Gossips

Couple of months ago I shared some thoughts about media with you. Now I’ll continue the topic that I started then.

I would like to tell you one thing. People are terrible talebearers. Everyone is always curious to know at least something: how is classmate, where the girl you work with slept tonight, or what Milla Jovovich did at the party in Moscow. Take me for example: I always snoop for the reason and without it. Sometimes I hear people are irritated of it, that is completely right, but I still keep snooping.

Gossips that a friend tells you are just gossips. But when you see gossips in newspapers or on a TV-screen, it is news. Roughly, news is nothing but gossips told for everyone to hear it.

Nowadays news is more credible than before. It’s not because more people get more access to newspapers, journals, magazines, TV-shows and internet. The main thing is that in modern news ordinary people are the source of not just gossips, whispered in each other’s ears, but of news in blogs, web-forums that everyone with the access to internet can read.

Now it’s a fact that expressions in internet-forums and blog posts visibly influence the old media. Remember situation with hurricane “Catarina”. Authorities hid the real scale of tragedy, newspaper and TV journalists didn’t tell too much about it either, but it was yelling of Catarina’s victims in blogs that made bureaucracy to accept that it has failed, and Hollywood stars to spend couple of days in floded Baton-Rouge and New Orleans. Even the snobby BBC didn’t disdain to show videos and fotos from the internet after the explosions in London subway.

News didn’t simply become more credible. People started to watch, read and listen truly different news. One thing is when media for mass audience were in charge. They showed something like Margaret Thatcher, shaking hands with Gorbachev, tsunami in Indonesia, polls in Italia — something awfully global and world-wide. And what is now? Indonesia, Italy and documentaries about Thatcher didn’t go anywhere, of course. But thousands of people writing in internet what has happened with them appeared in addition. This can be anything — trip to North Pole, new computer game or new car bought. .

As the matter of fact, these things made our world a little better. Yes, just like that. It’s true at least because the state now has to be a little more honest and opened, and advertisement in media a little more plausible. The news themselves became much more interesting just because the reader can choose himself what to read about: about riots in Paris, new browser or shower in the town of Kalmar.

Funky World

It’s written in many smart and not-so-smart books of last five years that the business world changes very much. Broadband internet, new technologies, gadgets of different kind and 3G mobiles – well, now the consumer can:

a) Compare offers from different firms without moving the butt, and keep sipping beer;

b) Choose the product characteristics suitable for consumer, and include it in the product

To be honest, all this stuff takes my breath away, especially when you learn it for the first time (in the book like “Funky business”). But it seems to be so unreal and so far away, when you read about it sitting on a chair in Harkiv, that you can’t quite believe these things exist in a real world.

Well, as late as a week ago I came across with this kind of concept as large as life. Of course I’ve been comparing prices and characteristics of different stuff in internet for a long time (ticket prices to Oasis show in Stockholm, for instance). That’s why the first point doesn’t surprise me. But I stumbled across one thing recently. It’s called “Last.FM radio station”. Its charm is that it doesn’t have any fixed music stream. Users register there and chooses the music HIMSELF – either entering the music style or the band he/she likes in a string search. Moreover, the station offers the suitable music itself after some time.

You know, these things provoke me to say phrases like “You’ll see what will be in 20 years! There won’t be any TV, cinema, or theatre – just internet, and nothing else”. Of course, stations with living DJs won’t disappear, as well as al these programs with on-demand songs and morning jokes. But what will disappear is the sacred attitude to music. In fact it has already vanished. There won’t be such cult bands like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, the icon bands with fainted fans on their shows - that’s for sure. But there definitely will be something else – that’s beyond all doubt. Probably the brandy products like iPod or Xbox will take their stand: the news about throng in the first day of selling this kind of products doesn’t surprise anymore. You know, the biggest cue I’ve seen in Finland was in the first day of Christmas sales near the entrance of a clothing mall, at 7 am when it was -20!

Well, the world isn’t as it was ten years ago. The world is changing and we are changing with it. What is more interesting, it is changing in an unpredictable and breathtaking way!

Devonian park

Time after time you can hear the phrase like that “Scientists discovered the fossils of an unknown dinosaur, that became extinct 100 million years ago”. Of course, you take it seriously. Maybe you even admire the scientific progress. But I’ll surprise you: that phrase is out of all relation to palaeontologists.

