Jennka

Of course she is (inside out and back, that is a very good way of saying it), did I forget to mention that. A serious omission.

There is no way it could be the other way round

Mmm, maybe I'm just being an unobservant male again. I'll have to do some more serious observations.

Ok, then tell me your results

Oh Ksenia

Whow, what is her whole name? She looks wonderful!!

Most places (including here) seem to have it as Kahnovich, but others have it as Kakhnovich, so I'm slightly confused. She pronounces the K herself

Pretty skinny, but stunning

Longest arms in the biz? o_O

Very nice, cool and elegant. These polas ARE amazing.

Glad you like them how about this one? Her name is Ymre Stiekema and she is just... whow

Felt I just had to post this here. More pictures in the link at the bottom of the post. Not sure about the art work, to be honest, but I love the idea.

I don´t like the pictures, but the idea is gorgeous really love it!!

Oh Ksenia

Whow, what is her whole name? She looks wonderful!!

Most places (including here) seem to have it as Kahnovich, but others have it as Kakhnovich, so I'm slightly confused. She pronounces the K herself

Pretty skinny, but stunning

Longest arms in the biz? o_O

She has amazing bone structure and great eyes!!

Just like my fl he used to exercise a lot, but then he grew somehow tired of it and did not have enough time - now it´s ocasional and mostly he does Kapap to stay fit - but he HAS the belly and says he could not be bothered

Does your boyfriend drink beer regularly? He could try limiting simple carbs (white bread, sugar, beer). Those foods tend to increase body fat for some people. bodybuilders tend to eat a high protein, high fat diet (and cut out as many carbs as possible).

I can see his face while telling him this

you misunderstood me. He knows pretty much about dieting, exercising and burning fat, he just doesn´t care anymore and loves beer... I love beer too... he eats a lot and still has no problem to lose weight quickly (two or three kg in one week). Used to weight 67kg, but his dream was to weight 90 he gave up when he could not get over 83 now he eats normally, exercises when he has time, and does kapap. And I love his belly

#1: If you want to really learn something, you can teach it yourself. Use the internet, buy textbooks, buy everything on a college syllabus..put in your time..outside of the time commitment, it's almost free.

#2. The idea that we should stratify society by education titles is a fiction, and is part of University marketing and political design. There is, indeed a degree of mindless credentialism based on the logic that education is correlated with expertise. It can be the pretext of having greater expertise while in practice merely producing barriers of entry.

#3. We need to respect all different types of people- blue collar, white collar, intellectual..- for their unique skills and abilities & what they contribute to society.

...........

Many people who do humanities do so for self-improvement....which can have certain potentials...and not necessarily to build an immediate career out of it. Secondly, people who have studied humanities or MA in so called"useless" philosophy tend to have first rate critical thinking capacities (as well as being first rate human beings), which can be valued by an employer.

Overall, I like the Canadian educational system. In the US our Ivy league and Tier I specialized programs (Law, business, medical, engineering, etc.) do a good job in setting up students. Anyway, the Tier II/III unis don't even try. I did a good program and I had a good experience- my classmates were all picked students...very smart and highly motivated. We had a very hectic four years.

There are a lot of big problems with all universities, though.

1. I think your college degree (and even grades, for that matter) is just a minor part of your application. You have to be doing a lot of other things on your own to supplement it and be developing your own set of marketable skills. What matters is the skills, experiences, and knowledge that can be imprinted on your long term memory bank. You need to find a realistic set of goals and throw yourself into them 100%.

2. There are indeed big problems with the way subjects are taught in a formal setting as they are often geared toward training people to move into graduate studies. There is also the major problem of focus: Test taking, class projects, and other gradables DISTORT the REAL learning process badly. You have to be really proactive and teach yourself..and realize that you will be teaching yourself a lot more than the courses themselves.

3. There is a certain commonality in programs: Important subjects are often not emphasized enough while the useless is often overemphasized. Perhaps 2/3rd of the things I did in college courses were a waste of time. This is a huge problem.

Other than that, I believe that all people entering into society in the 21st century...as today we live in a era of global labor markets...really do need to do at least 16 years of formal schooling. But definitely not the way that it's being done today.

