Archive for the ‘Sideline’ Category
Posted on March 6, 2010 - by Venik
Saakashvili to submit to a drug test?
The president of Georgia decided to go along with the proposal by an opposition parliament member Dmitri Lordkipanidze to test all government employees for illegal drugs. Saakashvili said that the test will require a single hair and that he will offer his shortly. In other news, Saakashvili shaved his head bald…
Lordkipanidze’s suggestion of drug-testing the [...]
Posted on February 16, 2010 - by Venik
Olympic Bones
As I am sitting here watching the Olympics, I am reminded of a CNN (I think it was CNN) special a few years ago. Some angry-looking activists were discussing the alarming popularity of online videos depicting street fights, schoolyard brawls and such. The gist of the discussion was that most of us share the responsibility [...]
Posted on February 2, 2010 - by Venik
Novaya Gazeta and DDOS Attack
The Register, among others, reports that the Web site of one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers – the Novaya Gazeta – came under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Currently the newspaper’s site is unstable. The reason I even noticed this news item is not because I am a big fan of Novaya Gazeta. It is [...]
Posted on August 10, 2009 - by Venik
Delusions in Tbilisi
Recently Russian online news service Lenta.ru published a Q&A session with a well-known Georgian political and military analyst Mamuka Areshidze, who is known for his anti-Kremlin attitudes but is also somehow not a particularly big supporter of Georgian El Duce. In other words, Areshidze is supposedly a moderate, a centrist and so his take on [...]
Posted on August 9, 2009 - by Venik
Russians in Afghanistan
AP’s recent “Safety of Russian planes in Afghanistan questioned” by Catrina Stewart is exactly why female journalists should stick to writing about Gucci purses, chihuahuas, and SUVs. After some, no doubt, extensive research on the subject of military transport aviation, this broad came to the conclusion that the reason NATO keeps hiring Russian cargo aircraft [...]
Posted on July 21, 2009 - by Venik
Saakashvili’s War
Entirely in line with his suspected drug abuse problem, Saakashvili is now waging war of words on the Wall Street Journal. In Georgia’s President Vows Changes (by Andrew Osborn, WSJ 2009-07-20) the following quote appeared:
“He also called the hopes of Georgia joining NATO “almost dead.” “It’s tragic,” he said. “It means the Russians fought for [...]
Posted on June 13, 2009 - by Venik
Bluehost.com Web Hosting Problems
Bluehost.com is a large Web hosting provider based in Provo, Utah. It advertises “professional Web hosting” and claims to be “specializing in customer satisfaction”. Yesterday I learned neither of these claims is true. Originally, I selected Bluehost.com over my other top picks – Site5.com, Hostway.com, and my own old Sun E3000 server sitting in the [...]
Posted on June 11, 2009 - by Venik
Buy a Microscope
A rather sad story on CNN tells us about a teenage girl from Washington who for many years has been suffering from an undiagnosed chronic bowel inflammation. For eight years she suffered from severe stomach pain and other serious symptoms, but her doctors were unable to identify the decease. To make the long story short, [...]
Posted on June 8, 2009 - by Venik
Reading Airshow, 2009
The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum (MAAM) is membership supported museum and aircraft restoration facility located at the Carl A. Spaatz Field, the regional airport serving Reading, Pennsylvania. The museum, founded by Russ Strine, the current President, collects and actively restores historic war planes and classic airliners as well as rare civilian and military aircraft. Many of [...]
Posted on May 23, 2009 - by Venik
Swiss Humor
The IMD – a Swiss business college situated on the shore of Lake Geneva popular among Russian nouveau riche – recently published a glossy report ranking “competitiveness” of national economies.
Reading the preamble to the report one may be very impressed by the advanced methodology used by IMD’s researchers. Everything looks very proper and scientific. It [...]
Posted on May 19, 2009 - by Venik
Russia’s New Policy on Historical Revisionism
The Wall Street Journal is commenting on Russia’s new policy to counter attempts at historical revisionism (“Russia Frames New Policy on History“, by Andrew Osborne, WSJ, May 19, 2009). According to WSJ’s hand-picked collection of opinions, Russia is trying to move back to the Soviet practice of tightly managing the official, state-approved version of history [...]
Posted on May 10, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: 2009 V-Day Celebrations in Russia
WWII V-Day, traditionally celebrated in Russia on May 9, is the most significant holiday in the country, rivaled only by the New Year. The government upped the anty this year by throwing the biggest military parade since the Soviet days, with more troops, tanks, and aircraft. The next year’s parade, commemorating 65-th anniversary of history’s [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 4
The fourth and last part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 3
The third part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism movements. The [...]