Digenis.org

A professor at the University of London says that cows have regional accents.

Research conducted in the UK shows that hungry men prefer fuller women. As Kottke put it, “…if you’re hungry, you’re more likely to be attracted to someone who looks like they might know where some food is.”

Maciej Ceglowski went and imported a good deal of Pushkin’s early letters into his e-mail application. There are many easier ways to do this, and I’m sure that as a programmer he knows of them, but he says he did it this way because it gives him a lot of search and sort features that he wouldn’t have otherwise. He also zipped it up as an mbox file, so you can import them into your mail app as well. Fun.

But if you really want to search Pushkin, someone on SEELANGS pointed out the FEB-WEB DSE Pushkin site where you can conduct searches through a good deal of Pushkin’s works and correspondence. Great resource.

I just today listened to a Timothy Keller podcast from his session at the Reform and Resurge Conference. His talk was titled Doing Justice and in it he had the following to say about Jesus’ miracles:

You know, if Jesus Christ really wanted to prove that he had divine power with his miracles, he surely could have done a better job than that. We live in a culture in which spectacular special effects are done strictly to be spectacular. And therefore when we see Jesus doing miracles our first response, our first reaction, is to say, “Oh, I know why he as doing miracles. he was doing miracles to prove that he had power… to say, ‘look what I can do. See, I’m the Son of God, I can do these things.”

But honestly, to show forth power, the bread thing, is that all that spectacular? Not particularly… Feeding the hungry? As wonderful as it is to heal a cripple… That’s nice, but those of us who’ve got a little background in marketing today, we could come to Jesus as a consultant and say, “Look, if you’re trying to get your power across through miracles you could really do a much better job. We could brand you much better than you’re branding yourself. So for example, fly into the air and do some loops over the Sea of Galilee.” Couldn’t he have done that?

And they would have said, “Lord, you are truly the Son of God.” Or he could have said, “Look, nothing up my sleeve.” And suddenly a ball of fire appears. He could have done this; he stilled a hurricane, he could do this. So here’s this ball of fire and he says, “See those trees over there?” And he throws it into the trees and they incinerate and everybody would get down.

But Jesus’ miracles are never ever, ever, ever like that at all. Why not? Because the point of his miracles is never to show the naked fact of his power. The point of his miracles is always to show the redemptive purpose of his power. When you and I as modern people think about the miracles of Jesus, we think that it’s a suspension of the natural order. It’s not. God didn’t make the world originally to have blindness, leprosy, disease, death, poverty and injustice. He didn’t make it that way. These things aren’t natural. These things aren’t original. And therefore, when Jesus feeds the hungry, when Jesus heals the cripples, when Jesus raises the son of the poor widow, he is not suspending the natural order so much as he’s restoring it. The purpose of his miracles is to restore the natural order and the purpose of his miracles is to say, “I’m here to get justice done.”

I suppose I’ve never really thought about how Christ’s miracles aren’t the showstoppers that we might have made them if it were up to us. All of the Lord’s miracles, including calming the storm, were meant to show his great compassion, not his might.

The L.A. Times had an article last week about the evolving state of piracy in Russia. Though it mentions the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade estimate that over 50% of all consumer goods in Russia are pirated and how intellectual property rights are the major obstacle to Russia’s entry into the WTO, the focus of the piece is on some of the more amusing recent manifestations of forgery:

Always wanted to brag to your friends about your trip to Brazil, but couldn’t afford to go? No problem!

For $500, nobody will believe you weren’t sunning yourself last week on Copacabana Beach, just before you trekked through the Amazon rain forest and slept in a thatched hut. Hey! That’s you, arms outstretched like Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic, on top of Corcovado!

Persey Tours was barely keeping the bill collectors at bay before it started offering fake vacations last year. Now it’s selling 15 a month — providing ersatz ticket stubs, hotel receipts, photos with clients’ images superimposed on famous landmarks, a few souvenirs for living room shelves.

If the customer is an errant husband who wants his wife to believe he’s on a fishing trip, Persey offers not just photos of him on the river, but a cellphone with a distant number, a lodge that if anyone calls will swear the husband is checked in but not available, and a few dead fish on ice.

It reminds me of the short story by Philip K. Dick, We Can Remember it For You Wholesale, in which a company would sell fake vacations complete with ticket stubs, manipulated photographs, souvenirs and implanted memories, all with the guarantee that you’ll never figure out it’s not real. It was later adapted into the screenplay for Total Recall.

The article also briefly mentions the sale of forged university diplomas and terms papers, which I’ve written about earlier here and also here.

Several of the metro stations in Stockholm’s metro system have an interesting cave motif.

Lenta.ru and Novye Izvestiya report that Ulyanovsk, the birthcity of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is planning several projects in order to attract tourists to their historical city.

Sergei Morozov, governor of the Ulyanovsk region, originally proposed gathering old Lenin statues from all over Russia and creating an open-air museum not far from a Lenin-themed ski resort. However, some American mystery investors consider another idea more profitable and have decided to pour their capitalist money into a Lenin theme park.

A whole theme park devoted to Vladimir Iliyich? What will we do there, you ask?

??????? “??????????” ?????? ?????? ??????? ???????, ?? ??????? ?????? ???? ????? ????????? ???????????? ????????????. ??????????, ?????? ???????????? ????????, ??????, ????????, ?????????? ? ?????????????????? ??????? ??? ????????? ????????? ?????? ??????, ?????????????? ? ???????????????? ???????. ????? ?? ??????? ?? ????? ?????????? ????????? ?????, ???????? ???? ????????? ???????.

The centerpiece of Leninland will be a replica of Red Square on which there will be daily May Day Marches. Visitors to the park, in search of experiencing the exotic, can try their hand working at a Kolkhoz (ED: communist collective farm) or hear a talking statue of Lenin speak of the ideals of communism. Also, from time to time, park employees will play the role of secret agents and track down visitors the park.

Of course, the idea of a commercial amusement park with Lenin as its Mickey Mouse has plenty of people up in arms. Valery Perfilov, director of the Lenin Memorial Museum in Ulyanovsk, had this to say:

«???? ???? ?? ??????????? ???????????? ???????? ????????? ?????. ? ?????? ?????? ???????? ?????, ???? ?? ?????, ???????? ? ???????? ??????? ??????, ?????????, ??? ??… ???-?? ????? ???????????? ?????? ? ????? ???????????? ?????. ???? ????????? ???????? ????????????? ??? ??????».

What we’re talking about is an undisguised exploitation of the symbols of the soviet era. By all appearances, Vladimir Ilyich will be portrayed as some sort of scarecrow or bugaboo… These people have decided to use Lenin for purely commercial reasons; Leninland is being made exclusively for amusement.

As exciting (read with sarcasm) as this sounds, I highly doubt that an animatronic Lenin and communist farm will draw tourists 900 kilometres outside of Moscow. Especially when they can see the real Red Square and the real fantastic plastic Lenin in Moscow.

My guess is that this theme park will never happen.

I wish this existed when I was in university: tell Snacksby.com what you have left in your pantry and it will tell you what you can make. (via Paulo)