Blogs of the ex-NGO "Russian Geographical Society" - a model of the freedom of speech in Russia

Several months ego dead NGO "Russian Geographical Society" was possessed by a dreadful evil  (Putin&Co) and animated. Only the Holy Smite would be able to destroy this undead and save the future of the Russian Geography. 

De jure Russian Geographical Society (RGS) is still an "NGO", but the quotation marks are more important than the letters in this case. Recently they've launched the GEOblogs. Pathetic...

I've checked it out and found some really stupid shit in some of the posts. Anfortunately I was unable to leave a comment or something - there were no openID at these blogs or even a possibility to register (cause you need an invitation)!

There was a pal of mine among the GEObloggers and I've send him an e-mail: asked him about the situation with the EdRo (a nickname for  the major piece of shit) and RGS, his involvement; suggested to demand an openID and to blog about an important stuff, like corruption of the RGS... His reply was quite sincere  and I was unable not to paste the part of it here even if normally I do not share a private correspondence (the background colour and the [brackets] are mine):

"Привет! это же госструктура, вот и боятся они пока открытых блогов и возможности всеобщих комментариев. Пишу там только по случаю знакомства с их редактором. Я уже давно им об openID говорил.
По этой же причине [что РГО на самом деле - госструктура] там не стоит писать о чём-либо важном или плохом, а можно только об чём-то общем и позитивном.
Я далеко не фанат нынешней власти РГО (и уж тем более я не фанат ЕдРа), но любая серьёзная негативная новость на сайте окажется последней для её автора. Да и удалят раньше, чем кто-либо прочитает..."

 The same in English:

"Hi! this is the state structure, so for now they fear an open blogs and they fear to let everyone comment posts. I'm able to post there only because I'm the acquaintance of the editor. I've  already told them about the openID a long time ago.

For the same reason [that the RGS is not an NGO, but the state structure] you should not to write about something important or negative - only about something general and positive.

I'm far not a fan of the current authority of the RGS (and even more so I'm not a fan of the EdRo), but any important negative news at the site will be the last for its author. And they will delete it sooner than anyone will be able to read it..."

The point is that RGS is really the state structure under the "NGO" lable, and no one will let someone to post some important negative news (i.e. the truth) on this site. This is the model of the relationship between government and society in Russia and the model of the freedom of speech: a guy with the bad news - a dead guy.

Intellegent design is a bullshit!

At first, some citing from the bash.org.ru:

Сегодня к нам в школу приходил священник. Видимо, на урок православия, детей просвещать. Бедняга не ожидал, что дети будут бегать за ним с криком: "Бафни на стамину!"

A priest came to our school today. Obviously to brain-wash pupils on christianity. Poor gay-pedobear guy didn't expect that children would run after him, shouting: "Buff my stamina!"

Another worth spreading video on a subject.

Adjustment of the QGIS appearance

It is a strange thing, but as I noticed (you may search for the screen-shots), the most of QGIS users do not use 2 quite helpful options for customisation of the program’s appearance: the side toolbars and the background color. I don't understand why. It is irrational!

A sidebar will save space of the map canvas even if you have a square monitor just because it's thinner than a regular one, and it will save even more space for a rectangle monitor (you can calculate it by yourself).

A dark-colored (I chose gray) background will save not only your eyes (they will get tired slower) and time (in cases when you will need to determine whether this white area on a raster is a white color or a transparent area) but your money too - the monitor will consume less power.

example

Mail.Ru is a batch of spammers

Of course this is an open secret, but the spammers of this company continue to hunt me. I thought that was able to get rid of them, when abandoned my account @their.domain several years ago... No, it's not so simple to escape enterprises nowadays.

A month ago I started to receive a lot of spam, a Russian spam at my gmail account, which is unusual for gmail. And I was sure I didn't exposed my  gmail account to any suspicious sites at least for a several months.  I decided to check detailed information on these mails. I found that actually this spam was from my account @rambler.ru. I do not use it since I started to use gmail, but still  keep to collect incoming mail from it. 

As I was sure I didn't exposed my gmail account for months, I was dead sure that I didn't exposed my rambler account for years! WTF? The answer was somewhere near, but not too obvious, so it took time to discover the truth. The reason for spam was that Mail.Ru purchased the ICQ! I bet you didn't get it ;-) Let me explain:

1) the spam-attack started right after that bargain;

2) my ICQ number is connected to my rambler account;

3) Mail.Ru acquired information about my rambler account and started to send spam. 

