Mine is Vitali. I always disliked it, but now I'd say: I love it. I hate names Sergei, Igor, Alexandre and many other (name Ivan in Russia is very very rare, cause it is associated with "Ivan the fool" - a personage from Russian fairy tales). I never met name "Vitali" in Russian literature of the 19th century. After 1917 it got into fashion for several decades, then it faded away. Now pop names here is: Maxim, Denis, Kristina, Darya, phhhhhhhhh... Names Nadezhda, Luyobov', Zoya, Maria, Marina (my beloved female name) totally disappeared
I can't recall exactly what was Mrs. Thatcher for Soviet ppl in 80s. My personal impression was/is: an extra-clever politician of the 20th century (ranked right below Sir Winston Churchill) We, in Russia etc, are fed up with leftistic ideas. But you know... the current generation here is abs stupid - they drink the beer, in their 15-17 ys. It was an enormous plus of the USSR: it never allowed any forms of dissoluteness. In general, we lived under comm. regime not bad - all was abs free - medicine, education etc. "I love tomorrow" (c)
At my last job my boss lashed into me: "Why do not you earn money doing some projects for students etc?" (for years, at work, I was solving numerous algorithmic problems, because in my the very first year there I had done everything for my factory)
Only very recently (3-4 months back) I got to know that... Americans were on the Moon several times. I always thought their 69' lunar expedition was an unique single space event. Soviet mass-media did not report anything about American lunar expeditions of 70's. They kept silence, a bit like Sicilian "omerta" swear.
No =) I fear any weapons to the guts. I shot from pistols, but never from revolvers. I shot from AK-74 (5.45 mm). Ppl, I'd say: f*** that weapon.*** It jumps in your hands like a frog.
As for Mrs. M. Thatcher: (as it was said above) she was more a problem creator than a problem solver.
It was my words, but actually I wanted to say "I can say nothing bad about Mrs. Thatcher." She took on herself such a responsibility, for UK, for all its traditions. And she won, in the long run. Those who drank champagne... it's just stupid plebeians. You know, in Russia there are millions of such bozos who spit on Gorbatchev, Kasparov etc. Nothing new under the Sun.
Below an article from RU.net (translation by Google):
Thatcher: farewell to childhood April 17, 2013
For me personally care Margaret Thatcher - it's like another farewell to childhood. She became the British Prime Minister, and I just went to the first class. I've been interested in politics since preschool years, watched all the news, just go to sleep after watching the program "Time", and in first class knew about all of the major world leaders.
But as I watched the Soviet news, then my knowledge there were specific. "Washington hawks", "the Israeli military", "aggressive policy of NATO and peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union." And of course in my mind, the Soviet child, Margaret Thatcher had a special sinister place. I was sure that she spends only anti-people policies.
I, in my nine years of soul sympathized with Bobby Sands, fasted in Block HLB, then rooting for Argentina in the Falklands War of, empathized with the miners, who fought for their right to do hard labor, which we in the Soviet Union was a special honor.
In addition, Thatcher was a close ally of Ronald Reagan, and Reagan then personified the general all the most terrible and disgusting for the Soviet people that you can imagine.
How interesting the way the world, after all. I was curious schoolboy, who zakanifolila brains Soviet television propaganda. But because now we do know that just as I …
2all, you know, I noticed that the best part of world-famous people were born in 20-31 date span. There are very very few of them born on 1st, 2nd, 3rd day of a month (I was born on June, 1st).
Also, on all first-year-students was imposed studying of a huge, very thick book titled "The history of Communist Party of Soviet Union" ("Istoriya KPSS"). Its cover was red and we called this book "brick". It was a true torture for me "to study" this book (not because I was an anticommunist (I was not, until now I keep on being a totally apolitical citizen), but because I counted this book as a silly wasting of time). As for Fortran: my faculty was called "Faculty of experimental and theoretical physics", thus I decided that so far I need no Fortran (maybe later).
What about an old English proverb on "How to preserve the health", one (of three) points of which is "Don't lift weights!"? I'm going to bed, too sleepy.
I heard it from radio (Russian service) "Liberty" (in their weekly program "Po sledam Esculapa"). They referred to some scientific article in some American medical magazine.
You know, guys, actually I don't like computers, newest gadgets and so on. What I'm very fond of is algorithms and new ideas (ironically, for ~8 years I was trying to solve this problem: http://www.spoj.com/problems/RUNAWAY no avail and no ideas until now). I miss (a bit) "true" science, like physics or chemistry or biology.
Mine was Fortran, I was taught it in my high school, but I did not study it at all, never visited seminars on it. As a result: I almost failed the exam on it, what saved me was my excellent program (which was written by my friend, not by me), smth like "transposing a matrix". Then (and much later) it were Basic and Pascal.
