I am worried about way too many elements of Putin's personality cult in Russia. I am worried about those elections that Putin won. Our friends in Moscow said that even if less than 50% of the electorate had showed up on the election day the official count still would have been >50%. I am worried.

I have a great deal of respect for Clark. He argues very clearly and acts very strategically. Great timing and great arguments! White House dwellers come across as a bunch of unsophisticated losers when you hear them trying to counter-argue. Even if Bush is re-elected I'll still applaud Clark's position. His whole life and career is at stake but he ( Read more... )

Can't believe the US media are discussing how bad it is that we still have not killed Bin Laden and the whole world along with the UN (as well as some of the US media) are discussing how bad it is that Israel killed a leader of Hamas, one of the worst terrorist organizations on Earth!

Many young parents consult tons of educational literature on how to raise their children. I think many of them would be better parents if they spent with their children at least part of the time they waste studying the latest educational approaches.

I have lots of friends in IT (programmers). Many of them are not very happy with today's tendency of many large companies to outsource code-writing (programming) to cheaper companies in India and China. They argue the way Indians write the code is not in synch with the way the code is written in the US/it is not elegant/they don't know the ( Read more... )

In order to be truly active one has to be truly motivated. In order to be truly motivated one has to be convinced that what one is planning to do is the right thing. However, are there many "right things" to do? Many a thing appears right to some but wrong or meaningless to others or seems right on the surface but has many potential negative ( Read more... )

It seems that many people's life belongs to the realm of our reality only partly. A very large proportion of their life belongs to the imaginary world, world of the movies, TV shows, bands, singers, movie stars, etc ( Read more... )

I don't feel at home in the US. I walk on the streets, I drive in the car, I work, I interact with people, I have here a family I love, I even like what I am doing - but I keep thinking "they" instead of "us," "Americans" instead of "us." It seems to me now that I felt much more like being among "ours" or "mine" when I lived in Europe (already ( Read more... )

Russian culture is very direct and rough. If you take a look at the soviet "social realism" literature you'll see that, very frequently, positive characters are very direct, even rude because they always tell the truth - even when this truth hurts others (or even themselves). Negative characters, on the other hand, are frequently smooth talkers. ( Read more... )