pengovsky | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Getting Rid of Nuclear Weapons?

This and (consequently) this caugth my attention yesterday.

Apparently Her Majesty’s Government is cosidering upgrading its nuclear submarine arsenal some time by 2040. But a row erupted on whether the UK should instead reject nuclear weapons as a whole. According to the Beebs, “the main [argument agains nuclear weapons] is that the old threat from the Soviet Union no longer exists and therefore the need for a nuclear weapon no longer exists.”

Now call me old fashioned and reactionary, but this smells a bit too much of pre-WWII disarmament drive and pacifism which was flourishing on the Island in the 30’s. Just to jogg your memory a bit: trying to lead by example, various British governments of the time unilaterally dismantled a lot of their fleet, reduced the armed forces, cut military spending and neglected development. The result being that Britain was caught with its pants down at the beginning of WWII, making it way easier for Nazi Germany to wage war in the early stages of the six-year bloodbath.

While the world has changed since then and while nuclear armament is an entirely different ball game I fail to see the reason in a country abandoning a strategic advantage over potential adversaries. Granted, the so-called “war on terror” is the order of the day and yes, if all the satellites of the world didn’t find Osama bin Laden (or didn’t they?) then is’t kind of hard to imagine what possible use nuclear weapons could be against an invisible enemy. But while you and I have the luxury of tackling problems one at the time a world power (I still consider Britain to be one) does not have that luxury.

OK, so it’d be great if there were no nuclear weapons, but this crazy planet is way beyond that. I strongly support the Non-proliferation treaty and am keen on the world becoming safer. However, I think that the times we live in are neither the time nor the place to for experimental disarmament. This goes beyond the current anti-terror and über-partiotic craze.

In the times when Pakistan and India are using their (albeit limited) nuclear capability to lay claim on a permament UN Security Council membership, when North Korea is obviously being bribed into not going forth with a nuclear option, when Iran is sending mixed signals about it’s nuclear programme (virtually inviting all kinds of crazed rednecks to come crashing a kebab-party) and Israel just itching to use its (non existing, of course) nuclear arsenal, then getting rid of the only thing that gets you a seat at that particular poker table is tantamount to assisted suicide.

I’m sure Winston wouldn’t approve…

Dead Politicians Society

“Oh Captain, my Captain… ” Well, not really…(source)

Matej Lahovnik, former minister of economy, former vice-president of Liberal-democratic party, currently serving as MP, left the party (being the first of several prominent members of LDS to have done so) and gave form to persistent rumours that a new social-liberal party is being formed on the political left.

But what we thought it would become a new political party, turned out to be a past-time activity. Lahovnik, Pavle Gantar, Davorin Terčon and Alojz Posedel (all MPs) have formed “društvo Zares” (Society Serious). They hope the society will eventually transformed into a party, but apparently it will not happen immediately.

So. First we got Drnovšek’s Movement. Then we got Zoran Janković and his “non-political” List. And now we have a society. See a pattern here? It is hip to be a-political politician.

An obvious contradiction in terms, of course. A non-political politician is a (politically) dead politician.

The Burden of Being A Mayor

Being the mayor of Ljubljana can really take it out on you…(photos by Pengovsky)

Although it may seem that I’m making fun of the man, I actually feel slightly sorry for mayor Zoran Janković. I mean, I know he brought it upon himself by running for office, but here you can see what four months of public service can do to a man. The pictures may not be of the highest quality and I’ll admit that his poses are different in every one of them, but I think that the burden of the office is apparent.

BTW: according to Manager magazine, Zoran Janković takes “only” 47th place among the 100 richest Slovenians.

A note on the photos: The first photo was taken a day after he anounced his candidacy, all the others were taken while je was already in office. The bottom ones were taken with a Nokia 6680 phone (2.0 megapixel), the top two were taken were taken with a Sony Cybershot (also 2.0 megapixel). All four pictures were taken under artificial light, with all but the first one taken in the same room during various press conferences.

Oh, and my ladies… Happy Women’s Day! 😀

The Perils of E-Communication

Wine is a great conversation starter…

Something wee bit serious today…

For some time I’ve been meaning to write about e-communication and how deceptive it can be. Thanks to turistka I’ve finally got around doing it.