1. We would have a massively boring society if all young people did functional specialties.

2. The typical graduate from a dental, medical, business, etc. school lacks liberal arts education, and it shows up very badly. Liberal arts and culture needs to be emphasized more in general to maintain a more civilized society with higher consumer tastes & better psychological health.

3. Basic business skills need to be taught to everybody.

4. We need to do a much better job in teaching second or third languages and interdisciplinary skills.

5. North America and Europe have been very soft in education for too long....

............

Besides that, I would advise Congress to adopt industrial policies, labor/tax changes, and to quit en masse, but they would assassinate me for not being sufficiently establishment.... :magic:

Don´t know what to reply, because mostly I absolutely agree with you on this... one thing that springs to my mind is, that I have a dentist who is also a painter

but at least one thing is good about education here - the pressure on schools for languages. There are at least two foreign languages in the elementary school (and nowadays even in nurseries, English or German is being taught) and two or three in high school... and many, many language schools with certificates, with lots of languages from English to Chinese.

Well, from the broadest perspective the Germans lost the war as soon as they declared war on the United States. In Russia, they were finished by the winter of 1942. In contrast to stereotypes that still exist today- with the Nazis being incredibly efficient & monolithic.. the Nazi government and political economy was in fact very byzantine and disorganized. For instance, Himmler and Goering each had their private armies that competed with the German army for resources...and Nazi Germany was effectively a kleptocracy with many internal inefficiencies.

The Soviet Union had not only a better functioning government but also more rationalized production capacity. They had far more human and material resources.

What the Germans were good at was in producing high quality soldiers and fighting units. But they held this advantage for only 2 to 3 years. In terms of technology, the Germans were mostly equal or worse than the United States. They made some "Gucci kit"- ie. Very powerful, large tanks. But these tanks were very limited in number, and played no significant role.

The Soviet Union matched the Nazis in military technology in most of the places that really mattered.

And Germany's war making potential on the ground was less than the Soviet Union's. The United States' war making potential was about three times that of Germany's. The Nazis had no rational reason to be fighting the Western world. They lacked military and economic power.

When the Germans invaded Russia, they achieved great victories at first but as they advanced in the SU their logistics and supply chain started to collapse. They couldn't maintain their army in the field well enough. They planned their invasion very poorly and they completely underestimated their enemies.

By 1943, the Soviet Armed forces were basically kicking their a$$, so to speak..

Amat Victoria Curam

Victory Loves Preparation

Thank you for the history lesson

I don't read much outside of stuff related to my areas of focus- so I don't have time to read entire history or sociology books and so forth. I just browse through them, of course

Sometimes I do that too but mostly I try to focus on the book (which is hard when I started reading other five )

Do you feel that income equality is an important issue? As you can see, I do. I prefer a world that is guided by true merit and individual & group achievement.

There are many important issues... but your world seems to be a little Utopia. Of course I do prefer a world without poverty and full of equality - but that is nonsense. Communists thought they could make people qual to each other - by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. So we all would be equal... that one huge idiotism. No one has a right to decide what is right and what is wrong. They took from the rich (in reality hard working people that had been developing the business for generations) and gave it to the poor (in reality mostly lazy people without any ambitious who only destroyed the given thing, because they did not know how to handle it).

There is also another thing - money is not everything and has different value for different people. Some people are poor, and happy the way they are, other people are rich, and you would never call them "happy".

So, it´s very difficult to say who is rich and who is poor (mostly) - if you know what I mean. People are tricky - you never know, what makes them happy (and I´m pretty sure that in a perfect world, people would go crazy).

But yes, a little bit more of "true" values and fair play would be great...

People even judge other people through clothes and physical appearance- at least initially :-p I have a lot of old clothes that I still wear. I have a nice wool coat that hasn't really aged much in the 9 years that I've had it.

9 years, what an age! Great fabric, then

hey jennka. how are you dear? hope all is well

morning you sexy SLOV, hope your weekend was steller sweets, alittle lady godiva AKA GISELE for your monday viewing

There are many important issues... but your world seems to be a little Utopia. Of course I do prefer a world without poverty and full of equality - but that is nonsense. Communists thought they could make people qual to each other - by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. So we all would be equal... that one huge idiotism. No one has a right to decide what is right and what is wrong. They took from the rich (in reality hard working people that had been developing the business for generations) and gave it to the poor (in reality mostly lazy people without any ambitious who only destroyed the given thing, because they did not know how to handle it).

