Севастьянов Максим Александрович : другие произведения.

Schopenhauer's Hermeneutics

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   Problems of interpretation- hermeneutics. I read Schopenhauer about reading and science and scientists and people in general. He thought general understanding of written texts was very poor - that is, even if people read books, they very often understand very little what is written there, not saying anything of their ethic, which is even worse than their understanding so they warp and torture a book they read for their material and immaterial ends. A person reads a book - but remains equally empty after reading it as though he never saw it. Schopenhauer was very pessimistic about human nature, he thought very bad about people en masse. He thought the best company for a person is to communicate with himself. I don't believe in this, but he had a reason to say so. So let a pundit read it, let a specialist read it. But even Dao De Dzin has several hundred translations to English alone, so if there are two pundits, there will be two opinions, not guaranteeing any of these two will be right. And if your subject spans many domains? The opinions grow in geometric proportion. Actually, I did not mean my book to be read by specialists, I thought I was writing very simply. But as I was partly writing about books, the knowledge of these books by my reader was desirable. And reading of books nowadays is a rare occupation, people usually spend their time watching television, or reading crime fiction or women romance, if they take a book in their hands. A book like Dao De Dzin is not a popular reading in West or in Russia. And if you mention Rabelais in one breath with Dao De Dzin, and then mention Charles Bukowsky or Gashek, you are almost surely not ever to be understood by anyone save a couple of geeks.
   Still, people think they understand you, and understand you very well. They know(usually negative) that you are a fool, that you're trying to look clever, that you are too smart(smart Aleck), that you're abstruse, and you are mistaken, you are wrong, from the very beginning, that you're boring, that you have to change, that you're growing old, that you're not the same but it would be disastrous for you to remain the same, that all your endeavors are futile and bound to end in nothing, if not in disaster. But all are very concerned about your fate.
   The color red in politics - what it is like? My father, when I visited him in Petersburg suburb, among workers of the chicken factory situated nearby whom he impolitely called 'bolvans' (I don't exactly how to translate it into English, something like 'morons'), though he had lived the better part of his life under Communist rule, cannot be called 'red' in any sense. Still, he mumbled while we parted, something like he was interested in exploring red color in painting, there was a special exhibition in Hermitage devoted to this. George Orwell, though he did the most of Western people to denounce Communism, was, for some strange reason, called Communist in America. So what is it to be Red?
   500,000 Iraqis died because of commitment of Americans to democracy(I'm editing this later,
  
   In 2018, some years after the Iraqi war of 2003-2011 ended, and in the internet
   There are various estimates of number of casualties, from 200000 to 1,5 million) Earlier, 5 million of Vietnamese did the same, because of wrongly chosen political beliefs.
   Trying to uncover who's Red, what's wrong with the Red, meanwhile I'm doing Lumosity.
   I did not tell the story of my life, only some memories. The army was left out, my childhood, youth, and other years, shortly.
  
  
   I was basing my opinion not on the 'right' data in case of Iraq; I did not have any data. Rather, I thought the conflict between civilizations is a very dangerous thing, and Islam would not become more pacified if exposed to war, vice versa, sword would create an opposite sword. This is very simple.
   Somewhere I've read the word 'education' comes from Latin 'educe' which means 'draw out', 'extricate'. Education draws out what is already in you like Buddha-nature which is present in every man and woman. Schopenhauer discusses benefits and shortcomings of reading. He says: when you read all the time, you get stupid and crazy. It's unproductive and subservient to follow all the time in others' tracks, it kills your own thought. You have to think about what you've read, you have to live your own life.
   A drop out should teach you. I tried to get into American graduate education ( after 3 and a half of years in Russian institute), then I emigrated to Israel and finally got enrolled into a Western (Hebrew) university. That finished also unsuccessfully. In 90s, I was given a job of an interpreter but when an American businessman saw me, my untidy, bespectacled, dreamy, astronaut appearance, he immediately ordered me out. Once, in Israel, I wanted a job planting flowers on the street, with Negro workers, but the manager asked me if I had a driving license. He believed planting flowers needs a driving license. American universities also saw through me. I sent applications to four universities, Rutgers, Chicago, other two I forgot, I think one of them Stanford, but they did not believe in my abilities.
   Programmes scolaires, what should French pupils know, besides their smartphones.
   The need for 'equilibrium? The recent study showed the French lag behind in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving. Maybe that is what they need to work on.
   I've got 1969 Bukowsky 'NOTES OF A DIRTY MAN' in 1994, in 'Tower Records' in a big house on Tel Aviv central beach. 'Tower Records' is a musical store, nowadays almost nobody buys records there, but then, in 1994, I bought two discs, 'The Cocteau Twins', and one more I forgot which. I did not like the disc, and it soon got broken, though I bought a special walkman to play it. Later, in Petersburg, I sold this player. I bought one more Bukowsky book there, 'Hollywood', later, I dropped it in garbage. My mother, seeing me reading Bukowsky one time, told me it would make me crazy, this man had lived in a horrible universe. But how she knew? She doesn't read English, she's never read him. I got this book in 1994, and it survived my goings from country to country (from Israel to Russia and back) and six changes of apartment and moving from Jerusalem to Ashdod. But I've read it only twice during all this time, it just stood on my shelf.
   I don't have warm feelings for old fridges. I have one, it stands in Petersburg and is called 'Oka IIIIM'. I remember our ancient fridge, 'Yuruzan', fucked up suddenly. My mother went out and bought a new one. It was I don't remember when, in dinosaur times, I was a student in my high school, I was maybe eleven, maybe fourteen. So this fridge is over thirty though it's not so old as me or my mother. It's painted black now(it used to be white), in tunes with changing times. Though it's a monument to Soviet quality ( actually, very low, as is found out nowadays), I don't like it so much. It works like a devil, freezing food, and gets covered with thick layers of ice so it has to be defrosted once in a month. But we don't use it. We live some thousand kilometers from it, have a white German coffin for a fridge, and visit this antique once a year, to puzzle again at its weird black color(to say an N-word to designers who rented our flat and painted it according to their modernist vision inspired by IKEA booklets), and to fill it with strange Russian food.
   While in Prague, my mother decided to listen to a concert. We went to the sumptuous building in downtown , and the box office man said he could sell us tickets cheap; not 900 Krons, but 700 Krons per capita. 700 Krons is 150 shekels or 40 dollars, it was not so cheap for us. But anyway, my mother wanted to listen to the music, so she bought these tickets. Before the concert, there were Eastern-looking people in foyer waiting, like us, for the beginning. I asked my mother were they Chinese or Japanese, earlier she said she could tell one from the other (Japanese look more refined). But she said she did not know, I suggested they were from Corea. She asked North or South. Jokingly, I said North, for we supposed North Coreans are an impossible spectacle in Prague. But the rope was lifted, and we run to the concert hall. We listened to the concert (the hall was half-empty, which surprised my mother, she told me in Petersburg Philarmonia, at the opening of a season, the hall was always full, and it was much more solemn, lightened , and the organ in Petersburg was much bigger, she did not like the interior, it did not hold any comparison to the Philarmonia, though I did not care, the hall was ok with me), and two young adults speaking German sat in a row before us. They laughed at us, at our exotic appearance and remarks; it seemed to me they understood Russian. We listened to Mozart and Vivaldi 'The Four Seasons'. I enjoyed the music though I could not tell Mozart from Vivaldi, and started to want to piss so the music stopped to interest me and I waited for the end. Toward the end of the concert, in the hall the smell of the pork being fried began to disseminate which greatly puzzled me. I could not join in my mind music and pork, though I like both things separately but they did not go together for me. The Germans, evidently, were disappointed by my musical and general culture. After the concert, one of them has made a moue( frowned) and said something unapprovingly in German.
  
   Handling medical errors; I've read an article in the 'New York Times', about how a surgeon operated on the left knee instead of the right; I myself heard a story how they forgot in the belly some lancet or something, with which they operated; the author of the article says punishment is not the point, he wishes for doctors to improve, punishment would deter them from improvement( actually, I've heard a lot of stories about egregious medical mistakes, there is even a hospital in Petersburg, called 'istrebitel'naya', from the Russian name for destroyer plane, meaning doctors gather in this hospital for the quickest destroying of the unhappy folk having bad luck to get there (usually poor people having not means and knowledge to escape from doctors' hands). Handling medical errors, some political and financial errors also could be called 'medical'. Where, can you tell me, a hospital exists where doctors succeed to kill 600000 patients like in Iraqi war started 'in error'? Who will pay for European and global surveillance when virtually every phone and iPhone is bugged?
   Talking of musical contacts East-West: recently Kostya Kinchev, the leader of the Petersburg rock group 'Alisa', invited Paul McCartney to his concert in Russia. Paul McCartney politely refused. That's how the wind of change (by the way, in the famous song of 1991, 'The Scorpions' sing about 'balalaika' and 'my guitar' suggesting mutual possibility of enjoying both, not aware, evidently, that guitars are also used in Russia, and balalaika is a very rare, ancient instrument, not enjoying especially great popularity in Russia) blows. A long time ago, I've read somewhere it's useless to learn foreign languages, people who learn them, learn to hate, never understanding each other. But I don't believe it.
   More about musical contacts. I found in the net the British musical magazine 'The Wire', and there 'The East' was represented by obviously homosexual Russian bearded beauty 'Stellatrix' or something like that, that was the name of his/her group. I 've bought one number of 'The Wire' in Germany, in 1992, and pursuing my past, I looked it up digitally, but the Russian, as well as British homos, don't interest me, though I'm not that homophobic. The model East-West, East posing 'down', and West posing 'up', is something against my patriotism and love of Motherland. I'm not pushing the reverse model, but I did not like it.
   'Los Angeles Times' doesn't like the prospect of giving to each poor, immigrant son or daughter, a new iPad. They say 'a great teacher' is needed instead of new-fangled gizmo, but I suspect they are just afraid. They are afraid of the internet potential, that kids might learn something 'undesirable' on the net. If they're just don't want 'to waste' money, why not give children old PCs? I'm not sure kids would read Lucretius in Russian or Latin on their iPads, but they could really learn a lot of stuff, which is educational and enlarges their horizons. Besides a growing market of eBooks, there are a lot of free eBooks even in English, music, movies, newspapers, programs, etc.
   If we take, for example, Spielberg's old movie 'Back to the Future', and project it on current events, we'll find the future emerging before our eyes(not in the movie but in real life) looks more like the 'ugly' scenario happened due to heroes' mistake in their trip to the past, not the shiny future they finally reached. The growth of Fascism in France and elsewhere, surveillance, violence, bullying, wars. Can you imagine a future without next Vietnam war?
   Obsessed with education, my audience - children, Alzheimer's patients, or, in the best case, young adults, what is really the level of my education? I took GRE, I took (on the computer) GMAT, but I have not really graduated from any college. 'Unfinished higher education', 'high school', 'pre-kindergarten' - 'EGE'(Russian) - to which standards I apply, where to put me? Trying to counterfeit academician's signature (I never tried, only was blamed with), trying to sell a doctor's dissertation (like a corrupt Russian deputy, 'the serf of the people' (I never was)), young adult German frowning at me - 'this food delivery boy' (I did waiter's job on 'Lumosity', serving fast food to virtual Johns and Kellys, getting my virtual pay) - I recall Heinrich Boll 70s novel 'A Group Portrait with A Lady', my mother liked it, there was a captive Russian guy in Nazi Germany, his education never was to be compared to German Abitur, though he was over 20, as I remember, and probably an officer in the Soviet Army - unruly Leni preferred this primitive slave Red Russian to an educated Nazi native boy- but what is my education? Very strange kind of education, really. Exactly suited to what I am doing now. Like a Jack-of-all-trades switching between food delivery, writing, shopping and outsider criticizing what's happening in the 'New York Times', riding a rocket too, occasionally (in 'Los Angeles Times')(never getting credit for this)(acting, teaching, curing, entertaining, participating in multiple scientific experiments, behaving as an ageing rock star, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera - but my girl urges me to stop lazing out and get a job).
   Strange, almost all the history has happened in analog times. All the people we meet now digitally had lived their analog lives. Shakespeare was analog, Jesus Christ was analog, Lao Tse was analog -or was he 'different'?
   Will you wear the Halloween costume this year? I won't; I'm not living in the u.s. I don't know what Halloween costumes are about; I worked officially at one time of Halloween in Israel, and I had to pack Halloween masks, they really horrified me, I don't know how children are supposed to wear these masks, a Chinese dragon, etc. they are ugly, aggressive, drab, stupid, vulgar, cheap - what kind of life these children are having if they buy these masks. I, I -who am I, am I the person they address in the paper - no, I'm not. They don't address me, they address their fellow Americans, and since I'm not their fellow American, I'm that abominable snowman, who is a bear, too, but soon will be caught.
   I'm no teacher; still, I teach. I try to teach myself, having for teachers myriad of things. For example, William Blake: Jew, stop counting your money! Negro, widen up your mind!
   It could refer not to a Jew only, or to an American, it refers to me myself, too. I don't say don't study economics, be a Communist, etc. I myself mainly meet with cashiers whose job is to count money - this advice is suicidal for them. But it has sense for them, too - it teaches them to be not as narrow-minded as to think of money only, there are other things in life besides money.
   'The New Yorker': rising cost of education... try to sell your future shares...
   I don't care about rising cost of education. If your iq is higher than 130, you can learn all you need on your own. And you can get your iq higher than 130, read, study math, learn languages, surf the net, commune with Nature. If they throw you out of your college, this may be better for you, like in Tao tale about a villager and his son, who broke the leg, and the army did not take him like all others, who went to war and all were killed, save this boy. But the cycle of happiness and unhappiness doesn't stop here, there may be further misfortune, probably leading to future happy states, you never know what leads to happiness, and what leads to misery.
   Nobel lit 2013 went to 82-year old Canadian Alice Munro for the life-long work in short stories. They are lucid, and short, unlike the ouvres of the laureates of the years preceding 2013, (temporary relief -whose relief, Swedish Academy?)which 'were criticized for being obscure, difficult to comprehend or overtly political'. I wonder do I fit into the description? Of course, not(not everything written about other people could be said about me) - literary world, in their Kafkian castle, lets out, to my ears, not much, but enough for me to be unhappy - like 'children's literature', for example. I never know if I possess any talent - sometimes I hear about 'bezdarnykh' authors, but I'm not sure if I belong to this category. From the other side, there are 'talented authors', 'geniuses', like Iosif Brodsky, for example. But the tragedy of Iosif Brodsky turned to parody, to caricature in my case, as I learn from Piotrovsky, the chef of the art museum 'Hermitage' (though was he talking about me? The castle, what happens there, in the mysterious heights where only a few select ones enter, I'll never know. He was talking about some 'idiot' too, with a youthful joy in his voice - probably, that was me).
   But, anyway, I thought I was too simple, too easy to comprehend, to be awarded a Nobel prize. They said also the prize is given for the life-long work. And I said something about their gerontocracy, about a long line for the fame and fortune. Even if in their minds went (for some obscure for me reasons) an idea to award me finally, my defiant behavior should have scared them away. I've heard they were going, besides giving a Peace prize to Yaser Arafat, to award Hitler, though I wonder in which domain. Peace prize is a bit mocking, physics hardly the field of Adolf, maybe economics? Germany shortly risen up from the ashes of WWI under Hitler.
   Fame and fortune; have the Nobel brought happiness to Iosif Brodsky? He was very active in trying to get it and got it in 1988, when he was something over 40. But I've read his essays, how he had to travel round the world fixed up in numerous writers' conferences, his account of a trip to Rio de Janeiro, nothing to be liked about this trip. He writes about himself that he feels like 'a badgered neurotic'.
   So is there a sense to get a Nobel? I have not got a Nobel, but I don't feel like a badgered neurotic( though the badgering is in full swing, and I am medically considered psychiatric patient , it makes me saner only). If I got one, probably, I would feel like one. You have to pay for everything. I don't feel like a respected author, and I don't need it. I don't have a passion for glamour. If you are down, everybody is more honest with you, at least. Nobody dresses you up, like a naked king.
   I found out the number of the convolutions of the brain doesn't depend on iq. I remember our teacher in school told us about Lenin's brain, how it was studied by science after his death, and how dense in convolutions it was. But I've read on the net the brains of several geniuses were studied in comparison, and they did not differ from other brains and among them. To believe it or not? In Russia, everybody knows fools have one, maybe two convolutions, clever people have more.
   Another myth: average man uses only 10% of his brain. Totally debunked on the net, even in Wikipedia. But an idiot and Einstein, do they really use the same percentage of their brains? And I saw pictures of neurons net before and after Lumosity training, and if to compare it to a tree, the 'after' tree was much more luxuriant, than 'before' one.
   Walking to the supermarket near our hotel in Prague, I saw groups of men drinking beer sitting on stone parapet right on the street. I got myself a bottle of beer and sat there, alone, watching the city wake up. I became something of a native Prague citizen because soon a boy came up to me from the metro station and asked me how to get to the bus station. I looked up and showed him the direction to the station. He, looking European, country, innocent, politely thanked me and went to the direction I pointed out. I thought of Israeli youth, they are not so innocent. Russian youth, too, though Israelis are more huzpanim, insolent.
   Halloween: spooky news from America, global wire, coming to your home through communications. The pumpkin is in my home, but the merriness is not.
   Almost every morning, I wake up, drink my morning coffee, and sit beside my computer to look at five grey, drab rectangles, clicking exactly one hundred time on one of them, trying to guess where the classical European painter's picture is hidden. The theory of probability which is true and which I don't want to refute, says exactly one of five times, in the long run, my guess will be correct. But if extrasensory perception exists, the theory of probability can sit down and relax. It's the same as with acupuncture, the modern-Western science says it's bullshit, suggestion and placebo at best, but when I press 'the points' on my mother's leg, her back's pain recedes. By the way, my mother hates it when she sees me 'guessing' the rectangles, the cards. She says are you trying to prove you are 'a genius'? I was long convinced how in reality 'talented' you are. But I'm not trying to prove I'm a genius, I take part in a scientific experiment, though what is its relation to science I only wonder.
   Some people dislike medicine, this boring, 'unclean', 'painful subject. Some people don't like the work of scientist, scientific books, 'grey' and dull, to read about gory crimes, rapes, Nobel prizes and dictatures, about gorgeous mansions, about princesses' child-bearing, is much more fun, it's 'more creative' - picture moves, the revolver blasts, people drop dead, what a spectacle! But I'm highly ordinary, highly boring, I'm no any Indiana Jones, I'm no Superman, I'm not even the black mayor of Detroit. I read the papers, which , though not exactly offsprings of "The Official Gazette of Prague' it in many aspects, I read the papers, I watch tv, I follow its 'programming', I follow my course to the grave, programmed, spiced, and entertained(but not admitted to the university - not me, anybody else, it's ok, but me - not on this planet).
   There are no two identical leaves on the Earth. There are no two identical people among the Earth's eight billion. If leaves look similar, men also look similar, but they are much more complex than leaves, so really they are all very different. In Russia, they all lived in identical apartments. But still, they were not all the same. They, probably, read the same books. But they have not evolved, as a result of reading these books, into complementary, standard details, like those they produced on factories. The standards existed, they exist, they try to fit you into this or that standard,, like vodka 'Russian standard', for example. But diversity is not an exclusive property of the West, of the capitalism. In West, there exist not less, and sometimes much more rigorous standards. The modern life invites to standards, serial productions, serials, serial numbers, mass production, mass culture, still, you can escape.
   A lesson, for me, for children starting school at two, for Johnson&Johnson, for parents and authorities? Johnson&Johnson paid a fine of two bn dollars, for promoting Risperdal. This Risperdal(there was a picture of the 0,25 mg drug, I'm taking 3 mg daily) leads to strokes in old persons, to rapid weight gain and diabetes in young persons. This medication is given in dementia cases, to prevent oppositional behaviour, etc. I'm taking it for 10 years, though I don't need it at all. I haven't got a stroke yet, have not gained weight, and have not got diabetes yet. It's all what is in store for me. Dementia - is it given personally to me to fight dementia or to cause it? I'm not sure.
   It might seem my problem is financial one, my woes are result of my poverty, if I found a way of earning big or even moderate money, I would live forever happily. As ABBA sang, it's always sunny in the rich men's world. But authorities saw my problem rather as behavioral, I deviated from standards of late Soviet society, new post-Soviet society, but, very strange, from standards of the free world as well. The approach of authorities was medicational, I have been treated. I have been treated for my financial stupidity. If I admitted the standards of market economy, I would, perhaps, alleviate my fate.
   Notions of self-help, fitness, mental and physical, life as school, life-long learning, even garbage-throwing as nature-friendly behavior have deeply impregnated the minds of the general public. I have even the American mind company by the telltale name 'Learning Strategies' send spam to my mailbox. Learning strategies, my problem as mental, financial, national, or political, maybe intergenerational. Learning strategies, how should I go about problem-solving? Everybody floods me with the problems of their own, paradoxically hoping I should lend my resources and helping hand in their solving. Russian supremacy, American Obamacare, European stagnation - without my highly incompetent, sick, self-aggrandizing, narcissist self the world seems to get stuck in totalitarian impasse. At the same time, the union of the nations, cordial Alliance against 'Napoleon' seem to completely block any my attempts to propose a solution.
   Learning strategies, and I am about learning, too. Not that I took to heart Lenin's legacy motto 'To study, to study, to study', though it made some progress for Russia, making her from backward Middle Age barbarian country, 'the Boody of Europe', into the 'most reading nation in the world', the first space state. I don't know why I was so keen on learning, maybe because I am partly Jewish. Though I did not like school very much, the main learning I took from books that were not included into the school program. But I learned, first English, then some math, some literature, then I had two-year army curricula, then I got to medicine, philosophy, cognitive science, humanities. Then I tried to learn market economy, was forced some geopolitics, Chuan Tse was a relief, then it came to mass psychology and writing. What should come next?
   This story with Risperdal and Johnson&Johnson, it's only an iceberg's top. Strange that I have not come up yet with Proverbs of Hell of my own. Everything happening to me boosts up my creativity (if not kills me instantly)- it can be said I'm getting a 'creative' treatment - dumb drugs, serial journalists, French chefs with acute knifes, Jewish disseminated genius.

