Island of Fire: The Battle for the Barrikady Gun Factory in Stalingrad

https://www.amazon.com/Island-Fire-Barrikady-Factory-Stalingrad/dp/081171991X/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517079854&sr=1-7

One of the greatest books on Stalingrad is now getting wide publication!

http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Warren-Ellis-Crecy/Full?id=128351

http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Death-Of-Stalin/Issue-1?id=73148

On Charity:

" I suspect that few male millionaires keep their charitable donations secret from their wives and mistresses. 
A final oddity is that people usually avoid giving to charities that nobody else has heard of, however worthy the cause. The result is something approaching a winner-takes-all contest, with the 

charities that grow large and well-known attracting ever larger proportions of donations. Charities must spend a large proportion of revenue on "fundraising." This sounds like the pragmatic solicitation of donations. But it often turns out to mean the costly creation of a strong brand identity for the charity, hiring advertising firms to promote the charity in the same way that any other luxury good is marketed. Fundraisers know that when a new charity is launched, it is important to attract a few major donors, so their rivals feel obliged to top those donations with larger ones. The charity's goal is to provoke a donation arms race between local millionaires. From the viewpoint of efficiently transferring resources from the wealthy to the needy, such arms races look pathological."

How do you choose your avatars? They all have this calming, neoclassic type vibe. I also forgot to ask who the woman in the last one was.

On 1/30/2018 at 1:09 PM, Joe > Average said:

How do you choose your avatars? They all have this calming, neoclassic type vibe. I also forgot to ask who the woman in the last one was.

hmmph, that's a hard question to answer precisely.  I choose ones that are suitable for avatars and prefer those that won't annoy me or other posters over time.

This one is Brooke Shields.  I also used Hedvig Palm and Anna Mila Guyenz:

[

Hello Cult ,,of all people here,you were of few who stuck on my mind all past times of absence from Bz.

From Deborah Tannen's books on the differences between male and female linguistics.  This ties neatly with the other fields- and common sense- that examine the issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen

" I now see that my husband was simply engaging the world in a way that many men do: as an individual in a hierarchical social order in which he was either one-up or one-down. In this world, conversations are negotiations in which 13 people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand if they can, and protect themselves from others' attempts to put them down and push them around. Life, then, is a contest, a struggle to preserve independence and avoid failure. I, on the other hand, was approaching the world as many women do: as an individual in a network of connections. In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away. Life, then, is a community, a struggle to preserve intimacy and avoid isolation. Though there are hierarchies in this world too, they are hierarchies more of friendship than of power and accomplishment. Women are also concerned with achieving status and avoiding failure, but these are not the goals they are focused on all the time, and they tend to pursue them in the guise of connection. And men are also concerned with achieving involvement and avoiding isolation, but they are not focused on these goals, and they tend to pursue them in the guise of opposition. "

" If my husband was offended by what he perceived as claims to superior status, I felt these sympathizers were claiming inappropriate intimacy. "

"Intimacy is key in a world of connection where individuals negotiate complex networks of friendship, minimize differences, try to reach consensus, and avoid the appearance of superiority, which would highlight differences. In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell others what 14 to do, and taking orders is a marker of low status. Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions. "

"To Josh, checking with his wife means seeking permission, which implies that he is not independent, not free to act on his own. It would make him feel like a child or an underling. To Linda, checking with her husband has nothing to do with permission. She assumes that spouses discuss their plans with each other because their lives are intertwined, so the actions of one have consequences for the other. "

"Many women feel it is natural to consult with their partners at every turn, while many men automatical y make more decisions without consulting their partners. This may reflect a broad difference in conceptions of decision making. Women expect decisions to be discussed first and made by consensus. They appreciate the discussion itself as evidence of involvement and communication. But many men feel oppressed by lengthy discussions about what they see as minor decisions, and they feel hemmed in if they can't just act without talking first. When women try to initiate a freewheeling discussion by asking, "What do you think?" men often think they are being asked to decide.  "