If you are lucky enough to speak to a real fossil specialist – ask him when dinosaurs became extinct, and listen to the answer. You won’t hear any numbers, or words like “… a million years ago”, only something like “between the Cretaceous and Palaeogene periods”. It’s weird, but the last phrase is much more precise than the likely answer in the educational article “75 million years ago”.

Palaeontologists only use relative scale to date fossils. It is based on defining the layer of the Earth’s crust, where the fossils are found. The words “Jurassic”, “Devonian” or “Silurian” are nothing but the names of these layers. The higher the layer is, the younger the fossils are.

Defining the layers is very complicated. These can get mixed up after building of a house last spring or an earthquake two million years ago. Rocks from one layer can differ greatly in different parts of the world. It hardens the definition of the layers of one age. Besides, the animals can break the sequence of layers. But all these difficulties can easily be overcome.

There are several methods to define the absolute age of very old fossils. The most widespread one is based on measuring the speed of radioactive decay of certain types of isotopes. The main difficulty here is to assess the initial content of these isotopes in the fossils analyzed. Besides, the isotopes can vanish with the time. Scientists can also determine the age using the behaviour of certain minerals to keep the light energy and then to give it away under certain conditions.

The accuracy of absolute dating is considerably lower than the relative one. First of all it is connected with huge value that scientists deal with. History of a mankind dates 5 thousand years back; the last ice age was 12 thousand years ago. Palaeontologists deal with absolutely different values. For instance, the first birds appeared 100 million years ago (or, to be more exact, in early Jurassic period). Bias in this is usually no more than 5 million years.

Moreover, the methods themselves are far from being perfect, especially when the age is several million years. When the scientists tried to define the age of the Earth’s crust for the first time, in 1930’s, the different methods gave the value between 40 million and 7 billion years. That is why palaeontologists started to use the absolute age only about 40 years ago. But with the time the absolute dating methods are being improved more and more. Since 1980 the bias of dating the age of main geological layers decreased from 15 to 1 million years.

So, next time graciously smile when you read about the remains of a lizard that are 50 million years old. The phrase “Lizard from the late Palaeocene” would have been much more precise, but it would have definitely been less interesting for the general readers, like us.

Pictures from Sweden

It’s been five months already that I am in sunny Sweden, as you all know, and I’ve got plenty of impressions.

There was one thing that stroke my eye immediately – of course it was a lot of man-like women on the streets. I mean it, I’m not kidding – the percentage is extremely high in Sweden. And, besides, Swedes use the light version of their flag pretty often – two stripes, blue at the top, and yellow at the bottom. It reminds you of something, doesn’t it?

I saw couple of incredibly striking episodes – I wish I had a photo camera there! One of them was like that. A bus is driving a Stockholm street. A plain bus, of a blue colour, with two sections. Nothing special at the first sight. BUT! There’s an odour around it. And the odour is bloody familiar, but a little rare – you don’t smell it often, especially in Scandinavia. It reminds me of something, but what exactly it reminds is covered with a mist… And the bus turns to another street, and I read on the left side of it: “works on the ethanol”! And the smell – you won’t believe me – the smell of wash, a usual potato wash, of which the home-brew vodka is made at the end!

Another impressive episode. Guess, what is the maximum number of policemen I’ve seen in Sweden at a time? No, it’s not one, or two, but five! Where was it? At the building of Migrationsverket –migration ministry of Sweden. What did these 5 policemen do there, you’ll going to ask. It’s simple: there was around 50 guys from Ethiopia, yelling that Swedes had to acknowledge Ethiopia the country where military operations are now. After that the Ethiopians will get the favourable procedure of becoming the resident of Sweden. Well, that was interesting!

One more episode is a bit intimate. One can buy condoms in Sweden only in the drug stores! And those drug stores, I should say, work even worse than Systembolaget (it’s where the buzz is): many of them are closed on Saturdays, and even on weekdays they work from 10 to 8 – that’s all! All in all, you can get drunk without thinking what day is it today – you just go to the nearest pub, but as for the condoms there’s a real mess! You always have to remember the schedule. One seems to work on Saturdays till 6 but is closed on Sundays, but another maybe works till 4, but is opened on Sundays… Horrible!