The soft power of Twitter: the Arabian spring. But where is the twitter's power, it's powerful when it comes to self-irony, what has become of Arabian spring(began at Twitter)?

   Americans: why have we grown so fat? Me: because you drink Coke.
   Americans: why do we have life, and Mars has not? Me: Mars has not, but there are billions of Earth-like planets in Milky Way(our Galaxy) only.
   Britishmen: MexiCoke fans think their product is better that the real thing. Me: my mother doesn't let pharmacists sell her Rispond, the generic of Risperdal. If Risperdal was found in America harmful medication, I don't believe Rispond is any better than Risperdal, the chances are it's much worse.
   The question: what should I do? Should I continue to take Risperdal? It's a question not for my mother, and not for L.A. journalists, they'd rather I take some poison, and stop worrying their white souls.
   Germany has paid compensation to Jewish victims of Holocaust. America has displayed generosity concerning technology (talking of Twitter, but NSA also should be taken into consideration, I mean spying technology, all these web-cameras and phones, etc). But what is American response to Iraqi victims of war (600000 of them), besides temporary (till the next Bush term) regret at 'wrongdoings', or America believes her efforts at providing a democracy for Iraq should be rewarded (by Iraqi oil, for example)?
   Risperdal, promoted actively by Johnson&Johnson, was found poisonous for Americans(Johnson&Johnson has paid 2bn for this ), so there must be some science behind this. It is poisonous for my cat - she swallowed by mistake some other drug I'm taking, and has nearly passed out, it felt very strong for her, I thought how healthy I must be to be taking all this shit tens of years and not dying yet?
   Talking of Geodon, I looked up it in Google. First, there came a site of 'the most absurd, ridiculous lawsuits', there is a premium for that. But not only that, Pfizer also paid 2 bn, this time for geodon. Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Bob Patten led the Geodon and Zyvox
   investigation on behalf of the states and the National Association of Medicaid
   Fraud Control Units ("NAMFCU").
   Interesting, if you look up Geodon in Google, you'll find 'patients' comments where they praise it and describe their feelings of relief under the treatment. But in this investigation, it was found out geodon can have VERY serious side-effects (like sudden cardiac death).
   Millions of American kids and teens get antipsychotics, one out of 25 teens. This is an off-label prescription, and the government fined the monster pharmaceutical companies for this. But it's very lucrative, companies make billions on this. I've read in the press it's called the national catastrophe. Parents and doctors, not wishing to deal with children's problems, simply put them on antipsychotics , 'destroying their brains'. The efficacy of the drugs is very doubtful even in the cases of 'on-label' prescription, in psychiatric patients who decades earlier had to suffer harmful drugs of previous generation, and now are exposed to high risks of many serious diseases. It's very lucrative, the market is 16 bn dollars, and the nation is increasingly 'sedated'(not only this, boys can start growing a female breast).
   Hot mess with the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto. But the US returns to normalcy, with California leading the nation. Some signs of life from Europe, France, UK got a raise of 0,7%, 0,8% in Q3.
   My mother doesn't like our current location; she says it's a garbage place. But I like it. I don't want to relocate to Los Angeles. The pity it's not for long. My mother keeps moving, in spring we'll do the next move. I don't care about poverty. Poverty, Christ says, is closer to Heaven's Kingdom. The boom in L.A., they look so cool now, they throw all the old garbage. But they are not aware they make it worse for themselves. I liked Leningrad when it was shabby and provincial. I liked my mother when she was not so bitchy on money. Leningrad people got rich, they became proud nationalistic Petersburgers, and they became arrogant. Like Brodsky, when he got his Nobel, he began to demand to be addressed in 'vy', not in the second democratic pronoun 'ty', he's got important, he was a genius. And I'm saved from this. Nobody's going to promote me, to make me lose my inferior status. I can freely orbit Ashdod on my own feet.
   Nazis in Russia take for their inspiration French Nazis. They say: we want to live like in Europe, and look at Europe - in France they are very popular. It was Ray Bradbury who noticed this American, as it seemed to him, but really universal, phenomenon: to follow Joneses, to buy the same (or better) helicopter as Joneses.
   Microcosm reflects macrocosm, and it seems not all is going well in Danish kingdom. Not all goes well, in my own personal microcosm, and from all sides there are ideas and suggestions 'to put it right'. But how? How should my own personal microcosm be 'corrected'? What should I(as a Hamlet) do? If I am not able to independently come to a decision (involving fates of macrocosm - that is - my family? My neighborhood? My country? Which country? The Western World? The fate of Mankind? What is my 'circle of reference'? Should I take upon me the Tsar's superior function?), somebody should make it for me instead of me, but who? Who can solve all the problems? Who can be a superhero, without a shade of reproach? Ercul Puaro? Super-Schumacher? Mr Putin, dzudo champion, Himself?
   The Cold War ended (so they say), but the match USA-USSR (transformed into the matches USA-China and USA-Russia, though this last one is not a match really, Russians have not the slightest chance, it's a walk-on for Americans) goes on. I remember the saying of Margaret Mead, the renowned British anthropologist: if an American has to say he's sick, he doesn't fall really sick as a Russian invariably would do. Meaning: Russians are fools, in distinction from Americans. They are fools and beasts, they were fools to try to build socialism, they were fools with their tsars, they are drunken non-entities and slaves, like their ancient name suggests. This line of reasoning, strangely, is advocated by Eduard Topaller, who is promoting Russian culture in America (not for Americans, for Russians themselves so they wouldn't die out, out there in Russia). He became an American athlete in not yet started Sochi Olympics (which is already under boycott threat from the West). America, like one man, heroically led in the Moon conquest, with her 'Apollo' program (where Russians shamefully lost). America invented aerodynamic cars in 30s, which Russians copycatted from Americans to use them for their 'black ravens', the cars GPU agents came in the black nights to imprison and kill people. All America did, Russia primitively copied for her ugly, stupid, crazy purposes. America saved Russia in WWII by 'land-lease' trucks and other machinery.
   But I'm not going to compete with Topaller, to say everything in Russia was and is good, and everything in America is incorrigibly bad. I don't feel like Sochi Olympics.
   Some blogs I saw, in Boris' computer, say 'we're in trouble'. Not all goes well in Danish kingdom (they mean, in Israel? In America? In Russia?) Crowds of fools go to Palestinians, who laughingly accept their services,' the Fatherland in danger', and some morons preach 'friendship between nations', this Red idiotic slogan, when in reality friendship is possible between individuals and corporations only. Meaning: between nations only enmity and hatred is possible, the might is right (ancient sophists' teaching which Plato opposed), Palestinians and their stupid fiends can only be controlled, if war needed, by war. And corporations, in their relation to individuals, can only be right, together offering them their products, if you don't like their service, you have no choice, there aren't 'other' corporations, every corporation has a corporate 'ethic' which is to make profit.
   Modern fascism is not about exterminating Jews and Gypsies, and the thousand-year German Reich only, and not even about Europe-centrism and hatred of Blacks only, it's logistic, technological, you have to have your ID number, it's not necessarily tattooed on your skin, with yellow star. But you have to have you nationality; you have to take part in the global net. Your nationality connects you with certain people, it gives you (probably, collective) identity. You know your nation, you know you have to fight other nationals, it's written in computer, in your DNA, it's part of the game, like you are the fan of your city team (meaning you're part of this team), you're fan of you country team, you compete with other nations. It's automatic; you don't have to think for yourself, you act with your fellow countrymen.
   Mayor of Toronto caught on smoking pot, was disgraced on American television, RTVi told us from New York that he was shown with 'quivering, shaky head', in utter degradation, failed leader, the culprit of failures of Toronto and Canada - healthy moral instinct of RTVi, this Russian American tv channel, did not fail it in showing one of 'people's enemies', happily disclosed. But smoking pot, should it be legal, should it be banned, not on airplanes only, but everywhere, like smoking tobacco? Smoking tobacco is an anti-American activity reeking of bad smell (sorry for the unfortunate pun), free thinking, and, perhaps, worse, like atheism, crime and terrorism.
   New York: Spreading Culture. A rich butter from Europe reeking of high culture, honky-tonk and high society - spreading it generously on bread, taking it in (getting fat? Healthy fat, not those anorexic models starving in Europe, not Africa).
   Broccoli, that favorite meal of Barak Obama - is it more healthy than cauliflower? What is cauliflower's IQ, is it bigger than pumpkin's? But now is Thanksgiving Day, now is the turn of turkey. Eat them all, eat them quicker, eat them and all your problems will be automatically solved) like buying wits and eggs on the market - but, like fast food, it's not lowering your cholesterol - you end up with Alzheimer's symptoms - hopefully to be treated and alleviated but still...
   New York journalists shortly displayed the scene from my mother's favorite movie 'Kill Bill' when the heroine leaves the restaurant in Tokyo full of dismembered bodies, the low howl of Jakudza crowd, all dead, wounded, and beaten. 'Philippine survivors gave up hope, they're in despair.' As if I was that tornado crushing the Philippines as New York before. When it was ME who really was the victim of tornado.
   It was Dale Carnegie who wrote it's very stupid to hope for people's gratitude. For example, Scott Fitgerald. He wrote a best novel of American literature, 'The Great Gatsby', the American Dream of Americans. And he did not live to 40 dying from alcoholism. American engineers who helped Russians to copycat American dream cars of 30s disappeared in Stalin purges. But not only these engineers. The best generals, the best writers and journalists, elite of Russia, disappeared in these same purges. It probably started with Phidias who was incriminated in theft of gold from his Zeus gigantic statue. I don't take myself as an example but I learned from Carnegie and these stories. I myself have not met anything like ingratitude. I was not a Phidias, I did not help Russians copycat American cars, I have not disappeared in Stalin purges. But I expect bad for good, as a rule, and if I ever make something valuable I may perish as a result of this.
   'This architecture is like fake money, seems like true but it's not true, doesn't cost anything'.
   The Soviet architecture, Stalin houses, horrible, but cost now big money. Khrushev houses, like coops, strange that people can live there, Brezhnev houses, I grew up in a Brezhnev house, and it made me emigrate. But architecture in Russia goes on. Strange if it suddenly changed its ways with advent of capitalism and Putin. They said 'a generation must perish before something could change', one generation, two generations, three generations, but something must be wrong with modern Russian architecture; life simply doesn't let beauty to get through.
   The Soviet architecture, the Soviet movie of 70s, 'The Irony of Fate', a hero between Moscow and Leningrad, between two women in identical houses on the streets of the same name, in identical apartments, on a train, in a snowstorm - happiness despite architecture, Russian cosmic feeling of snowstorm on the whole Earth, not as a deadly Sandy for New York, just a happy snowstorm.
   I don't want a fabulous French chateau, I don't want a mansion with thousand servants, I don't want a modest villa on Mediterranean, I don't have dreams about houses. Arriving in Petersburg, I am quite happy where I am, in one-room shabby flat tortured by designers. I even don't want to live in old part of Petersburg, in Dostoevsky type of a house, with Dostoevsky bipolar syndrome. I dreamt about 'a round house in heaven', a picture from 60s magazine 'America'. But it stayed in 70s, together with picture of American food nature-mort, from the same magazine. I don't know what kind of house I would like to live in. A hut in woods, but where? Just a hut in woods, not specifying where.
   Nationality, it's the 'fifth line' in the Soviet passport. Fifth line where it's written you are a 'major', 'normal' nationality, a Russian, or might have the bad luck of being written off as 'Jew', and then you face many hurdles. Jews, 'expatriate cosmopolitans', upon entering the Promised Land, took the clue from Russians. In the Jewish State there is place for one nation, others are 'personae non grata' here. You must be a Jew to live in Israel; there is 'a fifth line' in the Jewish passport. That was the reason for Jews to fight for the right to live outside the Communist Heaven, to fight for the cancellation of shameful sign in your ID. But they aped Russians in their xenophobia.
   New York: when it comes to theater, WE take the central stage. Israelis, from their side, think the centre of the Universe is in Jerusalem. When they speak of 'North', they mean Golan Heights, Galilee, but also Ukraine, Russia, what not. West - is all the Europe together with America, East - China, Japan (Jews are active in Japan selling bogus watches). And I am provincial; I am on the periphery of the world. Russia, Petersburg (whatever Putin infuses into it, it's NOT the world capital), Ashdod - shady Darom, South of Israel, somewhere between Asia and Africa (some claim in the centre of Africa). Like in 'Martian Chronicles', average man in the small town on the plains of America, in the usual, grey Monday, watches rockets start to Mars - take me with you; don't leave me with my dull, ugly, grey life! But the astronauts only smile haughtily at him as the police squad grabs him into the patrol car and drives him away from the rockets but from the rear window he watches despairingly at the take-off.
   The world is very big, it's not small, it's not computer, apartment, Jews, Russians, news only. But much of it can be inferred from Vysotsky's song about a sentimental boxer. И думал Авдеев, мне рёбра круша: " И жить хорошо, и жизнь хороша!" It doesn't matter where you are, who is talking to you. It's all this crushing boxer. But I'm like that sentimental boxer; I can't stand the thought of beating people.
  
