On the Impossibility of Cultural Estrangement

Charles Stross writes on his excellent blog about the lack of cultural estrangement in far-future science fiction. His objection is that far-flung societies ought to be significantly removed from what is familiar to us; and yet many space operas present a future that is essentially the status quo, plus made-up technology:

The gender politics, religious framework, ideologies, fashions(!) and attitudes of today—specifically, of a type of Anglophone developed-world middle class lifestyle that lots of folks aspire to—has become a universal norm. And nothing else gets much of a look in.

He brings up two examples, one of which I am unfamiliar with; the other one is Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, the first book in his Commonwealth series, of which I am a big fan. I have my own problems with Hamilton's writing, but they are not the same as Stross's problems. In fact, I was very surprised by his objections; and while Charlie is very good about engaging with his fans, the comment thread stands at 348 entries as I am writing this, and I just don't see the value of riding into the middle of the discussion on the back of a white rhino. So you get to read this on my blog instead.

My first counter to Charlie's objection is that he is guilty of this himself. He grants that Hamilton at least has a fig-leaf explanation, that the rich people who are the majority of Hamilton's protagonists have access to rejuvenation and their society is therefore frozen in time (in the later books, access to rejuvenation for the middle classes and working poor is also addressed). Yet let's look at Stross's own far-future books. He's come up with two compelling space-opera universes: that of the Eschaton (abandoned due to mechanical inconsistencies that bother Stross far more than they ever bothered fans), and that of Saturn's Children. In the latter, society is frozen in a sort of today-plus-ten-years, with middle-class aesthetics predominantly influenced by the Western fascination with Japanese pop culture which has - today, in 2014 - become thoroughly mainstream and is well on its way to being diluted into banality; and much of the rest of that world is a direct copy of the modern vintage hipster approach, co-opting the symbology that is already retro in his reader's time. Stross's fig-leaf excuse is that he is describing a rump society left over after humanity essentially ground to a halt, stopped reproducing and died out, all within a lifetime of the observer's now, and the remnants are compelled at firmware level to ape that moment in time when their creators perished. In the Eschaton universe, Stross goes further still - his god-machine takes various historical human societies, including quite recent ones, and deposits them around the universe in such a way that they would come into contact with each other simultaneously - but at different points in their own development. The compelling culture of the original Eschaton book is late-stage Imperial Russia, but with starships and lasers. The most distinctive culture in the second Eschaton book is literally Space Nazis.

Secondly, the most obvious retort: every writer is told to write what they know, and every reader consumes a story via their own perspective. For a human, fallible writer to create a universe that is fundamentally unrecognizable would be a neat trick indeed, especially if it is supposed to have developed from an existing modern one. Have any managed this? Answers in the comments, please...)

For the human fallible reader, that universe would be confusing and without meaning - the semiotic equivalent of opening a PDF document in Notepad. This is why the works of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells do not accurately describe real-life 2014-or-thereabouts. For even the best futurist to predict events more than a decade or two in the future, without firmly grounding them in historical precedent of similar developments, is a blind lottery: you might succeed accidentally and occasionally, but you can't pull it off reliably and repeatedly.

Thirdly, I think there is a counter-argument to be made to Charlie's assertion that a comparison of our present with our own past implies an unrecognizable future. Yes, the world of 2014 is incredibly different from the world of 1914; but that world is far less removed from 1814 in the view of the man on the street. And the world of 1714, in that same perspective, would be remarkably similar to the world of 1214. That's just taking Europe - a continent and culture that famously had a thousand-year chasm in its civilizational development, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance; and if Hamilton's criminally familiar universe is set 400 years in the future, well - there are 400-year-old buildings a stone's throw from where I'm sitting right now, still perfectly functional. And if I go into a shop, I can buy food from farmers and artisans who use 400-year-old methods to produce a premium, higher-added-value product. I live in a country that is often lauded in global media as the world's most advanced digital society, but in this same country, heating your house with a wood-burning stove is still a perfectly valid infrastructural choice.

