Comments on "Archaeology - The Essential Guide to Our Human Past" by Paul Bahn, the editor, and 13 additional authors.
The editor, Paul Bahn, apparently wrote about 15 pages of this overwhelming 555 page book. But there are 13 other additional authors: 6 men and 7 women. It seems that the 7 women authors account for almost two thirds of the writing in this book. In fact, the 2 leading authors, Jane McIntosh and Georgina Muskett, together, account for almost one third of the writing in this book; that is, maybe over 180 pages. Of course, Paul Bahn, as the editor, did a very great deal of other work, too.
The book jacket states that, "Beginning deep in prehistory, it{the book} takes in all the archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day." And, "it takes the reader on a tour through time and around the globe to hundreds of sites of archaeological importance." Besides that, we learn about the most modern archaeological uses of "magnetometers, ground penetrating radars, < > 3D laser scanners, < > DNA analysis" and even satellites and other applied sciences.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Experimental Blog # 219
Quotations and notes from "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived" - The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
"Something on the order of 107 billion modern humans have existed, though this number depends on when exactly you start counting. < > The species Homo sapiens < > emerged a mere 300,000 years ago, as far as we know, in pockets in the east and north of Africa."
"The seven billion of us alive today are, according to all the evidence available to us, the last remaining group of human great apes from a set of at least four that existed 50,000 years ago. < > Earlier people had been loitering around the continent{Europe} for up to 2 million years. < > Homo erectus < > had great success leaving < > Africa and making it < > as far east as Java, and all over western Europe."
Mathematics and geneticists agree that, "... merely 600{???} years ago. Sometime at the end of the thirteenth century lived a man or woman from whom all Europeans could trace ancestry < > if we could document the total family tree of everyone alive back through 600 years, < > everyone European alive would be able to select a line that would cross everyone else's around the time of Richard II." Richard II lived from 1367 to 1400.??? 600 years ago would be 1417, which is in the 15th century. 1367 would be in the 14th century.
Beyond Europe it seems "that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive on Earth" today, no matter how remote or isolated they might be, lived somewhere in Asia and not more that 3,600 years ago.
"Something on the order of 107 billion modern humans have existed, though this number depends on when exactly you start counting. < > The species Homo sapiens < > emerged a mere 300,000 years ago, as far as we know, in pockets in the east and north of Africa."
"The seven billion of us alive today are, according to all the evidence available to us, the last remaining group of human great apes from a set of at least four that existed 50,000 years ago. < > Earlier people had been loitering around the continent{Europe} for up to 2 million years. < > Homo erectus < > had great success leaving < > Africa and making it < > as far east as Java, and all over western Europe."
Mathematics and geneticists agree that, "... merely 600{???} years ago. Sometime at the end of the thirteenth century lived a man or woman from whom all Europeans could trace ancestry < > if we could document the total family tree of everyone alive back through 600 years, < > everyone European alive would be able to select a line that would cross everyone else's around the time of Richard II." Richard II lived from 1367 to 1400.??? 600 years ago would be 1417, which is in the 15th century. 1367 would be in the 14th century.
Beyond Europe it seems "that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive on Earth" today, no matter how remote or isolated they might be, lived somewhere in Asia and not more that 3,600 years ago.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Experimental Blog # 218
Quotations from "The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside" - A Maverick of Electrical Science by Basil Mahon
"Oliver Heaviside, who lived from 1850 to 1925 < > founded much of the subject of electrical engineering as it is taught and practiced today: every textbook and every college course bears his stamp."
"I{Oliver Heaviside wrote} hold the view that it{that is, mathematics}is essentially an experimental science, like any other, and should be taught observationally, descriptively, and experimentally."
" ... someone had to bridge the gap between the world of the scholarly scientist and that of the practical-minded engineer."
"What gave Heaviside the power to bridge the great chasm was his unique approach to mathematics. To him, symbols and equations were not pale abstractions but components in a vivid picture of the physical world."
"The advance of electrical communications in the past hundred years is the greatest leap of knowledge in humankind's history. Radio, television, radar, cell phones, the Internet, satellite navigation: each has been turned from ambitious idea into everyday tool at incredible speed. With astounding skill and ingenuity, scientists and engineers have created hundreds of wonderful new devices and techniques ... < > On the face of it, we have left Heaviside way behind. But in one important sense it was Heaviside who made it all possible. By bridging what had been a great gulf between theory and practice, he brought advanced electrical science within reach of technologists."
"Oliver Heaviside, who lived from 1850 to 1925 < > founded much of the subject of electrical engineering as it is taught and practiced today: every textbook and every college course bears his stamp."
"I{Oliver Heaviside wrote} hold the view that it{that is, mathematics}is essentially an experimental science, like any other, and should be taught observationally, descriptively, and experimentally."
" ... someone had to bridge the gap between the world of the scholarly scientist and that of the practical-minded engineer."
"What gave Heaviside the power to bridge the great chasm was his unique approach to mathematics. To him, symbols and equations were not pale abstractions but components in a vivid picture of the physical world."
"The advance of electrical communications in the past hundred years is the greatest leap of knowledge in humankind's history. Radio, television, radar, cell phones, the Internet, satellite navigation: each has been turned from ambitious idea into everyday tool at incredible speed. With astounding skill and ingenuity, scientists and engineers have created hundreds of wonderful new devices and techniques ... < > On the face of it, we have left Heaviside way behind. But in one important sense it was Heaviside who made it all possible. By bridging what had been a great gulf between theory and practice, he brought advanced electrical science within reach of technologists."
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Experimental Blog # 217
Notes and quotations from "My European Family" - The First 54,000 Years by Karin Bojs
This book is a very up-to-date summary of the applications of the most recent advances in high resolution DNA analysis. Since the author, Karin Bojs, is not a scientific DNA researcher herself, she seems to be very able to give the views of all the contending scientists.
"Doubtless human beings have been singing and dancing since time immemorial, far longer than since the point when we first left the African continent."
