Crimes. Starvations. Who? March 28, 2007

When you kill a person you become a criminal, why don’t you become one when you kill millions of people? I’m still talking about Holodomor and Stalin. And I still can’t understand why wasn’t anyone punished for this?

Every person has learn something from his\her life and understand that life has cycles and if you do something bad during one period it will hurt you in the other, so I think that Holodomor was a really good lesson for everyone. Just imagine one person doing so many bad things to the whole nation and the worst thing was that the nation couldn’t do anything with it. I can’t understand what was so bad about Ukrainian culture, people and traditions, I kind of understand that Ukrainian people have a really strong spirit, but I don’t think that it could hurt Stalin.

I think that people have to know more about their own history and to understand it, so that they won’t make the same mistakes in the future. Wars and starvations don’t change anything. People get killed and that’s it. 

Puddington, Arch. “Denying the Terror Famine“, National Review, (May 1992):  p.33-36.

Holodomor. March 25, 2007

The article gives a really short story of the Holodomor, mostly political issues and also made a connection between the USA and USSR. I’ve never thought of what was going on in the USA during Holodomor in Ukraine, well, the article tells that people were emigrating from the USA in 1930’s and I’ve never heard about it.

So, getting back to Holodomor. I can’t believe that Holodomor was Stalin’s idea. It doesn’t feel right to me and I actually don’t understand the reason of this starvation. It is hard for me to imagine that one person could kill so many people.

“Over the next two years, millions of kulaks were expelled to distant lands. Entire families were dumped in the Arctic forests and told to build their own huts, grow their own food, and remain in their new villages. Many wound up in the gulag, Stalin’s vast network of concentration camps. Stubborn kids went to “children’s labor colonies.” Some peasants, branded as “bloodsuckers” and “parasites,” were simply taken from their homes and shot.” 

How could this be done? It is really hard to understand the reasons of Holodomor and to make a full picture of it because it is very complicated, everybody has his own truth and doesn’t want to hear anything else.

I guess I’ll focus on the reasons of Holodomor and the beginning of it in my paper because I’ve suddenly understood, that I don’t have a full picture of it. 

Lord, Lewis. “A reign of rural terror, a world away“, U.S. News & World Report, (June 2003) vol. 134, Issue 23, p.4, 1p

Telling the War. Interview. March 24, 2007

I’ve always been interested in how people remember what happened 50 years ago. The interview on March 20 showed me that things are even worse – they remember every detail, every name and even what was the weather that day. I think that people who suffered during wars or starvations should tell about it, because when the talk, they give away a small piece of pain they been going through, I guess if they’ll tell the same story lots of times they will rid of all the pein and feel better. The very first time to tell is the hardest because you still have all the emotions inside of you and they hurt, but after that telling becomes easier.

The person we’ve been interviewing was telling about WWII and Holocaust, Babiy Yar and crowds of people going there, about mines and children laughing. This story made me feel really strange because I couldn’t understand how could people let these thing happen. I’m sure, that older people have to talk and we, the younger ones, have to know the stories to tell them to the very youngest.

I want to say thank you to everyone, who is telling his\her own history.

Pepsi VS Coke March 19, 2007

There is one thing that makes me smile anytime and anywhere: Coca-Cola and Pepsi war. Personally I think that there is absolutely no difference in these two drinks because both of them are awful, but people still argue on this topic and are still saying that Pepsi is better that Coke or vice versa. So, I was really glad to find the “Pop Goes the Pepsi Generation” article in the U.S.News magazine. It is really hard to say what is better, because some people can’t live without Pepsi, others start their day from Coca Cola, tastes differ and you can do nothing about it. Anyway, Pepsi and Coke are trying to get the market and sell as many bottles of their drink, as it is possible. They used to change the formula, or make Crystal Pepsi, but people seem to like the old taste of these drinks. Pepsi used to be “A drink of the new generation”, while Coke was providing “The same old taste”, but now everything is so mixed up that you can’t even see their marketing strategy so clearly. I have a strong feeling that they are just trying to sell more and more bottles without the big idea. I guess that the world wouldn’t become worse if we didn’t have Pepsi or Coke, because there is absolutely nothing good in it. So, the article showed a piece of war of these giants, but you have to decide whether you want to live a long life or drink Coke (or Pepsi).

