Month: November 2022

The original title of this Vasnetsov painting is “Alyonushka (simpleton)”. Proof – for example, the catalog of the Society of Itinerant Art Exhibitions from the year 1889. Nowadays, they write that orphans were called simpletons back then, but honestly, I can’t find any evidence for this. In Dal’s dictionary, a simpleton is someone mentally disabled or insane. But according to the fairy tale, she and her brother Ivanushka (who later turned out to be a goat) were left without parents, completely alone, so the term orphan would fit.

I did some research, and here’s what I found: an art journal from 1881, which published a review of the itinerant exhibition, and similarly described every interesting painting, including Alyonushka. I quote:

“…Strictly speaking, she is not a simpleton. She is named thus, as Ostrovsky named his Vera— a savage; everyone calls Alyonushka a simpleton. She is a homeless, shelterless orphan, she grew up among strangers; she has no kin, no corner of her own…”

Over time, the term ‘simpleton’ was dropped, and only Alyonushka remained. Fair?

Soon, everyone will be sending each other Christmas cards. Well, just so you know, all the birds depicted with bright red breasts are males. The females predominantly have grey plumage. Only in the last photo in the frame is a pair depicted correctly. Almost all the cards depict a gathering of two males. There’s nothing particularly wrong with such images, of course. Just something for you to know now.

A rotten egg, walled up inside a wall, can disastrously spoil life for all the inhabitants of the house.

But this is not because it is great and powerful. Not a cosmic evil, not a great emperor, but an old, stinking, rotten egg…

Yuki knows how to sleep sweetly! Right now, she is lying down, snoring loudly. The first two photos are from just now, the rest were taken at different times recently. It was impossible not to take them

I just can’t understand. Did they finally buy the pedestal for the coffin this year, or not yet?

In the mornings he is a tiger

We work with the tail

I was curious to twist in a comment about the 1/6 part of landmass that the USSR once occupied, but after doing the math, it turns out that the USSR didn’t even come close to occupying a sixth of the landmass.

With an area of 22,400,000 km² and a total land area of 20,272,000 km², the USSR made up 20,272,000/148,939,063 = 13.61% = 1/7.35 part of the landmass. The difference from 1/6 is about 2 million km², which is roughly equivalent to the combined area of Germany, Poland, France, Italy, and Spain.

Were we lied to in school?

What else to do at six in the morning but to explore this question.

The first to calculate the ratio of the Russian Empire’s territory to the total land area of the Earth was a military cartographer, Colonel of the General Staff Ivan Afanasyevich Strelbitsky, in 1874. Using a device new at the time—the planimeter—he measured the area of Russia based on available maps and obtained (quote) “18,946,456.3 square versts, or 21,561,450.6 square kilometers, which make up more than 1/6 part of all the land on the Earth.” He referenced calculations by German scientists made in 1872: the surface covered by land, including internal waters and islands on Earth, amounts to 133,770,000 square kilometers.

Fifteen years later, in 1889, the second edition of Strelbitsky’s work was published, by which time he had become a Major General. Over the years, he writes in the preface, “the possessions of the Russian Empire in Europe and Asia increased by 348,215 sq. versts.” German geographers also refined their data: “The surface occupied by land amounts to 119,537,664.8 sq. versts = 136,038,872 sq. kilometers.” Further: “In total, the territories of the Russian Empire, including mainland, internal waters, and islands amount to 19,709,294.4 sq. versts, or 22,430,004.2 sq. kilometers.” Conclusion: “The possessions of the Russian Empire in their entirety cover about 1/6 part of the land surface.” Indeed, when dividing both square versts and square kilometers, the result is 6.065.

So it’s clear how they arrived at these figures, which for the year 1889, might be excusable.

Interestingly, over 30 years, the Earth’s land area decreased, but “only” by 115,000 square km. In another source, there’s a phrase “1/6 part of the inhabitable land.” This raises an interesting question about what is considered inhabitable. It seems to me that there is no, and never has been, uninhabitable land on Earth. But overall, it would probably be fair to exclude the Greenland ice sheet, the Amazon tropical forests, Antarctica. But then, it would also be fair to exclude a significant part of northeastern Siberia from the expression.

Cleaning a vacuum cleaner is about as bothersome as washing a dog. But from time to time, both must be done. Especially since the vacuum cleaner has its birthday tomorrow (three years).

(The operation was successful and everything even works as it should)

“Home is where the heart is”

(by Vladimir Malakhovsky)

https://boombaya.artstation.com/