Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


Exactly. There's an exception, though, and it's veal, which is as good as can be, I'd say. If we are talking cows. I'm not sure how easy it is to get veal in Poland now.

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@ dtaylor and others, about cooking: dishes are not to be difficult, they are to be tasty. Whether it takes hours or minutes to prepare, it doesn't really matter, if there's no taste to enjoy. That's what you can't grasp, the basic difference between cooking in the UK, an athletic approach, and cooking in Poland, which is more of an art than simply feeding people in numbers and on time.

Cooking is not a skill that can be learned in school. It's something you grow up with, and soak it from weaning times to adulthood, and still every newly learned dish needs practice and feedback from people who know what they're eating. A good cook can always do something eatable when doing it for the first time, but there's never any guarantee that this is the thing. Cooking is not mixing ingredients as per recipe and following the algorithm. Factory made food will always be substandard, there's no way around it, regardless of additives. Cooking can not be computerised, because the nuances are far to difficult to describe - and can't taught like engineering.

My mother is a good cook. She makes delicious zrazy zawijane po warszawsku. One day she tried rolady, which is basically the same, only different stuffing. We ate it, not exactly bad, but, well, 'silesian kitchen is a bit behind'. Then I had an opportunity to taste rolady made by our neighbour, who was the source of my mother's recipe, and I changed my opinion. It took several attempts for my mother to get it more or less right. She did it in the end, but then she had a life long experience in cooking, day in, day out.

What Britain apparently excels in, is top shelf catering for people who measure their pleasure by numbers on the bill and the ratio of plate diameter to the weight of food. Not the art of cooking as such. Two different things.

Catering in Poland is far from good, I'd say. Only once in my life I found a good restaurant, quite a humble place, and rather hidden, luckily, but there was a cook working there. You ordered your schabowy, and you actually could hear it being thumped for you, and after you ate it you looked with envy at the newcomers who still had enough space in them to eat whatever. Simple dish, schabowy, innit. It's not about recipe only, it's not a skill you can learn from a book.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


My point is you don't know what cooking is.



And it seems the message is getting through :)

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


Nothing much, that was my point. TV doesn't make cooks.


It might. Once or twice, then you get disappointed, and you keep to watching them with awe, while munching free delivery pizza.

You know, there are programs in Poland, about cooking. A cook shows people how he (most often) cooks things not commonly known. Not how quickly he can cut onions. But he shows it to people who already know how to hold a knife, and what 'glassy onion' means.


What's a michelin star? Can you eat it? I want food from the cooks, not medals to look at.


Sorry, I am not a fan :)


Fish and chips were there, and 'pies'. Now there's curry and tikka masala, KFC and peri-peri. Well, yes, the all day breakfast holds tight, but not even you can call it tasty as served. The basics are forgotten long ago, whatever they were. I was working in a kitchen for a stretch, and the English-born apprentice didn't know what to do with a ready made Yorkshire pudding. Pathetic.


Restaurants, not kitchens. Kitchens are in countries where people do cooking. Not chefs, people. For people, not for customers with thick wallets who enjoy fancy tiny structure on a huge plate. Restaurants with stars grow where there are people with money to burn, so no wonder.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


Well, it makes you think you can have an opinion on cooking :)

You ever seen the Tomato contra Pepper show, whatever the true name? People voting on cooks by the looks of the dishes and by what the cooks said during the 20 minutes they were given to make a three course dinner. It's ridiculous, they don't even get samples to taste, they just look at it. Ready-Steady-Cook? A competition for chefs, not for cooks. 'Chef' is about producing sellable food under pressure, 'presentation' and logistics being as important as taste. It's not about cooking, just like breeding farm is not about sensual love. The F Word? It's about how disastrous the British commercial kitchen is behind the doors, 'get the fking roaches out of here first, and clean that fkin fridge!' :)

It's all good and fine that somebody started to teach the Brits the basics, but it's along way to go. First, you have to develop taste. Which is a vicious circle, actually, an attempt to lift yourself by pulling up you hair...

We are way off-topic, I am afraid...

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


So you say. It's a craft, with little deep secrets and a hefty dose of heart. You don't get it from books nor from TV.


Half the BBC is about cooking :) About competing in cooking, that is.


Majority? Not even in Poland.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]

Says it all, really :) Being a good cook is not like acquiring new looks. You need to grow in it.

Cooking may be becoming fashionable, given the amount of propaganda, but you don't make a good cook by telling him to cook well from now on.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


Poland has kitchens all over the place.

