current affairs
I was recently interviewed by the local paper. Another teacher had called the paper to recommend me for “Teacher of the Week” due to my Polska adventures, and voil: a article in the paper after living in the city less than three months.
(A few mistakes here and there, but…)
Saudi King Abdullah visited Buckingham Palace, and he received a villainous welcome.
(Note from 2026: The actual video has been removed... wonder why?)
Right now there is a labor shortage in Poland for the simple reason that thousands upon thousands have gone West, primarily to Ireland and the UK, seeking work. Off the top of my head I can think of five people I know who are now in the UK: two former students and three friends.
But this leaves Poland itself short. So it’s doing what the UK did: look to the East.
Warsaw, Poland 9 October, 2007 With the failure of the Polish Government’s efforts to attract Polish workers back to Poland, Chinese and Indian workers will be brought to Poland in order to make up for the severe labor shortage that exists in the country. (Poland Looks To China And India For Help)
Ahmadinejad is indeed a nut:
Not since the prime minister of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada presented an address claiming that UFOs posed a mortal threat to the future of mankind has the United Nations been treated to such a bizarre spectacle.
Many people believe the greatest threat to world peace concerns Iran's nuclear programme, so there was understandably great interest at this week's general assembly in New York when the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took the platform.
But instead of seeking to reassure delegates that Iran's nuclear intentions were purely benign, Mr Ahmadinejad took advantage of his official visit to a country deemed – in the lexicon of the Iranian Revolution – "the Great Satan" to embark on a discourse about the wonders of the 12th Imam. (Will the 12th Imam cause war with Iran? - Telegraph)
It appears that he may be wanting war as much as any warmonger Christians -- those hoping to hasten Jesus' return -- here in the States.
Madeleine L’Engle, author of one of the most famous books in the adolescent literature canon, A Wrinkle in Time, died last week. (Madeleine L’Engle: News)
A Wrinkle in Time was one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and it’s one that has stayed with me for twenty-some years now. I read it again in college for the required course on adolescent lit, and it was just as enchanting in my early twenties as it had been twelve or so years earlier.
Last year: Landis, Ulrich, Basso.
This year: Vinokourov, Moreni, and Rassmussen.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the Tour again. What’s the point? It’s no longer a contest of who has the most endurance, who trained the most, who has the most — dare I use THE sports cliche? — heart.
It’s who can best hide his doping.
Anyone who wins a stage, a title, the Tour itself will now be immediately suspect.
Recently I found this report:
Iranian intelligence operatives recently detained over a dozen squirrels found within the nation’s borders, claiming the rodents were serving as spies for Western powers determined to undermine the Islamic Republic. (Ynetnews)
I guess the CIA would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids…
From Reuters, on the UK plots:
“To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area I think that’s a planning impossibility,” said Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now at London’s Chatham House think tank.
“A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK,” he said. (Yahoo! News)
Some common ideology? What could that have been?
They were all Formula One fans? They were all passionate about Jane Austen? They were all Culture Club fanatics?
That’s it — it’s Boy George’s fault…
Ron Paul is Exhibit A in the case of why we need more than two viable political parties. Granted, there’s the Libertarian Party, and that was RP’s party of choice some years ago, but now he’s running for the Republican party nomination — even though most of the Republican party shuns him.
He does seem fairly un-Republican in some ways. His ideas about Iraq win him more applause from Bill Maher than any of the Democratic candidates.
If we think we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. […] They don’t come here and attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They attack us because we’re over there. (Republican candidate debate)
I don’t know of any Democratic candidate who’s talking about blowback and 9/11. It sounds like something out of a Chomsky book, as do his comments about the folly of spreading democracy with a gun.
And yet, Paul was talking to Cobert, he indicated that he’d be more than willing to have a small a government as possible, eliminating various agencies such as the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security.
What he is, in reality, is a real Republican — an isolationistic, small-government, states’-rights, federal-government-butt-out, old-fashioned Republican. The Republicans have strayed so far from their original principles that a “real” one stands out.