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“Long-escalating tensions between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia erupted into full-scale war Friday, leaving hundreds if not thousands of civilians dead and turning thousands more into refugees, forced to flee for their lives.” [1]

It seems Georgia is another proxy state supported by the US to expand its imperialist plans. Everyone who knows a bit of history should not be surprised by what is going on. Mass media – as usual – doesn’t give the appropriate context in order to understand the conflict. But if you are looking for the truth, you can find it.

I would like to direct your attention to Bill Van Auken’s article US-Russian tensions in Caucasus erupt into war.

Here is a map of Georgia which might be useful in combination with the article, and further background reading:

• Further escalation of tensions in the Caucasus between Russia and Georgia
• The missile defense scheme and the sharpening of US-Russian geopolitical tensions
• Russia and Georgia on the brink of armed conflict over Abkhazia
• Economy in Georgia

I would like to point out the following article by Howard Zinn published a while ago on www.alternet.org. Although it has been a year since it was published the topic is still current and deserves attention.

There is new movie coming out called the American Dream. It looks very interesting and features interviews with people like Howard Zinn and Danny Glover.

The movie webpage also features a very interesting trailer and teaser as well as a quite shocking ‘Facts’ page.

Please do read the following article:

• http://www.nenasili.cz/en/832_noam-chomsky

You may want to take part in the following online petition:

• http://petice.nenasili.cz/?lang=en

Another delightful essay by Peter Norvig about the elections in the US.

It takes quite some time to acquire good programming skills! Just as no good craftsmen suddenly fall from heaven, no one turns into a good programmer over night.

There is a nice essay about this topic by Peter Norvig called Teach yourself programming in 10 years. Especially the part where Norvig says ”...Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. ...” is very true.

So don’t be a language fundametalist by sticking to the one and only programming language and paradigm you know – learn more languages, learn about other programming paradigms (e.g. declarative vs. imperative)! This will improve the way you code, design, reason, and understand programs.

While I am writing this, I really hope that the informatics curriculum at Informatics@JKU will change at least a little bit in order to accommodate more and better courses on programming languages and different programming language paradigms in general. By the way they also should improve their home page as well. It is in a very sad state and makes the uni look quite bad!

Sources:

• Teach yourself programming in 10 years [by Peter Norvig]

Just by incident I stumbled over Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s blog today. Her entries are translated into English, French, German and Spanish.

This morning I finally got to watch the November 24. show on Democracy Now, which was titled “Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the war on Terrorism”. Up until now I have known Howard Zinn only by citations from other authors, but after watching his speech, I am really looking forward to read some of his books as well!

But again, don’t trust my judgments, go ahead and watch his speech. You will definitely not regret it!!!

The Conquest of Happiness by Betrand Russell is a book I managed to read recently despite my busy schedule.

This book really is “[...] a modern substitute for the bible”. – Time

Even though I am big fan of Russell which surely makes me a bit biased, I think that this book can be wholeheartedly recommended to everyone, yes, literally everyone!