Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

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Colour photographs from the Russia of 1909

October 16, 2013

This is from Kuriositas. A magnificent collection of colour photographs from a Russia of a century ago.

The Century Old Color Photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky

In 1909 a remarkable project was initiated by Russian photographer Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky. His mission was to record – in full and vibrant color – the vast and diverse Russian Empire. Here, with his story, is a selection of his amazing century old full color pictures. …

The colors are quite remarkable – a technique which Prokudin-Gorsky developed himself. However, his travels through the Russian Empire were never a fait accompli. They were the culmination of a long and arduous struggle. Thanks to the tenacity of the photographer we now have a record of times a century ago, so clear and vivid that one feels it is almost possible to jump in to the picture …….. Prokudin-Gorsky came from a long line of Russian nobles who mostly enjoyed careers in the Russian army. Prokudin-Gorsky had a more cerebral bent and he studied chemistry in Saint Petersburg at the Institute of Technology in the city. He also studied painting and music at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Chemistry and the Arts may not immediately spring to mind as a happy marriage of subjects to many, but Prokudin-Gorsky’s interest in both would come together eventually. In 1889, at the age of twenty six he travelled to Berlin to study Photochemistry at the Technical University of the German capitol. There he met and studied under Adolf Miethe who was experimenting with three color photography. ……. 

The process used involved a camera that would take a set of three photographs. These pictures would be monochrome but each picture would be taken using a filter of a different color. When all three monochrome pictures were projected (using light which had to be specifically colored) then the original color scene could be reconstructed. However, this took some time to take ….. 

Here are just a couple of a quite remarkable collection which spans the mighty and the miserable:

Prokudin-Gorsky 40 Emir of Bukhara

Prokudin-Gorsky 40 Emir of Bukhara

Prokudin-Gorsky 25 Hard labour at the Bakalskiy Mine

Prokudin-Gorsky 25 Hard labour at the Bakalskiy Mine

Prokudin-Gorsky is credited with the first ever colour photograph in Russia – a portrait of Leo Tolstoy – in 1908.

Prokudin-Gorsky L.N.Tolstoy 1908 Wikimedia

Prokudin-Gorsky L.N.Tolstoy 1908 Wikimedia

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Posted in Art, History, Russia | 1 Comment »

Are Obama / Kerry preparing a face-saving exit?

September 9, 2013

UPDATE!

Looks like my speculations  this morning may not be so far off the mark:

Washington Post: 

Syria ‘welcomes’ Russia proposal on chemical arms

========================================================================

It might just be wishful thinking on my part or it could be that Obama and Kerry are preparing a face-saving path to abandoning their strike on Syria rather than suffer a humiliating rejection in the the US House of Representatives.

For the first time that I have noticed, Kerry is now “offering” Assad a way to avoid a strike – by giving up all his chemical weapons. I could be mistaken but I perceive the beginnings of a change in Kerry’s strident tone. The rhetoric for a strike from Kerry and Obama is not letting up – but it’s the first time that a possibility of a strike not happening has been mentioned. Of course if Congress and the Senate back Obama then there will be no need to back down and the exit path will become unnecessary. I also noted some US voices suggesting that Obama could postpone any vote in Congress until after some – so far – undefined moves in the UN as being advocated by the EU and other countries (including Russia). Putin for his part has also indicated that if the UN were shown the evidence and concurred then he would also support some – as yet unspecified – UN action against Syria.

Of course Assad would not/could not just give up his chemical weapons and certainly not to the US. But it is not unthinkable that he may be willing to put them under the control of his Russian allies. So if a suitable “formula” is evolved where the Russians perhaps “take charge” of Assad’s chemical weapons or in some other way secure their “safe-keeping” then Kerry and Obama could claim that their objective of preventing any further such attacks has been achieved. And if in addition the Russians are acting – or seen to be acting – on behalf of the UN in arranging such a scenario it would not only give Assad a way of saving face but also give the US the possibility to claim that Assad has conceded the supremacy of the UN. More importantly if such a scenario were being arranged it would give Obama and Kerry a “reason” for waiting with the vote in the House and for waiting with the strike.