"If intimacy says, "We're close and the same," and independence says, "We're separate and different," it is easy to see that intimacy and independence dovetail with connection and status. The essential 16 element of connection is symmetry: People are the same, feeling equally close to each other. The essential element of status is asymmetry: People are not the same; they are differently placed in a hierarchy. "

"This duality is particularly clear in expressions of sympathy or concern, which are all potentially ambiguous. They can be interpreted either symmetrically, as evidence of fellow feeling among equals, or asymmetrically, offered by someone one-up to someone one-down. "

13

"On one level, this is simply an example of a clash of wills: What he wanted conflicted with what she wanted. But in a fundamental way, it reflects the difference in focus I have been describing. In arguing for his point of view, the key issue for this man was his independence, his freedom of action. The key issue for the woman was their interdependence how what he did made her feel. He interpreted her insistence on their interdependence as  "manipulation": She was using her feelings to control his behavior. The point is not that women do not value freedom or that men do not value their connection to others. It is rather that the desire for freedom and independence becomes more of an issue for many men in relationships, whereas interdependence and connection become more of an issue for many women. The difference is one of focus and degree.  "

When women told her they had gained freedom by divorce, they meant that they had gained  "independence and autonomy." It was a relief for them not to have to worry about how their husbands would react to what they did, and not have to be "responsive to a disgruntled spouse." When men mentioned freedom as a benefit of divorce, they meant freedom from obligation--the relief of feeling "less confined," less  "claustrophobic," and having "fewer responsibilities."

The burden from which divorce delivered the women was perceived as internally motivated: the continual preoccupation with how their husbands would respond to them and how they should respond to 27 their husbands. The burden from which it delivered the men was perceived as externally imposed: the obligations of the provider role and a feeling of confinement from having their behavior constrained by others. Independence was not a gift of divorce for the men Riessman interviewed, because, as one man put it, "I always felt independent andI guess it's just more so now." 

" The four men's answers had much in common with each other and little in common with the women's. All four men referred to independence as their main motive."

"I do not believe this means that women are not interested in research, but rather that independence, freedom from being told what to do, is not as significant a preoccupation for them. In describing what appealed to them about teaching, these two women focused on the ability to influence students in a positive way"

" But in talking about their profession, the women focused on connection to students, whereas the men focused on their freedom from others' control. "

"If women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, while men speak and hear a language of status and independence, then communication between men and women can be like cross-cultural communication, prey to a clash of conversational styles. "

"Their groups have a leader who tells others what to do and how to do it, and 29 resists doing what other boys propose. It is by giving orders and making them stick that high status is negotiated. Another way boys achieve status is to take center stage by telling stories and jokes, and by sidetracking or challenging the stories and jokes     "

"Girls, on the other hand, play in small groups or in pairs; the center of a girl's social life is a best friend. Within the group, intimacy is key: Differentiation is measured by relative closeness. In their most frequent games, such as jump rope and hopscotch, everyone gets a turn. Many of their activities (such as playing house) do not have winners or losers. Though some girls are certainly more skilled than others, girls are expected not to boast about it, or show that they think they are better than the others. Girls don't give orders; they express their preferences as suggestions, and suggestions are likely to be accepted. "

" They don't grab center stage--they don't want it--so they don't challenge each other directly. And much of the time, they simply sit together and talk. Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked."

"Gender differences in ways of talking have been described by researchers observing children as young as three.   "

Trying to solve a problem or fix a trouble focuses on the message level of talk. But for most women who habitually report problems at work or in friendships, the message is not the main point of complaining. It's the metamessage that counts: Telling about a problem is a bid for an expression of understanding ("I know how you feel") or a similar complaint ("I felt the same way when something similar happened to me").   In other words, troubles talk is intended to reinforce rapport by 37 sending the meta-message "We're the same; you're not alone." Women are frustrated when they not only don't get this reinforcement but, quite the opposite, feel distanced by the advice, which seems to send the metamessage "We're not the same. You have the problems; I have the solutions."   Furthermore, mutual understanding is symmetrical, and this symmetry contributes to a sense of community. But giving advice is asymmetrical.   It frames the advice giver as more knowledgeable, more reasonable, more in control--in a word, one-up. And this contributes to the distancing effect."