Installing QuantumGIS

On Friday and Saturday I performed 2 installations of QGIS. Not a big deal, but...

The first installations was at the department of the land management and land monitoring of the Administration of the Rosreestr in Petrozavodsk, Republick of Karelia!!! Yeah, baby! And a great thing was that I was able to provide them with the Russian manual, thanks to the GIS-Lab! People form this department (of the land management and land monitoring) had no any GIS(!!!) ... Until now.  But they needed a GIS to be able to work somehow with the MapInfo layers of the  major Land Monitoring Project of the Roseestr I took part (de jure I was a single executer for the one of the objects, but de facto beyond my primary charge, I was a supervisor for the other 3 objects out of 7). The solution was clear to me - QGIS is able to visualise .tab; it is free of charge and it is legal to use it; besides no one was going to buy anything for this department. Hope they will be using it. Here you are the place of this installation:

Watch This pseudo-map in the bigger frame

The second installation was performed on the notebook of my colleague by this project - a professor of the Politechnical University who teaches to work with MapInfo. The main part of the work with my object was done with QGIS and it was only finalised in MapInfo, and I've used an opportunity to demonstrate advantages of the open-sourced product to this professor (as I did with the Technical Report on the project to the Rosreestr). Hope he will tell about QGIS to his students (many of them are programmers for Linux by the way) and maybe he will even start to lecture on it instead of MapInfo someday. 

In addition I've taught the people from the department and the professor how to use GLOVIS.

No rest on Saturday in Moscow

On the 11 of December my wife an I arrived to the Leningrad railway station in Moscow.  I always try to achieve two or more goals with a single effort so the goals of this trip were to take part in the GIS-Lab party and to let my wife spend some time with her friend Marusia.

It was my 3-rd night running to spend in a train and on the way back I was going to equal my previous 4 nights running record established this November with a business trip St. Petersburg → Petrozavodsk  → Kosomuksha  → Petrozvodsk  → St. Petersburg and all trips were in night (unfortunately there always were no more than 7 hours to sleep). Actually for the last 3 weeks I had to work extremely hard and slept for 4-6 hours per day. I was so tired that on the way to the wife's friend in metro I used a well known opportunity to sleep in the train on the circular line. It is a really cool thing this circular line)))

Our first goal was to meet Marusia. On Friday we received a message from Marusia that she is in hospital now.  On Tuesday she decided to dye her hair in some hairdressing salon with a very expensive dye. A hairdresser performed some kind of allergy test with her which showed that Marusia had no allergic reaction with this, but... The next day an ambulance took her with a swelled face to the hospital for allergic persons. 

After the hospital my wife and I moved to the Manezh Centrall Exgibittion Hall to take a look at the photographic exhibition. At the Manezh Square we saw a lot of youngsters who looked like a soccer fans. Many of them had masks on their faces... An hour and a half later when we wanted to leave the Manezh Hall, the security told us that the doors are sealed and no one able to enter the building or leave it. The reason was unrest. 

While the raged mob tried to break in, people captured inside the Manezh Hall remained calm but little bored with a necessity to stay inside for a while. Luckily  there was a cafe ion the 3-rd floor We used an opportunity to eat something and take a nap.  Fortunately mindless hooligans were hurled back  soon and the pass to the metro was cleared.

We were only 20 minuets late to the GIS-Lab party - the main event of the day. It was a first time when I was able to take part in it. Twice before I wanted to come, but every time some obstacles prevented me from the trip. Even this time my employer asked me to work on Suturday despite I worked for 14 hours per day without holidays over 3 weeks (but it is another story), and these hooligans who captured us inside the Manezh...

I was glad to see people whom I knew only by virtual communication at the forum ind IRC. An interesting notice: at least 6 people (1/3 of all participants) at the party related to the ecology. I'm confused with conclusions but never the less...

