Archive for the ‘Sideline’ Category
Posted on June 16, 2011 - by Venik
NATO Says It Won’t Attack Russia
You have to agree that it would look rather strange if you were to approach some random person on the street and tell him that you you will not punch him in the face. From time to time NATO leadership likes to reassure Russia of the Alliance’s friendly intentions. But in the past couple of [...]
Posted on January 26, 2011 - by Venik
Goodbuy Lenin?
Andrew Osborne of The Telegraph talks about the unofficial online poll conducted by Putin’s United Russia party regarding the proposed burial of Lenin’s body. According to the poll, some 66% of the respondents believe that Lenin should be buried. It is interesting that Andrew Osborne is so quick to believe United Russia’s claims when they [...]
Posted on December 14, 2010 - by Venik
Holbrooke’s Dead
One of America’s preeminent diplomats (a title not hard to attain, judging by the Wikileaks’ publications), former VP of a leading private equity firm Perseus LLC, and former board member of AIG died at the age of 69 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm after a meeting with Secretary Clinton. Evil tongues claim Wikileaks was the [...]
Posted on December 8, 2010 - by Venik
Nobel Prize for Assange
An unnamed member of Medvedev’s administration told Russian new agency RIA Novosti that nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize should improve his chances resisting legal and political pressure. While it is unlikely that such a nomination will come from the Russian administration, the fact that they are even talking about this in the Kremlin [...]
Posted on October 16, 2010 - by Venik
Hotels for Business Travel
So, I am coming back from a quick trip and I was staying at Marriott. At times of economic uncertainty many hotel chains (airlines, car rentals, and even restaurants) try targeting the business customer. The newly designed rooms at Marriott look like my office filled with Ikea furniture. Smells like one too. It’s not a [...]
Posted on August 30, 2010 - by Venik
Global Moron Alert
Here’s my scientific study* on the density of morons in various almost randomly-selected countries. We deal with morons on a daily basis. Some of us would swear we are surrounded by morons. But how many morons are there? I decided to try to answer this question and arrived at some unexpected results. Wikipedia defines “moron” [...]
Posted on August 25, 2010 - by Venik
Microsoft for Soviet Macedonia
I don’t know why, but today I stopped by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. I was greeted by a photo of Lake Debar located in western Macedonia near the border with Albania. When I hovered the mouse over little black squares on the photo, I was given a quick lesson in Macedonia’s history. My knowledge of [...]
Posted on July 16, 2010 - by Venik
Secret Cell
Sorry to disappoint you: this post is not about some new secret CIA jail discovered in a budding Eastern European democracy. What’s on my mind is all the ridiculous secrecy surrounding the development of the iPhone 4 and Nokia N8 and how it hurts the sales of these devices. In case you haven’t heard, iPhone [...]
Posted on June 4, 2010 - by Venik
Microbrain(tm)
When a few years ago I bought my Xbox 360, I had to shell out almost five hundred bucks. One of the extras I got was the 60Gb hard drive. Even by those times, charging a hundred dollars for what essentially is a standard 2.5″ SATA hard drive with special firmware was highway robbery. And [...]
Posted on May 29, 2010 - by Venik
Yak-130 Crashes in Russia
A Yak-130 advanced trainer jet crashed earlier today at the Lipetsk combat flight training center of the Russian AF. Both pilots ejected and were treated for minor injuries. There was no damage on the ground. The aircraft went out of control on takeoff during a routine training mission. This is first crash of an in-service [...]
Posted on April 20, 2010 - by Venik
Journalists Killed in Iraq
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists published a report claiming there were 88 unsolved murders of journalists in Iraq between 2000 and 2009. Incidentally, nearly all of the 88 murders occurred in 2003-2009 when the country was under American occupation and some of these eighty eight journalists died at the hands of the US [...]
Posted on April 11, 2010 - by Venik
How Poland Defeated the USSR
In his latest article on Russo-Polish relations Matthew Day, a Warsaw-based reporter for The Telegraph, provides a curious timeline of some major events in the common history of the two countries. According to Mr. Day, in 1919-1921 “Poland defeats Soviet Union in war”. A snafu like this I would expect from CNN, but a British [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
