UK, Ireland / Polish and English law on child access? [14]


in Poland you call the police to all such situations (where you can't excerise your rights) for them to produce an official report about it (more than to enforce the law) - otherwise you would need 2 or 3 witnesses before the court (this is not easy to make people testify for you for various reasons) - in this case no witnesses that could testify before a Polish court (your friend will be appealing to a Polish court if more of such situations happen) - the Polish police are quite accustomed to such case and know why such a report is needed and what to state in such a report - have no idea what is it like with the British police (I mean if they customarily produce such reports (of which the caller should get a copy) and if they ever turn up to such scenes) -

- the thing why your friend never called you after that is he didn't need any other immediate assistance - if the situation on the Christmas day has not been documented the matter is gone and to be altogether forgotten from the Polish legal point of view (or rather from the usual Polish court practice) - he may need some help if the situation repeats itself

the other reason why he perhaps wanted the police to come to the scene is he may have figured it might have influenced his ex to let the kids go and spend the day with their dad

Travel / Whats your favourite Polish city and why? [132]


a good bet is Kasprowy Wierch in Zakopane - it very often lies above the clouds and access is pretty easy with cable cars - the cables system and the cars have been modernized recently - unless there are high winds

Life / Dog Boarding Facilities/Dog Hotels in Poland [28]


firmy.net/hotele-dla-zwierzat,wroclaw.html

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]

which is now mostly lost unfortunately

Law / Why is US $ getting so high or Polish zloty falling? [60]


delphi Polish government paid big dividends out of KGHM for the last couple of years - but it had to share with other shareholders in the profits (I think private shareholders account to more than 40 per cent shares) - so the government came up with the idea to take most of the possible profits in the form of a tax - interestingly KGHM reacted in buying a mine (or a mining company) in the US or Canada (I don't know any details) - it's not a fair action btw - because KGHM received a lot of capital from the shares and it invested it - and now the state moves in to take most of the profits of that capital investment

btw - as PiS stated when the whole issue arose (in the exposee of Tusk) there should have been an investigation whether there was any bigger movement in selling the KGHM short on the Warsaw stock market in the weeks leading to the exposee which would have been a clear manipulation of the market

Travel / I'm half-Polish and I'm Planning a Trip to Poland - tickets, historical landmarks? [36]


as far as I know the stretch from Toruń to Stryków won't be open before the Euro 2012 - so won't be the motorway from Kraków to Ukrainian border because there will be unfinished gaps - it is not even yet certain if the £ódź (or Stryków) Warsaw bit is going to be ready before Euro 2012 - if the winter is mild like so far it can possibly be ready

History / Polesie Voivodeship before WWI? [11]

Polesie voievodship were 50 per cent jews and 50 per cent Poleshuks plus one Brit (a military retiree) who spent his days hunting for ducks in the swamps -

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polesie_Voivodeship - wikipedia entry on Polesie Voivodeship

News / Greed rules the world; Czempinski (Poland's former Intelligence chief) arrested [21]


which journalists have been spied upon? two or three? Anna Marszałek? who used to write 'investigative' articles in Rzeczpospolita formerly when all 'materials' were delivered to her by the WSI? (Rzyszard Szeremetiew case for example - sure you may not remember it delphi because you most probably weren't here yet)

News / Greed rules the world; Czempinski (Poland's former Intelligence chief) arrested [21]


why an effective policing (and one that originally wasn't involved in all 'deals' in the spheres of power (administration including the police)) should be anything authoritarian - you are completely brain-programmed on this issue milky - wake up and think for yourself


a voice of reason

Genealogy / Ukrainians in Poland before WW2. Ukrainian last names? [7]

it wasn't common for one simple reason - farmers (or peasants) were poor people and pretty tied to their land (if they had enough to feed themselves)

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]

and I could find quite different explanation to what Michnik did - like for example improving his title's reputation at home in the times when sales where rapidly dropping

if your explanation of how possibly could Gazeta Wyborcza or Michnik himself get hurt by confronting a French newspaper then the explanation must be a way to explain things away - or perhaps there is something inherently wrong with Poland when the main national newspaper can be threatened by some foreign title? or maybe there is something inherently wrong in the way the media work


what is so mysteriously particular in how journalism works? isn't journalism about reporting things to the public? isn't journalism about finding out and showing the public the truth???