The classic SF soundbite about the future being already here but unevenly distributed applies at both the macro and micro scales. Parts of our lives are incredibly advanced, but transport a modern literary novel four hundred years back in time, edit it slightly for spelling and vocabulary, and I think it would still be readable to the people of that age, as one of those new-fangled notions in the style of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Fourthly, I think the grounding of far-future SF in modern culture is simply a normal part of the compact between the reader and author. The escapism that draws readers to space opera is about being a better version of yourself - not about associating with someone entirely different. From the days of "Utopia", it is understood and accepted that the author uses the expanded horizon of speculative fiction to make a relevant point, to say something about the society in which we live today. If the future they have described does not come to pass, the artistic value of the work is not diminished - we still enjoy Verne and Wells, and Asimov and Heinlein.

The best futurists are not the ones who have guessed right - they are the ones who have presented a future so consistent, believable and attractive that the generation of their fans goes out and builds it.

From Dead Air by Iain Banks:

'I believe in truth,' I told her. She was smiling a little now. I was making a complete idiot of myself but I didn't care any more. 'There; I said it. I believe there is something pretty damn close to objective truth more or less all the time and I'm not accepting this shite about everybody having their own truths or respecting somebody else's opinions just because they're sincerely held. The Nazis sincerely hated the Jews; they weren't just kidding. I'm not respecting their fucking ideas just because they were deeply held. I believe in science, in the scientific method, in doubt, in questioning, in facing truths, not hiding from them. I don't believe in God but I admit I could be wrong. I don't believe in faith at all because faith is belief without reason, and reason is the only thing we have, the only thing I do believe in. I think people have every right to believe in anything they want, no matter how ridiculous it might be, but I don't accept their right to coerce others into the same views. And I certainly don't accept any right they might think they have not to have their views challenged just because they're going to feel peeved in the process.

Click-to-summon

Don't you just love "experts" who are not just consistently wrong, but remain wilfully ignorant?

Forgive me for feeding a troll, but I understand that my readers rather enjoy this kind of thing. Was pointed to an article by someone purporting to be an economist.

Well, as I told John at the time, the Estonian case is a complex one, since in a country with only just over a million people a myriad of special case factors can be at work, confounding results.

Well fuck me sideways with a chainsaw, Edward, but wouldn't it just be swell if an analyst publishing long-winded treatises full of graphs actually took the time and effort to investigate these special factors, and contemplate their effect on the model he's trying to apply? All the more so after admitting his previous predictions have been wrong?

Ligi on Taxes, Benefits, and the Exchange Rate

Via Urmas Aunin, a link to an excellent interview with finance minister Jürgen Ligi at the Eesti Päevaleht newspaper.

Extracts translated by yours truly.

---

Q: What will be the ultimate exchange rate between the kroon and the Euro?

A: [...]Do you think I would dare return to Estonia if I announced on July 13th that the exchange rate will not be 15,6466? That we decided to make it cheaper... Do I look suicidal?

---
Q: When will the pensions start growing? When will the teachers' salaries go up? When will the doctors' salaries go up?

A: When we start earning more.

Q: [...]So teachers and doctors shouldn't hope for raises in 2011.

A: No, they shouldn't. We're actually quite happy that the decline is over, and we'll be licking our wounds for a while.

Q: But are there any cuts coming in these areas?

A: No, there really aren't. I can't see any sensitive cuts coming, those have already been made. Of course, a lot depends on how quickly employment recovers. Too fast a recovery is not good, that would mean that structural improvements have not been thorough.

---
Q: For ten years, there's been talk of necessity-based social benefits. Any progress there?

A: That's the political process for you, common sense does not prevail. When you talk about [free school lunches], some people will think that it's a fundamental question in education. I say, my child doesn't need it. It's embarassing for me to use it. I didn't get this freebie in my time, we didn't get the freebie during socialism.

Now, some people will cry that saving money on children is unthinkable. Let's just admit that a child is primarily the responsibility of the parent, and the areas where we really do pay out massively are specific services: education, healthcare, after-school activities. But food and clothes... Most parents, taxpayers, should be making that choice for themselves.

That's just one example. Look at the 300-kroon child benefit, that's not very necessary. When we start looking at how much good it's actually doing, the real value is quite modest.

---
Q: When you talk about unnecessary [tax] exceptions, do you mean VAT discounts as well?

A: Yes. Tax discounts create a potential for corruption. It is an extremely expensive way for politicians to gather popularity. At the same time, they have no social justification, as they benefit those who consume more, and buy more expensive goods. There is no economic justification either.

