Bookworm Room

I’m still happil figuring out all the bells and whistles on my new iPhone, so I’ll start off this Monday with a few quick picks:
No wonder Putin still dreams of the old Empire:  it turns out that, if the Soviet Union still existed, it would have left all the other countries int he dust when [...]

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Catherine the Great’s beloved Grigori Potemkin used to be her advance man as she toured Russia.  He become famous in history for building entirely false villages in the recently conquered Crimea to elevate the status of her new conquest:
Potemkin villages were purportedly fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to [...]

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There are basically two types of events at the Olympics:  those that are timed and those that are judged.  The problem with the latter events, of course, is that they are subject to human fallability, national loyalty, grudges, and out-and-out dishonesty.  I was therefore quite interested when my sister sent me to a sports blog [...]

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As you may recall, I was both impressed and dismayed by the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics.  I’ll quote the point I made that comes back again in this post:
They were gorgeous.  They also reminded me very strongly of the public spectacles that socialist countries have always loved:  vast numbers of people moving in [...]

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While I’m processing news, I just had to take a minute to discuss Michael Phelps — or, more accurately, Michael Phelps and how I’m watching the Olympics.
I first tuned into the Olympics in 1972, when I was 11.  In those days, and for many Olympics thereafter, the Olympics was a tight package of fair traditional [...]

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I got my filing finished today, which ate up the morning, but I have a little — a very little — time now to doodle around before I have 15 kids swarm my backyard for a party.  The problem is that, as always, one seems to lose as much as one gains when switching to [...]

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I watched most of the opening ceremonies last night.  They were gorgeous.  They also reminded me very strongly of the public spectacles that socialist countries have always loved:  vast numbers of people moving in tightly choregraphed formations.  It’s certainly impressive, but it’s also a vivid, visual reminder of the socialist state’s ability to subordinate peoples’ [...]

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We all know the story:  Adolf Hitler planned for the 1936 Olympics to showcase Aryan supremacy, only to have his little race-building effort destroyed by the great Jesse Owens.
Iran, apparently, isn’t taking any chances.  It’s decided that it simply cannot afford to risk having one of its athletes race against Jews — for (who knows?) [...]

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