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Коты умеют считать и понимают человеческую речь

Те, кому приходилось держать дома кота, могли убедиться, что это на удивление умное животное, которое со временем приобретает навыки, заставляющие восхищаться его сообразительностью и наблюдательностью. Первое, что наверняка бросится в глаза - это обнаружение котом того факта, что даваемый ему корм извлекается из холодильника. Через некоторое время голодный кот уже не будет следовать за хозяином, мяукать и тереться о его ноги, а предпочтет просто подходить к холодильнику, задирать голову и смотреть на него, давая тем самым понять, что пришло время извлечь из него что-нибудь съедобное.

Если кот живет в многоэтажном доме без лифта и часто поднимается вместе с хозяином по лестнице, обычно забегая на один пролет вперед, то он довольно быстро запомнит, сколько этажей надо пройти, чтобы достичь своего, и будет безошибочно определять дверь хозяйской квартиры. Вот почему, возвращаясь рано утром с прогулки, кот будет сам отсчитывать пролеты и останавливаться именно на том этаже, где живет.

Ошибки при этом он, правда, делает, но нечасто, - например, может остановиться на один этаж раньше, однако мяукать начнет именно у той двери, которая расположена на площадке точно так же. Известен случай, когда сделавшему такую ошибку коту хозяйка "неправильной" квартиры сказала: "Тебе не сюда, тебе надо выше", - после чего он, посмотрев на нее, развернулся и побежал вверх на свой этаж. Примечательно, что этот кот ошибался редко и только в сторону недочета, а лишний этаж не проходил вверх ни разу.

Благодаря Интернету, куда любители домашних животных выкладывают множество видеороликов об их жизни, стало известно, что умением считать удивительные способности котов не ограничиваются. Создается устойчивое впечатление, что они прекрасно понимают то, что говорят им хозяева, и даже отвечают им на своем кошачьем языке, смысл которого легко понять из той обстановки, в которой происходит этот удивительный диалог, и преобладающих в нем интонаций. Достаточно посмотреть короткий ролик про кота Никифора, где хозяйка укоряет его за то, что он разлегся прямо на кухонной плите. По всей видимости, ее поверхность нагревалась горевшими конфорками, что превращало ее в самую уютную кровать на свете, и кот явно не хотел покидать это удобное лежбище.

Свое нежелание подчиняться просьбам хозяйки он выражал практически словесно, то есть произнося некие короткие фразы, смысл которых, как это ни странно звучит, был предельно ясен: "Не хочу уходить и не уйду". Этот очень необычный диалог длился около минуты, и в конечном итоге кот Никифор нехотя встал и спрыгнул с плиты. Надо заметить, что сделал он это безо всякого физического принуждения и тем более без демонстрации ему признаков нависшего наказания в виде веника или полотенца. Нет, он спрыгнул именно потому, что в итоге внял словесным требованиям хозяйки уйти с плиты.

О том, что коты отлично понимают людскую речь, некоторые хозяева могли догадаться, например, по тому, как быстро и точно питомцы исполняют их команды. Если коту дать рыбу, которая будет положена на поставленную на пол тарелку, и в процессе поедания рыба сместится на линолеум, угрожая испачкать пол вокруг, достаточно громко скомандовать: "На тарелку!", - и кот послушно перетащит рыбу в посуду. Мало того, - коты сами могут пытаться что-то сообщить с помощью интонированного мяуканья.

Например, если гуляющая по улице кошка захочет заскочить на колени к сидящему на скамейке незнакомому ей человеку, то, приблизившись, она выразительно и коротко мяукнет, всем своим видом давая понять, что ожидает разрешения. Остается приветливо похлопать по ноге, и общительная кошка моментально запрыгнет на колени, ласково урча. Изредка гладя ее, так можно просидеть довольно долго, и животное даже задремает, однако, чтобы прервать этот сеанс общения, достаточно легко похлопать кошку по боку со словами "пора идти", и она, прекрасно поняв, что от нее требуется, соскочит на землю.

