The East · Archive · Books · Education · Nature
Illustrations from a copy of the "Book of the Wonders of the Age" of the 17th-18th century, held at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Marvellous fish illustrate the work of the Arab writer Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Qazwini, who lived in the 13th century.
Archaeology · Science · Education · Humour
Soviet researchers once asked themselves: could a Cro-Magnon have entered the Sorbonne? Recent events have given a perfectly definite answer to this rhetorical inquiry
Education · People · Saint Petersburg
At 13, Sergei Prokofiev became a student of the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire – and it was a real breakthrough! His talent was noticed by Alexander Glazunov, who himself suggested that the boy should enter the Conservatoire at once. And what proved decisive at the entrance examinations was the opinion of Nikolai
Archaeology · Observations · Science · Education
I have come across an interesting idea about a connection between how intensively the stone tools of early Homo sapiens were reworked and how much food their landscape had to offer. A group of archaeologists from Kiel University studied material from the sites of Florisbad and Lombard's Drift
The Golden Age · Art · Education · Society · People
A 64-year-old professor of photography at Oberlin College and his 56-year-old wife have been shot dead in Ohio. According to documents of the Oberlin Municipal Court, the investigation has charged the photographer's 31-year-old child from a previous marriage, Asia Nguyen-duy (born
The Golden Age · Archive · Books · Observations · Education
A wish for all children for the coming week: Beware, children, of idleness As of a bad habit. And read each day If only a single page. Literal translation A little verse by Alexander Kruglov from the endpaper of "My First Alphabet Book", published in 1890 by the
The East · Observations · Education · Society
The US Department of Defense has added the Confucius Institutes to its list of organisations that pose a threat to the country's national security. The Confucius Institutes are cultural centres attached to foreign universities, opened and funded since 2004 by the Chinese government. They teach the Chinese language,
Books · Education · Humour
O my dear reader, you have already noticed that one may be a great scholar and yet know nothing of the commonest phenomena, and on the strength of things known to the whole world indulge in the strangest of fancies. Ptolemaeus Philadelphus applied himself to the sciences and did not
The East · Aristocracy · Archive · Books · Education · People
The American writer Shen has written an essay about her great-great-great-grandfather Duanfang, a prominent Manchu dignitary of the Qing dynasty who founded a university, travelled to America, spoke out against foot-binding and collected ancient Chinese bronzes; his collection was considered one of the finest in China.
Education · Society · Paris · Reportage
They did not know how to avoid a robbery, but they used tear gas against us - reads one of the demonstrators' placards at the entrance to the Louvre. Today the student protests in Paris reached the Louvre, and I decided to go to the demonstration at the museum'
Archive · Moscow · Observations · Education · Society
Something tells me, on this day of splendid quotations from presidents, that in response to the call not to allow society to be divided into a thinking intellectual elite and people who will find themselves in the second or third rank in their level of intellectual development zealous executors, should
Coming Up · Moscow · Education · People
After Boris Yukhananov's death, the director Alexey German Jr. recalled that in his youth Yukhananov used to convince beautiful women that he was a prince from a faraway land, and the women believed him. The theatre critic Marina Davydova quoted a phrase with which Yukhananov himself explained his