" ...when modern humans in Europe interbred with Neanderthals, their descendants must have died out. Researchers can only see definite traces of interbreeding somewhere in the Middle East about 54,000 years ago, and further east in Asia."
However, it turns out that since Europeans have not quite 2% Neanderthal DNA; it is equivalent that they have a Neanderthal great-great-great-great grandfather, one of 32!, in their family tree. Apparently, the DNA has persisted at this level for about 54,000 years because it is useful to human life."
"Blue eyes and dark skin are an extremely rare combination today, but many Ice Age people seem to have had such an appearance. Blue eyes, dark hair, and dark skin seem to have been commonplace in much of Europe. < > it looks as if many people among Europe's original population of hunters had black hair and quite dark skin. < > as late as 8,000 - or even 5,000 - years ago, many European hunters still bore the original gene variants from Africa, meaning that they were probably quite dark-skinned."
Advanced DNA analysis has also been very useful, even revolutionary, in determining the times and places of the domestication of dogs, cats, horses, and other animals; and plants too.
Most of all in this book, DNA analysis is continuing to provide more detailed information of all kinds on the settlement of Europe: the first neolithic migrants, the first farmers, the Iron Age Indo-European language carriers, and others.
This book is a very up-to-date summary of the applications of the most recent advances in high resolution DNA analysis. Since the author, Karin Bojs, is not a scientific DNA researcher herself, she seems to be very able to give the views of all the contending scientists.
"Doubtless human beings have been singing and dancing since time immemorial, far longer than since the point when we first left the African continent."
" ...when modern humans in Europe interbred with Neanderthals, their descendants must have died out. Researchers can only see definite traces of interbreeding somewhere in the Middle East about 54,000 years ago, and further east in Asia."
However, it turns out that since Europeans have not quite 2% Neanderthal DNA; it is equivalent that they have a Neanderthal great-great-great-great grandfather, one of 32!, in their family tree. Apparently, the DNA has persisted at this level for about 54,000 years because it is useful to human life."
"Blue eyes and dark skin are an extremely rare combination today, but many Ice Age people seem to have had such an appearance. Blue eyes, dark hair, and dark skin seem to have been commonplace in much of Europe. < > it looks as if many people among Europe's original population of hunters had black hair and quite dark skin. < > as late as 8,000 - or even 5,000 - years ago, many European hunters still bore the original gene variants from Africa, meaning that they were probably quite dark-skinned."
Advanced DNA analysis has also been very useful, even revolutionary, in determining the times and places of the domestication of dogs, cats, horses, and other animals; and plants too.
Most of all in this book, DNA analysis is continuing to provide more detailed information of all kinds on the settlement of Europe: the first neolithic migrants, the first farmers, the Iron Age Indo-European language carriers, and others.
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Experimental Blog # 216
Quotations from "The Home That Was Our Country ' - A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek
"When authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were overthrown in 2011, all eyes turned to Syria as if it would be next. But despite both peaceful and armed opposition, the regime that had ruled Syria for over forty years remained entrenched."
"The Ottoman Empire had captured the region{greater Syria} in 1516. < > Greater Syria is ancient, and it was home to some of the world's earliest civilizations. < > Since the third millennium BCE, many empires, dynasties, and caliphates had ruled Greater Syria. They read like a greatest hits of the ancient, classical, medieval, and Islamic eras: the Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims{Umayyad, Abbasid, Mamluks}, Crusaders, and Mongols."
"When the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital, Constantinople{in World War I}, they began partitioning the territorial spoils according to agreements they had negotiated among themselves during the war. < > France would take what would eventually become Syria and Lebanon, and the United Kingdom grabbed Palestine{which included Jordan} and Iraq. In the separate Balfour Declaration{1917}, the United Kingdom had also encouraged the Zionists to seek a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
"Only in 1946, and with British intervention, did the French finally leave."
"With independence, Syrians were no longer unified by the pressing need to get rid of the French."
"The resulting movements and their leaders based their politics on ideology - whether that was socialism, nationalism, Islamism, or some combination."
"Alongside these political players was the military. < > the French had intentionally recruited for the new Syrian Army men with fewer opportunities, such as from the rural poor. They also sought minority men, assuming that they might be less prone to any kind of nationalism .."
"However, < > not all officers thought with one mind; among them, many were loyal to different ideological factions. Sometimes, that even meant being more loyal to military strongmen outside of Syria < > than to a class they were never part of inside Syria."
"...the ideologues became willing to work with the military in hopes of bringing about their envisioned changes. As might have been expected, eventually the men with guns could{and would} dump the philosophers. Thus, Syrians were introduced to the coup d'e'tat, the attempted coup d'e'tat, and the counter coup. While each coup that took place had different goals based on the philosophies of whoever was backing it, they all tended to follow a similar process."
"The Ba'ath Party was founded by two Syrians < > They named their party Ba'ath from the Arabic word for "resurrection" or "renaissance," and they envisioned a new society that transcended sectarian loyalties and the borders that foreign powers had imposed on the region."
"The most organized of the dissenters were the Islamists, which in Syria meant the Muslim Brotherhood. < > If the Muslim Brotherhood believed that Islam was both religion and state, the Ba'athists believed that religion belonged to God, while the country belonged to all{in theory}."
" ...on October 30, 1970, Hafez al-Assad staged the last coup in Syria, which he would maintain was not a coup but simply a "corrective movement."
"As much as Assad's authoritarian ways were resented, so were his Alawite roots. Anger against the oppressive regime was also driven by a class-based indignation that Syrian society's lowest rungs were now in charge."
Soon after the death of Hafez al-Assad on June 20, 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the new ruler of Syria.
"Tahrir means liberation, and Arab countries are full of Liberation plazas, boulevards, and buildings - though freedom has been in short supply in all of them."
"When authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were overthrown in 2011, all eyes turned to Syria as if it would be next. But despite both peaceful and armed opposition, the regime that had ruled Syria for over forty years remained entrenched."
