30.10.11
I've got it figured out. The 'occupy wall street' movement will form a political party. They'll call themselves 'occupy the white house,' and will start receiving campaign donations for the two thousand and twelve elections. Having established themselves as a bonafied party, in particular a for-profit business, they'll receive a grade from all the rating agencies. The S&P and Bank of America rating agencies will start the company at the lowest grade ever seen: 'for the love of God, don't give these people your money,' which is just a step below 'you'd do better burning your cash in a barrel for heating this winter.' But then Warren Buffet will suggest that these people are on to something in regards to the banks having too much power, and throw their campaign a few hundred million dollars. That will raise a few eyebrows, and people will start donating their money to the young party (after all, when politics is concerned, donating and investing are the same thing), and the rating agencies will rethink their initial assessment. Finally, the Goldman and Sachs rating agency will give them a grade of mega quadrupal super A+, more people will invest, the party will turn into an investment bank, and the bank's political problems that the party might have caused will be solved. The founders of the 'occupy wall street' movement, having become multibillionaires, will suddenly understand that there are no two ways about it: money makes the world go round. And Ayn Rand will be able to rest in peace.
As it is, she's rolling in her grave. I've only read one of her novels, "Atlas Shrugged," but it has proved to be very thought provoking. I also found it rather well-written, though I wouldn't recommend reading the unabridged edition unless you're rich in free time, as I was last summer. Some of the demonstrators in Germany have recently hit the streets with the message that 'the only crisis is capitalism,' and others have called for something like a 'Robin Hood' tax on the richest banks. I couldn't help but laugh at reading the latter, since Rand took a few pages to explain how Robin Hood was really an evil socialist, which itself was kind of entertaining.
The heroes in her book are very hard-working people, genius inventors, and would be successful businessmen in a capitalist environment. But the socialists gain too much power, let modern society crumble with their demonic policy, and force the heroes to start anew in their own capitalistic haven that they founded just for themselves.
I think Ayn Rand would be mistaken to say that a person's value to a capitalistic society is measured by the amount of money the person has. I hardly believe that all rich people are valuable, and, conversely, I'm inclinced to believe that there are some valuable people who are not rich. The difficulty is, who decides what's valuable? In Peterland, teachers would be richer, but in the real world, many of them get by with next to nothing.
Getting back to the 'occupy wall street' movement, the question arises, are bankers valuable to society? If not, then why do some of them have so much money? I was thinking about how banks make money the other day. It's actually really easy. People give them their money to keep safe, and with all that capital, banks give out loans and collect interest. There's nothing to it! There's no work involved! Does one even have to graduate from high-school to become a wall street banker? I mean, if you give out the wrong loan, and you're about to crash, the government will help you out, as long as you're among those that are too big to fail.
Anyway, it's this type of rich people that Ayn Rand doesn't address. They're not geniuses, and they seemingly don't have to work very hard. They don't invent new materials, they don't make sure that trains get to where they need to be on time, they don't manage anything, except other people's money. So what is a banker's value to society?
A banker, or a rich investor, might say that they are the people who put money where it needs to be in order to keep the economy strong and help society progress. Unfortunately, a strong economy and societal progress might be at odds with one another, depending on what progress entails. Again, that depends on who you ask. In any case, it shouldn't be up to the bankers, or anyone who stands to gain from making that decision. For the bankers, progress is when their bank account grows larger.

This weekend I went walking along the banks of the Moscow River, a rather unfortunate name for a river through a capital city. You'd expect something a little more Russian sounding, like Kl'yazma, or even Volga, but as far as I know this river has no other title. I started my walk at the metro station 'Leningrad Avenue,' where I quickly went shopping at a huge mall. Upon leaving the complex, I had little idea of where to turn, so set off in a random direction to see if I could find a map of the district, which they often post at busstops, among other places. I quickly found the Avenue. You don't exit onto it directly from the metro. Rather, you go straight onto Gagarin square from which very little is visible. At one corner there are giant smokestacks spewing clouds of carbon biproducts into the sky. At another corner is the mall where I can get roasted almonds at a good price. Another corner is dominated by a building with a huge sign across its top, I forget which one, since there are lots of such gigantic signs thoughout the city; this one might be Росгосстрах, an insurance company, I think. Another corner has a monument to what could be the bicentenial man, but more likely is of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. The monument is really tall. It has a large silver-colored statue of a man, itself maybe two stories high, on top of a column which is many times larger than the statue. In effect, it looks like the man is taking off into space, as though he has jet-packs in his feet.
