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Posts by jon357  

Joined: 15 Mar 2012 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 18 hrs ago
Threads: Total: 75 / Live: 24 / Archived: 51
Posts: Total: 25145 / Live: 15100 / Archived: 10045 		From: Somewhere around Barstow
Speaks Polish?: Not with my mouth full

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jon357   
23 Apr 2012
Food / Name of this particular Polish sausage [32]

n I remembered that Polish sausage and English sausage aren't exactly the same. Is there a type of sausage I could buy in Poland which would be good for this?

Not exactly, but it works with kielbasa biala better than any other.
jon357   
22 Apr 2012
Travel / Best place to exchange money in Poland? [98]

I'm actually on a ship travelling between between the Gulf of Mexico and the Ekofisk oil field at the moment (currently sort of between Greenland and Scotland) but I'll be back in Warsaw in a couple of weeks. The rate at the one I use is usually a little better than most others. The best advice is to avoid ones in touristy locations and shopping centres (especially the one in Zloty Taras). The 24 hour one on ul. Krucza isn't usually bad.
jon357   
22 Apr 2012
Travel / Best place to exchange money in Poland? [98]

Zielona Gora

Have a wander round the centre of Zielona Gora - there are certainly kantors there. They all have a table of the exchange rates they offer. 'Kup' means 'buy' (that's the column with the number of zloty you'd get per pound) 'Sprzedaż' means 'sell' (that's the rate if you change zloty to pounds). British pounds are usually listed on the table as 'GBP'.

It's worth checking the bans (who often have a similar table on display). their rates aren't usually as good, but from time to time they can be.
jon357   
22 Apr 2012
Travel / Best place to exchange money in Poland? [98]

The kantor is usually the best bet. Always better than in the UK and at cash machines. If you're going to Warsaw, PM me - I can recommend one that always has a very good rate for sterling - it's tucked away a bit, so you'd need directions to find it.
jon357   
17 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

You were invited to adduce proof to back up your flawed proposition and you failed to do so.

On the contrary.

your position

rebu

And more of the same.

I don't mean to be critical, but you have been outsmarted and have lost the argument.

Very far from that. Nobility is nobility - the majority of the szlachta were not. They didn't fit the socio-economic model, they were unable to sustain themselves as a privileged group, and their numbers were too large even to be a viable elite.

I notice that you're trolling has taken a different turn from usual - this time you're trying to emulate the pompous language of Dessie etc.

It doesn't make your point stronger - it just dresses it up differently.

Czerwinski

Out of interest, where does Dzierzynski come from. The wikipedia entry on Feliks Dzierzynski uses the phrase 'purportedly polish szlachta'.
jon357   
17 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that circumcision - a barbaric practice if ever there was one prevents HIV transmission on medical grounds.

And by the way, yes - it can only survive within a very precise range of pH.

The study of HIV infection (conducted in Kenya) that is sometimes used by pro-circumcision isn't actually as positive as it seems:

...absolute risk reduction, during the two years of the study, of around 1.3%. Participants who were circumcised suffered a complication rate of up to 3% with complications including erectile dysfunction. Whether those who were circumcised will remain at lower risk during their remaining lives is purely speculative.

jon357   
17 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

In order to survive it needs a host culture with a high temperature and very precise pH levels. If the circumstances are right, it survives for a long time - if they are not it dies in less than a minute.

It certainly doesn't live under a foreskin!
jon357   
17 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

There are valid medical factors, IMO. Without the foreskin, it is easier to wash that body part, or, even without washing, the virus is more exposed to the environment and "dies" more quickly. If proper hygiene is maintained, however, both these mechanisms are moot.

It dies very quickly once it's outside the body, and paradoxically (anyone squeamish should look away now) an unwashed one is less likely to be an environment where the virus could survive due to the properties of what one would wash away.

I strongly suspect there are other reasons for any correlation in HIV prevalence and circumcision.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
News / Polish Silesian Autonomy movement [67]

Personally I'm in favour of autonomy

The chance of a Special Economic Zone on the model of Schleswig Holstein could bring huge benefits. The issue of that zone being administered from Berlin would set them off arguing for years.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

I'm sorry, but it's not. Socio-economic standing is a corrollary to the practical trappings of nobility, not the definitive test. I'm sure that in England (and indeed elsewhere), there are nobles who live in penury. This doesn't make them any less noble.