 The girls go on and on. The boys raise the issue, one of them comes up with a solution, and then they close the discussion. "

"The women in these stories are balancing a delicate system by which troubles talk is used to confirm their feelings and create a sense of community.   When women confront men's ways of talking to them, they judge them by the standards of women's conversational styles. Women show concern by following up someone else's statement of trouble by questioning her about it. When men change the subject, women think they are showing a lack of sympathy--a failure of intimacy. But the failure to ask probing questions could just as well be a way of respecting the other's need for independence. "

"Women tend to show understanding of another woman's feelings. When men try to reassure women by telling them that their situation is not so bleak, the women hear their feelings being belittled or discounted.   Again, they encounter a failure of intimacy just when they were bidding to reinforce it. Trying to trigger a symmetrical communication, they end up in an asymmetrical one.   "

f a man focuses on the negotiation of status and feels someone must have the upper hand, he may feel more comfortable when he has it. His attunement to the fact that having more information, knowledge, or skill puts him in a one-up position comes through in his way of talking. And if sometimes men seem intentionally to explain in a way that makes what they are explaining difficult to understand, it may be because their pleasant feeling of knowing more is reinforced when the student does not understand. "

" Or it may simply be that they are more concerned with displaying their superior knowledge and skill than with making sure that the knowledge is shared.   A colleague familiar with my ideas remarked that he'd seen evidence of this difference at an academic conference. A woman delivering a paper kept stopping and asking the audience, "Are you with me so far?" My colleague surmised that her main concern seemed to be that the audience understand what she was saying. "

"This is not to say that women have no desire to feel knowledgeable or powerful. Indeed, the act of asking others whether they are able to follow your argument can be seen to frame you as superior. But it seems that having information, expertise, or skill at manipulating objects is not the primary measure of power for most women."

"Rather, they feel their power enhanced if they can be of help. Even more, if they are focusing on connection rather than independence and self-reliance, they feel stronger when the community is strong. "

"Having expertise and skill can reinforce both women's and men's sense of themselves. But the stance of expert is more fundamental to our notion of masculinity than to our concept of femininity. Women, according to convention, are more inclined to be givers of praise than givers of information."

On 2/8/2018 at 5:24 AM, Mahi said:

Hello Cult ,,of all people here,you were of few who stuck on my mind all past times of absence from Bz.

I'm moved! hi Mahi 

"He pointed out that many men get a sense of pleasure from fixing things because it reinforces their feeling of being in control, self-sufficient, and able to dominate the world of objects. "

"Furthermore, this man pointed out that he, and many other men, take special pleasure in showing their strength over the world of objects for the benefit of attractive women, because the thanks and admiration they receive is an added source of pleasure and satisfaction."

" Women were highly visible as speakers at the conferences studied; they presented 40.7 percent of the papers at the conferences studied and made up 42 percent of the audiences. But when it came to volunteering and being called on to ask questions, women contributed only 27.4 percent. Furthermore, the women's questions, on the average, took less than half as much time as the men's. (The mean was 23.1 seconds for women, 52.7 for men.) This happened, Swacker shows, because men (but not women) tended to preface their questions with statements, ask more than one question, and follow up the speaker's answer with another question or comment"

" More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking. Another way of capturing these differences is by using the terms report-talk and rapport-talk. For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. Emphasis is placed on displaying similarities and matching experiences. From childhood, girls criticize peers who try to stand out or appear better than others. People feel their closest connections at home, or in settings where they feel at home--with one or a few people they feel close to and comfortable with--in other words, during private speaking. But even the most public situations can be approached like private speaking. For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order. This is done by exhibiting knowledge and skill, and by holding center stage through verbal performance such as storytelling, joking, or imparting information. From childhood, men learn to use talking as a way to get and keep attention. So they are more comfortable speaking in larger groups made up of people they know less well--in the broadest sense,   "public speaking." "

Am I destined to come here and see you writing something about linguistics....Wow.I am doing master degree these years in English arts/branch of linguistics.