"The Ottoman Empire had captured the region{greater Syria} in 1516. < > Greater Syria is ancient, and it was home to some of the world's earliest civilizations. < > Since the third millennium BCE, many empires, dynasties, and caliphates had ruled Greater Syria. They read like a greatest hits of the ancient, classical, medieval, and Islamic eras: the Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims{Umayyad, Abbasid, Mamluks}, Crusaders, and Mongols."
"When the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital, Constantinople{in World War I}, they began partitioning the territorial spoils according to agreements they had negotiated among themselves during the war. < > France would take what would eventually become Syria and Lebanon, and the United Kingdom grabbed Palestine{which included Jordan} and Iraq. In the separate Balfour Declaration{1917}, the United Kingdom had also encouraged the Zionists to seek a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
"Only in 1946, and with British intervention, did the French finally leave."
"With independence, Syrians were no longer unified by the pressing need to get rid of the French."
"The resulting movements and their leaders based their politics on ideology - whether that was socialism, nationalism, Islamism, or some combination."
"Alongside these political players was the military. < > the French had intentionally recruited for the new Syrian Army men with fewer opportunities, such as from the rural poor. They also sought minority men, assuming that they might be less prone to any kind of nationalism .."
"However, < > not all officers thought with one mind; among them, many were loyal to different ideological factions. Sometimes, that even meant being more loyal to military strongmen outside of Syria < > than to a class they were never part of inside Syria."
"...the ideologues became willing to work with the military in hopes of bringing about their envisioned changes. As might have been expected, eventually the men with guns could{and would} dump the philosophers. Thus, Syrians were introduced to the coup d'e'tat, the attempted coup d'e'tat, and the counter coup. While each coup that took place had different goals based on the philosophies of whoever was backing it, they all tended to follow a similar process."
"The Ba'ath Party was founded by two Syrians < > They named their party Ba'ath from the Arabic word for "resurrection" or "renaissance," and they envisioned a new society that transcended sectarian loyalties and the borders that foreign powers had imposed on the region."
"The most organized of the dissenters were the Islamists, which in Syria meant the Muslim Brotherhood. < > If the Muslim Brotherhood believed that Islam was both religion and state, the Ba'athists believed that religion belonged to God, while the country belonged to all{in theory}."
" ...on October 30, 1970, Hafez al-Assad staged the last coup in Syria, which he would maintain was not a coup but simply a "corrective movement."
"As much as Assad's authoritarian ways were resented, so were his Alawite roots. Anger against the oppressive regime was also driven by a class-based indignation that Syrian society's lowest rungs were now in charge."
Soon after the death of Hafez al-Assad on June 20, 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the new ruler of Syria.
"Tahrir means liberation, and Arab countries are full of Liberation plazas, boulevards, and buildings - though freedom has been in short supply in all of them."
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Experimental Blog # 215
Quotations from "The Great Departure - Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World" by Tara Zahra
"Between 55 and 58 million Europeans moved to North and South America in the period 1846-1940. < > The great departure from Eastern Europe was not unique: millions were on the move in other parts of the world as well. Between 48 and 52 million people, mostly from India and Southern China, moved to Southeast Asia and to islands in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific between 1846 and 1940. Another 46-51 million people left northeastern Asia and Russia for Manchuria, Siberia, Central Asia, and Japan."
"Well before the Nazi conquest of the East, a broad consensus had developed - among Western diplomats, Zionists, humanitarian organizations, and East European officials, as well as ordinary Jews desperate for a better life - that the "solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem" would entail the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. < > When the Nazis successfully made Jews disappear, under the pretext that they were being "relocated" to the distant East, it is hardly surprising that so few East Europeans protested: the notion of emigration as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" had long been established, and it helped make the departure of Jews palatable to their neighbors."
" "It must be frankly recognized that the larger Eastern European problem is basically a Jewish problem," he{President Franklin Roosevelt} maintained in January 1939."
"But in order to understand why so little was done to save Jewish refugees, even once the immediate menace to their lives was apparent, it is necessary to understand the logic of population politics in the 1930s, itself an outgrowth of decades of emigration policies. That logic envisioned the large-scale emigration of Jews as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" in Europe. Well before the Nazis occupied Eastern Europe, moreover, many Polish, Czech, Romanian, and Hungarian officials and citizens had been hoping {and planning} for the evacuation of Jews from their territory. It is therefore hardly surprising that there was so little organized protest when Hitler fulfilled these fantasies."
"Between 55 and 58 million Europeans moved to North and South America in the period 1846-1940. < > The great departure from Eastern Europe was not unique: millions were on the move in other parts of the world as well. Between 48 and 52 million people, mostly from India and Southern China, moved to Southeast Asia and to islands in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific between 1846 and 1940. Another 46-51 million people left northeastern Asia and Russia for Manchuria, Siberia, Central Asia, and Japan."
"Well before the Nazi conquest of the East, a broad consensus had developed - among Western diplomats, Zionists, humanitarian organizations, and East European officials, as well as ordinary Jews desperate for a better life - that the "solution" to the so-called "Jewish problem" would entail the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. < > When the Nazis successfully made Jews disappear, under the pretext that they were being "relocated" to the distant East, it is hardly surprising that so few East Europeans protested: the notion of emigration as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" had long been established, and it helped make the departure of Jews palatable to their neighbors."
" "It must be frankly recognized that the larger Eastern European problem is basically a Jewish problem," he{President Franklin Roosevelt} maintained in January 1939."
"But in order to understand why so little was done to save Jewish refugees, even once the immediate menace to their lives was apparent, it is necessary to understand the logic of population politics in the 1930s, itself an outgrowth of decades of emigration policies. That logic envisioned the large-scale emigration of Jews as a "humanitarian" solution to the "Jewish problem" in Europe. Well before the Nazis occupied Eastern Europe, moreover, many Polish, Czech, Romanian, and Hungarian officials and citizens had been hoping {and planning} for the evacuation of Jews from their territory. It is therefore hardly surprising that there was so little organized protest when Hitler fulfilled these fantasies."
