GMail Art - Google explained with art to the Russians

A fun little advert/video that Saatchi Moscow created to turn more Russians on to Gmail.
There is also a fun video by Commoncraft about how Twitter works. It’s a great video - Commoncraft doesn’t say it’s an ad - but at times it sure feels like an ad.

Thanks to Art Threat

Иван Грозный = Ivan the Formidable (but terrible anyway)

Former russian rock star Piotor Mamonov will play the role of Ivan the Terrible. Mamonov, who starred in Pavel Lungin’s Ostrov (The Island) (2006) and Taxi Blues (1990) will represent the story of relations between Ivan the Terrible and Metropolitan Philipp.

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Ива́н четвёртый, Васи́льевич) (August 25, 1530, Moscow – March 18, 1584, Moscow) was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and was the first ruler of Russia to assume the title of tsar (or czar). His long reign saw the conquest of Tartary and Siberia and subsequent transformation of Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. This tsar is known in the Russian tradition as Ivan Grozny (Russian: Ива́н Гро́зный listen to the pronunciation here), which is traditionally translated into English as Ivan the Terrible. But the English word terrible is usually used to translate the Russian word grozny in Ivan's nickname, but the modern English usage of terrible, with a pejorative connotation of bad or evil, does not precisely represent the intended meaning. Grozny's meaning is closer to the original usage of terrible—inspiring fear or terror, dangerous (as in Old English in one's danger), formidable, threatening, or awesome. Perhaps a translation closer to the intended sense would be Ivan the Fearsome, or Ivan the Formidable.

The movie will be filmed in the ancient town of Suzdal (which in in former times it functioned as the capital of several Russian principalities and forms part of the Golden Ring) and Spaso-Efimievsky Monastery on River Nerl. Is expected to be released in spring 2009, acording to the blog Russian Film:

“Ivan the Terrible was a very contradictory person. He executed people at daytime and spent nights praying,” – Pavel Lungin says – “In any case, it is not going to be an entertaining story”. According to the film director, “Pyotr Mamonov has got that kernel, which might become a key to the portrayal of Ivan the Terrible”.

It will not be the firs film about Ivan The Terrible. Thre is a two-part film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship. The films were originally planned as part of a trilogy, but Eisenstein died before filming of the third part could be finished.

You can see the first part of the movie here!

In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, which may have caused a miscarriage. His son, also named Ivan, upon learning of this, engaged in a heated argument with his father, which resulted in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff, causing his son's (accidental) death. This event is depicted in the famous painting by Ilya Repin, Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on Friday, November 16, 1581 better known as Ivan the Terrible killing his son.

"The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn"

Five years on, and still we have not learnt, writes the british jorunalist Robert Fisk about the invasion of Irak in The Independent. He complains about "Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster". He is specially critic with is country, UK:

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

Pat Buchanan wrote not long ago: ""They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

We have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.

The Iraqi civilian death toll since the invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.

He was a dissident

His last television report on Channel One earlier this month was about the reconstruction of an Orthodox monastery in Abkhazia, a pro-Russian separatist region of Georgia, RIA Novosti news agency said. Today the body of Channel One correspondent Ilyas Shurpayev was discovered tby firefighters in his rented studio flat. A spokesman for the state-TV channel said a fire was apparently started there after the attack.A porter was quoted as saying Shurpayev had called down to her in the early hours to ask her to let two young men into the building.

More than a dozen journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, have been killed in contract-style killings in Russia since 2000. Hate attacks on members of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and former Soviet Central Asia are also common in Moscow.

Hours before his death, Shurpayev wrote a blog saying the owners of a Dagestan newspaper had banned his column and told its staff not to mention his name in publications. "Now I am a dissident!" was the title of the last entry in his web piece.

Shurpayev was born in the mostly Muslim Dagestan province. He had worked in Russia's North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan and Chechnya.

Critics say Russia has witnessed a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political freedoms during President Vladimir Putin's eight-year presidency. Top independent television stations have been shut down and print media have also experienced growing official pressure, Pravda writes.

A planet called Užupis

Houses in Užupio #2, originalmente cargada por aevarg.

Užupis is a district of Vilnius, located in the Old Town, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Its name means "on the other side of a river"; that river is the Vilna River which gave Vilnius its name. The region has been popular with artists for some time, and is often compared with Montmartre in Paris. Now the ruins there are becoming very expensive. "More expensive than an egg of a bishop", as we say in Spain. The district houses art galleries, artists' workshops, and popular cafés. The district declared itself an independent republic (the Republic of Užupis) in 199. Uzupis (in Polish: Zarzecze) is a place to love during the sunset. To walk during the daytime. And, just in case, to run at night.

The area unilaterally declared its independence on April Fool’s Day 1998, which is celebrated annually at the somewhat ramshackle Angel of Uzupis Statue. Is a bohemian place whose Constitution ends: "Don’t conquer. Don’t defend. Don’t surrender". Copies of the 41 articles of the Republic's constitution, in three languages, can be found affixed to a wall on Paupio street in the area. Some of these articles would be unremarkable in a constitution; for instance, Article 5 simply reads "Man has the right to individuality.". Others are more idiosyncratic. A typical example can be found in Articles 1 ("Man has the right to live by the River Vilnelė, while the River Vilnelė has the right to flow by man."), 12 ("A dog has the right to be a dog.") and 37 ("Man has the right to have no rights."), each of which makes an unusual apportionment of rights. There are a number of paired articles, such as Articles 16 ("Man has the right to be happy.") and 17 ("Man has the right to be unhappy.") which define man's right to either do or not do something, according to his desire.

