Estonia Power

Some nice exposure for Estonia...

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, Estonia has recently been getting quite a bit of good press in the U.S., both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. For example, Publius Pundit has a nice piece today, that starts like this:

In less time than it takes for a new baby to reach U.S. voting age, the nation of Estonia has transformed itself from a cold, gray, stagnant outpost of the Soviet Empire to one of the world’s most impressive dynamic democracies. Its banks are pristine, its one of the most wired countries in the world, it is famous for its absence of corruption, as well as its flat tax, its sound stable money, its property rights, its free trade (unilaterally done with no miserable CAFTA battle, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa noted.) The only shortage out there for Estonia is enough praise for this marvelous nation that is lighting a flame for the rest of the world.

In the rest of that article, he points to this comment on another blog, from someone whose sentiments (and sighs) I certainly share:

[Sigh] "Filing an annual tax return online, as 80% of Estonians do, takes a few minutes."

Processing these tax returns takes an average five days.

Estonia has a flat tax of 24% on personal and corporate income.

"Estonia's economy showed 9.9% year-on-year growth in the latest quarter -- Europe's fastest rate."

[Figures & quotes from The Economist 10/15/05.]

[Another sigh]

Maybe the Estonian government hired a new public relations firm?

Morning Walk

In the chaparral after a rain...

One of the nice things about being unemployed and living in the chaparral country of San Diego County is that I'm now completely free to take walks in the morning. With Debi and our two dogs (Mo'i and Lea), I've been walking every morning in the hills that surround our home.

This morning was even grander than usual. We had some rain last night -- not a whole lot, but enough to wash all the dust from the leaves of the chaparral, and to accent all the lovely high desert morning smells. The freshly cleaned leaves gave a new, dark green appearance to our hillsides. The smells of high desert chaparral are hard to put into words. The dominant small is from sage; the same sage that's commonly used as a spice. It's always the strongest at night and in the early morning; after a rainfall it is at the absolute peak -- strong and sharp in your nostrils. Along with the sage, there are dozens of odiferous nuances as you walk along; some from the leaves (like sage), others from flowers or stems that you crush as you walk. It's a veritable symphony of smell in the early morning after a rain, and that symphony is playing very loudly. The intensity of this desert perfume has to be experienced to be believed...

Something interesting about these smells -- nearly all of them serve a distinct purpose for the plant, usually either an insect repellant or an outright insecticide. The sharp odor of sage, for instance, is from a chemical that is quite an effective insect repellent -- even appearing in commercial products for use by people, and commonly planted in gardens to ward off bugs. Strange, somehow, to think that these things that we find so attractive are either obnoxious or fatal to insects!

Rhma

She's doing great!

A few weeks ago I told you about a little Iraqi girl with a severe medical problem, and how some concerned Americans conspired to make sure she got the help she needed. Michael Yon now reports that Rhma has had the surgery she needed, and the results were terrific. He posted this email from one of her nurses:

Rhma did absolutely beautifully during surgery. Her oxygen saturation is now between 87 and 91 and she is pink! She looks like a different child. Her Mom just kept holding her hands, looking at her nail beds and smiling. She has been very stable and has not required any medications to keep her blood pressure up. She is still on the ventilator just to allow her to rest for the night but she'll be off it in the morning. I will keep you posted.

This is very sweet good news on top of the political good news of the Iraqi constitutional referendum...