Mallory, Maria. “Pop Goes the Pepsi Generation”, U.S.News (June 1997):48-49

Kieff. 1912.

I love
Kiev and I think that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It is always very interesting to read other people’s thoughts about it.

In the “Memoirs of a British Agent”
Kiev (or Kieff) is described as if it is the most beautiful city in the world and I like it. He tells about my favorite places in Kiev, like Vladimir Hill and Saint Sofia, which are really very beautiful, and, of course,
Dnieper is simply gorgeous. I like people, who give a lot of details while describing something, because sometimes just a picture is simply not enough, sometimes you need all the sounds and smells to see the full view. Well, he was comparing Kiev to Moscow, which, I think, was not a very good idea because these cities are completely different, but, anyway, Kieff was better, because “after
Moscow it was a relief to find hills and a real river”.  I don’t think that he had any negative thoughts when leaving
Kiev, because he was writing about it as if he liked it very much and you can’t say bad things, when you’re in love.

I think that there is no other place, where you can find such beautiful views and people, and it even looked good in 1912 and I guess it is even better now.

MLA, Music and Mint Tea March 18, 2007

Sunday evening is always a great time for music and mint tea, but today I’ve decided to add one more “M” to this ideal evening.

Our life has a lot of rules, which you have to follow to survive. Writting is a part of life, so you have to know the rules and follow them. Today let’s talk about MLA style. I’ve always been pretty sure that FAQ is a very useful thing, so after looking through the whole big article, I’ve turned to the FAQ page. Usually there is a lot of useful information there and I was right! So, one of the questions was: “Should I use underlining or italics?” I thougth that it didn’t matter, but then I remembered one situalion, when italics didn’t look really “italicish”, so underlining sounded better to me and I was right. So, it is better to underline everything, that should be underlined, because it is easier to  see.

I was still reading and I saw a very interesting question: “How many spaces should I leave after a period or other concluding mark of punctuation?”. I’m pretty sure, that there is absolutely no difference how many spaces should you leave, but it turned out that there are some “usual” or “traditional” spacing. Well, anyway, they say, that it’s not a very big deal if you put one or two spacings, but this question looks really weird to me.

And I’ve also found a really interesting one: “If a title begins with a numeral, how should the title be alphabetized?”. I’ve never been thinking about it, but it may be useful. So, you should alphabetize it as if you were writting the numbers with letters, like “3” is “three”, etc.

So, I strongly recommend you to read this page http://www.mla.org/publications/style/style_faq and find a lot of useful information.

Now I should go to sleep because I ran out of my favourite mint tea.

Article on Holodomor March 17, 2007

Before reading an article you have to be sure that the person, who wrote it, knows the subject or at least knows someone who knows the subject. I will write my research paper on Holodomor and that’s why I got the “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931-3” article. To be honest, I didn’t like it from the first couple of words. Do you want to know why? I’ll tell you about it anyway. First of all he tells that about 6 millions of people died during 1931-1933, but I can’t understand where he got those numbers. I’ve read pretty much about Holodomor and everybody else tells numbers that are over 10 million. Secondly, I don’t like the language that he uses to describe it. Personally I, can’t get his idea while reading it the first time, and I don’t usually have problems understanding people. Thirdly, it is BORING to read that James Mace is better than Robert Conquest, but Penner said that… Oh yeah, and two sentences later he tells about Mark Tauger and Davies. After that he moves to earlier famines and tells about them on 3 pages and finally, he gets to 1931. Well, the beginning of the article doesn’t make you to read it to the end. So, after reading first 5 pages of this article I have some questions to the author: 1. Where did he get the numbers? 2. Why should you read his article, not Mace’s, Conquest’s or any other one? 3. Why couldn’t he write it in normal language? 4. Why couldn’t he start from 1931 if the article is called “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931-3”? This article gets “2.5” out of “5”.

Wheatcroft, S.G. “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931-3: Political and Natural Factors in Perspective”, Food&Foodways: History&Culture of Human Nourishment, 2004, Vol.12, p.107-136.

