Tag Archives: Ukraine

Countries With The Word The

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Countries With The Word The

“Man 1: Where are you from?  Man 2: From a place where we do not end sentences with prepositions.   Man 1: Okay, where are you from, jackass?” Unknown

I don’t remember all the rules of grammar.  I was doing fine until we started texting. My words are always bumping into each other. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they misspell a word (thnx) or leave out punctuation (me). If you are trying to learn something, like visiting all the countries you can, you should probably learn how to pronounce their names correctly.

In English, we use “the” if a country has a political title in its name, or if it refers to a group of islands. There are also countries, such as The Netherlands, which people commonly attach the definite article to even though it does not follow the two rules above. Just to make sure you are doing it right, here is the list.

The Bahamas

The  Falkland Islands

The Maldives

The Virgin islands

The Czech Republic

The Philippines

The United States

The Dominican Republic

The Netherlands

The United Arab Emirates.

The Ivory Coast

The Central African Republic

The United Kingdom

Since it has been in the news a lot lately, it is not “the Ukraine”.

 

Fly safe,

JAZ

Ten Countries That Drink The Most Alcohol

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Ten Countries That Drink The Most Alcohol.

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” Edgar Allan Poe

“Are you over 21 yet””why?“I wanted you to buy me some beer.’

Not all countries have this problem. According to the World Health Organization (where I get a lot of my information for these lists) here are the top ten countries to get drunk in. The best way to measure alcohol consumption anywhere in the world is through the per capita consumption of pure alcohol within a given country.

10. They start drinking young in Slovakia. The average age of tasting your first drink is around ten years old. Fifteen to eighteen year olds are drinking less and men drink more than women.

9. In the Czech Republic people take pride in their drinking and their beer. They have the highest consumption of beer per person in the world, bur for some reason rate low in drunkeness.

8. Hungary is a little more voracious about their drinking than many other countries. It is one of the leading countries in liver cirrhosis mortality in the world.

7. Unlike many countries with high levels of alcohol consumption, Andorra’s economy is fairly prosperous. Andorra is located between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains and has an exceptionally strong tourism industry. Wine is the drink of choice.

6. Drinking on various festive occasions is a large part of Ukrainian culture.Heavy alcohol consumption at any occasion in the Ukraine possible. Fourteen is the average age to try alcohol.

5. There is a much higher incidence of alcohol abuse in the villages and rural areas than in the larger cities of Romania. Most of the alcohol in these areas is of the homemade variety.

4. The high number of early deaths in Russia is mainly due to people drinking too much alcohol, particularly vodka. Causes of death include liver disease and alcohol poisoning. Many also die in accidents or after getting into fights.

3. In Lithuania, people use alcohol to feel better and relax. Most beer drinking is done at home. Lithuania scores highly in countries with binge drinking and ten per cent of the population have alcohol related disorders.

2. Citizens of Moldova are some of the world’s biggest drinkers. Moldovans drink nearly three times the global average. The country is poor and a major wine producer, with many people drinking cheap homemade wine, vodka and other spirits.

1.Belarusians are the heaviest drinkers in the world. Alcohol is a major reason of crime, suicide and health problems in Belarus. The idea of a healthy lifestyle remains unpopular especially for older generations and village dwellers. Alcohol remains a profitable business for the state and it has its own influential lobbyists who are actively a work promoting their interests.

Fly and drive safe,

JAZ

The Voice Heard Round The World

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The Voice Heard Round The World

‘Where words fail, music speaks.’ Hans Christian Andersen

I love to be able to travel when I am home. I watch The Voice. Reality TV and coffee are my vices. If you happen to live under a rock, it is a singing competition with celebrity judges. I love the Blind Auditions where the judges have to pick their team by hearing them. The audition is the only reality TV that we have left. You can’t fake an audition. You are actually watching someone vulnerable who’s life can be changed. I like seeing new talent emerge.

One night I was trying to catch up on some auditions, and I came across videos of blind auditions from The Voice Around The World. I was hooked. I’m obsessed with the Italian and the French judges. The Ukrainians and the Russians love heavy metal music and they like to make comments.  The Voice originated in Holland. I have no idea who any of these judges are. I watch the British version now as well. Here are my favorite auditions in no particular order. One is a battle round.

italy, France, Germany, Australia, Ukraine, UK, China, Russia, Holland, Poland.