The statue doesn't face the square named after him, however, and I figured, after having completed my shopping, that maybe he was looking towards downtown Moscow. I was one the right track with the thought that he was looking at something important, though it wasn't the center of town. I crossed the avenue through an underground tunnel, embarked down another street along which Yuri was looking, and immediately noticed in the distance, about two kilometers away, a building I had seen about a year before, Moscow State Univeristy of Lomonosov. It wasn't downtown Moscow; if anything it was a little further away from downtown, but it was a landmark I had seen before, so I set off for it for the sake of making the connection between two known points. Along the way, I crossed not a place I knew, but the name of a familiar place, called 'Sparrow Hills.' I knew there was a metro stop with that name, and that that stop was one closer to central Moscow than the University, so I left the avanue and entered the park 'Sparrow Hills' to see what else I would find.
The metro stop is located on a bridge across the Moscow River, and exits right into the park itself. But you don't have to enter the metro to cross the bridge, there are crossings on either side outside of the metro station, and that's what I used to get to the other side of the river. I kicked myself for not bringing my camera, for even though the sky was overcast, the trees in the park made for a nice Autumn photograph, with the top of the university in the background. As I came to the end of the bridge, I noticed another thing which I love to see in any city, big or small. Along the bank of the river there was a wide sidewalk with a green and yellow painted bike-lane. That's the only one I've ever seen in Russia, let alone Moscow. The bike lane ended not far from one side of the bridge, so I took off in the other direction, although part of me wanted to make another connection with a huge cathedral, that of Jesus the Savior, that I had walked past the week before. In the opposite direction I walked along the river, which winds around an olympic sports complex where I suppose atheletes competed in the 1950's or 60's (a sign said the complex was fifty five years old; who knows how old the sign is?). The park extends on the other side of the river. In its middle there is a tall structure, which I soon realized was a ski jump, like the one they use in the olympic games. The park isn't so broad as it is long, and I thought some strong jumpers might fly right into the river if they don't restrain themselves. But in the winter maybe this isn't a problem, since the river probably freezes. The bike lane came to an end with the park on the other bank as I exited the olympic sports complex, and came back into civilization with broad avenues, too many cars and not enough trains. I walked a few more kilometers, not knowing where I was going, but expecting to come across a metro station soon enough, expecially since I could see a castle in front of me, which meant I wasn't far from downtown.
Eventually I approached a glass pedestrian bridge across the river, took the deserted stairway to its top, and crossed. I could see I was approaching a train station, but which one exactly I couldn't tell until I had crossed completely. It was the Kiev station. There were hoards of people, people travelling somewhere, others shopping at the giant mall next to the station. There were venders on the square in between the station and the river. I used the bathroom at the mall, one of 'european' standards, as I heard another man comment, and I can only agree. I've had to pay for a urine-soaked hole in the ground at one of Moscow's train stations. The bathroom at the mall was free and civilized.
Having an idea of where I was in the city, I set off to make a new connection, crossed the bridge again, and went down some quieter streets before approaching what looked like another large avenue. I came out from the side street, noticed a huge castle to my left, and guessed, correctly, that the old Arbat street was not far away. I didn't check my guess, but took another street in the direction I wanted to go, reached, as I had expected to, the station Kropotinskaya, which is located right across from the cathedral of Jesus the Savior, continued on in a new direction from that station, and after passing a few museums with lines of people waiting for the evening exhibition, found myself approaching the Kremlin. I didn't go through Alexander garden, or cross the Red Square, but turned a corner and entered the Metro at Borrovitski station, rode back to Timir'azovskaya, and caught the train back to Dolgoprudny just as it was stopping on the platform.

23.10.11
I'm reading a good book called "One-storied America" by a pair of soviet journalists Ilf and Petrov. Those two might be better known for a novel called "The 12 chairs," after which a number of movies were made, among others one in Hollywood, I think directed by Mel Brooks. The latter is a comedy about the search for a certain chair that's supposed to have a fortune's worth of diamonds hidden inside the cushions. The book I'm reading now isn't so much a comedy as a sort of historical novel. I never have been too interested in history. I've joked with my students, whenever the topic of discussion allows for a digression into education, that history is completely worthless, we'd do well to spend the time studying math instead.