London has the most of the best restaurants in the world, yet the Brits enjoy cooking mostly on the TV, like sport.


that too, still the cook makes his/er own impression. Like, two main varieties are bigos made from soured cabbage only, or from mixed. And there comes selection of spices, even if apparently not impressive in number.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


where you from, delph? you got good socks over there... :)

Bigos is different in every house, all depends on the cook. My neighbours made something that made me feel full up before I got it on my plate.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]


Kids... don't know what's good for them.

I loved it :)

I'd agree with Ksysia, in general. Polish food seems more flavoursome.

Food / Taste of food in Poland vs other countries [186]

Ah, I don't know if you can get milk from a local dairy any more... Have you ever tasted unprocessed fresh milk? Still warm.

News / Polish Lithuanian Diplomatic War? At last. [533]


Thanks, only you were saying about a Polish court, and this is about a REM (Rada Etyki Mediów, The Council for Media Ethics) statement.

'The problem is, the the journalists of GP presented the information about the call by the BOR officer as an unconfirmed hypothesis by one of the informers, and contradicted it with the statement of the officer's brother. And Nasz Dziennik [another condemned newspaper] adds, that there was no such publication at all (...)

So it was not a Polish court, there was no conviction, and the accusation itself was rather thin. Got any other links. please?

News / Polish Lithuanian Diplomatic War? At last. [533]


Oh yes, say some more. Got any links?

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Seems Mr Lott has a better approach than me, researching data about the impact of legalising guns on crime rates in particular locations.

I just wasted half of my Sunday comparing gun ownership (this time estimated real, instead of legal) with murder rates in Europena(and like) countries, and my conclusions are like in my previous post. No relation, even in intuitively similar groups of states.

I got one impressive graph though, comparing guns per head to murders per gun :)

mediafire.com/?ord7r7d7xbfmk7s

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]


Seems numbers are quite an important element.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]

I would help if somebody defined the proper numbers and the allowed margin of error. Quite a lot of people are stuck with the 6 mln number.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


I know my math, thank you :) My mistake was to take the data in good faith instead of checking them against other pages. I might've expected differences like 10% at most, coming from mixing data from different years, but what is there calls for justice to Heavens.

Now, I took the effort to recalculate the per capita, using absolute number of murders and populations from the site. I took a choice of countries, which is Europe (except for some post-Yugoslavian countries, for which there's no data on murders) and countries rooted in Europe, like Canada etc.

First, errors:
1. Poland, 202% error, Switzerland -67% error. 14 countries with absolute error >=5%.
2. Albania, Nepal, Sweden, Belgium, Austria missing from the 'per capita' list, despite their rank.

The 'per capita' list from this site is useless.

Now, assuming that absolute numbers are correct, and taking the numbers of murders and population data, I got an interesting result. The definite winner in the competition is the post-USSR, with #1 Russia sporting 0.205 murders per 1000 people, #2 Estonia with 0.109, and Moldova, the least murderous in this group, with 0.079. Then comes the USA, with 0.053, and then the mix of Western Europe and the former Eastern Bloc, starting with Albania (0.049), Bulgaria (0.046) and Switzerland (0.028), and ending with Spain and Germany (both 0.012) through Italy, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Ireland, down to Austria, Greece (both 0.008). The Eastern Bloc is mostly on higher positions here.

To make it short - legal gun ownership has much smaller impact on the number of murders than cultural and social factors, and comparing the laws with victims per head gives no meaningful conclusions, unless we keep it in well defined groups. 'Well defined' here means 'I think it'll be all right'.

Edit:
Thus, similar position of the Czech Republic and Poland makes you think, innit. Czech Republic 0.023, Poland 0.019. The UK 0.020.

Love / Polish men are complete doormats (especially after they get married) [125]


Yet some people find this concept difficult to grasp. Thing is, such a man deserves a Woman. Welcome to Poland. :)

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]

Right, easier. So bullies will die out, you say, and the heroes who put them down will end up in strict prison for life. Society will be cleared of extreme elements and everybody left standing will happily live long for ever since.

What you talking about, AJ :)

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


I remember one school, where the teacher had a gun too. Short story, not worth the first pages.


People acquired this passive stance, because the upper echelons didn't give a fck. This is a different country, AJ. The upper echelons were born and bred in this country, they know perfectly well what's going on.