Источник: раздел Домашние питомцы Сборника газет “Движущая мысль“

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Cats are able to count and understand human speech

Those who had a cat as a pet, could make sure that it is a surprisingly clever animal, which eventually acquires skills, making admire its wit and observation capabilities. The first thing that probably makes wonder is a detection by a cat of the fact that food which is given to him is taken out of the refrigerator. After a while, a hungry cat will no longer follow the owner, meowing and rubbing against his leg, and would prefer simply approach to the refrigerator, lift up its head and sit looking at it, thereby making it clear that the time has come to take something edible out of it. 

If the cat lives in an apartment building without an elevator and often goes up the stairs together with the owner, usually anticipating him a flight forward, it quickly remembers how many floors it has to pass in order to achieve one where it lives, and will accurately determine the door of the apartment. That is why, coming back home early in the morning from a walk, the cat itself will count spans and stop right on the floor, where it lives. 

Errors happen sometimes too, but infrequently - for example, a pet can stop one floor earlier, but starts to meow at the door, which is located at the site in the same way. Once in a case of such a mistake the hostess of the wrong flat said, "You should not be here, you have to go up!". Cat looked at her attentively, then turned away and ran up to the right floor. It is noteworthy that this cat was wrong rarely and only in the direction of shorting but not going up an extra floor ever once. 

Thanks to the Internet, where pet lovers put many movies with cats starring, it became known that amazing abilities of cats are not limited to counting floors. One gets the impression that they understand what the owners tell them, and even respond to them in cat's language, which is easy to understand from the environment in which this dialogue is going on, and intonations prevailing in it too. It is enough to watch the short video clip where the mistress reproaches cat Nikifor because it sprawled on the kitchen stove. Apparently, its surface was heated by burners that turned it into the best bed on Earth so no wonder that the cat did not want to leave this comfortable rookery. 

Its unwillingness to comply with the request of the hostess it expressed almost verbally, uttering some short phrases, which meaning, although it sounds strange, was very clear: "I do not want to leave and will not go away." This very unusual dialogue lasted about a minute, and eventually the cat Nikifor reluctantly got up and jumped off the kitchen stove. Surprisingly it did it without any physical coercion, and moreover without showing it some signs of impending punishment in the form of a broom or towel. It jumped off just because eventually heeded mistress` verbal requirements to leave the stove. 

The fact that cats perfectly understand human speech, some owners might have guessed for example through the way how quickly and accurately cats execute the commands. For example, if a cat has to eat some fish, which is put on a plate standing on the floor, and in the process of eating fish will move away on linoleum, threatening to stain the floor around, it is enough to command: "Back to plate!" - and the cat obediently moves together with the fish on a plate. 

But that`s not all - the cats themselves are trying to tell something to man via intone meow. For example, if a cat walking in the street wants to jump on the laps of a man sitting on a bench, then, approaching, cat tells meow, its whole manner implying that it awaits for permission. So it`s enough to pat friendly on the leg, and sociable cat instantly jumps up to knees, humming softly. You can sit in such a way for a long time, and the animal may even doze off, but to interrupt the communication session it is enough to pat it on the side telling "It`s time to go", and perfectly understanding what was required of it, cat comes off at the ground. 

First posted at Home Pets section of Media Collection “Driving Idea”

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It's time to play chess (why the current situation in the post-Soviet economy resembles the Chernobyl accident)

December 2018

People who caught up with the spring events of 1986 in the Soviet Union remember very well the strange atmosphere of the April days, when the Voice of America radio station had long told in detail about the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the official Soviet media were either stubbornly silent about what had happened, or had being informing about it very poorly, either they didn`t even know nothing or even didn`t want to hear, hastily making up pages of May Day issues with reports about the next labor victories in the fields, poultry and fishing farms, foundry and assembly plants, design bureaus and research institutes.

There was tension in the air, generated by uncertainty, a vague awareness of the great magnitude of the impending consequences of the accident and, it seems, the universal significance of what had happened somewhere in the depths of the Kiev region. After some time, the Soviet press and television nevertheless began, as if reluctantly, to squeeze out in small portions messages telling that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was being tested, and during that test, the planned reactor operation was disrupted, which led to the release of radiation.