So I finish my post on this great atmosphere. Good luck and be healthy!

Sesond oldest profession

I read a lot – don’t know if it’s noticeable or not. And besides, as you probably all know, I am far form my native Kharkov, and even not in Ukraine right now. So, I have to read even more – just to be posted on what is happening in homeland, what’s news my relatives, friends and girlfriends have. Hence, I have to look through, perceive and read a huge number of web-sites, articles and journals. As the result, I’ve got some thoughts that I want to share with you.

It is an enormous number of information in the world right now. I don’t even mean that the scientists find out, discover, refute and prove something in breathtaking volume – not at all. I mean just news, just something that is happening in the world and around you. After all, with the help of the Internet, newspapers and TV one can learn anything – even about how much the average human make sex, and how many hang-gliders the army of Abkhazia has. The development of communication means at all, and internet in particular, drastic price-reduction of the communication services rouse that flow up to colossal size. There is so much information, and it has become so easily available, that people say about the information, but not the knowledge, that rules the world.

Thus, it is not the information as such, but the way it’s combined, presented and interpreted is important. In other words, the comclusions that a reader or an audience has learnt are crucial. In the middle of the 20^th century journalists and philosophers were talking about as much impartial journalism, as it is possible, but now it is completely senseless – it’s impossible to imagine the information flows without their processing.

One quite banal conclusion can be made: the role of a journalist increases multifold in modern journalism, journalist has a great social responsibility in society, journalist has to be ethical, good and honest, etc. But I won’t make this post in a flow of commonplace stuff, but make a completely other argument: the role of a READER increases multifold in modern journalism. The reasons are following.

As I’ve mentioned above, modern journalism has to bring to grass (and already does) the conclusions and opinions, but not jus a bare information. Besides, in the journalists’ arsenal there is a large number of ways to manipulate the reader’s opinion – starting with the word consequence in headline, and ending with the way the article is illustrated. That’s why the author of the article or TV-show is significant without internet. There’s something that changed radically for the reader – and that is the access to information. One matter is when you’ve got only a “Pravda” newspaper every Friday, (that never lies), and quite another – when you’ve got a PC with the broadband internet, a TV with a hundred channels and five journals by subscription.

So, the reader has a great power in the modern journalism. Because of the great accessibility of different information sources, and because the reader can change these sources without any problem, the reader chooses HIMSELF what to read, what opinion to hear and with whom to argue. That is why the long-suffering reader doesn’t depend on how much was the author paid for the content of the article, or if the author of the plot is sincere or not. The reader simply switches the web-site or the channel if he sees or hears nonsense. That’s why it is now that the journalists HAVE to be honest, and to reflect just their opinion, but not the opinion of the big boss, the editor or the communist party.

Sex

I’ve got a really GREAT mood today. By accident I came across the web-site with the music of one of my lovest band “Luk”, and of course, it is from Kharkov. J And what is more, there is the new album on this site called “Sex”.

I love Luks very much. Why? Because they don’t strain yourself. Because they are bright and joyful. Because they emit HAPPINESS. Because they are cool. And because they are from Kharkov.

Each their note hits right inside, sweeps out all the gloom from inside and makes you smile. They have plenty of guitars, plenty of rhythm and lots of synthesisers. And I should say they are excellent during their live concerts. I’d say even more: you should get acquainted with their music only on their live concerts. And they are better in the small stages in the nightclubs, than during bug live shows.

“Sex” – is their third album. Luks are relatively famous around ex-USSR, and their last disc is played in the same manner that previous two. The music has become more in radio-format. I don’t mean at all that Luks were chewed up by that junky pop-celebrities, and are under radio-station’s thumb at all. There are just several true radio-hits for pop-, and not-really-pop-stations. And that is, my dear, an extremely good and wonderful thing – the more people listen to the good and cheerful music, the better the world is.

All in all, I’m glad and happy!

I'll change topic a bit, and won't write about serious stuff. What i'm going to write about is the things that surround me.