If , in spite of the “red line having been crossed”, a US strike can be avoided by Assad ceding control of his chemical weapons then it seems to me to be something within the realm of negotiation. Especially when the benefits to the US of a very limited strike are not very evident. The benefits of such a strike  may mainly accrue to Al Qaida.

The key remains the US Congress. All “face saving” only becomes necessary and only comes into play if Obama expects to lose a vote in the House even after (and if) he has won a vote in the Senate. The next few days will tell if Obama’s rhetoric is holding sway in the House or whether he will need to use his exit strategy.

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Russia, Syria, US | 1 Comment »

Officials at World Athletics championship do not impress

August 13, 2013

I have just been watching the World Athletic Championships from Moscow on TV and need to have a little rant at bumbling officialdom.

I am not sure if this is to the account of the IAAF or to the Russian organisers but the officials at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow have been less than impressive.

  1. Idiot officials at the winning line who try to shoo away decathlon and heptathlon athletes who have collapsed on the track after completing their grueling final runs in the 1500m and 800m respectively.
  2. The utter lack of interest from idiot officials who merely watched as an athlete (Diego Ferrin high jump) was writhing in pain from a pulled muscle (hamstring?).
  3. The apparent lack of medical facilities  around the stadium which takes many minutes for assistance to come to injured or physically drained athletes (Hansle Parchment, Diego Ferrin)
  4. Idiot officials who try to keep winning athletes from celebrating and approaching their supporters.
  5. Idiot officials who are unable to ensure that the athletes competing in the 20km walk follow the designated route and where the position of the winning line is obscure.

I’m sure many of the officials are just temporary help drafted in off the streets for the championships but they do remind me of the security staff at airports – instructed to follow some rigid protocol and not – in any circumstances – to use their brains or their discretion.

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US and Russia engage in the “disappointment” wars

August 8, 2013

“Disappointed” is the new in-word in diplomatic relations particularly between the US and Russia.

Everybody seems to be disappointed with everybody else.

With this amount of “disappointment” clearly going around there is a real risk of a “depression” setting in.

But at least its better than a “cold” war and a long, long way from a fire-fight”

” Very disappointed”. “Seriously disappointed”. “Deeply disappointed”

The diplomatic winner is the one who can express greater disappointment than the other.

  1. It’s Time to Admit Obama is a Disappointment 
  2. Despite ‘disappointment,’ Obama will travel to Russia
  3. Barack Obama ‘disappointed’ with Russia over Edward Snowden and ‘Cold War mentality’ 
  4.  Russia “disappointed” bilateral talks with US cancelled 
  5.  U.S. ‘deeply disappointed’ at Russian opposition leader conviction 
  6.  US disappointed by Russian court verdict in Magnitsky case 
  7. U.S. Government ‘Disappointed’ Hong Kong Let Snowden Leave 
  8. U.S. ‘very disappointed’ by Russian ban on U.S. meat. 
  9. Putin ‘Disappointed’ by Crushing Hockey Defeat to U.S. 
  10. Moscow Disappointed by EU Ending Syria Arms Embargo – Putin 
  11. U.N. chief “disappointed” by Assad’s speech on Syria crisis
  12. Parents disappointed in Russian adoption ban 
  13. Russia disappointed with US refusal to extradite Viktor Bout 
  14. Russia “disappointed” with UN Syria draft  
  15. US ‘disappointed’ that Britain not to extradite hacker
  16. EU, U.S. Disappointed by Ukrainian Ex-Minister’s Trial 
  17. Pussy Riot members jailed; Obama disappointed 
  18. US expresses “deep disappointment” over Hungary’s transfer of Azeri murderer
  19. Palestinians disappointed with Obama
  20. Netanyahu expresses ‘disappointment’ with Abbas’ UN speech

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Russia, US | Comments Off on US and Russia engage in the “disappointment” wars

Snowden leaves Moscow airport

August 1, 2013

Russia’s interfax news agency reported  at 1354 CET that Snowden had now left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and crossed the Russian “border”.