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]


tell me about the risks cause I don't quite imagine them

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]


btw in what way did he risk his career??? - is (was) Michniks career dependant on some French trotskyists?? - was defending Poles really risking the fate of his newspaper in Poland?? ( I would think defending the name of Poland would rather gain him favour within the country and how could possibly some cosmopolitan leftists threaten Gazeta Wyborcza sales and profit)

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]

first of all I am not making assumptions that all Jews everywhere are bent on promoting only their tribe, there were and are Jews who are good Polish patriots or just treat every nationality equal - if Mr Meller was one - how do I know? maybe he was - Jarosław Kaczyński made a couple of blunders with his pick of co-workers most significantly in the case of Mr Janusz Kaczmarek

I don't find the likes of Aleksander Smolar working for the highest good of Poland

btw if Adam Michnik wants to defend me from accusations of anti-semitism it's his choice - I don't mind being called an anti-semite as long as noone throws stones at me

Life / Are there many crypto-Jews in Poland? [67]


you conveniently omit the issue of allegiance - if you read stuff from Michał Cichy about the leadership of 'Gazeta Wyborcza' (he worked with them for good couple of years and was close to Michnik) you would see that for example for Helena £uczywo (who actually led Gazeta Wyborcza for quite a time) there is only one principal allegiance - other Jews and their interests - you could perhaps well imagine that interests of Poland and general Polish population are of minor concern for her (Cichy explains that with a trauma of the year 1968)

btw there was anecdotal situation where Gazeta Wyborcza bold-typed the first page headline 'Jerozolima nasza!' (Jerusalem is ours!) when the Israeli Kneset voted for incorporating of the territory of Jerusalem into the state of Israel somewhere in 1995

Language / Etymology of Dupa [11]


yeah, I thought it has something to do with German - 'Popo' is more or less German equivalent of Polish 'pupa' and if there was some borrowing involved I would bet it was rather German to Polish than the other way round (I pretty much believe 'pupa' to come from 'Popo'_

oh well - it goes further than that - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puppis


you can still read the posts - they are not deep in the random thread yet (just been there to check if they're there)

there was not much interesting there to be honest - I'm just an amateur linguist with no real knowledge of languages like Lithuanian, a couple of words or roots of Latin origin and that's mostly it - the only original thing I came up with was the "'pyge' connection'" ;) - you just won't learn that Greek word unless you study a certain field and surprisingly it's not medicine too :)

the *dup- Slavic root is thought to be connected with Lithuanina *dub- root (meaning deep like in river or lake names (Dubissa) or a sink in the ground, a ditch), these are probably cognates with Germanic *diup root word which also meant deep, maybe the Slavic word is a direct borrowing from Gothic diups (deep) as there are plenty of direct Gothic loanwords in Slavic (including for example modry, modrzew*, chlew, chleb, druh, drużyna (perhaps also drugi) and perhaps even mleko)

*modry is a name of a blue colour now - but originally it was a name for red or blueish red colour - Gothic 'madr' - enraged, mad (so also red in face) - the old sense of modry is retained in Silesian 'modra kapusta' which is 'czerwona kapusta' in general Polish but also in 'modrzew' (larch) - it is most probably things like 'czerwona kapusta' (red cabbage) that actually caused the 'modry' to change it's meaning - modrzew was simply a modrodrzew - but it hardly makes sense if you think of modry as blue - but makes a lot of sense when 'modry' is red as larch wood is distincly red hue - btw larch wood was the most prized by old Poles - most of the wooden houses were built of it - in contrast to other conifer tree's wood it is very durable and ages very well in the air (know if first hand -not that I built anything from it) - I also guess that it does not change shape when drying out as our pine wood often does

and finally - read the this:

etymonline.com/index.php?term=deep&allowed_in_frame=0 (etymology of the 'deep' word)

oh there is another thing I would like to add - when talking about Gothic-Slavic language contact (which as we can see was quite alive) it pretty much defines the area ProtoSlavs lived in the time of contact as we can quite readily reconstruct the migration of the Goths (and the Gepids) from written records and archeology

Travel / Traveling across Poland with a dog. [13]

you should check the arrival and departure times of your typical train in Poznań and Wrocław - in the times past trains would stop for some 20 minutes or more on this major stations - in Wrocław it is possible to walk a dog to the end of the platform which is under the open skies contrary to the middles of (unless the platforms are currently under reconstruction - there were major works there quite recently) - I can't remember the Poznań situation that well but some platforms definitely are long and ending in open perhaps even with some lawn

Language / Etymology of Dupa [11]


I think it's rather the other way round 'pupa' being an euphemism

anyway 'dupa' might have just meant a hole - there is Czech word 'doupie' that means something like animal's den - there is also Polish 'dziupla' which in my view is just 'dupa' with a suffix

in Russian 'dupa' is 'żopa' (not far away phonetically if you look at Slavic languages) - interestingly Polish word for mine was 'żupa' ('żupa solna' was salt mine)

I have no idea about 'dupa' connections with other Indo-European languages

A Proto-Indoeuropean word for 'dupa' (backside) must have been along the lines of Greek 'pyge' - you might be surprised that the Polish vulgar word for female private parts is most propably directly connected to that Greek word - there is also Polish (also Czech) word for 'musk' - which is a secretion of the glands of a certain deer and the glands are well para-urinary - the word is 'piżmo' - the old German word for 'musk' is Bisam and it is said it is a borrowing from Turkish - it is quite probable the the source of Polish 'piżmo' is German Bisam - but for me this can be a coincidence and 'piżmo' can be of native origin from the root that was still productive back than (-mo suffix was productive in early Polish - it can be the same thing as the Greek suffix -ma found in words like 'magma', 'stigma', 'schisma', 'chasma', 'phlegma', 'phragma')

if you doubt certain words in Old Greek have direct counterparts (not being borrowings) in Polish (or Slavic in general) see the case of 'aulos' - 'ul' ('aulos' is a pipe in Greek - Polish 'ul' means a beehive (first beehives were simply hollowed out thick tree branches or trunks) - aha - the word reflects ProtoSlavic regular sound changes - all ProtoIndoeuropean -au- diphtongs word monophtongised into -u-