Tax exceptions are justifiable in the case of medical drugs. These are goods with a controlled usage, and largely paid for by the state anyway. Tourism too, to some degree, since there you are talking about exports, and by definition exports have a zero tax rate, so the discounted rate there is understandable.

[...]This is a Pandora's box, and there are attempts to close it at the European level as well. VAT should be a neutral tax, applied irrespectively of the type of goods, and without scheming for preferences. That's how it was intended, it's just that different countries have historical privileges that are very hard to get rid of.

At the same time, I want to say that in the short term you will not be hearing any news on this issue. Don't misunderstand. To repeat one more time - there are no tax increases planned. I would love to get rid of the exceptions, but I don't have the power to do that. The finance minister does not have the political support.

---
Q: Are there any realistic opportunities for taxes to go down any time soon? Even people who otherwise have no love for Reform Party policies admit that labour taxes in Estonia are too high.

A: On the one hand I agree that the labour tax burden is too high, but usually the people who speak out about it leave out the hidden tax burden of other states - things such as contributions to various funds.

In terms of competitiveness, we need to reduce labour taxes, and in social terms, the tax-free wage minimum is understandable, but in economic terms what actually matters is the upper limit. Very good specialists cannot be paying the full measure of social tax, as they will never use even a fraction of what they pay in. The social tax ceiling is one issue on which we have to decide.

Q: Understanding is one thing, but I asked about political opportunities: are tax cuts coming?

A: Doesn't look that way. The budget's main priority is cutting costs. We want to lower the labour tax burden and that's one area of discussion, but this will not be resolved before the elections.

These are painful issues. The land of unbridled demagoguery. I think we need the tax changes to settle down on the European level, so we too start to understand that taxing consumption makes more sense than taxing labour. But usually this is where the hysteria begins, that the poor are paying more.

Taxing consumption is a trend. It's a trend that does not damage the economy. What is good for the economy is usually a far more important question for the poor than for the rich, who can get by anyway. In this sense, social democrats are quite one-sided. They look at things in a static way, who to take from and who to give to. If you take from the wrong place, then those who don't have a lot to give, they'll end up giving away the last thing they have - their jobs. [...] For the poor person, what is very important is what makes for a lesser burden on the economy. He doesn't see that the social and income tax is a tax on himself, and if you increase that burden, you increase the likelyhood of him losing his job. But consumption is something that people can control, to some extent. Income and social tax is paid by the company accountant, and the employee doesn't understand that this is part of the cost of a job.

---
Q: State contributions to the pension pillars - are they coming back?

A: They are absolutely coming back.

Q: Was [pausing the tax for such a short time] a right decision, or a silly one?

A: It was not silly. I was not the one who came up with the idea, but I applaud my predecessor for having the guts to put forward this proposal (to pause the contributions). Bringing that back will have some problems, the 6 and 3, some complicated schematics. I'd have left out the compensation. We'll live to regret it.

Stopping the contributions at the same time as losing the mandatory savings was reasonable. But you can't start compensating for the crisis later. It's a poor compromise, but it's been decided, and the state has made a promise.

---
Q: What did you think of the slogan "Making Estonia one of Europe's five richest states in 15 years"?

A: I didn't think anything of it.

Q: When this slogan came out, I did a little research online, whether this goal was even statistically possible, and it seemed to me that it wasn't.

A: Theoretically it was actually possible. Yes, there was some fudging involved. For example, when we discussed it, there was the question of whether we should include Norway and Switzerland - they're part of Europe, but not the European Union. But I did not support it, as it depends on quite a lot of external factors that we cannot influence.

Also, politics and campaigning is often quite removed from actual people and reality. I remember walking in the city and seeing Hanno Pevkur on a poster, promising "A better salary for everyone!". I thought to myself, look at that, a young politician and such a populist statement! Then I got to the defense ministry building, and saw the same poster with my face on it.

The European Union was built by a process of piecemeal social engineering, indeed it is probably the most successful feat of social engineering in history. The architects recognized that perfection is unattainable. They set limited objectives and firm deadlines. They mobilized the political will for a small step forward, knowing full well that when it was accomplished its inadequacy would become apparent and require further steps. That is how the coal and steel community was gradually developed into the European Union, step by step.