Take blogs, for example. Some people use blogs to express themselves – or so we think. A sort of a public diary, a personal blog can offer a great insight into some people’s thoughts, lives, feelings, etc… The trick, of course, is that the insight is not complete and unfethered, but is rather only a partial – censored, if you will – image of a particular blogger. Even more, it can be completely deceiving.

A particular blogger chooses (thus in effect censors) information he/she shares with the outside world. Even if the information is varied in nature and content it still seldomly paints a true picture of a person. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and blogs fail to present the wholeness in its… well… wholesomness.

And while blogs do offer some sort of a medium for a meaningful debate (at least in theory), chats are even more perilous. Chatting by its very name implies the lack of any serious and meaningful conversation and is usually limited to short sentences and replies. The fact that a chat almost always ends up on the subject of sex might be just my trait, so I won’t dwell on that.

Almost the same goes for text-messaging (SMSing, as it is known in Slovenia). Limited to 160 or 320 charaters, one is limited to writing down basic information and squeeze in a smiley or two.

E-mails on the other hand offer a way too conveinent medium of presenting oneself in a far better and complex way than he/she might actually be. As the conversation is not “live”, both the author of a starting mail and the respondee have more than enough time to think over the contents of the mail, to “brush it up” and make it (and to make themselves) look better than in real life.

Talking over a phone is in my opinion slightly better. In addition to the actual conversation being conducted “live”, one can also hear the voice of the other party – enabling us to roughly discern the mood and nature of the person on the other side. Also, a slight tremble in the voice of a person who usually speaks loudly and clearly will more often than not indicate that something unusual has happened.

But even a conversation over a phone lacks one true ingredient of any conversation: non-verbal communication. The manner of the person, the way he/she behaves during conversation will tell you at least as much of him/her as the contents of his/her speech, enabling you to have as much clearer image of who you are actually talking to.

Now, I’m not saying that the above is true in every case and of every communication (especially if the two parties know each other), but to put it in scientific terms:

Any non-personal form of communication is subject to greater interference by outside factors and the probabitly that the receiver will interpret the message differently than the sender meant it is much higher than during a personal communication session.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t e-communicate, just that we should keep the above in mind. As for me: I love all forms of communication, but I’ll take a glass of wine and someone nice to talk to any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Total Lunar Eclipse, pt. II

As I promised on Saturday, here is some footage of the total lunar eclipse as seen from Ljubljana. It is actually a piece (if you can call it that since I improvised it) for the Firm™ so it is in Slovene, but still…

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Camera: El Presidente™, music: Michael Jakcson, Thirller

OK, so it wasn’t all that spectacular 😀 But it was much more fun looking at it during the actual event. Which reminds me… I might post some footage of 1999 total solar eclipse. That was much more fun 🙂

Tonight’s Special: Total Lunar Eclipse

During a total lunar eclipse the Moon turns red (source)

Tonight at 22.30 CET spectators from whole of Europe, Africa, South America, and eastern parts of the US and Canada will be able to observe a total lunar eclipse.

Contratry to a total solar eclipse which is an extremely rare event and last only minutes, a total lunar eclipse is much more frequent and lasts considerably longer. While tonight’s eclipse will start at 2230 hours with a partial eclipse, the total eclipse will start at 23.44 and will last for more than an hour, with the Moon exiting Earth’s shadow at 00.58 on Sunday.

The moon will not become completely invisible, but will rather turn red, because some light will be filtered through the Earth’s atmosphere and will reach lunar surface.

The weather forecast for tonight is extremely good, with clear weather and temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius, so you will have great conditions to observe this astronomical event. And if you feel like taking a picture or two, here are some tips.

Ljubljana SweetSwing Festival 2007

Zoot suit – gotta get me one of those! 😀

From March 16 to 18, Ljubljana will be hosting the first ever swing festival on Slovenw grounds. The festival will include 16 hours of workshops, done in two levels, three evenings of parties, live music and last but not the least – a lot of fun and dance. The festival is hosted by the SweetSwing Society and you can find more info here

Highly recommended! 😀