Hard to believe, innit :)

My neighbour visited a 'bad quarter', popped in a shop, and left her purse lying on the counter while packing goods. A teenager grabbed her purse and darted away. She run out of the shop and shouted 'Jee, moja taszaaa!'(*). A short while after the boy appeared from behind the corner, approached her slowly with a troubled face, and said 'jo wos bardzo przeproszom, jo żech myśloł, że wyście som gorolka...'(**). And gave her the purse back.

(*) 'Geee, my puuurse!!!' (Silesian)
(**) 'I am very sorry, madam, I thought you were from central Poland...' (Silesian)

Authentic. It pays to speak the local language :)


Why not both, like the Czechs have? Mind you, the best equipped police are never where you need them. Criminals have devious, uncooperative minds, and they choose times and places devoid of uniformed law enforcers. I'd have not much beef with them if they cared to inform the other interested parts beforehand.


And why should it. I do not advocate the right to commit murders with firearms. The criminals already have what they need anyway.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


In the US. In Poland there's precious little of preventing crime with guns. As I said, for reasons.


murders:
nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

#20 Poland: 0.0562789 per 1,000 people
#24 United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people

So it's 30% more, per head. In Poland.

Crime level in Poland is rather high, and much of it goes unreported. You report only grave incidents, and what is related to insurance, or when you loose your ID. Otherwise you just don't bother, it's waste of time. Even if your wallet goes with the ID in it, you don't rush, as decent thieves send your ID back. Seriously.


One goes with another, don't you think? Possession and right to use. Situation in Poland is ridiculous. If they make concealed guns legal, but ban pulling a gun, then there's not much point in the first law, like. Most likely you just loose your gun in the event.

@ convex and Amathyst:

murders:
#41 Czech Republic: 0.0169905 per 1,000 people
30% of the Polish murder rate.

assault victims:
nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_vic-crime-assault-victims

#2 United Kingdom: 2.8%
#9 United States: 1.2%
#12 Poland: 1.1%
#20 Japan: 0.1%

Only 20 positions shown, no Czech Republic.

History / Poles in the Crusades to the Holy Land [75]


Seconded. Nicely put.

There was a mention about Władysłąw Wygnaniec and his offspring. Although worth mentioning in the topic, I don't think they should be considered Polish knights, in circumstances. Maybe only as an illustration how difficult it is to find any Polish involvement in the Crusades.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


I'd say quite a lot of people do have guns, yet majority of them don't really want to use them. One reason being, that if you threaten a burglar with an illegal gun, you risk a hefty sentence for possession, and the burglar gets away with having to bear witness. Similar reason being, if you shoot a burglar with a legal weapon, you go through years of trials, and you can still end up in prison, for 'excessive defence not appropriate to the threat'. This is a well known, widely ridiculed law in Poland, lot's of examples.

There was a series of robberies of taxi-drivers, sometimes ending with murders. So they allowed the taxi drivers to keep gas-pistols (!) in the cab, but there was a regulation, that yes, you can defend yourself, only the means used must not be more dangerous than what the attacker uses. He got a knife, you can use a sharp implement. He got a baseball bat, you can use a wrench, and so on. He mugs or strangles you with bare hands, you can not use a tool, regardless of body size comparison. He strangles you with a string from behind, hmm... And, in general, by the nature of the location you wouldn't use a gas-pistol, of course..


Everyday necessity not exactly, I'd agree. If you can put up with being mugged at your own door for money, or with watching how a laughing car thief breaks in your car and happily drives away. That's what the quoted video says about. Nobody cares how many crimes are being stopped by the sheer presence of a gun.

History / Poles in the Crusades to the Holy Land [75]


As far as I remember it was something like calling in sick. Leszek wrote to the Pope that his medicus prescribed him beer for some ailment, and since this medicine doesn't travel well and is hard to come by in Jerusalem, then sorry Your Holiness, looks like God's Will indeed...

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


That was my intent, AJ :)


Yeah, cleaning toilets and picking strawberries 12 hours a day. For good money, in the situation.

Just yesterday I stumbled accidentally on the info that 37% of Poles live below the poverty line. This is true 'in a way', the way being that Western standards are being applied to Eastern reality. What in Poland is 'struggling along', in the West is 'utter poverty'. Those people will not risk imprisonment just to put more, or better, meat on their tables, or to get plasma instead of an old dad's TV.