George Soros
Humboldt University
Berlin, Germany
June 23, 2010

The full speech is absolutely worth reading. It is a great clarification of some aspects of the Euro's structure, and the situation surrounding it. I don't necessarily agree with Soros that deflation is a Bad Thing - of course, he does go on to say that the EU needs to invest into education and infrastructure, and mentions that the reason Germany is such a powerhouse in Europe is that it is a competitive, efficient country, and a lot of others aren't.

Labour efficiency is Estonia's next great target. The milestone we should be aiming for, now that we've achieved Euro entry, is a positive trade surplus. Currently, Estonia's IT sector creates and exports a huge amount of added value that cannot be properly reflected in financial statistics, because of the way the IT sector works - and the way that Estonian subsidiaries of foreign corporations work. IT will remain a core competence of Estonia's, and we should support it (the big thing there is an improvement in the quality of education), but to safeguard the economy, we need to make sure that Estonia retains and increases the actual production capacities it has. That is the long-term backbone of an economy.

I Don't Think You Know What "Interesting" Means

Here's a news article linked from one of my forums. The news story itself is a couple of days old now. The gist of it is that a Frenchman paid some Kosovar gangsters to kidnap a German and drop him off near a French courthouse. The German had previously been convicted in absentia in France of the manslaughter of the Frenchman's daughter; the German authorities found the case to be without merit, and so refused to extradite him.

Just to get it out of the way, my personal opinion is that the Frenchman - who appears to be cooperating with the police in the identification of the kidnappers - should be tried, convicted for kidnap, and sentenced to lots of community service. He broke the law, but in the least evil way possible under the circumstances. (For comparison, consider Drasius Kedys, the Lithuanian who murdered two people suspected of molesting his daughter.) The German is now in French custody; the article says that a conviction in absentia means he will now go through another trial, where he will have the opportunity to defend himself.

What bothers me is the cocnluding line of Charles Bremner's article from the Times Correspondents section:

It's interesting that we have only had the French side of this story.

As I commented on the article itself - yes, because it would be ridiculous to expect a staff writer for a major newspaper to actually get the German side of the story!

Even though the article itself appears in the Blogs section, it still carries the Times header; as such, Charles Bremner does represent the institution and ought to be bound by the habits of good journalism. I usually defend the established media in the face of claims that it has outlived its usefulness in the age of Digg and Twitter, but lazy incompetence of the kind exhibited by master Bremner makes it difficult to do so. "It's interesting" can be expected from a blog (though even then it is vulnerable to ridicule), but in a major news source, it ought to be cause for immediate termination. The very least that the Times correspondent must do is contact the German prosecutor's office and ask for a statement, better yet - have a look at the reasoning in Germany's official refusal to extradite or even pursue the case. Even if that information is not public record, certainly the Frenchman and his attorney would have access to it. And if Bremner were to strike out, find nothing of significance, then the line should read "The German authorities declined to comment on the case".

Charles Bremner uses the word "interesting". I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

Comment of the day

As with anything else, Latvia trails Estonia by nearly two years.

(Not mine, alas.)

Dissenting Opinion

Am I the only one who thinks all the noise surrounding the Dark Knight film is over the top?

John Scalzi (who is an awesome writer btw and you should go and buy his Old Man's War books if you haven't already) has a column out where he dissects the film's Oscar chances. He makes a lot of very sensible points, both for and against, and concludes by saying that Heath Ledger and Christopher Nolan (the director) will probably get their Oscars, and there will be a bunch of wins in technical nominations - but that it will not win Best Picture, because, quote, In the end, I expect giving the Best Picture to a movie about a guy in a bat suit will still be out of the mental comfort zone of the Academy.

Really? It was well within the Academy's mental comfort zone to give Best Picture to a film about a burning cunt suspended on top of a Gothic tower and a guy in spikey leather.

No, the reason why Dark Knight will not win Best Picture is because - and this is where I will ask that you hear me out before throwing various metaphorical kinds of rotten tomatoes at me - it is not an outstandingly good movie.

Not on balance.

There is absolutely no denying that The Joker was a spectacular, genre-shattering performance; this is the new gold standard of on-screen villainry and if, by some fluke of politics or mathematics, Heath Ledger will not receive a posthumous Oscar, it will be the end of the Academy, because its opinion will not be taken seriously by anyone again. Heath Ledger has had a tough time growing out of his heartthrob career (see his odd performance in Lords of Dogtown, where his character was a decrepid ruin opposed to the core cast of teenagers, producing a cognitive dissonance: Heath Ledger is suddenly old), but his Joker is absolutely phenomenal. No actor was this good in 2008; no actor has been this good in recent memory.

