Read the rest here.

I saw an interesting short documentary about Rwanda’s attempt to transform it’s economy from an agrarian one to an information one. In a time when it seems all we hear about Sub-Saharan African countries is truly dire, this is an example of one country trying to move forward from it’s horrid history.

Note: After spending 30 minutes trying to embed the stupidly-coded video player here, I had no success. So just go to this link and you can watch it.

Found via BoingBoing.

UPDATE: Here is a handy-dandy flow chart that explains Sarah Palin’s debate strategy. ph33r and loathing, via BoingBoing.

Ok I haven’t written anything political here for a long time, so please excuse if I come across a bit rusty. First off, there was never any doubt about who would emerge as the “winner” of the debate; rather the goal was to see by how much Biden would win, and how many times each of them would screw up. In my humble opinion, and unlike most of the commentators on PBS (the venerable Brooks and Sheilds), CNN (“the best political team on TV” – WTF? Is that a trademark?) and MSNBC (whose “anchors” and “analysts” are such a joke that no one should even listen to them anyway), I thought Biden blew her out of the water, and illustrated brilliantly to me just how far out of her league Sarah Palin is. She did nothing to advance the republican agenda (which is what? I’m wondering more and more often these days) and nothing to advance the McCain campaign for president. Why she is being credited for not completely f@%king up, just because of her dismal interview with Katie Couric, is beyond me.

It’s true that expectations were incredibly low for Palin’s performance in this debate, and while most people think she did better than they expected, I cannot be counted in that group. Which isn’t to say I think she did worse than I expected. I can tell that she is a reasonably intelligent, competent person, and she achieved her goal of repeating the standard campaign talking points (actual “questions” be damned) and attempting to deflect attention from her own party’s non-existent platform. In short, she proved to me that if I was up there instead of her, I could’ve “held my own” in a vice presidential debate as well! What a great ego boost! She spoke for “the everyman”. But does anyone want me to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Biden, on the other hand, did better than I expected. He stuck to the platform, which by definition is far superior to anything the republicans are offering up these days, he didn’t take any bait to say stupid or condescending things to Palin (which, as the Wonkette editors aptly noted, he clearly wanted to), and, perhaps thanks to the debate’s 2-minute answer/response format, didn’t go on and on and on. I haven’t seen much of Biden before this debate, but have heard much of his gaffe-prone oratory, and was thus expecting something like the “FDR on TV in the first depression” double-whammy at any moment.

As we’ve known all along, this election is the Democrats’ to lose. The fact that it’s even close is a big mystery to me, except it’s not. I think if we score the VP debate with a big handicap for Biden (I mean c’mon, it was like the pros vs. little league), then it could be scored pretty evenly, with a slight edge to the Delaware Senator. After all, Palin didn’t get flustered, caught in a “gotcha” moment or even stumble much in her responses, and with the bar set deceptively low for most republican aspirants, they can probably breathe a sigh of relief, as she just got through her biggest test of the campaign.

Whatever, it will all be forgotten tomorrow with the bailout vote. Let’s have a poll!

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Was out late last night at an apartment warming party that Kacsa threw. ‘Twas good times, though some weirdo kept asking me to play (I was the Def Selector) Michael Jackson tunes. One is ok, but three in a row? That weird one with Naomi Campbell? Not happening.

Anyway E and I left “early” at about 2:30am and went to Corvinteto, which has all the charm and style of a red light-swathed opium den (and I’ll let you decide whether that sounds cool or not), where we proceeded to get our boogie ON. Long story short, my 7:45am alarm came WAY too soon.

So I got sad.

Part of it is that we’re leaving. Sometime. More on that soon, when I force myself to sit down and write again. But then I read the news about the NYPD goons getting acquitted, and I just felt terrible for Sean Bell and his family and friends. I have no clue why, except that they are so obviously the victims of a racist and unjust system – but what else is new? Bang off twenty shots. Stop. Reload. Bang off another twenty shots. It was him or us, judge. Who was Amadou Diallo again?

Then we heard that a bicyclist had been killed yesterday. Riding on a bike path, hit by a truck that took a right without looking. Maybe he wasn’t either. And I wanted to cry for his family and send them cards and hug his kids or siblings if he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. I mean, didn’t.

We decided to join a group of 150 or so bikers that had gathered at Heroes’ Square to paint a ghost bike and chain it to the spot where he was killed. It was pretty powerful, all these people who didn’t even know the guy coming together to ride. Along the way we stopped at another ghost bike, one for the victim of a similar incident that happened a few months ago. This madness must cease.

And you would think it would – soon – judging by the turnout of last Sunday’s Critical Mass ride. It was only the biggest in the world, EVER, at an estimated 80,000 participants. The only things bigger are the anti-government rallies and the Sziget Festival, but I don’t even know if that counts because most of those people are foreigners.

But the truth is, Hungary is changing impossibly slowly. It is a wildly squawking Turul with its wings drowning in a thick paprikas. Did I tell you yet why we’re leaving?

And this is the most poetic thing I’ve read in months. It makes me sad to know these truths.

But don’t worry, I’ve been drinking water all day.

Monday was our deadline day. I woke up before the alarm, despite going to bed later than usual around 1:30am the previous night. Perhaps I’d gained some energy from our dangerously relaxing weekend, spent mostly lying on various grassy surfaces in the sun. We need to make up for the gray winter.