Since then, more than three decades have passed, during which widely reported by the press major accidents at the Fukushima and at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam took place. However, even against their background, the perception of the Chernobyl catastrophe, which was nothing else than a "dirty" nuclear explosion, the most tangible consequence of which was radioactive contamination, did not change in any way either in strength or in the degree of drama.

It was the conspiracy of silence imposed immediately after the accident upon Soviet newspapers and television that made events at the Chernobyl NPP which were well understood even to the schoolchildren studying the civil defense terrible and mysterious, thus elevating them to the level of myth and legend, which are passed on from person to person but do not reach the consciousness of the inhabitant through the channels of official propaganda. Perhaps that is why folklore was filled with stories about mutants and scary monsters who inhabited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, so gullible and avid on sensations adventurers rushed towards the station to meet and consider all these "mutants".

Something similar can be observed today in the sphere of economics in the former USSR: over a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its former economy generally turned into ruins, but this fact is hardly covered in any way by either television or newspapers. True, they now have a most powerful competitor in the form of the Internet, which has long been filled with information about how unemployment and poverty are spreading in some former Soviet republics. It is worth watching several channels in YouTube (Новости СВЕРХДЕРЖАВЫ, БАРМАЛЕЙКА, Суть времени, Sasha Sotnik , Александр Балу, Д’ Робот Скрепоносный Бузотёр, Волхонский ЛАЙВ) or read the channels in Yandex Zen (Тезис, Uchaev blog, Буркина Фасо ЖЖ, Ермаков Игорь, Общество и политика, Академика, PRO РОССИЮ), as the picture of reality begins to coincide with this very reality.

Shabby housing, deceived shareholders in shared construction, low pensions and salaries, the inability to find work in a speciality or any kind of work at all, the need to save on food and clothing, the huge debt load of the broad masses of the population, high prices for utilities that eat up the lion`s share of pensions and wages, the need to work 10-14 hours a day is what the residents of once-prosperous or non-distressed cities and regions today say about in their blogs and comments.

But this is also not a complete list of social problems brought by the current economic era, which can be called "post-privatization devastation". Recently there were reports that in 2019 in Russia a mortgage crisis could begin, which would lead to a massive eviction of debtors from unpaid apartments and the further placement of their former housing for sale. In this regard, it would not be superfluous to recall that one of the reasons for the sensational global financial crisis of 2007-2008 was the fact that recipients of American housing mortgage loans from the subprime category began to make overdue loan payments and defaults, which ultimately forced them to leave houses not bought from banks.

That same mortgage crisis of a decade ago led to the ruin of a number of companies, including the Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. As a result, the American authorities had to develop the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also called the Paulson Plan, which provided for the allocation of loans to banks in the amount of seven hundred billion dollars and a number of other health measures.

It is important to take into account that these troubles have fallen on an economically stable America, which, due to its financial status, has considerable freedom of action for dangerous monetary experiments. But where the housing mortgage crisis in Russia, which has long been imposed by various kinds of sanctions, will lead to, so far it remains only to guess.

However, it is already possible to draw the simplest conclusion that, for bank balance sheets, mass defaults on mortgages, figuratively speaking, will not be a positive factor. Accordingly, for those debtors forced to urgently take out the property and furniture from unpaid apartments, the troubles of finding an apartment for rent will not be a means of improving living conditions. Banks will begin to feel the shortage of money, and their bankrupt customers will be faced with a shortage of square meters and grounds for confidence in the future. In fact, the simplified system of approving mortgage loans laid the same time bomb under the economy of the Russian Federation, which the US financial institutions laid out for the US economy on the eve of 2007, handing out mortgage loans left and right.

These phenomena make it possible to call a considerable part of the former Soviet social and cultural space as a territory of an emergency economic situation, which is characterized by the absence of many social institutions that were common in the Soviet Union. There is no former mass distribution of apartments from the housing funds of enterprises, as there are not many of those enterprises still exist. There is no former large-scale agricultural production, as there are not many villages on the basis of which it functioned.