However, except for The Joker, what does Dark Knight really have? Batman Begins only got a single nomination for Best Cinematography, and the sequel has not actually moved the game on in any meaningful way. Christian Bale's Batman is as wooden as ever, and while he made this sort of character work really well in Equilibrium, here he has little opportunity to do that. Batman simply walks around responding passively and predictably to cues fed to him by the other characters; Bruce Wayne is better, as Bale actually manages to convey the disillusioned billionaire with a death wish. It would be entirely possible to go through the entire movie without Batman ever actually showing up. Bale gets far more screen time as Bruce Wayne anyway, and the fight scenes are your typical Hollywood choreography showcases; the fanboy audience expects a caped crusader, obviously, but if this wasn't a studio blockbuster, it might have been done as an arthouse adaptation without any footage of Batman in action at all - only scenes presumed and described by the other characters. Would not have limited Heath Ledger at all, but it would have been far more of a challenge (and accomplishment) for the director.

Aaron Eckhardt is far, far better. He's best known for Thank You for Smoking; both there and here he did an excellent job on pure, raw charisma. For two thirds of the movie I was impressed that they portrayed him as an absolute, incorruptable force for good, and the Two-Face character has merit as well; while the coin-flip plot device is long established in the Batman canon, Eckhardt somehow manages to pull off the ultimate sociopath: he is not the least bit disappointed if chance says the victim lives. He can kill you or not. Either way's good.

What he doesn't do quite as well is the transformation. Both Harvey Dent, the white knight, and Two-Face, the sword of chance, are excellent characters, but I am not convinced by the way one became the other. Two-Face's motivation could not simply be grief for his lost love and outrage at the betrayal of the corrupt policemen and inept superhero; surrendering yourself so utterly to blind luck requires true soul-searching, coming to the inevitable and logical conclusion that chance is the only thing in this universe that makes sense.

Besides all of which, longcat is looooooooong. Dark Knight feels drawn out in a way that the Lord of the Rings movies never did. They needed to pack in not only a lot of special-effects showmanship (in addition to giving Heath Ledger all the screen time he so richly deserves), but also the plot arc for a whole additional supervillain, plus the love interest - the latter felt like an afterthought with a strong Spiderman influence, which is absolutely not a compliment.

What else? The cinematography? It's good, but the long-established Gotham aesthetic readily lends itself to breathtaking backgrounds and haunting details. It'd almost be more effort to get it wrong.

The upshot is that Dark Knight is an excellent film, well worth the ticket price to go and see on the big screen (your home theatre would do it an injustice); but it is surrounded by an inordinate amount of hype. Heath Ledger's performance deserves all the hype it is getting, and more; but it does set a standard for the film's other components that they just do not live up to. Ledger is the best actor in 2008; Dark Knight simply is not the year's best film.

Oh Snap

Talking to Justin the other day, we got onto the topic of Andrus Ansip as the longest-serving (continuously) PM in the history of postsoviet Estonia. In fact, only one Estonian leader has ever served longer than him.

The Päts syndrome is a constant issue in Estonian internal politics. Personally I find it reassuring that since '91, Estonia has never had a government make it from one election to another. But Ansip is a prime candidate for a latter-day Päts, as he does have that central quality: an absolute conviction that he is right, and everyone around him is a moron. (If you think I'm overstating the issue, go and watch a Steinbock House press conference, especially one where the reporters ask him about something less than utterly practical.) He also has a core team that seems loyal to him.

What he does lack is vision. Reform is supposed to be the party of economic competence, but Ansip wants more than that - he wants to be a statesman. Unfortunately, that's pure ambition; he doesn't have an overarching idea of what needs changing, like Laar and his mates did back in the early 90s. He wants to be in power for the sake of power.

In this, he is destroying Reform's credibility. In the context of Estonian politics, it seems ludicrous that the bankers' party is firmly in charge of a country, but cannot stop an economic recession. We've missed the Euro accession (nevermind that a lot of people were unconvinced by the idea, it's annoying that we weren't allowed into the Eurozone rather than choosing not to enter), inflation is high, unemployment is growing for the first time in recent memory, and now it turns out that even our balanced budget, one of the cornerstones of Estonia's economic miracle, might not be that balanced after all. This is where Ansip's cult of personality is coming back to bite him, because nobody cares about the coalition - this is Ansip's fault.