All day long there was a fog. The fog was real, as large as life - very dense, heavy and damp. A very unusual feeling, i should say - I've seen such thick veil only in Kalmar. And the scene around was awfully interesting: it was a deep night with street-lights, and moreover those lights were blurred, as if someone editid the picture in Photoshop. It was an interesting sensation of something not real, as if you are watching a photoalbum of a famous artist, or an art-house movie of a cool director. And the sounds - that was something unimaginable, i should say! have you ever heard the hedgehogs, rustling with their little pawns on the fallen leaves? I have, and that was in Kalmar.

Business ethics and just an ethics.

Last week there was one thing happened. We split into groups of five persons on a lesson, and started discussing the topics of our thesis works. And all of a sudden a very interesting dispute between me from one side and Benita from Germany with Alexandra from Moldova from another.

The disagreement was in the following topic: what is business ethics and what is it for? I won’t dwell on my opponents’ point of view – still it’s my blog – and express my own one.

I think and I’m really sure that the mission of EVERY business, of an any private company – to earn wad. The more you have – the better you are. And there’s no limit for a Real businessman.

Note. When I say “ethics” I mean the set of certain rules of behaviour. The one to follow these rules is good, pretty and wonderful. And these rules are constant, as the definitions what is good and bad.

So, every REAL businessman puts is own interests higher than the interests of whoever at all. That is why it is in businessman’s nature to cheat competitors, state, consumers, and employers – everyone at all – to make money. If it is profitable for a businessman to sell a high-quality product – he’ll do it with enormous pleasure. But if the product is harmful, but there is profit out of sales –businessman will sell it regardless of anything. It’s because of that to be good for state, workers, consumers – it is not a primary target for a business, as it’s in fashion to write in manuals about. TO make business good for a state and society is the primary goal for exactly a state and society. These institutions must push business within the ethical behaviour and make them run its business ethically. To speak about business ethics and corporate social responsibility is the same as speaking about a vegetarian shark, or herbivorous wolf.

The things I don’t like, the things that irritate me and the things I simply hate.

Well, I decided to start my blog with one quite obvious and simple topic: what makes me humpty in life. Of course, I can say that I’m always cool and calm, but unfortunately it’s not about me.

Generally, I should say, that my negative reaction and its extent depend on the person itself that emits the anger fluids in the air. If the person irritates me – I’m irritated about everything in him/her, and sometimes even more (but it’s only when I’m in a bad mood). And if a person is OK, I can close my eyes on some of his/her imperfection.

But I looked aside of the topic a bit. So, the things I don’t like:

• When people insert phrases in English while speaking in Russian;
• When the Cyrillic letter “Ы” is transliterated as “I” into Latin, and the Cyrillic letter “Ч” as ”4”;
• When a person asks me a favour, and after that he/she says in a ingratiating tone: “I don’t bend you down, do I ?” or “I’m so imprudent, I’m sorry”;
• When a person says “украинский” – “Ukrainian”, with a wrong stress – I’m ready to kill’im sometimes!!!
• The phrase “You are so nice”;
• Pasta, cooked more than an hour earlier;
• Beer with 3,5 volume of alcohol or less (you’re laughing I bet, but in Sweden the beer stronger than 3,5% is sold ONLY in special alcohol shops, you can’t buy the normal beer is simple supermarkets)

This is the stuff that is up-to-date. The list is being constantly changed and enlarged, so the updates are possible.

And after all I’ll tell you the following. I already see some of you asking “Nikita, what do you LIKE, what do you keen on? Why didn’t you write about it?” Well, the thing is like that. The stuff mentioned above irritates me, and when there's no above mentioned things around – I’m completely filled up with the lightest, kindest and most man-loving emotions in the world. Therefore in order to make me happy you just don’t prevent me of being happy.

First post

Hello my dear!

I would like to avow you – I’ve given away to the common internet-fashion to keep my own blog. Whether it is good or bad – well, it’s not bad, I would say. Especially, there is so many different stuff around, that I want to lock it in, and the umpteen thoughts in my head. Don’t think in any circumstances that I shall stop writing letters to you and start sending you to the blog web-page in answer to tell some news about me. My blog is rather just an attempt to write, to train of my style, just a practice of writing. An, of course, my blog will have my relevant ideas with the reason, and without it, that I, on obvious reasons, didn’t reflect anywhere.

Yours sincerely Nikita Barsukov.