Food / Hip flasks in Poland [7]

your best bet are trekking shops - look for Alpinus or Campus (a trekking cloth manufacturer) shops or similar - also look for shops with hunting accessories

Law / Credit card fees vs. Cost of Using Cash in Poland [15]


- I heard it on Polsat News 24 hour news channel today -

the article more or less repeats it
newseria.pl/news/nbp_wypowiada_wojne,p1589590042
the commision is some 3 per cent on average but it's still a robbery i think

Law / Credit card fees vs. Cost of Using Cash in Poland [15]

btw think of bigger power outages - while I don't mind using a card I'd rather hard money remain the main means of payment in most situations

Law / Credit card fees vs. Cost of Using Cash in Poland [15]


it's quicker to pay with real money than with a card in most cases (unless the attendant does not have the change)

actually two thirds of retail outlets in Poland don;t accept cards - Biedronka has a policy of not introducing card terminals in their stores and there must be a serious reason behind it - one big issue is the ammount of commision charged for card payments in Poland which is supposedly the highest in Europe and even ten times higher than in Finland - heard it on the news today - NBP (the central bank) eventually threatened that if the operators and banks don't lower the commission the NBP will do it arbitrally


while there is some odd shabby babcia in the queue who is slow to count her change payment with cash is twice as quick as with cards so it is actually all the card holders who hold the queue up - while it is not so important in big stores situated on the outskirts where people go to buy a trolley-holds of stuff and because the time to just scan all that stuff is so time consuming it is strinkingly visible in places like Harry pointed out

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]

the figurine is one of Saint Florian who is a patron of fire fighters and the tower is part of a volunteer fire brigade post

Genealogy / Sniezyk / Sniezek - I thought I would like to know a little more about my roots [13]

and in which part you are interested - the lower or the upper :) :P

News / Polish media excited about bad article on Relativity Theory, published in a shady journal [27]


either I don't get something or you have your mind too much fixed because of too much training in solving problems in physical mechanics - your model here clearly omits important features of an axle-slat interface

Work / Greek Speaking Jobs in Poland [25]


salaries are bigger in Warsaw - in £ódź you don't have metro - a monthly ticket for both bus and tram that is valid for all lines at all times costs 100 PLN in £ódź (just checked that) which is less than 1 euro a day - you can eat a lot cheaper than 10 euro a day (even having the main meal in town - if you have access to a 'milk bar' (bar mleczny) you can have a good main meal for less than 5 euro) - coffee and cigarettes are bad for your health

News / Polish media excited about bad article on Relativity Theory, published in a shady journal [27]


ok let's suppose it does (we know there is some gravity between the axle and the slat) - but if you exclude intermolecular forces there is no force that oposes the movement of the slat around the axle in my view - just draw it for yourself (my thought model is: a non-zero diameter axle and non-zero thickness slat with non-zero mass)


- this is all because the reaction force is caused by gravity - in the friction less model there is no force oposing the translation of the beam against the ground (as there is no tangential component as you observed) the same as the slat-axle interface

News / Polish media excited about bad article on Relativity Theory, published in a shady journal [27]


the reaction force is only there because there is the gravity force which has a non-zero component that is normal to the bead/wire interface (if we talk about pure geometrical mechanics and don't take any intermollecular forces into account) - in the case of a slat turning around an axle there is no such force that has a component that is normal to the slat-axle interface I believe (the gravity force is completely tangential to the slat-axle interface)

News / Polish media excited about bad article on Relativity Theory, published in a shady journal [27]

without proper drawings I don't really know what you are talking about - but as you mention reactionary force at the support I just can just say that it is a pretty arbitrary of you to introduce any reactionary force (in my opinion in an ideal situation (perfectly round, smooth and fitting surfaces of both the slat and it's axis) there is no reactionary force as all what happens is tangential (so in a way a latteral translation)

Language / Polish language immersion, time, fluency [14]


the thing is Polish is significantly more irregular than Russian - it is because of phonetic developements of the language - just a little example: Russian: bieda, biedie (poverty in nominative and dative/locative) - Polish: bieda - biedzie (the same); another example: Russian: idti - idiot (to go - he goes) Polish: iść - idzie

yet another one: Russian: vyezti - vyezu (to carry on a vehicle - I carry on a vehicle) Polish - wieźć - wiozę (the same); yet another Russian: igra - igrye (a game nominative- dative/locative) Polish: gra - grze

add another case: Russian: ruka - rukie (a hand nominative - dative/locative) Polish: ręka - ręce

I only give situations where Polish and Russian words are similar - there are plenty of words that are completely different in Polish and in Russian