"Small talk is crucial to maintain a sense of camaraderie when there is nothing special to say. Women friends and relatives keep the conversational mechanisms in working order by talking about small things as well as large.   Knowing they will have such conversations later makes women feel they are not alone in life. If they do not have someone to tell their thoughts and impressions to, they do feel alone. "

"GOSSIP AS SOCIAL CONTROL  The reinforcement of values by talking about other people also works in another way. We measure our behavior against the potential for gossip, hearing in our minds how others are likely to talk about us. In trying to decide what to do, we automatically project contemplated actions onto the backdrop of this imagined dialogue, and our decisions about how to act are influenced by what we think others would say about them. Having decided, we hide, adjust or display our behavior to prevent criticism and ensure being praised. "

 Girls and women feel it is crucial that they be liked by their peers, a form of involvement that focuses on symmetrical connections. Boys and men feel it is crucial that they 85 be respected by their peers, a form of involvement that focuses on asymmetrical status. "

He demonstrates that male behavior typically entails contest, which includes combat, struggle, conflict, competition, and contention. Pervasive in male behavior is ritual combat, typified by rough play and sports.   Females, on the other hand, are more likely to use intermediaries or to fight for real rather than ritualized purposes. Friendship among men often has a large element of friendly aggression, which women are likely to   mistake for the real thing. "

"

"Even when she was sure she was sowing agreement, she reaped a harvest of disagreement. To John, raising a different point of view is a more interesting contribution to make than agreeing. But Marge finds his disagreeing disagreeable, because it introduces a note of contentiousness into the conversation.   For Marge, disagreement carries a metamessage of threat to intimacy.   John does not see disagreement as a threat. Quite the opposite, he regards being able to express disagreement as a sign of intimacy. One man explained to me that he feels it is his duty, when someone expresses a view, to point out the other side; if someone complains of another's behavior, he feels he should explain what that person's motives might be. When someone takes a position, he feels he ought to help explore it by trying to poke holes in it, and playing devil's advocate for the opposing view. In all this, he feels he is being supportive, and in a way he is, but it is support modeled on an adversative stance--a stance that is more expected and appreciated by men than by women.   "

"WOLF WORDS IN SHEEP'S. CLOTHING  If boys and men often use opposition to establish connections, girls and women can use apparent cooperation and affiliation to be competitive and critical. "

"Johnstone found that the women's stories tend to be about community, while the men's tend to be about contest. The men tell about human contests--physical contests such as fights as well as social contests in which they use verbal and/or intellectual skill to defend their honor. They tell about contests with nature--hunting and fishing. Stories about contests with people or animals can take the form of tall tales, which are themselvesa kind of contest between a teller and his audience. When a male storyteller is not the protagonist in his story, the protagonist is a man; men rarely tell stories involving women.   The women's stories, on the other hand, revolve around the norms of the community, and joint action by groups of people. The women tell about  incidents in which they violate social norms and are scared or embarrassed as a result; about people helping other people out of scrapes; about sightings of apparent ghosts which are then explained by others; about meeting their mates and acquiring their cats. The women tell about peculiar people, dramatizing their abnormal behavior and setting it implicitly in contrast with social norms. They tell stories about themselves, about other women, and about men.   In Johnstone's study, not only did men more often tell about experiences in which they had acted alone, but when men and women told about acting alone, the outcomes tended to be different. The vast majority of men who reported acting alone also reported a happy outcome. The majority of women who reported acting alone portrayed themselves as suffering as a result. Only a very small number of stories told by men (four out of twenty-one) had the protagonist receiving help or advice from someone.   In a much larger proportion of the women's stories (eleven of twenty-six), the protagonist received help or advice from others.   Johnstone concludes that men live in a world where they see power as coming from an individual acting in opposition to others and to natural forces. For them, life is a contest in which they are constantly tested and must perform, in order to avoid the risk of failure. For women, Johnstone claims, the community is the source of power. If men see life in terms of contest, a struggle against nature and other men, for women life is a struggle against the danger of being cut off from their community.   "