Music always makes me feel that we are more the same than different.

Fly safe

JAZ

Countries That I Used To Know

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Countries That I Used To Know

‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. – Mahatma Gandhi

If you are looking for missing countries from the maps of your school days, here is a list of all the names. Countries have split apart, gotten back together, gained/lost independence or just didn’t like their names. How do we understand our place in the world if we don’t know about other places? Americans typically score very low in geographic literacy. What happens in the world is connected to where it happens in the world. We are supposed to be a “global village.” We should know the correct name of our neighbors and be interested in why they changed them.

. Used to Be                                                    Now

Burma                                                             Myanmar

Ceylon                                                            Sri Lanka

Czechoslovakia                                               Czech Republic, Slovakia

Rhodesia                                                         Zimbabwe

Southwest Africa                                              Namibia

French Somaliland                                           Djibouti

Tanganyika and Zanzibar                                 Tanzania

French Sudan                                                  Mali.

Basutoland                                                     Lesotho

Zaire                                                              Democratic Republic of Congo

The Gold Coast                                             Ghana

Dutch Guiana                                                Surinam

East Pakistan                                               Bangladesh

Western Samoa                                            Samoa

East Germany and West Germany               Germany

North Yemen and South Yemen                  Yemen

North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam           Viet Nam

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)       Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan

Yugoslavia                                                  Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia                                       and Montenegro, and Slovenia

Tibet                                                          Xizang Autonomous Region Of China

We can’t afford not to pay attention to the world anymore. We have to change the story.

Fly safe,

JAZ

Who Are We Fighting? Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Nigeria etc

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Who Are We Fighting? Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Nigeria etc

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ” Tim O Brien, The Things They Carried

I was at a Coffee Bean in Los Angeles ordering a coffee. A woman was arguing with the cashier. She was blond with a British accent. She was angry because she wanted to put her chicken in the refrigerator while she drank her coffee. They explained to her that this was a kosher coffee shop and they could not take her food in the refrigerator. Now the reality is I don’t think any restaurant in America can put your personal food in their refrigerator due to Health Department reasons. She became very angry and yelled in my ear (I was next to her) to “Tell the rabbi to go f-ck himself.” I said that I preferred not to hear anti-Semitic comments while I was ordering my coffee. She replied quickly that I should “Go bomb Gaza.”

I don’t understand. The Palestinians know they are in the middle of a war and that Israel is targeting certain areas. Why are their children on roofs playing with pigeons? Why are they running around in the streets? Why are they not evacuating their homes and schools and protecting their children? We keep seeing horrific shots on CNN of children being killed and hurt . As a parent, I would put my kids safety first, no matter who told me to stay.  Israel does not want to kill their children. They just want peace. They want the rockets and terrorism to stop. But it seems that Hamas is not protecting the people of Gaza and is more concerned with blowing Israel off the face of the earth. How do you solve that?

A passenger airline carrying two hundred and ninety eight passengers, eighty of them children, is shot down over Ukrainian air space. The bodies fell out of the plane along with toys and personal belongings. They fell on the children’s orphanage in Torez. It will be a sight those orphans will never forget, -teddy bears, dolls, those beautifully made European toys and naked bodies with their clothes blown off in the blast. The world is shocked but the war will still continue in the Ukraine.

In Nigeria it has been one hundred days since two hundred girls were abducted from their school by the Boko Haram terrorists.  The International Community is horrified and it seems we can do nothing.

And what about the children in Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria? And before that in Rwanda, Liberia, Libya,  Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina? And World War II?

Are we still fighting the children of the world?  Have we learned nothing from the past? Will innocent children always be casualties of war?

I can only feel compassion and hope that others do also. Hope is the only thing to hold onto when everything appears so dark. Life looks like a mess right now in our world. But as human beings, we have the capacity for goodness. We have the ability to think and talk and that has gotten us into trouble. We can only hope that same ability to think and discuss will help us find peace.

Fly safe,

JAZ