Interfax: 

MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) – The Federal Migration Service has issued former CIA employee Edward Snowden with a certificate, which allows him to leave the Sheremetyevo airport’s transit zone, lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Interfax on Thursday.

“I have just delivered documents from the Russian Federal Migration Service. He can now leave the transit zone,” said the lawyer, who is rendering legal services to the U.S. whistleblower.

The saga continues.

I suppose he will in due course end up in Latin America.

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Herrings galore in l’affaire Snowden

June 27, 2013

Some level of state surveillance is no doubt necessary though it has probably gone too far in the US. To have blanket eavesdropping and entrapment and agents provocateur is not so unlike the Stasi or the KGB. I am not too concerned if the NSA has been reading my emails – much good it may do them! I have no strong opinions as to whether Snowden is a hero or a villain but I would be more than a little surprised if he has been sitting quietly in the transit lounge of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for the last 3 days.

I am pretty sure that all the reports coming out about his possible movements or non-movements are largely disinformation. I am very suspicious when Foreign Ministers and Heads of State make statements about his whereabouts or where he is not. I suspect that technically none of them have lied outright – but I am fairly certain that  they know much more than they are letting on. The lone individual bravely evading the far-flung resources of the most powerful nation in the world is the stuff of Baroness Orczy and of urban legends to come.

So my guesses as to where he might be are:

  1. He is being debriefed by Russia. It would be child’s play for the Russians to have whisked him into a private and  “safe part” of the transit area and to return him to the public area after a suitable period. I see no reason for the official Russian line to have been jeopardised since he would not technically have gone through immigration control. When Ecuador says they need time to consider his asylum request, I wonder if it is the Russians who need time to debrief him – willingly or unwillingly.
  2. He is in the transit area of another Russian airport and to get to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport – for example – would have been easy for the Russians to arrange.
  3. The trip to Havana was just for disinformation and he actually flew to Hanoi and is now hidden within the entourage surrounding Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino.
  4. He has already reached and is holed up in Havana (and the Cubans therefore are not saying anything), or
  5. He is in the transit area of a country friendly to Russia (Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan….)

With the heavy US presence in Reykjavik, it is unlikely that Iceland was ever a serious destination.

Given the resources that the US and the world’s media must be bringing to bear to find him, it can only be a matter of time …

We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Yankies seek him everywhere.

But the US establishment has some egg on its face. John Kerry’s blustering against China and Russia and now threats of a trade war against Ecuador come across as heavy-handed and hypocritical. It is only Snowden who gains and Obama and Kerry who lose in the PR stakes for every day that he continues to remain undiscovered.

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Thank goodness for the Russians

June 12, 2013

It isn’t often that the Russian position is to be admired and even in this case they are doing – in my opinion – the right thing but for the wrong reasons. Anything which blocks the ridiculous UN Panel on Climate Change and its pointless and wasteful exercise in Bonn is welcome. Of course the Russians are only really concerned about the value of the Carbon credits they have stock-piled. Credits they received  for shutting down inefficient industries as being environmental “good guys” but where these were going to be shut down anyway.

This from AFP:

A key panel at UN climate talks in Bonn went into deep freeze on Tuesday as Russia ignored pleas to end a procedural protest, according to a webcast of the meeting and sources there. Supported by Belarus and Ukraine, Russia refused to let work start in the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), an important technical committee in the climate talks, more than a week after the 12-day negotiations began.

Observers said if the three countries did not back down, the future of the entire UN process to fight greenhouse-gas emissions would be at risk. “It’s a most unfortunate situation,” said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as delegates admitted the panel will most likely have achieved nothing by Friday’s close.

The Russians are incensed by what happened at the UNFCCC’s last big annual meeting, held in Doha, Qatar, last December. They complain they were ignored by the conference’s Qatari chairman, who gavelled through a deal that extended the Kyoto Protocol.

