I get so much spam trash, that today I decided to harvest a line or two from each spam I got (well, the PG or less ones) and shuffle them together into a found poem. Trash into art? Not quite. But something...

Saw an entry from Stanislav Mishin's Mat Rodina Blog, when it was posted to Johnson's List. A superb and well-argued summary of several things Russian business people need to attent to if they want to do business with the West. 

I just stumbled across this nice interview (July 07) of Victor Bogorad, who does the cartoons for our Survival Russian feature. Too bad the video is not archived online... 

Many have scoffed at Cindy McCain's defense of Alaska Governor (and GOP Veep candidate) Sarah Palin's foreign policy chops with the assertion that "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia." Scoff not. The truth is so more startling still.

This hilarious YouTube satire video by the Perm KVN group gives a bit of background on the recent Russian election, and how Medevedev was recruited for his role. The dubbing is superbly done. (All in Russian)...

In the 2002 film Oligarch, by Russian director Pavel Lungin, the main character predicts his own downfall, saying, "Russia is a bear. You think you are playing with it and it devours you."

Hilary Clinton stumbles over the name of the next president of Russia, and a Ukrainian TV host offers a pronunciation lesson.

In February 1582, the Catholic Church, in the person of Pope Gregory the thirteenth, decreed a new, more accurate calendar to replace the Julian calendar, which had been in use since 45 BC. The revision meant dropping 10 days off the year...

A look at the cats that guard one of the world's great museums.

This week, depressing news about divisions and birth rates can only really be counteracted with a smile over the Orthodox church’s new take on sex.

Granny Olya Shumakova had taken to her bed to die. But life, and death, are generally not simple.