Egypt

I feel like I should say something about the events in Tunisia and Egypt, and what could I say? I don't know a fuck, and I suspect neither does anyone else. There is one thing I can say, though: you know you have become an old conservative when you hear about an uprising and your first thought is "how is it gonna affect our interests in the region?" ("Our" means the US here; I would also be concerned about Finland's interests there if Finland had any.)


First of all, Yusuf al-Qaradawi supports the revolution in Egypt, which makes me suspect that this is a bad thing. OTOH, Sandmonkey, whose opinion I respect, is out there and seems to believe that this is not about putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power. And then again, in 1979 there were quite a lot of people in Iran who didn't believe their revolution was about putting the islamists in power, and guess who is still in power over there?

Speaking about Sandmonkey: he is currently reporting (on Twitter) that there is no food or gas available, and no Internet. He is tweeting by phone through a friend in Jordan.

All the neighbors' reaction to the events in Egypt can be well summarized by the words "oh, shit!".

The US administration said that Mubarak should address the legitimate grievances of the people of Egypt, which did sound a bit silly considering that Mubarak himself is in fact the legitimate grievance of the people of Egypt, but on the other hand what could they say? "We have invested a lot of money into that motherfucker, and now we are a bit miffed that you are kicking his ass out, but we are ready to invaest the same money into the next motherfucker as long as he is not any more trouble than this one"?

There is some unrest in Jordan and Yemen, and if they start a proper revolution in Saudi Arabia, I am totally buying popcorn for the first time ever in my misspent life. Which is not really a bright idea, since I don't have a TV and don't eat popcorn either.

Oh well. Let's wait and see.

Maybe it's just a little bit deeper?

How come none of the people who claim that you can find the truth about everything if you look into your own heart never seem to find any content from the Spring 3.0 API reference manual in there?

Hourly chime

Just turned an hourly chime on my watch by accident. you know, the thing that starts beeping once an hour and then you have to google for a manual somewhere to figure out how to turn it off?

OK, I have given up complaining about unintuitive user interfaces that have you googling for manuals, but what I really want to know: what is the damn chime for? All the digital wristwatches seem to have this feature; if there a person somewhere who actually uses it?

Communists are crazy, part 452542

HS says that somebody blew up Stalin's monument in the Ukraine, in the city of Zaporozhye. My first thought was "no shit". The second thought was "what the hell was the monument doing there anyway?".

For those who don't know, Stalin has murdered millions of Ukranians.

They really should get rid of all the monuments of genocidal maniacs from the USSR time, I thought, and then read that the monument was put up last May.

WTF, really? Was it there waiting for Hitler, Che Guevara and Pol Pot, as a friend of mine suggested? Or just to scare children? Who put the damn thing up? I wanted to see the person.

Quick googling found, among other things, that the leader of Ukraine's Communist party considers Stalin to be the greatest politician of modern times. Some more quick googling found that it was Zaporozhye's Communist party committee that put the monument there in the first place.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Hope none of you are as hung over as I am.