Nevertheless I find this book very interesting. It's about the authors' excursion in America around the year 1936, during the great depression and before the start of the second world war. It's very interesting to see America at a different time and from a foreigner's point of view. A foreign eye sees things that a native doesn't ever notice. It's also interesting to get to know the people they met on their journey. They wrote about a lot of communist sympathizers, including Henry Ford, who they met on their way through Detroit. They mentioned a baptist who hitched a ride with them from Utah further west, who preached the same cheerful song I've heard many a time in my own life, and not just from baptists, that all of us who don't convert are going to burn for eternity. This was ammusing for the communist authors, whose country had officially prohibited collective practice of any religion - perhaps to no avail, for though they had no God, they had Lenin and Stalin. They also spent some time on a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico. They said the Navajo despised anything associated with the white man, but that there was one white man who had gone to live on the reservation to convert the savages to christianity, and ended up becoming an Indian himself. This was a very interesting character: respectful of the earth, satisfied with the life of a livestock farmer; not surprisingly also a communist.
A few times while reading I've wanted to look up a few things in a Russian history textbook that I left behind in Vladimir. The 'five year plan' which had just come to an end in Russia was described by a layman in the book as a plan by which everyone in Russia worked, and in return received food and shelter from the government. I understand that the Russians were then working out a new five year plan that would be much like the first, which allegedly worked out rather well. But where does all the terror that people in the west heard about fit into play? Were things really going well at that time, or were millions of Russians starving and being thrown into the gulags? What would Ilf and Petrov have to say about this?
There was another hitchhiker, incidentally unemployed, who said that the richest Americans should be allowed to have no more than five million dollars. That's an interesting idea, one you don't hear much today. Today raising taxes the slightest amount on the richest two percent of Americans is as antipatriotic as some of the more radical ideas back then. But opposing either idea, raising taxes, or capping the wealth at so many millions of dollars begs the question: how many yachts do you need? I can't get past this question. Ayn Rand, though she helped me sympathize with some insanely rich people, couldn't convert me completely. Actually, I might have made a good communist.

16.10.11
I saw a movie today, called "Contagion." Here they called it "Zarajzenie," which has the same root as "Zaraza," which fans at football mathces sometimes yell whenever their team screws up. I enjoyed the movie. I hadn't seen anything from Hollywood since my arrival, so, as strange as it might sound coming from a guy who's not too enthusiastic about main-stream western culture, it was a bit refreshing. Watching an epidemic spread reminds me of degrees of acquaintance. I don't think that's what they're really called; I mean that person A is acquainted to person B to the Nth degree when person A knows someone who knows someone who knows someone ... (N-3 more times) who knows person B. With a viral epidemic, these degrees might have practical significance, whereby acquaintance isn't made by so much as a handshake, but merely through proximity to a person, or by touching common objects, such as a martini glass, within a short timeframe.
I watched the movie in Moscow, since I understand that Dolgoprudny doesn't have a movie theater. I think that's because the internet is fairly well established here, and my impression is that people can download whatever movie they want from file-sharing websites without any repercussions from the law. I don't think Russian law has reached copyright issues yet. I've gone so far as to buy allegedly pirated copies of movies on the street, but I haven't gotten to downloading the latest blockbuster yet. I say that the internet is strong here, but I still haven't hooked my laptop up. I'm waiting to meet my landlord. He or she should be by before the end of the month. In the meantime, I'll make do with whatever I can find. There's a computer at work that I've been able to use. If I get internet at home though, maybe I'll see what downloads are available.
I was in Moscow yesterday too. I enjoy walking there. I like connecting unknown regions to ones I know already. I've taken unexplored routes from metro stations, trying to find my way to the next station on foot. Last weekend the weather was wonderful. I found my way from the station where the central school is located, Mendeleevskaya, to Trubnaya, which looked oddly familiar as I walked up. If I'm not mistaken, I had been at that square a year or two prior, when I was walking around looking for the Dostoevski museum. I went into a mall I had visited once in a previous life, suspecting that there was an M-video store there, which there was and which I entered in order to see if they had any interesting audiobooks. Their selection was horrible, as it often is, but they did have one disk with poems by Nekrasov for a little over two dollars. I'm not much for Russian poetry on audio - the readers tend to get very emotional - but the price was right, and my tastes may change.
