Friday 30 January 2009

Tuesday 27 January 2009

EF students please answer,

what activities/events do you want EF to organise??(for example maybe poetry evenings or bowling or free-spa for top 10 students)

EF students please answer,

Saturday 24 January 2009

Honestly

I don't like this forums i have to review
1st forum: i think it's quite new one therefore there's not much information in it. Not only in sociology but in MAths as well(that's quete important as well)
2nd forum: most of the questions are answered with normative statements therefore are hardly to believe in)and there are not many answers at all.
3rd forum seems to be nice-articles are written in the intresting way and there are articles for futher reading as well.
4th forum is also answered with normative statements but there are a lot of people on this forum therefore this forum really appears to be a place for a good discussion)
5th forum appears to be a "hot line" for people because most of comments are anonymous and there are no listed to topics so i think this forum is useful if only you have free 128379128738912 hours to explore it.
6 th forum is quite famous one but still "sociology" there is not very popular)But still there are some reasonable answers there so it's good enough to be explored:)

Who else gained from the recession?))

i think that video game makers REALLY gained from the recession:
Profit from sellng video games has become more that 21,33 billion dollars.
Europeans have bought more than 8 millions of Wii during this year.
Playstation 3' sales have grown up by 40% during 2008.
Americans have bought 2 millions of Wii during 2008.
Microsoft have selled more than 28!!! millions of Xbox 360.
Nintendo sold more that 3.1 millions of DS in USA.
(sourse:www.lenta.ru):D

I've played computer games a lot

And honestly i mostly agree with this research. Gamers are much more friendly than other people(at least vast majority).There was the same research in Russia that proved that competing games(like Counter-Strike/Quake/War\Star Crafts/Crysis) probably make people less aggressive because they express their aggression in shooting people in game but not in real life. Some of my friends are gamers and i can't say that they are violent-on the contrary they are amicable. But every rule have exceptions.
IF we look at people who are almost addicted to MMORPG(Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) like World of Warcraft or Lineage2, we will see that most of them are quite aggressive. This can be explained by the fact that they substitute real life with virtual what makes them indifferent to their actions in reality. Sometimes they transfer aggression from virtual life into real life. I've played MMORPG Lineage2 and i knew some guys who actually had REAL fights because of virtual money/characters. There were even fights between two or more opposing CLANS because of castles ot just to prove that "other clan sucks". There was even a story of a man with nick DVP who played on one of the official La2 servers. His real name was Andrei Ponamorenko.He had a wife and a daughter and owned a computer firm in Ukraine. He had a quarrel with a guy from Moscow whose game nick was CBEPX. Once DVP came to Moscow for a clan meeting and there he met CBEPX(who was a student) and just beat him to death. Probably he didn't want to do that(because he was put in jail for 8 years) but fact remains the same CBEPX died in hospital because his scull was broken. Most of the people who play these games either students(because they usually has nothing to do and MMORPG are highly addict able) and feral and nonsuccessive people(because they don't seek for the success in real life but try to become very "cool" in the game).

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Mulder and Scullder

by the way)X-files was quite a nice serial))
anyway:
Sociology-(society+logos(Lat.)-study) study of human behaviour inside the society,ways of interacting between people builing up social institutes and societies.

reading

This This
1st article "In studies of kinship it has been said that pets are substitutes for children, providing emotional satisfaction."-Probably this may show only the decline of the family as a social institute. But still in some families animals play an important role and even may be considered to be member of the family. But "Sociology can be defined as a study of human behaviour or a study of people's interactions" (Source:http://nast-is-nast.blogspot.com/") so in my humble opinion there's no point in dealing with animals behaving like humans.
2nd article

"WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what the goth scene is all about.

43 (male): Having the absolute freedom to dress as you want and to express yourself as you want."---->>>>


A culture and form of ground breaking music and self expression...is it goth?

or maybe it is hip hop?

"WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what is the goth scene is all about.

109 (female): Being different to all the mindless, brain-dead clones that walk around small town England."

In my opinion the last frase should written as "Being different to all the mindless, brain-dead clones that walk around small town England,organising our own club of
the mindless, brain-dead clones of Dracula doing nothing to change the reality except depressing everyone around and scaring children".

Now more objective comments)
I think that this article shows us that existance of Goth(and any other) subculture is not only inevitable but probably indispensable phenomenon because all these subcultures only supplement the entire culture of the nation. All subcultures are aimed to make people feel free of choosing at least something)But being "loyal" to one subculture in fact means refusing all other views what leads to "narrowing" of thinking.