There is also no modern free health care, an ideology of economic development and scientific progress. The system of higher education is in many ways fragments of the Soviet higher education, which almost do not teach and do not give students the profession in demand, while deeply immersed in formalism, useless paperwork and creating visibility of activity. This is not at all the goal that was drawn in the minds of people who wanted to leave in the past the Soviet ineffective socialist economy.

Like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, created to give light and warmth, but ultimately pushed off the rails the well-established life of many people, the territory of economic emergency appeared as a result of good intentions to do away with the administrative-command system and entrust the care of the further development of the economy to the invisible hand of the market. In order to return life on this territory to normal, it is necessary to develop its Paulson Plan on emergency economic stabilization.

The struggle of two approaches to managing economy, leading to its revival and decline, can be thus called a struggle of emergency economic stabilization with an emergency economic situation, that is EES against EES (sounds like "chess" in Russian), which, given the English word "chess", can be considered one of the tensest chess games of the near future. Judging by the number of recent rallies against pension reform, it has already struck an hour to start this fight, and the opening combinations have already been played.

First posted on Media collection “Driving Idea“ at http://www.drivingidea.ru/WOTM/WOTM-5.html

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Exit without entrance

Written in 2017

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1997, I visited London as a tourist. It must be admitted that from the very first minutes of acquaintance with this country it produced the impression of a very different world - not how England had been imagined for fifteen years spent studying its language, literature, and culture first in school, and then in two institutes. From the Soviet and post-Soviet far away, UK seemed to be such an illustration to the Dickens` books - a country frozen in self-contemplation, constantly rethinking its history, following which English became the main and only universally recognized international language. However, having taught the whole world to speak their own language, the English were not in a hurry to adopt from the world rules almost universally acting in it. That's why the first cultural shock for a tourist coming from Moscow was the fact that the bus that transported the group from Heathrow Airport to London suddenly went on the left side of the road.

This test was not for the faint-hearted since on the first kilometers it seemed that the luxury bus that had gone "against all rules" would now crash if not into an oncoming car, then into some bump. Surprisingly, the movement on the left side did not lead then to any accidents and troubles, and soon a group of Russian tourists with curiosity examined the houses and subway stations which were crawling outside the windows. All this architecture was so different from the usual Moscow building that it almost seemed as if it was nothing more than a theatrical scenery, and soon, when they finally run out, a "real world" will open around with the usual huge houses and wide streets. However, this expectation was not to come true, and soon the tourists, having gone to their hotels, have been already filling in the arrival cards on the couches at the reception desks.

The next, even more, powerful than the left-hand traffic, a shock, was the first walk along central London street. The plane came there in the middle of the day, and so the working afternoon was at its height, when white clerks sat in their offices, immersed in computers and documents. That's why there was a strong feeling that the plane was off course and instead of London brought everyone to some kind of Arab or Asian country. All the streets were filled with people of absolutely non-European origin and not even in European dress. A few passers-by, wrapped in something like white sheets, proudly carried the real turbans on their heads. As well as it is necessary to Indians, they were silent and looked somewhere ahead, and most likely not on street, but somewhere to meditative eternity. Nearby, groups of noisy, low men, reminiscent of Pakistanis or Afghans, scurried about. They roughly discussed something, and it can not be said that their speech was like English. Arabs, Indians, Asians, often dressed in their national dress and speaking their native languages - that's who made up the majority of passers-by in the Paddington station area at the very beginning of July 1997. At the same time, there were so many of them on the streets that even the white-faced passers-by appeared in the crowd almost like tourists, just as decided to visit this mysterious eastern country.

The very next day, this observation was reinforced by a young Arab who was distributing some flyers on the same patch. Trying to take from him one, I called the unbelievable surprise of the guy. It turned out that they were written in Arabic script, that is, they were originally intended only for Arabs, which, it is likely, he expected to meet on the street in large numbers. "You read?" - he asked me with a bewildered grimace, obviously not an Arab, and showed that the yellow leaflet was covered with mysterious wavy-curly letters. Naturally, I could not read them and refused to take the flyer. Only in the evening after the working shift in the central streets appeared "white", as they would be called in America, unexpectedly turned out to be in London a separate ethnic group, and yet not the fact that the most numerous one. Wearing business suits, they were hurrying with their suitcases in their hands on the subway, to the shops, home or somewhere else - that is, they were clearly distinguished by their vanity and disunity from the not in a hurry at all Hindus and the Pakistanis who spoke loudly in large groups.