A future plans of the community development were discussed. Maxim Dubinin told that he wants to save some time for his personal life and delegate some of his functions to the some kind of council. This step in GIS-Lab community development should also improve its sustainability. Of course it is necessary to transfer responsibility, but the process might be somewhat painful for the person who was in charge for all these years because the opinion of the future council might be quite different to his own. Discussion about the sandbox for the GIS-articles is an example. It was hard but the participants convinced Maxim to give a chance to the some kind of personal blogs instead of wiki to write the articles about GIS.

There was a brief discussion about the commercialisation of the GIS-Lab, but it ended up with the strong opinion of the majority that this will not gonna happen anytime soon and if this ever will occur it will destroy the community.

Another topic was future GIS-Lab's projects. I proposed creation of the data set of the conventional signs for QGIS. All the more the new symbology in QGIS is a powerful tool, but the initial data set is extremely poor. There were other interesting proposals and they will be described in the official blog of the GIS-Lab along with other topics of the meeting (link to the report). 

Unfortunately we had to move to the railway station and leave some interesting topics behind. I didn't even said goodbye properly because we were talking about issues with spatial data access, while I was dressing up and leaving the room. 

They told me that the next meeting will take place in January... I highly doubt, but I will  be waiting for the next meeting - that's for sure.

A world without religion

Here you are a nice demotivator.

I believe if we'll keep the caption and replace the picture with the following one the demotivator will be much deeper...

QGIS - trunk version for the openSUSE

is now available from the /Application:Geo repository.  The only problem is that you can only update stable version of QGIS to the trunk version but not to install trunk version next to stable one (of course you still can do it manually). On the other hand when the newest version is available and it is not to buggy you do not use the stable release.

Another nice thing is that as opposed to the Windows7, in openSUSE trunk version starts 3 times faster then a 1.5.0 version.

Blocking LJTiMES

Annoying shit

This new Life Journal's frame drives me crazy. If someone wants to get rid of this stuff (and I do know that there are a lot of people who do not even think about blocking ads and other unnecessary stuff), here is an option for the Firefox. I have the Adblock Plus addon (and Element Hiding Helper for it) installed. Unfortunately, right clicking on the frame and choosing option to disable the frame will work only for the current journal and this frame will reappear at another one. So you should chose an own filter option (after right click -> block the frame) and type: http://*/__rpc_lj_times_string.

Vandalism and maps

It was a shock when I saw these maps at the site of Russian Geographical Society. They put the name of the institution in the middle of the map! And it was the Geographical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences! What a shame...

Vandalism

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

It is an interesting lecture of my favorite scientist since 2005, when I've discovered his book "The Selfish Gene".

If you liked this lecture, you might be interested in reading "The God Delusion", which was published 4 years later. They say the Russian translation is not that good (but still it is good enough to my mind), so I suggest to read the original version.

I'm counted

Russia needs everyone slave - it is important to know whom to milk.

 

Now they can sale the database with some information about me. The inventory-guy was a student from the culinary technical secondary school situated in front of my windows across the street. He provided me with information that it is quite safe to eat at "Dve Palochki" restorations (he is working in one of them), but it is better to abstain from ordering soups: they add an MSG (which cause an addiction and an impotence) in it. Now I know why I liked their spicy soups so much ((( It is good that my visits to these restorations were not frequent.

Despite the youth, the guy has a clear view on the impotence of our government, our people... I told him to learn foreign languages and leave damn country. He answered that Sweden is his goal.  Good choice. Farewell, comrade...

1 billion of roubles for the land assessment

1,17 - more precise value. Yea, baby! What about to gain some money?! Here you can find a contract conditions. Of course the price is so high for the reason, or a couple of them, but let's start step by step.

The obvious reason of the price is a number of lands to assess. I can't even imagine how many of them there are in 83(!!!) subjects of the Russian Federation... and there are additional conditions about some maps, etc. So not every cadastral company will even think for the moment to try to get the job. From this point we are very close to the second reason.

Actually, there are only 2 companies, which are potentially able do get this titanic job done. The first is VISHAGI and the second is FCC "The Land". Now it is more simple to guess who will hit the jackpot. Chances are 50%/50%, but I bet, FCC "The Land" will take the upper hand. Why? Ok, I have some information from the inside. VISHAGI do not like to play "Sharing is Caring Russian style", and FCC "The Land" is well known for determination of amounts and targets of  the kickbacks in advance. Nuff said.

This contest is for the only one player and the countless pockets of the bastards from the ROSREESTR. We'll see if I’m a good seer.