Did this happen in Slovakia? I generally believe that communists tend to just redistribute power and factors of production to a superclass of people. They seize the assets of the rich once they get into power and just keep it for themselves (so they can mismanage). The flip side in a capitalist world is the fact that "capitalists and businessowners" can more and more steal the labor and lives/capacity for self determination of the poor, working class, and middle class (which has happened in America today) over time if they are left unchecked by the public. Eventually it reaches a breaking point. The condition of the working poor in the United States has always been unusually bad.

Generally speaking, as bull markets appear, incomes become more and more distorted while power concentrates into the hands of the most powerful private sector actors. Right wing politics also contributes to it. For instance, the top marginal tax rates in the US used to be 90% , now it is less than half of that. That's why I think income distribution should be periodically re-aligned in a capitalist economy as to avoid political corruption and to afford talented members of society- usually concentrated in the middle class- opportunities for creating new enterprises and creations. A big problem Americans have today is liquidating the incompetent elements of the super-rich, the degenerate aristocracy & the assets of the dead and their unworthy children. This action goes far beyond just raising marginal rates. It seems to be an intractable problem with no real solution in sight.

In the US, distribution was much better aligned about 40 years ago but it took a political revolution to do it (FDR administration in the wake of the Great Depression). (In fact, the distribution from 1940-1970s were really quite good). The Gini coefficients of Scandinavian countries are a pretty good number.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. " Thomas Jefferson.

Regardless, the Constitution of the United States has at times unduly burdened living people today with ghosts of the past.

There is also another thing - money is not everything and has different value for different people. Some people are poor, and happy the way they are, other people are rich, and you would never call them "happy".

So, it´s very difficult to say who is rich and who is poor (mostly) - if you know what I mean. People are tricky - you never know, what makes them happy (and I´m pretty sure that in a perfect world, people would go crazy).

But yes, a little bit more of "true" values and fair play would be great...

I don't think that the pursuit of a certain happiness should be a goal, because if one has to consciously pursue that happiness then they are doing the wrong things everyday!

Please, feel free to do so

I agree wholeheartedly with Jennka on this one, Layla

Uhmm guys, I didn't mean this seriously

Uhmm guys, I didn't mean this seriously

I was dying to see a 1,000 word essay on this subject,

I can see his face while telling him this

you misunderstood me. He knows pretty much about dieting, exercising and burning fat, he just doesn´t care anymore and loves beer... I love beer too... he eats a lot and still has no problem to lose weight quickly (two or three kg in one week). Used to weight 67kg, but his dream was to weight 90 he gave up when he could not get over 83 now he eats normally, exercises when he has time, and does kapap. And I love his belly

Oh, I see

Don´t know what to reply, because mostly I absolutely agree with you on this... one thing that springs to my mind is, that I have a dentist who is also a painter

but at least one thing is good about education here - the pressure on schools for languages. There are at least two foreign languages in the elementary school (and nowadays even in nurseries, English or German is being taught) and two or three in high school... and many, many language schools with certificates, with lots of languages from English to Chinese.

Sometimes I do that too but mostly I try to focus on the book (which is hard when I started reading other five )

That sounds good The thing with languages is that it seems to be harder to learn them when you're older. These opportunities were not really available to me earlier in my life:(

With books- I tend to have pressing questions or problems... and I used multiple texts as research material. The material on the internet is just not good enough..

Here is the section from The Last Unicorn, Cult Icon written by Peter S. Beagle.

Mummy Fortuna (a witch) captured the last unicorn while she was asleep and caged her in her carnival. And as people no longer believed in unicorns, she had to put a false magic horn to her, so people could see she was a unicorn. Schmendrick is a magician who is trying to free her.

Schmendrick came back a little before dawn, slipping between cages as silently as water. Only the harpy made a sound as he went by.

"I couldn´t get away any sooner," he told the unicorn. "She´s set Rukh to watching me, and he hardly ever sleeps. But I asked him a riddle, and it always takes him all night to solve riddles. Next time, I´ll tell him a joke and keep him busy for a week."

