Eating the Future

CSMonitor has an excellent article on Russia’s internal debate regarding the country’s direction.

"We are eating our future, and we are being too quiet about it," said one person interviewed for the story.

Also, the article highlights the fact that Russians exist on a pure-carb media diet of sugar puffs, pixi-sticks, and Mountain Dew.

"The glossy media have taken off," says Sergei Strokan, an editor at Kommersant, one of Moscow's few remaining independent daily newspapers. "Entertainment fills the niche that became vacant when serious information retreated from the mass media."

Just what the doctor ordered.

***

Also this week, Russia sank to 121st place on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index, a tie with Guyana and Rwanda. Among the country’s which are less corrupt than Russia (as a measure of perceptions):
--Albania
--Uganda
--Iran
--Georgia (that's got to sting)
--Algeria
--Lebanon
--Kazakhstan
--Bolivia

My god.