This will hurt me...

The mysterious Jennifer makes one of her rare appearances in the Photo of the day bit, headlining with the banana-munching Henry. They are catching a few winter's rays checking out a book while Ezra concentrates on his sit ups, chin-ups and crunches in the next room. I think that he's preparing for a tilt at Ultimate Fighting, but he's keeping his cards close to his chest. Seeing the littlest bloke in the house prepare so diligently, I cast some thoughts over some of the nasty business currently going on in the Caucuses . The present position of Georgia reminds me of a fellow that I used to go to school with (some years ago now). A hot blooded fellow, little more than five foot tall, he spoke a good game. Easily led, on occasion a number of older colleagues would manage to convince him that he could 'take down' some of the bigger, nastier lads (I'm talking about dudes with attitudes and runs on the board). Naturally, he would choose the patented little bloke mo...

I would like to note that today is the one hundredth anniversary of the Tunguska Event . You would be forgiven for having not heard of this event or even any idea of where or what a Tunguska is, but it has fascinated me ever since I read about it in the World Book Encyclopaedia as a kid. As an aside, I will admit to dipping into the old encyclopaedia for random reading matter right throughout my childhood (remember kids this is BE time ( B efore the I nternet). The Tunguska Event was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in (what is now) Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia during the morning of June 30, 1908. To confuse matters more, we have the lovely quirk of Russian history that records the date as June 17, in the Julian calendar, which was used at the time. Most estimates of the energy of the blast agree on somewhere between ten-to-fifteen megatons of TNT the most likely. This would make it about a thousand times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima...

One of my new favourite websites is the always magnificent English Russia . The motto of the good people behind the website is "just because something cool happens daily on one sixth of the Earth surface". The other day, no doubt inspired by election fever in Russia , they posted some posters from Russian elections held in the 1990s, but mainly from Presidential Elections. One picture appealed to me in particular: I am told that the banner reads: Youth choose Zyuganov Now, for those of you wondering, the honey in the poster is Gennady Zyuganov, who has occupied the somewhat incongruous position as leader of the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation in post-communist Russia. You can see why the kids would all be rushing out to support Zyuganov; because he really is one cool looking cat! FYI, in the first round of the 1996 Presidential election –an election that I best associate with ' Mad Vlad' Zhirinovsky – Zyuganov finished second with 32%, trailing only Y...

Here's what I imagine this fine cock is bellowing (in an Ivan Drago-accent) "Superior Soviet chickens will crush your decadent and puny capitalist fowl!" Here is a Soviet era advertisement for chickens. Or eggs. I'm guessing. If anyone can read Cyrillic, please let me know.

Yakutsk, Russia Yakutsk (Яку́тск) is the capital of the Sakha Republic (the Yakutia region, formerly the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Located in Siberia, it has some renown as the coldest city on earth. It has a population of around 200,000 people, so it defiantly qualifies as a city. But is it cold? You bet your sweet Aunt Nelly it is! In January, daily high temperatures average around -40.9 °C. For those not impressed by facts and figures, that’s COLD . Warnings are issued to people about wearing glasses outside, as they have a tendency to freeze to the face and tear the flesh off when one tries to remove them. Nice visual there. The coldest temperatures ever recorded outside Antarctica occur in the basin of the Yana River not far to the northeast. Conversely, July temperatures can often exceed 32 °C, making the region among the greatest in the world for seasonal temperature differences. The biggest city built on continuous permafrost, Yakutsk is about 4° below the Arc...

In this brief but engaging book, Kalashnikov's story is told in an engaging and colloquial style. It is a fascinating portrait of a man of ingenuity and vitality in the context of the harsh and often brutal Russia of the twentieth century. Against what appears to be the effort of the publishers (or at least whoever designed the book sleeve), this is not a text for serious firearms or military enthusiasts. Despite the title, this book is less a story of the AK-47, and more the story of its designer, Mikhail Kalashnikov. The autobiography of Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the renowned AK-47 assault rifle, recounts a far more interesting story than his most famous invention. In it, he shares his life story for the first time: his deportation to Siberia with his family while still a child; his time as a soldier in a tank regiment; his invention of the world's most famous weapon and his experiences of life in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yelts...

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945, Anthony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova. Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman (1905-64) worked as a journalist and kept notebooks throughout both the German invasion of Soviet territory, and the subsequent Soviet liberation and race to Berlin. Such practices were strictly forbidden (not to mention highly dangerous) under Stalin, and Grossman's jottings about the events he bore witness to thus represent a extraordinary testimony of the attitudes and conditions experienced by both the Red Army soldier and Soviet citizens more generally. Writing for Красной Звезды ( Krasnaya Zvezda , ‘The Red Star’), the Red Army's official newspaper, Grossman’s honest and frank character observations of both military and civilian life during both the disastrous retreat of 1941, the fierce battle for Stalingrad and the genocide the subsequent Soviet advances revealed. Antony Beevor – for mine the foremost writer of ‘humanist’ military histories ...