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Posts by Des Essientes  

Joined: 6 Feb 2010 / Male ♂
Warnings: 1 - O		 Last Post: 6 Jun 2015
Threads: 7
Posts: 1,288

Displayed posts: 1295 / page 8 of 44
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Des Essientes   
22 Apr 2011
Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]

Does the level of politeness in Poland vary from region to region? Here in the USA it does. A young lady attending my university was from the Midwest and upon arrival she greeted and introduced herself to the first people she met on the street and they were quite bewildered, and even contemptuous, because such amiability towards perfect strangers is completely alien to Santa Barbara, where scowls and furrowed brows are very much comme il faut.
Des Essientes   
22 Apr 2011
Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]

I was thinking about this characteristic of English language. Compared to German who's cousin it is, it is less open and clear.

English, perhaps due to the Danish and Norman conquests of England, has a larger vocabulary than most languages. An English writer, whose name escapes me, in order to demonstrate this linguistic abundance once described all the dishes offered at a huge banquet and then redescribed them all without repeating a single word. this plethora of words does indeed allow for alot of obfuscation.
Des Essientes   
22 Apr 2011
Life / Rules of Etiquette in Poland [22]

I once read in an advice handbook for travellers visiting Poland that one must be very careful when presenting bouqets of flowers because Poles are all still aware of the specific meanings attached to each type of flower, and thus, for example, giving red roses to the wife of one's business partner would be very bad because they express sexual intentions. Is this knowledge of floral signification still widespread in Poland?
Des Essientes   
22 Apr 2011
Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]

English, the idea is not to offend the person, as far as I understood the intention of that practice, right?

Yes I think that the frequent use of euphemisms ostensibly stems from the British aversion for confrontation. Although in many cases the English speaker doesn't really care if they offend but they keep to the practice because of cultural conditioning.

Idea behind that manner of speech is different. Here it is disrespectful to talk like that to the interlocutor, it is usually interpreted as a way to mislead or deceive.

Indeed as E.M. Forster wrote "Suspicion is the sin of the East and Hypocrisy is the sin of the West."
Des Essientes   
24 Apr 2011
Life / Polish authors, books & literature. [94]

Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski

Here is a link to an English translation of his book Beasts, Men and Gods [librivox.org/beasts-men-and-gods-by-ferdinand-ossendowski/] I highly recommend it both as an account of the tumultuous Red vs. White war in Siberia and Mongolia and also as a rich first-hand account of a Pole coming face to face with the magical shamanistic and Buddhistic East.
Des Essientes   
25 Apr 2011
Life / How could things have gone so wrong (Poland church dress code) [195]

i see more wrongs when young women attend church than i do with men.

You should have seen the "wrongs" taking Communion in my CCD class here in Southern California. I Remember the pants were so tight on this one Italian-American girl's bubble butt that my eyes nearly lept out of their sockets. The pious expression on her face was straight out of a Correggio. She saw no contradiction between her beauty and her devotion and neither should we.
Des Essientes   
26 Apr 2011
Polonia / What similarities would you say there are between Poles and Mexicans? [132]

Neither Mexicans nor Poles wear shorts to mass thats for sure. Mexican men, for the most part, don't wear shorts ever. And I think there are also other similarities: a proud equestrian tradition amongst both peoples, tumultous national histories, quixotic temperments, and Virgin centered churches. The last similarity, in my opinion, gives both peoples their own style in the arts, and in the art of living, which, although quite distinct, share a certain grace which is the boon of devotion to the eternal feminine.
Des Essientes   
26 Apr 2011
Polonia / What similarities would you say there are between Poles and Mexicans? [132]

You say Mexican men don't wear shorts ever? Are you sure about that?

Notice I added the qualifier "for the most part" and you link doesn't disprove my qualified assertion as the Mexicans wearing shorts in it are minors and not men.
Des Essientes   
29 Apr 2011
Life / Polish authors, books & literature. [94]

Tuyshegoun Lama

Yes this personage was especially fascinating. Ossendowski portays him as a sort of super-spy. I wonder if Beasts Men And Gods will be made into a film as Rawicz's book was. I don't know if there are any Kalmuk actors working in the film industry that would be up for the task, but it would be very interesting to see this Lama portrayed by one of the popular Asian action stars.

So much for the facts.

