Podcasts and a riddle about statistics

I've got the significant part of my English from podcasts.

What is a podcast? Wikipedia tell us:

The word arose as a portmanteau of "iPod" (a brand of media player) and "broadcast."

A podcast is an episodic series of digital media files which a user can set up so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own local computer or portable media player.

For a long time I'm addicted to those podcasts, and I'm waiting for new episodes passionately.

Each morning my smartphone checks all my subscription and shows me the list of new episodes for today. 

Honestly I can't listen to all of them for a long time, because I bit off more than I can chew, so for now I have a huge list of episodes to catch up.

I like some podcasts more than other and they always have the high priority for listening.

The absolute leader, the  top priority one is Teacher Luke podcast.

He is a English teacher from London, who also is a stand-up comedian.

I adore his humor and his pronunciation. 

I like his explanation for serious topics, I think he can explain everything.

If you have a time during a day when you can listen to something, I strongly recommend consider to listen to his podcasts.

I do it during my walking and cycling.

Recently I listened to this episode about British comedian Tim Vine (which is the perfect topic itself) and Luke read to his listeners the statistics about where his listeners are from:

I was surprised. Russia? Really? On the top of the list?

It can't be explained  by interest to English language, because I just can't believe in that.

During all my life I met two persons who learn English seriously here.

And I have only a few Russian acquaintances over the Internet  who do so.

There must be another explanation. 

 - Am I living in an area which don't represent "average Russia" well? What if everyone outside the are speaks perfect English as well as Russian? Unlikely!

- Do those listeners just like his humor? How they understand it then? 

- Are we hiding our ability to speak English? Why?

Could you please help me to reveal this riddle?

The New Year

The summer season is ending here. As always it's abruptly.

Two day ago it was +30, yesterday it was +12, and today it's +5.

Probably we will have snow in the September.

We have The New Year celebration at Jan 1 as many people in the world, but to have some fun we closing our summer with a fake new year celebration too.

It means, the fun season is ended, let's wait for another one.

Despite the fact it's a fake new year, it has all what a real new year has.

The contest of costumes for children, they were declaring poem during it, and they got their sweets.

The fire show, with fireworks, fakirs, and magicians.

The Russian Santa. Russian Santa is kind of different, from western one.

We call him grandfather Cold, and he is usually accompanied by his granddaughter Snowgirl.

For sure we had our fir-tree:

and traditional new year's food, like champagne and caviar, and a lot of else.

And, of course, rock stars and the concert, for the whole night:

Because this fake new year is about the summer, we celebrate it not in home, but at our favorite camping on the river Chusovaya with our friends. 

More than 400 people were there with us. A lot of fun.

My boys still dance and sing songs which they heard there.

My older boy was the one who opened the concert by declaring poem, he is still proud of himself (and I proud of him too). I am not sure if I can declare something for such large audience.

Did you ever celebrate fake holidays?

Would you like participate this one?

Bards' festival

Recently we visited a special even - bards' festival.

It's almost like a live concert but with some quirks.

1. It located on the big meadow in the forest, and almost all people who visit it live in the tents.

It's like a combination of camping and live concert.

2. It longs for a few days, first of them it's a contest between bards.

And the last one is the gala concert, where only best of the best are allowed to performance.

3. There is no electronic or synthesized music, it's all prohibited.

All what can you use is your voice, music instruments, amplifier and speakers (last two are provided by organizers)

4. It's a kind of special genre. The restriction is not about music melody, or way of singing, the restriction is about who wrote the text.

For contest it can be only your own song.

There is secondary scene (smaller one) where bards allowed to sing songs of other authors, but it's out of contest.

 Why I like this event? It's pretty special. 

For instance: in additional to main scene and secondary scenes there are a lot of other places where bards are singing, after their participation in the contest.

Almost each campfire have its own star. It's good organised.

I call it small scenes. It's a campfire, place for bard(s) and the audience, and several tents on the perimeter.

The music differ significantly from one small scene to another.
It give you almost 100% chance to find something which you like.

In addition those concerts longs for a few days, and people make friends, combining into duets and making new music just in front of you.

I like to see and listen to talented people. I like this community.

Many of them don't see each other for the whole year, and meet here once a year, and produce their hits just on the spur of the moment.

