Archives for November, 2004

On Nov. 29, 1945, the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

Yesterday would have been the 59th anniversary of socialist Yugoslavia. As it was, Yugoslavia only lived to be 47 — lower than the average life expectancy in Liberia.

Nevertheless, here are five patriotic songs (and one speech) that would have been appropriate back then:

1. Hej Slaveni.mp3 — The national anthem of Yugoslavia. It literally means "Hey Slavs!" and had versions in Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenian. This is the instrumental version. [History and lyrics]
2. Druže Tito mi ti se kunemo.mp3 — Literally, "Comrade Tito, we pledge ourselves to you." A bombastic, patriotic song performed by the former Yugoslav superstar (and still active) Zdravko Čolić. The Zagreb Philharmonic backs him up.
3. Yugoslavia.mp3 — During one of the final communist party meetings between delegates from all the republics: "It seemed that they could not agree on a single thing. They even quarreled about what song should open the extraordinary Fourteenth Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party; the Internationale, the national anthem, "Hej Slaveni" (Hey Slavs), or the popular song, "Yugoslavia." At one point, [Croatia’s communist leader] Ra�?an said: "It is not important how we begin, but it is important to finish with Yugoslavia," apparently missing the irony until the others broke out in laughter." [From Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, page 79]
4. Svobodna Slovenija.mp3 — "Free Slovenia."
5. Na juriš.mp3 — A popular partisan song meaning "Charge!" During World War II, Yugoslavia lost around 1.7 million people — an astounding 10% of its population. In terms of total losses, it finished in sixth place, globally. More Yugoslavs died than British and Americans combined. In fact, even if you double American and British losses, the Yugoslavs still have more dead. Like in other countries with heavy losses, the majority of people killed were civilians.
6. Excerpt of a speech by Tito.mp3 — A prophetic excerpt from a speech by Tito. He says: "We spilled a sea of blood for our brotherhood and for the unity of our nations. We won’t allow anyone to touch or undermine it from inside, so that our brotherhood and unity would be destroyed." Yugoslavia outlived Tito by only ten years.

There are many more songs available here.

(Thanks Miran!)

A headline from Slovenske Novice, October 26, 2004.

Here’s a headline you’ll never see in the United States:

"Black like the devil, they butchered lambs"

It’s from a story that recently ran in Slovenia’s biggest daily newspaper, Slovenske Novice, about two black dogs that went berserk on a farm and killed some lambs. The fact that this was the top story in the country is already interesting enough. The choice of words, though, is even more so.

It’s safe to say that no professional news organization in America (or elsewhere in the west) would ever use the phrase "black like the devil" — not even to describe dogs. Slovenia is a different story. For one thing, the population is 102% white. For another, the concept of "political correctness" hasn’t been established here.

Case in point: Mladina, the popular left-leaning magazine. A few years ago, it published a photoshopped image of the American ambassador to Slovenia (who was black) wearing a star-spangled condom over a titanic schlong. (NSFW picture)  The U.S. embassy protested and the ambassador later told the newspaper Ve�?er:

I think that if an American magazine
had done the same thing, it would not be done with such distaste and
racism. The fact that some magazine publishes a caricature of me
does not bother me, but if it is racist, then it bothers me very much. (via)

Of course, I can’t think of a single mainstream American magazine that would ever run that picture. Time magazine caused a big stir just by darkening O.J. Simpson on one of its covers — I can’t even imagine what would happen if they photoshopped him inside with a huge wang. Pandemonium, probably.

Also: the blue word in the headline ("kri") means "blood." I find it extremely funny that they included it.

An interactive map of Slovenia. Click to visit.

The Interactive Map of Slovenia is a beautiful little site with lots of artistic photos of the country. Unfortunately, the creators seem to have run out of steam pretty quickly. Only four cities are included: Ljubljana, Kamnik, Ljutomer and Murska Sobota. (You can see a complete list of locations here.) Most of the photos are of natural settings, primarily from the central and northeastern parts of the country.

Since the site hasn’t been updated since March 2003, it’s probably safe to say that it won’t be finished anytime soon — which is too bad.

For a nearly complete interactive map of Slovenia, see also Boštjan Burger’s awe-inspiring creation.  It’s the incredibles.