QGIS manual in Russian

...is available now!!! Click here to download. Also several improvements were made in English version because of this translation. I'm glad I took part in it!

UPD: manual was updated to the 1.6.0.

Shearing is caring!

There was a scientific session at my university today. I've presented a report about waste management in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. It was somewhat a "party" for the local scientists, so I was in doubt whether should I put the names of my Finnish colleagues as coauthors or not. It wasn't that level which would be valuable for them, besides this report was made of my part of our main article. Never the less the decision was made and I've put two more names on the front page. I've shared authorship of this report.

In the end of the session ex-dean of the faculty came to me and gave a special thanks. "Why? The report and following discussion were good, but there were better" - I thought at the moment. But he thanked me not for the report, but for the foreign coauthors! They brought an international status for our local party! So this publication (and others from the session) will be more valuable. The publication of report became more valuable just because the session became more valuable because of my report presence at the session! It is very interesting thought ;-) But the shearing was in the first place.

There was another shearing story at the session. Google is shearing imagery even if it doesn't want it))) One of the politicians(!) of the St. Petersburg reported about an expedition to the Altai. He mentioned that they have used an images from Google to create a 1:50 000 map... O_o ... Ok, even if he was not aware that for this scale Landsat was just good enough, wasn't this a violation of the Google's terms and conditions of usage? "Honestly, I do not know" replied politician to me...

Let's make it clear: I'm not against robbing Google, I'm against the ignorance.

Let's save the St. Petersburg!

Let's show to the "servants of the people" that they have to give some respect to the laws and human rights!

Rally's place:

Просмотреть увеличенную карту

Dreadful green ad

"Recycling owns the future!"

 

 

 

 

 

I'm scared for future...

Lithic age or how to prove your working place on Linkedin.com

I've decided to update my profile on the Linkedin. They asked for my corporate e-mail to get a conformation that I do work there. That's meanly to require such things! Why in the hell should I provide Linkedin with my corporate e-mail?! (or a password for my own e-mail "to search for contacts"?!)

It is on the one hand... On the other... I do not have a corporate e-mail just because there are no corporate e-mails in my Scientific-Research Centre of wounds. We're still in lithic age here...

Ok, damn Linked in wants a conformation... Let's search for official e-mail of the Centre... There is no official e-mail... Providing own e-mail of the director (that is actually used as official e-mail) is not a good idea... Ok, I will feed you with own e-mail (domain name is mail.ru) of the head of laboratory... After entering that e-mail, Linkedin killed me with a warning:

Drop the curtain...

About higher education in Russia and a language barrier in science

In Stockholm my wife and I had a short conversation with a subway cashier - a 40 years old man. We found out that he speaks Russian fluently and many years ago have studied in Herzen Institute. Excellent painting - Russian education is just good enough to sell tickets in Sweden...

Despite there are no Russian institutions of higher education in top 200 of the Times Higher Education’s list 2010, Moscow State University still holds at 152-nd place on another list. It is not a reason for cheers, because it is only one Russian institution on the list and only at 152-nd place (the situation with higher education and science in Russia is awful and MedvePut does not pay attention to it). But it is an example that all depends on methodology. Let's take a look at the methodology of the Times...

How to get a heart attak at 27?

That is the first question in my head after the 1st minute of the "When You're Strange" documentary. The recipe is simple: one just have to drink hard, take LCD and cocaine at least for 54 months (exact terms and results may vary).

Actually, the film is very good and definitely you should see it. And not a censured version as I did.  That is a stupid idea to censor an archived tapes, especially when it is about "The Doors" rock band and its singer - Jim Morrison. Unfortunately uncensored version is very hard to find and in a downloaded file you can find something different to the desired. - Consider yourself warned!

Despite the answer for the first question was simple, the answers for the others remained a mystery to me. Why does Jim Morrison was so wasted during this period of his life? Why does no one was able to help him to get rid of alcohol and drug addiction, especially when the profits of the band depended on him? Or may be it is just some kind of poet's curse - to die prematurely?

Repost: Модернизация обещаний. Как «Единая Россия» исполняет свою собственную программу.

Originally posted by ervix at Модернизация обещаний. Как «Единая Россия» исполняет свою собственную программу.