The decision at Doha hamstrung Moscow’s planned sale of 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon credits that Russia had amassed under the first round of the Kyoto Protocol.

It had gained these credits not through emissions reductions efforts, but after market pressure forced the closure of CO2-spewing factories following the fall of the Soviet Union.

……..

“If these three countries maintain their positions until 2015, they could wreck the entire process,” one observer warned AFP.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Politics | 1 Comment »

Carbon dioxide warming effect is just a “marketing trick”

April 11, 2013

P Gosselin of NoTricksZone reports on this Article in the Voice of Russia a month ago – but which got little attention from the global warming orthodoxy and the politically correct media. Not that everything from Russia makes sense but in this case I think they are far closer to reality than most others. I think they pay sufficient attention to solar effects and the oceans and are not easily diverted by the fanciful demonisation of carbon dioxide:

The world facing an ice age (in German)

Gosselin writes: The article writes that Russian scientists are predicting that “a little ice age will begin in 2014“. The article adds:

“They reject the claim of global warming and call it a marketing trick.”

When it comes to warming and the man-made CO2 greenhouse gas effect, the Voice of Russia writes that “Russian scientist Vladimir Bashkin is categorically in disagreement. He claims that the climatic changes are characterized by cycles and have nothing to do in any way with the activities of man.”

Together with his colleague Rauf Galiullin from the Institute for Fundamental Problems of Biology of the Russian Academy Of Science, he demonstrates that the current warming is a reverberation of the planet coming out of the ‘Little Ice Age’ and that in the near future, of course measured on geological timescales, we are at the threshold of an ice age.”

The Voice of Russia quotes Bashkin:

“The periods of a cooling and a warming follow each other at 30-40 year intervals. In Russia for example there was a warming in the 1930s, a time when seafaring at the Northern Sea Route was possible, then a cooling followed during the wartime years, and then warming followed in the 1970s, etc.. The current warming period ended at the end of the millennium.“

Note here that the Russian scientists confirm that the Arctic sea ice extent was also low in the 1930s. This tells us that nothing is really so unusual in the Arctic today.

The Voice of Russia then explains that the cooling is related to ”a change in solar activity” and that this “also has an impact on our climate“. Bashkin adds:

“The scientific research of the climate of the past geological epoch causes us to doubt the motives behind the demands of the IPCC. […] The greenhouse effect that is connected with the anthropogenic factor is about 4 or 5 percent of that from natural emissions. The eruption of a volcano produces more. A real contribution to the greenhouse effect is made by normal water vapor. Thank God nobody has gotten the idea that this too needs to be regulated.“

The Voice of Russia continues: “The world’s oceans contain 60 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. When the temperature of the planet rises, it begins to be quickly released. This leads to an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and not vice versa. A global warming that so many are talking about is not so much a scientific problem, rather it is much more a marketing trick. […] We do not have global warming ahead of us, rather we have global cooling, the Russian scientist claims. However, we do not need to fear the cooling because it will take place gradually and won’t be noticeable until the middle of the 21st century.”

The scientists add that part of the motive behind the “marketing trick” is to manipulate the market for fossil fuels.

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Could Russian money from Cyprus be fuelling the Bitcoin?

April 7, 2013

In the last 6 months the value of the “virtual” currency the Bitcoin has jumped from $9.7 to $149. It started increasing significantly in February and really  took off in the middle of March this year. It seems too much of a coincidence that the worries (and the rumours) about the Cyprus banks followed the same time-table.

Bitcoin value in US Dollars

Bitcoin value in US Dollars

It is thought that much of the Russian money stashed away in Cyprus – especially the “black” money – left Cyprus before all the restrictions came into effect. That money must have gone somewhere and that somewhere would need not only to be “remote” but which also could provide the possibility of some “laundering” when the money was moved again. The Bitcoin perhaps could provide such a haven. If the bubble bursts in the next few months it could well indicate that the Russian money has moved again, well “laundered” and probably at a profit.