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Experimental Blog # 214
Quotations from and comments on "Democracy - Stories from the Long Road to Freedom" by Condoleeza Rice
"Russia's own democratic transition at first appeared promising but ultimately failed entirely, replaced by Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule and expansionist foreign policy."
" ... as a child, I was part of another great awakening: the second founding of America, as the civil rights movement unfolded in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and finally expanded the meaning of "We the people" to encompass people like me."
"Look closely at the constituencies that support Turkey's Erdogan, Hungary's Orban, and Russia's Putin and you will see substantial similarities: older people, rural inhabitants, religiously pious people, and committed nationalists."
"Like most black Americans, they{the author's ancestors} were both slaves and slave owners. My great-great-grandmother Zina on my mother's side bore five children by different slave owners. She somehow managed to raise them all and keep them together as a family. My great-grandmother on my father's side, Julia Head, carried the name of the slave owner < > you could look at her and see that her bloodlines, like mine, clearly bore slavery's mark: My DNA is 50 percent African, and 40 percent European, and there is a mysterious 10 percent that is apparently Asian."
"There were so many martyrs to the cause of gaining equal rights, including my friend Denise McNair and three other little girls killed in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in September 1963."
"Vladimir Putin personifies Russia's struggle to find its footing. < > In the end, he rode the wave of the population's frustration and fear, pulling the country back to its authoritarian past."
" ... too many lost wars and internal revolt destroy tsarist rule and bring Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power."
"Can democracy ever take hold in this rough and vast land? < > Russia is not Mars and the Russians are not endowed with some unique, antidemocratic DNA.."
"And on December 25, 1991, the Hammer and Sickle, the flag < > was lowered from above the Kremlin for the last time. More than seventy years of communism ended quietly and was buried with few mourners and little fanfare."
"When Putin came to power in 2000, his support was remarkably broad < > His supporters spanned all age groups, income brackets, and levels of education. Today, his most ardent support comes from rural voters, older people, the military, and those middle-class citizens who are dependent on the state for their income."
"The annexation of Crimea propelled Putin to new highs. < > In their version of events, Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783; the idiot Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine as a gift for three hundred years of Russian-Ukrainian friendship in 1954 < > Vladimir Putin set all of that right. Crimea was once Russian, and it was Russian again."
"He presents himself as a strong, conservative ruler who has the backing of the Orthodox Church. He has the support of the salt-of-the-earth people - soldiers, workers, farmers. < > He has a security apparatus that enforces his arbitrary application of the law. And the motherland{ or Rodina, as Russians call it} is once again secure."
"The Russians and the Ukrainians are ethnically the same < > and they speak similar but not identical languages. Russians tend to overstate the links between the cultures and ignore the distinctiveness of Ukrainian national identity. Ukrainians resent this and sometimes overstate their uniqueness."
"As the Wehrmacht pushed east, Ukraine was devastated by the Nazi's occupation and extermination policies, which resulted in the deaths of five million Ukrainians{about one-eighth of the total population} and a majority of its one and a half million Jews."
"In Russia, rapid privatization was the culprit{of economic chaos}. Ukraine did the same, privatizing a large industrial base, but one that did not rival Moscow's for sophistication and talent. Still, a class of oligarchs found plenty to buy, and, as in Russia, these rich beneficiaries dotted the landscape in Kiev and across the country."
These quotations are not intended to be a coherent summary of the chapters on Russia or Ukraine. The author, Condoleeza Rice, also writes very informatively about Poland, Kenya, Columbia, the Middle East, and other countries{and America, too, of course}.
On the fourth from last page Condoleeza Rice says, "In the United States, a new president{she never mentions his name} was elected with absolutely no experience in government of any kind < > He has made clear what he thinks of America's political elites whatever their ideological stripe. They have ceased, he believes, to represent the American people - their aspirations and their fears."
"Russia's own democratic transition at first appeared promising but ultimately failed entirely, replaced by Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule and expansionist foreign policy."
" ... as a child, I was part of another great awakening: the second founding of America, as the civil rights movement unfolded in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and finally expanded the meaning of "We the people" to encompass people like me."
"Look closely at the constituencies that support Turkey's Erdogan, Hungary's Orban, and Russia's Putin and you will see substantial similarities: older people, rural inhabitants, religiously pious people, and committed nationalists."
"Like most black Americans, they{the author's ancestors} were both slaves and slave owners. My great-great-grandmother Zina on my mother's side bore five children by different slave owners. She somehow managed to raise them all and keep them together as a family. My great-grandmother on my father's side, Julia Head, carried the name of the slave owner < > you could look at her and see that her bloodlines, like mine, clearly bore slavery's mark: My DNA is 50 percent African, and 40 percent European, and there is a mysterious 10 percent that is apparently Asian."
"There were so many martyrs to the cause of gaining equal rights, including my friend Denise McNair and three other little girls killed in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in September 1963."
"Vladimir Putin personifies Russia's struggle to find its footing. < > In the end, he rode the wave of the population's frustration and fear, pulling the country back to its authoritarian past."
" ... too many lost wars and internal revolt destroy tsarist rule and bring Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power."
"Can democracy ever take hold in this rough and vast land? < > Russia is not Mars and the Russians are not endowed with some unique, antidemocratic DNA.."
"And on December 25, 1991, the Hammer and Sickle, the flag < > was lowered from above the Kremlin for the last time. More than seventy years of communism ended quietly and was buried with few mourners and little fanfare."
"When Putin came to power in 2000, his support was remarkably broad < > His supporters spanned all age groups, income brackets, and levels of education. Today, his most ardent support comes from rural voters, older people, the military, and those middle-class citizens who are dependent on the state for their income."
"The annexation of Crimea propelled Putin to new highs. < > In their version of events, Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783; the idiot Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine as a gift for three hundred years of Russian-Ukrainian friendship in 1954 < > Vladimir Putin set all of that right. Crimea was once Russian, and it was Russian again."