"In other words, what emerges as male confidence can be as much the result of past pain as what appears as female insecurity. Women and men are inclined to understand each other in terms of their own styles because we assume we all live in the same world. Another young man in Fox's writing class noticed that his female peers refused to speak with authority. He imagined the reason to be that they feared being wrong.   For him, the point was knowledge, a matter of individual ability. It did not occur to him that what they feared was not being wrong, but being offensive. For them, the point was connection: their relation to the group. "

"t. But another reason for the greater approachability of women is their avoidance of conflict, which means they are less likely to respond harshly if displeased. "

"When his family ate a chicken for dinner, someone had to eat the back, and in his family it was always his wife, who assured the others, "I like chicken backs."   But, as this man commented to me, nobody really likes chicken backs. She had convinced herself that she liked chicken backs--and broken egg yolks and burned toast--to be accommodating. But years of accommodating built up to mounting frustration that they both believed had contributed to their eventual divorce. "

. The interrupter is seen as a malevo!ent aggressor, the interrupted an innocent victim. These assumptions are founded on the premise that interruption is an intrusion, a trampling on someone else's right to the floor, an attempt to dominate. "

" And being accused of interrupting when you know you didn't intend to is as frustrating as being cut off before you've made your point."

"Both would be right, because interruption is not a mechanical category. It is a matter of individual perceptions of rights and obligations, as they grow out of individual habits and expectations.  "

" The inadvertent interruptions--and the impression of domination--came about because the friends had different conversational styles. I call these styles "high considerateness" and "high involvement," because the former gave priority to being considerate of others by not imposing, and the latter gave priority to 161 showing enthusiastic involvement. Some apparent interruptions occurred because high-considerateness speakers expected longer pauses between speaking turns. While they were waiting for the proper pause, the high-involvement speakers got the impression they had nothing to say and filled in to avoid an uncomfortable silence. Other unintended interruptions resulted when high-involvement speakers chimed in to show support and participation: High-considerateness speakers misinterpreted the choral support as attempts to yank the floor away from them, and they stopped, to avoid what to them would have been a cacophony of two voices at once. Ironically, these interruptions were not only the interpretations of the apparent victims--they were their creations. When high-involvement speakers used exactly the same techniques with each other, the effect was positive rather than negative: Chiming in with speakers didn't stop anybody from talking. It greased the conversational wheels and enlivened spirits."

"Interruption, then, has little to do with beginning to make verbal sounds while someone else is speaking, though it does have to do with issues of dominance, control, and showing interest and caring. Women and men feel interrupted by each other because of the differences in what they are trying to accomplish with talk. Men who approach conversation as a contest are likely to expend effort not to support the other's talk but to lead the conversation in another direction, perhaps one in which they can take center stage by telling a story or joke or displaying knowledge. But in doing so, they expect their conversational partners to mount resistance. Women who yield to these efforts do so not because they are weak or insecure or deferential but because they have little experience in deflecting attempts to grab the conversational wheel. They see steering the conversation in a different direction not as a move in a game, but as a violation of the rules of the game. Being blamed for interrupting when you know you didn't mean to is as frustrating as feeling interrupted. Nothing is more disappointing in a close relationship than being accused of bad intentions when you know your intentions were good, especially by someone you love who should understand you, if anyone does. Women's effusion of support can be irritating to men who would rather meet with verbal sparring. And a left jab meant in the spirit of sparring can become a knockout if your opponent's fists are not raised to fight. "

On 2/10/2018 at 6:18 PM, Mahi said:

Am I destined to come here and see you writing something about linguistics....Wow.I am doing master degree these years in English arts/branch of linguistics.

You were destined to come here to discover that I use my thread as a copy  & paste notebook..

how are you?  What impact did I have on you?