   Michael Zhvanetsky, in his latest address to the Russian people (on the Central Television, in quality of 'Person-In-Charge-For-The-Country') remarked: 'The beard doesn't becomes you'. I don't know about whom he was talking, evidently about some bearded personage but it struck me the beard doesn't really becomes me too. And I don't grow a beard; I shave my face and chin. Perhaps, 'beard', 'legend', 'history' isn't flattering to me. Perhaps, from the point of Zhvanetsky ( he's sitting high, sees far - he's a famous comedian, stand-up artist and has many honors for his making fun of Soviet ugly, ridiculous realities(though it seemed he somehow lost his ground with break-up of the Soviet Union, and just recently it dawned on him 'there aren't so many differences in socialism and capitalism', question - why all this fuss, what are so many people are quarreling about?), my history is bad for me, perhaps, I should forget about my shameful, reprehensible past, about my N-word being, and try to be somebody else. But I don't regret writing 'Canaan Chronicles'.
   Zhvanetsky is right; in my history there is nothing to be especially proud about. Much food for comics, but in general, I'm too grey, insignificant, dull personage, 'nudnik', speaking Yiddish, too dumb for a Jew. Sitting on my 'throne', what is all this monarchy, tyranny, 'Game of Thrones' about? Take for example, Jerusalem tramway. Took longer than BAM, the Soviet 'dolgostroi', stolen milliards of shekels, rubles, dollars, what not, the monument to 'multiculturalism', meaning Jews and Arabs can sit there together and looking at each other, forget their cousins' hatred. I am supposed to be 'father of multiculturalism', something in Israeli politics like poisoned Yaser Arafat, failed laureate of Nobel Peace Prize (though I am 'very evil' and like Yury Gagarin, the first man in space, much hated by his schoolmates)- father of multiculturalism, the child of two worlds - I did not steal a copeck of tramway money, I did not see a copeck of these milliards. Still, there are numerous 'black holes' in this world, money, abstract notion for me, disappear to all kinds of holes. Where these money come from, where they go, is a mystery to me. I was told drinking begets 'black holes'. But I drink less, I smoke less, I work more, I get emaciated (controversial weight loss pill?) soon to be like nonexistent ethereal ghost( in the apartment where I happen to exist though the leadership of Russia and many others doubt my existence saying I'm purely virtual and legendary, mythical, literary collective pseudonym, like Kozma Prutkov). Still, I have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. My location, with tremendous precision, is known to every random person I meet; there is something sinister about this.
   Going back to my own history - in Russia this my endeavor was rejected as 'fairy tales', 'Brothers Grimm fairy tales', recently, by Akunin, the savior of Russian belles-lettres, as 'Fairy tales for idiots', my person (to remember what I've wrote three years ago) was located as a cell operator in Latvia angry with his bosses, going back to my history, I remember at one point in my life I took from the library a book on the French Revolution, about why it was a crazy, doomed enterprise, and why it was possible to avoid it, and how happily France would live without it. Thinking of France, these truisms that Revolution 'always' eats its children, that 'the machine of Revolution' becomes at certain point uncontrollable, the quiet, bookish intellectuals give orders of guillotine, sending their friends to death for their Ideals, how Napoleon strangled the French Revolution getting to first military, then general power, how Napoleon in his turn was strangled by international monarchies, how monarchy in France was restored ( and even now gains positions worldwide), how they hate Lenin, and what kind of revolution would I like to organize? Not French bourgeois revolution, not Russian socialist revolution, not Russian capitalist revolution (is it really a revolution or counter-revolution, Prague velvet revolution), I know revolution is often bloody, it brings wars, deaths, destruction, disorder, chaos, but it is not always bloody - venerable example - British Glorious revolution, the British were the most clever, they knew how to avoid trouble, they won their freedoms.
   America: What if JFK was alive?'50 years since the nightmare, still there is no talk of conspiracy. The killer: Harvi Lee Osvald, who spent some time in the USSR.' Why they say there is no talk of conspiracy? All these 50 years there was MUCH talk of conspiracies. It started even before the Commission of Warren the report of which was much criticized, even in 'America' magazine published in Russian and designed specifically for the Soviet reader( not every Soviet reader could get access to it, though, there was strict very 'conservative' hierarchy in the Soviet Union).
   Moiras interweave my fates, Moiras not Jewish rather Moiras Ivanovnas, the world 'zakulisa' councils in its transcendental healthy sea spas: " Otrezhem otrezhem Maresievu nogi" performing by itself its hygienic role of wolves- 'sanitary lesa' what to do about me, stepping up on the scene, I'm not the sole actor in the Athenian theater, with its 17000 empty seats, there are others. You choose what to watch (mine long had been the worst movie of the year, with me doing nothing heroic or bad, barely moving, reading books and putting a finger in my nose); what to watch - theater 'Gesher'('The Bridge')fittingly emerging in 9th channel recently, by its bridge name, seemed, suited to my activities, 'Yunona and Avos', super popular Russian rock opera(10 million copies sold) I've read a story about its protagonist and his Spanish girl - unflattering( he succeeded to procure a post-mortem glory for himself despite his eternal petulance and his ordinariness compared to people around him (on his ship)) - 'Yunona and Avos', I prefer 'Jesus Christ-Superstar', though it's not in Russian, in English, the language of 'my potential enemy'.
   Jews are the best comics, Zhvanetsky, for example, I could never compete with them, probably, learning a thing or two about the craft, like Chuan Tse writes about some ancient Chinese people(they did not know the Way, but they knew a thing or two). But the life appears to me mainly in the comical light, with comics like Zhvanetsky who do it for money, and many, many others, of all nationalities and walks of life, who do it inadvertently and look funny to me.
   'The New York Times': ' A Closer Look at Centuries-Old Manuscripts'. Not opening the link yet, trying to guess what snakebite awaits there credulous reader - 'closer', 'ever getting closer and closer', closer to Verity? West is committed to Verity, at least Western philosophy inherited from Greeks ( Greek - meaning gay, for popular logistics, don't you ever dare to trod on Greek territory (in Russia, Georgians are blamed with this vice (which is not a vice at all for significant portions of population in decadent, sated, hedonist late Roman Empire West, but Russia, another actor in our play, keeps the virile Spartan Victorian(not to mention German Nazis) attitude - gays are pigeons, to be used in medicine, cosmetics, posh products, etc., but mainly to undertake a rear-entrance practice, even from 'straights')aspiration to Absolute Truth. But what kind of manuscripts, published or not, needs now a closer look? 'JFK conspiracies?''WikiLeaks information pertaining to behavior of American GIs during Iraqi war(and elsewhere)' I wrote earlier internet is flooded with information. You have access to all ancient religious, philosophical, literary traditions. I doubt tens of millions of Africans would soon make any use of it. But it's here, for you to choose.
   Laughing not for money, writing for your own pleasure, living in the middle of nowhere, being non-pragmatic, not yearning for the world's awards and honors, not standing on tiptoe, being 'holistic'( getting away with all 'isms'), do whatever you please - who can stand this?
   In the television sky, like before in the internet LA sky an interesting phenomenon happened. The Israeli government unexpectedly found extra money, a lot of money, 13 billions. Like in LA before, they were genuinely surprised by this fact, like they were fighting their party wars, traveling around the world, enjoying life, and - BOOM! MONEY! They, like before in LA, began to publicly hypothesizing where this money could come from. Raised taxes, true, ministries consumed less, true, raised prices, true, but it seemed to them this was not sufficient reason for easy money, there must have been something else behind this. And they were wary - what should come out of this?
   LA watchdogs try to escape me in Facebook (that is, on their jobs, in their shift). There is MUCH interesting going on there, hidden from curious eyes, something like Twitter, and similarly there where I don't go. Everybody - to Facebook! It's like I was going to study German, and two Israeli girls on the bus complained there was no escape from me, I was learning all the languages. So they could not keep IT secret from me. But I'm not about secrets, I don't care about secrets, I don't care about passwords, I'm not that secretive. I don't want to snatch American secrets from Americans, I'm no Snowden.
   Doctors from 'The New York Times': facetiousness leads to multiple sclerosis?
   'The New Yorker': How it came about we've gotten so fat?
   I guessed due to cola, but it's not only cola. It's all those 638 recipes, obsession with food. People are bored; they invent incredible dishes dishing them around the globe. The net result: general obesity. You might object, is it better to live a life like mine, with not much food, and not much else, why live a life of a skeleton, we'd better grow fat. But I'm not a skeleton really, I weigh 69 kg What about quality of my life, it's subject to jokes like everything else.
   People were worried yesterday on tv not only by unexpected money, but also the impending stagnation, lowering competitiveness of Israeli products, low level of education of minister of finances, etc. But I don't share their worries. To worry about Israel is absurd. A man burned himself because he did not have anything to eat and pay bills, but these people on television won't starve.
   I'm no Taoist but I wonder at some of their principles. Like: don't argue. They think it's useless to argue. But on the 9th channel they reminded me debates, everywhere (mostly in the high school and college but in the Congress, too)in America are very popular.' Verity is born in discussion', so the ancient Latin proverb says. So who is right? Chinese or Latins? I don't know. I keep getting in arguments, is there any sense in this?
   I'm not like Marcel Proust. Though there are similarities. He was a half-Jew, he was born July, 10 so he was a Cancer, he was a writer, his novel was rejected by publishers, and his father was a doctor. But: he was born in 1871 so he is not a Snake, he was a famous writer, and he was a homosexual (he even funded a bordello for homosexuals). He had money so he could write his multi-volume epopee not worrying about this. He was a frail child, and very sick in his adult life. He forsaken love for art.
   France beat Ukraine; Germany beat England, and me, what should I do? I'm not for Israel, I'm not for Russia, I'm for my novel - by the way, I dwelled on national question there, and on internationalism-multiculturalism, is it part of my 'program'? By the logic of football fans, I must incessantly split in myself and fight myself. But I don't accept this logic. Kuprin wrote mongrels are more competitive than 'pure' races. Proust is an example, Vysotsky, the Russian bard, too. Not the tea Vysotsky, it's quite a different matter (как пел гуру из Бобруйска Майка Науменко, лотос - это такой цветок, а вовсе не стиральный порошок). It is actual here, where I'm located for the last 13 years, it is very actual. The Jewish State of Israel fiercely denies its resemblance to the German Reich - but it can't be denied, you have your rights here only if you belong to the Chosen Nation (and not in America, I'm not living in America nor Northern Italy nor Latvia, I'm not that rebellious cell operator, I'm on pension from Bituah Leumi, and my existence is negated in Israel, in Russia, and elsewhere).
   I'm not a guru, not a 'guru from Bobruisk'. But I don't believe Petersburg will live in 2030 'like in Barcelona'. It's a question of originality, you have to work out a style of your own, not imitate others. In Soviet times, many in Russia disliked Muscovites and liked Leningraders. Why? There was something in Leningrad, some aura, though it was heavily shadowed by Moscow and was generally neglected by authorities, and Leningrad Communist authorities actually did not add to the city aura but did everything they could 'to extinguish' it. Nowadays, many in Petersburg complain 'the marshland smothering, killing climate', Sokurov, for example, the city famed moviemaker, would fain emigrate though he enjoys quite a high status.
   Russian economy. Part of BRIK (though illegal and disputed, really not quite understandably relegated to the 'developing ' world - the USSR competed with the USA quite seriously, in times of Mr. Kennedy's presidency, when America produced 50% of the world GDP, the USSR produced 20%, one may argue who needed all these tons of cast iron, the population wanted rather American jeans and American cars, and all the rest also American, but population was not taken into account, the task was to win over America and to build communism, by the year 1980, still, the USSR was the second, from this 'Second World'), with its 5 and 7% of GDP growth annually, Russian economy (if to compare her with a frivolous girl) 'gave' and 'grew'. But recently I opened a Russian site and found a sad report about its not meeting its set by Mr. Putin 4% 2013 GDP growth. It made 1, 8% in the Q3, though still more than France, somehow disappointing for Russians. The site elegiacally spoke of 'rains' which 'beaten' the harvest. It seemed Russia makes her living from her agriculture, like in 1913 (though in 1913 we hear of 'mighty' development of capitalism, and the Russia's figures for 1913 were long unsurpassed in the Soviet times, and some argued Russia was much better off then). On another Russian site I learned about Mr. Putin reaction to the news. He is to 'talk sense' into businesses - getting more taxes from them. So, like in Israel, people in the newspapers and on television worry for economics, G-d forbid it might stagnate. I thought the driving force behind the Russian economics were those hated Uzbeks who repel the 'dominant' population so they get killed for such trivial reasons as a ticket to metro. Probably, they said - enough! What sense makes it to work like a slave if you get killed in return?
   I said I might learn a thing or two from Jews (meaning not only the humorist craft), and I actually learned some things from my mother. She, though not a 'kosher' Jewess, is a big comic. But I'm not saying only Jews are comics. Ukrainians, too (Gogol), Americans (Mark Twain), Taoists(Chinese), and many other nations have a wonderful sense of humor. I wouldn't repeat the Western mistake of representing Russians as cold, beastly, rough, criminal, Red brutes, who cannot joke.
   I inherited from my mother not only sense of humor, not only just character, but ESP abilities too. Today my mother came to her room, and the watch fell down and broke. But, possibly, it's not my mother only. My writing takes such turns that the Forces of Evil get irritated (I provoke them), and get together to harm me (and my family). 'How does Cancer smell?' inquires 'The New York Times' solicitously. Not only Ugo Chaves, not only Iaser Arafat, not only Curt Cobain (not only John Lennon, Itzhak Rabin and John Kennedy), 'The New York Times' worries for my health.
   I don't care about delayed gratification. The researches of Maria Konnikova in America led her to suspend this religious belief in delayed gratification. It was found out those who faithfully waited for their bigger, lawful reward, got nothing. Those who choose the duck (or I don't know who it is in American proverb) in the hands, at least got something. It was evening; I won a bottle of beer from my mother and read the article, a treat like those delightful brownies. Maria (a fresh Ph. D. from Columbia University, an author (Mastermind: How to Think like Sherlock Holmes, New York Times bestseller, translated into 16 languages, 2013) got to conclusion it is worth to set definitive time border when 'the reward could materialize'. The indefinite waiting is bad for morale and leads (children waiting for the ice cream, for example) to forfeiting delayed gratification.
   I learned Maria Konnikova studies psychology, and self-control, specifically. I am not against self-control, I don't want to be self-controlling, but self-control is essential. I don't follow in all its ramifications every thought found its way to my head (or where it is where the thoughts come into our mind, Chinese think it is heart), I don't practice self-control like Buddhists do in vipassana. Though I believe vipassana is very helpful, if I had time and possibility to do it under the good guidance, I would gladly do so. But I'm rather impulsive, spontaneous, natural (don't mix it with reflexive, gut instinct type). I try philosophy for self-control.
   I first read Camus when I was 24. I liked 'L'Etranger' but 'Myth of Sisyphus' turned me on. Recently I met a person in the internet who 'adored Sisyphus', how he was alone before his immense stone and had to raise it eternally up only to see it slip on the mountain top roaring jumping accelerating down, always down. I thought it was good to be Sisyphus. But recently, when I found myself in Sisyphus boots, I hated him. It just doesn't make sense. I am against an absurd hero, I'm against existentialism. I have my 4-volume 1935 dictionary of Ushakov, 'tolkovyi' in Russia that means literally 'clever', 'smart', such is strange rendering in Russian of the name for monolingual dictionary. Boris said it lost all its 'sense' nowadays, but I don't believe him. Of course, the situation in Russia in 1935, 1937 was far from normal. Many words are there that frighten and repel me, with that characteristic 'totalitarian', 'Bolshevik' flavor. But it's not all that there is there. There are many lengthy, pithy citations from Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol and many other Russian writers. After this dictionary, there were not things like that. It was an outmoded luxury; there was no need, time and resources for Russians to know Russian well. But to sense, I wanted rather to make sense of the world, not to glory in its absurd. Absurd there is out there, there is too much of it. Absurd and tragic is human life, and it's better to try to make it not so senseless.
   'It's knot over yet', warns 'The Independent'. True, right now, 'live', there are sounds in the sky above me, here, in Ashdod, in 30 km from Gaza, war planes fly there, for what? Not much guessing is needed, it's highly improbable they would drop humanitarian aid to Palestinians, rather something more 'cool'. It's knot over yet, the history has not ended like prophesied one Japanese professor. Reason, (we shall behave like rational beings), still, like Carnegie writes, has to function in the deep, hot, passionate ocean of emotions. Educated people 'know' killing is bad, all religions agree in that, but killing goes on(and on, and on, and on...)The progress leads to 'better' weapons, people are able to kill and be killed with ever increasing ease. Is this the meaning of progress?
   It's interesting how sense travels between languages. RTVi says 'critics of Obama health reform call it "обамахранилище", interesting what is the English word for it? I've heard Obamacare, but is it it? "Обамахранилище" is a very rough word in Russian, it's understandable the rich people don't like idea of cheap health care and try as hard as they can to bury it as well as their Russian 'fellows'. Pharmaceutical industry gets, in contrast, ever more expensive, and the doctors wouldn't like 'to go cheap.
   'Obvious inventions', like powder or curtain. The clam Ming who is 507 years old and was born before Columbus discovered America. Acupuncture which is, for me, the most strange thing in the world, stranger than internet and telepathy. When it was 'invented'? They say first manuals appeared somewhere in 3 B. C., or I don't know when, in times of mythical Yellow Emperor (when he lived, is a mystery to me, had he existed at all, I don't know, he is considered 'the founder' of China, and Taoist, by the way). From the other side, there were found stone needles, so they started it in the Stone Age( that is, at least 10 thousand years ago). In one Russian manual, I've read the following story about origins of this 'invention'. One Chinese peasant, working on his rice field, hurt his leg. Suddenly, he hit his leg by a stone, and the pain disappeared. This 'materialistic' explanation doesn't suit me. These 'channels', which aren't detected by the most precise, most digital, most contemporary modern technique, how they were discovered? There is something supernatural about it, aliens? I don't know. But it works. Like the clam Ming from the Ming dynasty, it's older than Columbus, and it defies Western science.
   I've heard some laud education of Soviet times. They say 11 classes then equal 3rd year of today's college. Pity for today's Russia but I wouldn't rely on Soviet education. For me, essential part of education is exposure to 'alien' culture, living in it makes you better understand relativity of everything and your own culture. And Soviet education was very hermetic, though friendship between people was actively promoted. Soviet, and then Russian people grew in 'provincialism of great culture', like today's Americans or the British. This piece of Western learning (though not many in West follow it) I picked up intuitively. Then, opportunities East-West. In the USSR there was yoga, as a physical exercise. But this is all there is to it. Greek and Latin were known by few people.
  