Многочисленные оплачиваемые и добровольные сторонники политической партии «Единая Россия», а наипаче ее, простите, высокопоставленные члены любят вальяжно огрызаться на представителей оппозиции, мол, занимаются оппозиционеры сплошным популизмом, аппаратного и управленческого опыта не имеют, зато огульно критикуют. А мы, единороссы, типа с потом и кровью ударно занимаемся модернизацией страны, не покладая рук внедряем инновации, поднимаем страну с колен, в общем, ведем Россию-матушку в общее светлое будущее.

Для того, чтоб с фактами на руках показать патологическую лживость всех агитационных и программно-идеологических документов партии «Единая Россия», рассмотреть, кто на самом деле является популистом (пока не будем тыкать в наглую медвежью харю) и узнать, а что из обещанного жителям России реализовано партией власти, предлагаю вдумчиво изучить Предвыборную программу Политической партии «Единая Россия», утвержденную 20 сентября 2003 года на III съезде всероссийской политической партии «Единство и Отечество» - «Единая Россия».

Как оказалось, найти программу «Единой России» не так просто. Как будто кто-то специально ее прячет подальше, как только выборы состоятся. Однако, будучи уверенным, что судить надо по результатам деятельности, программу косолапых за 2003 год удалось-таки отыскать на сайте www.archive.org. Выбор именно 2003 года не случаен – именно тогда, в результате общенациональных парламентских выборов, «официальная» партия власти получила серьезнейшее преимущество в парламенте, которое с тех пор не только не уменьшала, но всячески наращивала. С другой стороны, 7 лет являются хорошим сроком понять, исполнены ли предвыборные обещания или нет. Обманула ли «Единая Россия» ожидания избирателей полностью или только частично. К сожалению, подавляющее большинство своих обещаний партия власти не выполнила. Впрочем, не будем забегать вперед и вернемся в 2003 год.

А началось все очень оптимистично:

( Стабильность развития и выбор большинства )

( Как Единая Россия отказалось от какой бы то ни было идеологии )

( Как Россия обгоняла Евросоюз )

( Как единороссы коррупцию побеждали )

( Эффективная международная политика )

( Единороссы как гаранты свободы слова )

( Сказ про то, как Россия вместо нефти станки продавала )

( Мудрое регулирование тарифов на электричество )

( Как единороссы построили нам полный ГЛОНАСС )

( Хит сезона - доступное жилье )

( Медвежья законность )

( Очевидные успехи в сфере удвоения ВВП )

Граждане России, вы согласны оставаться еще несколько лет недалеким электоратом, или готовы спросить у партии власти за исполнения ее обещаний многолетней давности?

Может хватит голосовать за обманщиков?

Прошу поддержать. Пусть как можно больше людей узнают, как единороссы выполняют свои обещания.

Even children are against Russian president!

Brains of the Russian leaders are so damn fucked that even child is able to notice that. President wants to destroy Utrish (the unique area at the shore of the Black Sea) for his amusement... bastard! 

Will he be able to listen to the children of the region?



I don't think he is able to hear anything but the call of his own greed and greed of mister Putin.

Public data, GDP and Google

There is interesting information source of public data, created by google. It is quite useful 'cause now you don't have to waste time for downloading data and creation of a graph - google already did it. You just have to customize visualisation for your goals.

GDP per capita (current US$) - World Bank

While in Finland I'm trying to find out interesting facts about country that was too small for me to pay attention to it when I was in Russia. One such fact is that economy of Finland had a serious impact with USSR collapse. You can see it on the graph above. Thanks to trade with Soviet Union GDP per capita in Finland grown fast and was higher than in US in 1990 and then was a sharpen fell for 3 years. Only in 2007 Finland managed to overcome US with this parameter again - it took 17 years.

Now let's look at graph below. There is GDP per capita too, but from another source - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Graph for US is pretty much the same, but for Finland and Russia it is quite different. Finland does not best US and impact from USSR destroying is less significant, and numbers for recent years for Russia looks more promising than on previous graph. Looks like OECD failed (or didn't wanted to) to recalculate numbers properly. So you should pay attention to sources and units for data you use.

GDP per capita - OECD Factbook 2009

Hope Google will add more public data soon and develop additional export, import and visualization options like in FactBook eXplorer for example;-)

Are you a Muslim in some notrhern country? Then you're so screwed...