The disingenuous bit here is claiming that the Bronze Soldier debacle caused the crisis, by cutting off Russian transit. It certainly contributed, but let's not exercise selective memory: for most of 2006 at least, everybody was saying that 12% annual growth was unsustainable and that the shit was only a few millimeters away from the fan. Russia accounts for 8% of exports and 13% of imports; losing Russia's business hurts, but it's not going to bring the economy crashing down all on its own. (It didn't before, when the double tariffs were introduced, and we're in much better shape now.)

But Russian trade aside, Ansip was still supposed to mitigate the effects of the upcoming crisis. This is what the Reform Party is for. The most public effort so far was the new labour bill, which significantly curtailed employees' rights and benefits in favour of the employers. I can see the idea behind it - make the market more attractive to foreign investment - and at the time I didn't much care, as I've never drawn unemployment or any other welfare benefits from the state, but then I have the advantage of apparently marketable skills. The labour bill was designed to achieve a similar effect as the flat tax system, but whereas Laar's great coup was a feat of engineering - making corporations happy while the people shrugged and were mildly grateful for simpler tax returns - Ansip's plan was going to make life demonstrably more difficult for the actual voters. Since the favourite food of an Estonian is another Estonian, even the other coalition parties took advantage of the public outcry, and delivered the thermonuclear boot to the labour bill.

Now, there are things that Ansip's cabinet gets to be quietly proud of - they seem to have managed to stave off the Eurocrats and keep the zero corporate tax provision alive. But as far as the public is concerned, that is overshadowed by practical embuggerances like the higher fuel excise, which - correct me if I'm wrong - the goverment did not strictly need to implement quite yet. (As far as I understand it, we are obliged by EU policy to eventually both get the fuel excise up to Central European levels, and to bring the tax system in line with the rest of the confederation, but not quite yet.) Ansip is determined to take credit personally for everything happening in Estonia, but the upshot is that he gets blamed personally as well. Reform approval ratings are still decent, though falling, but opinion polls do not actually tell you who people would vote for if the ballots were handed out tomorrow. A lot of people are angry at Ansip, and some of them, like former Prime Minister and transit mogul Tiit Vähi, have stopped being subtle about it:

The most serious problem [in the Estonian economy] is that our Prime Minister is incapable of discussion or listening. As long as that is the case, I do not foresee any positive changes for the Estonian economy. We'd all rather take monuments down and put monuments up, and damn the economy. The politicians' infighting is more important.

New policies come with new people, but right now, nobody wants a change of government. They'd rather let the Reform Party roast for as long as they can.

The solution would be a government of specialists or technocrats, like we had in 1992. [...] Andrus Ansip does not solve problems, he sees myths and thinks that the economic slowdown is the fault of international imperialism and the four seasons.

Of course Vähi's words should be taken with the appropriate amount of salt, and the economy will bounce back up once the current crisis has shaken people up a bit. But I have a sneaking suspicion that when we come out on the other side of this mess, PM Ansip will be conspicuous by his absence.

Blatant

A letter to the managing director of a Siberian coal mining company, from the local office of United Russia. It reads:

I consider your refusal to provide financial assistance to the regional branch of the United Russia party for the campaign of the upcoming parliamentary elections as a refusal of support for President Putin and his formative course.

I consider it my duty to notify the Presidential Administration and the Governor of Kemerovo oblast about this.

From the Secretary of the Political Council of the local UR branch.

Are you scared yet?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Võru

South Estonia, especially Võru county, is a place hiding many interesting things - and many interesting people. There is a Barclay Hotel in Tartu, named after Barclay de Tolli, the Russian army general from the Napoleon wars. It is located in the building which, in the Soviet days, used to house the headquarters of the South Estonian Military District. The presidential suite of the hotel used to be the office of the district commander - one Djohar Dudaev, later on the first president of rebellious Chechnya.

There's also an urban legend about nukes in Võru. I thought it was improbable, myself - strategic munitions so close to the Western border - even though the Raadi airfield near Tartu was designated as an emergency strip for Soviet nuclear bombers. But stranger things have happened. Below is an account by a friend who grew up in Võru county.

