Photographer farflungphotos describes: All the stations in Moscow’s metro are completely different from one another. Some of them are so opulent, with grand marble halls and chandeliers, all hidden away underground. People seemed to be using them as places just to hang out and meet up with friends. The trains were really frequent too, practically […] » about 100 words
Sure, Clinton played his sax on TV, Bush groped Angela Merkel, but Boris Yeltsin gave speeches drunk, tossed women into the water, danced on stage, and generally did all manner of laughable things. But he also turned back a hardline coup by jumping atop a tank and dragged Russia kicking and screaming toward democracy. Not […] » about 300 words
I’m not going to make this point well, but let me try. Now that we’ve recognized the long tail of violence and the “open source insurgency” and seen the Hezbollah missile threat, it’s hard not to imagine a growing threat from enemy or terrorist missiles. In short, as technology becomes cheaper, the weapons people can […] » about 400 words
Mark Nelson’s Pripyat series on flickr is full of the pictures of desolation that people seem to be looking for as we solemnly honor the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Google added high-resolution satellite photos of the area yesterday, and Pripyat.com offers both stories and photo galleries to help us remember. It is there […] » about 200 words
Twenty years ago today at 1:23:44, the Chernobyl NPP reactor number four exploded. Five thousand tons of lead, sand, and other materials were dropped on the resulting fire in an attempt to stop the spread of the radioactive cloud. The world learned of the accident when Western European nuclear facilities identified radiation anomalies and traced […] » about 300 words
Nearly 20 years after the initial events of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 26 1986, the story is still unfolding. This month's <a href="http://ngm.com/0604/">National Geographic Magazine</a> tells of the “<a href="http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/feature1/index.html">long shadow of Chernobyl</a>” -- grown children of the disaster now fear having their own children while <a href="http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/feature1/gallery2.html">some elderly residents return to their old homes</a> inside the 1,000 square mile, still contaminated “<a href="http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/feature1/map.html">exclusion zone</a>.” The print article seemed to offer hope, noting that even the pines of the “red forest” -- so called because they received so much radiation that it bleached the chlorophyl from them, and some say the trees actually glowed -- are beginning to grow back now. But the <a href="http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/sights_n_sounds/index.html">multimedia companion materials</a> tell a somewhat more morose tale. » about 800 words
| I regularly check the <a href="http://english.pravda.ru/">English language online edition</a> of <a href="http://pravda.ru/">Pravda</a> for laughs and sometimes for their take on US domestic affairs. But today's headline left me scratching my head. <a href="http://www.mille.org/scholarship/1000/AHR9.html">What calendar</a> are these people using, anyway? The <a href="http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/17-03-2006/77430-bush-0">headlined story</a> is offered without any context or explanation. As it turns out, author Ian Magnussen <a href="http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/77430-1/">really did mean</a> <a href="http://www.superbowl.com/history/recaps/game/sbxl">February 5th 2006</a>, not 2007 or later. Had it appeared two months ago it might have been called speculative fiction, though more likely seen as a crazy conspiracy theory. I just find it a bit scary. But still, why publish it now? » about 100 words
I don’t remember exactly why I found myself looking up Moscow‘s Ostankino Tower, a 1772 ft (540 m) tall radio-television tower. Compared to the world’s tallest buildings, it’s taller than all the greats: the Taipei 101, the Sears Tower, Empire State Building, though some people keep towers — even those with observation platforms — in […] » about 300 words
Don’t worry. I’m right on top of whatever happens in Pravda, the leading newspaper of the Russian Federation. Or, at least, I’m right on top of whatever they report in their English language version. The thing that had me choking on my onion and boursin cheese bagel this morning was the story headlined FBI arrests […] » about 300 words