"He presents himself as a strong, conservative ruler who has the backing of the Orthodox Church. He has the support of the salt-of-the-earth people - soldiers, workers, farmers. < > He has a security apparatus that enforces his arbitrary application of the law. And the motherland{ or Rodina, as Russians call it} is once again secure."
"The Russians and the Ukrainians are ethnically the same < > and they speak similar but not identical languages. Russians tend to overstate the links between the cultures and ignore the distinctiveness of Ukrainian national identity. Ukrainians resent this and sometimes overstate their uniqueness."
"As the Wehrmacht pushed east, Ukraine was devastated by the Nazi's occupation and extermination policies, which resulted in the deaths of five million Ukrainians{about one-eighth of the total population} and a majority of its one and a half million Jews."
"In Russia, rapid privatization was the culprit{of economic chaos}. Ukraine did the same, privatizing a large industrial base, but one that did not rival Moscow's for sophistication and talent. Still, a class of oligarchs found plenty to buy, and, as in Russia, these rich beneficiaries dotted the landscape in Kiev and across the country."
These quotations are not intended to be a coherent summary of the chapters on Russia or Ukraine. The author, Condoleeza Rice, also writes very informatively about Poland, Kenya, Columbia, the Middle East, and other countries{and America, too, of course}.
On the fourth from last page Condoleeza Rice says, "In the United States, a new president{she never mentions his name} was elected with absolutely no experience in government of any kind < > He has made clear what he thinks of America's political elites whatever their ideological stripe. They have ceased, he believes, to represent the American people - their aspirations and their fears."
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Experimental Blog # 213
Quotations and comments from "My Way - A Muslim Woman's Journey" by Mona Siddiqui
"Islam has relatively fewer rituals than many religions, but God is remembered and invoked at all times in the life of the individual. The name Allah is mentioned so frequently in different phrases throughout the day that it is part of the daily vocabulary of many Muslims irrespective of their mother tongue."
"For me, the simplest and most potent Qur'anic prayer is 'O Lord increase me in knowledge'{Q20:114}. Seeking knowledge in all its diversity with all its risks is central to seeking God and understanding ourselves."
" ...the two most important relationships which emerge are those between the believer/believing community and God, and between men and women. < > The Qur'an is concerned with the moral dimensions of people's relationships, and here, gender and sexuality are pivotal to the dialectic between God, man and woman. The masculine and the feminine are connected in all kinds of ways, and sex and sexuality are essential to this connection."
"One of the modern Muslim thinkers, Hasan Askari, states that 'Islam is the only religion outside Christianity where Jesus is again really present." The author, Mona Siddiqui, goes on to quote about a page of 10 Qur'anic passages that seem to be all about Jesus.
A few pages later on the author quotes from Martin Luther. In part Martin Luther's opinion is, "Oh how overpowered in the flesh of women Muhammad is. In all his thoughts, words and deeds, he cannot speak nor do anything apart from this lust. It must always be flesh, flesh, flesh."
It is interesting to remember that Jesus seems never to have been married. Although Martin Luther did marry, they say, he did so sometime into middle age. However, Muhammad was married for a long time before he became a prophet; and then, it seems, he married again, more than once, and became the father of children. Muhammad was very involved with this most fundamental part of all human life.
"Islam has relatively fewer rituals than many religions, but God is remembered and invoked at all times in the life of the individual. The name Allah is mentioned so frequently in different phrases throughout the day that it is part of the daily vocabulary of many Muslims irrespective of their mother tongue."
"For me, the simplest and most potent Qur'anic prayer is 'O Lord increase me in knowledge'{Q20:114}. Seeking knowledge in all its diversity with all its risks is central to seeking God and understanding ourselves."
" ...the two most important relationships which emerge are those between the believer/believing community and God, and between men and women. < > The Qur'an is concerned with the moral dimensions of people's relationships, and here, gender and sexuality are pivotal to the dialectic between God, man and woman. The masculine and the feminine are connected in all kinds of ways, and sex and sexuality are essential to this connection."
"One of the modern Muslim thinkers, Hasan Askari, states that 'Islam is the only religion outside Christianity where Jesus is again really present." The author, Mona Siddiqui, goes on to quote about a page of 10 Qur'anic passages that seem to be all about Jesus.
A few pages later on the author quotes from Martin Luther. In part Martin Luther's opinion is, "Oh how overpowered in the flesh of women Muhammad is. In all his thoughts, words and deeds, he cannot speak nor do anything apart from this lust. It must always be flesh, flesh, flesh."
It is interesting to remember that Jesus seems never to have been married. Although Martin Luther did marry, they say, he did so sometime into middle age. However, Muhammad was married for a long time before he became a prophet; and then, it seems, he married again, more than once, and became the father of children. Muhammad was very involved with this most fundamental part of all human life.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Experimental Blog # 212
Quotations and notes from "Secondhand Time" - The Last of the Soviets - An Oral History by Svetlana Alexievich - Translated by Bela Shayevich
From the "Chronology: Russia After Stalin":
"OCTOBER 2003 ... The imprisonment of Khodorovsky and seizure of his assets marks the beginning of Vladimir Putin's efforts to transfer control of all major Russian industries to his political party, United Russia. This economic takeover, necessitating a great deal of corrupt maneuvering, also leads to the necessity of silencing criticism and dissent in the press."
"FEBRUARY - MAY 2014 ... After the flight from Ukraine of pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich, Russian forces take over Crimea, which then votes to join Russia in a referendum."
From the first chapter "Remarks From An Accomplice":
"We're paying our respects to the Soviet era."
"Communism had an insane plan: to remake the "old breed of man," ancient Adam. And it really worked . . . Perhaps it was communism's only achievement. Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: Homo sovieticus. < > I am this person. And so are my acquaintances, my closest friends, my parents. < > Homo sovieticus isn't just Russian, he's Belarussian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Kazakh. < > People who've come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity - we have our own lexicon, our own conceptions of good and evil, our heroes, our martyrs, We have a special relationship with death."