There were as many as eight Soviet military objects in Võru county: a surveillance station in Meremäe, a communications unit in Mõniste, missile bases in Sänna and Nursi, firing ranges in Nursi and Kubija, an airport in Ridali and another missile base in Palometsa.

Nursi and Sänna were the nuclear missile sites. In Sänna, at least one of the cupolas of the underground launching silos should still be there, although access to the base is restricted now. Both bases stored intermediate-range ballistic missiles - R-12/SS-4 - targeted to cities in Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Norway. The R-12 Dvina missiles were exactly like the ones deployed to Cuba in 1962.

A missile was actually fired to Novaya Zemlya once from the Sänna base, without the nuclear warhead, supposedly, but this fact has nevertheless a highly gasp-inducing factor.

The missiles were removed from Sänna and Nursi around 1988-89, although yeah, there are all sorts of stories about how some of them were left behind, hidden away with other weaponry. Around 1999 people became sort of paranoid about some supposed secret storage facilities...

When the missiles were gone, most of the Russians living at the bases quietly left as well, and local farmers couldn't have been happier. They explored the sites and brought all kinds of stuff home with them and used it in their households. Some barracks were never restored either, and roughly about 6-7 years ago, some local schoolboys went to Nursipalu and brought with them a huge glass jar filled with mercury, which was stored under a layer of petroleum. The word is that those glass jars were in abundance there. I wonder what these were used for.

Another interesting fact is that although the nuclear parts of the warheads were removed a long time ago (some warheads still remained, but without the radioactive stuff - some local farmers have made use of these as bee-hives, actually), they are still conducting radioactivity surveys regularly, the last one was apparently in 2001-2002.

As far as the urban legends go, people do talk about the high incidence of leukemia in Nursi.

The English Estonian Blog Scene

Man, first thing I'll do when I become president of Russia? Sergei Ivanov is going to get a pink slip. "Dude, you're fired! You suck!

Giustino, some time after midnight on Saturday night, in Zavood, after about five A. Le Coqs.

As Good a Version as Any

Chanced upon this article (in Russian) by one Dmitri Furman, a history professor with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The man has credentials.

He also has a good point to make. He starts out by reminding us all that there's a very good chance we've only seen part of Putin's eventual plan, and that we can well expect reality to turn out completely different from what any of us expect at this point. Having recently boasted of my predictions coming true, I would like to take a moment to wholeheartedly endorse this point. Don't take my ESP for granted. :)

Dr. Furman then goes on to speculate why Putin chose the path of formal legality to remain in power. It's a good question; his recent actions have stupefied observers far more than an all-out power grab would have. Putin chose not to modify the Constitution and proclaim himself President for life, but make no mistake - he could have. A direct quote from the article:

In an imitation democracy, adhering to a Constitution that acts as a facade can result in the destabilization of the true power system. Putin's retirement in the name of sticking to the Constitution is, in this sense, a very dangerous and risky move.

So why did he do it? Why didn't he take the option that the leaders of so many former Soviet republics took, the option that the postsoviet political evolution presents so temptingly?

Furman suggests that the difference between Russia and Kazakhstan is historic pride. The countries that now have absolute rulers do not have a history of statehood, at least not in reasonably modern times. For them, the opportunity to have a nation of their own is inherently satisfying; compared to that, democracy is a nice idea that they might want to consider at some future point, once things calm down a bit.

Russia, on the other hand, has been a European superpower even before the Cold War. Ever since Peter the Great, Russia has fancied itself a civilized, modern country, perhaps with a few kinks here and there in the way they do things, but essentially part of what is now the First World. One of the hallmarks of Western civilization is democracy; turning to an obvious autocracy would be an admission of fundamental inferiority. Not only are the Russian people unwilling to be a Third World country, but Putin himself is unwilling to be the ruler of a Third World country. A power grab would render him the equal of Chavez or Mugabe, not Brown or Sarkozy.

The upshot? Putin is retaining and enforcing the framework for regime change. A Russia without an evident master is an unstable Russia, but by establishing a precedent of respect for the Constitution - no matter how flawed the hyper-presidential Constitution may be - Putin is creating the opportunity for a soft landing once he himself is out of politics.

A token effort to keep up European appearances is a token chance to invoke a European process.

Hans Rosling: Seemingly Impossible Is Possible

Seriously. You need to watch this.

