(I'll bring back a nice gift for the first person who correctly identifies where I got the above title from.)This is a shot of one of the many Turkmen warrior statues standing guard all the way around the Turkmenbashi museum in Rahmana park (see below). Those mountains ringed Ashgabat, and at some points it felt like if I could just streeeeetch my arm out far enough, I could touch them. Just glorious, that Ashgabat with it's mountains, fountains, and white marble buildings.
Things are really heating up here and I'll be spending the next 7 work days in more maternities in Kazakhstan, and then off to Tadjikistan for 2 weeks. Then when I get back I'll have 2 weeks to analyze a BUTTLOAD of data and get it in shape for our reporting requirements before Steve comes. Yikes! It is going to be ovaries to the wall.
Since I worked through lunch I don't feel guilty posting a quick few photos of Turkmenistan. My friends came over yesterday and I was telling them all about it...they wanted to go. And I want to go with Steve. But getting visas without letters of invitation are tough, and I don't know that I want to burden the people I worked with with the bureaucratic rigamarole of writing us letters, submitting them, etc. Besides, I don't have time or the willingness to wait at the Turkmenistan Airlines ticket office for days on end, trying to bribe people for a ticket. So it appears my Turkmen vacation dream will remain just that, a dream...
Here's a shot of an aparment building with those ubiquitous satellite dishes. They look (and spread!) like mushrooms, no?
Here's one of the Ministry of Health. Imagine a city full of massive white marble ministries of varying shapes. Just lovely.
And here are a few shots of this enormous park dedicated to Turkmenbashi (leader of all 
Turkmen, what the last president/dictator named himself), which depict the writings in his book, Ruhnama. He wrote this book to explain the history/religion/everything about the Turkmen people, and mandated that everyone memorize it, including schoolkids (what fun!). There are copies in every hospital I've been to, in multiple languages. Not to mention the statues (usually gold) and massive portraits of the man hung everywhere. Talk about a cult of personality. This guy leaves Stalin in the dust. (There's a gold statue of him that rotates constantly in the center square so that he's always facing the sun. Popular opinion is that it's so that he can keep an eye on everything going on in Turkmenistan....) There's a massive copy of 
the Ruhnama in this park that opens every day at 6 pm. I was informed by more than one Turkmen that this book was in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest electronic book. :) What you can demand be built for you when you're a dictator! Any random whim can become some poor engineer's nightmare.
Turkmen, what the last president/dictator named himself), which depict the writings in his book, Ruhnama. He wrote this book to explain the history/religion/everything about the Turkmen people, and mandated that everyone memorize it, including schoolkids (what fun!). There are copies in every hospital I've been to, in multiple languages. Not to mention the statues (usually gold) and massive portraits of the man hung everywhere. Talk about a cult of personality. This guy leaves Stalin in the dust. (There's a gold statue of him that rotates constantly in the center square so that he's always facing the sun. Popular opinion is that it's so that he can keep an eye on everything going on in Turkmenistan....) There's a massive copy of 
the Ruhnama in this park that opens every day at 6 pm. I was informed by more than one Turkmen that this book was in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest electronic book. :) What you can demand be built for you when you're a dictator! Any random whim can become some poor engineer's nightmare. Sorry, folks, but that's all I can manage for today. I'll come back and upload more this weekend.
And after a data day like today, all I have to say is that SPSS kicks STATA's ass.
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