Spring , civilized things / Arms / Blogging / Spring break ending

Spring , civilized things

It seems that spring is here. I had a walk with Kössi in the morning in nice sunshine. We bought New York Times, from the guy who sells them in the corner of Fairfield and Commonwealth Avenue (it is, by the way, the only newspaper that requires a plastic bag for carrying to the cafe). In order to feel belonging to some civilized community of decent humans, we went to have caffe latte in the cafe Sonsie in the Newbury Street. They serve excellent coffee in porcelain cup. Today, they had opened the wall to the street, and one could really enjoy oneself, the beautiful people, sunshine, and newpaper. So nice. On the way back home, we made another discovery: the small grocery shop in the corner of Newbury and Fairfield sells several brands of real chocolate and, to out great surprise, even Finnish licorice.

Arms

President Bush, and his subordinates (or is the other way round), has decided to sell F-16 fighter planes to the dictator of Pakistan. As we all remember, Mr Bush promised to get rid of all dictatorships during his second term. Now, it is not starting that well. India was a bit upset of the sales, and thus mr Bush et all have also promised to sell similar planes to India, too. This is the way to promote peace and democracy, I assume. Closer to USA, the autocrats/dictators of Venezuela have decided to buy some 200000 AK-47 machine guns from Russia. According to Bush et all, this is not good, as it will somehow tip the regional balance. Go figure.

Blogging

Blogging is changing the world. Unfortunately, some bloggers pay high price for their writing. See, for example, this website, which gathers information about and campaigns for jailed and threatened bloggers. Thanks to Peik for the link, which I start to follow regularly.

In New York, we went to see the off-off-Broadway theater Baghdad burning. It was based on the blog of Riverbend, who is a young Iraqi woman writing from Baghdad. Read it. You will get another view on the situation. What impressed me most was Riverbend's claim, that after USA attacked Iraq, the situation of Iraqi women has worsened drastically. Before the illegal attack, most women were working, earning the same as men, allowed to walk unaccompanied outside their homes, etc. Not anymore. It seems, that the illegal attack and its incompetently handled aftercare have unleashed the reactionary, militant, and conservative forces, which were somehow kept in check before the attack. Furthermore, the attackers have miserably failed to restore basic infrastructure (water, electricity). But do not take my word on it, read for yourself.

See United Stages for more information about the theater. See also FeministPress for information about, well, feminist writing.

Spring break ending

We broke the spring break by getting together in the SDM-office and working on the systems optimization case study. After some discussion, Kumar, Spiros, and I got convinced that our solution is close enough and we can submit it. Nice. It took total 6 hours of work. Not too bad. After this, we went for Chinese dinner to the Harvard square.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs March 2005".