Emo. March 12, 2007

Arguments, arguments, arguments. Good evening! Today I want to talk a bit about arguments and things you should to in order to win. Always winning may seem a bit fantastic, but It’s real because people can be influenced easily, you just have to remember some things. So, first of all, you have to try to get their emotions out. You don’t have to cry or fill the room with tears, you don’t have to lie that Santa was always brining all the best presents to your brother. Everything is much easier: you just have to make a person feel guilty for not helping you (listening to you, having an argument with you). That’s everything you have to do. A good question right now would be: “How can I do this?” Well, this depends on your charisma and your ability to manipulate people. I’ll only tell you that it is called Ad Misericordian, which means “appeal to emotion”.

(http://kurgman.blogspot.com/2006/08/argumentum-ad-misericordian.html)

After that, when your opponent feels sorry for beginning this argument you should become over- self-confident and start leading him\her to a conclusion. Sometimes it is easy, but sometimes you have to take a risk and try to use minimum of evidence and make maximum conclusion out of it. There even is a name for such thing: “Hasty Generalization”. Using it is even easier than using Ad Misericordian, because in this case you just have to find the moment, when your opponent is not actually following the talk, after that you should give your conclusion as if it is the right one.

(http://www.goodart.org/hasty.htm)

And in the end you simply have to finish the talk, so that the person will remember it for a long time. A slippery slope thing is a really good one to finish with, so just say something like:

“We’ve got to stop them from banning pornography. Once they start banning one form of literature, they will never stop. Next thing you know, they will be burning all the books!”

and your opponent will feel himself “great”.

(http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html)

But the only thing that you really need is practice, so Generalize your Slippery Emotions and make all the world believe in you.

Visiting British Council March 11, 2007

Saturday morning was quite sunny and I was in a great mood. After having a breakfast I went to British Council to find some information on my research paper. It was my first time there, so I didn’t know where to go and what to do, but the people there turned out to be friendly and helpful, so I left my coat downstairs and got in. I didn’t pay any money because they told me that it was my first time and that’s why I could look around for free. Kristina Gray was hiding behind the wall, but I heard her talking and went to the place, where the voice was coming from. And I was right! She was talking to one of the students, so I waited for a while and then Kristina showed me how to use databases to search for information. It turned out to be easy and quite fun (the fun thing was finding new keywords for your search. I was looking for information on Holodomor, so I’ve started from “holodomor” as a keyword, and then moved to “starvation”, “famine”, “Ukraine, 1930s”, “
Ukraine 1931-1933”, etc.). I guess I should have taken a dictionary of synonyms with me, because it was hard to remember all the words.

So, an hour later I have emailed about 15 articles on my topic and now I have a lot of information to deal with. So, everyone go to British Council and get some useful articles!

After that I went to work and had a really good day there.   

Are Cows Our Friends? March 5, 2007

I’ve been sticking to diet only once, and not because I wanted to lose weight. I had an allergy on God-knows-what and I had to give up eating meat. It was really horrible. To be honest, I’m sure that life without meat becomes black and white. So, I’ve chosen the “Eating Less Meat?” article. The article tells about vegetarians, vegans and other crazy people.

Well, it is a quite interesting article, because I found out that “the number of vegetarians has grown from an estimated 2.3 million in 1997 to 4.8 million in 2000” (p.47). I’ve asked myself a lot of times: “Why do people do it?”, but I can’t find the answer.

Let’s think together. Why do people eat meat? Well, because it tastes good. Why don’t people eat it? Because it tastes good. So, why do you have to suffer without it if you can enjoy it?

I’ve also found out that there are different types of people, who don’t eat meat.

 

“Experts classify vegetarians into various categories. The semi-vegetarians dump red meat, but still eat chicken, fish and dairy products. Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eschew meat, fish and poultry, but consume dairy products and eggs. Lacto-vegetarians go a step further and eliminate eggs. At the end of the line, the pure vegetarians, or vegans, stick to all-vegetable diets bereft of animal foods, dairy products and eggs.”(p.47)

 

But still, why can’t you simply eat meat? I understand that vegetables are really healthy, but I guess they don’t become less healthy if you combine them with meat, do they?

So, going back to my horrible week without meat. Yeah, I’ve spent 7 days without it, but you know what? The most awful thing was going to sleep and having dreams about a juicy steak. It may sound absurd, but I really did have this kind of dreams.

Well, you know, the best thing about it was eating meat again, so now I feel great and finally happy.

 

McAlpine, Ken. “Eating Less Meat?” Reader’s Digest (May 2001): 47-51