...because of Ramadan, when Muslims can't eat, drink and have a sex during daylight. Suppose it is not easy time even in Arabic countries. But if  one lives for example in Finland, where the day lasts a heeeeell looooonger... In the beginning of august in Lahti, Finland sunset occurs at approximately 23:00 and dawn at 5:00 - it's only 6 hours to eat, drink and (if one would feel the might) have a sex, and don't forget about sleeping - one still have to go to work in the morning. Ramadan will pass easier in a random settlement in Iran - night lasts approximately 11 - 12 hours.

Thanks God, I'm an atheist!

Call out for solidarity!

Call for Solidarity actions with the accused COP15 activists
On the 18th of August there will be a solidarity demonstration in Copenhagen to mark the trial of the first two people accused of 'organizing' the protests around the COP 15. We
urge everyone to spend the day or the following days on demonstrations and statements of support and solidarity – demonstration and manifestations outside Danish embassies,
press work and articles - all are welcome and appreciated.
During the climate summit in Copenhagen, around 2000 people were arrested preventively and held in custody while they were trying to get their voices heard. These people along with thousands of other activists from around the world were trying to set a different and
more just political agenda in the climate debate.
Approximately 20 people were detained for up to a month, out of which four people are faced with trials this autumn.* These people are accused of charges including planning violence against police, systematic vandalism and serious disturbance of public peace and
order. Some of these charges are drawn from the Danish terror package and the penalties are strenghtened by the new Danish anti-protester laws introduced just prior to the COP 15. The charges they face are unfounded, but can still potentially result in years in prison. During COP15 thousands of people from around the world gathered in Copenhagen to challenge the farcical political negotiations at the Bella Center and demand just solutions to the climate crises. We demonstrated for solutions that are not only favouring the rich western world. We protested for real solutions which are challenging the capitalist system, because this system has a constant focus on growth and profit that is obviously not able to solve the climate problems.
This dawning climate justice movement was met with antipathy and arrogance of power from the Danish government, which was reflected in the form of a massive police repression. During 2009 the Danish government and the Danish police carried out an intense scare campaign in the media to demonize protesters and activists. Police were given extra power and economic resources for the COP 15. This led to thousands of preventive arrests, month-long surveillance of telephone and raids of private homes and accommodations, and
grotesque and unnecessary detentions.
The police actions were completely out of proportion and a clear violation of our democratic rights. Their actions attempted criminalization of our right to organize ourselves politically. It was made clear that any movement that dares to challenge existing power
structures and demand political changes are not welcome in Denmark today. Instead of listening to the massive criticism of the negotiations, the Danish government revealed a hypocritical lack of interest in solving the climate problems. And now the Danish state is trying to make four individuals responsible for a whole movement's collective decision-making and collective protests.
In our view - the right to protest and everyone's right to be heard, is an essential element in a democracy - even if you are speaking against the existing capitalist system. We therefore call on everyone to show solidarity with the accused and make the criticism of the ongoing
processes visible.
We would like to receive information and documentation of any actions you take to collect on our website.
The coming trials is not just about the fact that innocent people might be convicted, but about everybody's fundamental right to demonstrate, protest, take action and organize politically. It is important that we do not sign away these rights, but continue the fight.

In Solidarity – The Climate Collective
www.cop15repression.info or www.climatecollective.org
email: cop15repression@climatecollective.org
* The four accused are: Natasha Verco, Noah Weiss, Stine Gry Jonassen and Tannie
Nyboe. Natasha and Noah's trials are on the 24th, 25th and 31th of August, and Stine and
Tannie's trials are on the 6th, 27th and 28th of October. The prosecution case against the
Danish state about the preventive arrests are on the 23th and 30th of August and the 1st of
September.

Waste amount progress in St.Petersburg

I'm writing an article about waste management situation in St.Petersburg and Lenindrad region. Found some interesting sharpen decreasing of municipal solid waste collected in city in 2005 (original data provided to government by waste transporters). Amount of collected waste decreased by over 1.4 mil cubic meters. You can see it at fig. below. The question is why?

