Common sense prevails. Evenimentul Zilei splashes this morning with news that Romanian schools will once again be teaching kids about evolution. Three years ago the country’s education ministry took a giant leap back into the Middle Ages and removed all mention of Darwin from school books. Since then children have been taught (often by men in black with long beards) that the world is 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs are fiction and that they’re all damned to hell.
Alas, it could be too little, too late.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, and – in line a Council of Europe directive that it should be central to the educational programme of all members states – the vast majority of European countries have made 2009 the Year of Darwin.
Not Romania.
In a country where superstition reigns (notice how many people are obsessed with horoscopes, and who will also claim to be good Christians…) there is still startlingly little place for science. Allowing Darwin back in the classroom is at least one step.
Getting religion out of schools is the next…
Parmalat, you’re a retard – what deity? You’ve got no proof for one.
If you want imposed theocracy, go to Saudi Arabia.
[Reply]
Oh yes, we are already familiar with your “Communist, therefore good” theorem. Even birds would not fly in a country led by morons such as Ceausescu and his followers (see Iliescu). As for that shithead Conducator you keep on adulating, who would be interested to put a bomb in a country that lived in the Middle Ages, where there was nothing to buy in shops and people dared do nothing? More leaders like Brezhnev… I presume you would have gladly joined the red bros to invade Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia in ’68; and that would have made you a better leader than Ceausescu even.
By the way, get this Monday present. Should you not find it, look at this beauty. Have it printed and put it over your bed.
[Reply]
All Russian Presidents from Nikita Khruschev were great leaders, except for Gorbachev and Eltsin. They were serious people not like Bush, Basescu, Blair or Sarkozy…
Europe needs more communist leaders like Brejnev, Ceausescu, Erich Hoeneker, Gerlach!
Do you think arabs would dare to put bombs in a country where Khruschev were President?! Or Ceausescu… that’s what we need: communist leaders! When you see Bush, Blair or Basescu in power you can hardly hold your laughter.
[Reply]
Both are just as good as leaders, but Putin seems to be more of a success story, especially if compared with Eltsin’s chaos (and booze). A smart guy that managed to rule a country like Russia (and not only) both when he was president and now, with that Boc sort of puppet on.
[Reply]
@Gordon: have you seen Ioan Becali on tv recently?
well, if you haven’t here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKV_5newzcc&feature=related
@Bucharestian: either Merkel or Putin
[Reply]
OK, I understand why Merkel of all (maybe because she is a CDU member?). Back in Romania, those running for the elections are a product of the Romanian society. And again, if Romanians themselves were any better, Romanian politicians would have no option but to change for the better (or step down). But people in this country point at the garbage that suffocates their cities and towns the very moment they throw an empty beer can off the train window.
[Reply]
@Bucharestian: we had no choice, we had to vote ‘them’ because there was nobody else running
?
If Angela Merkel would run I’d vote for her but if the same people run every 4 years who can we vote for?!
[Reply]
Holy stray dog, Andrei, what have you done?!
Anyway, “because they failed to create the necessary climate”. Who would this “they” stand for, other than people Romanians voted? I understand you expect a flying saucer to bring Jesus, Ceausescu and Vlad the Impaler set some order in Romania, but let us be serious for once. If Romanians want to have a better country to live in, they should start with themselves.
[Reply]
@Davin: oh, so it’s the first race on Magheru that you saw…
) Don’t take it out on the blog, at least here we can discuss these things.
)
I agree with you totally, Romanian girls are 110% arrogant! And I also agree when you say this city resembles a mad house.
But what’s wrong with the blog?
What was your episode with women? What made you hate them? You see, I prefer to avoid them even if I have what they want, because of their arrogance. My only relationship with women is – I pay them and I have sex with them, nothing more. If I ever want to get married I’m gonna find myself a girl from Europe or from the US.
A few years ago I lived in Paris for 9 months and there I met a girl, she was Dutch and living in France with her parents. We spent a lot of time together so I know what you mean when you say Romanian girls are arrogant, the difference in attitude between Laura (my Dutch girl) and most Romanian girls is huge.
So I can answer your other question as well: when they go to another country Bucharestians can easily adapt to the Western lifestyle and they will be very careful in not breaking the rules. We’re talking about normal people visiting or working abroad, not criminals – crime is the same everywhere. My experience in Paris was great and I had no problem even if I wasn’t speaking French. It was like changing workplaces – from working on a construction site to working on Wall Street. So Bucharestians have no problem adapting abroad, but it seems that foreigners really do have a problem adapting to Bucharest
C’mon Gordon, we need your advice, you’ve been living here for quite a while, how did you manage to adapt?
