Putin has been busy - but I would imagine there is still quite a way to go before the technology is perfected.
Russia has successfully tested a modernised anti-ballistic missile at a range in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, its defence ministry says. The A-135 missile is said to have successfully hit a training target.
The events in the Ukraine are certainly interesting ones. The split in the country is evident, with large tracts of the Eastern regions supporting closer ties with Russia through Viktor Yanukovych. Curiously, or perhaps not surprisingly, the blogosphere largely supports the pro-Western Victor Yushchenko.
Perhaps that’s because we are Westerners ourselves. What is curious to me is the conversations I have with Georgian, Russian and yes, Ukrainian people. Despite their obvious dislike for Putin, my Georgian friends are inclined to support Yanukovych – simply because they don’t want to see yet another Soviet-era country move towards NATO and the EU. It should be noted though that Georgians are great lovers of Josef “Iron man” Dzhugashvili, he was afterall from Gory, Georgia. Russians seem to be plainly in support of Putin’s efforts to ensure Ukraine’s continuing close ties with Moscow, and too fear NATO expanion. While my Ukrainian friends are split either way.
To me what is plain is that no matter what people think, a fair election did not take places. Have another one – and if the majority favour moving closer to Russia – so be it. I hope my liking for liberal democracy does not make my too ethno-centric in my views.
The always entertaining Sarah Carey has added me to her blogroll – cheers!
I can’t keep up with events in the Ukraine, but Dan Drezner has been blogging on it non-stop.
Too late for Christopher Reeve – but stem cell technology is promising great dividends. A woman in South Korea who has not even stood up in 19 years is now able to walk.
The woman could now walk unassisted, the scientists said. “The stem cell transplantation was performed on Oct. 12 this year and in just three weeks she started to walk with the help of a walker,” Song told reporters at a news conference in Seoul. The woman’s legs were paralyzed after an accident in 1985 that damaged her back and hips and confined her to a wheelchair.
The researchers said they isolated stem cells from umbilical cord blood and then injected them into the damaged part of the woman’s spinal cord.
Kind of old news, but it is great to see the growth of Firefox. I am a firm convert – and don’t even consider using Internet Exploder unless I absolutely have to – such as on MSNBC.com.
The BBC are reporting on the first reports of some details about the PS3 chip, and its use in things other than the new Playstation. I expect Sony, IBM and Toshiba expect to make a tidy sum out of this, and I bet they will.
The three firms claim that the Cell chip will be up to 10 times more powerful than existing processors.
When put inside powerful computer servers, the Cell consortium expects it to be capable of handling 16 trillion floating point operations, or calculations, every second.
The chip has also been refined to be able to handle the detailed graphics common in games and the data demands of films and broadband media.
IBM said it would start producing the chip in early 2005 at manufacturing plants in the US. The first machines off the line using the Cell processor will be computer workstations and servers.
A working version of the PS3 is due to be shown off in May 2005 but a full launch of the next generation console is not expected to start until 2006.
As well as being inside the PlayStation 3, the chip will also be used inside high-definition TVs and powerful computers.
“In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network,” said Ken Kutaragi, Chief Operating Officer of Sony.
“Current PC architecture is nearing its limits.”
Exciting times for the people building the successor to Hubble. Work has begun on the primary for the new telescope. For those who don’t know:
The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in 2011. It will hang in space at the Lagrange-2 point of balance between the gravitational influences of the Earth and the sun. Astronomers will use the telescope to look back in the infra-red to the youngest days of the universe in the hope of finding out more about the birth of galaxies and stars, and gaining a better understanding of the size and shape of the universe.
In related news the robotic mission to save Hubble may be scrapped due to cost.
New Scientist has published an article on the craze of blogging sweeping China. It is written by Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley. He also runs China Digital News blog at chinadn.org. There is definately no shortage of enthusiasm:
Meanwhile blogging seems set to grow as a national hobby for the younger generation. Providers of China’s 300 million mobile phones are beginning to provide “moblogging” services, with which users can send text and photos directly from their phones to their blogs. For now, most blogs are personal, but their potential for building networks of people and disseminating news cannot be underestimated.
As for Mao, he now enjoys a large following among Chinese bloggers. He has become a successful high-tech investor and uses his blog to gather donated books for rural schools. While others see blogs as a tool to promote social change in China, Mao does not associate his love of blogging with a political agenda.
Asked whether he has a strategy to expand blogging under China’s censorship regime, his response is Taoist: “What is our strategy? We do not have a strategy. But the information flow in the blogosphere has its own Way. The Way is our strategy: personal, fast, connected and networked.”
The Guardian have published an edited version of a speech Hans Blix gave last week at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. The full text can be found here.
His criticism of the American right is telling:
We also see an intense and large-scale campaign of vilification, depicting the UN as “corrupt” because the oil-for-food programme – instituted and supervised by the security council and its most powerful members, including the US – enabled Iraq, the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of products to Iraq, to siphon off money fraudulently and pass it on illegally to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The fraud, although widely suspected and estimated at about a billion dollars a year in the media, was not easy for the programme administration to track down and prove. The council and its members saw it with open eyes just as they saw the billions that flowed to Saddam from oil exports to neighbouring states. The programme functioned as a reasonably effective break against the import of weapons and dual-use items, which was its major objective. Today it serves as a campaign platform against the UN. So long as the current climate remains, it is doubtful if any meaningful discussion about UN reform can be pursued.
This all comes around the time of the latest UN report – billed as one of the most important since the founding of the organisation.
Battling is and will certainly remain one of Eminem’s biggest passions. You can feel a certain nostalgy in his words when he recalls Rap Olympics in 1997:
Just a short note before MiJack fans get mad at me: I do respect your idol’s artistry. I just can’t stand his attitude towards Eminem.
Ireland may be the nicest place to live in the world according to recent reports – but since May 1st a veritable deluge of people have arrived from Eastern Europe. Polish registered cars now seem to be the most common non-Irish car on the roads. The numbers coming to Ireland seem to mainly come from Poland – with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia following behind.
And they come to work – and the Irish economy seems to be handling it all quite well. I have already started learning some Polish and Russian. It might come in handy.
Here is a photo of how much Ireland has changed since May 1st – and I think changing for the better.
Baltimore is the town in West Cork – at the very south west tip of Ireland. If you keep going from here you end up in Canada. It has become very popular for building holiday homes as this photo shows.
The weather isn’t great in the winter either.
The press has spilled a lot of ink about Eminem’s so called ‘ misogyny ‘. A further examination of his life and statements will make people understand that those allegations are totally unjustified. Like many other rappers, Marshall Mathers may have talked about ‘ bitches and hoes ‘ that should be ‘ raped ‘ and ‘ murdered ‘ in his lyrics. Matter of fact: Marshall is different in real life.