   Dale Carnegie urged to study proverbs; there is people's wisdom in them. William Blake also said there is soul of the people in them. I studied 'Proverbs of Hell', I studied Russian proverbs.
   I've heard a story about Jim Morrison, how he never had any money, and when he died he had 400000$ he did not know about..
   But smart about money, it's not wit, like intelligence about making a play, writing a novel, starting a religion, or feeling the Nature. Richs don't have time to look at the stars, they're busy making money. Christ said it's hard for the rich to reach the Heaven's Kingdom; it's hard EXACTLY because the rich are rich. Money kills Spirit.
   Was Christ dumb saying this? 'What we're reading this week'. They sell a Psalm Book for 140 millions, but have they read the Good News?
   I'm not preaching poverty like Francis of Assisi. I'm not a preacher. I look at my own experiences, looking at the rich men world, studying Cognitive Science, trying to understand where it is that wit and wisdom lies, trying to save myself from stupidity. Who are smart and who are dumb? It's a myth that rich are smart.
  
   Our 'salon', the dining room, our hut of Gulliver up there in the sky, driven by crazy winds God knows where, our little family soap opera, is made up of television 'guests', of computer windows, of trips to the supermarket, and Victor Topaller comes sometimes to tell us about America. He told us about American cars, about American painters, about the White House, about cruel and primitive redskinners( a white woman taken by Indians becoming a 'squaw').
   Victor Topaller is a theatre critic who lived in Moscow, now he is 60-something( or 50-something) baldish white-haired man who is an anchorman in a guest show TV program 'In New York With Topaller' featuring artists from Russia who come to New York to perform. We see him quite regularly, once or twice a week. Now, we watch a series named 'American likbez' ('liquidatia bezgramotnosti','illiteracy liquidation', for short, `lik-bez' a popular name of the Soviet 'cultural revolution' of the 30s). He is a Jew, but he likes Russian culture. He, it turns out, also likes American culture, and considers himself an American. He talks of America as 'our' country. So what does he tell us of America? American cars, with their 'aerodynamic', sexy appeal, the White House, also looking quite sexy, with its oval fronton. An English ex-patriate painter, of whom nobody would hear if he did not leave England. Love of Americans for Nature, with a symbolic river's turn 'strangling' dark, threatening-looking lone cliff in the shadow, with a man-labored fields in the sunlit valley as a symbol of Man exploiting Nature( he speaks with a subtle irony about these 19-century nature- and freedom-loving painters reflecting the certain ideological trends in American culture, of which he is critical , because they represent 'Red' which he opposes, he is conservative , Red, . And, of course, Indians. He grants them 'silent, solemn nobility',. But nevertheless they were cruel, barbaric, undeveloped stock of people, and a white 'squaw' captured by Indians lived a life of humiliation and barbarity. This is a cue for the modern young girls, American, Russian, or Jewish - don't marry Blacks, or peoples of other subhuman species.
  
   . I thought Topaller was talking quite interestingly, and I learn much new in 'American likbez'.
   I visited Akko yesterday with Lilia.
  
   We were in Bahai gardens in Haifa, in the Castle of Templiers and on the seashore of Akko. We saw the prison from the window of which the Bahai prophet saw Haifa, where he bequeathed to build these beautiful gardens, we saw the tunnels crusaders built for their smuggled goods, we learned Napoleon could not capture Akko. The trip was 'multicultural', in Akko live Muslim Arabs, and we walked through their 'bazaar'. Some Blacks made photos on the background of Haifa bay, and near me. they spoke English. I've heard the German speech, one girl spoke a Slave language and our bus was from Jerusalem. We saw dividing walls, all around Arab territory, the Israeli Great Wall.
   2013, The Year Monarch Did Not Come. I remember a long time ago, my school friend said people will soon solve the problem of management,' the computer will be the president, it will solve all the problems'.
  
   Calling Republicans 'morons', calling Democrats 'morons', are they really so? It's just our universal human trait to consider 'others' fools and ourselves 'geniuses'. It's like the Soviet war planes, one pilot-beginner suddenly found himself amazingly 'free', without N- R-, S-words of instructor. The 'ether' was silent, he flew on the plane high in the skies. He wondered at this, 'I'm making progress', thought he to himself, 'I'm the pilot-ace'. But, suddenly, he saw his telephone receiver lying somewhere near him, not in his ears. Picking it up, the familiar dirty aggressive humiliating speech of the instructor' entered his ears again. We all think others are 'idiots'. 'Baba ne chelovek', 'women - fools', 'their chicken brains', that's how men think about women. But women deceiving their husbands think maybe much worse about men's intellectual capacities.
   Chekhov was very modest, he thought himself 'in the eight hundredth' of Russian writers. We now know he was not 800th, he ended up in the top ten. Someone said 'Orgueil peut etre legitime', in contrast to Chekhov. But even if it's 'legitime', what it's for? Does it lead to any good for others or oneself? I doubt it.
   Orgueil, спесь, чваниться. Borrowing from the best, we are the best(we are the champions). You ever met some ad that 'it was NOT the best'? We are the best writers, we are the best nation. Staying only in the best hotels, drinking the best vodka, staying in the best society (high society), vanity fair, in a word.
   They try to control Nature, and they try to fit natural phenomena to politics. They already mastered rains, and the lake Kinneret(rains, though, stopped to pour on Israel, not tolerating the people's hatred). But the volcano Etna, not fitting any timetables, began to erupt,very naughtily, and still very appropriate to the political climate.
   Yesterday my parents watched 'In New York With Topaller' with Igor Efimov, grey-bearded guy, 'known and loved' author, 'who wrote 'The Seventh Wife', the favorite book of my mother, and philosopher, besides being a writer. It was found out he has read about 150 books on Kennedy assassination. The report of Warren Commission, with its 1000 pages, many volumes of reports of other commissions. And what did he infer? It was Fidel Castro who killed the great man. Hearing this from my room, I switched on my Walkman and the rest of the chat escaped my attention.
   I don't have a canon, be it the canon of Russian literature, Jewish TANACH, or Buddhist library of 5 thousand books. I don't believe you have 'to read everything' in order to start writing another book. These precocious geniuses, like Sri Aurobindo who spent his childhood and youth to read Plato and Russell,and all the rest, I am not such a hero.
   'Let's understand how the world works...This understanding makes us go above and beyond various know-hows and is important in itself.'
   This phrase, the beginning of an article in 'The New York Times' , struck me with its 17 century conception of the world, equally like all its parts, as a machine, mechanistic, Cartesian, and abandoned long time ago - by whom? I don't know. It's like Newton laws, they function in a tiny segment of the Universe, space-time continuum, but all people use them and the great majority doesn't suspect 'something is wrong', though many studied in the high school. Western science knows the world is not a machine, but even if we leave Western science alone, many more know this. The world doesn't 'work'.
   There is a word in the Russian language which, like many more, I spell wrongly. I thought "скабрезный" is spelled like I wrote, I met it in the books, but listening to Vysotsky, one of his 70s songs, I met it spelled "скабрёзный", and I thought I heard this word anywhere last time a long, long time ago, if I ever heard somebody say it. It was not on television, in the internet, on the radio, in everyday speech though it seems it should be a very popular word in today's Russian, given everybody's obsession with sex, fashion, beautiful, and pornography, including sexual crimes. All the mood of newspapers and tv news is exactly скабрёзный, still nobody uses this word. I wonder why?
   The world doesn't 'work' but how the news work, how media works, how journalists work? I see the results of their labors(or labours)daily.
   But I see the world in the comical light. For example, numerous commissions gathered under various presidents during the last 50 years to probe into the causes of JFK death, many thousand pages of multivolume reports were labored, and what is the final result of all this? Nil. Americans still cannot 'guess' who killed Kennedy. Despite their sophisticated knowledge of how the world 'works'. In the Soviet Union, they at least made an attempt, in 1956, to expurgate 'the cult of personality' and connected mass repressions. Here, the kingdom of absurd.
   The kingdom of terror, 'conspiracy of silence', online courses offer help on decoding the Third Plenum, but no online or offline course offers help on decoding JFK. It's a lie, you would say, yesterday, especially for YOU, in Russian, a Russian lectured 'comprehensively' exactly on this. The message is simple, like the Third Plenum, it's the Communist killing.
   'A woman fell from the third floor, but unknown man tried to save her. Both are hospitalized.' (from the news, not in Russia, in L.A.)
   Talking about Greek tragedy, about Aeschylus' 'Oresteia', the family curse, killings in the family, chain of vengeful deaths, vendetta, ending in 'Oresteia' with gods' interference. 'Hamlet' comes to mind, the need to revenge for death of a father. America has not done this soul-searching about JFK, and her karma grows as a result of this.
   The problem of 'extra' ( useless, not wanted, `garbage') people in today's Russia. Always, in Russia extra people somehow subsisted. To be more exact, they were 'discovered' by Gogol and other Russian writers of the first half of 19 century, maybe earlier, Eugene Onegin of Pushkin and Chatsky of Griboedov. Discovered but now they are criticized in press. Some guy said go to work, try to earn money, raise family, be normal person, don't be alcoholic, don't do what other don't do. He felt 'physical disgust' even in 70s while watching 'The Autumn Marathon'. And recent 'Geographer(who drank away his Globus)' also disgusted him. He doesn't understand how such films, such people can arouse sympathy, how prizes are given to such movies. It seems, like the word "скабрёзный", time came for these people simply to disappear one way or the other. What 19 century Russian literature was about, is not relevant for Russia today. Maybe, literature is also 'an the extra man', now.
   Not only literature, music, too. The mayor of New York Bloomberg already fined the Walkman listeners. And not only in America. Vysozky also was an extra man. Though he worked (in the theatre on Taganka, and was filmed in many movies), he heavily drank, used narcotics, was put to the psychiatric clinic, to the end of his life he saw demons, in his dreams, and awake, he sings very juicily about all this in his songs, downloadable from internet, not only his official LPs and 'Best Songs', which are among his most 'innocent', 'harmless'. Vysozky was driven to his grave. By whom? I don't know. And Sokurov also is an extra man in Petersburg. And Tarkovsky was an extra man in Russia which he loved like not many.
   Literature as a useless stuff, music, i. e. musicians, Hitler thought Jews were useless stuff, and not only thought, he built scientifically sound factories where it was done away with Jews and other undesirables. Spartans couldn't stand physical and moral defects, and sent their old people to grave. In ideal communities of future, clean and sanitary, glittering with jewels, straight roads, no dirty Jewish ghettoes, no dirt, all clean, healthy, young, and optimistic.
   It may seem that Mark Twain, from my point of view, is a 'positive' personage. He wrote about Heck Finn and Negro Jack whom Heck saves from selling to 'bad' owners. But in his early novel, 'The Simpletons Abroad', he reasons about city reforms of Napoleon the Third, whom he apparently admires. He rebuilt the old quarters of Paris to build wide, straight, now famous, boulevards of Paris. For beauty? Not at all. The cannon balls have 'straight' space for battling revolutions.
   But this innovation hasn't saved Paris from the Paris Commune of 1871.
   But Mark Twain possibly evolved in his life. I don't know how much of 'Napoleon III spirit' remained with him by his mature years though this spirit, of course, has not died with Napoleon III, and, probably, continues to dominate France, and not only France.
   Victor Topaller, who continues to accompany our family (though, he is now, probably, raised his rating, and became a more universal hero, in his voice I hear now solemn, 'high-toned' accents, he represents 'culture',' white' vs. 'Neanderthals', 'black', taken in its most general aspect), goes on to talk of realism (humorously, though rather straightforwardly, rejecting 'socialist' realism, as pink-cheeked gyps-like angel whose 'complete filthiness'( he used a filthy Russian word for it, for the using of which in Pushkin and Lermontov times there would necessarily ensued a duel) every sensible person can see), 'originated by the French painter Gustav Courbet', and which was born soon after the invention of photography. And this 'real', 'true' realism is quite legal, it has right to exist. Then I switched my Walkman again and overheard the rest.
   My Lilia thinks it's better to be fat than thin. She's tried a million of diets trying to lose weight(after one of her attempts she lost 10 kg and met me, I don't know if it's lucky for her) but most of them doesn't work for her. She has a book by Paul Bragg, but Bragg was found to be braggart, liar, and false prophet, he lied about his age and other things. Lilia's from Ukraine, there they know fatpeople are much better off than thin ones. If you're fat, you have money to buy food. If you're thin, you are poor (or is it the other way round?)
   But I'm not really thin. Everybody thinks I'm anorexic, and soon will begin to emit light. But I believe thins, slim people are much healthier, besides other reasons. Of course, not anorexic.
   Weather report: 'unusual hot for this season', I went to swim, it was really hot there. Soon we'll be having not 2 degrees Celsius rise, but it will be 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit in summer.
   'Pilule Norvelo est inefficace en femmes de plus de 80 kg'. The pills won't help. Norvelo or Francelo or any else. But my method is inappropriate for women over 80 kg, or anybody else. I can't make Lila to lose weight; it's no sense to talk of other women. I live in Ashdod, she lives in Jerusalem, and I can't be with her, walk with her, play ping-pong with her. I weighed 75-76 kg two years ago, normal for my height, 177 cm (but it's better to have 110 different betwwen height and weight - 67kg for me). I walk on my chores around Ashdod, don't take any bus, don't have a car, and don't have a diet. I don't sit all day before television set or computer. Maybe, something else but I can't specify it.
  