Already at that time, a feeling arose that it were visitors from far-away southern countries who were dark-skinned passers-by in exotic outfits who made up the majority in this country, for some reason considered European and soaked with European culture. It turned out that in the large Garfunkel`s Restaurant on the corner near Paddington at the checkout near the scales where it was necessary to set up a plate with dishes gathered together on a buffet, an Asian woman stood, for some reason conditionally nicknamed by me as "Vietnamese", although she could be a Chinese woman, and a Korean, and a Mongolian, and the daughter of any other Asian country. Alive, mobile, greedy and at the same time cheerful, she never missed the opportunity to poke fun at the client, she did not resemble the cold and unsociable Englishwomen.

"You took everything!", she exclaimed with surprise and discontent, when on the second day of staying in this strange city I, having already studied the way of service in her restaurant, filled the plate with herring, salads, meat, crabs, and potatoes. In response to my objection that everything was done according to the rules of this restaurant, the little "Vietnamese" laughed and, remembering my visit the previous day, asked "Large Sprunklist?" - referring to the bank of fizzy drink, by color and taste reminiscent of Fanta. It was I who chose it on the previous visit, not finding in the list of the proposed beverages one or almost none of the names familiar to the European.

"Vietnamese" fed tasty, but a little expensive, stripping for dinner from eight to ten pounds, so I did not go to her restaurant anymore, but looked in a small cozy place nearby, just as suggested to the guest himself to fill the plate with the dishes of the buffet to your taste and then pay for the whole portion. Here above all, a swarthy middle-aged Indian man reigned, who, despite a serious and even gloomy look, took for a full plate of meat and some completely unfamiliar dishes just over two pounds. His food was cheap, tasty, but ruthlessly spicy, and only sitting down at the table I found out that the red pepper was generously sprinkled over meatballs, cutlets, and something like potatoes, and in general over everything I collected there in large quantities. After sitting in his small dining room for about two hours and eating everything, I involuntarily plunged in his silent society into a state resembling meditation, clearly felt in the cramped atmosphere of the hall, with almost total absence of other visitors, and now the world outside the windows seemed not to be some cheerful Vietnamese Holiday, but stream of Indian life focused on something. Thanking him for a delicious dinner and going out "to London," for a long time I felt like a yogi sitting on a lotus and staring at one point.

That is why a long time ago this country, in the center of the capital of which it was possible to visit first one Asian world, and then another one next to it, had had already little in common with Europe. Not surprisingly, in mid-March 2017, almost twenty years after that trip, the upper house of the British Parliament authorized the Prime Minister to begin withdrawing from the European Union. The bill was approved almost with a threefold preponderance of votes - 274 against 118. The Lords did not introduce amendments rejected by the House of Commons. The government opposed the amendments, and the chance of obtaining their approval was negligible. By and large, Great Britain was not in Europe, as it had been living for too long in its isolated island cultural and historical environment.

The fact that in London hotel they ask in the morning what kind of breakfast to serve - British or Continental - best of all referendums and bureaucratic decisions suggests that England has never felt like part of the "continent," that is, Europe, and preferred to live in its own way. It is unlikely that in its streets there will be fewer dark-skinned visitors - it has been colonizing the rest of the world for too long and let immigrants from all over the world come to British territory, so it is hard to believe that one of the reasons for parting with the EU is fatigue from labor and other migrants. England leaves the EU because it is foreign to it, and it is alien to it, so it is difficult physically, culturally and mentally to this geographically isolated state with strong island thinking to share political and economic space with EU.

