October 27, 2016

How to name your baby (and not get arrested)


How to name your baby (and not get arrested)

Babies and bankrolls

1. If you wanted to name your baby Dolphin, Lucifer,  Princess Daniella, or Ray of Happiness Summerset Ocean, you’re out of luck. A new bill proposes banning names containing numbers, ranks, abbreviations, and profanity. The reasoning: overly outlandish names could lead to bullying in school. Authorities have refused to issue birth certificates for strange names before – BOCh rVF 260602 (short for Biological Human Object born of Voronin-Frolova on June 26, 2002) has lived all 14 years of his life without identifying papers, for instance – but this would make it official.

2. How serious is “protest potential” in Russian universities? Perhaps more than before, as it’s been revealed that students and teachers across Russia were –unbeknownst to them – investigated for loyalty to the state. A think tank claimsto have found evidence of "destructive propaganda and anti-state ideas" in universities. Even with the Kremlin claiming no involvement, people are riled up enough that protest potential might get a boost.

3. Russia’s middle class has shrunk by 14 million people just since 2014 – and none of them left the middle class because they won the lottery. The decrease from about 61% to 51% of the middle-class population indicates the extent of the economic slump, with middle-income households bearing the brunt of financial stresses. And the spiral may continue, as the increase in wealth inequality could impact the central bank’s ability to steer inflation and manage the country’s finances.

In Odder News

Caption
  • If you don’t think Ivan IV (also known as “the Terrible) deserves a stone statue, Kansk has an alternate monument: a wooden stake dripping with blood-red paint.
  • Russia announces a fancy new spaceship, which may or may not be flown entirely by androids when it launches in 2021.

Quote of the Week 

“You’ve all become too civilized….You need to buy a yurt and move back to nature.”
—Dugar-Syuryun Oorzhak, a shaman and a healer, on the value of tradition in contemporary life.

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Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

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Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.
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Jews in Service to the Tsar

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The Samovar Murders

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Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
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93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
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The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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