" ... I sought out people who had been permanently bound to the Soviet idea < > The state had become their entire cosmos, blocking out everything else, even their own lives. < > Today, people just want to live their own lives, they don't need some great idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it's unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we're built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. < > Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn't recognize their own slavery - they even liked being slaves."
"After perestroika < > We learned the history that they had been hiding from us ..."
"People read newspapers and magazines and sat in stunned silence. They were overcome with unspeakable horror. How were we supposed to live with this? Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well."
"Secondhand Time" was published in Russian in Moscow in 2013. This translation into English came out in 2016. Besides this, Svetlana Alexievich's book has been translated into Ukrainian, Chinese, French, Spanish, and other languages.
From the "Chronology: Russia After Stalin":
"OCTOBER 2003 ... The imprisonment of Khodorovsky and seizure of his assets marks the beginning of Vladimir Putin's efforts to transfer control of all major Russian industries to his political party, United Russia. This economic takeover, necessitating a great deal of corrupt maneuvering, also leads to the necessity of silencing criticism and dissent in the press."
"FEBRUARY - MAY 2014 ... After the flight from Ukraine of pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich, Russian forces take over Crimea, which then votes to join Russia in a referendum."
From the first chapter "Remarks From An Accomplice":
"We're paying our respects to the Soviet era."
"Communism had an insane plan: to remake the "old breed of man," ancient Adam. And it really worked . . . Perhaps it was communism's only achievement. Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: Homo sovieticus. < > I am this person. And so are my acquaintances, my closest friends, my parents. < > Homo sovieticus isn't just Russian, he's Belarussian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Kazakh. < > People who've come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity - we have our own lexicon, our own conceptions of good and evil, our heroes, our martyrs, We have a special relationship with death."
" ... I sought out people who had been permanently bound to the Soviet idea < > The state had become their entire cosmos, blocking out everything else, even their own lives. < > Today, people just want to live their own lives, they don't need some great idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it's unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we're built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. < > Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn't recognize their own slavery - they even liked being slaves."
"After perestroika < > We learned the history that they had been hiding from us ..."
"People read newspapers and magazines and sat in stunned silence. They were overcome with unspeakable horror. How were we supposed to live with this? Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well."
"Secondhand Time" was published in Russian in Moscow in 2013. This translation into English came out in 2016. Besides this, Svetlana Alexievich's book has been translated into Ukrainian, Chinese, French, Spanish, and other languages.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Experimental Blog # 211
Notes and quotations from "Black Square - Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine" by Sophie Pinkham
"...2013-14, when Ukraine had another revolution < > more spontaneous than the Orange Revolution a decade earlier, it became known simply as Maidan, for Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kiev's Independence Square, the site of mass protests that lasted for three months < > More than a hundred people were killed during the protests; some ten thousand died in the war that followed."
"His{Yushchenko's} prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was a Russian-speaking oligarch from Dnipropetrovsk, in south-central Ukraine. She was canny enough to polish up her Ukrainian and do her hair in phony wheat-gold braids, modeling her image on the Berehynia, a dangerous female water spirit rebranded as a mother goddess."!!
"Ukraine's bilingualism made it an easier place to learn Russian than Russia itself."
"In 1887 Habsburg geographers declared a village near Rakhiv the "geographical center of Europe."" Rakhiv is a town in the Carpathian Mountains in far southwestern Ukraine near the border with Romania. "The ethno-national identities that we take for granted today were largely the product of nineteenth-century nationalist movements that created "imagined communities," a sense of blood relation between people who had never met and who had dramatically different ways of life."
"Lviv was part of Poland from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where it was called Lemburg. < > In the nineteenth century Lemburg was mostly Polish, German, and Jewish, though the surrounding countryside was full of peasants who called themselves Ruthenians, and who were learning to call themselves Ukrainians. < > After World War I Lemburg became Lwo'w, a Polish city in which only one-sixth of the inhabitants were Ukrainians.
"During the Second World War the city went to the Soviets and then the Germans, becoming part of the Soviet Union after the war ended. It was renamed Lvov < > Lvov's Jews had been killed in concentration camps, mass shootings, or pogroms, and its Poles and Germans had been driven out, deported, or killed."
"When I saw the documentary All Things Ablaze, < > I realized that there were many versions of Maidan. < > As in reality, it isn't clear who started the violence, or who is fighting for what, exactly. It often seems that people may be fighting just for the sake of it."
"On May 11, 2014, the Donbas separatists held referenda < > Only Russia recognized them{the landslide votes in favor of independence} as legitimate. But as in Crimea, many people in Donetsk and Luhansk truly did want to distance themselves from Kiev's new government and to put themselves under Russian protection."
"Ukraine was trying hard to distance itself from the Soviet past. It declared May 8 "Victory in Europe" Day and replaced the Soviet term "Great Patriotic War" with "Second World War" in keeping with European practice."
"Shortly after Victory Day, Poroshenko signed new laws that attached criminal penalties to the display of Soviet and Nazi symbols in almost any context, and prohibited any denial of the "criminal character of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917-91 in Ukraine.""
"The new laws were an act of symbolic violence against the civilization in which many Ukrainians grew up, and for which millions of Ukrainians lost their lives while fighting the Nazis. < > Thousands of signs had to be changed and monuments removed, replaced with the heroes of the moment."
"...2013-14, when Ukraine had another revolution < > more spontaneous than the Orange Revolution a decade earlier, it became known simply as Maidan, for Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kiev's Independence Square, the site of mass protests that lasted for three months < > More than a hundred people were killed during the protests; some ten thousand died in the war that followed."
"His{Yushchenko's} prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was a Russian-speaking oligarch from Dnipropetrovsk, in south-central Ukraine. She was canny enough to polish up her Ukrainian and do her hair in phony wheat-gold braids, modeling her image on the Berehynia, a dangerous female water spirit rebranded as a mother goddess."!!
"Ukraine's bilingualism made it an easier place to learn Russian than Russia itself."
