- Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.—Gravity’s Rainbow
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Our Pledge
You will never see an ad here. If you want or need something, we trust you will be able to want or need it without us planting the urge or ache. You certainly do not need our help finding what your heart desires on the internet.- “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.”—H.G. Wells
More bicycle quotations »
Author Archives: WorldWideWeber
Hunters
Amid the guffaws and sarcasm surrounding the Vice President’s hunting mishap (which, in itself, was far from funny), some commentators and comedians have made the obvious connection between Cheney’s reckless hunting style and his approach to foreign policy. Tom Engelhardt … Continue reading
Afghanistan
Last Wednesday Moscow News somberly noted the 17th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the course of the ten-year war, more than 14,600 Soviet soldiers died and some 50,000 were wounded. Since the US entered Afghanistan in 2001, … Continue reading
Fours
Good grief! I hardly blog at all, and here I’ve been tagged. I’m it. And not the it from the eBay ads, just “it.” Okay, what the heck. Four of this and four of that—petits fours … pour vous et vous … Continue reading
Hamas
Vladimir Putin has invited Hamas leaders to Moscow, and the world press has dutifully reported the yowling from certain quarters of Israel and from their amen corner abroad (most particularly, in the US government and mainstream American media). As usual, there … Continue reading
Olympics
I’ll know this country has finally grown up when its TV announcers and commentators no longer refer to the US Olympic contingent as Team USA.
Hazing
A particularly vicious form of hazing had existed in the Soviet army for years. I remember friends in Moscow in the late ’80s desperately trying to get their draft-age son into an American university. It was the dedovshchina (дедовщина) they were … Continue reading
Blasphemy
Muslims in many locales are protesting and burning things because of some cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper. Wikipedia describes the origin of the controversy: The drawings, including a depiction of Muhammad with a bomb inside or under his turban, … Continue reading
Zvuki Mu
This morning I had a simple, nostalgic little thought: What ever happened to Звуки Му? Well, with the internet at my fingertips, it didn’t take long to discover that, far from going up in smoke as a flash in the … Continue reading
Konchalovsky
Last year the acclaimed Polish actor Daniel Olbrichsky turned sixty, and the mayor of Warsaw gave him a present he still hasn’t gotten over: he could pick any theater, any play, any actors, any director, Olbrichsky would play the lead, and … Continue reading
Ratings
Two Soviet-era literary giants went head-to-head on Russian television and battled to a draw. The miniseries based on Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle drew about the same number of viewers as The Golden Calf, based on a work by the … Continue reading
