Ukraine’s so-called leadership is also very frustrating. While Russian gangsters kill, maim, and torture Ukrainians, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wastes his time on meeting the Pope. WTF the Pope has to do with Ukraine? There are maybe 3 religious people in the entire country, one and a half of whom might be vaguely Catholic. Ukraine needs the Pope like a dead person needs a Zumba class membership. It’s beyond ridiculous that time and energy should be wasted on such meaningless encounters.

Yes, a meeting with the Pope is done to spite the Russians who hate him. Big whoop. It would spite them more if a serious military counter-offensive were organized to push them out of the country.

I just read a very interesting post about the innate differences between Liberalism and Conservatism:

Conservatism delivers this message: “You are special.”

And liberalism delivers this message: “You are not special.”

From that you can see why liberalism has an innate messaging problem built into the very fibers of its being, even if it is more correct.

I never thought about it this way but I think this blogger has arrived at something very useful. All of the privilege check-lists and victimization Olympics are probably so popular among Liberals because they allow to overcome this “innate messaging problem.”

The “You are not special” message is so contrary to what a person with any degree of mental health feels that it will only lead to a movement’s failure. This is why it is a message that Liberalism needs to  ditch as soon as possible.

The Crimea gets all if its potable water from Ukraine through the North Crimean channel. Getting water to the Crimea is a complex operation which requires a large group of specialists tending to the channel 24-7.

Now that the Crimea has been annexed, groups of criminals have been expropriating businesses and beating up or kidnapping their owners while the Russian authorities abstain from interfering.

Finally, the criminals got their hands on the channel. They threw out the Ukrainian engineers who were servicing it. Of course, the water immediately stopped flowing through the channel. As I said, it’s a very complex system, and when there are no engineers to make it work, the people of the Crimea are left without water.

When it was pointed out to the Russian authorities that the channel couldn’t function without the engineers, the response was, “Well, people could always drink bottled water.”

I don’t even want to think what the Russians will say when Ukrainians stop supplying the peninsula with food.

My sister is here, and that means we’ve been shopping. A lot. Here is what we found in an outlet mall:

If Kharkiv, the city where I grew up, becomes occupied by Russian invaders, that will be a personal tragedy to me. We keep hearing on the news here in the US that the Russian-speaking Kharkiv wants to become part of Russia. It’s impossible to convince anybody that being a Russian-speaker doesn’t necessarily mean one wants to live in Russia, which is strange since nobody seems to assume that every English-speaker in the world wants to see his or her town invaded by England.

Today, after the Russian terrorist groups have been beaten back and, at least temporarily, squeezed out of Kharkiv, there was nobody but actual Kharkovites to show up for a protest in support of Kharkiv separating from Ukraine and becoming part of Russia. This is what the protest looked like:

 

Here is also a video of the protest.

I can also repeat what I’ve been saying all along: there is no division among Ukrainians. The number of people in the country who are interested in becoming part of Russia is not large. This minority is not interested in doing absolutely anything to make this fantasy become real. It’s a fantasy that they entertain after a few drinks and it doesn’t motivate them to engage in any actions. Everything we’ve been hearing on the news about the clashes, the wounded, the kidnapped, etc. is organized by the Russian special forces. The second the Russians are forced to leave, everything goes back to normal.

Jonathan Mayhew has a fascinating series of posts on his blog about his intellectual formation.

Here is Post 1. Post 2. Post 3. Post 4.

I’m now totally inspired to write my own intellectual history in a series of posts. This will be fun! I’m wordy, so I will have many posts in my series.

Read Jonathan’s posts in the meanwhile.

OK, folks, I have come up with a beautiful game for us to play. The name of the game is “How Americanized am I?”

The rules are as follows: you are to come up with questions  to test my understanding of American history, idioms, geography, culture, literature, daily life, food, fashion, TV – anything. And I absolutely promise not to Google or do any searches and just answer off the top of my head. I don’t mind feeling ridiculous or ignorant for a change, so I won’t cheat.

Questions can be serious or humorous but they have to be of the kind that anybody who you consider part of this culture to be able to answer.

If I answer more than 60% of the questions (which is the passing grade at my university), I win. If not, you win, and you can come up with a collective decision of what I should do to expiate my lack of Americanization.

Russia’s official representative at the UN made a statement explaining that the goal of Russia’s actions in Ukraine is to help out the EU.

The US, he said, wants to saddle the EU with Ukraine so that it would deter the EU from developing economically. This way, the US will get rid of a major economic competitor.

No, he doesn’t really mean it. Yes, he is laughing in all of our faces.

People complain that I haven’t posted any recipes for a while, so here is a dish I made today. The recipe is completely my own, and this is easily the best dish I ever cooked, which is saying a lot.

Here is what I used:

– 4 quail;
– 2 cloves of garlic;
– a bunch of purple asparagus;
– 7 big mushrooms;
– 1 huge meaty tomato, seeded;
– half a bunch of kale;
– 1/4 of a bunch of curly parsley;
– a cup of peas;
– turmeric, allspice, nutmeg, salt;
– half a cup of sake.

Quail are expensive and tiny, so unless you buy two packages they have to be part of a casserole. I crushed some garlic and fried it briefly in a small amount of olive oil and a bit of butter. Then I added some sake (since I had no wine) and reduced it.

I cut the quail in 4 parts each with kitchen shears and seared them on both sides. Then added some water, just to cover the quail.

The vegetables are all added at the same time and so are the herbs. It’s important to take the seeds out of the tomato because we want the liquid to reduce to almost nothing in the process of cooking.

Then I added the seasoning, closed the casserole and put it into the oven for an hour. And the result is beyond delicious. It’s also very easy to prep and takes next to no time.

Here it is on a plate: