Alecto or Alekto

An excellent English language bookshop if you're in Tallinn, if you're not please stop reading now...I think it's called 'Alecto' though a google search didn't yield anything (the second spelling showed a company of the same name but think it's unrelated).

But it's really there, I didn't imagine it. It can be found where Juhkentali peels off to the right from Liivalaia, on the right on the ground floor of an office building.

I was amazed to see multiple hardback copies of a history of the SBS, they must have picked them up cheaply somewhere, and generally a good military section if that's your bag, foreign language courses and dictionaries, fiction, biogs etc. Also a place that stocks a lot of ESL materials (booo!).

Generally nice for browsing and not a lot of folk about getting in the way.

Postscript: the shop is actually called 'Allecto', on Juhkentali 8.

Ground Zero - The New Cordoba

Sorry, sorry, one more Islamic post and then I'm done. This is just a YT clip which I'll let speak for itself re: the Ground Zero Mosque.

Actually I often disagree with the poster, Pat Condell, so in fact I'm just posting in the interest of balance...

Thought For The Day No. 33 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

Why do people use the cliché 'meteoric rise', when meteors go downwards through the earth's atmosphere? 

A. Whyte

We've Murdered Prices..

I've heard of some interesting ways of trying to get an apartment cheaper than the market rate, buying derelict flats and doing them up, buying foreclosed properties or looking in an area that is 'up and coming', but this is a new one - the murder houses of Taiwan...

...essentially as it suggests, places where a murder or maybe suicide has taken place and thus noone wants to touch with a bargepole. Might be taking advantage of others suffering, but if that doesn't bother you and you're not spooked by it, could be a way of finding a real bargain. I have no idea if the price is in inverse proportion to the number of murders that took place, they bulldozed the Fred West place after all..

Thought For The Day No. 32 - The Rabbi Anders Weiss

The voice of your passions can be louder than that of your conscience. Your passions speak differently - they scream at you - whereas your conscience speaks to you in a quiet but firm voice.

William Ellery Channing

If You Choose Any Old Port It's Not Likely To Be In The Far East..

Amazing set of statistics  on the Economist website, which outlines one dimension to the unstoppable rise to preeminence of Asia over the last 20 years - namely the dominance of far Eastern container ports, by volume of traffic...the same figures also show the huge rise in capacity of ports in general over that time..

In 1989, the Dutch port of Rotterdam was third on the list with 3.9 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs), evidently the unit of measurement in such things. Since then, Rotterdam's capacity has more than doubled to 9.7 TEUs, and yet it's fallen down to 10th place on the list. The top spot today, occupied by Singapore, processes some 25.8 TEUs (in 1989, when it was in second place, it saw a volume of 4.4 TEUs, more than a five fold increase).

In 1989, nine out of the top twenty ports were in the Far East (assuming the Philippines is in the Far East); now that total stands at 14, with East Asian ports occupying 8 of the top 10 places...and of the 4 countries that were newcomers to the list, namely China, Malaysia, Thailand and the UAE, 3 of them are Far Eastern countries (Hong Kong topped the list in 1989 but it was still a British colony then of course).

China itself boasts no less than 6 new ports today that were nowhere to be seen 20 years ago; the US has only 2 ports on the list today as opposed to 4 in 1989,  and poor old Felixstowe (always loved that name) in the UK  is presumably gone for good..

..hope you got all that..have no data for the Baltic ports..

Seth's Blog - The Roush Effect

Gerald Roush, who recently died at the age of 68, was a long time Ferrari enthusiast. Nothing too interesting in that you might think, but as my big brother Seth Godin explains, this obsession led to a very nice little earner indeed, simply by compiling lists of information on Ferraris around the world and selling this info on a subscription basis to a few hundred people.

This is it, I feel. Find a tribe which has a passion for something, and provide everything that that group of individuals want to know about their passion (and sod the rest) and charge them a little bit of money for it...

....of course, it helps if you yourself have a passion for the same thing, and Roush's obssession started in his teens when these things tend to take root. But for those of us in our 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond, I don't for a minute believe all is lost. It's just a question of hitting on something that works; even in a small country like Estonia, we have the internet.

