All we need is… a grandmother revolution! September 21, 2010

For those who have seen the film “Patch Adams”, starring Robin Williams, the interview below would be an added value to this amazing film. And the value of the film itself is high indeed, especially because it’s based on a real-life story.

Today I came across one interview with the film protagonist. The real person turned out to be even more fascinating than the film character (often it’s just vice versa).

Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams, M.D. (born May 28, 1945 in Washington, D.C.) is an American physician, social activist, citizen diplomat and author. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971. Each year he organizes a group of volunteers from around the world to travel to various countries where they dress as clowns in an effort to bring humor to orphans, patients, and other people. Adams is currently based in Arlington, Virginia. In collaboration with the institute, he promotes a different health care model (i.e. one not funded by insurance policies).

In his interview to one Italian financial newspaper Patch Adams gives a genius in its simplicity answer of how to change the world to a place, full of love and compassion:

and enjoy the second part, that’s brilliant!

Russians are the most humorous people in the world February 7, 2010

Sounds unbelievable, right 🙂 Typically, in the Western imagination, Russians are sombre people, who live in cold places, dress in grey or brown, drink vodka in shots and rarely smile, much less laugh. I’ve found that much of this image is easy to dispel as an outdated Cold War stereotype. The image problem is exacerbated by the Russian habit of maintaining a poker face in public and a tendency towards, let’s say, a brusque manner. The irony is that Russians actually have a great sense of humour.

Whether you believe it or not, I am going to prove that it is so sharing my own experiences and observations.

HUMOUR AS NEWS

Being myself Russian, I start my day with pretty unusual portion of news. This is  anekdot.ru – a brilliant site where Russian speaking people post their newly invented jokes and real-life funny stories. The charm of it is that reading these jokes, freshly created on the same day or the next day when something happened (in Russia or around  the world) one can get the best update on the situation in a witty perspective. I wonder if there is such a site anywhere in the world? And if it is being used as a kind of a news portal?

FREQUENCY

An average Russians tells from 1 to 5 (some to 10) jokes A DAY! In my whole 12 years of living in Austria I have heard may be 1 or 2 jokes from people here (1 or 2 in 12 years!). I thinks, it’s pretty much same in many places. But Russia is different 🙂

WHY?

There is a supposition that humor is being used as an “antidepressant” because, as commonly believed, “Russian life is hard.” Indeed, Russian humour is, most often, a self-deprecating and effective weapon against iniquity, injustice and pain, of which Russians have had extra helpings – especially in the last century or so. 

A man is walking down the street with a spear through his chest. His friend runs up and says, “Wow! Does it hurt?”

“Only when I laugh,” comes the reply.

WHAT IS A RUSSIAN JOKE?

The most popular form of Russian humour consists of jokes (анекдоты — anekdoty), which are short stories with a punch line. Typical of Russian joke culture is a series of categories with fixed and highly familiar settings and characters. Surprising effects are achieved by an endless variety of plots and plays on words.

What I miss in Avatar and many similar films January 6, 2010

The idea of a Super Hero is something which is so typical for the Western Film production that nobody questions it. Having my Soviet background, when we used to watch films with a winning team, not a Super Hero, I get sick of the this typical One Man Show.

Even if Avatar can be considered as a breakthrough into the new technological and even spiritual level (at some point), then still the message of one man saving the world seems very unnatural to me.

Although in the history of humanity we had many single leaders who managed to bring about the changes, I believe that very soon, if not starting with Today, the humanity will evolve to the next level of collective action. I do not mean that the masses will act unorganised. I think at some point when we all reach a certain level of awareness (some more some less, but still) we can jump into this new dimension of collective decision making, acting and achieving.  

my reflections on facebook December 15, 2009

Two years back I posted “how many bloggers use Facebook” saying that real bloggers don’t need Facebook and it’s a waste of time :). Either Facebook has developed itself to the best, or I have changed my ways, but somehow or rather I started appreciating Facebook. In fact, I found out how much fun and use it can be! By now I have about 620 friends (not everyone I know in person though) and that is not the limit for me. I love to watch this sea of souls communicating and sharing… fascinating!!

Here are my Facebook goodies:

1. It is a brilliant manifestation of collective intelligence: sharing and supporting each other gets easier for people, even if they don’t really know each other. I belive it is Facebook that made the breakthrough into collective online awareness – not everyone is a born blogger and blogging is a job after all :)… but everyone can make a step into the online life through Facebook.

2. New virtual friendships establish themselves probably even easier than through blogging – and then, online leads to offline! When i started using Facebook, I only wanted to have my real life friends there. But soon other people (mutual  friends, etc.) joined in and I realised how much fun it can be to meet and get to know better people with whom you would probably never met otherwise (not only because of the distance, but also because of differences in background and interests).

