Not as I (and my governor brother, Daddy’s friends Supreme Court judges) did…

Head on over to Bush calls for fair Zimbabwe poll for a good laugh. Kettle. Pot. Black. (Please modify to your tastes.)

OK, so perhaps comparing Bushes previous highly dubious election ‘win’ to the diabolical regime in Zimbabwe is taking it a little too far, but seriously, did none of his advisers think people would draw parallels betwixt them?

To be fair, G Dubbya Bush came out comparatively well in his ‘frank’ interview with the BBC’s Matt Frei (see here for the transcript. You do have to read it out loud to understand some of his sentences, but I expect we all fall prey to that occasionally. I know a couple of Americans who’ve told me that whilst George Jr. is certainly no great orator, he does actually come off pretty badly when foreign/American liberal media portray him as a half wit. Even if he was well rehearsed for the interview, he went up in my esteem slightly. Very important to him, I’m sure

I’ve just finished reading a BBC article on the plight of Tajiks (Tajikistan is south of Kazakhstan, not quite bordering it) who are really suffering right now. They have apparently had a severe winter so far, and with the rivers frozen, obviously their HEP plants are unable to work and produce much needed electricity. Not much to add to this personally, I just wanted to highlight the news, and provide a link to the report.

[edit]

Forgot to link to this article as well, sorry.

We have just finished watching one of those property redevelopment programmes on BBC prime, where two guys meet a family, and try to find their next ideal home. The premise is quite simple, and some weeks the episode tends to drag along, and others the ‘drama’ seems a little forced. It makes me wonder whether the producer use real estate agents or actors? Anyway, compared to the series on DIYing your house to within an inch of it’s life to increase it’s value, I find these more interesting, so it could be worse…

After last year’s infamous flooding in England, it looks as though some areas are in for more of the same, though most experts are predicting that river levels will not rise as high, meaning even though some properties will be effected, the scale and devastation will not be as large. Check out the BBC article for further information. To all our friends and family in Gloucestershire and Wales, I hope your houses escape the waters, and at the very least you get a day or two off work, with flooded roads or something. Just so long as your cars don’t get flooded again
Anyway, if things get bad again, I’ll try and source some more live webcams and recent photos, as last year’s problems seemed to attract a lot of visitors to this blog…

Scratch the original plans, here are the links I mentioned, not enough time left after having got everything ready for our trip to actually create proper posts. Now the DVD burner is fubared, and I wanted to burn another 3 discs of MP3s for driving to. Hey ho.

Kyrgyzstan elections not fair either - see this article and this one for more details. For those not familiar with the country, no that isn’t where we live (we’re in KAZAKHstan), however international monitors similarly do not think that the elections were free, fair and transparent there either…

Discounting apparently rife in stores - BBC article - Actually I’d call it pretty piss poor ‘professional’ journalism. They trot out the same rubbish each year, closely followed by an article in January saying how shoppers actually spent a lot more than expected. I especially loved the headline - attention grabbing, discounts sound significant, then followed in the main body of the text that this year’s reductions average at 36% off, not 35% ! Yep, 1% difference…

Wives Tales or Valid Medical Info? - Article here. If you don’t drink 8 glasses of water per day, you will use less than 10% of your brain, meaning you won’t be able to read in the dark, turkey will make you drowsy and your hair will continue to grow after death, no matter whether you shaved it or not. Or something like that I have heard before that the ban on mobile phone usage within hospitals is rubbish, espcially when you consider the power of the transmitters they need to use for their own internal walkie-talkies etc.

Eco-friendly consoles requested - BBC article - I know that some PC component manufacturers are already trying, but apparently the big three gaming giants (Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft) are being pressured to lower the amount of toxic chemicals used to produce their consoles, amongst other things.

Take care when you google - info here - My thanks to Irina for noticing this report, and also on the shoddy workmanship of the journalist once again. The article reads in parts as though they did no investigation, and simply read from Google’s press release, with contradictions in places. Anyway, bad people had been setting up sites to try and hack unprotected PCs, and were trying to drive traffic by optimizing for popular keywords.

Dynamic advert placement within PDF files - article - the title says it all here…

Info on Amazon’s ‘Kindle” - here and here - Amazon’s e-book reader, an attempt by another company to crack the market. Once again, the aims have been praised, the actual product is not so popular in some circles.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers - check here - A long time favourite author of mine, Mr Pratchett has revealed he has the condition, though is doing OK so far. Whilst I selfishly hope he will be able to continue to write such well crafter novels, I do hope that if/when the time comes that the balance between personal well being and writing output tips the wrong way, his fans will let him retire with grace.

One for Alex - here - Poorly kangaroo goes for a swim, and gets snapped up by a shark! (As you may have guessed, based in Australia)

W00t - BBC article - Like ‘all your base are belong to us ‘ from a few years back, but certainly a lot snappier, w00t appears to have started its life in the gaming world, and is used as an exclamation, normally positive.