It's been checked in practice, and I refer to the ridiculously easy access to firearms while our best-friends-in-the-world were leaving for home. You could get anything, starting with a sh1tty police handgun, through vintage Parabellum and up to AK47, all with with ammo, on your local market, for a surprisingly moderate price. Without dodgy contacts, all you needed was to look a sufficiently 'decent bloke', and to hint on a bit more serious interest in 'proper stuff'. People who had enough money to eat dumplings and cabbage everyday could easily afford it - yet they didn't. Those who had some cash to waste, and liked the idea, did it just for the sake of it, and then kept their guns cunningly hidden.

There was a meaningful increase in gun crime at this time, easy to predict. From zero to something. Surprisingly again, this something was like non-existent, actually. Except for the sudden rise of organised crime, but even they didn't use firearms much, while it was sufficient to smash the landlords windows now and then, or burn the door. Not too much, he was supposed to run the business and pay for protection, not to go bust overnight.

And the organised crime was due to corrupt police, rather, than anything else. The perfect example was in Katowice, where nearly all the small businesses had to pay racket money until a team of 'paratroopers' were sent from Warsaw and finished the grand mafia off in months. They didn't care much for drug dealing, different business, so the very centre of the city was a desert place after 10pm still, ordinary folks scurrying through now and then in haste to avoid half-sane potheads with dirty syringes in hand.

As you noticed yourself, people prefer to do ****** jobs than to rob tills in local shops. May seem strange, but it's true. And seems there's no tradition of gun-crime in Poland, it's, like, impractical. It's much more reasonable to hit the mark with a gas-pipe from behind and walk away with a wallet, than to risk noise and commotion with a gun. Small profit, good turnover, and you can live from balanga to balanga.

Long post, sorry, but it like wrote itself.

History / Poles in the Crusades to the Holy Land [75]


There are historical documents to back it up.

I never heard about any Poles fighting in the Holy Land. Like, not our business.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


The graph 'More Guns, Less Murder' has axi... axs... damn that language... axes swapped.

Axes?? Whatever, X and Y.

Thanks for the link, now let's read it...

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Roughly, although I'd not condemn too severely those who just repeat it. Took me a day to start thinking, and it was only because I am against the bans and trying to find weaknesses in apparently dangerous arguments. And because f_stop repeated it, of course :)

As with many such issues, people first make their choice and then try to rationalise it, so what we get is mostly noise.

Heh, first make choice, then make noise. I made an aphorism!! :)

Rhyme not perfect... well, back to mopping.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


But why? Not to wage war, AJ, I am just curious. And I can safely presume that I know Polish mentality better than you.


It is too simplistic, but even if you wanted to draw conclusions from this simplistic approach, this graph is useless, come to think of it. It compares percentage of armed households with deaths per capita, while a meaningful comparison would be that of percentage of people with guns at hand to death per head. Portugal has an average household of 2.9 people, Sweden of 2.0, and these two countries are very close on the graph. On average, 50% more people in Portugal can shoot a gun at will, yet proportion of mortality is almost the same, amazingly - and actually this conclusion has no value either, as we do not know whether it's more likely for the small families to have guns, or vice versa, or maybe there's no relation at all, so we can safely use the average household size.

What we need to draw conclusions from this simplistic approach is what I said, percentage of people exposed to percentage of deaths. Nothing like that can be squeezed out from this graph. Seems to me it's just a convenient statistical artefact, a nice accidental linear co-relation of something and something. Thus the very fact that people are using it as an argument means that truth is not what they want to promote.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


I did. In the UK. There's no Constitution here...


Well, kill'em. Or like'm.

I use it to make holes in a cardboard target, indoors. Legally, I can't take it out. Toys that look like firearms are illegal in public. Even plastic imitations, true boys' toys.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Despite the constitution saying nothing about it. But you're right, of course, about the ease of banning guns in Poland. And it is true, that few people really need them now. Like, say, chainsaws. Or strong acids. Or piano strings. Or baseball bats (illegal, actually). Or padlocks on a chain. Funny thing, how many completely legal items can become deadly weapons in hands with purpose. And then you can call 999. If you can.


You know, I was a fan of American films, as many Poles in those times. And I watched some US stupid horrors too, sweet blondie running from a werewolf, and, God is great, there's a car left in the woods, and she gets into it, and turns the... fkn hell!! there's no key!!!

Now that's a shocker, for an American. In Poland, it's 'stupid blondie'. What does it say about the crime level, this indirect information?

I lived in a relatively quiet place. One autumn the postman didn't show up, they found him half a year later, after the spring thaw washed out a thin layer of dirt. You'd think that the local newspaper would mention it, a short note at least. It didn't.