| "Spem in alium" in memory of Terry Pratchett

Thursday, August 21, 2014

"The times, they are a-changing"

According to The Moscow Times, Russia is demanding that Bulgaria take steps to prevent vandalism of soviet statuary.

This is what the Monument to the Soviet Army used to look like:

On June 17, 2011 the monument was painted overnight by unknown artists, who "dressed" the Soviet Army soldiers as American comics heroes and characters: Superman, Joker, Robin, Captain America, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus, Wolverine, The Mask, and Wonder Woman, with a caption underneath which translates as "Abreast with the Times" (in Bulgarian "V krak s vremeto", literally "In pace with time"). The monument was cleaned in the late hours of June 20, 2011. The event was widely covered by the international media and provoked serious pro and anti-Russian discussion in the Bulgarian society. The story was filmed in the short documentary In Step With The Time directed by Anton Partalev and includes anonymous interviews with the artists. The film won the second prize in 2013 IN OUT FESTIVAL in Poland.

Top photo: Ignat Ignev / Wikicommons

Millions more personal records stolen

Community Health Systems, which operates 206 hospitals across the United States, announced on Monday that hackers recently broke into its computers and stole data on 4.5 million patients.

Hackers have gained access to their names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays and telephone numbers.

Anyone who received treatment from a network-owned hospital in the last five years -- or was merely referred there by an outside doctor -- is affected.

The large data breach puts these people at heightened risk of identity fraud. That allows criminals open bank accounts and credit cards on their behalf, take out loans and ruin personal credit history.

It never ends...

It's true that there's no prize when you die...

mariyam | 7:42 AM | recommended books Be the first to comment!

... but I do keep track of all the books I've read. I rate them on a scale of 0-4+, so that when I get old(er) and (more) demented, I'll know which ones to re-read.

For the past 25 years, here are the 92 books I've rated 4+ (to be honest, it also includes a fair number of 3.5s), out of a total of 700+.

Year	Author	Title
1990 ( of 26)	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Ludlum	The Parsifal Mosaic
1991 (52)	Colin Watson	Hopjoy was Here
	Gerrold	The Man Who Folded Himself
	Marquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude
1992 (63)	Boyer&Nissenbaum	Salem Possessed
	Weisman	Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th century Massachusetts.
	Frederic	The Damnation of Theron Ware
	LeCarre	The Secret Pilgrim
	Warren	Brother to Dragons
	Clarke	Childhood's End
1993 (39)	None
1994 (44)	None
1995 (38)	Dickson	And So To Murder
	Paulson	Winterdance
	Kersten	The Jesus Conspiracy
	Huyghe	Columbus Was Last
	Holand	Norse Discoveries & Explorations in America 982-1362
1996 (28)	Bester	The Stars My Destination
	Fowles	A Maggot
	Guthrie	The Big Sky
1997 (8)	None
1998 (13)	Krakauer	Into Thin Air
	Wahlgren	The Vikings and America
1999 (16)	Jewett	The country of the Pointed Firs
	Faulkner	Absalom Absalom (turgid and gloomy)
	Hardy and Shaffer	The Wicker Man
2000 (4)	Teale, Edwin Way	A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm
2001 (8)	Ryan & Pittman	Noah's Flood
	Lansing	Endurance
	Mowat	The Alban Quest
2002 (19)	None
2003 (36)	Brown	Angels and Demons
	Hosseini	The Kite Runner
	Warren	All the Kings Men
2004 (49)	Menzies	1421 The Year China Discovered America
	Wodehouse	Bertie Wooster Sees It Through
	Brown	Da Vinci Code
	Hoffer	The True Believer
2005 (45)	Whitaker	The Mapmaker’s Wife
	Woodham-Smith	The Reason Why [Crimea, Light Brigade]
	Ferguson	Naked to Mine Enemies, Volumes 1 and 2
	Lapham	Gag Rule. On the suppression of dissent
	Powell	Bring Out Your Dead
2006 (35)	Grogan	Marley and Me
	Hanson	Confident Hope of a Miracle
	Bamford	A Pretext for War
	Needham	Science and Civilisation in China, Vol IV: 3
	Wright	The Looming Tower; Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
	Ryan	The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
2007 (29)	Harris	Letter to a Christian Nation
	Setterfield	The Thirteenth Tale
	Kinzer	Overthrow. America’s Century of Regime Change (skimmed)
	Fothergill	Planet Earth
	Shorto	The Island at the Center of the World [Manhattan]
	McCarthy	The Road
	Smith	When the Cheering Stopped
	McCarthy	No Country for Old Men
2008 (30)	Hitchens	God is Not Great
	Nouvian	The Deep
	Ballesta & Deschamp	Planet Ocean
	Corrie	Let Me Stand Alone
	Marent	Butterfly
	McCarthy	Blood Meridian
	Weiner	Legacy of Ashes
	Winchester	Krakatoa; the Day the World Exploded
	Schooler	Last Shot
2009 (31)	Wilson	How Jesus Became Christian
	Ehrman	Misquoting Jesus
	Keys	Catastrophe
	Zuckerman	Society without God
	Nasrecki	The Smaller Majority (nature photos)
2010 (49)	Pears	An Instance of the Fingerpost
	Nicholls	Paradise Found: Nature in America at the time of discovery
	Van Allsburg	The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Lester	The Fourth Part of the World
	Gilder	Heavenly Intrigue [Kepler and Brahe]
	Grann	The Lost City of Z
	Holmes	The Age of Wonder
	Bergreen	Over the Edge of the World [Magellan]
2011 (21)	Meldahl	Hard Road West
	Gaiman	Coraline
	Winchester, Simon	The Alice Behind Wonderland
	Severin	The Brendan Voyage
	Seuss	The Bippolo Seed and Other Stories
	Bryson	The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way
	Cohen	The Tree Army; a pictorial history of the CCC, 1933-1942
2012 (18)	Mann	1491
	Millard	Destiny of the Republic [bio James Garfield]
	Menzies	1434; The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy…
	Moon	Blue Highways
	Feldman	When the Mississippi Ran Backwards
2013 (21)	Peskov	Lost in the Taiga
	Mitchell	Cloud Atlas
	Mitchell	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet
2014 (21)	Faulkner	As I Lay Dying