Month: July 2016

Interestingly, the USA has not produced a single artistic biographical film about George Washington. Or maybe I’m just bad at searching.

There’s a good film about Gandhi. There’s an excellent one about the “Iron Lady” in England. At least five films have been made about Hitler, including Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. There are a number of films about Stalin and Lenin. But nobody has made one about Washington. It’s understandable that they would have to fully depict slavery and other unpleasant things, but still, it’s the 21st century! 🙂

I’m planning to go to Mount Vernon, wanted some educational entertainment, but there are only documentaries and one obscure TV series about Washington that nobody knows, consisting of three episodes.

Liza and I just watched the first episode of Brain Games. It’s this new type of documentary about how our brain works: illusions, perception features. Very interesting and highly recommended. For those who understand a bit of English, it’s probably better to watch in the original language. It’s very simple, in my opinion. Available on Netflix with subtitles.

In the States, it’s common practice in the service industry to ask for the full credit card number and expiration date over the phone. A hotel clerk could easily walk away with a stack of real card numbers, but presumably, if there’s fraud, there are ways to trace the clerk and the security system is balanced. But still, I can’t get used to it. I was taught as a child never to give my card number to anyone.

Biking through Manhattan

Please provide the text that you would like translated.

New York today. Rented bikes, had a ride along the promenade 🙂

I am in Novodiveevo

We were taught that “фамилия” in English is “surname,” but in American English, it is called “last name.” People are slightly confused by ‘surname’ #english #american #english

A very interesting project. It shows the distribution of ethnicities across the USA, and also the population density. If you zoom out the map to fit the entire country, it is clear where civilization is concentrated. It’s visible that there are many Asians in San Francisco, a large Hispanic population in Miami, and the entire eastern side of Washington is black. Overall, of course, I haven’t discovered America with this, but it’s interesting to take a look.