On the same day last weekend, after taking the metro from Trubnaya to somewhere else, I remember walking by a big government building in the center of Moscow. I had walked past what I think is the former KGB headquarters, further down the street towards one of Stalin's castles that I'd spotted in the distance, past a big museum that I'd like to visit someday, and suddenly there wasn't anyone else walking around, which made me think that I wasn't supposed to be where I was. I forget which building I was walking by, but I think a sign might have said it was an office building for the administration of the President. There were police cars parked in a small lot across from the broad sidewalk I was walking along. Nevertheless, I walked by unhindered and quickly came back to civilization, to a place I'd frequented many times before. I had reached the China Town metro station. One of the streets in a triangular intersection I recognized as Solyanka, which leads to the hostel I chose whenever I needed to stay the night in Moscow. I crossed the intersection and turned down the street opposite Solyanka to see where it lead. Not five minutes later I found myself approaching Vasilivski Cathedral on the Red Square. To my left, on the other side of a lone restaurant, a whole block had been cleared. They must be planning some construction there. Ahead of me on my right, I could see the clock tower of the Kremlin, and the huge golden domes of the cathedral - the mark of any Russian orthodox church. I've never been on the inside of the cathedral. Judging from the look on the outside, one might expect to find upon entering a wonderland filled with candy and deserts. One of my former colleagues from the American Home joked that Vasilivski Cathedral was the Russian headquarters of Willy Wonka. I'm so stupid I actually believed Willy Wonka could in some way be affiliated with this cathedral on the Red Square. It's colored just that way. I took another unknown street and found my way back to the former KGB headquarters, and took the metro back ot the train station from where I headed back to Dolgoprudny.
Yesterday the weather was horrible, but not bad enough that I'd cancel my weekend walk. Had it been raining, I might have stayed inside. Fortunately, the rain was minimal, and whatever fell was frozen anyway, so I didn't get really wet. What had been the warmest weather the weekend before had become the coldest since my arrival. Over the week the temperature had fallen twenty degrees celcius, or thirty six degrees fahrenheit. It had been over seventy degrees on the Saturday before. Yesterday temperatures were in the upper thirties. My lungs could feel the cold. For a moment I was concerned that I would catch a fierce cold, but then I figured I would have to expose myself to the cold at some point, there's no point in delaying the inevitable. I found it strange that temperatures in the thirties felt so cold in the Autumn and yet rather warm in the Spring. It must be acclimation: in the Fall everyone is used to warmer temperatures than in the Spring. So I rationalized my concern away. If you feel your lungs burning from colder and colder temperatures, don't fret. If you survive the viral onslaught, you'll be all the stronger for the rest of the cold season.
I didn't time the cinema right yesterday, so I walked for a hour before returning home to cook some Turkish chickpeas. I went by the American Embassy on Novinski prospect, turned towards another one of Stalin's castles to confirm the location of a metro stop, walked back to Novinski prospect and turned in a new direction. I passed the Moscow zoo and planetarium, and shortly thereafter come up to a concert hall. There are probably very many concert halls in Moscow, this one was in the name of Tschaikovski. The statue on the sqaure adjacent was probably of the great composer; I didn't check, but turned another unknown corner. It wasn't long before I noticed a cinema across the street, and after studying the approaching intersection, I realized that I was coming back to a place I'd been to many times before. I was approaching Tverskoi Boulevard, a street which I've walked along rather frequently since my arrival last month. I crossed the street (using the very convenient underground tunnel), went into the theater to see what was playing, observed that this one was also showing Zarazjenie, which I'd noticed first at another theater on Novy Arbat, and made plans to come back the following day, which was today. I wasn't too impressed with the auditorium. The view is at least as good at another theater where the movies are less mainstream and consequently much less expensive. The chairs are more comfortable though.

17.10.11
It's quarter to two on Monday. I'm going to have lunch and go to work soon. I'll give lessons from three thirty until ten, come home, whip up a dinner, and go to sleep around twelve thirty. This week should be much easier than the previous ones. Another teacher has returned from vacation, and he gets many of the classes that I was covering for him. I don't envy his schedule. I hope he doesn't get sick immediately and stay home for a few days, but some of those kids are enough to drive anyone insane. I had some fun with some of them last Friday. What a way to end the week, with a group of nine-year olds some of whom haven't mastered the alphabet yet, let alone seen the verb 'to be.' I tried teaching them words for family members, brother, father, mother, things like that. Then they should have been able to say what their names were, and how old they were, but we didn't get that far. Words like 'his' and 'her' were also new, and all that makes for a lot of material for one lesson. About three of the nine students figured things out, another three couldn't care less about whatever wisdom I had to share with them, and the rest maybe tried a bit, but didn't quite get what I was demonstrating.
