Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
I do not know Georgian so I can’t evaluate the quality of Joseph Dzhugashvili-Stalin’s youthful poems. I am no connoisseur of painting so I can’t tell if Hitler’s watercolors are any good. I have read a Russian translation of a…
The historian emeritus has recently published Downloading Democracy in The National Interest. I hope this article becomes required reading at least for all political bloggers. This is how it begins: The common addiction to general words or concepts tends to…
…As the kids grow up, though, the bespectacled nerds among them can improve their standing as they trade smarts for protection. Nearer and nearer draws the point of entry into an adult world where muscle power must yield to mental…
Scraps of Moscow is a blog by an expat in, well, Moscow — a blog I recommend both reading and looking at. The author’s photographs, some taken with a mobile phone camera, offer a vision of Moscow I wouldn’t mind…
Via Cella’s Reviews: Understanding Terror Networks by Marc Sageman. I started gathering terrorist biographies from various sources, mostly from the records of trials. The trial that took place in New York in 2001 in connection with the 1998 embassy bombing,…
Operas, one would think, provide a plenitude of potential brand names. Cavalleria Rusticana could be a line of ready-made clothing, the Cracker Barrel of the garment business; Mimi Pinson, a chain of home decor outlets; Amneris, exotic lingerie. But Das…
…is not the name of an extremist heavy metal band extolling the virtues of incestuous bonding and of the great race of the North. Wagner Love is a talented Brazilian forward who plays for the Russian soccer club CSKA. His…
No kidding. Judge for yourself: here’s an abstract of a paper in what’s called Cognitive Linguistics. Can sexist ideologies be reflected in inflectional classes? On the basis of a detailed discussion of the Russian a-declension, the present paper answers this…
“The timbre [Marjorie Lawrence’s] is clear and lustrous, penetrating the orchestral surges and complying with the energetic tempi that the conductor, Bodanzky, preferred.” (Paul Campion on Götterdämmerung.) “Bodanzky was much admired and, at the same time, greatly disliked by some.…
Final, or perhaps Fınal, is a brand of Turkish tea. Sphinx, among other things, is a brand of urinals. Even myopic me could read the conspicuously placed inscription. French loans in Turkish, such as asansör (pl. asansörleri) and kuaför, remind…
I have been linked by Colby Cosh, reputedly one of the two best Canadian conservative journalists. The other must be Mark Steyn, whom I cannot stand despite his wit. Loads of thanks, Colby. I have added Neeka’s Backlog to the…
Top right: America’s creaking democracy Putin’s grab for power Europe’s multi-speed economy Hong Kong’s missed opportunity Center (large print): Why Europe must say yes to Turkey […]