3rd article
as there is only a part of the article i can't say much about it. but still it's obvious that younger generations appear to be more materialistic and therefore more...ermm...consumeralistic:D...That happens because of many things:in Russia for example one of the possible reasons for that is breakdown of the socialistic sytem and the shock theraphy that changed people' minds completely.Another reason for that may be increased competition and improvements in technology:our parents simply didn't have that much to choose from(sorry for poor english)).

this)

this says to us that the only thing that will make the system work again is hope.But how can it appear from nowhere?US banks probably spent the money they didn't have,just by adding several 0 to their accounts. Now there's too much money in their economy(and in the world economy as well)...So what's the way out?I think that the only way out now is controlled(or at least partly controlled markets).
Let's look at China-the only country which is likely to show 7% economic growth in 2009(from Newsweek 19th/jan/2009). This country was moving from planned economy to market one but this crisis shows us that this may not be the right thing to do. The man in the video tells us that one of the features of every working economy is absence of fear or in my opinion it's better to say presence of confidence. When the whole economy is probably controlled by DIFFERENT people,corporations,banks etc. that are driven only by their GREED, ordinary people are not able to feel safe therefore the economy can't work properly...BUT when the economy is supervised by the RIGHT and FAIR government whose aim is to maintain stable situation in the country and probably wealth for everyone,people feel more secure and therefore comes FAITH and HOPE.
Some people may argue that planned economy is the way to socialism. But "It doesn't matter if a cat is white or black, as long as it catches the mouse" © Deng Xiaoping

Aren't you scared of cyber war?:)

W32/Conficker(Downadup) was first noticed in november but this problem became really urgent in January.
concider this: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001584.html

It's the biggest network ever)So the guys who made it should think of something really hard and maybe quite dangerours to do!

Friday 16 January 2009

quote from russian bash.org

«Владельцы капитала будут стимулировать рабочий класс покупать все больше и больше дорогих товаров, зданий и техники. Толкая их тем самым для того, чтобы они брали все более дорогие кредиты, до тех пор, пока кредиты не станут невыплачиваемыми. Невыплачиваемые кредиты ведут к банкротству банков, которые будут национализированы государством, что в итоге и приведет к возникновению коммунизма».
1867 г. К.Маркс.

translation
(sorry not precise)
"Owners of the capital will stimulate working and middle classes to buy more and more expensive goods,machines and appartments". That will also ecourage people to take more and more expensive credits,until these credits will become unpayable.Unpayable credits will lead to bankruptcy of banks,which will be nationalised by the government and therefore will lead to formation of the comunist society.
1867 K. Marks

Isn't it similar to smth?:)

:)

One good way to revise-use of mind maps!:)))

Friday 9 January 2009

I BET

That it's possible to have a grade A in Chemistry preparing just one day! or at least we will see my results in two months from now)

Thursday 8 January 2009

GCSE/As maths private lessons, consultation free. available Russian

This easy notice you can see in http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/unified_adboard.php?col=t
There u can find huge number of oxford graduates willing to teach anything you like=)

Re:Printing Money

As i am not a proffesional economist i can't say nothing exact about future economic situation. But I really believe that printing more money is not the right way to stimulate the economy.
On the one hand the increase of the amount of money in the economy MAY probably lead to even greater devaluation of the pound and as the result even greater inflation. I absolutely agree that inflation won't be as it is in Zimbabve or in Germany during the time between world wars but still the inflation rate will be much higher than it is now.
On the other hand this money will be used to buy toxic assets and as the result banks will have more money to lend businesses and households. That means that the first may produce more(shift of the SRAS to the right) and the second may buy more(because devaluation of the pound means that there are more money in the economy and so many ordinary people may suppose that they have more money[and plus they will think that the inflation will be even greater] so their MPS will decrease. In addition to that we should forget that devaluation of the currency means that it's cheaper for foreigners to buy products from UK so exports will rise and that is again an injection to AD)
The problem is that we can't predict exactly because it depends:if government will be made to print more money than needed there will be great inflation,but if the money will be printed only for buying toxic assets this will lead to increase in lending and as the result firms and companies will be able to take credits to produce more.
To my mind it may be not be a bad idea for the UK to join the Eurozone. Euro has shown itself as quite a stable currency and this will also improve trade conditions because more than 60% of all UK exports are within the European Union and single currency will may stimulate firms to export more(and as the result will stimulate aggregate demand of the country)