Young students get more disruptive, the less they care about the material. If you can make the material interesting, then you might manage to teach them something. If they're not interested, then you're sunk. How do you make students interested when they know absolutely nothing? Hell if I know. Before this gig, I'd never taught students with so little knowledge. This principle of interest isn't as true for adults. I think it's mainly because they pay for their own classes. They know that they're paying a lot of money, and this investment translates into more motivation. Even if they're just beginning, they are more focused and work harder. That being said, interesting lessons are still very helpful. In general, I find it's easier to learn something if it's interesting.

8.10.11
I think science is the best religion not only because it grows and corrects itself, but because it doesn't require much blind faith in the first place. In mathematics for example, you only have to acccept a few ideas such as the existence of the number one, the existence of addition which you can iteratively apply to pairs of one to get two, then three, and the rest; you accept that two points determine a line, and that a collection of positive integers has a smallest integer among them. I would like to say that these assumptions make sense, that I can conceive the idea of number and addition by holdind out first my pointer finger, then my middle finger, and behold, one and one make two, but I think that would be the analogue of observing the trees and the birds and concluding that god exists. So I'll be honest and say that I merely believe in the idea of one and its consequences. I can't justify my belief by saying I want to believe, my faith is as blind as any other.
But like I said, a scientist doesn't need to have much faith. There are relatively few things that need to be accepted outright before the ideas grow on their; own.idea begets the other, like generations of a living being. With christianity, where contradictions abound in the absence of logic, faith is an absolute necessity, and the less founded the faith, the better. A christian is often brought to the conclusion that their god works in mysterious ways, and that's the end of the discussion. For a scientist, the mystery is the beginning.

Is economics a science? There's something scientific about the principle of supply and demand, presumably you can observe it working again and again every day, yet economics seems to function with a greater factor of faith than one might expect in a science. Nobody calls it faith though, it's called consumer confidence. I'd like to believe that low confidence is a consequence of a bad economy, but isn't it also a little bit the other way around? If consumers are confident, then they invest money, and the economy grows and becomes stronger. So why don't consumers just decide to be confident, then the economy would be in good shape! I haven't had the pleasure of being enlightened in the mysteries of the economy, but maybe economics is enough of a science that it's susceptible to a little logical thought. It seems to be a viscous cycle: the economy is bad, thus consumers don't see any reason to be confident, thus the economy remains bad, because in order to get good, it requires some support from the consumers. How do you break the cycle? You need help from above, from the government. Thus economics becomes a political issue....
Republicans and Democrats hate each other (maybe we can make this an axiom), in particular republicans don't like Obama. In order for them to get rid of him, it's in their best interest to keep the economy in its current poor condition, because that's the only thing they have against him in the coming election. Isn't that sad when a political party fights against the good of the people? But it's a consequence of a conjecture, whose truth can be observed from time to time: As long as power is there to be had, politicians will be drawn to it at whatever cost. Principles be damned, there's the presidency to win! To be fair, I don't think democrats are any less blinded by the beacon of political power. Maybe a monarchy is better after all.
The thing that democracy has over a monarchy is the simplicity of change. If people don't like the way things are going, they don't have to get weapons and start a bloody revolt, the revolution happens at the voting polls. This principle only works if people have faith in the process, which is not the case in Russia. I've asked some of my students for their thoughts regarding Vladimir Putin's likely return as President of the Russian Federation - his candidacy in next year's election was announced a few weeks ago - the students who cared to comment said they weren't happy about it. It think some of them might have been catering to what they thought was a critical observer from the land of democracy, but I have nothing against Putin being President again, especially if he gets voted into office in a fair election. If the people like him as ruler of the land, then why not? I remember years ago (I think I may have already written this), when Putin was being interviewed by Larry King, and Larrry asked Putin about the possibility of becoming President again and whether that was really democratic, Putin retorted that as long as more citizens in America vote for one candidate while the other somehow wins the election, he didn't see any contradictions with the current principles of democracy.
