Archive for the ‘Society’ Category
Posted on May 23, 2009 - by Venik
Swiss Humor
The IMD – a Swiss business college situated on the shore of Lake Geneva popular among Russian nouveau riche – recently published a glossy report ranking “competitiveness” of national economies. Reading the preamble to the report one may be very impressed by the advanced methodology used by IMD’s researchers. Everything looks very proper and scientific. [...]
Posted on May 19, 2009 - by Venik
Russia’s New Policy on Historical Revisionism
The Wall Street Journal is commenting on Russia’s new policy to counter attempts at historical revisionism (“Russia Frames New Policy on History“, by Andrew Osborne, WSJ, May 19, 2009). According to WSJ’s hand-picked collection of opinions, Russia is trying to move back to the Soviet practice of tightly managing the official, state-approved version of history [...]
Posted on May 10, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: 2009 V-Day Celebrations in Russia
WWII V-Day, traditionally celebrated in Russia on May 9, is the most significant holiday in the country, rivaled only by the New Year. The government upped the anty this year by throwing the biggest military parade since the Soviet days, with more troops, tanks, and aircraft. The next year’s parade, commemorating 65-th anniversary of history’s [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 4
The fourth and last part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 3
The third part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism movements. The [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 2
The second part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism movements. The [...]
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Venik
Photos: Russian and Soviet Posters, part 1
The first part of the gallery featuring commercial and propaganda posters from the Soviet days and the time of the Russian Empire. Political and advertisement posters were a highly developed form of art in Russia and the Soviet Union. My favorite period is definitely the 1890-1930 Russian modernism with its avant-garde and supermatism movements. The [...]
Posted on April 20, 2009 - by Venik
Loudicrous
It seems Lou Dobbs decided to join the choir of starry-eyed optimists who believe that the recession is over that the American economy will begin to recover any month now. Lou, what is the point of parading Nobel Prize-winning economists on your show if all you do is interrupt them with your idiotic ideas? I [...]
Posted on April 12, 2009 - by Venik
Is Sprint Reading Your E-mail?
We all know that Google has a huge database of your online searching and browsing interests. We also know that every credit card company is tracking your spending habits more diligently than you do. We even know that your Windows operating system comes pre-configured with a clandestine application called the WGA Notification tool, designed to [...]
Posted on April 11, 2009 - by Venik
Choose Your Justice
The New York Times recently ran a story about Telenor losing a $1.7 billion lawsuit in Russia. To summarize: Telenor – a Norwegian telecom firm – and Alfa Group – one of Russia’s largest private investment banks got into a squabble over VimpelCom (Beeline) – their joint telecom business in Ukraine. Alfa wanted to acquire [...]
Posted on March 21, 2009 - by Venik
The Jerks
The AIG bonus scandal is gaining momentum. According to the latest information, the total payout was $218 million and not $165 million, as was previously believed. Bonuses of at least $1 million each were paid to some 73 AIG executives, while four of them received bonuses in excess of $4 million. Of course, this is [...]
Posted on March 12, 2009 - by Venik
Madoff’s Confession
Since 1960s, Bernard Madoff’s investment scheme attracted thousands of wealthy clients primarily of Jewish descent. Madoff admitted defrauding his 4800 clients of $64.8 billion, which translates into a $13-million average investment for each account. Madoff’s victims were millionaires who often spent a great deal of time and money to get close to Bernard Madoff just [...]
Posted on February 20, 2009 - by Venik
Obama’s Idol
When in the course of human events, a legend becomes greater than the man, prick of the hollow needle of history helps let out stale air of misconceptions. The Great Emancipator might not have thought Negroes were actual men, but Honest Abe indeed was honest and consistent in his believes and statements to that end. [...]
Posted on February 18, 2009 - by Venik
Space lawyers
The recent collision between an in-service US-made Iridium 33 communications satellite launched by Russia in 1997 and a defunct Russian Strela-2M-class Kosmos-2251 communications satellite launched in 1993 created a stir among the small but hungry community of space lawyers in the US. There are about 8,000 man-made objects orbiting Earth. These include about 560 operational [...]
