Best wine comes out of an old vessel.

Few years ago I was thinking: the most interesting blogs are written by the brightest professionals: engineers, doctors, managers, scientists. However, they often have timing and confidentiality constraints so they cannot share most interesting insight they have. But there must be some who are now retired and who are willing to share their vast professional experience. I think livejournal is a perfect medium for a live memoir genre, including live discussions with readers.

I have to admit I only found two so far.

The most notable example is a LJ (in Russian) of Dr. Berezin. For a layman like me, he is most famous for MMPI adaptation.

He is writing about different topics, but one I like most is series of posts where he narrates stories from his practice as a psychologist. Such stories often illustrate how science and industry were operating in Soviet Union times. His journal title is "One live through four epochs" for very a good reason. His stories show how society of Soviet Union was changing as time passed.

For instance, I enjoyed a story he published few months ago about his client, a physicist. He uses pseudonyms for his patients, but in some cases like this one he provides enough details so it is theoretically possible to de-anonymize. Another example is a story of "Фселикос". The patient's name was also changed. However he is so famous that I knew the real name from a very beginning. And he had enough pseudonyms so I do not quite understand why he needed another one. For a technical folks like me who are interested in CPU design and manufacturing there is another interesting story is about Soviet CPU manufacturing.

And I love the communication style of Felix Borisovich! He responds to every comment he receives in his blog posts, sharing even more interesting insights. It is very rare thing to see someone in internet using proper Russian language even in comments.

I'll point to another LJ I found in a next post.