   They call you Cadillac, and they call you rag...They call you anything...But I'm not anything. I take myself for myself, not Mark Twain, and not Vysozky. A bird cannot fly too high on wings of his own. You don't have to follow other's steps, but the experience of mankind - you cannot get away without it. And what is experience? It's history. History of peoples, personal histories, history of literature, history of science, history of religion, history of everything.
   This obsession with the best, I don't want to blame anybody, but I don't really need the best. I am satisfied with the food from the supermarket, not really delicatessen, I don't need the best education, not for me, nor for my children, I don't need 'the best' doctor, . Our Chicka is not a Siamese or Persian with pure, undefiled genealogy. We picked her on the street. And she doesn't become any worse because she has not a Jewish blood or I don't know. I like Pele, he is really the best, but not the same with 99% of advertised as 'best'.
   Meetings with Topaller. 'When your publicist acts as your mom and your mom acts as your audience...'
   I looked up a definition of 'publicist' in Webster Collegiate. First, it's an expert in international law. Then, a commentator on public affaires. Third, press agent (the one who maintains good public relations).
   Evidently, first won't do. Then, second? Maybe, third? In Russia, there is also the word 'publicist'. But here it is used exclusively in the second sense, the one who comments on public affaires. This word is very 'active' word in Russian, for example, Herzen with his London anti-government famous 'The Bell' magazine, was a publicist. It's something like a modern-day prophet.
   But Topaller is not your 'usual' public affairs commentator. He is about culture, about theatre, about art (though, he also fights terrorism, in his other programs).
   I here act as his critic, provide a feedback. First, he is not 'mine'. Second, he doesn't act as my mom. Third, he lives in far-off, metropolitan New York, and my tiny, provincial, 'not quite kosher'(frankly, totally not kosher, 'fishy') voice acts on him like this red duster on this educated, successful, well-off former Muscovite who, as a Muscovite, feels a primal urge to let down a Petersburger.
   But I have objections to his Russian. Though his job is to talk in Russian with Russian people, he has lived abroad for too long, and it is reflected in his language. Something happens to language of immigrants.
   On the law of contradiction, I was found kosher. How? I wonder.
   'Long way to freedom' - should it be long? Aren't there shortcuts? 'Ars longa, vita brevis'. Art of manners - and pissing and making wind generating fifty nine thousand small men - art of manners - eat your turkey civilly, but mannered speech and mannered behavior is the worst enemy of freedom. Be stupid, don't keep manners, be natural, and get your beating for this. It's not the greatest crime to be stupid, women love stupid. And if women don't love you, it's not your fault.
   They promise to raise the average lifespan to 80 by 2030(in Russia). Now it's less than 70, less than in the times of USSR. Like they struggled with Russia of 1913, now they struggle with the Soviet Union. Less than 70, 63 (or 65) for men, 75 for women. But how? The life in Russia goes according to Victor Zoi, 'War is the medicine against wrinkles', and even if people would live to 80, the last 15 years they will suffer from Alzheimer, Parkinson, heart diseases, diabetes, and cancer. They would better learn from Taoists who lived to 250 drinking red wine only (and looking in their hundreds like young men). Maybe it's a fairy tale but I believe there is something behind it. The problem that the direction nowadays life takes (like pharmaceuticals, cars multiplication, smog and stressful life, wars) doesn't leave place for long life.
   I'm not Suleiman The wonderful, I am not the Just King, and I'm not going to build the tower of Babel. These people are crazy, they build commercial centers, call them 'Maxima', and they break down killing people. It's a new fake, like new wonder drugs, it's 'haltura', easy money, and nothing else. And it's very dangerous, it's like bubble, there is only illusion behind it, emptiness like in 'Martian Chronicles'. I thought was Ray Bradbury right about technology, etc., and I think he was right in many things. It's like children with atomic toys, they go to Mars and beyond with their Hubbles when it would be better to do humanities.
   In popular consciousness, Frankenstein is this hellish creature, the creation of a mad scientist turning against him. But it's a common mistake. Frankenstein is this mad scientist who made a first robot. I thought Einstein, Frankenstein, there is some likeness. Though Einstein is a cultural icon demonstrating unbound force of intellect and hope of the future progress, magic of Science, in reality, Einstein is known not only for his theory of relativity(which nobody really understands), but for his war effort, work on American atomic bomb. There is this hellish side in modern science (including real, not literary, robots, aka drones).
   The stargazers, lovers of Dutch art, and others followed this week the brave comet ISON which decided to fall on the Sun, waiting with hope it would disappear. The first reports were positive - the comet, like modern Ikarus, was too close to the Sun - it died. But later, some astronomers in Europe found it could survive. And it flew away, away from the Sun, into dark depths of space. It's unclear when we'll hear about it the next time. But something else would turn up, so there always is some news. Not the Good News, not good news, the next disasters, typhoons, and revolutions. Something happens to the world, even the weather has changed. How to keep traditions?
   Einstein became an epic figure, the Hero of New Time. His IQ, on numerous IQ test sites, is estimated as 160, the maximum possible, in one place I've seen it as ranging between 180 and 230, though they say 200 is the limit. He is close to Marylyn von Savant, the record holder, by some opinions. But really the domain of 'the highest possible IQ' is very hazy, some say what would happen if 'aliens' with IQ of 1000 would suddenly come? The IQ of geniuses having lived in 5 B.C. (Plato and Hepatia), or mere 500 years ago (Leonardo da Vinci) are 'counted' though how you can count them? The online iq tests are very unreliable, some say the intellect lies not in IQ, an IQ test doesn't measure it, and these tests are 'very stupid'. And 'official' IQ tests which are administered by a clinical psychologist are no better. They, in despair, direct the reader to 'the theory of multiple intelligences', to EQ intelligence, but really nobody knows what this thing like intellect is. Too few people have it, there is little statistics.
   'You don't have to be a rocket scientist to fight wildfires. But it helps.' I don't have anything against rocket scientists. But I don't want to be a fireman. If the rocket scientists switched to fighting wildfires, I would be happy. But the rockets fly not to Mars only. Right at this moment I don't know how many rockets are aimed exactly at my forehead. And I don't deserve such treatment, I don't have any gun, I am not going to fight, against rocket scientists or anybody else.
   Some LA comedian bought a house for 2,686 dollars. For purposes of entertainment. I don't care about entertainment, but show me a house for 2,686. Anywhere (if it's not in North Corea, Chile, or a like country). How it looks? I, perhaps, could afford a house for this price. But how it looks? Are there 6 meters including kitchen, are there parasites coming out at night to devour your food and yourself, or am I wrong, I can buy a palace for a joke in LA?
   Obama says Obamacare site vastly improved. I am not about Obamacare, I'm not going to give girls free condoms and Risperdal, I am rather for alternative medicine, anti-war as a way to cut the number of cut legs and arms, I am not for turning into vegetable by your 40s, dragging another 40 years on drugs and dialysis.
   They offer you all kinds of jobs, including that one of the Russian Emperor, but all the wrong ones. This sole job I'm doing - that of a chronicler, of a witness witnessing the human comedy going into tragedy and farce - they don't like. I might say something not in tune with 'the official version' - how things are in Israel, for example, not on the level of emperor and this mythical 'middle class', not from the point of view of a 'businessman' , but from my own, idiosyncratic point of view, not Russia's victories, and the conquer of space.
   About 'talent'. Talent is 'celebrity'. 'Celebrity' buys and sells houses, for 2 million dollars, or any other figure, but not less than 2 million. Talent is the ability to make money, if you can't make money - you are a hat( and not a talent).
   Are we(that is, 'they') going back to the USSR? Now, we have plans again. The economy must be planned, up to 2030. The man, as always, in the centre of everybody's urges and wishes. A bit of Soviet history, a flashback. In 1964, Brodsky, a young poet, was called in the paper ' Окололитературный трутень". Not only called, there was a trial, and punishment. Then Russia was in the midst of its 8th 'pyatiletka', or maybe, it was 7th? We studied in the school each 5-year plan separately, but I have not learned any differences between them, they all, from the first 'pyatiletka', somewhere in the 20s, to the last, tenth or eleventh, were identically grey for me. But back to Brodsky. I was not deemed eligible of a title like this(paraliterary drone), no, never, but I was called everything else. For what? For my mistakes. I was not 'normal'. I can't say I for state planning or against, it's not my specialty. But if with planning, the persecution of poets will start again? I'm not a poet, if I'll be judged, I doubt it's for 'truancy'. I'm not going in Brodsky's footsteps, I don't like Brodsky. I'm writing in English, living abroad, no country cares about me. This is a different 'case'. But still, something has not changed, I feel, something deep in Russia. Something deep inside, that started not in 1917 but much earlier. The Russian tsars, so popular now, are not the cure from Russian ills. It was they who started this tradition of persecuting free thought in Russia, which was, like in 'Animal Farm', picked up by Communist 'vozhdi'. I'm not having schizophrenia, I'm only look a bit deeper.
   The monument to Pushkin in South Corea, restore Yosemite? Baby Heisenberg?
   Yes, it's all good, it's all right, Yosemite needs repair, a monument to Pushkin stands good in Corea, baby Heisenberg is a good name.
   Pushkin was black to Zvetaeva(but not to me), Pushkin, what can say Pushkin today? Should we set Ukraine free? Pushkin always was for freedom. That's why he was great.
   Pushkin, canons, canonization. I don't know how in church, but in lay life canonization kills. To put up a monument, it's like kill the works of a new saint. The same story happened with Marx-Lenin in Russia. Marx was a sedentary scientist in British Museum in London. But in Russia he became Moses. And it killed Marx spirit in Russia. 60 years it dragged on, but then the wind blew away costly decorations, socialist realism turned into red-flagged, red-slogan kingdom of absurd, like in today's North Corea. And the same story happened to Pushkin. This name became an empty sound, an empty label. I don't think Putin really likes and reads Pushkin. But it's a symbol of Russian culture, i.e. Russian Empire, and the new monument is erected in Seoul.
   Russian imperialism. Lenin called the tsarist Russia 'the prison of peoples'. But was there such a thing as Soviet imperialism? Someone said it was 'different'. Still, the 'conservators' who overwhelmed in the USSR made it much in the vein of American and other imperialisms. The GDR, the East Germany with its Berlin Wall, where thousands fled to the West, and many were killed, should you be happy to live in the country from where people are trying to escape? Russia should have said to Ukraine: go, go, and see for yourself how it's like in the free world. But she won't do a thing like this.
   'The smartest man in America', 'the smartest man alive', Christopher Langan, from the other side, No. 223 in American Encyclopedia of Loons', 'super-crackpot', where is the verity?
   Judging from his support of 'intelligent design theory', he is closer to the second category. What is 'intelligent' about the design of the Universe? Everybody who in his right mind has lived (not one day) at least 7 years, knows perfectly well there is nothing 'intelligent' about it. Rather, vice versa.
   The problem is that people are losing their 'right mind' when starting their education. Buddhists and Taoists think the 'ideal' state of the mind is like a newborn baby's. Buddhists by meditations and reading Scriptures, by working and a million of other techniques try to 'return' the mind of a person into its 'primeval', Nirvava' state. Taoists, like. There is a saying: half-education is much worse than no education at all. Buddha said uneducated, 'simple' people can easier reach Nirvana.
   Doing iq tests, I discovered another supersmart person, Netanyahu. His iq is reported 180, higher than Einstein, but lower than Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer. But Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer don't live in Israel, in Israel there is no a person smarter than the Premier-Minister. You can't be smarter than your boss, otherwise you 'mitkhahem'(playing the smart Alec), I don't know how it's in English, in Russian, I think, it's ' умничать".
   I once tried to do this under my decoders' boss, and it did me no good. In Israel, 'mitkhahem', trying to be smarter than others, is not welcomed. By the way, Israel was below Russia and USA in the latest quiz named 'Pisa 2012', where 15-year-olds were examined on their knowledge of mathematics, reading and science. Russia and USA did rather not so well, far below various Chinese towns (Shankhai, Hong Kong, Singapour, and even Taiwan), but Israel, the super-smart country, was even worse. Maybe, it's due to its 'superiority complex', due to punishment of 'mitkhahmim' and untold but clear message not to 'get out' of the box. By the way, I've read in some Western scientist or philosopher, in 50s he wrote this, that Chinese, by their hieroglyphic intuitive writing, are 'inherently' not able to do math.
   The art's crosscultural, cross-linguistic, cross-border, international, cosmopolitan appeal. Cesannes may return to the US escaping Nazi loot, escaping burning as 'degenerate' art, but radio you can listen anywhere in the world (save North Corea), e-books you can read anywhere, not having to pay millions for a picture, you can watch whatever you want in the internet: pornography, killings, tortures, but art, too.
   IQ may rise with years, that is not the number of points of 'IQ' but intelligence whatever Lumosity complained of cognitive decline. But I can't understand this 'specialization' of iq, attaching an iq figure to any aspect of your activity. EQ, money iq, physical fitness iq, driving iq, social iq, and many more iq's. My physics iq is close to nil, and my driving iq is similar. Our mind is NOT a computer whatever computer scientists preached (if you are not stupid enough to believe them). Our body is NOT a machine, not a system. Mind is whole, and you have to disentangle it from the systems of all kinds.
   Now, 'The Los Angeles times' published a note about the death of Todd Mills, how he founded 'Locos Tacos', no idea what kind of food it is. I copied it, and tried to paste it into this diary. What my Word gave me as a result, you can see for yourself (5 pages of this - unintelligible text, the Microsoft software translates these types of symbols - how the company sold $1 billion 'locos' not paying to the author of idea nothing save 1000 of dollars for his medical bills (he died at the age of 41 from brain and lung cancer) - watch for yourself - try to decipher the truth.
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Hot chili squid chips, anyone? </A></LI></UL></DIV></DIV><p id="pmad-rail" class="konafilter pm-ad tpl06 pm-device"><IFRAME id="pmad-rail-frame" height="200" marginHeight="0" src="javascript:(function() document.open();document.write(&quot;<script>google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-8415620659137418';google_ad_slot = '8406673887';google_ad_width = '200';google_ad_height = '200';google_ad_channel = '5673533489,1000000209';google_adtest = 'off';google_override_format = true;google_safe = 'high';google_hints = 'doritos';google_page_url = 'http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-man-behind-doritos-locos-tacos-dies-20131203,0,2790357.story';google_max_num_ads = '2';</script><script type='text/javascript' src='http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js'></script>&quot;);document.close();
   Russian Academician Zhores Alferov compared the state of things in American and Russian science as according to a proverb: One lady has rare beads; another one has 'rarefied' soup. He said if we had another Duma, we'd had another country.
   But I don't believe only America matters. America has her own, and Russia also has her own. Don't make out of Russia a second (or a third, India also called herself 'the second America', or a forth, etc) America.
   Alferov also said the competition between America and the USSR used to spur scientific progress. Now it died out.
   But, besides competition, there is cooperation (like brothers Strugatsys wrote). The USA-USSR competition had cost too much militarily, it created the 'ambience' of the Cold War, a bit relieved by Brezhnev and Nixon in 1972, but 'the detente' (another code name for governments' campaigns, 'perestroika', 'glasnost', 'uskorenie', 'razryadka',' restart') proved short-lived.
   Once, I met a study which said 90% of Israelites are happy and satisfied with their lives. Now, the new anchorwoman said to us 94% are happy. Finishing her evening news program, she advised those 6% of us who are still, for some stupid reason of their own fault, unhappy, nevertheless to try to come to terms of peace with this world. Still, in her next program, she herself seemed somehow not totally happy (I don't know why, maybe the quarrel with the lover, the need to go to the dentist, the reprimand from her boss, etc.). Still, she, like almost all Israelites I meet, radiates this air of superiority. It's not only 'the government, the country' thing, every individual Israelite usually thinks he's better than others (not his bosses), anyway, better than other countries. This is Israeli patriotism. 'They laugh at us, they persecute us, but we're so fine, nothing would change our faith and The Way Of The Country(Derekh Eretz). Our writers are the best in the world (and are to be awarded the Nobel when time comes), our scientists are the cleverest, and our religion is the Highest. We are simply the best. And now, we are the happiest.
   How, at this moment, they are doing in London? Boris, the mayor of London, has failed a surprise IQ test. He said earlier that 16% of population has an IQ of 85, and so, 'it's hard for them to compete..."
   Boris said 'we must do something for them, for those who find it hard to compete, to alleviate somehow their fate...' Boris, the graduate of Eton, etc. was shown after the test sitting with his hands covering the face, deeply in distress.
  
