You are my sunshine

Havaya is the sun, and Elokim is the shield.
 — Chassidus

I’ll always love you and make you happy,
If you will only say the same.
But if you leave me and love another,
You’ll regret it all some day.

 — Johnny Cash

These pictures taken by an astrophotographer Alan Friedman had the sunlight reduced so much that we can see the surface of the sun itself more clearly. Click on the link above to see larger versions of the images.

Another picture of the space (source):

Literary reflex

Literate people raised in certain cultures respond instinctively to particular scenes or events of life by having similar scenes from their favorite books come to the surface of their memory.

For instance, the vast majority of people raised in the former Soviet Union upon seeing this picture (from the previous post):

(click on the image to see in full glory)

... will hear the following words in their mind (at least the first sentence):

The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower disappeared, the abyss descended from the sky and flooded the winged gods over the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean Palace with its loopholes, the bazaars, caravanserais, lanes, pools... Yerushalaim — the great city — vanished as if it had never existed in the world. Everything was devoured by the darkness, which frightened every living thing in Yerushalaim and round about. The strange cloud was swept from seaward towards the end of the day, the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan.

It was already heaving its belly over Bald Skull, where the executioners hastily stabbed the condemned men, it heaved itself over the temple of Yershalaim, crept in smoky streams down the temple hill, and flooded the Lower City. It poured through windows and drove people from the crooked streets into the houses. It was in no hurry to yield up its moisture and gave off only light. Each time the black smoky brew was ripped by fire, the great bulk of the temple with its glittering scaly roof flew up out of the pitch darkness. But the fire would instantly go out, and the temple would sink into the dark abyss. Time and again it grew out of it and fell back, and each time its collapse was accompanied by the thunder of catastrophe.

Other tremulous glimmers called out of the abyss the palace of Herod the Great, standing opposite the temple on the western hill, and its dread, eyeless golden statues flew up into the black sky, stretching their arms out to it. But again the heavenly fire would hide, and heavy claps of thunder would drive the golden idols into the darkness.

The downpour burst unexpectedly, and then the storm turned into a hurricane. In the very place where the procurator and the high priest had had their talk around noon, by the marble bench in the garden, with the sound of a cannon shot, a cypress snapped like a reed. Along with the watery spray and hail, broken-off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and sand were swept on to the balcony under the columns. The hurricane racked the garden.

At that time there was only one man under the columns, and that man was the procurator.

Dima Chatrov

I present to you the awesome craziness and crazy awesomeness that are the photographs from all over the world by Dima Chatrov. Click on the images to enlarge, but to see the full beauty of it, I suggest you go to his blog (and blog-roll it). Each post with a picture has a link under it with a picture in larger resolution.

More Petersburg

Thanks to e and street signs about not fishing or swimming.

Some more pictures of Peterburg. Click on the images to make smaller. I mean, to enlarge.

[source1; source 2]

Narcissism

Recently I mentioned to TRS that I hate Manhattan because it’s full of narcissistic people (which he found amusing, because we were discussing the quality of Manhattan in a different realm).

Here’s a great illustration of narcissism from Artemiy Lebedev. Look at this picture (click to enlarge):



In the picture is a monument to the victims of Golodomor, a famine in Ukraine (1932–1933) which some people say was orchestrated by Stalin, y"sh, as a genocide against Ukrainians. (Others say that it’s propaganda by Ukrainian nationalists, and there was a famine everywhere in the Soviet Union due to socialist economic policies. I don’t care at this point about who’s right and who’s wrong in this argument. I don’t care whether, even if it was a genocide, Ukrainian politicians are really using it as a tool to inspire anti-Russian feelings. I don’t care how any of that compares to the Holocaust. There was a famine. Millions of people died.)

Lebedev comments on the picture [slightly edited for language]:

People love nothing more in the world than themselves. That is why every person loves to have pictures of himself taken. So that nobody can accuse him of nasty narcissism, one takes a picture of himself next to something else, to take off the feeling of awkwardness. If there is nothing nearby, he will take a picture next to a branch of a tree, or a bush. If there is a famous building — yay, we are saved! A monument? Excellent, even better.

To take pictures of the famous sites without yourself is not interesting. There is enough of this junk on the postcards. And there is nothing to hold the guests’ attention with — they saw enough of the castles on the TV. This way you kill two birds with one stone [in the original: “two hares”] — show off yourself, and not just wherever.

That is why people come to a monument, stand like morons next to it, and make a special photo-taking face. Take :-) a :-) pic :-) ture :-) of :-) me :-)

Later they will show the album and say: “Here I am in Kiev”, showing off, in reality, themselves. Here I am, such a handsome guy, with the bags, with a haircut. And I don’t give a damn that next to me is standing tortured by terrible famine little poor Ukrainian girl.