Not an article, but Wikileaks may interest you. Has a small section for Kazakhstan. Not going to discuss that sort of thing right now, no time.

Excuse me whilst I don’t cry - boo-hoo - with any luck the BNP will eventually go the same way as the old National Front did. I just hope any splinter groups don’t survive, and aren’t too radical whilst they are around. Don’t have much time for racist, lying, Lowest Common Denominator politics and politicians, as you may have guessed.

Misbehaving pupils shocked into towing the line - article here - I can never imagine Mr Owen having given this sort of punishment in his lessons…

Right thats it, I’m off to bed, and won’t be posting for a couple of days probably. Hope all who read this do so in good health…

Once again I find myself about to leave Kazakhstan, with quite a few news stories bookmarked, without a post yet made. So the next few posts will all be sourced from BBC news articles which I found interesting. I will also try and post about last week’s meal that David invited me to, the night clubs, and our meal last night, here at our flat.

If so, head on over to this BBC article that details the possible confusion that will arise when carry on (hand) luggage rules are relaxed in SOME circumstances in the coming weeks. With our trip back from Britain to Kazakhstan, we will need to find out in advance whether Heathrow, and our airline specifically will be allowing more than one piece of hand luggage, and exactly which restrictions will still be applied.
I really do recommend you read the article, but if you want the ultra-short version, don’t assume you can take more luggage, just because the airport has publicized changes, unless your airline has the extra security hardware required, you will still be limited to one piece per passenger. Something to remember when considering how to pack any presents you get this year…

The ISP we now have our internet connection with is called Megaline. Unfortunately, since swapping to their service, everyday sees some downtime for connectivity. Even when all is apparently working, packets are often lost, and I can no longer as open as many simultaneous pages, without time outs occurring. That said, it is a lot cheaper, and although only 1/2 the speed, I do get an allowance of 10Gb/month before they throttle me down to 32Kbit/sec, from 128Kbit/sec.
Anyway, we first have a report on the UK’s lagginess (puns will stop now, sorry), when it comes to very fast internet connection availability. This is no great surprise really, given our history with BT’s (formerly part of the GPO) previous monopoly at nearly all stages of communications. Great investment will be needed to push beyond the current 24Mbps ceiling, and even that sort of connection is only really possibly if you live on top of your local exchange. Until we drop twisted pair copper lines as acceptable, the days of fibre optics into every home are a long way off, unless someone like Richard Branson decides that it is economically viable in areas when other Cable TV operators have avoided.

On a more positive note, here we have an article detailing how broadband internet connectivity (even if it isn’t globally breath-takingly fast) has rapidly become the preferred speed, compared to just four years ago, when most people considered dial up speeds acceptable. No pretty table to illustrate the point this time, sorry.

Finally, on a semi-related matter, the BBC News site had details on how some European nation’s citizens are rejecting land lines altogether, in favour of mobile phones. Although this may sound surprising at first, if you take into account that some of the nations, that were unable to develop as quickly under USSR rule, never had high rates for phone lines into every house, and how competitive some mobile phone network companies are in these markets, to try and get, then keep loyal customers, you can begin to see why having no land line number is becoming more common in some areas. Whether these figures include those that only use phone lines for internet usage, and use mobiles for cheaper evening calls etc, I couldn’t ascertain.

First off, we have an article over at the BBC web site (I should probably learn to broaden my horizons, or at least add a few new RSS feeds ).
Anyway, a survey recently carried out revealed that 40% of some 11,000 people from 14 different countries believed that a press free from the shackles of governmental or military censorship was not as important for society, compared to social harmony and peace. Just as interesting, for me at least, was that news that Russians (as well as Egyptians and Germans) believed that state run media was more likely to give an unbiased account of events, compared to private owned media companies.
For a quick summary, see the BBC’s graph below…

Although it is sometimes difficult to discuss political matters in this country, especially as I am a relatively inexperienced foreigner in a different culture to that I grew up in, I have to admit I do not have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of local TV stations and newspapers, when it comes to reporting Kazakh-based news that has a political slant. Would I feel any differently if I had lived through the years of even heavier repression? Quite possibly, but in knowing what can be achieved by a free press, it can be frustrating to watch the personality-based ego feeding that often occurs on the news reports around here.
The world does not revolve around one man, no matter how great his achievements… if a balance is not achieved between respect and kowtowing, then disillusionment will eventually form.

For anyone who doesn’t remember, or is perhaps new to this blog, Gwen is the name of Mum and John’s dog, and I would like to ask them to make sure she does not read this post…

The reason? Head on over to this article, for details on how a pack of hungry squirrels allegedly attacked a stray dog that was bothering them. I am not too sure if this story is more of an exaggerated chinese whispers incident, much like the nicotine addicted (and therefore ciggy stealing) squirrels that we allegedly had back down in Bournemouth, but whatever the case, the BBC seem to see fit to treat it as news, and it is not every day you hear of such small rodents taking on a serious foe, so I thought I’d throw the link out, and see what people thought.