   Talking with the world, Shimon Peres talked with Arabs, there were 29 ministers of all the Arab countries there, but Shimon Peres is 90 and alone, nobody else talks with Saudi Arabia, Emirats, Bahrein, etc.
  
   Recently, driving in the bus to Akko, an Arab town far in the north, we saw a mosque on our way, not far from Haifa, which was unusual, our guide said. It belonged to a sect who wanted not to conquer 'infidels' 'by sword', but to do a propaganda, to 'explain'. And this sect is tolerated in Israel (we were told, not in Arab countries).
  
   Once I've read in the net: you have knowledge in you for ten universities, you just don't realize this. After telling my saga of being 86-d from three universities, dreaming of more universities, in other countries, as well as in my own, Open (The Open University of Great Britain), doing courses in one Open University, reading about universities, I was surprised - how can this be true - I am, like this Black girl, 'trying to get my B.A. in more than ten years (being propped by Black-loving authorities)'
   But I seem really to have this knowledge, even if I did not study graduate- and undergraduate materials in the net and offline. The problem is to 'evoke' it, like in the manual of French (of 50s, still very good) ' Pour la tete bien faite, non bien pleine'.
   Talking with Arabs, talking with Russians; the ad in 'The Independent' offers its readers to choose among 8 languages (for business and cultural ever increasing needs), among them Mandarin and Arabic, but no Russian.
  
   I don't want to be 'благополучный".(`well-to-do')
  
   I was called 'professor' in the army. Though I was 19, and had not taught anywhere, and was a usual college drop-out. The guy who called me 'professor', was himself 25, was a carpenter by profession, was from Tver, and already had served 'a term' in prison. I was carrying my glasses, not always, there were periods when I lost them or somebody broke them, and I had to make do without. I fixed them with a wire, sometimes one glass was lacking, and I looked rather like a captured German in Russian winter in my glasses. Later, I was called 'lzhe-uchyony', 'bogus-scientist', and it's equally strange because I did not preach any teaching, first, I did not have any certificate, any credential of finishing any accredited institution, in any field, I was a 'professor', but in which science? Not medical. Not computer. Not philosophy. Not antiquity. Not history. Not Jewish studies. Not Eastern studies.
   Glimpses of American 'economy'. Long lines of Samsung televisions, waiting for their delivery...Diet drugs work, why not prescribe them? Overempowering smell of French fries, no time to smell roses...Diet Coke will do to your brain (what?), I used Diet Coke for twenty five years of my life...
   Television makes me vomit, diet drugs make me vomit, and fast food makes me vomit, what does not make me vomit? supermarkets and long lines of multifarious products also make me vomit (the abundance of choice - though I only have what my mother gave me, 50 shekels or twenty shekels, I'm not going to buy another flatscreen, today for sale), dream girls also make me vomit. But not everything.
  
   Rain is a bad time for Israelites. Lying on the beach, I met one bipolar who complained he felt depression in autumn, when the rains pour on Israel. He felt depression, he said, only when it is raining. I can't say I'm only happy when it rains, if the rains were all the year round, like in Petersburg, I would also be depressed.
  
   Top ten lists. Who were humanity's top ten most intelligent people? It's hard for me to answer. The top ten lists you find in the internet, I don't like them. Even if they are all from out times, are they really the most intelligent people of our times? From history - you'll find Plato included. But Diogenes wasn't of so high an opinion of Plato's intellectual powers, and he lived in the same time with Plato. Leonardo Da Vinci, Goethe, Pascal, Descartes - were they really the most intelligent? Are the most intelligent people philosophers, mathematicians, painters, poets?
  
   Bernouilli? Bobby Fischer? Garry Kasparov? Edgar Poe said chess was very stupid. Was he right? Descartes made our Cartesian world, Pascal made his God's bet, Plato made his Fascist state, Bernoilli - he merely proved something with water, with tubes, I don't believe he was the world's most intelligent man.
  
   I don't propose myself for the most intelligent person in the world, but who are they, the most intelligent, from whom it makes sense to learn? 'L.A. Times' learns from the Houston 'Ground Control', 'L'Express' learns from Jim Morrison, and humankind never learns from mistakes of the past.
   Chronicles, I tell stories of my life, but this time I delved (by mistake) not into Russian history, not into Jewish history, but to American history. I've got a link to V-discs, jazz music for American soldiers of WWII. Though not my own history, still, as a Cancer, I like to have a feel of history, to try to recreate ambience, this time, of 40s, 1943, 1944, 1945. How it felt that time in America? A lot of interesting music.
   Best pop music of 2013, I don't care for it. American pop music of 1943 is more appealing to me. Not because I'm a dinosaur. And I like French chanson also, be it 1943 or 2013.
   Turning into a Martian, turning into an American, turning into a Frenchman, turning into an ancient Chinese...'Martian chronicles' is an American book, written about Americans, and the Martians there are the same Americans. How does it feel to meet a real Martian? I'm not a Martian, I'm not a noble Greek or Roman, and I'm not even Monet or Zola.
   The cult movie, the cult book, the cult author - never read, never saw, never talked to, the cults are somewhere, up there, in esoteric heights, where the mortals like me never get in, just have no key, no pass, no secret, no access (access denied), the cult things like this use many sacral words like shit, I also had this liking for American slang, I thought if I said 'cunt' or 'sitting on my throne', I would be cool. I'm not a cult author.
  
   In America, they 'buy' knowledge, 'buy' education. But it's impossible to buy; it's not a sold item. You can buy a book; you can buy a program of study. But the knowledge I'm talking about, cannot be bought, like love. It's immaterial, spiritual, and elusive. If you read a book, it won't teach you anything. You have to try on you own; a book may not apply to you. Every person is different; everybody lives in a world of his own. How can a teaching of elephant be of any use for a rabbit? And elephants and rabbits are only two of a million of different kinds of animals. And people are much more complicated, they're no elephants and no rabbits. It makes sense to glance into other worlds, but not for copying. How a teaching of a Chinese Taoist having lived in 2 B.C., can be of use for me now, in 2013, in Israel, writing in English and living on a pension? But does living in Israel 'bounds' me in any way, so I have to act like they act in Israel? Does reading American papers make me act like an American? What do they want from you? It's maybe not what you would want for yourself. They sort you into this and that, making you part of their system. . They don't like it complicated, they like it simple. They 'like' you, like in Facebook, or 'don't like' you. More nuanced feeling for you is not in their system. They can make it part of the game defining 'exactly' your physical and other location, with precision to the 99th decimal, trying to be 'fair' and 'just', giving you 'your due', reluctantly, but that's the part of the game, and the game is not to be 'violated'. If you learn acupressure, they complain of China, showing it, again, in some unfavorable light, G-d forbid you try to learn Chinese, and go to that 'other side'. They have their business with China, competing, as a world power, with 'Chinese influence', at the same time learning and 'borrowing' from China, but not making it public. But it's universal, acupuncture, meditation, taiziyuan, philosophy, Nirvana. Any American can reach Nirvana. But it's rather difficult, not anyone trying to reach Nirvana, gets there. East, it's vast sea of thought, the universe of thought. There are million of various paths there, Hindouism, Krishnaism, all those gurus, Gimalayas, it's easy to get lost - though you'll come somewhere anyway, if you try to go. Getting to Everest doesn't mean Enlightenment, it's just the sport.

I'm not against buying books, computers, salt peanuts. But the accent is not on 'buy', not 'use', 'consume', 'finish', but on 'read', 'think', 'explore', 'try to find something new'. Eating salt peanuts can be as spiritual as doing meditation, but by eating, anything and everything, you don't 'get there.' It's like putting fat books 'on the night' under the pillow, in hope to get smarter. Somehow, from the contact with the pillow, the books' stories would get into your head, and you'll don't have to bother to waste time to read them. Wisdom in a pill - swallow it, and you'll double your brain power in an instant.

Daria Dontsova, the popular author of 'ironical crime fiction' in Russia, wrote a book ' Инь, Янь, и всякая дрянь", in 2009. She doesn't like Yin and Yan, she doesn't like China, the return to Nature, and refuse of civilization. West is also pro-Western. They run now to analyze, analyze, and analyze, thinking it the main virtue of the Western world. But analysis and synthesis - the condition of any thought.

The thought process of some American reader of these last lines, probably, would be to rush out and buy some salt peanut in a nearby store. But it won't get you anywhere. That is not what I had in mind writing this.

Once I worked for one composer, he was sick with Parkinson disease. He was over 80, and could hardly speak; he had constant pains over all his body. I massaged his back and legs, gave him his drugs (which did not help), made a food for him, and went for some shopping. He lived in Jerusalem, in the centre of the city, in two-room apartment. He had a Fillipino metapelet, a guy of 20 years, who lived with him and cared for him for some miserly pay. On Sundays he was off, he was a Christian, and I had to change him. That composer boasted to me 'he had had read three thousand books'. There really were a lot of books in the apartment, in English, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, and some other languages. His teaching to me was (all the Jews are teachers, they want to teach you something) money was a single thing that mattered. Then, he said all the greatest teachers of humankind never wrote a word, their teaching was oral. And then, the proverb: 'All is shit, except urine." I picked once a book in the rare books store, downstairs. It was 'L'Histoire de l'art generale', in French. When I showed it to him, and he asked how much was it, and I said 5 shekels, he did not believe me. He browsed through the book, saying its cost was much more than 5 shekels(and I saw later in other stores the similar books for 300)( the seller, selling me the book, glanced at it dubiously, saying she was wondering whether it's cost was 5 or 10 shekels, but I picked it up in the room where all books were for 5 shekels, once I saw there on the floor a quaint red little book of medieval French verse, I bought it also for 5 shekels), and he never summoned me after that. Why, I could never understand. It's some peculiar Jewish way of relating to money, it's Chinese to me.

  

I also used to count books I've read. I made lists counting books I've read a million of years ago, not remembering anything written there but making it the point of including in my list, I remember the title, so done with it. I also met similar lists in the internet. Some guy, drunk on his achievements of reading one hundred books, makes it public, publishing the titles of them - look, emulate, see how smart I am!

Thinking of the 'fallen' quaint little red book of medieval French verse, lying uselessly on the floor in 5 shekel department, I recalled Heinrich Boll, his passage about the irrationality of the world concerning prices. One girl sells it for 5 Deutsche Marks on the street, at the same time another, having basically the same properties, sells it for millions consenting to be wife to some businessman or politician, living afterwards in life of luxury and absence of discomfort.

I remember another job, on tv decoders, it was 15 km from Ashdod, on the Intersection Kanot. There was a guy there, we worked in one crew. He said he was wondering if life exists outside of Circular Route, round Moscow, 40 km in diameter, I think. He took me for a Buryat, with my Buddhism and Taoism, living somewhere in prehistoric past and 'out there', thousands of kilometers from the Circular Route. Still, I borrowed from him 10 shekels (the transport was lacking, and I had not money for a bus). Later, this day, I met him on a bus station, near Market 'Bet', not far from his home. He was talking on his cell, about some business opportunities, possibilities of making millions. I returned him 10 shekels and have not heard from him since.

  
  

The victory over nature is not reached yet. The snow fell over Jerusalem. It was like a small Catastrophe here, there were voices calling to Purification, they thought G-d punished Jews. But, slowly, life returns to normal, the victory over nature is close, soon the nature will be dead.

Oleg Mamin, the author of a movie 'A Window to Paris', wrote about vodka, fools, and revolutions. He said his movie was not propaganda of drunkenness - look at these fellows, how disgusting they look in Paris in their orgies of drunkenness. He also informed us the deputies of the Duma drink the best vodka and eat the best meat.