Television screenshots from March 24, 1999. Click for more.

These few pages contain nearly random screenshots of a night in front of the tv set. Possibly there will be more. The date was 24/25 of March 1999 and it’s all about the bombing of Yu.

I first came to Slovenia in early ‘99 — just a few weeks before The Strike Against Yugoslavia^TM, as CNN called the Kosovo Conflict, began.

Slovenia had opened up its air space to NATO planes, so you would occasionally hear F-16s from the Aviano Air Base in Italy flying overhead towards targets in Serbia. Later on at night, if you turned on the television, you could catch a glimpse of what they had been up to. It was a surreal experience, made more intense by the fact that I was spending a lot of free time reading whatever I could and then flipping through the channels at night for the latest news. CNN, of course, provided their usual stuff:

CNN anchor: "Joining us now in Brussels is Mr. CNN reporter, who’s been following the latest press briefings. What can you tell us about what’s going on at NATO headquarters?"
CNN reporter: "Well, CNN anchor, NATO members are urging resolve and determination today as the Strike Against Yugoslavia continues. They’re saying that this mission won’t be easy, but that they have resolve and determination, and that that’s what this mission will take to win."
CNN anchor: "Thanks, CNN reporter, we’ll be checking in with you again in five minutes. In the meantime, we’d like to welcome to our studio Mr. CNN Retired General Military Analyst — thanks for speaking with us."
CNN Ret. Gen. Military Analyst: "It’s my pleasure."
CNN anchor: "What kind of… strategy is NATO going to employ in the next few days? What can we expect to see?"
CNN R.G.M.A.: "Well, of course that’s all strictly confidential, although I’m sure they have very thorough plans. I think that, primarily, NATO will try to show resolve and determination in these next few, crucial days, and continue to pursue their mission goals within the mission’s given parameters, and by doing so, complete this internationally supported mission until it is successfully completed."

It’s amazing how you can listen to them for hours and not learn anything, isn’t it?

I much preferred Serbian television, which started broadcasting English news reports every night until NATO dropped a couple tons of resolve and determination on their broadcasting capabilities. Every single night, it was a variation of the following:

Serbian announcer: "NATO criminals continued NATO-criminal tactics against Yugoslavia today. At 4 a.m. in morning, NATO criminals drop bombs on Ostruznica Railroad Bridge using bombs that were criminals, or to be more specific, that were NATO criminals."

I should also mention that, at the time, it was normal to see X-rated movies on public television. (They’ve since been removed, as far as I know.) So, when flipping through the stations, you would see: war, war, war, war, porn, war, war, war, gay porn, war, war, etc…

This site, with its random screenshots, does a wonderful job of capturing that whole bizarre period.

The sun setting over Mount Pohorje yesterday.

Rome (left) and Ljubljana (right) via satellite. Note how nice and green Ljubljana is.

Keyhole is "the only company to deliver a 3D digital model of the entire earth via the Internet."

And now, for a limited time only, you can test drive their program by downloading the trial version of Keyhole. You’ll have to go through an annoying (but quick) registration process. If that’s too much for you, you can watch this animation of California to see what it looks like.

Unfortunately, large parts of the Earth (including Slovenia) are unmapped. You just see green blurs like the one above. Otherwise, it’s pretty impressive. The ability to zoom in and examine the closest details of metropolitan areas will definitely dazzle you — unless, of course, you’re a paranoid type. Then it will probably freak you out.

Still: give it a try!

(via Metafilter)

The Economist’s 2005 quality-of-life index. (Click to expand)

According to The World in 2005, Slovenia is the 27th greatest country in our solar system, just behind Germany and France and ahead of Britain and South Korea. Ireland is the most awesome country in the known galaxy, followed by Switzerland and Norway. In fact, European countries nearly swept the top ten. Only Australia (#6) prevented a total rout. Interestingly, though, none of the so-called "big three" made it into the top ten — or even the top twenty.