Posted first on Media collection “Driving Idea“ at http://www.drivingidea.ru/GP/GP-2.html

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Technology - for the village (elements of modernity and paintings from life in the 1980s and '90s)

Young people living in big cities, from birth, got used to the constantly surrounding noise of cars, snowplows, the rustle of trolleybuses and the screeching of trams. Not surprisingly, public and personal transport is perceived by "metropolitan dandies" as an integral part of life. All the more strange are for them the empty streets of deaf district centers and half-forgotten villages, where, at best, once a day, the still alive Zaporozhets will rattle, or a small tractor, will hobble. In such places, it seems that people do not need equipment at all and it is exclusively a luxury item.

Meanwhile, the provincials in their own way love wheeled vehicles - their preferences are just biased in favor of the practical application of the wonders of technology. To get acquainted with the way of thinking of the peasant and his attitude to the self-propelled constructions will be useful to all narcissistic townspeople who consider the car to be the invincible "king of the highway".

Indeed, rural residents almost always use technical aids on the farm. Let they be the simplest, smallest and cheapest, even in a single copy - but you will find some two-wheeled tractor in the shed of the old peasant. He will squeeze out all the juices from this child of progress. Then he will take it to the regional center and at a discount for veterans of labor will repair in a pompous car-care center, where he bought his amazing for the city dweller unit five years ago. The lifetime of this micro super tractor has already long expired, but the gallant grandfather will again go to the district center and order a familiar miller with whom he sat in school at one desk forty years ago, to cut out twenty-six new parts, and will pay for work with a bag of potatoes and two turkeys.

Rural teenagers in all take the example form the elders and therefore do not imagine life without a motorcycle. Its acquisition is just as an obligatory life-mark, as well as marriage. Particularly zealous motorcycle lovers buy themselves an old half-ruined "Jawa" by the age of 16, and, after killing half a year for repairs, with a wild crash and very busy appearance, they regularly travel all the streets of their native village. When the rural bikers get tired of simply scaring old women and disperse stupid chickens, they will repaint dirty-brown-crimson gasoline tank in a flashy white color and through the stencil will put on it a black skull. Having played tuning of the already terrible motorcycle by the age of 18, the gallant lad solemnly sells his war horse to another impudent youth who is eager to make a strong impression on the girl living next door. In the army, the former biker will tell his fellow soldiers for a long time how gallantly he drove through the village, and to the boring real facts, he will add a few freshly invented romantic episodes, into which he himself will willingly believe.

Of course, a motorcycle in the village is always needed, like a motor cultivator. But neither in the district center got accustomed to it. The first is too cumbersome and powerful, and the second does not justify the money spent on it. Residents of small towns always and everywhere prefer to use mopeds. There is nothing better than this chattering grasshopper to go to the sea, to the garden, for water or for fishing at the other end of the city. Quite small compared to a motorcycle moped enjoys equal success both with the elderly, and with adult men - and, of course, with adolescents.

Old people ride a moped mainly on fishing, tying to its frame all that can and cannot be: a shovel, fishing rods, oars. On the trunk "toilers of the sea" manage to put buckets and bags, and on their own back, they also carry a rubber boat in a large backpack.

Fathers of families use a moped more often to travel around the city. They can often be seen on the outskirts, with buzzing aspiring towards the winery farm, a tractor plant or a bus station. Using a moped only for movement, they do not take care of it at all and squeeze out all possible turns from their recently purchased "Carpathy". Sometimes the squealing of their cylinders even drowns out the growl of the "Volgas" rushing by and the chirrup of fussy "Zhiguli". It is not often necessary to repair a new moped, but the fathers try to eliminate rare breakages by their own forces.

Young people over twenty years of age use "Verkhovyna" only for chic. It is considered a special luxury for them to drive up a moped to the doors of the wrestling section, and after training to drive on it, shiny with fresh factory enamel, a friend to the house. Constantly imagining that sometime - very soon - "Verkhovyna" will grow into a second-hand "Zhigul", the guys are really very reluctant to part with their two-wheeled friend and, having bought a car, prefer to keep their favorite moped in the garage to the state of "falling apart".

Finally, the most reckless moped fans in the regional centers are the young people of school age. Happy boys, already satisfied with the fact of acquisition, they never get the desired wreck in the acting form. With grief in half fixing it with the help of craftsmen from the neighboring yard, urchins at the first signs of sparking sit down on the creaking junk and bravo go "to the sea" - that is, to a semi-wild beach. Of course, there can be no question of any brakes for such an antiquity that has risen from the dust. Approaching the goal of the journey, juvenile marginals simply pull out the spark plug from the motor to muffle it, and in front of the surprised resting people further brake together with soles of the shoes. All ingenious is simple, how can one not agree with this statement after such a spectacle?

Reference source: http://www.drivingidea.ru/MR/MR-9.html

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How to start your own agricultural business

Constantly rising prices for food can not help but lead to the idea of trying to stand "on the other side of the counter" and get at least a small part of the rapid flow of cash, which every day goes to the purses of food producers. It will not be so difficult to do how it may seem to a city dweller who judges on agriculture from television reports coming from collective farm fields. To get profit in this business and master its basics, it is not necessary to plant hundreds of hectares of vegetables or sunflower at once. To start a farmer's career, it's enough to put a box of earth on the window-sill and press some seeds into it.

The current economic situation in a blink of an eye turned recently abandoned and useless agriculture into the most popular business. It is difficult even to estimate approximately its prospects, since food is the most sought-after substance after air and water. Even the poorest people spend a lot of money on food, and during periods of aggravation of crisis phenomena, monthly spending on food becomes the main issue of concern to ordinary citizens, journalists, sociologists, party and state figures. That's why the idea that it would be nice to turn from a regular customer of food, spending almost all his revenues on it, into its permanent seller, sooner or later may come to a mind of any enterprising person. If he does not brush it off, but really starts to learn food production, then with sober calculation and far-sighted planning he will be able to direct to him some part of that daily stable flow of money that settles in the pockets of large, medium and small players in the food industry.

Perhaps the simplest way to start your journey into a grocery business is to cultivate radish, green onions and a tomato. You can start the process of obtaining an additional product without waiting for a warm season. It is enough to take a cardboard box, to cover it from the inside with plastic bags, to fill it with soil, and even clean sand for the radish, and plant seeds. For the reason that radish poorly survives after the transplantation, its entire vegetative cycle will have to be carried out in the same box, from which it should be taken out in a month and a half, washed, bundled and brought to the market or handed over to vegetable shopkeepers. The heads of green onions germinate and give usable shoots very quickly, so in a couple of weeks it will be necessary to cut off the green feather, also tie it in bundles and sell it. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the income received should be higher than the cost of radish seeds and onion heads used for planting, otherwise the business will be unprofitable.

Somewhat differently, the process of growing tomatoes is going on. From planting to obtaining red vegetables in this case, it takes about three months, with about a third of this time spent on obtaining seedlings. A warm and well-lit apartment is perfect for this purpose, so it remains to buy tomato seeds and put them in a box with an interval of about twenty centimeters. Little by little watering them every day, already in a week or so, you can wait for the appearance of young shoots. By the quality of their first two leaves, it is possible to predict with great certainty how viable and fertile the entire bush will be, so that sprouts with weak, curved, twisted leaves must be decisively removed. If it turns out that the shoots grow too close to each other, then they must be transplanted as soon as possible to increase the distance between them. Tomato seedlings are very sensitive to poor illumination, which will force the closely growing seedlings to compete for the light stream, pulling the stems up and delaying the development of their side shoots system.

When the young tomato seedlings get stronger, they can be transplanted into a hotbed, and in regions with a warm climate - directly to the open bed. It should be borne in mind that after transplantation, resulting in a change in soil and atmospheric conditions, seedlings may become ill, so the "pale appearance" of newly transplanted tomato seedlings should not cause panic. To facilitate the adaptation process, you need to water abundantly the seedlings immediately both after the transplantation, and every day for a week after it. In places with a harsh climate, heat-loving tomatoes need to be brought to the stage of fruit formation and ripening directly in greenhouses and hotbeds, where, by the way, because of the high humidity, the question of irrigation will not be too acute. In the southern regions, early tomatoes bear fruit well under the open sky at the end of June - the middle of July, but their cultivation can face such problems as drought and pest attack. And if the fight with the first one does not pose much difficulty, when there is a source of water near the garden bed, then with the second one it will be better just to come to terms. The insecticides used to repel insects that lay their larvae into young tomato flowers are expensive, and therefore the costs of them will easily absorb if not all the profit, then its lion's share. In addition, there is no guarantee that poisonous chemicals will not absorb into plant`s tissues and will not have a negative impact on both its life cycle and the nutritional quality of the vegetables.

Long-term experience of growing tomatoes on the open ground showed that the invasion of harmful insects can cause significant damage, but rarely ends with the complete destruction of the crop. At the same time whitefly butterfly for example shows high activity not every year, but usually once in five seasons, so you may not be afraid of too much damage due to her appearance. Drought is much more dangerous in terms of harm. A few days of watering delay in hot weather will make tomato bushes wilt and weaken, their flowers will dry out, and the vegetables already formed will stop developing normally.

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The economic results of 2016 year

In the background of not optimistic market news from China and Europe, the situation in America today is seen in rather bright colors. Trump administration has committed itself to supporting nuclear power plants and their preservation as part of the state's energy infrastructure. Perhaps this policy will help to generate electricity just to the extent that the US industry will need if Trump is able to return to his country factories from abroad and thus launch a new industrialization.

Chinese economy which is composed primarily of production and export definitely has grown in recent years and has created the middle class, which is considered to be the mainstay of a healthy state. There is reason to believe that its ranks will soon be replenished, as from provincial areas of the country young people flock in Beijing, ready to endure the hardships of city life and to live in the so-called Ant Tribes in order to eventually open their own business, gain financial independence and help with money relatives remaining in the villages and small towns. In this case, if future Chinese business sharks decide to spend their income not to improve living conditions and education, buy electronics and cars but to put it in the growth, the choice of investment instruments available will be very small. They can only buy stocks or real estate, with much risk of losing their money if financial bubble in these areas ever burst. The memories are still fresh about collapse happened in the Chinese stock market in July and August 2015, which by all logic should have happened inevitably given the fact this sector was overheated with investor`s money, but it seemed quite an unreal threat. Perhaps wanting to avoid the further development of the stock market bearish trend, the Chinese government began to put down the excitement of the short sellers, that is why the rule of automatic stop of all trading on stock exchanges in the country was introduced in the event when the shares drop by seven percent.

At the same time the incredible growth of the Chinese real estate market gave rise to a unique phenomenon in the history of people - the emergence of tens, and according to some estimates of hundreds of so-called ghost cities, built by office centers and residential skyscrapers, where no one works and lives. The fact that huge prices for apartments in cities may collapse at any moment to the ground not meeting effective demand, which is clearly not observed, is not hard to guess. It is also easy to predict that the development of China's economic recession caused by the crisis of export production model and freeze of big money in the uninhabited cities, will inevitably lead to the decline of the extractive industries in the countries that supply raw materials to China for its epic construction and industrial projects. And this dangerous trend threatening for example Australian economy has already been observed, which is why in the north of China empty and idle metallurgical plants can be seen, and former workers are doing odd jobs, which are not easy to find in these depressed regions.

Europe meets the 2017th year not at its best place, as today it is suffering not only from terrorist attacks, but also from the difficult situation in the PIIGS block consisting of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. After a number of saving measures taken by the European Union and the IMF, these countries have austerity, which is obviously not conducive to the growth of consumer demand there and did not find approval among the population. This situation is particularly difficult for Greeks, who eventually rejected restrictions imposed on spending and gave rise to a tendency of leaving the euro-zone. It has already affected the UK and could well spread to other countries, that eventually could lead the euro currency to be abolished. About the structural weakness of euro, fraught with its cancellation, the US hedge-fund giant John Paulson expressed his opinion long time ago. He earned really a lot in the crushing collapse of the US residential mortgage for which reason he got the nickname of "mortgage looter." Apparently, his subtle sense did not deceive with regard to the European currency, which looked very doubtful at the end of 2016 year.

REFERENCE SOURCE: http://www.drivingidea.ru/WOTM/WOTM-1.html