Or maybe you prefer giving a huge amount of your life that you'll never retrieve to employers who don't care if you live or die, performing a task that anyone else could do just as well, donating twenty something per cent of your hard earned money to incompetent Governments to piss up the wall (it's salutary to reflect that the Islamic faith demands as zakat, one of its five pillars, that an adherent  gives just 2.5 per cent of their income to the poor, not ten times that, and this for an unequivocally worthy cause) and having nothing to show for it at the end.

Anyway, it's a good post.

Shackleton's Disillusionment

A (very) short story..

After all the privations the team had suffered over the past months, Ernest was at a loss as to why they had disappeared. Only yesterday they'd held a vote of confidence in his leadership in letting him overrule them in his choice of campsite for the evening– not the shelter from the cruelty of the Southern ocean that was offered by the lee of a small bluff, the Bosun's choice, nor the cook's choice, a spot right on the beach, convenient for the quick despatching and preparing of the fish that they would surely be able to land, but the unpromising crush of rocks, held together by robust gorse, where they had finally struck on

So now where were they? Barely a trace of them, aside from a couple of empty pemmican tins and ski equipment, surplus to requirements during the summer months in South Georgia, and yet Ernest discounted the idea of a mutiny out of hand.

His curiosity therefore could hardly fail to be drawn by a small square of yellow light which appeared at just the spot where the horizon melded into the grey lowlands, which a short walk revealed as coming from a house – no, a hotel, the word emblazoned in no less than three languages, the proprietors no doubt ready to take any and every business which might drift in from the sea.

The vantage point offered by a steep, glaciated, geological feature which he'd forgotten the name of enabled the now deeply puzzled Ernest to look straight through the open window, from which he'd already caught bursts of aggressive, forced laughter, only to see the rest of the crew, very drunk, and clearly happy to have found environs which wouldn't have been out of place in yorkshire or guernsey, even more so that they were free of their leader's jurisdiction at last.

For the first time in his life Ernest felt truly left out.

Shackleton's Disillusionment

A (very) short story..

After all the privations the team had suffered over the past months, Ernest was at a loss as to why they had disappeared. Only yesterday they'd held a vote of confidence in his leadership in letting him overrule them in his choice of campsite for the evening– not the shelter from the cruelty of the Southern ocean that was offered by the lee of a small bluff, the Bosun's choice, nor the cook's choice, a spot right on the beach, convenient for the quick despatching and preparing of the fish that they would surely be able to land, but the unpromising crush of rocks, held together by robust gorse, where they had finally struck on

So now where were they? Barely a trace of them, aside from a couple of empty pemmican tins and ski equipment, surplus to requirements during the summer months in South Georgia, and yet Ernest discounted the idea of a mutiny out of hand.

His curiosity therefore could hardly fail to be drawn by a small square of yellow light which appeared at just the spot where the horizon melded into the grey lowlands, which a short walk revealed as coming from a house – no, a hotel, the word emblazoned in no less than three languages, the proprietors no doubt ready to take any and every business which might drift in from the sea.

The vantage point offered by a steep, glaciated, geological feature which he'd forgotten the name of enabled the now deeply puzzled Ernest to look straight through the open window, from which he'd already caught bursts of aggressive, forced laughter, only to see the rest of the crew, very drunk, and clearly happy to have found environs which wouldn't have been out of place in yorkshire or guernsey, even more so that they were free of their leader's jurisdiction at last.

For the first time in his life Ernest felt truly left out.

Thought For The Day No. 31 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

"Never does a man portray his character more vividly than his proclaiming the character of another."

Winston Churchill

Where The Worst Is Better Than Most People's Best..

I normally disparage list programs, as in those 'top 100 films/TV ads/comedians' etc that seemed to be the staple of Channel 4's output when I left the UK 5 years ago anyway, but I'm as susceptible to the Beatles as the best of us, so can't keep away from this...all of the Beatles' output (more or less, doesn't include those bootleg things they did in Hamburg, or the Decca demos, and quite rightly so).

...naturally there's plenty of room for debate, I've only got to the 160s as I type, and as expected about half of the White Album has already been represented plus that sub-Frank Zapper one they did with Brian Jones, but please, putting 'The Word' at 174!! You Blaspheme! Come to think of it 'I Wanna Be Your Man' doesn't belong in the 180s either...