There is a biography of Baron Ungern Von Sternberg called The Bloody White Baron which portrays the Baron as a virulent Anti-Semite and so I was surprised by Ossendowski's claim that the Baron was well disposed towards Jews, but I ascribed it to his not having spent much time with Von Sternberg. Ossendowski surely wasn't trying to whitewash this bizzarre warlord in the rest of his account.

And thank you for the link to Don Croner's project, boletus. I am quite excited to learn more about the amazing super-Lama.
Des Essientes   
1 May 2011
News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]

Despite ostensible Christianity, Germans had always worshipped pagan gods and Hitler played on those sentiments.

I don't know about "always" but C.G. Jung, for example, saw Nazism as a resurgance of the older faith as his essay Wotan argues.
Des Essientes   
1 May 2011
Genealogy / Do you think all Slavs are white? [178]

In north of Poland people tend to be "whiter" and in the south darker. Same goes for Germany and France.

This is due to the curvature of the Earth which makes sunlight less dense the further north, and South, one goes from the Equator, and since whiteness is caused by the loss of melanine amongst peoples living in areas with diffuse UV B rays in order to synthesize vitamin D, it has had been noted that people in these areas whose diet is mostly fish, which is rich in vitamin D, do not lose their melanine, hence the dark complexion of Eskimos. Darker Slavs may be descended from fisherman.
Des Essientes   
1 May 2011
Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]

anyone know of any medieval movies of poland with eng subs like teutonic knights or the start of poland

There is a recent Polish movie with english subtitles on Youtube called "When The Sun Was A God" that fictionalizes the lives of the progenitors of those that would found the Piast dynasty and Poland.
Des Essientes   
2 May 2011
News / Polish people humiliated in the latest episode of Family Guy [51]

I haven't seen this episode of Family Guy but given the description of the "humiliation" I think the writer's intent was not Polonophobic, but rather he was mocking both Peter Griffith, who stupidly thinks being half Polish is objectionable, as well as Quagmire, who stupidly thinks so too. It ridicules New Englander yokles and their prejudices not Polish people.
Des Essientes   
3 May 2011
News / "Poland is flourishing" [62]

this is how Poland should be understand, as beautiful butterfly

If that crazy, blinking, freaky-looking thing is a beautiful butterfly then I don't understand Poland.
Des Essientes   
3 May 2011
History / Poles in the Napoleonic era [224]

Poles were also in the German Army during the First World War. There is a passage in Ernst Junger's Storm Of Steel in which a German officer asks for volunteers to storm a British machine gun emplacement, but no Germans volunteer. However one soldier, whom Junger describes as "a large lumbering Pole", does volunteer, and faced with his brave example some German soldiers are inspired, or perhaps shamed, and they volunteer to accompany the Pole. Ernst Junger being a reactionary German nationalist, who was no friend of Poland, would not have invented this story.
Des Essientes   
4 May 2011
Classifieds / D&D Group for Expats in Warsaw needs one more player... [69]

Although I am sure it doesn't approach the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, it appears that there is another role playing game out there called "Rifts" that was created by a Polish-American named Kevin Siembieda.

somethingawful.com/d/dungeons-and-dragons/wtf-dnd-rifts.php Can anyone one the forum confirm that Siembieda is a Polish surname? It looks like it to me.
Des Essientes   
5 May 2011
History / Poles in the Napoleonic era [224]

The Era is one of most wrote about eras

It was such a promising time. Napoleon was spreading the modern values of the Revolution even all the way to hoary Moscow! But the damned forces of reaction had to ruin it.
Des Essientes   
5 May 2011
Law / PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF SWASTIKA AND NAZI SYMBOLS in Krakow, Poland - Where I should report them? [56]

It is sad such an ancient symbol, which is known worldwide and was used by proto-proto people since at least the time basket weaving, is appropriated by scoundrels. Swastika is a Sanskrit word and the symbol is associated with several dieties in Hinduism most especially the graceful goddess Saraswati, hence the name Swastika. The Nazis didn't even call it a "Swastika" but rather a "Hakenkreuzen" or some such ugly word which translates into "crooked cross" in english. Calling its Nazi usage a Swastika is unfortunate and it should be called a "Nazi-Footed-X" in English from now on, or perhaps "Hitler's Anus".