MSW collection, St.Petersburg

There are a lot of publications that points out dependence between amount of

Civil war presentment

There is a news story - interview with a leader of antifascists which made a mess with the building of Himki administration.  For better understanding of causes of this mess you should read digest of events for Himkinsky forest rescuing (you may read only red colored text) - the conflict between common people and the capitalistic Power (government, local administration, criminals and even church).

Not the interview with the Antifa leader is interesting by itself but the following video-interview with the correspondent of the paper. In the end of the video he said that he has a civil war presentment... 

I have that presentment too... And what about you?

Idea 2017

Recently I thought on a subject "how to create a better life in Russia". I was riding on my bicycle at that moment. Riding at the beautiful Lahti town in Southeastern part of Finland - one of the Northern Europe counties as Sweden, Norway and Danemark for example. And for a long time Finland was a part of Sweden. This 4 countries are well known for its high quality level of life and economic development as for environmental preservation and strong social support system. On the picture below we'll compare the most important social and economic aspects of development for Russia (red), Norway (green) and Finland (blue).

Finland, Norway and Russia comparison (click to enlarge) - Nuff said / facepalm
(source: Legatum Prosperity Index)

Actually we can see from this picture, that Russian government do not give a fuck about the population - only about the money (no, it is not about wellbeing of common people - it's about wellbeing of corporations and bureaucrats).

So I thought what if we can place some smart people from Norway for example ('couse they know how to use natural resources in the wright way) in charge in Russia to let them develop the country in the way it should be?! Sounds crazy, isn't it?

But I'm even not original! This idea is like 12 hundreds years old! And the most unbelievable is that it was realized with Nordic guy named Rurik! And even the name "Russia" is after Nordic people.

So let MedvePut (yes Medvedev and Putin are one being with Gazprom as holy spirit) to have a rest. And we'll invite some people who knows how to create a better world.


It is hard to take public control over government, so let's not get hurry but state the deadline to change Russia for good. To my mind 2017 is a reasonable deadline. Which month? October is a wright month for such things, isn't it?

Where are oligarchs?

marker.ru (site that I mentioned in the previous post) provide us with incredible opportunity to watch over trails of yachts of Russian oligarchs. Here you can find a name, owner, cost, image, location and speed of yachts that belongs to robbers of the ex-great country.

Comments are so friendly:

"Does these coordinates precise enough for rocket launchers?"

P.S. Spatial source for the service is here (it is interesting to see too - you can find information about lot of ships).

P.P.S. I assume that marker.ru specialized in economical corruption-revealing news. This is uncommon and strange... but cool!

Africa exploitation

I like maps and GIS. But I want to show you something that is neither one nor another, but quite similar. It is very nice flash animation for information about export from Africa to developed countries - exploitation in other words. You can play with it here and I will just provide a couple of screen-shots.

Here you can chose country of your interest and click to see stats

Example of the stats

The Yes Men Fix The World

"If we let the free-market cult  keep running the world, there wouldn't be a world left to fix."  ["The Yes Men Fix The World"]

 I strongly recommend you to see "TheYesMenFixTheWorld" p2p edition movie. It's a very funny documentary film: you will laugh a lot watching it even if revealed subjects are not funny at all. 

"THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks. This peer-to-peer special edition of the film is unique: it is preceded by an EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the Yes Men impersonating the United States Chamber of Commerce. Because the Yes Men are being sued for this stunt, p2p is the only way that this film will get seen. Please spread the word!"

You can find official site of the project here.

Special thanks (from me of course) to thepiratebay.org which puts info about this film on its home page!

BP rebranding

It is hard to find some one who is not aware about one of th biggest crime against environment that was done by infamous British Petroleum. They loosing so much money with that oil spill every day that no one of us would be able to gain even in ten honest lives. The stain on the company name is irremovable. But... it's face is rebrandable! I bet in a three years they will re-brand the enterprise. But some good fellows already did this hard job for BP... for free! Rebranding competition organized by Greenpeace is almost over and I want to put here the works which are on the top of my list.

Here we go:

Best rebranded logo:

That's it!

Best illustration:

1-st place

2-nd place

Best wildlife:

It's leading anyway

Best slogan:

1-st place

2-nd place

3-rd place

Best "WTF?!":

Double hit

But is it satisfying enough? NO! Until the lust BP's toilet seat will be sold from auction to remediate (if it only would be possible!) destroyed environment, until every last motherfuker director and owner of the company will be drowned in the oil - there won't be any satisfaction >:(

Death of Jesus - its all about the money!

