March 5th, 2006 § § permalink
A decent enough human-interest piece on the difficulties of being a female journalist in Iran. But it’s spoilt by the introduction:
Women living and working in Iran, particularly those working for the foreign media, are finding all kinds of difficulties strewn in their path, writes Frances Harrison
Is she (or whoever wrote that sentence) really claiming that female journalists have a harder time than other women in Iran? The article itself shows how she managed to use her status as a journalist to get past sexist restrictions, by threatening not to report things she wasn’t allowed to see.
March 5th, 2006 § Comments Off § permalink
I want to see a photograph of this – Moscow police are going to start using airships to monitor traffic.
March 4th, 2006 § § permalink
Online RPGs affect players’ perceptions of reality. People who play a MMORPG think that assaults with weapons are more likely than those who don’t play. There’s the start of a discussion on whether the same might apply to positive ‘cultivation effects’ (which is apparently the appropriate jargon). The next question is whether you could rejig the rules of a game in light of this – and whether you should.
March 3rd, 2006 § § permalink
Today I’ve had my head in Russia. From time to time I’ve attempted to find some interesting Russian-language blogs, and I’ve more or less failed. Turns out the reason is that they’re all using Livejournal. Now the question is just how to find the fascinating LJs amongst the teenage breakups and blow-by-blow personal diaries.
Meanwhile, I’ve turned up some odd and interesting Russia-related bits in English. A Soviet cartoon character reinvented as an Olympic mascot Panic-buying of salt, because of fears that Ukraine would stop exporting salt to Russia. Nobody from the Ukrainian government actually said that, or anything close. Just some Russian official worried publicly about the possibility and – Wham! – salt prices go up twenty times.
And how did I not notice that there’s a new BBC documentary series about the role of the oligarchs in Russia?
Edit two minutes later: or rather, there was a documentary about oligarchs. It’s presumably finished in the three months since that article was written. Have to rewatch this film instead (the DVD arrived a couple of weeks ago, as part of my christmas bonus from work, and it’s sitting on the shelf for a rainy day).
March 1st, 2006 § § permalink
Well, isn’t that nice. The mayor of Moscow has decided to ban Moscow Pride, which was due to happen for the first time this May.
The silver lining is the justifications given by the authorities. Leaving aside the nasty-but-predictable (“Russia is a multi-faith state and it is a known fact that all religions are against homosexuality”, “Love is supposed to be only between a man and a woman”), there is this wonderful comment by a deputy mayor who saw Paris Pride:
“All of them were wearing their swim-suits and some of them had false plastic tits, others had pictures on their butts. Moreover, for some reason, they were wearing rollerblades.”
Poofs we can cope with, but poofs on skates? That’s going to destroy our society!