"Adams, Plaid and Persen combined the poem with electronic music and the ambisonic field recordings to produce a piece titled Nord Rute -- the first in a four-part collection of performances about indiginous peoples titled The Compass Series, which merge poetry from Valkaeapää, music from Plaid and ambient audio from Adams. Nord Rute is a narrative account of the Sami people's annual migration.

The resulting performance is described as a "three dimensional psycho-acoustic experience" and an "ambisonic narrative evocation". During a performance the floor is covered with reindeer pelts and surrounded by speakers that create a plane of sound within which blindfolded audience members can immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the journey across the frozen wastes. To enhance the experience, there'll be absolutely no heating -- blankets will be provided and schnapps will be served instead."

"He [Bogin] seemed to care about the way they thought, not what they knew. The children found him bizarre…<br />
<br />
As things settled, we were discovering that New Humanitarian was a pretty remarkable place. Bogin set up a system of what he called curators, two or three teachers whose job was to oversee the 10 to 15 children in each grade. Curators generally do not conduct lessons but observe classes, identify problems and take children to meals and activities…<br />
<br />
Bogin had another innovation: classes were videotaped…<br />
<br />
New Humanitarian cost about $10,000 a child our first year. We could afford it — like many companies that send workers abroad, The Times paid tuition. Yet for Muscovites, the school was a strange breed. It was too expensive for most but not appealing to the rich, who often preferred compliant teachers and lavish facilities…"<br />
<br />
[See also: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/z-is-the-first-letter-of-the-alphabet/ ]

"Vladimir Putin, the 58-year-old former president and current prime minister of Russia, has cultivated a distinct public image over the past several years. The politician has piloted firefighting planes, darted whales, driven race cars, and even taken a submersible 1,400 meters (4,600 ft) below the surface of Lake Baikal. Putin was forced to step down from the presidency in 2008 due to a constitutional limit on more than two consecutive terms. However, he remained the most influential figure in Russian politics, and has had a strong hand in the "tandem rule" between himself and current president Dmitri Medvedev. The next presidential election takes place in March of 2012, and indications are that both Medvedev and Putin are planning to run, though neither has officially announced his candidacy yet. Gathered here are some of the more interesting photos taken of Vladimir Putin during his tenure as Russia's prime minister over the past few years."

"There were other organizations in Astoria involving Finns. There were the churches, the newspapers and the socialist club. The most unfortunate involved those members of the socialist club who had not found the totally classless society they had hoped to find in the new world. Members planned to set up a new community according to their own special design and decided that the most congenial place for this community would be a remote fishing village in northern Russia. It was anything but congenial. In the 1920's and 30s over fifty people left to fulfil their dream. It became a nightmare as they discovered the difficulties of working a beaurocracy that was not interested in their ideas of a new community. Disillusioned and defeated, some of the luckier ones returned to the U.S. Some simply disappeared in the night with Soviet soldiers never to be heard from again."

"A real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin's original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard. For more information visit http://www.firstorbit.org "

[As summarized here: http://o-song.tumblr.com/post/1083774173/happy-skydiving-fox-embracing-bottom-crimewave] "In Soviet Russia, foxes tame you! Story of a fascinating experiment by which a Russian geneticist secretly bred foxes for friendliness and fearlessness of humans, and which ended up making the foxes look like dogs - unlike wild foxes, they had floppy ears and shorter tails and doggish colour splotches on their coats."

"Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.

"Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.

"And what do these headlines tell us? If I had to read the tea leaves and make a grand prediction, I would say that in the closing days of the 2000s, the future does not look good for all authoritarian regimes. However, the signs are very positive for one particular authoritarian regime: China. Partly this is because the Chinese, unlike the Iranians and the Russians, continue to deliver prosperity, and in the current era it is prosperity, not ideology, that keeps authoritarian regimes in power."

"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar."

"Moscow ecologists think that dogs started acquiring this habits in 1990s, when the Soviet union collapsed and Moscow has fell into the hands of new class of Russian capitalists. They understood the true value of the downtown realty underestimated by previous Communist owners and became removing all the industrial complexes Moscow had in its centre to its outskirts. Those places were used by homeless dogs as a shelter often, so the dogs had to move together with their houses, so they had to learn how to travel Moscow subway - first to get to the centre in the morning then back home in the evening, just as us people."

"So our political class cheers on treasury-draining wars, allows financial elites to rob and pillage, witnesses huge transfers of wealth to the richest, and then when the whole thing explodes, the "real fiscal answer" is for ordinary Americans to have their Medicare benefits "slashed" and Social Security benefits reduced."

"Like Argentina in its worst moments, we never seem to question whether it is reasonable to expect foreigners to keep financing our extravagance, and we forget the bad things that happen to the Argentinas or Hungarys of the world when foreigners stop financing their excesses. So instead of laying out a realistic plan for increasing our national savings, we choose not to face up to the Social Security and Medicare crises that lie ahead, embarking instead on massive spending programs that -- whatever their long-run merits might be -- we simply cannot afford."

"In its depth & suddenness, the US economic & financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (& only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia & Argentina (time & again). In each ... global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. ... that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. ... But there’s a deeper & more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the US—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, & fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them."

"Last Summer, curatorial research group Capsula embarked on the first of its Curated Expeditions, demonstrating in the process that you don't need an intergalactic spaceship to uncover new territories and make meaningful discoveries. This series of Curated Expeditions are research trips that engage with earthly phenomena through artistic investigation." ... "The object is to make a series of expeditions dealing with earthly phenomena in remote and nearby destinations . The aim is to stimulate production and exhibition of multidisciplinary artistic creation related with nature's spectacles. I have many ideas for new expeditions and for the targets of the artistic survey, but these plans are in an early stage and not ready to be published yet." ""

"A building frenzy is raging in Asia, Russia and on the Persian Gulf. And cities like London and New York don't have the money to compete. Will Western urban landscapes soon look outdated?"

"For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to first join it...Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest....Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down."

"History records that previous commodity booms were not followed by mass starvation, resource wars and the end of civilization. John Atkin is out to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"young and trendy Muscovites are in the throes of nostalgia for the staples of Soviet childhoods, relics of a time when the U.S.S.R. was at the height of superpower status."

"His long-exposure photographs, often made of moving masses of people, are imbued with a down-trodden moodiness reminiscent of the stories of Dostoyevsky. They document a time of change, yet hope is a rare commodity, and the people blur into grey shadow f

"Science News has an article about a "cure all" Siberian herb called Rhodiola rosea, that has long been used by Soviets, and is currently being looked at by US university medical researchers."

"Dominating the skyline of Arkhangelsk, a city in Russia's far north-west, it is believed to be the world's tallest wooden house, soaring 13 floors to reach 144ft - about half the size of the tower of Big Ben."

"Here's another photo of the logo. It's from the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU), or Main Intelligence Directorate."