It was the first time for my boy when I took him with me on this event, and he was very interested in it.

The idea, that the musician can be not on the scene but sit near to you and making his music just here and now, was new for him.

- Have you visited such events?
- Would you like to visit it (again) ?
- Are you a famous bard ?

The first Russian train.

As I mentioned before my town is an industrial town.

There is the metallurgy industry here since 1600 or so.

At that time it was a very hard job. Almost no machines, all works were made by humans.

Because the metallurgy need an iron, and coal, water, and other things and all of them located far away the logistic was a hard task.

Several centuries the task was solved by horses, not the most efficient way.

In the early 1830s Russian inventors father and son  Cherepanovs built the first Russian steam locomotive.

I took a photo of it, and attached it to the post. It's not an original one (original is in the museum) but it is a very exact copy of it.

Cherepanovs were serfs of the Demidov, owner of local factories, and they got freedom after that invention, and became a chief mechanics at his factories.

Now they are the part of Russian history and we are proud of them, that's why   we have a monument about them in our town.

The funny thing is that local citizens call them "brothers" without a reason. Just because they looks similar on the monument.

It makes a funny folksy name for that monument, local call it "The monument for brother Cherepanovs, father and son". Kind of controversial but people don't see that.

Internationally the steam locomotive was invented before their work, in France (if I am right), but because of lack of the Internet and science magazines they had to reinvent it again.

I mention them, because I'm planing to describe a funny phenomenon, what we idiomatically call "The Russia is the motherland for the Elephants", and those guys could be a good illustration for it.

Elephants

In our town we have a circus.

The circus just a building, a place where the performances take place.

There are no local troupes or animals, all of them visit us for show.

Usually a troupe stay in a town for week or two, making show each evening and a few times during the weekend. 

It's enough to for our city inhabitants, everyone who wants, can buy tickets.

This week we have a circus band with elephants.

Because of hot weather, they go to the local lake to swim, I didn't expect that but it seems like elephant s love to swim.

And suddenly, people in our city are big elephant lovers.

My family and I went to the beach yesterday to take a look.

Look at this photo, how many people wants to take a photo:

Or, better this one, it's how it looks from the water (boat):

Crowds! CROWDS! Thousand of them!

I've never seen so many people in our town flocked together exclude big concerts.

What do you think is it possible that three elephants could made bigger crowd of people than a rock star in your town?
 

A joke about the Soviet design.

I saw a funny joke about the soviet design.

Here it comes: http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12607986/ussr-soviet-union-design-font-apple-samsung-mercedes-benz?yptr=yahoo

What I would say? Guilty!

I can find your many examples of weird, awkward and ridiculous design.

Design it's not about us. If you want a refined, elegant thing, please, don't look for it among our productions.

The Soviet (or Russian) design is about different things. I'll try to explain.

The thing may looks alien, it can be funny and totally ugly, nobody cares!

How we evaluate our design? It's simple.

If you can repair it with duct-tape, axe and screw-driver in the middle of nowhere during the winter under the snowstorm, without instructions, any qualified personal and using only one hand -  then this thing might be good enough.

If you can't  - there is no place for it.

Look at our cars, guns, everything. They are ugly, but they will work while you have a bit of duct tape.

What to color, shapes, etc. It's simple. Square, green. Good enough.

That is an example of Russian gps (glonass) navigator:

Doesn't looks fancy? But it will survive and continue working after a nuclear war.

Once I read an excellent book "Cryptonomicon" by American author Neal Stephenson, and I was surprised how much did he feel this thing.

Let me show you a small quote from the book:

There turns out to be not much fiddling necessary. An unlettered tundra
farmer with bilateral frostbite could get this thing up and running in ten
minutes. If he'd stayed up late the night before celebrating the fulfillment
of the last five year plan with a jug of wood alcohol maybe fifteen minutes.
Shaftoe consults the instructions. It does not matter that these are
printed in Russian, because they are made for illiterates anyway. A series
of parabolas is plotted out, the mortar supporting one leg and exploding
Germans supporting the opposite. Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of
shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the
shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he
turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.

Of course it is a joke, partially. But as we like to say there are much of truth in any joke.