It's a prerequisite - without the trappings, without the money, the status goes before the generation is out. Several times in history people have declined membership of the nobility because they felt they didn't have enough assets to guarantee that noble status is maintained throughout the generations. Somebody with a pretty coat of arms on their lavatory wall who works in the Town Hall isn't noble - they're just descended from noblemen.

All the Rights,none of the responsibilities,so,no,not Nobles just people who may or may not at one time have had a rich ancestor.

As usual, you've cut straight to the heart of the matter. They may have described themselves a 'working', 'landless', 'own-land-working', or degraded nobles, but in harsh reality, only the adjective is accurate - the noun is a mistranslation.

dietine deputies

Now you're getting closer....

. It is up to you to prove they were/are not nobles, and no, this is not a Russell's teapot type request.
Again, just because you say it is, doesn't make it so, and indeed, you are stepping into the realms of petition principii.

Proven lomg ago, and petition principii hardly fits!

It is fallacious to try to prove an argument as to the quality or otherwise of the subject based on hindsight. Be wary too of the fallacy of circular cause and consequence, vis a vis your reference to anarchy

That's pure nonsense, and you know it. The First Republic ended in disaster - you can be an apologist for it; you can talk about the avarice of neighbouring states, you can blame geopolitics, you can even look for weaknesses in the behaviour of Stanislaw August - but you can never avoid the incontrovertible fact that the First Republic had long ceased to function effectively as a state.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

They were nobility - res ipsa loquitur.

They also had structure and responsibilities, though these principles/concepts, or lack thereof, do not necessarily serve as the litmus test for what is or isn't noble

No - the litmus test if anything is socioeconomic. Distressed gentlefolk are not nobility, and most of the Freemen were not even that.

equal legal rights

As have Freemen.

politically and legally active

To get more than a fraction of them to the Election Field would have been a logistical impossibility, so it is disingenuous in the least to describe more than a tiny number as politically or legally active.

Be wary of presentism and hindsight.

Hindsight is all we have - and the First Republic ended in disaster.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

Actually, it is derived from Latin/French.

As is English in part.

szlachta were nobles.

No. They were without the structure and the responsibility that go with nobility, and their rights and responsibilities were analogous to Freemen in England. Whether they were or were not descended from nobility, by the Eighteenth Century socio-economically only a portion of them could aspire to gentility, much less nobility. If a genuine nobility emerged, it was no comprised no more than a fraction of the Freemen.

he only failing of the Polish body politic was not legislating contingency protocols for what was to happen if the Liberum Veto was enacted, and such enaction hamstrung the passing of other legislation.

An understatement to say the least.

At the time, it was a stupendous victory

History proves that statement to be very, very wrong. Unless you're suggesting it was so victorious it was just too good to survive!
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

Are you seriously suggesting that circumcision is a prophylactic against Bubonic Plague?

All the men the Catholic church claims as Early Saints were circumcised.

Which is no reason we should be. They also wore sandals. Maybe that's why they didn't get plague.

dawanet.com/nonmuslim/intro/misc/circum1.html

-- This site alone, by a Doctor, lists more than 40 separate sources, case studies involving thousands of men in multiple countries.
You do realise that this is a religious site? Try this:

intactamerica.org/resources/decision

or this:

butterflybirth.com/10-reasons-not-to-circumcise/

or this:

alternet.org/health/135757
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

So what about Mary, the mother of Jesus?? Which one was it for her?? ...And what about Peter's mother, and all the other apostles the Catholic church claim as saints??

That doesn't actually mean they were good people or had any medical knowledge. We know almost nothing about them, nor did the people who declared them 'saints'..

I don't know if your village has access to high speed internet or not, or if you can do a Google search?

You might be surprised to know that much of Poland has probably got better internet speeds than wherever you live.

