Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
A nurse in South Dakota says some of her patients refuse to believe they are infected with Covid-19 until their dying breath – literally. Some would rather be told they had the flu, pneumonia, even lung cancer (!) – anything…
Since I wrote about ruddy shelducks appearing in Moscow ponds alongside mallards (the default waterfowl, so to say), I’ve learned of four other bird species recently spotted in the city. Mandarin ducks seem to have made it to Moscow from…
Last Friday, I wrote that election fraud isn’t all that easy to pull off even in a polity dominated by a single party. Even in Russia. Now think about a fiercely competitive environment such as a swing state, like Georgia,…
Mark Galeotti in the Moscow Times: its [the Kremlin’s] inability and seeming unwillingness to control this six-week war had become increasingly problematic, especially as Armenia… was suffering attacks even on its own territory. This was all the more serious given…
The latest from Armenia: Russian peacekeepers have departed for Nagorno-Karabakh after Moscow brokered a peace deal that sparked celebrations in Azerbaijan and protests in Armenia, where demonstrators briefly occupied government buildings. The truce, announced late on Monday night, calls for…
Looking at the list of heads of states who have congratulated Joe Biden on his win, and at the list of those who have refused to do so or kept silent, it’s pretty clear that Biden has emerged as the…
Up until recently, Putin’s regime committed fraud at every important election. It wasn’t that easy, even though the perpetrators were told they would never face prosecution. In fact, having independent or opposition party observers at polling stations all but closed…
As the US Republicans are preparing to steal the upcoming election, likely with the help of the handmaiden they have installed on the Supreme Court with such brazen haste, it’s probably worth taking a look at some of the reasons…
This is a low-resolution view of Moscow from the Yauzsky boulevard, less than half a mile from the building I discussed in these two posts. I’m partial to this shot because it reveals (I hope) so much about the city…
Once I had great – inflated – hopes for Trump. I was disappointed by Obama’s reluctance to actively resist the Kremlin’s aggression. Obama’s 2014 sanctions, I thought, were inadequate, even counterproductive. It would have been natural for Trump – it…
More pictures of the Dankman-Rusanova-Simakin campus building on the Ivanovskaya Hill in Moscow – from the well-preserved northern section on the left, rightwards to the dorm sections extending south, to the burned-out southern section. Someone tried to rebuild it but…
Dr. Bedřich Welfer is an episodic but memorable character in Jaroslav Hašek’s great novel, The Good Soldier Švejk. Welfer’s uncle left him a generous allowance in his will, enabling the lucky nephew to remain a student of medicine for as…