I am currently heading to Washington DC to attend tomorrow’s “2010 Ponars Eurasia Policy Conference”:http://ponarseurasia.org/blog/conference/ (program can be found “here”:http://ponarseurasia.org/blog/conference/). The conference, which will be held at the “Eliot School of International Affairs”:http://elliott.gwu.edu/ at George Washington University, is open to the public. For those of you in the DC area with an interest in post-communist politics, and especially matters related to security in the post-Soviet Area, I’d recommend checking it out. I’m presenting my findings on Polish public opinion towards Russia that I reported on “here”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/10/polish_attitudes_towards_russi.html previously as part of a 9:30 AM panel on “A ‘New Neighborhood’ Policy For Russia?”.
I’m taking the Amtrak Acela to get to DC – which I greatly prefer to flying for short distances – and just thought I’d share a few observations:
* While it is great to be able to get from NYC to DC in under three hours, this train does not go nearly as fast as the “AVE high speed rail”:http://www.eurail.com/eurail-high-speed-ave in Spain.
* I wonder if the lawyer who is sitting behind me would ask me to leave his office if he had details of another client’s case to discuss, and, if so, why he feels comfortable talking on the phone about those same details sitting about five feet away from me.
* There is now wireless on Acela! So this is going to be my first TMC post at over 60 mph.
* There is an ex-US Secretary of State sitting in the same car as me. This is almost as exciting as when I saw Anne Hathaway shopping at my local Whole Foods, but not quite.
* I’m glad this conference “is not in France”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102103924.html.
More substantive observations from the conference to follow tomorrow…