The Palladian Traveler barely touches down in the “Land of the Tsars” and he immediately satisfies his craving for caviar in his first dispatch from St. Petersburg.

The Palladian Traveler lurks in the shadows while attempting to solve a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma as he files a series of new dispatches from St. Petersburg and Moscow.

If you haven’t seen it, the long version of Matt Taibbi’s critique of journalism over Russia-gate, is worth your time as an exercise in grappling with media herd instinct and the folly of putting our grand papers of record at the head of the herd.

Tick Tock. The good folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have returned to wind their Doomsday Clock. Last Thursday at the National Press Club a group of well-credentialed speakers, including former California governor Jerry Brown and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, underscored the organization’s warning that we have established residence in “the new abnormal.”