Blogging from the BlackBerry is weird!

So yeah, I couldn't really upload pictures from my BlackBerry to my blogger account, but I'm working on it, and I'll sit and figure it out some day I'm really bored. (Guess it might be a while - I do live in NYC after all!)

In other news, this weekend was our big event at work, and it went pretty well! There were trolls and vikings and rock star chicks, and fabulous weather, SO YEAH, GOOD TIMES!


Also, I went today, after the suggestion of my good friend Kata, to a memorial ceremony for assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot - twice - a year ago today, outside her apartment in Moscow. The event itself was, well .. .. OK, the event was one of the most boring things I have ever experienced in my life.

Also, I am fundamentally ambivalent towards Russian freedom of the press. Sure, Putin and his Siloviki have scarecrowed the media into submission, but not with a big, massive crackdown. Instead, they have been using stealthier techniques, mostly through pressuring publishers to fire editors and journalists who are too, shall we say, progressive. Media law in Russia was briefly changed after the school siege and mass murder in Beslan in 2004, using the incident for all it's worth, but apart from that, there are few laws de facto limiting press freedom.

However, when asked about how Russian authorities were bullying the media, President Putin responded "Well, the relationship between the press and the government should be like the relationship between a man and a woman: The man should always attempt, and the woman should always resist." This divulges not only some seriously fucked-up gender dynamics going on in the Putin household, it also indicates a sad truth about Russian media: As pressure from the government mounted, slowly but surely, nobody actually resisted - there were no protests, no angry headlines. Instead, there were changes in format, to more commercially viable forms of journalism, propelling some journalists to superstardom, but doing very little for the press freedom at stake. Politkovskaya was a dissenting voice. Sadly, it increasingly seems that she's the only one.