" At staff meetings, Roberta generally opens discussion of issues by asking all staff members for their opinions. She invites debate about the pros and cons of proposals, but somehow, when the meeting ends, they always end up deciding--by consensus--to do what Roberta thinks best. The women on the staff are happy with Roberta as a director. They feel she listens to their points of view, and they like the rule by consensus rather than flat. But Morton feels Roberta is manipulative. If they are going to do what she wants anyway, why does she make them waste their breath expressing opinions? He would prefer she just lay down the law, since she is the boss.   Morton's impression that Roberta does not act like a boss is the result of style differences. She is acting like a boss--a woman boss. She prefers to rule by consensus, and the women on her staff like it that way. But he is frustrated by her indirectness; he thinks she should rule by flat. "

" Since Matina Horner's pioneering research, many psychologists have observed that women seem to fear success. "

"Appearing better than others is a violation of the girls' egalitarian ethic: People are supposed to stress their connections and similarity.   In light of these and many other studies of girls' real conversations, it is no wonder that girls fear rejection by their peers if  they appear too successful and boys don't. Boys, from the earliest age, learn that they can get what they want--higher status--by displaying superiority. Girls learn that displaying superiority will not get them what they want--affiliation with their peers. For this, they have to appear the same as, not better than, their friends.   The appearance of similarity does not mean actual sameness. PenelopeEckert, who spent several years with high school students in a midwestern city, explains how complex the girls' system of masked status can be. For example, the popular girls are the ones who must determine when to switch from the clothes of one season to the clothes of the next--for example, from winter to spring clothing. If less popular girls show up wearing cotton clothes while the popular girls are still wearing wool, they have committed a gaffe, shown themselves to be outsiders. If they switch after the popular girls have appeared in cotton, they mark themselves as fol owers, limited to public information. The goal is to dress in unison: If they make the switch on the same day as the popular girls, they are gloriously the same--and have subtly proven that they are in the know. "

Another aspect of the pressure on girls not to appear better than their peers is the injunction not to boast. Gender differences in attitudes toward boasting are the cause of much mutual judgment and misjudgment between women and men"

"Margaret assumes that a good person is modest and self-effacing. Charles considers displaying accomplishments to be a requirement, not a liability, and he regards Margaret's (to him, false) modesty as foolishly self-denigrating, evidence of insecurity. Each one thinks he or she is simply expecting the other to be a good person, but their definitions of a good person vary because of the differing expectations for a good girl and a good boy. The reluctance of girls and women to boast in certain situations "

"The explanation for a woman's indirectness could just as well be her seeking connection.   If you get your way as a result of having demanded it, the payoff is satisfying in terms of status: You're one-up because others are doing as you told them. But if you get your way because others happened to want the same thing, or because they offered freely, the payoff is in rapport. You're neither one-up nor one-down but happily connected to others whose wants are the same as yours. Furthermore, if indirectness is understood by both parties, then there is nothing covert about it: That a request is being made is clear. Calling an indirect communication covert reflects the view of someone for whom the direct style seems "natural" and logical"--a view more common among men. Indirectness itself does not reflect powerlessness. It is easy to think of situations where indirectness is the prerogative of those in power. For example, a wealthy couple who know that their servants will do their bidding need not give direct orders, but can simply state wishes: The woman of the house says, "It's chilly in here," and the servant sets about raising the temperature. The man of the house says, "It's dinner time," and the servant sees about having dinner served. Perhaps the ultimate indirectness is getting someone to do something without saying anything at all"

"Women frequently say "I'm sorry" to express sympathy and concern, not apology. This confusion is rooted in the double meaning of the word sorry."

"

Instead, he generously said, "I accept your apology," and affably changed the subject to office politics. Now accepting an apology is arguably quite rude. From the point of view of connection, an apology should be matched. And from the perspective of status, an apology should be deflected. In this view, a person who apologizes takes a one-down position, and accepting the apology preserves that asymmetry, whereas deflecting the apology restores balance."

"Women's and men's differential awareness of status may have been the cause of Beverly's problem in a more fundamental way too. "