But I don't envy. I don't think it the best happiness to drink the best vodka. I understood his article as an idea the fools drink vodka and make revolutions. But I don't drink vodka. And I'm not going to make a revolution.

But I made a window to Paris.

I don't care about delicious, tasty food, delicatessen, I don't care about food. Maybe the best food is black bread with water. Buddha made a living by asking for food, and I doubt he always got the best food. But Buddha cared about soul, not body, and he was happy, though he did not make a point being happy.

Obsession with food leads to degradation of the spirit and nothing else.

I live in a port town. Not on the level of the sea, not on zero level. There is a slope when you go down to the beach, there is, I think, 20 meters between me and water. Water will get here not so soon.

But metaphorically, I'm on zero level. And they afraid lest the oceans level will rise and they think me as a water level. Rising of water for them is the same as my rising. So they have to keep me down.

But I don't want to rise, in difference with water. Water will rise, however they kept me down. Water will rise because of growth of the world economy. And the economy cannot not to grow, otherwise it will crash. So they're heating the planet, competing and fighting with each other, and the result of their competing and growing and getting richer will be self-destruction. But they cannot not to want to get richer; it's wired into the system. Poor are despised, poor cry, poor are zero, nonentity. Only the rich, who eats the best food, has life.

Working as a metapel(or metapelet), I met another old wise man. He said:' The Sun, air, and water - our best friends?' There was a slogan in Soviet times, invented by the Soviet proponents of healthy way of life: 'The sun, air, and water -our best friends!'

But here, in Israel, nature is enemy, and, though we may capture nature's 'gifts', the sun, water, and air are under suspicion. Moreover, since it's a 'Soviet' slogan - you shouldn't trust it.

   Woke up at 6. Went to the kitchen, opened the window, and looked at the sky. Right in the centre, above me, the wane moon, blue sky and no stars. Below me, a white squalid booth(for tools?) with black fat graffiti on it.
   I won't read the best books of 2013. I don't have an international credit card to buy them through internet; I don't have money to buy books. I have enough already, once I found a whole library near the garbage container. I recently came from Finland, we walked with Lilia in the district of villas nearby the sea, and there they lied, in several plastic packets, and one Russian immigrant already sat beside them, browsing through the old, battered books. It was 'The Library of the World Literature', the series, began by Max Gorky in twenties, but mainly published in sixties-seventies. There were about fifty books there. We divided them with this ole, he said he would sit at home, nothing to do, only to read books. We then went to the beach, I with two heavy packets of Virgil and Blaise Pascal's 'Pensees', and met there this book-lover. He was also glad to see us.
   Recently I've read 'The Rascal Novel' collection there, 'Unlucky Traveller' by Thomas Nash. I won't say it's the best book of 17 century, I've read about mediaeval tortures and Italian passions, and that it's best to sit home and read travelers' stories than to travel oneself(I don't agree).
   My father loved Hokusai, and when he left our three-room apartment on Science Avenue, he left behind him a number of Hokusai landscapes, of Fuji-yama. I remember, when I was a schoolboy, in seventies, there hang in my room a winter landscape of some strange Japanese bridge across a river, or a gulf, or a lake. Some Japanese figure, laden with some load, wretchedly walked on this bridge, and there was Fuji-yama, like in all paintings, but then I have not noticed it, it was somewhere in the background, I looked only on this figure in the snow. But I don't like Hokusai's wave, Hokusai's tsunami. It somehow doesn't find appeal with me. This gross wave, dangerously heaving, evoking thoughts of Disorder, revolutionary thoughts, I like his Fuji-yamas much more. And, when this wave appeared in yesterday 'The New Yorker', it wasn't what I expected from them.
   This wave, it won't be tsunami, it will go slowly. One decade, another, and then people find sea is closer. But, as it rises imperceptibly, nobody won't do anything about it. It will be a magazine pastime, from time to time, to show the Wave, but business interests prevail, it's only one of a million of the topics for a lunch talk.
  
   They studied your skeleton, they know everything about you, they can predict every your move, every gesture, they follow your private ramblings with a Hubble telescope. Still, they are surprised if they find you have leanings of your own not conforming to their wiles.
  
   My tale was compared, at one time, with 'Fairy Tales of Grimm Brothers'. I was insulted and greatly surprised since I am afraid I lack writer's imagination, and write only the naked truth as it appears to me. But I was also intrigued; the drab, grey, monotonous, average events of my life get response like 'that abominable Snowman', 'insuperable creations of a Cave Artist'. I've heard even on tv from Moscow that they were 'amazed' to get something from 'there'. They talked of 9-meter suitcase transported to the Red Square by Napoleon descendants, but 'there', what do they mean? Hell's fire burning unlucky sinner under their distant and unpredictable command? There, the land of 'out there', 'somewhere in the Mediterranean', like Aksyonov' 'The Island of Crimea'? Or the Fields Elycees of that 'inventive' Paris?
   It indeed looks like a fairy tale. Boris, a character living with me in one apartment (sometimes appearing in this story, but Americans think perhaps it's Boris the Mayor of London), wants to send me emails from his computer to mine, though the both computers are located in the same room and that room is not so big that I cannot see Boris sitting at his computer while I'm sitting on mine. But Boris is also under the power of illusion; he thinks perhaps my electronic address is the North Pole.
  
  
  
   Yesterday looked a bit at 'The Autumn Marathon', the 70s Soviet movie about two colleagues-translators, one Russian, another American who work together in Leningrad and run the morning jog, both in their 40s. 'Deciphering the Soviet soul',
   'the Soviet soul' is alien to me. The message under the movie said 'The Glacial Period', referring to the figure-skating competition, scheduled after the movie, but meaning, possibly, that 70s is a long-long past era. Though the action is in Leningrad, I could not 'identify' with it, the relationships of a main hero - love, work -foreign, though it seemed I might find something close to me - since I'm writing in English and in contact with Western people. The theme, 'autumn', is also, seems, close to my situation, and the main situation of the movie hero, who constantly receives moral beating which he cannot withstand, seems familiar. But I'm a writer, not a translator, and my writings are nowhere 'recognized', edited, and are to be published. I don't have a nasty boss(any boss at all, since I don't have a job)- I wouldn't like to return to these times, and to be 'in the skin' of the main hero, I don't envy his 'official' status and professionalism. Though, it's a Russian movie, and some of the themes Russian-Western remain relevant. But I'm rather of brothers Grimm fairy tale production; I don't want 'to get real'.
  
  
   Not only children read fairy tales, fairy tales are written not only for children. There are people who study the fairy tales, as there are people who study myths which can be not Barthian only. Fairy tales and myths are like verses, mythical mind was in the first times, and now some writers have it, some poets 'repeat' the 'primeval' magic mind. But the fairy tale usually ends well, a hero marries a princess, becomes a king, and 'they lived a long, long time after'. And I don't want a happy ending, I don't want to marry a princess( not that I find many eager princesses), I'm not that fairy tale prince every girl dreams of. My fairy tale is of a different kind.
   Most unhappy people of 2013: the Twitter founder who earned 0$, and the badgers.
   I'm not. Though I earned 0$ and being badgered. But I don't care about it; I care about my mother and a myriad of other things, not about my earnings and being badgered. For example, health. I do Lumosity for brain fitness, meditation, acupressure. I don't know if Lumosity and acupressure helps. But I prefer this to Obamacare, to drugs. I'm for Obamacare, you need a cheap medicine, but I'd prefer not to need it, to prevent diseases. Medicine is a very wide notion; climate change and green energy also belong to medicine. Fairy tales and myths, and books, in general, art, science, philosophy also belong to medicine. Altruism also belongs to medicine - if you help somebody, your health gets better (though not always, you may contract diseases from patients, like many doctors do).
   Returning yesterday from the beach, I met a school group of Jewish girls running their 'control' circle (perhaps, for their 'prince'). They were not enthousiasmed, one of them was holding a hand to her heart, and they run and stopped, getting forces for 'continuation of the torture'. One of them, near me, gasped from her last forces: one thousand and five hundred. What did it mean, I'll never know, I know only your health is the most expensive thing in the world, like education and love, you'll never buy it. Near a group of boys played soccer, also crying from time to time some digits, I went on, and met another group of girls playing tennis. They couldn't and wouldn't play, the ball helplessly run away from them. Then, I met an instructor instructing toddlers to get into the ring.
   My fiscal idiocy, no professor of mathematics will cure me from it. Maybe I provide all the laughs in the U.S.A., like Sarah Palin. But Jesus Christ taught me about the camel and the needle's eye, and I don't see any sense in becoming rich. It's not about money. Strange, but they think I'm about economy, and the weird thing is that it helps economy. But being mean is not good for health, being not moral harms health.
   Working for American economy, working for European economy, working for Russian economy, not speaking of Israeli - but what's the point? I'm not working for the 'new Middle East', rather 'I'm doing it just for fun', like an E.S.P. American site. Not for lotteries, it's just interesting to me, does E.S.P work. It's interesting for me to make people from different countries speak to each other, though indirectly. It's not for any country 'leadership', not for competition between countries, who's smarter, who's stronger. It's not a L.A. bridge, nor New York bridge, nor a Russian bridge. It's international, like U.N.
   Early morning, 'razvozka' got us to the Zomet Kanot, to the 'promzona', we walk to our place of job. There is a bad smell, it's from the dead cows, near us there is a meat-making factory, my colleagues close their faces with coats, they can't stand the smell, it's the smell of cows who'd been milked and now killed to make meat, my colleagues, a Negro about to be taken to the army, who wants to study Russian, a military boy, he studies in a military school , earns his money on a multitude of factories around Ashdod, a couple of Israelites, Black and White, some religious small boy in a kipa, 'who obeys G-d only'. We pass a Pepsi truck, the slogan urges 'to max it'. Never drank Pepsi, only in the Soviet Union, and my colleagues don't like it when I 'max it'.
   A German translated 'Dao De Dzin' in 1910, translating 'Dao' as 'Sinn', and 'De' as 'Life'. But Dao cannot be named, and De is not Life. He rationalizes Dao which cannot be rationalized. Looking at this 'root' translations, I cannot trust his rendering of the ancient text, 'which has suffered through centuries'. I've heard the text of Chuan Tse also was 'edited' by his ideological rivals so it's very difficult to understand it. But the ideas of Lao Tse as they came to this German (Richard Willheim), also not 'agree' with me, I wouldn't make of them my Bible. For example, 'men are like straw dogs for sacrifice to Heaven, Heaven is not benevolent. And for 'The Man of Calling' (another strange translation) men are like straw dogs for sacrifice. Man of Calling is not benevolent toward them.' And in another passage Lao Tse talks about benevolence and Love. Where's the Meaning?
   Leo Tolstoy also was a fond of Lao Tse. He practiced 'non-action'. But 'non-action', what is it really, in our everyday life, as distinguished from China of 7 B.C.? I know Tolstoy went to his village, taught children there, did work 'in the field', besides writing his books. How Tolstoy understood 'non-action'? Tolstoy is famous with us not with 'non-action', but 'non-violence', which was and has been harshly criticized by the history of 20 century, and all 20 century ideological forces, starting from Communism, and ending by 'common sense' criticism.
   Willheim also describes Taoism as something quite distinct from Lao Tse, presenting it as some form of folk animism extinct in the rest of the world in the Middle Ages. Taoists 'searched for the elixir of immortality', were busy with heath exercises, which is quite below of the great sage stance. But what is Taoism really?
   It's not Maoism. It is a religion, but not the religion only. Some argued is it religion or philosophy. But Taoists also made science. All the early China discoveries were made by Taoists. Acupuncture from the mythical times of Emperor is also connected with Taoism.
   There is authoritary dzen, there is revolutionary dzen, and there is 'just' dzen. Dzen is a synthesis of Taoism and Buddhism. Which dzen would YOU practice? I'm not practicing dzen, not authoritary, not revolutionary, not 'just' dzen. I'm rather for 'non-violence' though Tolstoy's understanding of Lao Tse was also criticized. Non-violence, weapons create disasters and 'handling' the world destroys it. It goes for America, it goes for the USSR, and it goes for China.
   'The Game of Thrones', I'm not partaking in it. I'm not sitting on the throne; I don't want to be a King. Remembering 'Ivan Vasilievich Chooses A New Profession', I reject the criticism that I'm not a tough enough King. I never applied for the job of a King, I'm not ambitious.
   Language, not a machine language, the human language, English language, is a code. So am I writing a code? Lao Tse wrote his teaching was very easy to understand and to use, but nobody did it. A code that I'm writing, is it a secret for somebody? 'The coded message', intended for somebody's ears, and not intended for all other ears, is anybody understanding me? I'm writing no secrets, it's not a coded message, still I'm talking about Chinese philosophy, medicine, not anyone can understand what the talk is about. But all are obsessed with codes.
   Talking about codes and secrets, military has its secrets, industry has its secrets, spies want to break secrets, 'Los Angeles Times' is a coded message, but what it wants to tell its readers. Does it want 'to program' them in a certain way, does it 'warble' its message for undesirable ears, does it have its 'preferred' listeners? What it wants to tell ME? I, of course, am not the sole reader of this newspaper. Millions in the world browse through 'The Los Angeles Times'. What it tells them about life in Los Angeles, about news there? Does it want to lure them into the city, to make Lakers out of them, to make business with them?
   'L.A.Times': 'Can hidden information in photographs be used to spot criminals', under a photo of a man, with blow-up of his eye: in his eye a tiny 'pixel', 'suspect' for criminal activity. I looked again at the photo, this man definitely looked criminal, the expression of his face, it seemed, spoke for itself, there was something 'crooked' in it. But how? How your eye can be a criminal? You watch, and you see what you were not supposed to see. You understand 'codes', you can 'decipher' them, and you tell what you've seen. You tell your understanding of the written material, but wasn't it written for you to understand? Or was it written to create an illusion in you, to 'tell what is not'? I never been to America, I never been to Los Angeles. I'm a stranger there. All my understanding is based on what I read there, is certainly very flawed. What is life like in Los Angeles? Judging from 'L.A.Times', very different from Vasily Aksyonov's account of his trip there in 1975. Not so happy, not so free, not so tranquil and funny.
   Financial illiteracy, many L.A. citizens suffer from it. We may guess Russian citizens, too. There is computer literacy, math literacy, foreign language literacy, and financial literacy. Should an average citizen of the U.S.A. understand everything about the federal debt of the country, nuances of banking, real estate, food literacy, finally? To know Sharlotta Bronte maybe is not so important, though it sometimes helps. The citizens of the U.S.A. should know now some things about mass surveillance (what you can say to your wife or friends on the phone or in bed, and from what you must refrain), about robotics, in addition to know how to drive a car. You might object it's all connected with politics, you should know how to vote, and, if your party wins, your problems will be solved by it.
   Being rich is not a sin, Obama says. It's just makes Heaven's Kingdom impossible for you. But what's it - being rich? Having 10000, 100000, 1000000? I don't know. I don't know where is the barrier for Heaven's Kingdom. But caring for money, serving Mammona is important though you would be poor hating the rich for their making money out of you.
   Memories again, a bag full of memories... But a good memory is very important whatever they tried to rob you of it. Not so long ago, my mother, looking at my school photo, said: A real Beatle. I was very surprised; I never dared to picture myself as a Beatle. Save that I listened to The Beatles in my very early infancy, I bought my first LP of them returning from the army, 'The Taste of Honey', and 'The Hard Day's Night'. For me Beatles were some famous British group infinitely remote from my everyday life. They were more popular than Jesus Christ, I was known to nobody save my family, friends, and schoolmates. And my inspiration was not Beatlish at all. Whoever they were, working-class heroes from Liverpool, I was quite from another stock. I never wanted to emulate them, take a guitar in my hands and sing about beautiful girls or a taxman, I never knew any taxman, there weren't any taxmen in Russia.
   'By the book', by which book? Starting a book of my own, I searched for roots, and found them in Strugatskys 'The Noon, 22th Century', and in the image of Max Kammerer, changed from Kramer. I looked for Kramers everywhere, like Stanley Kramer, or the eight sisters of my grandfather who escaped to America in 1890s while he, the alone son, and the youngest, remained in Russia to beget my mother. I looked for Sevastianovs, they are not so common, and there is in Russia only one famous Sevastianov, the cosmonaut. But I did not want to become a cosmonaut; I wanted to be a writer. I did not write 'by the book', I moved from book to book, and there was not a bible for me. I tried to find what is relevant for me now, in my personal situation. I did not want to become a guru, especially a commercial guru, I did not write the instruction for a kettle, or Apple laptop, or iPhone. I tried to find sense around me, I tried to find Dao. And Americans, if they ever were moving 'by the book', it was not my book, or the books I discussed. Rather, they were antagonistic to my book and the books I talked about. There were a lot of new books coming, the new bestsellers, but I was outside of all this. I read the old books.
   Still, in the 'Noon, 22th Century' there is a great vision of the future world. Though, I don't agree with some of 'exaggerations', like the 2000-meter golden statue of Lenin in Leningrad of the 22th century. But I'm not totally in accord with Lao Tse, neither. The idea of writing by knots and not visiting the neighbor village, never coming out of your home in the course of your life, doesn't find an appeal with me.
   'The Noon' is a work of young brothers Strugatskys. By their maturing, by the 'maturing' of a country where they lived, they got increasingly disillusioned and pessimistic. Their 'World' got into a deep crisis and by the 24 century the humankind, the great majority of it, the average, lay people, save a one-in-a-million 'selected' few, was left to itself, infinitesimally inferior to the Elite Galactic designs.
  