Well, as I implied, we've all got an opinion on them...

POSTSCRIPT: on watching all of the countdown, this person has managed to omit anything that was a cover (which lets out 'twist and shout' and 'money' for example), omitted 'penny lane' and some other famous songs, and cannot count. So forget that then.

On This Day 346 Years Ago ...

..London Diarist...

19th August 1664

The news of the Emperour's [sic] victory over the Turkes [sic] is by some doubted, but by most confessed to be very small (though great) of what was talked, which was 80,000 men to be killed and taken of the Turke's side.

The battle to which Pepys is referring must be the Battle of Saint Gotthard which had taken place nearly three weeks earlier on 1 August, near the modern day Hungary-Austria border. The scrap was  between Leopold I, the Habsburg emperor of Austria, and the Ottoman empire, under whose control much of Hungary had come since the previous century. The Ottomans had taken Transylvania and Leopold essentially wanted to take it back, in the process recruiting various Protestant north German allies. Despite being outnumbered about 3 to 1 the Austrian forces under Montecuccoli were triumphant and, whilst not inflicting the damages which Pepys himself had doubted, took between 16-22,000 casualties. The Ottomans were inexperienced in fighting modern, disciplined ranks of musket-bearing soldiers and a failure to adapt to this was eventually their undoing in south-eastern Europe. A 20 year truce was signed and, whilst Hungary was not liberated from the Ottomans immediately, that process started from around 1683. So there you go.

The Glamorous world of Tallinn Real Estate

From the pages of a real estate website here - they want 105 000 EEK (6,711 Euros, 5,530 GBP, 8,624 USD,  3,121,197 Zimbabwe Dollars)  for this!

Check out the main room - I'm feeling a bit better about the continual mess in my place already. It almost smells through the internet page! As for size I think I'd be moving into the mailbox in the hallway to extend myself a bit. It would probably need as much again spending on it to get it straight.

Still, try and see the potential...hmm, I can't really.

Desert Island Reads

If I were to be stranded on a desert island, or some other island, assuming it didn't have WiFi, and I could only take five books with me (presumably having planned to be stranded), they would probably be the following. I have only chosen books which were actually on my shelf, if I've survived without them in Tallinn then it seems reasonable they'd only get used as fire building material on the island...


Viktor Frankl - Man's Search For Meaning
Actually I've read this multiple times so it may be taking up valuable space in my survival kit that could otherwise have been taken up by a beta emitter, fishing line or condoms (excellent water carriers apparently). In any case the ultimate read in my view, by a survivor of Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps, but also a psychiatrist who had developed his own school of thought in Vienna before the war and got the chance to test his theories in the field so to speak. Triumph of the human spirit and other such platitudes cannot do it justice, just read it.


Phantastes - George MacDonald
The original fantasy novel, but don't be put off. One of a kind really, Anodos' travails through fairy land always seem to offer something new each reading. I don't think they have ash or alder trees in the tropics, so I'd be safe.


Guide to Rational Living - Albert Ellis and Rober Harper
Not sure if this would be really required in my hermitage, but it's a sensible book in a vast field. Nothing about how, as an infant, you'd wanted to murder your father and replace him in your mother's bed, surrendering to a higher power, or the secret of unleashing the hidden art of war for the soul, but rather a common sense approach to how we think ourselves into all sorts of jams - and thus can think our way out of them again (presumably including being down about being marooned).


Natasha's Dance - Orlando Figes
A cultural history of Russia which makes quite a refreshing change from his excellent 'People's Tragedy' survey of the Revolution, in that it doesn't have death, duplicity and damnation on every page. So much so that I've never really read it cover to cover, but dipped into it to such an extent that I must have read the bulk of it. My fave two paintings culled from the illustrations page - Surikov's 'The Boyar's Wife Morozova', and Malevich's 'Red Cavalry'.


Battle in the Civil War - Paddy Griffith
A little military book with lots of sketches, details the various logistical, tactical and strategic considerations that faced the armies in the (American) civil war. Doesn't sound too promising, and yet it's superb. I picked it up years ago in, I think, Foyles' in London. I would presumably have plenty of time on my island fastness to reenact, using sand and pebbles, where McClellan went wrong at Antietam.