"In 1887 Habsburg geographers declared a village near Rakhiv the "geographical center of Europe."" Rakhiv is a town in the Carpathian Mountains in far southwestern Ukraine near the border with Romania. "The ethno-national identities that we take for granted today were largely the product of nineteenth-century nationalist movements that created "imagined communities," a sense of blood relation between people who had never met and who had dramatically different ways of life."
"Lviv was part of Poland from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where it was called Lemburg. < > In the nineteenth century Lemburg was mostly Polish, German, and Jewish, though the surrounding countryside was full of peasants who called themselves Ruthenians, and who were learning to call themselves Ukrainians. < > After World War I Lemburg became Lwo'w, a Polish city in which only one-sixth of the inhabitants were Ukrainians.
"During the Second World War the city went to the Soviets and then the Germans, becoming part of the Soviet Union after the war ended. It was renamed Lvov < > Lvov's Jews had been killed in concentration camps, mass shootings, or pogroms, and its Poles and Germans had been driven out, deported, or killed."
"When I saw the documentary All Things Ablaze, < > I realized that there were many versions of Maidan. < > As in reality, it isn't clear who started the violence, or who is fighting for what, exactly. It often seems that people may be fighting just for the sake of it."
"On May 11, 2014, the Donbas separatists held referenda < > Only Russia recognized them{the landslide votes in favor of independence} as legitimate. But as in Crimea, many people in Donetsk and Luhansk truly did want to distance themselves from Kiev's new government and to put themselves under Russian protection."
"Ukraine was trying hard to distance itself from the Soviet past. It declared May 8 "Victory in Europe" Day and replaced the Soviet term "Great Patriotic War" with "Second World War" in keeping with European practice."
"Shortly after Victory Day, Poroshenko signed new laws that attached criminal penalties to the display of Soviet and Nazi symbols in almost any context, and prohibited any denial of the "criminal character of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917-91 in Ukraine.""
"The new laws were an act of symbolic violence against the civilization in which many Ukrainians grew up, and for which millions of Ukrainians lost their lives while fighting the Nazis. < > Thousands of signs had to be changed and monuments removed, replaced with the heroes of the moment."
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Experimental Blog # 210
Notes and quotations from "Bears in the Streets - Three Journeys across a Changing Russia" by Lisa Dickey
The author, Lisa Dickey, first went to Moscow in 1988, where she lived at the American embassy compound for 7 months. It is interesting that her mother, who was married to an American military serviceman{the author's father}, took an arranged tour of Soviet cities in 1976. Then in 1994 Lisa Dickey moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, hoping to make her living as a writer.
This book is a highly informative account of three journeys that the author made in 1995, 2005, and 2015. The first two journeys she made with a partner, but the third journey she made by herself. All three times she went to the same places: Vladivostok, Birobidzhan, Chita, Ulan-Ude, Galtai, Baikal, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg; and, as much as possible, she met with the same people.
"In the late 1920s, < > Joseph Stalin decided to create a Jewish homeland in Russia. < > the government's decree designated land "near the Amur River in the Far East" < > the Soviet government in 1934 designated the area as the Jewish Autonomous Region, with Birobidzhan as its capital. < > by 1948 the region's Jewish population had swelled to 30,000. < > By the end of 1992, fewer than 5,000 Jews were left there. < > and "official figures showing just 1,700 Jews living here now ...", apparently in 2015.
"Lake Baikal < > holds one-fifth of the earth's freshwater - about the same amount found in all the Great Lakes put together, although they have eight times the surface area."
A conversation:
"Generally speaking, it's not good for Russia when a Democrat is president," Sergei told me. I asked whether they liked George W. Bush better, and both of them puckered again.
" So, which American president did you like, then?" I asked. "Assuming there were any."
"Ronald Reagan," they both said, to my amazement. The "Mr, Gorbachev, tear down this wall" president, the man who took credit for destroying the USSR - this is who they liked? "He stood for something," said Sergei. "He said what he believed. He wasn't sneaky."
The author, Lisa Dickey, first went to Moscow in 1988, where she lived at the American embassy compound for 7 months. It is interesting that her mother, who was married to an American military serviceman{the author's father}, took an arranged tour of Soviet cities in 1976. Then in 1994 Lisa Dickey moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, hoping to make her living as a writer.
This book is a highly informative account of three journeys that the author made in 1995, 2005, and 2015. The first two journeys she made with a partner, but the third journey she made by herself. All three times she went to the same places: Vladivostok, Birobidzhan, Chita, Ulan-Ude, Galtai, Baikal, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg; and, as much as possible, she met with the same people.
"In the late 1920s, < > Joseph Stalin decided to create a Jewish homeland in Russia. < > the government's decree designated land "near the Amur River in the Far East" < > the Soviet government in 1934 designated the area as the Jewish Autonomous Region, with Birobidzhan as its capital. < > by 1948 the region's Jewish population had swelled to 30,000. < > By the end of 1992, fewer than 5,000 Jews were left there. < > and "official figures showing just 1,700 Jews living here now ...", apparently in 2015.
"Lake Baikal < > holds one-fifth of the earth's freshwater - about the same amount found in all the Great Lakes put together, although they have eight times the surface area."
A conversation:
"Generally speaking, it's not good for Russia when a Democrat is president," Sergei told me. I asked whether they liked George W. Bush better, and both of them puckered again.
" So, which American president did you like, then?" I asked. "Assuming there were any."
"Ronald Reagan," they both said, to my amazement. The "Mr, Gorbachev, tear down this wall" president, the man who took credit for destroying the USSR - this is who they liked? "He stood for something," said Sergei. "He said what he believed. He wasn't sneaky."
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Experimental Blog # 209
Quotations and notes from "Neanderthal Man" - In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Paabo
"Since the nucleus has two copies of the genome - it contains about 6.4 billion nucleotide pairs. By comparison, the mitochondrial DNA is tiny, with a little over 16, 500 nucleotide pairs ..."
