Smoking

By the way, I have successfully quit smoking this summer(yeah!). If some have not done the same yet, take a look at this.

"AROUND 700m Asians, mostly men, cannot get through the day without puffing on a cigarette. The habit is thought to kill around 2.3m Asians every year, almost half of the global victims of smoking. Cigarette consumption in China soared between 1970 and 1990 but has fallen slightly since. Most Asian countries have signed the WHO's tobacco-control treaty, committing themselves to restricting cigarette marketing, curbing smoking in public and helping smokers to give up. Not a moment too soon: not only is smoking among men far more common than in the West, there is concern that Asia will follow the Western trend, with more women taking up smoking as men quit."

http://economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9834626

Cats

just saw many picz of catz dis morning on diz blog. I lyked dis one most! PS I myself, don't like cats!

Democracy Award 2007

Anna Politkovskaya recieves "2007 Democracy Award" by National Endowment for Democracy, which, this year, is given for those "who have bravely contributed to increasing and preserving press freedom and independent media in Egypt, Southeast Asia, Venezuela, and Russia." (yeah...)

"Anna Politkovskaya, the courageous reporter for the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta who was murdered at her apartment building on October 7, 2006, will be honored posthumously. Throughout her distinguished career as a Russian journalist, Anna was an outspoken advocate for human rights and an end to the devastating war in Chechnya. Politkovskaya's award will be accepted by fellow Novaya Gazeta reporter Elena Milashina."

Here's more.

Sex and Marx

Пульс блогосферы за год по запросам секс и Маркс

Many people tried different things with Blog Pulse- a new feature by popular Russian website that counts words mentioned in the Russina blogs. Well, I tried to search "sex" and "Marx". The former word (blue line) is mentioned almost 15 times more than the latter (green). Just a random choice... I will leave conclusions for you.

On religion

While I was reading an article on Ferghana.ru, which talked about village school teachers prohibiting hijabs at school, and extending my thoughts that this fact contradicts between recent decision to allow passport photos in hijabs , I got an sms that read "Allahu -lailaha-illaila-muhammadun-rasullulah" (God is only one and Mohammad is his messenger).

That felt creepy... Not that I am into these things, but it got me thinking for a bit, until I discovered that it was my friend, who tried to stick to the rules of sms chain that "require" you to send it further.

As for the issue with hijabs, I was surprised to learn that teachers in Nookat (town in the south KG) remove hijabs forcefully from schoolgirls heads and threaten with expulsion. Many of them explain this by the "orders from the top" but do not present any papers or documents confirming these orders.

Another argument from a school director seemed totally ridiculous to me. She states that it is not "aesthetic" to wear a hijab and accused some girls of not combing their hair under the scarf. It sounded very... soviet. Typical coercive methods and intrusion with personal life.

Recent permission to take pictures in hijabs seem to contradict the so called "orders from the top", since having such a photo in your passport, automatically assumes you wear it everyday. Although, not long ago, I read not a single picture has been taken with a hijab on yet, those young schoolgirls from Nookat, who are struggling for their religious rights, will do that for sure.

On the other hand, while government is rather loose on religious rights, security services are increasingly active in combating religious extremism (e.g. Hizb-ut-Tahrir) and maybe dicating their own "underground" rules to schools (and many other institutions for that matter).

All in all, a small ship "Kyrgyzstan" is still lost in political ocean, in many terms: ideology, governance, economy etc.

PS I hope "they" won't knock on my door for having that sms.

The Pulse of Blogs- From Yandex

Interesting...

Remember Google's "Trends" feature? (if not go to google.com/trends) Well, this is the same tool that covers Russina blogsphere.

"Yandex has introduced a new feature called the "Pulse of the Blogosphere," which allows one to track the number of mentions of a term (and compare up to six terms at once) within the Russian blogosphere over time. On the FAQ page for this project, currently still in beta, Yandex explains why this might be of interest:

With the help of the Pulse of the Blogosphere you can see how internet public opinion on various events has changed over time and compare different items. Keep your hand on the pulse! [...]

