Author: Rauf Aliev

The Devil’s machine in the library: works like a microscope, you can zoom in a bit, or right down to the pixels

Police: Parents Arrested After Leaving Kids Home Alone (http://goo.gl/twv3ye)

You can’t leave kids at home here: neighbors can easily call the police, and here is a link to a story about an arrest.

Most states, with rare exceptions, do not regulate the age at which children can be left home alone. However, if something happens to the children, parents can face serious consequences. Child Protection Services (CPS) issue various recommendations on what age children can be safely left alone at home. For our Masha, it’s an hour and a half. But even for an hour and a half, it’s better not to leave them, unless you want to meet the police at your doorstep.

For our Masha it’s an hour and a half, but there are a ton of additional factors taken into account, like whether the child can find the parents on their own if needed (for example, if they work nearby). Generally, it’s the mothers who go clubbing or wander off while the child sleeps who get caught. In Russia, this is incomprehensible, as what to do with children when they come home from school at two in the afternoon and the parents are at work – the state does not answer.

Mom could go to jail for letting her son play outside alone (http://goo.gl/u4ZPYq)

A recent case too – they put in jail a mother because a four-year-old child was walking alone in the yard, reportedly 35 meters from the house, at an apartment complex’s children’s playground.

In Police State USA, Kids Playing Outside is a Crime: CPS to Mom “Don’t let them play outside (http://goo.gl/MboUAC)

Children here never play outside. Not even the relatively older ones. You might see kids walking home from the school bus, and rarely, 15-year-old teenagers alone in the mall. Anyone younger is kept at home or in school just in case.

There’s even a book for sale on Amazon, Dark Secrets Within Child Protective Services (http://goo.gl/xWxmsQ)

Some details in Russian on local forums (https://goo.gl/mfWs4L)

http://goo.gl/twv3ye

Liza’s New School

Facebook “dislikes” posts from external applications. It’s not written anywhere, but I can tell from the statistics and an experiment.

The experiment is as follows: I open two Facebook accounts. One is mine, and the other where I am marked as “close friends” (i.e., the feed includes 100% of my posts + there is an active notification when I write something).

Next, I make two status updates, one through posting on a WordPress blog, and the other in the classic way through the FB interface. In both cases, the posts appear on my page, marked as Public. On the second Facebook a) no notifications arrive about the posts from WordPress, b) my post from WordPress is not visible in the news feed. The classic post, however, works perfectly.

Maybe someone knows where the snag is?.. An option is to disassociate from FB and duplicate posts there and here too, but perhaps, there’s a checkbox somewhere that if checked, everything will work perfectly?

Interesting: http://mashable.com/2011/09/09/facebook-third-party-apps-study/#pEgXF0.xQOq5

Detailed response to Kostya’s comment on why I run a blog or write on Facebook. There’s a well-formed logic behind it.

Curiosity. Different people react differently to new things. Some don’t notice it at all, some notice, wonder, and then immediately switch to something else. But someone like me goes straight to Google to understand the reasons, the context, and to incorporate new knowledge into an existing system. This requires additional efforts and time, but it’s hard for a curious person to just drop the subject, it’s simply interesting. When you figure something out, it’s convenient to record and structure information in real time: besides posts in FB, I make use of various mind maps for this purpose, for example. Well, having figured it out, okay, but why write about it on Facebook after?.. And here it’s because it seems that a journalist still lives somewhere inside me. Since the information is there and it’s easy to share, pourquoi pas? Plus, the comments from friends are almost always very valuable. Example – various posts about traffic rules, national parks, all sorts of everyday stuff like American sockets or stores.

The second type of posts – just for lulz. The presence of such posts is usually explained by a very simple process of sharing something funny. If it required even a bit more effort (come home, download photos from the memory stick, process them) – there would be much less of that.

The third type of posts – photo albums for memory. Photography is one of my hobbies, and it’s nice for others to see good pictures, and I enjoy when they are well received or constructively criticized (then I learn and do better next time). Many are interesting to revisit, and Facebook is not the most inconvenient tool for this (although it has its own quirks – try deleting 50 erroneously uploaded photos en masse, for instance). Example – photographs from the Grand Canyon or sailing on the Kruzenshtern in the Baltic.

The fourth type of posts – public report of achievements or public commitment to achievements. This helps me not to give up on sports or music, even when there’s not enough time. Right now, I haven’t published anything from the drawings or my keyboard playing for several months. Either I don’t like the result, or simply don’t have the time. But someday there will be, for me it’s a motivator to move forward and find the time.

The fifth type of posts – when advice or help is needed in making a decision. I try to use this type of posts rarely and only when really needed. For my friends to see such posts at all, according to Facebook’s logic, all the above listed are needed.

Periodically, I share links – most often so as not to forget something interesting myself. Facebook finally implemented a search by posts, and if I need to return to something in the future, I find it faster in my own feed by some clues, keywords, than in the global internet.

http://beinginamerica.com/2016/02/07/почему-я-веду-блогпишу-в-фейсбук/

In America, discipline is paramount. If it’s stated that the zoo and parking lot close at 5 o’clock, then they close at 5 o’clock. Time: 5:05. By the way, the only car in the parking lot is ours 🙂

(Now all posts about America are written by eight hands on the site BeingInAmerica.com – thanks for the idea, @[734968816:2048:Vitaly Dubinin])

http://beinginamerica.com/2016/02/07/спустя-5-мин-после-закрытия-зоопарка/

Food

If you encounter a bicycle in Moscow, it’s more likely to be a mountain bike, whereas in our area, it’s more likely a road bike. So far, I haven’t seen any other types of bicycles on the streets, only horned road bikes are what you come across.

At Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC

https://www.swarmapp.com/r_aliev/checkin/56b66429498e5939a372042b?s=nox1IpnKvmNEhAOeH73zZwP6q6w&ref=fb&source=openGraph

Yesterday, we visited an interesting family in McLean. Their daughters play the violin and piano well. They take private lessons. Since I’m also interested, I inquired about the conditions. Compared to Moscow, it’s definitely an expensive pleasure here.

A piano lesson costs about 180 dollars. This is with top-notch teachers, etc., but overall, there’s not much choice among the “less prestigious” ones. The lowest I could find was 100 dollars per hour (they sell by half-hour). Specifically in the case of teachers who charge 180 dollars, any upright piano or especially an electronic one won’t suffice, a normal, albeit small, grand piano is expected.

This is to say, what you can get for a reasonable sum in Russia turns into an elite activity here.

Ivan Shapovalov