Time Is Much More Valuable Than Money - Seth's Blog

A useful post here where Seth applies one area of unnecessary measures which just serve to generate more fear, waste time and fail to solve the problems they claim to address, in airport security, to the much wider picture.

Imagine a world without bullshit, it would be great, wouldn't it?!?

Jingoistic Pit Summary - BFK

Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as we know him, is an affable motoring journalist of the old school. Dropping out of some big public school somewhere in England to pursue his passion pretending to race cars, he's acquired such an array of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, arran sweaters and empty travel sweet tins, that you can't help but ignore him. Look backward to BFK's "weekly" reports on motoring, cars, and what drives the people that drive them, in his section to be found somewhere on the site.

I was amused to notice that a random comment we posted on an obsucre youtube clip (as 'whyteay') was a highest rated comment (albeit with a whopping 4 votes)...

The clip was of the old BBC start grid music which I remember well when I used to report from the pit lane for along with Tiff Needell (this was in the days when Jeremy Clarkson was a provincial hack and Richard Hammond still driving pedal cars around the back garden).

In this case it was from the Hungarian Grand Prix, still in its relative infancy but a good chuckle nonetheless, in 1989, the first year turbos had been banned and everyone was in normally aspirated 3 and a half litres (and Senna and Prost still held sway despite the bickering that ended in them only speaking to each other via pit crew members).

Good old Murray Walker keeping the flag flying by only mentioning the British drivers on the grid.

I had a chat with the (now sadly late) Michele Alboreto about his cracked ribs that Walker mentions at the end, in the exception that proves the above rule. He said he'd slipped on a patch of oil whilst eating Calzone. Yeah yeah, we believe you Michele.

For the record Mansell won the race over Senna in a real nailbiter that had the rough surface of the Hungaroring at least in part to thank...ah, I'm reaching for another travel sweet as I write these lines..

Digging At The PMC

There is no posting today - spent a good chunk of the day shifting earth from A to B in a project to dig a drainage ditch at the PMC which has left us all utterly drained, appropriately enough.

Returning tomorrow..

Seven Of Our Posts Are Missing..

There seems to be a certain amount of discrepancy on the part of blogspot as to how many posts have appeared on the PMC. According to our editing page (which you can't see, not that you'd want to!) there are 308 - we did indeed mark the passing of the 300th post the other day with a cuppa soup.

However on this homepage it cites 202 (plus this one) in the archive for 2010, and 81 for 2009. Presumably the posts which appear on the front page aren't included in this figure, but they number 8 at any one time and so that comes to 301 in total (or 302 including this one). So there's a mystery 7 posts somewhere out there..

Maybe it's simply because we don't really count Tim Flowers' offerings as proper posts (by the way he's on his summer break right but promises to have some more inciteful musings on his own genius when he returns!)

Oh well this was an easy exercise in adding one more to the post count, whatever it may be!

Green Shoots Of Recovery

According to my sources, Estonia is no less than in second place in forecast growth in GDP for the 27 EU states in 2010-2011!

The figure stands at about 3.5 per cent (only Poland is higher at 4 per cent). Not quite the figure of the heady days of the early-mid '00s (peaking at 10 per cent in 2006), which may be no bad thing, but a vast improvement of the whopping 14.1 per cent contraction last year. So the belt tightening was the right thing to do all along, hats off to Estonia and its economic restraint!

For the record, neighbours Latvia came in at less than 1 per cent growth, Lithuania much stronger at about 2.6 per cent, the UK, France, Denmark and the Netherlands hovering around the overall EU average of 1.6 per cent and poor old Greece the only one still in the red at about -1.8 per cent.

More On The Lizard Brain..

Another good post on the lizard brain (for an explanation of the phenomenon see this post) from an entrepreneurial perspective.

It also gives it it's proper medical name, the amygdala, no less. Such a tiny little blob being responsible for such a huge amount of suffering and misery:-(

Thought For The Day No. 30 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

The greatest gifts can be destroyed by idleness.

Michel de Montaigne

Death Of A Nation

What I've been watching these last few days - a thorough, maybe largely accurate and often graphic six part documentary about the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It seems naive and crass now but I remember at the time wondering why all of these terrible things seemed to happen in places which had such idyllic, sylvanian looking scenery.

Seems that many people have forgotten about this conflict already, which I think would be a mistake.