As far as next year's election in Russia is concerned, judging by the few people I've spoken with about Putin over the past few years, I don't get the impression that he's as popular as the election results would make it seem. I get the impression that relatively few people vote. They don't vote because they think that no other party would do any better, which isn't to say that they feel the United Russia party is doing very well. I don't seldom hear that all politicians are crooks, I've been scolded for believeing otherwise about my own countries politicians. What this country seems to lack, and I cringe to say it, is faith in the political system. Yep. Russians need more faith; the blinder, the better! On the other hand, would Russia be a better place if the citizenry were as politically holy as me? A rival party or two may arise, but its members would buckle to the temptation of whatever increase in power they could win in the next election. The people would be as well represented as they are now.
Getting back to being blinded by power, I wasn't fair to the Republican party a few paragraphs ago. True, a bad economy is to their advantage, but contrary to popular liberal belief, they're not necessarily fighting Obama's policies for the sake of a bad economy, but for the sake of their political principles: they don't like spending money (unless it's for the military, but they don't like talking about that). Higher government spending translates to higher taxes down the road, and that's just not right! The republican party sticks to its rules, all of which are covered either in the bible, or Atlas Shrugged. The democratic party isn't as solid as that.
As long as I'm expressing blasphemy on the political front, I should try to wrap this up with a last cynical observation. While these days some politicians, principled as they may be, might not shy away from secretly supporting bad economic policy, the past centurty is filled with the same kind of politics. The trick is to stear the country into the right disaster, one which provides the political leverage to act decisively and effectively. Consider 9-11. Shortly afterward the Patriot Act was passed, the wars started, and Bush's approval rating soared; the people evidently thought he was handling the situation with presidential expertise. On the other hand, if 9-11 had been avoided, there wouldn't have been enough unity in Congress to allow wars in Afganistan and Iraq; President Bush wouldn't have been left to twidling his thumbs, and he wouldn't have had anything to put on his resume after his first four years. From a political standpoint, a disaster like 9-11 was a great source of results in the political arena. All the politician in power has to do is see it coming, and then let it happen. I don't know history very well, but even I can take a stab at finding other examples of the same phenomenon. Didn't the Vietnam war start with an alleged attack against an American cruiser? Was the war popular at first? And don't forget Pearl Harbor. Rumor has it that the Roosevelt administration knew it was coming. They wanted to get more involved in the war, so why do anything to stop a coming attack?
In contrast, America's current woes are seemingly less military than economical, as the country has been on and off the brink of complete disaster for a few times in the past few years. Liberals will say that while the stimulus hasn't restored the economy entirely, it has saved us from collapse. Without knowing what kind of collapse is meant, nobody can really appreciate whatever effect the stimulus packages may have had. It's like stopping a terrorist attack. If they catch the terrorists before they attack, then there isn't any credit for catching them afterwards. So let them attack; let the economy crumble. If we let it fall from as high as we are, maybe we can use the momentum from the downward tumble to jump back to an allbeit weaker, but more stable economy. Or maybe economic problems aren't as easy to take advantage of as when terrorists strike. Indeed, if people are out of work and hungry, they're quick to blame the party in power. It's strange that this hasn't been the case when we're attacked by an outside force; on the contrary, we're soothed when we see our missles and bombs blowing up buildings in far off lands on T.V.

9.10.11
And then there are rating agencies. I first heard of such agencies only a few years ago, where were they (or where was I) before that? They're the economic analogue of prophets from the bible. They tell members of the church where they should especially focus their faith if they want to be blessed with good returns from the economic gods. Lately the prophets bode dark tidings, damning entire countries like the U.S. and Italy with a holy curse called the downgrade. They can also perform the reverse incantation, and by doing so bring economic blessings to any country worthy of receiving such a charm. I heard recently that one agency was considering upgrading Russia's economy, if only some sector of some industry showed satifactory figures the following quarter. I can just see the agency members informing Russian economists with a wink and a handshake about a potential upgrade. Russians are notoriously corrupt; maybe it's a stereotype, but I know few Russians who would excuse it as such, which, to be fair, says little, since most Russians I know are cynical as can be regarding anything political.
Anyway, who are these prophets and why should we believe them? Funny how it works, if enough people believe them, then their prophecy comes true. Whatever they say is self-fulfilling. If, on the other hand, people ignored them, then they would cease to be. Maybe that's like God, or the number One. If there were no scientists, would One still exist?

