Current Affairs

You can watch the Kenyan presidential election returns in real time! So, far, Kenyatta seems to be handily crushing Odinga, although they don't tell you what parts of the country they have results for yet, so that may be deceptive. Not too many years ago, news like this tooks days to arrive, and now I can follow it live from a local source. _fluffy remarks that this sort of change is routine, and I suppose it is, but it still continues to amaze me. This isn't the world I grew up in anymore.


Edit: Actually, you can even watch it from Kenyan TV.

Further edit: And apparently, it's an accepted practice in Kenya to use 'damn' for emphasis on TV, and address professors as 'prof' in a formal setting. It's the little things that jar. They're wearing proper suits, they're speaking correct English, but little things like this drop in...

Further edit 2: And apparently thet follow the same practice there that we do here. If you're in queue when the polls close, you're allowed to vote, if it takes all night.

*****

The Sunnis and Shiites all seem to be increasingly at one anothe's throats, with mosque bombings now breaking out in Pakistan too. It would be fascinating to know how much of this was being driven by Anglo-American covert operations. I suspect that the answer is 'quite a bit', but of course that's the sort of information that doesn't become public for decades, even if then.

Skwirls!

When I took my trash out just now, I noticed something going on with the Skwirls. There are at least eight of them, possibly more, running back and forth between two trees and some shrubberies. It's not a mass orgy, and if it's a territorial dispute, it involves an awful lot of Skwirls. There's lot of chasing and vocalizing, but no actual contact that I could tell. I'm inclined to conclude that it's some sort of neighborhood play session.