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From the manual of the game Sam & Max Season One: speakers are input devices? And Germans apparently can insert the DVD ROM into a CD-ROM drive…
)Free… the World
After yesterday’s “Free Burma” (non-)action day, let’s not forget that there are also a few other countries where the human rights situation is not optimal. Human Rights Watch considers in their Welt Report 2007 (as PDF) 74(!) countries worth mentioning (and the European Union is combined in that number) – the amount of problems, of course, varies greatly (who would seriously put, say, the EU on the same level in this regard as Burma?):
Africa:
Angola, Burundi, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Americas:
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, USA
Asia:
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam
Europe and Central Asia:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, European Union, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
Middle East and North Africa:
Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco/Western Sahara, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates (UAE)
50 Years since Спутник
Almost exactly 50 years ago, on 4 October 1957, Sputnik 1, the first satellite, has been launched – rather surprisingly –, heralding the era of space flight.
This aluminium ball’s construction, 58 cm in diameter, wasn’t too complex and done in just four weeks, and the scientific instruments on board were limited to temperature sensors that could also detect a drop in pressure as it would happen if a micro meteor penetrates the casing, whose readings were sent to earth with the famous beeps from the radio transmitters. The political benefit – “Hello Yanks, our strong sockets can reach the orbit (and you too, if necessary)!” – was a little bigger, of course.
If you want to read all this in detail, you can do so e.g. at NASA.