[LINK] "Senior Programmer"

Anna Kirey's article at Transitions Online, "Senior Programmer", is an enjoyable biography of Nina Cherepanova, a Russian pensioner who has been a computer programmer for four decades. Besides being a biography of a very interesting woman, it also provides interesting insights on the development of Soviet-bloc computer technology.

[LINK] Two emergent space programs

• Over at Transitions Online, Andrei Aliaksandrau's article Satellite State" takes a look at Belarus' interest in developing satellite technologies for use in space. The Belarusian program has so far been hampered by the loss of the country's first satellite in a rocket crash, less so by the opposition's condemnation of the program as a misuse of public funds by a vainglorious dictator.


• Elsewhere in the world, Iran claims to have launched a rocket into space this Monday. This might, or might not, mark the culmination of Iran's own space program, using a mixture of indigenous and imported technologies to create space-capable rockets capable of boosting satellites into Earth orbit. These rockets would also have obvious military applications in delivering warheads of whatever nature to targets thousands of kilometers away from their launch site.

[BRIEF NOTE] What an exciting time--should we join in?

The text below is excerpted from Patrick White's article in today's edition of The Globe and Mail, "Canada's little case of election envy".

From coast to coast Tuesday night, Canadians intended to gather in bars, clubs and homes to obsess over the runup to a U.S. election that's still nine months away. With 24 states deciding on their Democratic or Republican candidate for president, Super Tuesday is a milestone in the opening act to the main presidential event. But the fervour with which Canadians have followed the U.S. results is unprecedented - even compared with a Canadian election.

"I think that the interest is envy manifest," said Mr. Bland, a dual citizen. "Even I'm envious, in a way. I wish I could quit everything I'm doing and go work for Obama's campaign right now."

On Monday, an Environics poll co-sponsored by The Globe and Mail found that 15 per cent of Canadians would give up their ballot for the next Canadian federal election to vote in the United States come November.

"We always make fun of the U.S. for having such low voter turnouts," said Dan Arnold, 25, a Liberal blogger who held three Super Tuesday party invitations yesterday afternoon, and wasn't sure which one to attend.

"But now we're much more interested in Super Tuesday than any Liberal or Conservative leadership race I can remember. There's definitely a little bit of envy in that respect."

This is the second time I've thought of Régis Debray's "Letter from America", wherein the anonymous narrator, a Frenchman by birth, describes how he became a naturalized American citizen and urges Europe (and, one could argue, Canada) to seek annexation in order to truly secure their interests in a unified Western civilizational state. A Canadian prime minister is rather lss influential in the wider world than an American president, and if I could influence the choice of president for the better if only I (and perhaps all of Canada) shed our separate nationality . . .

That fantasy lasts for only a moment, after which I realize that Debray's essay is, at least to an extent, ironic: Debray's narrator does die, killed in the service of the American state by an errant American bomb. I also can't say that I mind having a border with the United States, if only because it acts as a firewall against the worst insanities emanating from our south. I suppose it's always nice for any nation to be in a position where it needs worry only about its own follies.