   And the crisis, the crisis of the West, does it exist? It started with Spengler's 'The Sunset of Europe'. Spengler saw the civilization age as 1000 years. Europe has lived for one thousand years, should it get extinct? In the USSR, it was prophesied, 'known' and hoped for, but the crisis of the West included the existence of the USSR itself. China has known more than three thousand years of civilization (and the Jews, too), if not much longer - nobody knows for sure, and there are indications the civilization of China is much older than three thousand years - and it has not collapsed. Does the crisis of the West exist?
   I marked the New Year by plunging into the sea, I was alone, yesterday a man for a long time went around the beach with a long metal stick with round ending - he searched for mines. I was alone, nobody else wanted to make it with the sea this day. Yesterday, I switched on my player to escape the New Year RTVi and listened to Grebenshikov: На улице снег, на улице лёд. Минус тридцать, если диктор не врёт, моя постель холодна как лёд. Не время спать, здесь может спать только мёртвый, ВПЕРЁД! No ice, no snow, the anchorman lies, but no minus 30. I switched on Petersburg, maybe there is the freeze, minus 30, but no, there is 'warm' there.
   Coke won't do you any good, and cake too, if you eat it too much. But Israelis are fond of Coke, they prefer American values. I won't say it's wrong, I smoke myself, and which is worse: to die from cancer or from obesity? But I am not going to quit, if I die from cancer, so much the worse for me.
  
   From the other side, you can't say Jews hate Nature. There is even a pharmaceutical corporation "Teva', that is, 'Nature'. Jews use the Nature, they grow fruits and vegetables. My mother felt happiest when spending four days in Finland, in woods, on the lake shore.
  
   The English really have few synonyms for snow. Mainly, it's not even that white icy-cold substance, but cocaine, bamboozle, blizzard too. Eskimos have sixty-three words for 'snow', so I've read somewhere. It's not surprising, snow in its varieties, is the main thing they have around, it's important for driving, hunting, going out, etc (not skiing). And the English have notions about money like Eskimos have about snow. And it's not surprising; it's the main thing surrounding them.
   In Russian, the group of birds flying south for winter is called: wedge. A wedge of cranes, there is a good Russian song about cranes. But, recently, driving North, to Haifa, we with Lilia saw a wedge of pelicans flying low near the road.
  
   I'm not a con-artist, and I'm not a bubble. I'm not even a Jew though I have a metaphorical very long nose by which I sniff 'granit nauk', I don't know how it's in English. I'm not responsible for the American economy bloom, I don't base my decisions on whether they are good for American (or any else) economy. But I'm not hiding bounties. The sole thing I know - cutting on war could free billions, win-win for all, but nobody pays attention.
  
   Writing my diary, whatever comes to my head, brainstorming, the current of consciousness, gibberish, learning to write, learning English, learning life, erring, being ridiculous, humanum errarum est, you can't not make mistakes, how you can be right, your parents think they're right and correct you, everyone sees, from his OWN angle, how stupid you are, learning English reading monolingual dictionaries, learning English reading Russian-English dictionary when you get a Russian word and don't know what's its English equivalent, writing 'an essay' - in the framework of 'English' in the sophomore course - but you don't make any course, it's not 'Creative Writing', nobody teaches you creative writing, nobody corrects your mistakes.
  
   'Self-Reliance' - it's good to rely on yourself but bad to trod on others, self-reliance can be самонадеянность, it's good to try to be original, to develop American, home-grown, literature, but studying French is also good.
   'Учиться на чужих ошибках', learn from others' mistakes: this teach tv newsmen. Implying ME, I don't learn from others' mistakes, others learn from my mistakes(like those Cave Men who tried mushrooms and fruits: if they were edible, they enjoyed, if poisonous, they died - but who was learning on his own mistakes, and who profited from this?) , and I even not learn from my own mistakes. Meaning: it's a school, everybody learns, who learns better, wins. Learning from humankind experience.
  
   But learning can be not from mistakes only. I, personally, want to learn Chinese medicine, writing, many things. Should I learn from mistakes only? There are hundreds of manuals on acupuncture, Chinese and foreign. They accumulate the Chinese doctors' experience of thousand years. Chinese, Taoists, made a lot of mistakes in centuries with their experimenting. They tried to find an elixir of immortality, and thousands died from alchemic concoctions. Humankind made a lot of mistakes in its history, all nations, and people of all walks of life. Humankind as a whole, individuals, nations, parties, religions (heresies and witch-hunting to expel heresies), learning from mistakes, people outgrown the Cave Age. I, really, have not learned enough from my own mistakes, save mistakes of others. But I tried to learn from 'peak experiences' of individuals, to orient myself on highest.
   There was a guy; I met him in Krepost, back in 1987. He was one year ahead of me in the Medical Pavlov Institute. He was in the Krepost crowd, though he was a Leningrader, not a newcomer, working in the Krepost for the right to live there. He lived in an apartment with his father, studied medicine, but he married one girl there and had a child from her. I met him recently, he was a mature doctor by this time, and we talked a bit. He said - you learned from Jews. I said, yes, I don't see any evil in learning from Jews. My teacher of English, who interested me in the language, was an old Jewish lady, my distant relative. My teachers in the math school were almost all Jews, only the sports teacher was not a Jew. I've read a lot of clever books by Jews, in all domains. Many writers I liked were Jews, or partly Jews.
  
   Labeling: 'controversial'. Every writer sees from his own angle, literature is 'controversial'. You can't say if you read books, all books say one thing. Like religions, they're different. Controversial: for Jews or against Jews? Jews are different, too. If you have seven Jews, you'll have seven opinions. For which Jews, against which Jews? For the genius of Jews, against materialism of Jews? For 10 commandments, against theocracy?
   Jewish writers I liked in my youth were Kaverin, Kron, brothers Strugatskys( though they never were advertised as Jewish authors, they were 'Soviet'), Isaak Asimov, later Heinrich Heine, Marcel Proust, Philip Roth, Aksyonov, Dovlatov. But I can't say my education was 'Jewish'. In Soviet spirit of internationalism I've read 'world literature'. Boris Pasternack never 'accentuated' his Jewishness, though he was a 100% Jew. I never knew Anna Akhmatova was an Ukranian. National accents appeared later, with Iosif Brodsky definitely a 'Jewish genius' though he was not a 'pure' Jew. National accents appeared, and it's good, from one side, because earlier they were negated. But, from the other side, they turned a former Soviet Union in a kind of bedlam, with nations fiercely fighting each other.
  
   A worst movie out of me, I'm not even a writer, but since I write, I write and don't act. No celebrity out of me, CINEMAX is a complete bubble, I'm not a cinematic personality, not a singer like Beatles, don't make hits - and hate to think of hits, wish to completely disappear from view - not to learn to make hits, grow up, it's not the choice between anonymous nobody and a star, I write, but not to project me as a Sun, I'm not the Sun, I'm not that crucial, important, nothing depends on me, the fate of the world, the fate of Blacks, the fate of Whites, American Dream. America can learn from China - specifically, not to be so flashy, so Superstarry, so childish, not from China only, from Russia, from India - love is not something you're dying for today throw into garbage tomorrow, there is past, there is history, the world is not NEW each moment.
  
   Free education: ancient Greeks did not take money for their lessons and warned their students not to make profit from what they've learned. Not all: sophists took fees for lessons and were quite modern in commercial approach to education. But the classical philosophical and mathematical idea concerning education was the value of knowledge in itself not profaned by money and gain. Culture was important in itself; they wanted to make spiritual men. Maybe, because of this ancient Greek culture is superior to contemporary Western culture, whatever Marx said about ancient Greece as 'childhood of mankind'.
  
   CO2 emissions in the USA grew up 2% in 2013. The economy (the big part of which is auto industry) grew up 4% in the 4th quarter 2013. Sea level is expected to rise minimum 1 foot by 2050(and 5 or 6 feet by 2100). That means a large part of seaside territory around the world will be under water. And the economy only grows, and nobody is going to lower CO2 emissions.
   The meaning of free education is not socialism. Its meaning, whatever you learn, you learn it not for money, for yourself or for the others. Learn to be healthy, its meaning not in money, in your health, learn Nature - its meaning not in money, in something else, you'll understand it's better to be with Nature than to spend 24 hours before television, computer, or talking on smartphone. Learn languages, its value is not in money, in widening your horizons, travel, other cultures, better understanding of life. Learn internet, read free newspapers, magazines, in other languages, do brain fitness. It costs money to buy a computer, to buy books, to buy access to internet, but otherwise, it's free. You CAN get free education, even in America.
   I'm not saying education SHOULD be free, that you can't get money for your knowledge. I say the point is not money but something else. You can graduate from the best college having paid a lot of money for this and land a good job finely paid but this is not the point. Probably, with free education you'll not be able to land a good job finely paid but you should decide what you need do you really need that job.
  
   I'm not studying at Oxford. I am not studying anywhere. I'm studying humanity, how it could live better. How it could avoid self-inflicted disaster, those Australian tennis-players whining about weather, it soon will be everywhere. And you'll have to play tennis, fight your wars at 39 Celsius, forgot how much Fahrenheit, but ENOUGH for you to break, while weather men will congratulate you with blossoming economy and pity polar bears. You will envy polar beers.
   Juggernaut - a very big lorry. Something large, powerful, and overwhelming: a juggernaut of bureaucracy.
   The world, the world economy is like a VERY BIG lorry, really something large, powerful and overwhelming. And uncontrollable, too. World, with a speed of a modern plane-destroyer or a very fast internet, is driving to its ruin, war, climate change, flood.
   'Waiting for 2017', I'm waiting for 2050. Will the temperature rise 4 degrees Celsius? Will the ocean level rise 10 inches? Those who wait for 2017 don't wait for 2050, but 2050 also will come one day, Republican or Democrat in the White House.
   Philosophy of Diogenes seems counterintuitive. In recent fashion of the word 'counterintuitive' it seems 'right'. If it's 'counterintuitive', if it 'goes against the grain'(like Diogenes who entered a theater when the crowd went out, the performance ending), if it doesn't conform to the common sense -is it right? The laws of Tao also seem 'counterintuitive'.
   I don't know if I'm right-brained or left-brained. But I was told the corporate America is left-brained (though Learning Strategies seem to promote right-braininess). How could I persuade corporate America?
   The climate data is left-brained. It doesn't mean it's 'left', politically. But it seemed to alarm 'the lefts', mainly. The corporate America cannot make electric car, cannot switch to green energy, though it has all the capital and the entire R&D. It's a thing which I cannot understand(News: corporate America makes electric vehicles)
   (By the way, the location of mind in the brain is disputed by Eastern theories which say all the organs of the body interact and mutually control one another)
  
   I remember in 90s NTV showed one young beautiful Fascist melancholically smoking a cigarette. They incriminated my personage(recently, gaping at that television like a fish out of water) was this Fascist, I also smoked melancholically mulling over my problems - being a fish out of water. But I wasn't a Fascist.
   Keeping up with Joneses, not keeping up with Joneses. Going back to Ray Bradbury, to his 50s novel-warning. He said(about the future): earlier the ad slogans were 5 feet long, now the cars go so fast they can't read them, so they've made them 50 feet long. That's about speed, cosmic speed, you better slow down, close the factory. Think twice.
  
   The point is not to work more, you can work five minutes a day, and not necessarily in high-tech or finance, and create much more. But whether you'll get more, is unclear. The point is not to sit at your working place and make appearance of work, when bosses come to check you. The point is the results of your work.
  
   The secret is simple: freedom is the condition of any development. It's not big money that gives you an education; it's a bit of freedom that makes flourishing. Take away freedom, and economy suffocates.
   I'm not a political junkie, and I'm not a tv junkie, and I'm not a sports junkie, and I'm not a money junkie. I'm not even a book junkie or internet junkie. Rather, I'm a music junkie. I hide into music from tv narrative. I'm also an English language junkie but I hide into Russian and French from it, and back again, when Russian and French get me.
  
   Never mind 'Lumosity', intellect can grow with time. Even on 'Lumosity', you can still get higher. Intellect can grow, and it can get less, it depends on you only. Don't take 'Lumosity' or iq as a measure of intellect. Buddha said if a man doesn't know he is a fool, his business is bad. Only knowing this, there is hope for him.
   A senator spent his life forbidding smoking in all places. But on his funerals people laughed and danced.
  
   My mother takes her cooking inspiration from the Russian food program 'Smak'. I remember watching it several years ago, the anchorman with the cry 'Bonzai!' attacked the miserable chicken or whatever it was he was cooking, and the other guys echoed his war-cry and did away with their food. How it was possible to eat this?
   For me the 'smak' depends on the mood with which I prepare it, and this program method of cooking, heavily military, doesn't leave anything alive and breathing, so I don't take any pleasure in such meals.
   'Test yourself!' -Math. 'The New York Times'. 'After her last match defeat Serena Williams has won 77 matches out of 81. How many games she has to play to win 96?
   My answer -19. The answer of 'The New York Times' -20. The probability of her winning is 77/81 -95%. So she will lose one match so she has to play 20 games.
   Strange math involving probability. What if she loses 2 games or three? What if she wins all 19 games? Nobody knows. How you can 100% be sure she will win exactly 19 times out of 20? She doesn't know, and 'The New York Times' mathematicians don't know, only God knows but He won't tell(if He exists). How these mathematicians dare to play God? In my math school, in ancient Soviet times they would say 'the task is set incorrectly', there is more than one probable answer, though I 100% admit 19 is also not a good answer.
   'New York Times' says what if New York tried to muster enough hubris to take the Winter Olympics? It's not hubris; they are 'incorrect' again. It's 'initiative', maybe 'daredevilry' but not 'hubris'. Now, I looked it up in my English dictionary. It's 'exaggerated pride or self-confidence'(from ancient Greek). Impudence. That's what Greeks understood by hubris. Arrogant attack not considering others' rights.
  
  
   Проблема Израиля - ближневосточный кризис Я был в библиотеке Еврейского университета в Иерусалиме _ целая наука посвящена этому кризису, сотни томов, 50х, 60х, 70х, и прочих годов. Целая плеяда израильских докторов философии выросла на этом кризисе, многие поколения израильских политиков сделали на нем карьеру. Но что сделано в итоге? Каков результат? Нулевой. Единственное решение - "силовое", "умные" бомбы падают на Газу, "умные" "Железные щиты" сбивают арабские ракеты.
  
  
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