Owen Lipsett, from Philadelphia wrote more about this corner of the world.

Congratulations to Ævar Guðmundsson, from Iceland, for this great photo. It was taken near a hostel were I slept in my last trip to Vilnius, a place I recomend.

The Volkovs: Take off in USSR and land in Russia. And now again...

Sergei Volkov hopes to do as well as his father, a highly decorated Soviet-era cosmonaut, when he lifts off in a Soyuz rocket April 8. Sergei Volkov is the son of Alexander Volkov, 59, a veteran cosmonaut who logged up 391 days in space on three separate space missions in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was awarded an Order of Lenin and named a Hero of the Soviet Union for his performance.
The Soviet Union broke up in 1991. At the time Volkov was orbiting Earth on Mir with Sergei K. Krikalev,"the last citizens of the USSR ". Having gone into orbit as Soviet citizens, they returned to Earth as Russian citizens.
When Sergei returns to Earth, space tourist Richard Garriott, son of astronaut Owen Garriott will be aboard the same spacecraft.

Dead or alive

A Russian-born American businessman disappeared under murky circumstances from his vacation house in Latvia. He is believed to be alive, the U.S. Embassy in the country said Wednesday to Moscow Times. Police began a massive search effort after a sport utility vehicle believed to belong to Rozhetskin was found abandoned in the city. Rozhetskin's private plane left Latvia in a hurry on Sunday, possibly without his consent, Latvian news agency Leta reported Wednesday, citing "unofficial information."

Мілена Куніс in Russia

^uk^ Mila Kunis in Russia, originalmente cargada por unclekuntz.

Мілена Маркoвна Куніс was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) to a Jewish family — Her parents moved to Los Angeles, California in 1991, Wikipedia says. Kunis learned English by watching 'The Price Is Right'; host Bob Barker spoke slowly enough for her to understand.She was cast in minor roles in children's programs and television commercials, appearing in a 1994 episode of Days of Our Lives as a young Hope Williams. She has been dating actor Macaulay Culkin for nearly six years. She is heterochromatic, which means her two eyes are different in color. One is blue while the other is green with a tint of brown.

Uncle Kuntz likes image manipulations. And so do I.

After Putin: Russia is doing better, russians not so good

Kommersant published its last article about the social, demographic, political, and other changes that Russia has underwent in the last eight years. They had 2 gidelines:

1. Not to discuss politics and ideology. Just find out whether he has done what he had promised.
2. To mention only those results which can be estimated in numbers taken from official statistics or from special research.

Acoordind to them, Russia now faces the same issues and tasks which it faced early in Putin’s presidency.

• President Putin who started speaking openly about the poverty issue in Russia. In this period There has appeared the so-called hereditary poverty. Its cause is not the general economic situation. It is due to certain families’ incapability of economic activity and their social degradation.
• Salaries of teachers and professors still make up 60-70 percent of Russia’s average salary, which makes professional degradation and corruption inevitable.
• Infant death rate reduced. Is still too high. And the birth rate has indeed increased: Russia’s birth rate fell to its minimum in 1999, long before the state’s measures to support childbirth could produce any effect.
• Russia’s influence was growing together with oil prices growth. Russia managed to assert itself as an independent great power, but its foreign policy achievements are much more modest.
• So, the state’s healthcare expenditures in the last eight years have grown – from 2.7 percent of GDP in 1999 to 3.5 percent in 2006, which is a growth by 76 percent in real terms. Yet, these expenditures do not seem to be very effective.

2 on a chair?

Dmitry Medvedev won the presidential election last weekend on a promise that he would govern hand in hand with Vladimir Putin in the interest of stability. For Alexander Osipovich, if the Medvedev-Putin duo succeeds, it will buck the trend in Russian history in which power-sharing deals have often led to intrigue and conflict.

One such period of collective leadership began 55 years ago Wednesday, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died of a stroke after nearly three decades of undisputed rule.

Several top officials stepped into the ensuing power vacuum, including the dreaded security chief, Lavrenty Beria, who gained the title of deputy prime minister, and Nikita Khrushchev, who became the top Communist Party official.

Their working relationship came to a dramatic end in June 1953 when Khrushchev called troops into a meeting of the Party leadership and had Beria arrested. Six months later, Beria was executed.

Last month, Putin said the Constitution gave significant powers to the prime minister, which was perceived as a sign that he planned to play a strong role under a Medvedev presidency.

And Medvedev? He did not debate, face critical TV advertising or criticize any aspect of the Putin administration.

Yes, it's not very easy to discern what's actually going on.

Making friends in Moscow

In Moscow, police detained dozens of activists attending an unauthorised protest over Russia's presidential election on Sunday., originalmente cargada por hakuitillidie.

just to remember the good times.