The Pulse allows you to create charts of the frequency of mentions of words or phrases over various periods of time. You can see how public interest to various topics has changed dating back to the moment that the Russian-language blogosphere appeared.Yandex seems to date this back to the middle of 2001, and they weight mentions based on the number of blogs to minimize distortion created by the explosion in the number of blogs:

Since the blogosphere is growing, a thousand entries five years ago was a bigger percentage of all blog entries than ten thousand today.I decided to test out this new tool by comparing something the Russian government would rather have people blog about and something it perhaps would rather people blog less about. Looking at a comparison of nanotechnologies and Chechnya in the past year , it is apparent that Sergei Ivanov has achieved a great deal - nanotechnologies in the past month have been mentioned almost as often as Chechnya.

Looking at the same search terms over the past several years shows what an accomplishment this is.I then had to try this new tool out on one of my favorite topics - the unresolved post-Soviet conflicts. Russian bloggers seem much more interested in Abkhazia than in any of the other "unresolved conflict regions" (perhaps because Abkhazia is the only one of those regions where lots of Russians go on holiday):Пульс блогосферы по запросам абхазия, приднестровье, нагорно карабах и южная осетия

Yes, Yandex allows you to pull html and use it in your blog.Then I moved on to Putin vs. Bush - the Russian president gets about 4000 mentions a day; the US president, about 1500. Even factoring in Bush's 225 mentions to Putin's roughly 100 per day in English, unsurprisingly the Russian blogosphere is more interested in VVP than in Bush 43.The flaws in a simple term-based search are obvious - e.g., blogs might refer to Putin as ВВП, and the same abbreviation refers to Gross Domestic Product; in trying to pinpoint Sergei Ivanov, a search for "Ivanov" will be too inclusive and a search for "Sergei Ivanov" not inclusive enough. Also, the interface doesn't seem to accept "or" queries.

Also, it's not clear what blogs it measures - "the Russian-language blogosphere" presumably includes all livejournal sites in Russian, but of course these may not all be based in Russia. For example, it's possible (though unlikely) that Abkhazia's more frequent mention in the tally above is due to a higher number of people blogging about the subject in Russian from Abkhazia and Georgia. And it does return some results for terms like "Bush" and "Putin" in English. But hey, it's still in beta. And I think it's going to be a fun tool to compare all sorts of things."

http://scrapsofmoscow.blogspot.com/2007/09/pulse-of-blogs-from-yandex.html

To the "constitutional turbulence"...

Kyrgyz Parliamentarians decided to check upon the activities of Constitutional Court. A special commission that includes very active MP's like Beknazarov, Baibolov and Sherniyazov (and more!) will review the work of CC since 1993 (!). Looks like some are really unhappy with CC's decision to denounce the two versions of our Main Law: one passed under opposition pressure in November and the other- a new year present from the President. "Constitutional turbulence" is just gaining power...

Good boy, Bucks!

"Служебная собака по кличке Бакс выявила бутылку с героином" (K9 dog named Bucks found a bottle of heroin) is the title of the article published in AKIpress. It reported that a dog named Bucks helped to find a bottle of liquified heroin in a car that was coming from Osh, city in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

I got the impression that people viewed this article not because it was interesting (actually not really) but because the dog was named Bucks, which is a nickname used for President Bakiev among people. Comments on this article varied from accusations that it was a bad joke by AKIpress to joking on top of it, by saying that Bucks has a puppy named Max (nickname used for Presdident's son- widely accepted "grey cardinal" of KG).

Yep! Even if we can't swagger about our GDP growth rate or increasing salaries, we sure can proudly talk about our freedom of speech (at least reletatively free)! One of the reasons I love this country!

Oh, by the way the article is here (in Russian).

World Trade Center

Gmail has a cool feature- web clip. Although most of the time it gives rather useless links (like ad websites), I find interesting stuff from time to time.

Today I found very interesting gallery of World Trade Center pictures. If you are interested, click here to view. Enjoy!

One more Pitersky...

