Another picture from Hurricane Ridge. 

Me around Christmas time, at Hurricane Ridge in Washington. 

Graduation

So who all is coming for graduation, or otherwise coming for a trip to Edinburgh in the not-too-distant future? I know Steini and Yunhyong are likely attendees, but not sure about everyone else. Verena sometime in January. Sadly I will miss seeing Emina when she comes next week, as I will be heading back to the States by then.

Shameless Plug

I mentioned this to a couple folks already, but if you've got spare time you can check out my other blog, Public Editor . It's pretty much politics/media content. God knows you've got nothing better to do, right?

Change to Blog Settings

I changed things so that new posts will no longer go to the yahoogroups list, for two reasons: one, because it is redundant, and two, to encourage people to use the blog rather than just to reply to the emails.

St. Petersburg

Hello all,

Just a quick note to say that I am back from my trip to Russia and had a very good time. Obviously the pictures below are from my trip and the titles are fairly self-explanatory. My Russian definitely improved day-by-day and I'd like to go back at some point and do an intensive course for a month or so, but who knows when.

I guess everyone has their marks by now and I hope you are all satisfied. More importantly, I hope that many of you will come back for graduation (confidential to Steini: yes, you can stay at our flat).

Looking over the Neva from one of the bridges, near evening. 

The Church on Spilled Blood, which seemed to me to be a bit "Disney Russia," but oh well. 

...looking toward the General Staff Building. 

Looking across the river towards the Hermitage. 

on the cusp

Happy November, everyone. November 1st can mean only one thing: tomorrow's November 2nd, and so I have a slightly sick feeling in my stomach from having anticipated this day for so long. I thought I would post a little prediction here for posterity's sake. I'm predicting civil war on Wednesday morning. I have had a foreboding feeling the past few days that Bush might squeak through by way of voter suppression via various dirty practices at the polls, in which case look for all-out mayhem both on the legal front and in terms of people taking to the streets in protest. A lot of people on both sides agree that the Democrats can take the election by even a comfortable margin if they can mobilize people to actually go out and vote tomorrow, because they have registered an enormous amount of first-time voters in this campaign compared with what the Republicans have done. So this leaves the Republicans, as in 2000, with the strategy of trying to keep Democratic voters - especially minorities - from being able to vote, through intimidation, disinformation, and individual challenges that would cause long queues at the polls, thereby discouraging people from staying and voting. All I can say about that is that it is amazing that there is a major party in the US, not to mention the party in control, whose survival depends on a) segregation-era politics and b) keeping people from voting.

In less bleak news, most of the polls are either breaking for Kerry or holding even at the moment.