"We compared the Neanderthal mtDNA with that of 510 Europeans < > 478 Africans < > 494 Asians. The average number of differences from the mtDNAs of these people was also twenty-eight."
" ... the Neanderthal mtDNA did not trace back to this Mitochondrial Eve but went further back before it shared an ancestor with the mtDNAs of humans alive today."
".. the ancestor that the Neanderthal mtDNA shared with human mtDNAs lived about 500,000 years ago .."
The author describes at great length the constantly changing and improving methods and amazing machines that were used in these genetic researches; so that tasks that once required weeks or even months to accomplish could be done in one day or over night.
" .. some paleontologists claimed that they saw Neanderthal traits in the skeletons of early modern people in Europe."
"And eventually the Neanderthal DNA would spread throughout the population so everyone would have some proportion of it. < > it would not become further diluted but remain indefinitely in the population. Also, if mixing did happen, it likely didn't occur only once."
"We had 1.2 million nucleotides of Neanderthal DNA determined from Vindija < > about 400,000 < > from Neander Valley < > 300,000 < > from El Sidron ..."
"Nevertheless, the ancestors of people today and the ancestors of Neanderthals probably went their separate ways at least 300,000 years ago."
"Whenever an African and a non-African were compared, the Neanderthal matched the non-African at around 2 percent more SNPs than did the African. There did indeed seem to be a small but clearly discernible genetic contribution from Neanderthals to people outside Africa, no matter where they lived."
" ... about 2 percent of the DNA of people even in China comes from Neanderthals."
" ...a different analysis < > asked how far Europeans and Asians are toward being 100 percent Neanderthals. The answer varied between 1.3 and 2.7 percent."
"The dirty little secret of genomics is that we still know next to nothing about how a genome translates into the particularities of a living and breathing individual. < > I realized that we would not be able to directly identify the genetic underpinnings of the differences between Neanderthals and modern humans."
"Since the nucleus has two copies of the genome - it contains about 6.4 billion nucleotide pairs. By comparison, the mitochondrial DNA is tiny, with a little over 16, 500 nucleotide pairs ..."
"We compared the Neanderthal mtDNA with that of 510 Europeans < > 478 Africans < > 494 Asians. The average number of differences from the mtDNAs of these people was also twenty-eight."
" ... the Neanderthal mtDNA did not trace back to this Mitochondrial Eve but went further back before it shared an ancestor with the mtDNAs of humans alive today."
".. the ancestor that the Neanderthal mtDNA shared with human mtDNAs lived about 500,000 years ago .."
The author describes at great length the constantly changing and improving methods and amazing machines that were used in these genetic researches; so that tasks that once required weeks or even months to accomplish could be done in one day or over night.
" .. some paleontologists claimed that they saw Neanderthal traits in the skeletons of early modern people in Europe."
"And eventually the Neanderthal DNA would spread throughout the population so everyone would have some proportion of it. < > it would not become further diluted but remain indefinitely in the population. Also, if mixing did happen, it likely didn't occur only once."
"We had 1.2 million nucleotides of Neanderthal DNA determined from Vindija < > about 400,000 < > from Neander Valley < > 300,000 < > from El Sidron ..."
"Nevertheless, the ancestors of people today and the ancestors of Neanderthals probably went their separate ways at least 300,000 years ago."
"Whenever an African and a non-African were compared, the Neanderthal matched the non-African at around 2 percent more SNPs than did the African. There did indeed seem to be a small but clearly discernible genetic contribution from Neanderthals to people outside Africa, no matter where they lived."
" ... about 2 percent of the DNA of people even in China comes from Neanderthals."
" ...a different analysis < > asked how far Europeans and Asians are toward being 100 percent Neanderthals. The answer varied between 1.3 and 2.7 percent."
"The dirty little secret of genomics is that we still know next to nothing about how a genome translates into the particularities of a living and breathing individual. < > I realized that we would not be able to directly identify the genetic underpinnings of the differences between Neanderthals and modern humans."
Monday, January 30, 2017
Experimental Blog # 208
Comments and notes on "Love, or the Bond of Generations" - Stories about the Most Important by 15 authors.
This collection of 17 stories by 15 authors, 13 women and 2 men, ranges in length from about 3 pages to 38 pages. All the stories seem to be very recent; perhaps written in 2015.
In her story "One-eyed Zinka" Masha Traub writes about Zinaida Afanasyeva who, she says, "Simply had lived a very long time in this world and very well knew human nature - weak, cowardly, sinful and vain. Time passed, but people did not change."
The story by Dina Rubina, "Adam and Miriam", is told by a woman in Jerusalem. It is a story that begins with her survival as a young girl in western Russia during World War II. Because of its subject, it is the most difficult story to read in this book.
Larisa Wright's story is about an "Iron Character"; a female doctor who says that one of her patients died on the operating table because of her own fault. The author says to her, "They say that every doctor has their own graveyard." She is referring to such accidents.
Altogether these 17 stories give a very strong impression of Russia today, or at least Moscow, and how they have lived through so much since Stalinist times.
This collection of 17 stories by 15 authors, 13 women and 2 men, ranges in length from about 3 pages to 38 pages. All the stories seem to be very recent; perhaps written in 2015.
In her story "One-eyed Zinka" Masha Traub writes about Zinaida Afanasyeva who, she says, "Simply had lived a very long time in this world and very well knew human nature - weak, cowardly, sinful and vain. Time passed, but people did not change."
The story by Dina Rubina, "Adam and Miriam", is told by a woman in Jerusalem. It is a story that begins with her survival as a young girl in western Russia during World War II. Because of its subject, it is the most difficult story to read in this book.
Larisa Wright's story is about an "Iron Character"; a female doctor who says that one of her patients died on the operating table because of her own fault. The author says to her, "They say that every doctor has their own graveyard." She is referring to such accidents.
Altogether these 17 stories give a very strong impression of Russia today, or at least Moscow, and how they have lived through so much since Stalinist times.
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