Other People's Content: On Protest

It seems to me that the underlying assumption of any public protest - any public disagreement with the government, "the system", or "the establishment", by any name - is that the men in charge of whatever it is you're protesting against are actually listening, whether they later admit it or not, and that if you run your protest Right, it will likely make a difference. [...]So in the end the very act of public protest, even violent protest, was essentially optimistic and actually a demonstration of faith (mainly subconscious, I think) in the father figures who had the power to change things - once they could be made to see the light of reason, or even political reality.
[...]
A Willingness to Argue, however violently, implies a faith of some basic kind in the antagonist, an assumption that he is still open to argument and reason and, if all else fails, then finely orchestrated persuasion in the form of political embarassment.

Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Break It

Quote of the day - applicable to several things:

There are designated angels who just might save your soul...
They give me words to live by - and that's all that I know.

If it ain't real - fake it,
If it ain't yours - take it,
If it's all gone bad - forsake it,
If it ain't broke - break it!

Irony is delicious

A photo by Oleg Kabatov, published in the Russian edition of Esquire, of an OMON (SWAT equivalent) officer in full riot gear - including an SS logo painted on the helmet in white-out.

Preserved for posterity and easy reference whenever someone starts bitching about the swastika earring thing in Estonia way back.

It is incredible, really, how Russian propaganda is consistently undermined by Russians themselves.

Here's another one by Oleg Klimov.

Other People's Content: On Life

Couple excellent movie quotes, technically depressing ones, but they had me in fits of giggles when I heard them the first time.

From The Princess Bride:

Life is pain; anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.

And from The Departed:

'How's your mother?'
'She's on her way out.'
'We all are. Act accordingly.'

Insult Codepage

The original ?off Ready Reckoner:

1 - The U.S. of A. is not all that she is made out to be
2 - Capitalism when done right is the right thing
3 - Socialism when done right is the right thing
4 - Genetic predisposition exists
5 - Genetic predisposition should not exist
6 - Racism is universal
7 - There are no universal truths
8 - I want love
9 - Oh! Shiny
10 - Freedom is costly
11 - 10 is an oxymoron
12 - Hehe! He said moron!
13 - Exceptions are not rules
14 - Exceptions prove the rule
15 - Exceptions do not return value
16 - Violence is valid
17 - Violence invalidates
18 - Moron!
19 - Fucking Moron!
20. [grinning, ducking, running]
21. And you can't use Google to find that out because...?
22. That's what I get for trying to get some conversation going. Some 19 doing a 23.
23. Thanks for stating the obvious. Moron.
24. This thread has gone south (or, west)
25. Reducing the fundamental arguments to catalogued & readily repeatable will either free us from our past, or doom us all to a life of reciting obscure numbers for eternity.
26. Salad cream
27. Fruit Show.
100011011. If we re-worked the idea into a binary system, we could recite a single number and it would encompass all of the arguments we wanted to make. (In Hex then...FA)
28. I made it to the sidebar!
29. (this insult reserved for future insults)
30. Deadpan. Gales of laughter ensued.
31. I've always thought Joel was full of sound advice, and followed his stuff for years, but this recent article just goes to show he's really lost the plot.
32. I have a PhD.
33. Poo
34. I wish muppet would stop dragging X here
a: psychopaths
b: damsels in distress
c: stupid news links
d: people who post muppet posts who just keep the stupid thing going
(used with supplementary number, e.g. 34c!)
35. muppet is a troll.
36. I feel so left out.
37. Don't feed the trolls.
38. When do you people ever get any work done/don't you have anything better to do than to post here?
39. Drat, X beat me to it. (used with name parameter, e.g. 39/Dennis)
40. Prove it.
41. Disprove it.
42. The Babel Fish argument (logically disproving God's existence)
43. I already said that.
44. That 43 was prime.
45. Anybody want some gmail invites?
46. It's disingenuous to refer to the most primitive, arcade exercises when trying to disprove the value of an ideology, but that's what you get when you chat with people who don't know what they're fucking talking about.
47. What are you, retarded?
48. Sympathy reply.
49. I regularly engage in sex with two women simultaneously.
50. Been there, done that.
51. The problem with the world today is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
52. It doesn't do anything in Opera...
53. Marijuana is not a drug. It is a leaf.
54. Repost dildo!