3. An interesting phenomenon: with some people whom I hardly know offline and kind of rediscover online – we can have a very intense Facebook connection, however it does not lead to its offline manifestation. Even if we meet then (occasionally),  it never comes to the Facebook intensity…I have 3-4 examples already. Any idea why?

The Cosmonautics Memorial Museum in Moscow November 15, 2009

My father is  the “sky” person who has always been dreaming about flying as high as possible… Since he could not become a pilot for health reasons,  he became a paratrooper officer and made 2000 jumps with parashute. The space exploration has been fascinating him for ages. I obviously inherited some fo this fascination, since I love airplanes and everything that can take me higher :).

This time when I was visiting my parents in Moscow my father was delighted to show me and my mom the new Space museum. As you can imagine, Russia has something to show in that area…

This museum, the only one of its kind, situated inside an enormous monument to the explorers of the cosmos, is well worth the visit, not least for the nostalgia it should inspire in anyone who grew up in the heady days of the space race. The displays trace the history of space exploration, including the first interplanetary satellite flights, the first dogs in space and man’s journeys to the cosmos.

Let me show you some shots I made inside the museum.

My parents – by the way, they now live just next to the  Zvezdnyi Gorodok “Startown” by Moscow, where all cosmonauts are being trained:

      ——–

We saw an interesting documentary about the history of Space exploration. Juri Gagarin, the first ever human in space:

 his smile is unforgettable!

The typical space costume live:

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The clothes cosmonauts wear inside a spaceship:

There’s plenty of fun gadgetry, plus an excellently conceived display explaining how astronauts survive a space flight, all of which should be interesting for children. The food in the space freezer:

My photo-impressions from Moscow in November November 12, 2009

I am back from a short Moscow trip with some images which I took for you.

The quality of images is not that good, but I think you will get an impression of how it is like in Moscow in November – cold, pretty nasty and windy, but still enjoyable :).

It was getting dark rather early, and I was mostly outside during late afternoon, therefore most of the images look like taken at night. In fact it was a daytime (from 3 till 6 p.m.).

LOVE; axinia

An anti-religious joke animation October 29, 2009

no comments 🙂

LOVE,axinia

The magic of numbers on my watch October 25, 2009

 

Since today is the day when we change from summer time to winter time here in Europe, I take it as a good opportunity to make a note on the recent funny behaviour of my watch. By watch here I mean any digital display showing time. Since a couple of months I am witnessing the following phenomenon:

any time I have a look at the numbers, they are of this nature:

5:55

10:10

22:22

14:14

etc…………………………..

I mean may be not always, but surely 99% of cases!!! It has become even a kind of game for me – I suddenly glance at the watch (on my PC or mobile) and here we are – a “funny time” again and again.

Any explanations/theories/same experiences? 🙂

Thanks,

axinia

Imagination as such does not exist October 20, 2009

When someone starts picturing something unusual we say “oh, what an imagination”. Imagination is what is commonly known as creation of images or ideas that have not existed before. 

In my personal opinion there is no such a thing as imagination: I belive that everything already exists somehow somewhere…I can back up this idea either with Socrates’s Allegory of The Cave  or with the modern string theory -no matter what I take, it is obvious to me that there is noting in the world that has not been existing somewhere yet.

Let’s take horror films,  all these dreadful images are nothing else than already existing beings. They definitely exist in our collective subconscious (the prove is that in many different cultures these images are similar), and the collective subconscious is a reality. This reality hunts us in our dreams or drunkard/under drugs state. And this is not imagination, this is pretty real. A good example – Hieronymus Bosch. or just any horror film 🙂

The futuristic images are also real – they pop up from our collective supraconsious, which is another interesting realm.

The way an open heart operates October 7, 2009

What do we know about being open hearted? We may certainly understand what the media portrays as love; it is two people finding each other attractive, falling in love and marrying in one episode (after a small yet entertaining bust up, of course). For many people, this simplistic chain of events is their ultimate dream, and of course they are often disappointed when things don’t turn out exactly as they had hoped, and the dream fades aways under an onslaught of bickering or misunderstanding.

The heart is the seat of our love and home to our compassion. However all too often we are afraid ot open up and allow these wonderful qualities to flow as they should. We hide behind our fears, doubts and ambitions, displaying a false mask to the world to avoid being hurt. The result is the society based on illusion, hidden behind ego and posturing, never truly communicating as human being to human being. Small wonder then that the divorce rate is so high in the modern world, and that relationships come and go as the wind blows.