2005

It's sentences like this...

"I do not consider it satisfactory that the government coalition will balance further several on the verge of split weeks," Klaus said.
That make me not want to get my news from CTV (Czech Press Agency). Can anybody tell me what Klaus actually said?