The Economist Intelligence Unit used the following factors to determine their scores:

• income (measured by GDP per person)
• health (measured by life expectancy)
• freedom (civil liberties)
• unemployment
• family life (measured by divorce rate)
• climate (measured by latitude)
• political stability and security
• gender equality (ratio of male to female earnings)
• family and community life (church attendance and/or trade union membership)

You can read all about their methodology here. [pdf] In the meantime, many Slovenes will be happy to see that the country is comparable to Germany and France, outranks Britain, and is well ahead of Croatia, which is nestled between Poland and Turkey at spot 49. Croatians, in turn, can take comfort in the fact that Serbia-Montenegro is all the way down in 84th place — and behind Albania. If Serbs can recover from their collective heart attack, they can find solace in the fact that they’re ahead of Bosnia-Hercegovina. And Bosnians can be proud of the fact that, despite hosting Europe’s most destructive war since WWII, they’re still ahead of Russia and 17 other countries.

Of course, studies like this don’t matter too much, except as talking points. You could also do a study to find the world’s most greatest color by measuring how often it appears in clothes and buildings, how people rate it, if it’s natural or man-made, etc… In the end, all it boils down to is personal preference.

I like purple.

In Slovenia, the Little Prince is known as Mali Princ.

The University of Halle has put together a project called Der Kleine Prinz in 100 Sprachen (The Little Prince in 100 Languages) The basic idea is to translate and record an excerpt from Saint-Exupéry’s famous story into numerous languages and dialects. (Including Slovenian.)

According to the site, the majority of voicework is done by native speakers. Non-native speakers are specially marked with the symbol "L2." (Like here, for example.) In other words, the Slovene recording (which has no "L2") is done by a native Slovenian speaker from Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Now… go ahead and listen to the Slovene recording by a native speaker from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and tell me if you notice anything strange. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.

How did it go?

Look, I don’t claim to be an expert in Slovene, but even I laughed when I heard that reading, and I’m a lousy, no-good foreigner. There’s absolutely no way you can tell me that that voice belongs to a Ljubljan�?anka. [mp3]

Is it even the voice of a Slovene? Here I’m not sure, and need your help. My first thought was no — but then, there are so many dialects here; maybe this lady is a Carinthian Slovene? It definitely sounds Germanic. Unfortunately, I don’t know Slovenian dialects well enough to recognize them.

Perhaps someone reading this knows the answer. Anyone?

(Via Viewropa )

The hunt is on for SuprNova creator Slonček (little elephant)

One of the biggest web sites in Slovenia also happens to be one of the biggest in the world. Slovenia-based SuprNova.org distributes BitTorrent files to more than 400,000 visitors a day. If you don’t know what a torrent is, then this article: File Sharing’s New Face in The New York Times should bring you up to speed. If you do know what a BitTorrent file is, then you already know SuprNova. In fact, you’re probably downloading something from them right now. (It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.)

What some people don’t know, though, is that SuprNova was founded and is maintained by a Slovene who goes by the nickname Slonček, literally "little elephant." You also may not know that torrents currently account for more than one-third of all Internet traffic. These are big numbers; certainly enough to rouse the attention of you-know-who with their you-know-what.

A reporter recently asked the global director of the MPAA’s anti-piracy operations if SuprNova was illegal. He replied:

"That’s still an issue we’re studying, that reasonable minds can disagree on."

In the meantime, rumors are circulating that the authorities are hunting for Slonček. The fact that he continues to remain anonymous in a country that has only two million people, and where everybody knows everybody, tells you that either: a) he’s better than Bruce Wayne at hiding his identity, or b) the authorities aren’t particularly motivated in finding him. The magazine Mladina recently did some digging and then announced that he was an 18-year-old student at the Waldorf High School in Ljubljana, with the initials A.P. The only thing missing from their story was a map to his house. A day of reckoning between Slonček and the MPAA appears to be inevitable; and seems to be getting closer every day.

When Slyck News asked Slonček about his future in a recent interview, Slonček had this to say:

"We have no idea what will happen in the future, {neither do} we wish to, hehe, but we are still {the} site with longest online reputation and that’s the biggest guarantee that you can get, although like I said before, nothing is 100%, not even SuprNova ;)"

You can read their complete interview here: Interview with Sloncek of SuprNova.

UPDATE: They got him.

Niti ne poskušajte prekora�?iti hitrosti! (Don’t even try to speed)

(Thanks Miran!)