"To quit smoking is harder than to quit heroine" It's a quote from Soviet "Chemistry & Life", which, in its turn, cited (I don't remember exactly) American "Thorax" or "Lancet".
Tony, for your records: mixture of alcohol & caffeine (e.g., vodka in a cup of coffee), taken during 1-2 hours after the stroke, can save from inevitable death 50-90%% suffering neurons. Note: taken separately, neither alcohol nor caffeine has NOT such effect. And this phenomenon is still waiting for its explanation.
Dani, it's terrible to die being such young. I can't imagine I'd die in May 2014, nearing to my 50. My older brother died at his 51 (from limfoleikemia). He never never smoked and never drank and was a fan of physical activities, especially of the sport bicycling.
I had tasted Screwdriver. It seemed to me it's more tasty and easier drinking than Bloody Mary (though I used proportion vodka / o.j. = 1 / 4).
Btw, in Russia/Ukraine/Belarus it is a very wide-spread notion that vodka is the best beverage in terms of harm for utensils, liver etc. Wine, beer are considered here as much more harmful plonks.
GrimJack, What "attack"? =) Just an interesting and innocent exchange by opinions!
Agilemind, I can't find this article (it was somewhere on www.cnews.ru) and it refers to some American observations over several thousand people, during ~20 years.
Batatawada... hmm... it must be tasty. You hardly know it, but Russians and Ukraines always called us (Belarusians) bul'biashi. "Bul'ba" in Belarusian means "potatos". It's because our soil is dry & sandy, - an ideal for potatos.
I call myself "a kind of an eggeater-spider". The day I buy a pack of them (10 eggs) I, during the day, drink up 6-8 of them, in raw state, and with rough wheat bread + salt. I'm literally crazy about eggs and I always buy them. I think it's due to egg's interferon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon
Agilemind, of course, I have not any possibility to conduct my own scientific researches on this. I just re-narrate, as a parrot, what I had read in (basically, Soviet) magazines. And I have no my own opinion on such medical issues.
I'd suggest to compose, firstly, 2 lists of words - one for verbs, another for objects. Then to try find each word from the sentence in these lists... then swap 2 words etc. I think it's pretty clear what I mean.
One more interesting recent medical observation: those who in their childhood were always half-hungry (due to poor, unlucky families etc) they preserve the lucidity of mind till deep old age. Opposite case with those who were growing without any stresses.
Not all is so simple & unambiguously with the smoking. Medical statistics shows that those who smoke 1-10 cigs per day live longer than abs non-smokers (I read about this fact in Soviet monthly pop-magazine "Chemistry & Life", of early 1980s). Not to mention, smokers never catch Parkinson's and Altzheimer's diseases.
Right now I'm drinking karkade tea. Eat nothing, feel bad -> Yesterday I overdozed myself with vodka. I can't recall how, but I managed to drink up the whole bottle (0.5L), as Bloody Marys, of course (I really can't drink the neat vodka, by no means).
They found each other =) Btw, I hate anything sweet and never buy & keep the sugar in my house. In other words, the screwdriver cocktail is not my choice. Though, I'm afraid, it is a pretty good thing.
I'm ready to post links to them. In November 2011 a tremendous fire happened in my house. After it I lost almost everything. Thanks to firemen brigade - they saved the house itself.
It's all very interesting, but don't confuse complexity with laboriousness. Is this problem http://www.spoj.com/problems/CLK/ labour-intensive? No. Is it complex? Yes, it is.
Well, G. Kasparov is a Jew (as Grisha Perelman is, and so on). I, being a pure Russian (actually I'm a Belarusian, but now it does not matter) would like to tell you what is wrong with Russians. 1. Russians are native thieves. 2. They are too selfish. 3. They are lazy (me too), the permanent idling is their many-centures' dream. 4. They are narcissistic to the infinity. 5. They imagine to themselves that the whole world thinks about Russia only, in 24/7 mode. 6. They enjoy disasters happened in other countries (e.g., Fukusima - "hehe... where are their famous robots?"). Meanwhile, Japan helped us, after Tchernobyl, enormously - by medical equipment etc. I doubt that in Japan someone enjoyed Tchernobyl's catastrophe. 7. They are rude. 8. <it's enough for today, but all above is abs sooth)> 9. One sidenote only: you know, guys, now ppl here are better than they were 30-40-50 years ago.
Btw, the statistics witnesses that the most lucky human beings are those who were born in April & July. PS: I was born on June 1, 1964. My mom now is 87 y.o. (I'm the last & late child in my family).
Today he, this incredible genius of the chess, completes his 50 years. Bartender! Bloody Marys for everyone on DaniWeb.com! GrimJack will pay for it =)
