yeah for SB 1420 !

My two summers of grassroots lobbying in LA have finally resulted in a contribution to a new law in California. Go TEAM! So after you make your healthy New Year's resolutions, you can be sure that big California restaurants will help you keep them.

MoneyGami

Or something to play with after all the joys of financial news today.



Look at their cute faces! I don't think I can produce anything more creative than a paper plane but if you have some time, here or here are instructions on how to create various monetary creatures.

sounds familiar?

stop, and smell the hay

One of the hundreds butt loads of hay in Shelley Idaho, where I attended the famous Spud Days celebration

There is just something about this fresh country air, the endless fields of crops, smell of hay, hot dinner in the circle of a big family gathered around the wooden table in the peaceful-lone-standing house that makes it for the most relaxing weekend ever. I guess it's true what they say, and there will always be a part of country in me.

so typical

I think the word Alibi will always remind me of a popular crime fiction "Colombo" and its main character Lt. Colombo. As a little child, I religiously watched this scruffy guy in an always-wrinkled coat unpuzzle perfect deception du jour.


Lt. Columbo: I'm gonna tell you something. Do you know that there is a reasonable explanation for everything, if you just put your mind to it? Course, sometimes these things... pop up. Like with alibis. Do you know in most cases, people, they don't remember what time it is. They forget all that. Like the artist fella; he's all mixed up about the time. And Mrs. Matthews... she don't even remember what time she went to bed last night!
Dale Kingston: Being sober might help, I suppose.
Lt. Columbo: Now with you, Mr. Kingston, it's just the opposite. Very unusual. With you, we know exactly where you were, and when. Not only that, we know your whole car was empty.
Dale Kingston: Yes, isn't that nice?

I thought about this as I was reading NY Times about arguments both Georgia and Russia give about the beginning of the war. While Georgia is releasing records about the phone calls that supposed to show that Russia was the one to start the aggression, the only "facts" Russia give are murderer- style justifications. I can imagine Lt. Colombo raise his one eyebrow, light his cigar and shake his head in disbelieve if he heard Gen. Lt. Nikolai Uvarov of Russia base his countries "alibi" on the story about President Dmitri A. Medvedev enjoying the cruise on the Volga River and Mr. Putin away from all the political headaches at the Olympics in Beijing at the time of the attack.

“The minister of defense, by the way, was on vacation in the Black Sea somewhere,” he said. “We never expected them to launch an attack.”

Everybody were just having such a good time, eating caviar, drinking and dancing until all this happened. It was so unexpected, out of nowhere and now we are to blame... isn't just so unfair, Mr. Lieutenant.

The Spiral Of Silence - keep your oppinions to yourself

A perfect way to rule the country is when your people don't speak out against you. They just try to be nice and avoid the conflict and keep it all on down low. Best of all, this obedience can be inherited and distributed from parents to children. According to this theory all you need to do is create a popular majority that will make it almost impossible for those who have the unpopular opinion to speak up. Here is an example. During many years of USSR propaganda, repressions of 1929-30 when thousands of Ukrainian leading scholars and cultural leaders were arrested and executed as "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists", Ukraine lost the core of its national self esteem. Holodomor 33 (famine that was induced by Stalin on the Ukrainian farms), migration of Russian workers to Ukraine and mandatory education in Russian language...persecutions and punishments for being nationalistic, these are just a few factors that made Ukrainians a quiet, timid...nice nation with a lot of pride. They decided not to speak out, afraid for their lives and were teaching their children to be silent about the questions of politics, Russia and power. Moya chata z krayou - nichogo ne znayou ( basically, as long as my house is safe, I don't really want to be involved) - became a popular philosophy. It breaks my heart to see how well Russian media half truths have been influencing people. It's like a poisonous gas that disorients and paralyzes.. SPEAK OUT, move forward, open your mind, read a little and stop pretending like everything is going to be fine if only you could bring back past times.

provo

or in the others words, my second home, or my learning home...
Obviously, my first home is Kyiv, but even when I went back to spend time with my family, I found myself missing this place. Its my town, where I am in charge of my life and I don't mind to hide in this happy bubble every now and then. It is great to be back after all the LA adventures but this is definitely not my end destination and I am on my way to the new adventures soon. As I look back on all the people I have met and places I have been lately, I feel very grateful for all of you: my roommates, friends, boyfriends and coworkers for helping me see the world in the larger scale and slowly cure my nearsightedness by sharing your world with me.