“And that’s it, more or less.”

Daniil Kharms has been on my To Read list for too long. George Saunders has cast him as a bit of a prankster Bartleby, in the fashion of Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co.

Kasparov Detained After Anti-Putin Rally in Moscow

Because of Thanksgiving, i took my eye off the ball. Among many things, Russia's election is going to be a mess as expected.

Kasparov has been detained. Bill explained to me that he believes that Kasparov might possibly be seeking martyrdom, as he has no real chance in the election, but in death, he can provide a rallying point for reform. Now that he's detained, assassination is probably unnecessary.

Bush saw Putin's soul though, so it's all going to be all right, isn't it?

15,000 year-old hunters' camp site in Russia

Maybe there'll be more about this in the coming weeks...

KHABAROVSK, November 12 (RIA Novosti) - Archaeologists have found a 15,000 year-old hunters' camp site from the Paleolithic era near Lake Evoron in Russia's Far East, a source in the Khabarovsk archaeology museum said on Monday.

"The site dates back to the end of the Ice Age, a period which is poorly studied" Andrei Malyavin, chief of the museum's archaeology department said. "That is why any new site from this period is a discovery in itself."

The site, found during a 2007 archaeological expedition to Lake Evoron, is the largest of four Stone Age sites, discovered near the Amur River so far, and was most likely established by mammoth hunters.

"We came to this conclusion after studying flint pikes, arrowheads and a stone scraper," Malyavin said, adding that a comprehensive archaeological excavation could take a couple of years.

In 2006, archaeologists discovered an Iron Age burial mound around 2,500 years old containing a unique fragment from an iron dagger, which had been preserved in the Amur Region's acidic soil.

2,000 year old Pazyryk mummy in Altai mountains

from mosnews.com:

Russian archaeologists have uncovered the 2000-year-old remains of a warrior preserved intact in permafrost in the Altai mountains region, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported.

The warrior was blond had tattoos on his body. He was wearing a felt coat with sable fur trimmings and was buried in a wooden frame containing drawings of mythological creatures with an icepick beside him, the paper said.

Local archaeologists believe the man was part of the ruling elite of a local nomadic tribe known as the Pazyryk. Numerous other Pazyryk tombs have been found in the area.

"This is definitely a very serious discovery. It’s incredibly lucky that the burial was in permafrost so it was very well preserved," Alexei Tishkin, an Altai archaeologist, was quoted as saying.