Almaty · Books · Moscow · Observations · Society · People

Akyn Jambul became famous in 1936 after the decade of Kazakh art in Moscow

The Kazakh poet Dzhambul won fame very late: he became known only in 1936, when he was already very old. It cannot be said that nothing had been heard of him before. Dzhambul Dzhabayev was surrounded by a large family and was, by all accounts, a distinguished akyn, the victor

Faith · Art · Madrid · Observations · People

Fra Angelico and his altarpiece Annunciations, the first now kept in the Prado

The Early Renaissance Italian painter Guido di Pietro, known as the "blessed angelic brother" Fra Angelico, has been canonised and is regarded as the patron saint of artists. He made his name through his altar paintings. Fra Angelico's most famous subject is the Annunciation to the

A crowned figure in blue and gold robes stands under an arch inscribed Ecclesia, with a group of people under a smaller arch on each side.

NB! · Faith · Art · Observations

Ecclesia with the clergy and the laity in a miniature beneath the image of Mother Nature

Right beneath the image of Mother Nature is Mother Church, Ecclesia, with the clergy on her right hand and the laity on her left. What more is there to say? Mother Nature and Mother Church are always side by side.

NB! · Observations

An Idea for a Start-Up

A deep rectangular stone-lined pool among the ruins of an ancient city, with shrub branches hanging over it.

NB! · Archaeology · Observations

Ancient fish fermentation pools and the export of fish sauce from Chersonesos

Many ancient port cities have rows of such deep basins. They were used to produce a paste of fermented fish. From here, from Chersonesos, fish sauce was shipped to many countries

NB! · Art · Observations

What marvellous hair Mary Magdalene has 💛

Archive · Observations · Science

The subtractive rule in Roman numerals and older variants of their notation

At times one comes across original formats of Roman numerals that differ from the familiar ones. /For the sake of clarity, in the explanation below I shall separate the orders of magnitude with full stops; this is permissible/ As regards the notation we are accustomed to, 1899 ought to be

NB! · Architecture · Observations

Russian window surrounds on an Italian garden pavilion at the Villa Garibaldi in Palermo, designed by the great nineteenth-century architect Giovanni Battista Filippo Basile

Observations · Mores · Society · Pop Culture

Yury Averbakh on living chess in the USSR of the 1950s and the OBKhSS intervention

I am often asked about my chess past. Above all it is a draughts past, strictly speaking, but I remember plenty of stories from the lives of chess players. I recall a tale told by the well-known Soviet chess official Yury Averbakh, who is now 95. He once shared

NB! · Observations · Nature · Humour

So many people against one wretched snake: hardly sporting

NB! · Archive · Observations · Humour

Found my hairstyle of the day on a nameless queen in a fourteenth-century manuscript, while a dim-witted gatekeeper leans out of his window, ready to pass comment on our hairdresser

NB! · Faith · Moscow · Museums · Observations

The reliquary of Mary of Egypt recalled the "Saint Louis" exhibition in the Patriarch's Palace of the Moscow Kremlin, to which a glass casket from the Crown of Thorns was brought, but without the Crown, that is, simply an empty bit of glass