Watch it.

This Month's Revolutionary New Concept - Walt Gleeson

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so much so that I've given it the personal touch by referring to you as 'reader'.

Would you like to be able to control your mind, like a zen jedi, only much more effectively? Well now you can!

Just for my readers I'm offering this special deal, but hurry, it's going to close in 19 seconds' time!

For just USD 99.99 * you will be able to obtain anything you want, simply by going into my DeepTrance™.
 
What's DeepTrance™? Quite simply, DeepTrance™ is the revolutionary new concept in total mind power which takes the best of the last 4000 years of human spiritual achievement, improves it and distills it into a set of 2x 45 minute CDs which will enable you to achieve your spiritual goals of earning twice as much as your parents, being able to reverse out of your drive much more quickly than your neighbour can, without scraping the car this time, or having the lowest handicap in you local golf club.

The teachings of Moses, Jeremiah, Solomon, Budda, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Muhammed and others are taken as a whole and thrown altogether in onbe big pot pourri (they all said pretty much the same thing anyway) until we see what comes out at the other end.

With just ten minutes per day or use, you will achieve a higher state of consciousness than any zen master, within one month of starting the program, and your life will be revolutionized.

I'm very excited about this, particularly as my accountant has given me an indication of how much I'm set to make if I sell just one thousand sets. So, don't be an unspiritual pauper, buy it and make sure all your friends buy it to. I promise you you won't regret it, after all, it's your future that I'm asking you to remortgage again!

So, fill out the order right now - and as a special throw in gift, just as I'm that kind of a guy, I'll be giving a free copy of the transcript of a seminar I gave recently in Phoenix, Arizona, entitled "Why People Losing Their Jobs Is A Very Good Thing", but hurry - there's a limited supply!**

 * Per month plus postage, US and Canada only (overseas rates to Canada).
** or simply obtain a recording of any seminar I've given since 1977 when I last made a slight alteration to the patter.

Before There Was Four Lions...

The never disappointing Chris Morris' infiltration of one of those terrible day time discussion programs...culminating in questioning the presenter as to what happened to his formerly grey hair...it was a lot funnier than when the same program, as I remember from a day in the dim and distant past being off sick from school, got invaded by Nation of Islam/black power types, that truly sucked...

60 Years Of The PMC - Ooh I've Done It Again

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s).

1977 saw the introduction of the short lived but much loved series of 'blooper' posts, entitled 'Ooh I've Done It Again..!'

Posted by the never-popular Arthur Goldsberry (who never, apparently, did anything else noteworthy), they were a collection of ill fated posts which started off well, only to fall flat on their metaphorical face because, tee hee hee, people sometimes make mistakes! There were times when somebody burst out laughing, forgot what they were supposed to type, or uttered some kind of double entendre. Here are some of the selected highlights.

Ian Botham has had an extraordinary game today. The young all rounder stepped out at Trent Bridge today to claim his....what, er, what did you say? Oh no - it wasn't Trent Bridge it was at Old Trafford, ha ha ha ha ha  - ooh, I've done it again!

To make a Spanish omelette, take four eggs, crack them open into a large mizing bowl and - oh no, I've dropped the eggs on the floor and they've gone everywhere! - ooh, I've done it again!

Ok here's the start of my post...erm...tssss, ha ha ha! I can't remember what I was supposed to write - don't look at me..no, well you started it, tee hee hee. - ooh, I've done it again!

The Prime Minister today was in Reading for the opening of the dsaki  rj103093 akrkeak 334919e r efehr a reareakk939293929  ,fea..üreüarä - .....///// ..   will someone get that bloody cat off the keyboard?! - ooh, I've done it again!

A woman contacted the PMC today to ask about a big storm she'd heard that was on the way, due to hit the South of England some time tomorrow. We can assure you that no such thing is going to happen. The very next day a force 12 gale hit the country killing thousands, and the PMC was made to look very foolish indeed - ooh, I've done it again!

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king..fucking you FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK, OH FUCK IT TO HELL AND BACK; WHAT'S MY MOTIVATION DARLINGS?!? - ooh, I've done it again!

Postscript: Goldsberry tragically died in on the toilet in 1983 after eating a phal curry accompanied by 11 pints of lager - out of respect for him, his regular blogspot was retired (and also because it had quite frankly been done to death).

