20081006058

One Year Ago

I boarded a plane to London. Wish I was doing that today.

The Fighting in Georgia

I’ve just spent a while reading the media reports on the fighting occurring between Georgia and Russia and the disputed nature of the facts make it hard to come to a comfortable conclusion. There are claims and counter-claims between the two nations over the disputed territory called South Ossetia that is the focus of the military activity and also that of Abkhazia on the western border of Georgia. It seems undisputed that Russian ground forces are moving into South Ossetia in significant numbers and that Russian air forces have attacked targets in Georgia itself.

My conclusion is that we are watching the execution of a strategy that Russia has implemented in order to increase its power in the region and against the West, including both Europe and the U.S. The Georgians haven’t been without blame in their assertion of sovereignty over the disputed regions and the fact that most in those regions desire to associate with Russia rather than Georgia only makes the water murkier. Despite that, based on what I understand so far, Russia bears the greater fault.

Unfortunately, unless diplomatic pressure can bring to bear some heretofore undiscovered power, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of interrupting Russia’s plan. The possibility that Georgia may cease to exist as an independent nation seems real, although Russia may stop short of that for now. With the war in Iraq and Afghanistan still in doubt it’s doubtful that America will commit any troops (the question of whether we should is a separate one). The general inability and unwillingness of Europe to commit to any direct military intervention means that there is no effective check on Russia’s desire to establish vassal nations on its border and further strengthen its grip on the energy resources flowing into Europe.

NY Times Map of Georgia

Here’s what I read:

Georgia and Russia Nearing All-Out War

Editorial in the Guardian: Prisoner of the Caucasus

How Georgia fell into its enemies’ trap

Russia’s Invasion of South Ossetia: The Kosovo Precedent In Play?

testing ping.fm for updating statuses (statii?) on multiple sites

Astros Could Make a Little Run

The Astros are about to wrap-up the month of June tomorrow and they’re certain to finish it far below .500 for the month and on the season (currently 9-16 in June and 39-43 overall). June was a rough month. Although the starting pitching continued bouncing along in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed this season, the offense took a hit when Miguel Tejada and Hunter Pence decided to simultaneously take a nosedive. Both have been hitting in the neighborhood of .200 for the past several weeks.

But things could be looking up. While Pence still seems to be struggling, Tejada may be beginning to pickup a little. Over the past few games he’s had some solidly hit outs and for the month, statistics suggest he’s hit into a bit more than his fair share of bad luck. In the four series that remain before the All Star Game, the teams the Astros play are the Dodges, Braves, Pirates and Nationals. The past week they’ve won three series, including series wins against both the Red Sox and Rays, the two teams that happen to sit atop the powerhouse AL East. Our last surge, in May, coincided with a stretch of games against weaker teams and an incredible month by Lance Berkman.

It won’t be a playoff push, but perhaps we can get a few games over .500 before the inevitable dropoff occurs again. Winning each series until the break with a record of 8-4 would bring us right to .500.

Austin Real Estate

Talk about a new lease on life. An old apartment complex, refurbished, now selling as condos starting at $90K. The location is just OK, but it’s south of 183 on a major N/S artery. I don’t know if it’s a good deal or not; it just seems crazy.

The Allandale

Blog Post of the Day

Joe Posnanski blogs, mostly about baseball, from Kansas City and he has a post today following up on the kerfuffle over blogs and sports that happened on Bob Costas show the other day. I liked this quote.

“What do we think Martin Luther’s “95 Theses“ was? A blog. Of course. There was no WordPress for him to post, so he nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. The door, he found, was a better operating system than Vista.”

A few weekend thoughts …

Why Go To College?

Why Go To College?

The great majority of young Americans go to college because they’ve been led to believe that having a college degree of some kind is a necessity if they’re to have a prosperous career. Even though there are some extraordinarily successful people in the business world who never earned college degrees, it’s generally assumed that most of the doors leading to success are locked to people who haven’t signaled their abilities by getting a degree.

This pretty much describes the reason why I went to college. I wish I’d taken more time to think about it at the time.

This Week’s Netflix: Proper Villians

My recent batch of Netflix discs has been pretty poor. I guess I made some bad decisions in adding to the queue. Two were so boring I watched less than half before turning them off. Maybe they weren’t bad movies, but definitely not for me.

American Gangster - §§§ - Cops and drug dealers, it’s been fodder for lots of good movies and TV shows (and at least one great one, to wit: The Wire). Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) is a Harlem gangster who takes over the realm of his mob boss mentor in New York during the end of the Viet Nam war. He brings along his family and generally lives the good life before it starts to unravel. Russell Crowe plays a New Jersey cop (and eventually lawyer) who ends up assigned to crack down on the drugs. Good things about the movie: 1) the performances of Crowe and Washington. They truly are entertaining and make the movie worth watching; 2) entertaining views of New York during that period; 3) a nice coda to wrap things up. Bad things: 1) There’s not much suspense about what’s going to happen, especially since it was based on a true story and once the denouement nears, things really speed up; 2) it seems unbelievable that Crowe’s character, who gets his law license during the process of the investigation, would then be tasked with leading the prosecution of Lucas in court. I haven’t checked, but I really doubt that’s the way it happened and seems a ridiculous monkey wrench to throw into the story. 3) I’ve seen the method of drug transportation the story uses in several other fictional settings before, and perhaps it was truly the method the real-life Lucas used, but it felt recycled. Still, it sets up a critical point in the film, so I suppose it works. It’s not a big problem.

The Long Good Friday - §§§§ - A London crime kingpin is setting up for the biggest deal of his career, one that will bring him legitimacy and billions of dollars, until unknown forces start making things go wrong. Added this one based on the recommendation of a mention on the filmspotting.net podcast, and it was really enjoyable. I have two minor complaints: 1) this is truly a London movie and the language and slang are often hard to follow, especially without the benefit of subtitles; 2) the film score irritated me at points, it’s very much of the 80’s. The movie is set in 1980 and it’s a great story. Lots of violence. Make sure to watch the prologue, probably the first 10 minutes or so, very closely.

In Case of Emergency

For all you Cryptonomicon fans, here’s how to manipulate the LED lights on your Mac keyboard in case you’re worried about Van Eck phreaking.