The unicorn was gray and still. "There is magic on me," she said. "Why did you not tell me?"

"I thought you knew," the magician answered gently. "After all, didn´t you wonder how it could be that they recognized you?" Then he smiled, which made him look a little older. "No, of course not. You never would wonder about that."

"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. "There has never been a world in which I was not known."

"I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It´s a rare man who is taken for what he trully is," he said. "There is much misjudgement in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard t sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference ´twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips´ laugh and the heart´s rue." His quiet voice lifted as the sky grew lighter, and for a moment the unicorn could not hear the bars whining, or the soft ringing of the harpy´s wings.

"I think you are my friend," she said. "Will you help me?"

I love the whole book. It´s full of... this wonderful heart´s magic

other answers later

hey jennka. how are you dear? hope all is well

hey there yeah, everything is ok I´m looking forward to weekend, so much! How about you?

morning you sexy SLOV, hope your weekend was steller sweets, alittle lady godiva AKA GISELE for your monday viewing

You know how much I love this picture with Gisele

weekend was great, full of work and fun

^Back on unicorns again then..?

:evil:

#1: If you want to really learn something, you can teach it yourself. Use the internet, buy textbooks, buy everything on a college syllabus..put in your time..outside of the time commitment, it's almost free.

#2. The idea that we should stratify society by education titles is a fiction, and is part of University marketing and political design. There is, indeed a degree of mindless credentialism based on the logic that education is correlated with expertise. It can be the pretext of having greater expertise while in practice merely producing barriers of entry.

#3. We need to respect all different types of people- blue collar, white collar, intellectual..- for their unique skills and abilities & what they contribute to society.

However, I remember arguing with a professor once about the relative merits of professional versus non-professional people and their "worth" to society. Whilst it's certainly true all should be respected on a personal basis, I (and this was my argument) would rather have a medical doctor clean my windows than a window cleaner operate on me.

Did this happen in Slovakia? I generally believe that communists tend to just redistribute power and factors of production to a superclass of people. They seize the assets of the rich once they get into power and just keep it for themselves (so they can mismanage). The flip side in a capitalist world is the fact that "capitalists and businessowners" can more and more steal the labor and lives/capacity for self determination of the poor, working class, and middle class (which has happened in America today) over time if they are left unchecked by the public. Eventually it reaches a breaking point. The condition of the working poor in the United States has always been unusually bad.

Generally speaking, as bull markets appear, incomes become more and more distorted while power concentrates into the hands of the most powerful private sector actors. Right wing politics also contributes to it. For instance, the top marginal tax rates in the US used to be 90% , now it is less than half of that. That's why I think income distribution should be periodically re-aligned in a capitalist economy as to avoid political corruption and to afford talented members of society- usually concentrated in the middle class- opportunities for creating new enterprises and creations. A big problem Americans have today is liquidating the incompetent elements of the super-rich, the degenerate aristocracy & the assets of the dead and their unworthy children. This action goes far beyond just raising marginal rates. It seems to be an intractable problem with no real solution in sight.

In the US, distribution was much better aligned about 40 years ago but it took a political revolution to do it (FDR administration in the wake of the Great Depression). (In fact, the distribution from 1940-1970s were really quite good). The Gini coefficients of Scandinavian countries are a pretty good number.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. " Thomas Jefferson.

Regardless, the Constitution of the United States has at times unduly burdened living people today with ghosts of the past.

Yes, this happened in Slovakia, Czech Republic, and other countries too. Imagine you have a factory on boots, your family owns it for generations, you are the one who gives work to many people around you, and then come the communists, take it from you, and make your work in your own (previously your own) factory not even like a regular worker, but they give you the dirtiest job possibe. There were many suicides those days, could you imagine going through something like this? Actors, painters, businessmen, regular people - everyone who did not follow the regime was damned to a poor life, they took everything from them. Their children were not allowed to study on universities, they were not allowed to find a proper work. And they were also not allowed to leave the country.

"the incompetent elements of the super-rich, the degenerate aristocracy & the assets of the dead and their unworthy children" - what exactly does this mean?

I don't think that the pursuit of a certain happiness should be a goal, because if one has to consciously pursue that happiness then they are doing the wrong things everyday!

One should live the happiness, not pursuit it - right point in there