They cite multiple medical benefits of circumcision, including lower rates of cervical cancer for women in countries where circumcision is routinely practiced, and significantly lower rates of HIV among men who are circumcised.

Circumcision is not a protection against HIV and the cervical cancer statistic is spurious.

the medical benefits

There are none.

it is not because we don't eat kaszanka.

???
jon357   
14 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

Some Pole, back in the day, had the sense to ignore this barbaric act of mutilation, and quite rightly so.

It's never been standard practice in Europe, except within the Jewish community.

There's no health benefit whatsoever. Only drawbacks (if you'll excuse the pun). One is that the foreskin is attached to the glans until the kid is a certain age, and circumcision causes permanent damage - the result is a loss of sensation in the one part of the body where there's meant to be lots.
jon357   
14 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

There are and were different devices and shapes of democracy.

Yes. And few have ever been what they were on paper.

That would be only byproduct of social and political system and generally speaking not a rule.

No. The reverse is true. That is the very foundation of that system. Poland is not unique in that respect.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

By saying that IRP was an example of that, you can't possibly mean three centuries of IRP?

Of course not - it worked (if not perfectly) reasonably well for much of its life - the problems came in the last few decades when it effectively ceased to function as a viable regime.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

That seems to sum up my understanding of things. You could be a citizen who owned a tavern or a citizen in the senate,fair point,the majority in rome as in Poland had none of the rights of citizens where as in other feudal sociaties rights were extended further sooner.

I agree - this seems to be a pretty good explanation. One other (that was told to me a few years ago, by a Polish academic, was that the szlachta were those who considered themselves to be Polish. The peasantry didn't have that same identity - their sphere of experience was more regional.

For fellow non-polish PF members Józef Korzeniowski = Joseph Conrad.

I suspect most people know that, but thanks for mentioning it. He took the equality thing to an extreme - refusing a knighthood around the time that the Polish state was re-established for that very reason.

For your information, the political system of I RP was Noble Democracy, not Anarchy. My point about stereotypes went straight over your head...

What on paper is called a democracy is all to often something quite different in reality - the 1st Republic is a prima facie example of this.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

which comes from Latin and means a famous person. In later times a person of high social position in society

Indeed. In English (as in French) it implies responsibility. The British nobility had a responsibility to provide soldiers and to exercise the law in manorial courts.

He didn't mean that in every element they were the same as British nobility. The common platform was a high social standing in their respective societies.

You are right - they weren't the same. But can you say the Polish Freemen always had a high social standing? They certainly had a right to vote, however more that a fraction of them turning up to the Election Field would have been a logistical impossibility.

in the first volume of French encyclopedia under the letter "A", the longest article was about "anarchy" and almost whole was about Poland. As if anarchy was a distinctively Polish "thing". It's not all

It was however a unique system of government, whether good or bad. Unfortunately as with all forms of anarchy, the powerful (i.e. the true nobility) flourished at the expense of others.

the Liberum veto was not so stupid, as some believe. The usage of this legal mean since the mid-seventeenth century, especially in the eighteenth century, was of course detrimental to Poland. But the very notion of Liberum veto had a lot of sense and it worked well till second half of XVII c.

I'd certainly agrree with that, though as time went on it became less of a benefit and more of a problem.

But I'm not using this, not because of your conspiration theory, but simply because most of the articles there were written by morons to morons.

It isn't a conspiracy theory - the Polish Wikipedia Committee is a transparent organisation, registered at the KRS, acknowledged by the Wikipedia Foundation and transparent in their aims and membership - though I agree with your second point about wikipedia ;-)
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

In "God's Playground" he is using "nobility" as an exact word to describe szlachta.

I wasn't thinking of 'God's Playground' - but herein is the problem. 'Nobility' is an English word, not a Polish word. It implies noble behaviour and certain responsibilities. So does it's French cognate. Being szlachta had much more to do with Freedom than responsibility - as one poster said 'Golden Freedon'. This is why Freemen is a much better English translation.

wikipedia

Beware of any wikipedia entry (even English language ones) about Poland - they are written or edited by a group called the Polish Wikipedia Committee (I know several) with the specific purpose of promoting a Polonocentric point of view.