The bitcoin logo

At current values the Bitcoin “hoard” – restricted to be 21 million Bitcoins – represents a little over $3 billion.

The Telegraph reports that

Russia is the country most interested in Bitcoin, internet searches show, after a week in which the controversial electronic currency reached a record high and led to talk of a bubble.

The virtual currency, which allows users to circumvent the banks, burst into the mainstream as the price of a Bitcoin rose to $147 (£96) against the dollar, from under $20 at the start of this year.

Russia is the country now performing the most internet searches for the term “Bitcoin”, according to Google figures, followed by Estonia, the United States and Finland. The UK is not in the top 10.

The data gave weight to the belief that the recent price spike was driven by the crisis in Cyprus, as cuts to depositors’ savings planned under its bail-out further undermined faith in the global banking system.

Russian businesses were thought to account for €19bn of deposits held in Cypriot banks as of September last year, due to tax advantages, cultural links and, in some cases, for reasons of tax evasion. …….

……….. Created by a developer using a psuedonym in 2009, Bitcoin was intended to offer a means of payment that cuts out the banks through a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [that] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”.

The coins are “mined” by computer processing, with the system capping the number that can be produced at 21m. The process is technically difficult, meaning it has a cost in terms of equipment and electricity.

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Posted in Currency, Economics, Electronics, Russia | 2 Comments »

Chelyabinsk Meteoroid tracked back to the Apollo asteroid group

February 26, 2013

Astronomers at the University of Antioquia, Medellin in Colombia have back-tracked the trajectory of the Chelyabinsk meteoroid and have concluded that it was from the Apollo asteroid group which regularly intersect with Earth’s orbit. The Apollo group contains at least 5,000 asteroids and more than 240 of these are over 1 km in size. The largest known Apollo asteroid is 1866 Sisyphus, with a diameter of about 10 km.

The Chelyabinsk meteoroid crossed from northeast to southwest on February 15th at an angle of 20 degrees above the horizontal at a speed of about 18 km/s. It is estimated to have been about 17-m in size with an estimated mass of between 7,000 and 10,000 tonnes. It exploded at 03:20:26 GMT over 55° 10′ N, 61° 25′ E at an altitude of 15 to 20 kilometers (9.3 to 12.4 miles) with a force of 500 kilotons – the equivalent of 30 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

The astronomers have published their findings:

A preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the Chelyabinsk Meteoroid

by Jorge I. Zuluaga, Ignacio Ferrin

http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.5377 (abstract)

complete paper (pdf)

Reconstructing the orbit

The Chelyabinsk Meteor Friday 15th Feb. 2013: image from http://www.sott.net

BBC:…. Astronomers have traced the origin of a meteor that injured about 1,000 people after breaking up over central Russia earlier this month.

Using amateur video footage, they were able to plot the meteor’s trajectory through Earth’s atmosphere and then reconstruct its orbit around the Sun. Using the footage and the location of an impact into Lake Chebarkul, Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin, from the University of Antioquia in Medellin were able to use simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed and position of the rock as it fell to Earth.

To reconstruct the meteor’s original orbit around the Sun, they used six different properties of its trajectory through Earth’s atmosphere. Most of these are related to the point at which the meteor becomes bright enough to cast a noticeable shadow in the videos.

…. The results suggest the meteor belongs to a well known family of space rocks – known as the Apollo asteroids – that cross Earth’s orbit.

Of about 9,700 near-Earth asteroids discovered so far, about 5,200 are thought to be Apollos. Asteroids are divided into different groups such as Apollo, Aten, or Amor, based on the type of orbit they have.

MIT Technology Review: 

“According to our estimations, the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere,” say Zuluaga and Ferrin, who estimate the velocity at between 13 km/s and 19 km/s relative to Earth.

They then calculated the likely orbit by plugging these figures into a piece of software developed by the US Naval Observatory called NOVAS, the Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry. This allowed them to include the gravitational influence on the rock of the Moon and the 8 major gravitational bodies in the Solar System.

 

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