I'm doing all right. I don't have Friday's off anymore, and I've had a little more work so far in Dolgoprudny than at the previous school. Next week a teacher is supposed to come back from vacation, and I'll be relieved of some of the groups I have been covering for him. I wonder what I'm going to get instead. In general, classes are better for me, the higher the level and the older the students. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

25.9.11
Happiness is when Sunday evening comes, and you're looking forward to the coming week of work. I am not a happy man. But then, who is? I sure have a lot to be happy about. I live overseas, which I still find extremely fascinating and enriching; I only work four days a week, Monday through Thursday, giving me three day weekends on most weeks (I understand there will be things to do ocassionally on Sundays); the food here is good - what more could one ask? Nevertheless those four days haven't been easy, nor do they promise to get much easier. On work days I've usually been getting up around nine a.m., putzed around for forty minutes, started preparing for work around ten, left my flat around twelve to head to the central school to print out materials and make any necessary copies, arrived there after a forty-minute commute on the metro, left after an hour for the school where I work, which is only one metro stop from my flat, hence another forty minute commute back, arrived at the school, eaten lunch, made any final preparations for my lessons, if there was time, thought about the next days' work, then given lessons for two and a half and five and a half hours on Tuesday and Thursday, Monday and Wednesday respectively. There's a threat of getting another class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, which will keep me at work until about ten p.m. Monday through Thursday. So the schedule is difficult to get used to. I don't really like eating dinner at eleven p.m., but there are good things about it too. I can sleep in on most days. It's give and take.
Needless to say, I've been an inefficient worker. I think I spend too much time planning. I've limited myself to mostly planning lessons on the same day; I try not to think about the next days' lesson until the next day comes, because I find that any one lesson might consume me completely and leave me with nothing left for the other classes I have to teach. There's always something that could be better, better explained, better presented, more interesting, instructive, organized, pertinent. Teaching English, maybe teaching in general, is a perfectionist's nightmare, because no matter what you do, your results are always far from perfect.

There were lots of interesting things in the news this week. I heard that a company in Germany tested a computer-driven car in downtown Berlin. There was a guy in the driver's seat who could've taken control of the car at any moment if the need arose, but it never did. The computer was able to deal with all the other cars around it, as well as stop signs and traffic lights. A spokesman suggested that within fifteen years or so, there would be computer-driven cars all over the place. I really like the idea. The word 'automobile' will take on new meaning. Imagine a highway filled with these new automobiles. Every passenger will have entered a destination at the beginning of their trip, the cars will wirelessly communicate with one another in order to negotiate onramps, exits and lane-changes. There wouldn't be nearly as much traffic. Private transportation will become much more efficient, without there being loss to any privacy or freedom. People can still drive in their cars whereever they want to. They won't, as I may have previously advocated, be forced to ride public trains or busses and then walk their fat asses a short distance to their final destination. I imagine that some people will be against the idea of letting a computer drive their car. And these people sort of burst my bubble about automated transportation, because it only takes a few bozos to turn off their computer to create a lot of problems on the road. Look, if everyone rode on autopilot, then the cars could see each other and communicate their intentions from far away, as though each car were a telepathic metal creature, travelling from point A to point B. Turning off the computer amounts to turning off the telepathy, and suddenly the creature becomes a retarded renegade that everyone else has to reckon with. What's the point of that? And yet, people will insist on driving their own car.
In other news, a group of physicists reportedly clocked some neutrinoes at a speed slightly faster than the speed of light. This is a big no-no according to the laws of physics. (Somebody call the particle police, we've got some speeders on the lose; but how are you going to catch them when they've got the fastest ride in the universe! Einstein come back!) Evidently, the leader of the group was inclined to believe that something was going wrong, but he couldn't figure out exactly what, so he just decided to publish the group's results, and let the scientific community rip them to shreds. That is, he wanted some help finding out what was going wrong. You have to appreciate this feature of science: It corrects itself. Either the community will find out what the group was doing wrong, have a few laughs, disregard the results, and carry on with life, or the results will be repeated by another scientist, and they will figure out how to proceed without Einstein, who will be replaced with someone more modern, just as he replaced Newton on his turn.