Of course, the point is strengthened by the fact that the guy looks like a typical post-Soviet zhlob, with his moronic bags and his Eastern European chochmurte ponim. But I don’t know if I’d like it any more if it was a typical post-Soviet middle aged woman with her circular earrings and standard short haircut of the standard color. Or an American tourist showing off as many teeth as possible.

(By the way, I mostly care about his point on the monument. The rest I translated because I enjoy the cynicism, whether or not I have the same opinion. If you don’t care about strong language and would like to see Lebedev’s view of the human society, see this.)

Moscow subway

(click on the image to enlarge)

From this website (click on the links above the map to toggle between color, black-and-white and comparison regime).

[Via Ilya Birman's blog. He also has very cool interactive map of Chelyabinsk street-car/tram routes. Click within the square to magnify.]

Moscow subway is rather pretty, especially when compared to one in Brooklyn.

Jewish life in Poland

(am I the only one to whom this Galicianer Yid looks like a Jewish version of, lehavdil, Viggo Montersen?)

To see many beautiful photographs of Polish Jews, visit a photo collage by Bahaltener Pinkos.

By the way, although the official version is that my family came to Ukraine from Poland (settling in Shpola), my grandmother and her sisters speak in Galicianer accent of Yiddish (and so did my great-grandmother). My grandmother is very annoyed at my Lithuanian Yiddish, which I picked up from Lubavitchers (mixed with the influence of German I took in college).


(click on the images to enlarge)

What brings us together

Three participants of the beer summit, left to right, each thinking:

“A white man’s drink…”
“F—ing assholes. I wish I was drinking whiskey with my buddies, watching Sox…”
“Left side is my best photo angle…”

Fox News reports:

“I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart —” Obama said, adding: “…booze.”

Late-night thoughts on Gimmel Tamuz

It is warm outside, but in my mind and in my heart, this is what it feels the weather should be like tonight:


(Fontanka river; Petersburg, Russia)

To be followed by days of spring and summer, when the full strength of the sun and the moon will be revealed. But tonight it is like in the picture above.

Petersburg by Petrosian

(by A. Petrosian)

The only part of Russia I truly miss.

My birthplace: Petersburg, the Northern Capital of Russia, through the eyes of the photographer A. Petrosian.



The tall building close to the center is Peter-Paul Fortress, the place where Alter Rebbe was imprisoned in 1799 before being liberated on Yud-Tes Kislev.

If you liked these pictures, here are some more by the same photographer. The part of Russia I do not miss. At all.

The biggest question is: how can these two Russias co-exist?

Pictures from the war

From Alex Exler’s forum: New Gaza Operation in Pictures (if you don’t understand Russian, just scroll down; page numbers at the bottom).

Pages:
1 2 3 4 5

One year in fourty seconds

Super cool. Make sure to go to YouTube and watch it in HD.



Also, see this. After watching it, I surprisingly realized that I miss spring and summer a little. Maybe because winter in Boston is so boring (difference between winters in Boston and where I grew up reminds me of the difference in drinking habits of American and Russian students — Americans don’t drink regularly and then go and get completely drunk Friday night, sometimes ending up in ER; Russians, on the other hand, drink a lot regularly).

Signatures

Russian signatures are a form of folk art. Nobody simply signs his name. The signature has to be a form of Chinese calligraphy. Artemiy Lebedev asked his blog’s visitors to publish their passports’ signatures (of the cops who issued them the passports).

Some examples:


(The first time I see a signature with arrows — not to mention a spiral pin. “One can state safely”, says Levedev, “that the head of 2nd Moscow Police department was schizophrenic.”)

An arrow and a star:



And some samples from his readers:

























The main themes seem to be round signatures in Chinese-character style and repetitive lines symptomatic of orbitofrontal cortical damage (or obsessive-compulsive disorder).

London through eyes of a designer. Evolution of sign with finger

Russian designer Artemiy Lebedev posts a photo-reportage of his visit to London. As usually, most attention is devoted to garbage cans, traffic lights, mailboxes and light poles.

His previous adventures. His visit to North Korea should be looked at by any liberal, socialist or even just a proponent of bailouts. This is what you are supporting:

КНДР. I

КНДР. II

КНДР. III

КНДР. IV

КНДР. V

A people’s prison. Mamosh.

* * *

By the way, Evolution of Sign with Finger.

Compare Italian sign —



... and Red Army’s one —



... with that of Russian White Army —



Ah, the problems of Russian intelligentsia…

“It is difficult to shake off the feeling that White Army lost only because of its designers’ impotence,” says Lebedev.

* * *

Also, Lebedev pyramid. Not sure I agree that it applies to every community. Certainly some communities seem to consists mostly of upper part, while others — mostly of the lower part (take Russia, for example).

* * *

And a final thought: