View on Nationality Stereotypes

There аrе experimental ways of investigating stereotypes. One of the most obvious is to ask а group of people what traits characterize the Germans, the Italians, the Americans and so forth. There are some results of such studies. For instance, English and Americans regard Germans as scientifically minded and industrious; Americans also consider them as solid, intelligent, mathematical, extremely nationalistic, efficient and musical. As regards the English, they think that Germans are arrogant, aggressive and over-nationalistic.

Americans and English regard Italians as artistic, impulsive, passionate, quick­ tempered, musical, religious, talkative, revengeful, lazy and unreliable.

Jews аrе shrewd, mercenary, industrious, intelligent, loyal to family, grasping, ambitious, sly and persistent. They аrе also very religious.

The English consider themselves tradition-loving, conventional and intelligent, whereas Americans think that they are sophisticated, courteous, honest, nationalistic and even humorless. Needless to say that Americans consider themselves very intelligent, industrious, materialistic, ambitious, progressive, pleasure-loving, alert, straightforward and practical. English, however, consider them talkative and very boastful.

Both English and Americans think that Russians are industrious, tough, suspicious, brave and progressive. As for Russians, they consider themselves ….

Food for thought

About 20% of British teenagers leave home between the ages of 16 and 20. Some are students. They get help from government (grants) or their parents to study away from home but they go back home during their holidays so they haven’t really left.

Most of the 20% leave home because they want to get work and experience of the world. Some go in search of more exciting life. Others want to escape their homes which are overcrowded or unhappy.

In Britain, however, it is natural for children to leave home. In fact, only 9%of people over 65 live with their children and many older parents who cannot look after themselves have to leave in the old people’s homes

Ozone hole over the planet is increasing

Probably the supposition which was made by scientist that ozone hole could extend come true. News Week published a statement of American representative from NASA that said that nowadays the level of air pollution by chemical elements is the highest one.

The concentration of chemical elements in the atmosphere has reached the critical point for the last several years.

These chemical elements destroy ozonosphere of the earth, which protect the life on the planet from redundant ultra-violet rays. More over if some years ago the ozone destruction took place only under sparsely populated areas such as the Atlantic or the south part of South America now it expends to the densely populated regions of North America Europe and Asia.

These investigations were announced after the publication of NATO environmental program. This program is said that by the 2000 year ozone layer will decrease to 5-6% that caused the increase of viral diseases, AIDS, cancer to 300 thousand additional cases every year. Scientists also consider that the high level of ultraviolet radiation impedes the process of photosynthesis and formation of protein.

Lowering of ozone layer can have an adverse effect on the agricultural products all over the world. It is known that freons widely used in modern industry are the most dangerous elements for ozone layer. In 1990 industrial countries came to an agreement to stop the use of freon in industry by 2000 year. But scientists consider these actions insufficient. It is necessary to take drastic measures to change the situation for the better in the shortest time. They are sure that even if we could stop using freon right now ozone layer would not restore by the middle of the next century.

To be or not to be?

The burning issue of the day is whether human beings will survive on the earth or not? People of older generation know by the own experience the affected changes which lad to life-threatening situation in the present day. I was brought up in thirties in a village, not far from the mines’ settlement in the suburbs of Russian oblast. My grandfather and my father were miners. There was my parents’ house on a lot measured 300 square meters. There was a garden to raise everything for the family need and for the cattle we bred such as potato and beet (mangle). The garden yielded plenty of sweet fruits. We had a large selection of fruits the result of the thousand- year culture; I mean the primary meaning of the word.

In Latin this word meant “cultivating” or “care”. We borrowed it from Roam thousand years ago and destroyed it during the life of one generation. My village as well as my life has changed extremely. The place where was my parents’ house is occupied now by the town center with a market and other buildings. People who live there have no lots any longer and cannot eat fruits from their own garden and the nearest lands.

Now in this new market people are offered potatoes packed in cellophane. It was brought over there from suspicious places and has a strange flat form of tubers. From the economical point of view this sort of potatoes is much better than that we remember from childhood. Apples and pears you can buy in the market are sorts of fruits, which could survive in merciless commercial rival. They are suitable for being transported but not for eating, because they are not tasty or healthful. How could we do without these qualities? This loss threatens our future life. Let me remind you several aspects of this threat.

The basic principle of production goods and service to get benefit is the principle of tube opened with both sides. One end of it exhausts the earth and the other brings down not only necessary foodstuffs but also a lot of hazardous waste sites and rubbish. This process is constantly intensifying and now we even can estimate when on the one side the natural recourses run short and when on the other side the earth suffocate with the rubbish. On the one hand they try to persuade us that it is not a tube but the horn of plenty, which will always pour out with good things of life, but on the other hand they only try to conceal pollution effect on nature.

According to the glossy pages of advertisements there is no pollution at all but in fact the pollution effect is enormous and it threatens the live of human beings. If we compare the cost of products with the cost of rendering harmless the acids, transmitting rubbish and keeping dumps it will turn out that the former is constantly decreasing in comparison with the rubbish they produce. So we can say that the production of goods now is just the production of rubbish.

It is not quite by chance that the prosperous countries try to get rid of hazardous waste sites, rubbish, chemical weed-killers and pest killers (ядохимикаты) and radioactive materials and transfer them to developing countries. There was no place for produced rubbish in the counties with the greatest innovations of polluting nature.

The most threatening example is the energy production. In the middle of the last century human beings being unaware of what they were doing began to use heat-engines that caused the global geochemical experiment. Now we can witness inevitable results of it.