This self-correcting feature doesn't work so well with religious theories. I find that where scientific theories strive to grow, religions strive to remain constant. Try as they might to avoid it, they do change over time, but their stubborness goes a long way. Creationism, for example, has slowly given way to an idea more fit for survival in today's climate of thought, called intelligent design, and yet I bet there are still some presidential candidates out there who aren't ready to accept such a radical idea that God isn't watching us as much as sHe used to be. It makes me wonder how many centuries it took for Christians to accept that the earth revolves around the sun. But far be it from me to put science on a pedastal above religion; above Christianity, Islam, and maybe some other ideas, sure, but not above religion as a whole. In the end, science itself is a religion. Its God is Logic; it's Commandments are known as the Scientific Method; it's language is mathematics, something so divine it hardly requires translation between any of our menial spoken languages; it has its disciples and prophets, whose connection to God is remarkably strong. But what sets it apart from many other religions is its continual development. Science doesn't change and grow reluctantly, it grows, because that's what it is supposed to do. Science maybe be but a form of religion, but it's the best one out there.

1.10.11
Hello from Dolgoprudny. I've left Moscow and relocated to the suburb I was supposed to go originally. It all happened pretty quickly. Last Monday the director at the school I was working told me she had been informed that I was to start at Dolgoprudny the following week. Funny I hadn't been informed, I told her. She wasn't happy that I was leaving. She said from the beginning that I should tell the administration to keep me at the school. I was glad to hear that she was happy with me, but couldn't answer her request with sincere gusto, since I wasn't sure I wanted to stay.
The following day I went into the central school to ask them about my relocating. I did in fact indicate that I would have been happy with staying where I was (although I could have been a little more enthusiastic), but I was told that teachers' placements at various schools had already long since been decided, that I was going to move to a very nice flat, everything was going to be fantastic, and that they would be in touch with me regarding the timing details. I left the office not completely disappointed, though not beaming with glee either: In my first three weeks back in a teachers' boots I'd grown accustomed to my work and living place, now I was about to role the dice again to see if I get dealt a better hand. The more I thought about it, the more I felt satisfied with my current situation and the more apprehensive I became about the coming move.
At work that afternoon I got an email about moving to my new apartment - did I prefer moving the next day, or the day after, when I was scheduled to give my first lessons? I answered that with current lessons scheduled for tomorrow, there's no way I could move the next day. I asked if I could move on the weekend and commute for a few days from my current apartment. I got mixed answers.
I went back to the central school again the following day to sign my class assignment forms and get my textbooks and accompanying audio CDs. This was where the dice were roled. I walked into the office not knowing if I was going to be assigned nothing but groups of snot nosed ten year olds whose proficiency in the English amounts to having seen the latin alphabet a few times before. I did get assigned one class of the sort, except instead of ten year olds, the students are between four and six years old.
Fortunately there are only five of them, and only three of them showed up on the first day. That was hard enough. Challenges abound when the students know nothing and don't really see the importance of learning. We spent the first lesson trying to learn the words for members of a family: mother, father, daughter, son. We didn't get to sister and brother. We attacked phrases like 'I'm Peter,' but 'What is your name?' proved to be a little too much for them. I figure they might think of that phrase as one really long word which is hard to say. If I'm not sharing that class with one of the other teachers, then next time we'll start the alphabet and writing some of those simple phrases. I have a big classroom, and the kids have lots of energy, so I'll have to get them running from one corner to another, maybe chasing letters and numbers (I'll have to tape these up before class).
Fortunately, that's my only permanent class of really young people. I am covering a few classes of the same sort of group I had been struggling with at my temporary assignment, the group of little monsters (who suddenly, after my lesson with the five year olds, aren't so little anymore), but this group pleased me better. I think their level of English is not as varied as in the group I left behind, which makes it easier to keep students focused together.
I had those two class on my first day, and finished that day with a group of adults with a much higher level, which made things more interesting for me. The next day I had two very small groups of teenagers at beginning and intermediate levels respectively, and then a group of five adults at the beginning level. We worked on statements like: I am Russian; I am not from the moon; He is this; He isn't that; We are this; we aren't that; Are we/you/they from the moon? It can be pretty difficult if you haven't studied much English.
And now it's the weekend, and here I am. I just had a pot of Pete's spicy pea soup. I put some tomatoes and bell peppers in it this time because they still haven't got too expensive and I might as well eat them while they last. Food here is cheap. Regarding budget, an apple addict such as myself is surprisingly better off in Russia than in an agricultural wonderland like California.