Russian people know hats. When I was growing up® almost every Soviet citizen owned some variation of a fur hat. You could tell a person social status by the hat: the cheapest ones were made out of rabbit fur and more expensive ones were made out of fox, wolf, sable, mink, beaver (yeah, I said [...]

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I don’t have any kind of built-in emotional connection to Israel. To me it’s just another country. A country where I have relatives and friends, just like Argentina, Chile, Germany, Russia or Ukraine. In a way I am grateful that I didn’t end up there - seems like whole city blocks picked up and left [...]

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Reader Tracy asks in reference to one of my previous posts:
what we really wanna know is that dance!
We answer: Tracy, what you see is a traditional Russian folk dance. Although I personally never observed anyone dance that way at home without beforehand consuming “mass quantities” , it doesn’t mean it never happened. Maybe the fact [...]

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Obviously I am mailing it in for the last few days of the year. I spend entirely too much time and effort doing this for no particular reason and I am sure no one will notice if I slack off for a day or six.
Nothing makes your genitalia shrivel like a photo of people getting [...]

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For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.
Before:

After:

Caption reads:A party at the home of a so-called “typical Soviet worker”, the Dmitriev family. The father, a skilled metal worker, [...]

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When I was growing up® there was an old joke (which I may have told here before, but I only remember about three of these so I have to recycle): An American is walking around in Moscow and falls into an unmarked open manhole. He screams: “I can’t believe some idiot left a manhole open [...]

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55 years after his death there is still a controversy about Stalin’s role in the Russian history. His admirers celebrated his 129th birthday at his grave site in Moscow today. Others wished he was never born.
I’ve written about Stalin here.

Click on the photo for more.

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Some random photos of winter weather in Russia:

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Recent post by Scott Adams described his vision for the future of public transportation in the new economy.
Suppose the government enacted laws that made it legal for anyone to be a taxi driver in his own car without a special taxi license. And suppose the income was non-taxable. The result would be cheap taxis and [...]

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Secret plans to blow up the Bolshoi Theater and other Moscow landmarks if the Nazis occupied the city in 1941 went on display this week in an eye-opening exhibit on Soviet military counter-intelligence.
On display: Hitler’s fire-damaged Jacket was found in the bunker in 1945. (click on the image for more)

Another article on the subject.

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