Putin nominated a new Prime Minister. Tomorrow Duma (Parliament) will review his candidacy for this position. It came as a surprise to many, just like VVP himself back in 2000, when he came "out of nowhere". Ivanov and Medvedev one of the most popular figures in Russian politics after Mr. Putin himself, were not nominated as was widely expected.

He is one of the many Piterskys (from St. Petersburg), although has nothing to do with security services according to Economist. He is a good economist, according to his biography and mainly worked in the agricultural sphere. If interested you can look through his bio here (Russian), who knows maybe he is the next President: too much of similarities with the Presidency path of the incumbent.

Too much talking...

Everyone knows the word "Parliament" came from the french word that means "to talk", however, Kyrgyz MP's seem to take it too seriously. New "talking" season opened in Kyrgyzstan as our parliamentarians back at their working places, which, by the way, have been equipped with new laptops recently.

However, it seems like not many know that they should do some constructive talking in Jogorku Kenesh (parliament), rather than just expressing their personal opinion, mostly emotionally colorful. Having finished to discuss rather absurd ideas of encouraging polygamy in the country and moving the capital to the south in the previous season, some like Jusup Imanaliev, started this season with a proposal to send Bishkek city dwellers to work on farm lands that are left without care. Another MP Dooronbek Sadyrbaev, who previously promised to drop an "informational bomb" on the opening of this season, announced that a top criminal leader was after him and even put responsibility for his life on another MP's shoulder, who is widely assumed to belong to a criminal world (who of them does not?!).

I know that these things happen... but not this often! It is simply frustrating that having so many problems and issues to discuss, our MP's even bother engaging in conversations on such outrageously stupid discussions.
"За державу обидно..." (Sorry for my country)

"Fall 2007" opinion poll

Another opinion poll from 24.kg. Number of repondents- 503. I thought it was rather interesting to know.

1. How do you think fall-2007 will look in Kyrgyzstan?

51.2%- soon president and the cabinet will have serious problems. Seems like it already started with the inflation crisis.
6.39%- Kyrgyzstan will have an economic crisis
5.18%- there will be next row of scandalous dismissals and exposures
2.59%- opposition will be strong enough to hold rallies
1.38%- wait for new political season and "drastic reforms in all spheres of life"
3.35%- "I will be out of Kyrgyzstan in fall"
0.99%- new constitution will be accepted and all will be well

2. Can opposition organize new protest rallies this fall?

51.16- yes, if President will not stick to its promises
5.58- rallies of those opposed to President Bakiev are irreversible
4.19- rallies of those opposed to President Bakiev are irreversible, if opposition can resolve internal problems
6.28- depends on if opposition will have a new leader
1.63- new opposition will be rallying
27,67- fall will be calm (20,46 of this think that opposition don' have any support among people)
3,49- could not answer to this question

3. If opposition will be able to hold rallies, what will be the demands?

37.44- removal of the President
30.94- "allow them to come to power"
17.49- constitutional reforms
5.44- fight corruption and clanism
2.67- nothing to demand, everything is being done
5.44- could not reply

4. Will new draft of Constitution be accepted this fall?
34.12- most likely "yes"
3.45- maybe not this fall, but they will accept it
32.28- no (12.66 out of them think they will use various excuses)
18.4- "how many times will we change it?!" rhetorically questioned of the repondents
8.36- don't care about the problem of Constitution
2.89- could not answer the question

5. How do you think Constitution of Kyrgyzstan should be accepted?

37.47- ratified by parliament first, and then referendum
28.2- only referendum
16.55- parliament ratification only
13.35- don't care about the destiny of our constitution
4.43- had a hard time answering this question

All respondents are 24.kg readers and you can see the original version for yourself (in Russian) here.

It is hard to write

After my first posts, I realized that laziness is slowly creeping in (already!) and it is harder for me to get in front of the monitor to post something.
Past week was full of... anticipation. As I was waiting for Sunday for my girlfriend to arrive. She was part of this extremely popular program Work&Travel.
While anticipating, I missed a chance to meet one of my blogger-friends, while visiting one of the local NGO's. How? Simple. I did not recognize him, though I have seen his photos.
So, that should do it so far...