Had my usual breakfast of cheeses and toast and headed to work hopeful that we would finish today and not push our deadline back another day, which happens more often than I care to admit – and I’m not even the editor-in-chief. Spent the day finishing up what needed to be done- some events here, a PR article there, a lifestyle piece in the middle, some phonetically spelled Hungarian sentences and (another) sappy editorial to edit as bookends. Did I mention that once my boss asked me to write his editorial, then (to my great horror) put my name on it? I mean, he thought he was doing me a favor, as if you could just draw straws for who gets to be editor that week and I could add it to my resume. I’ve since written them twice more. The irony of it all, of course, is that when he writes them himself, he uses a pseudonym, and a pathetic one at that: Justin Case.

Had lunch with my lovely American co-worker M at a pizza place for yuppies and tourists on Ráday utca called Pink Cadillac. It seemed like everyone around us was speaking English, though our young waiter, crew-cut glistening and acne stains only beginning to fade, spoke to us only in Hungarian. I couldn’t decide if it was because he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English, or because he was tactfully playing along at our rudimentary language skills, or he was just becoming a sad victim of the Italian tourism pox. The pizza was good.

Ostensibly I think we should be finishing each issue on a Friday, then proofing it thoroughly on Monday with fresher eyes. The fact is, we haven’t been in the habit of proofing at all, and it was painfully obvious in our last issue. Granted, it was rushed- three days ahead of schedule to beat a four-day weekend -but we really aren’t building any support by publishing a shoddy rag. So I made it my mission to stay late and proof the thing no matter what.

That meant I got home around 9:30 p.m. E was at her sister’s place, checking out their new garden, which she reports is very cute. I sat on our fifth-floor balcony in my boxer shorts, hidden by darkness and the ugly frosted-glass barriers and sparing the neighbors any embarrassment as I watched the few stars, listened to the distant tinkling of a rock-club across the river, and ate a small plate of strawberries. Oh yes, the magical season (yes, my American brethren, there IS a season for strawberries, and most fruit for that matter, which you are NOT supposed to get in the winter) of strawberries-by-the-kilogram will soon be upon us, prized for it’s competitive price ($2.50/kg for the expensive ones) and incomparable taste. These are no fist-sized, apple-red, plasticine monuments to genetic “enhancement” that have little taste and even less nutritional value, but knuckle size, gnarled berries of Jacques-ian lore that melt on your tongue with just the right balance of sugary temptation and sour fulfillment. I look forward to a summer of fresh strawberry shakes and vegetarian barbecues, the latter unfortunately only by our own design.

The warm summer air a reassuring temperature, though probably early for this time of year, I watched the fifteen or twenty stars that made it through the light pollution and regular pollution to bring ancient light to my eyes. They all seemed to be twinkling rapidly between white and red, and yes, I’m sure they weren’t planes, which were easy to spot as they looked like massive fireballs ascending and descending at Ferihegy 1 and 2 about 20 km to the east. One star was much brighter that the rest; at least 2-3 times so. I briefly attempted to search for it on the ‘net (what would one Google? “brightest star tonight”?), then gave up. It’s probably a planet anyway.

In the late afternoon I had a meeting with my other boss, that of Sales and Marketing. This meeting was important because we were finally discussing the terms of my contractual employment request. I will get it, with the caveat that I commit to another year, which would probably only begin in August, as the bureaucratic process actually takes months to slog through, with considerable expense. I have to tell them my intent in the next few days.

Big decision time.

Been meaning to write about the trip to Florence, Italy, so here it is. In the central three weeks of April, my parents came to Europe to visit me, E, and the great Renaissance painters my father happens to be on a first-name basis with. They flew to Budapest the first weekend, spent the middle 10 days in Italy, then returned to BP for their final weekend. We wanted to spend some more time with them, and anyhow were in need of an escape from the last winter sluggishness in the city, so we agreed to let them take us to Florence for a three day weekend.

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“People tend to believe that the cause of all troubles is sin. To them sin means that someone lies, steals, cheats, robs, kills and fornicates. Their ignorance goes so far that they issue immensely grandiloquent laws, in which they even evoke the threat of the gallows. Although these laws are many thousands of years old, until now they have failed to yield any result.”

-Béla Hamvas, The Philosophy of Wine

This serves as a tardy entry on ideas evoked by the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington that, for better or worse, have changed the course of world events and ushered in a new era of human development. On that clear morning I had awoken early for Japanese class and clearly remember arriving in the classroom where two faculty members I did not know were watching a small TV and talking about a plane flying into the World Trade Center tower. Assuming it was some freak accident involving a small private craft, I did not think much of it, and soon the tube was switched off and class begun. Next I had another class, and while talk was growing more excited, no one had a full idea of what was going on and we continued with our studies. I spent the rest of the day huddled in my room with others on the floor, glued to the television and repeatedly questioning our state of consciousness. It was truly surreal, unbelievable, and most certainly “like a movie“.

Four years, two wars, one election, thousands of American and tens of thousands of Afghani and Iraqi deaths later, in what ways have things changed? We have certainly seen that security issues have become the number one concern of Americans, whether they be in New York, Los Angeles, or Nowhereville, USA. Our civil liberties have been curtailed without clear indication of when they will be restored, and despite the billions spent on “homeland security and preparation for disaster”, the Katrina disaster has clearly demonstrated the lack of effectiveness of that program. The economy is slowing, the deficit is soaring, world opinion of us is terrible, and any higher moral ground we gained from that day of lost innocence has since been shamefully squandered in the cynical ambitions of a cadre of puppets and war profiteers.

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