Do you believe Bible in a questions of Jesus life and death as a god? If no - than you are smart one. But is it possible that the Bible describes real life of some good guy named Jesus but in very sick and twisted way? I believe :-) it is possible. If you don't mind some historical insight, than you should enjoy the following essay I found here.

In general it is about money exchange operations on Roman Empire, Jew's church that had a major profit from it and Ponty Pilat who suddenly found himself in need of money due to involvement in conspiracy against Tiberius and his reforms...

But unfortunately you have to translate it from Russian.

Associations

So there is one forum's game called "Associations". What do you associate word "grass" with? If you are GIS-specialist than association would be "GIS" because of GRASS open-sourced and very powerful GIS, that was originally developed by US military forces and then given to the community when corruption ESRI took the upper hand in US army. But if you are just common jerk then it is possible that your association would be "weed", isn't it? Understandable. Actually it was a Russian forum and Russian word "трава" - grass that looks like "травка" - weed (and if you think that I'm talking about marijuana, then you're wright completely wrong!).

But that was your's associations, not mine. I associate this word with a "космодром" - space launching site. Why? Because there is one song ("Трава у дома" - Grass Near Home) from 1983 and there are lines about spacers who dreams not about space launching site or deep space, but about grass near their home. By the way it was my first movement inside my mom's belly in 1983 when she was at the concert and this song played...

I have a strong nostalgia feeling when I hear this song or think about it. It was easy to find a video on YouTube (there are a lot of different videos for song). And I watched a modern version and... there was a comment...

"Great song! POLAND and RUSSIA brothers forever! Grettings from Poland. Fuck politician! Normal people in poland and in russian is OK. POLITICIAN is bad in all world. Politician begin War. Religion and piliticion is very bad because begin war, Example:  JEWISH vs ISLAM this is very stupid conflict. NO POLITICAN and NO RELIGION = NO WAR! sorry, i speak english little..." 

Such words are priceless... And it is difficult to understand this fact when you are too young and too proud of your country. So don't listen to the fuckers in the TV when they tell you to hate someone from another country or that people from another country hates you. Politicians and priests are lying to take control over you and made you obey their will so they can gain more power and money. Just talk to aliens a bit more.


That was my thoughts on associations and grass... I want to prevent you from get completely bored and let you enjoy the "Трава у дома" song. Say "hello!" to 1983!

OSM, google and yahoo undercover in QGIS

Yesterday I've discovered "OpenLayers plugin" for QGIS. This is pretty cool thing to have a Google maps and satellite as Yahoo and Openstreetmap as a wms-layer in QGIS. I will show you:

(Just click the image for better resolution)

Now it is much simpler for me to compare FIRMS fire data (yes, from that exclusive archive data access I mentioned in previous post) with landfills locations.

Unfortunately, there is only one example of successful fire detection on the landfill in the Leningrad region (it is on the picture above). In other cases I have to look into Landsat archive. Maybe they will have the images for the days when fire near landfill was detected. Looking forward to download them... yeah... 1Gb per archive.

Lucky data mining

It was a lucky day for data mining!

I believe, you know that if you try to get some spatial information in Russia then you'll eventual start to shit bricks. I remember for one project I've been calling to the response person in one regional committee for 3 or 4 month asking about my request (while they must give you response during 30 days), I do remember that they prepared some answer, but I do not remember if I finally managed to my information!

But for now I'm working on a waste management project in Finland. Today I asked someone (we've never met or spoke before) to give me some spatial information for my research. I had no hope that she'll share it! BUT I WAS WRONG! I've almost cried while reading the e-mail. It was like: Yes, sure! Here you are! Use it well and don't forget to leave a proper reference in your research. By the way, I can send you more in different formats!

I wish I ever get such response in Russia!

For another part of my research I need fire spatial data. It is available at FIRMS site, but they provide only 2 month old data when I need data for past 10 years. So I asked guys if it is possible to get data for several years. Guess what they answered! Yes, sure! We're just in the middle of developing request page, so help yourself and test it in the process!

Yeah baby! It's a smell of civilized world! Too bad that I have to get back to Russia in a several months...