In 2012 an unlikely book exploded bestseller charts in Russia, easily outselling its close competitors. It is a collection of stories about life of the Russian Orthodox Church called Everyday Saints and other stories. In some of these, the author, Arkhimandrit Tikhon, described his path of becoming a clergyman and his early life in the Pskov-Pechora monastery.… Read the rest
Ever hungry Hyde Park squirrel as a metaphor of the consumerist culture
Think about what really makes us different from animals? Is it our ability to empathize and be altruistic sometimes? But then altruism is regularly found in animals, especially social species, and is assumed to serve as an adaptation mechanism to preserve the community or ecosystem.… Read the rest
Pussy Riot, photo by Игорь Мухин at ru.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons