English

Today, preparing to perform my morning physical routine, I went for an experiment. My default exercise soundtrack contains various up-tempo Latina music, but today I’ve changed the rule by prefering an audiobook. And it was Taleb’s “Skin In The Game” in English, which I decided to refresh in my mind, …

John Masefield Sea Fever, 1902 Я выучил эту балладу наизусть еще много лет назад, когда пытался повысить уровень английского. Но только в нынешнем году, когда впервые сам шёл в море под парусом, она во мне, что называется, «сыграла». Sea fever можно было бы перевести на русский как «морская болезнь», но …

Сегодня впервые в жизни делал полуторачасовой выступление для студентов (частично российских, частично иностранных и нерусскоязычных) на английском языке. Что знаменательно, происходило это в Питере, ровно между Стрельной и Петергофом. Ниже тезисы Can Russia compete? Loren R. Graham is a noted American historian of science, particularly science in Russia. In his …

It seems that now I can deeply understand what is “Impact Investment” and how it really works.  To anybody who forgot or wasn’t acquainted with the term, I’ll remind in short. The marvellous tale is that at first would-be mighty philanthropists are spending a great amounts of money to resolve …

I’m receiving regularly some offers to deliver lectures or public speeches in English. Until now I was always refusing them, because wasn’t feeling myself ready enough, while my English level was remaining shamefully low for that. But there comes a time to break the rule and overwhelm my own fear.  …

I have been studying English since 9-th class of the school… oh, sorry. Sooner. In the earlier childhood, before the school, I had been visiting the courses in the House of Pioneers, for about year or more. But in the middle school I chose German, because my father knew it …

The song “Hasta siempre” about Che Guevara in the version of Nathalie Cardone (oh, that great YouTube clip!) has been popular in our politicized part of blogosphere since the beginning of times — equally on both sides, pro- and contra-Putin’s. Many years ago, not knowing Spanish almost at all, I …

Another note about my language studies. I’ve realized it when studying Spanish. My basic motivation in languages is to become able to read books written in it as soon as possible, and that’s why I’m enriching my passive vocabulary as fast as I can. But there is a trap. Big …

I’ve changed my preliminary plan of the lecture in Skolkovo today and instead of the theory of strategy (as it was planned before) told to my audience about the Californian Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960. Which I described as the most successful and influential strategic document in the …