More On 'Corruption'

Following yesterday's post about corruption in Russia, or more specifically a link to a video about those who speak out against it, our usually apolitical blog is gonna attempt to set out some thoughts about this corruption, for what they're worth.

Corruption seems to be one of those words, like democracy, which gets bandied around quite a lot without clearly defining what is meant by it (in the case of the original meaning of democracy, most of the populace in Plato's Athens, which in any case he was criticizing of course, were in fact excluded from any say in affairs of state). In order to call something 'corrupt' it is necessary to have an idea of an 'uncorrupt' version, just as you can't have an up without a down.

In the case of a computer file, for example, this is presumably relatively easy as we, or at least programmers, know what a clean file should be. But do we have a clear picture of what a corruption-free country would be? Presumably it would mean everything would be done by the book, so to speak, and that there was in fact a book to adhere to. No irregularities, no jumping the queue, bribes etc. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't envisagae that such a state exists anywhere in the world. Where everything is done fairly and on merit, and noone has any major gripes about the way things work. Indeed, political thinkers have diverged hugely on what form the perfect theoretical state should take.

In the UK for example there have been numerous scandals involving large financial donations to political parties in return for influence, expenses claims, control of the media etc.

One big area that I feel is a bit of a red herring is that of the never ending sex scandals. Without condoning them, these largely seem to fuel public demands for salaciousness and don't, necessarily, impact on the running of affairs of state. Naturally there are some exceptions to this, such as the Profumo affair which potentially threatened national security, but this was almost half a century ago now. It reminds me of the story told about Lincoln when, in the early stages of the civil war, things weren't going very well for the Union as they lost battle after battle. Some aides, generals whatever came to him snitching about General Hooker's alleged, shock horror, addiction to the bottle. Lincoln simply asked what brand of whiskey Hooker drank and when informed ordered bottles of the same to be sent to all of his generals since Hooker was the only one that was winning any battles. A little bit facetious but, whether it's apocryphal or not it illustrates a point.- someone's personal life need not have any bearing on their professional function and that goes for politicians too (provided they don't have the gall to start lecturing us about morality, I'm remembering John Major's fiasco of an administration here). We seem to expect our politicians to be next to sinless, even as the bulk of those decrying them are not likely to be any worse, or any better, forgetting that all of the prophets had their iffy moments, so it seems a little bit unrealistic to hold mere politicians up to a much higher standard than we apply to ourselves.

But I digress. If we have no example of a perfectly uncorrupt state in reality, maybe we can show that to some extent some countries vary hugely in their adherence or otherwise to some sort of theoretical model people have in their minds, although even then these things are hard to quantify.

What we're left with really is people's perceived view of a government's corruption, and naturally Russia scores very low here even in its own people's eyes. I think the answer is that we have to give credence to people's common sense here - if it walks, talks and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, without going into detail of what species of duck it is, how ducks evolved etc.  I'm sure there is a good deal of unfairness and downright oppression of the majority of the people to the benfit of the elite, and that this is what people really mean by corruption; having lived in Lithuania and Latvia I've come into contact with minor examples of this and no doubt Estonia is  hardly free from the phenomenon either. In other words outcry at this 'corruption' seems to rise in proportion to the ordinary folk's inability to get a piece of the action, and the yawning gap that arises from this impotence, rather than criticism of the general ethos of the state. But maybe I have a too pessimistic view of people here.

It's in part a question of semantics; returning to my opening theme, 'corruption' seems to be a catch-all theme for a variety of activities, or even spoken about in the same way that we'd speak about influenza. But the willingness of a few, courageous people (sooner them than me!) to use whatever avenues they can, including youtube, to highlight this, surely must be a step in the right direction in clarifying further what these problems are and the realities of the suffering of the many millions who have to live with this every day.

Vladimir Demovsky And His Youtube Clips

Brave guy, and other people, and it shows the power of the internet - not going to slag off youtube again!

Don't Be Afraid Of Shadows - Seth's Blog

A great post from my big brother Seth Godin - just look a monster in the eye, you'll find it's just the shadow it casts that makes it seem formidable. That goes for the monster that tells you to smoke, drink more or do whatever else that you really don't want to...