Davin, please don’t leave the blog
[Reply]
oh, woops, I forgot this:
http://www.romanianewswatch.com/2009/02/in-romania-bribery-is-health-problem.html
[Reply]
You know what? I have given up on this place and will no longer post here. I watched a Porsche Turbo race motorcycles down b-dul Magheru this afternoon at speeds I would say of 100-120 km/h. Anywhere else these guys would have had multiple police cruisers behind them and they would have been taken out, the Porsche possibly in an immediate pit maneuver where the police car takes a corner of the rear bumper of the Porsche and spins it off the street (probably this would have taken place on the road out to the airport). What I was witnessed was extremely dangerous. These nouveaux riche Romanians are way out of line and think the city is like a playground. In normal cities you can’t race your Porsche around like this. It’s really laughable to see what goes on here. Also, where’s all this arrogance coming from?! The women here too are the most arrogant women I have encountered. . . ANYWHERE! So much for their beauty! They are a huge turn off to me. So many of them act like complete jerks. I need to get of here and can’t wait for a vacation from here where everything is normal!!!!! I don’t know what a lot of these Bucharestians would do in a Western city! I wish people here could realize that NO OTHER PLACE is like this. You just can’t bribe your way through life normally, hordes of government officials don’t siphon off funds into their own pockets and the police actually do enforce the law. Romania seems to be a singular case. I mean I’ve been to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Rebuplic and they are NOTHING like here. Suffice to say, Romania is really bizarre. That’s it! I’m off this blog.
[Reply]
@Parmalat. Doesn’t this homophobia have to do with Romania’s machismo culture? Having said that though, Greece has a machismo culture and yet they have a long history of open homosexuality among men.
[Reply]
@Bucharestian: People work in the US too, but how come they earn more money than we do? It’s the same 8 hours that we’re talking about. So what came after Ceausescu is still worthy of pitty because they failed to create the necessary climate for people to earn a good living through work.
) when they say homosexuality everyone thinks about men only; because women getting turned on by other women is generally accepted by all men and an important number of women so we would have about 75% positive percentage for that 
)
@Davin:
Still the analysis should go further as in Romania people don’t really care if a guy is fu***** some other guy in his home and keeps it for himself. When people say they hate homosexuality it actually means they hate exposed homosexuality – they don’t want to see guys kissing on the streets, they don’t want to see homosexuality in the media every day, they don’t want to see the so called ‘gay parades’. For example would you like cows on the streets in NYC as they have in India? Of course not, that doesn’t mean you’re against cows it just means you believe there’s a certain order that has to be respected in regard to the society that you live in.
So if you’d ask Romanian people like “are you against some guy fu***** some other guy at their own premises?” everyone would respond “I don’t care about it, as long as they’re home they can do whatever they want”.
[Reply]
@bucarestois. Well, read this piece from last month in the NY Times where researchers note how women are sexually excited by all sorts of things (including other women) compared to men. . . I bet that Romanian women are no different and so 91% of the population being against homosexuality must be a lie
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?scp=1&sq=what%20do%20women%20want&st=cse
[Reply]
Andrei: “If we had (seen) better times after Ceausescu”? Who do you want to bring better times for you, other than yourself and your own effort? Who should bring better times for Romania, other than the people living here? Do you want someone else to take care of you, pamper you? Good night, got a 05.50 AM train to catch.
[Reply]
Not trusting their fellow citizens was not happening when Ceausescu was President! This feeling came after 1989 when everyone wanted to make money on the back of someone else! It started with Caritas, Gerald, Banca Romana de Scont, FNI, Romanian-Turkish Bank, Credit Bank, International Bank of Religions, Bancorex, it continued with the selling of Romtelecom, Sidex Galati, hundreds of other state-owned companies together with countless small crooks like restaurants, rip-off taxi drivers, useless police and many other reasons for which Romanians don’t trust people!
Because we were ripped off so many times by others attempting to get rich over night that we can’t trust anyone! It has nothing to do with religion.
Do you know why gypsies make fortunes in western countries by begging for money? Because you trust them! You don’t know what mafia lies behind the beggers and you trust what you see, if you didn’t trust them they wouldn’t receive any money. So we have a good reason for not trusting anyone.
What do you mean religion has no effect in helping the others? Has someone ever asked for your help and you refused? For example if someone with an old Dacia asked you to help him push the car so it can start did you refuse? I didn’t and I don’t know people who would refuse. Whenever I needed my neighbours’ help they helped me even if they had to miss work for one day or even if they had to come at 2 o’clock in the morning to fix a broken pipe. I don’t believe in that, people in Romania help each other as long as nothing suspicious is involved. As I said, we’ve been ripped off many times and we avoid anything suspicious.
And yes we want a dictature because we know damn well in our souls that the Romanian society was very well organized when Ceausescu was President. If we had saw better times after Ceausescu we wouldn’t want a dictator again. But what came after Ceausescu is worhty of pitty.
And we don’t volunteer because we don’t have the time nor the money that would allow us to volunteer for activities. If foreign managers would pay us 2000 Euro per month we would volunteer but right now we have bigger concerns than volunteering.
[Reply]
As Alexandru Balasescu said, not trusting the others reveals Romanians’ not trusting themselves. This is probably the biggest problem of the Romanian society: the lack of any point of reference / sustenance one is willing to rely on, either coming from the inner self or external. And, in the end of the day, the lack of will to change this statu quo.
[Reply]
Some of those Eurobarometer figures are incredible. I knew about the homosexuality one, but never knew that so many Romanians had such little faith in their fellow citizens. Shocking.
[Reply]
And yes, I have changed the user name (Bucharestian was taken by someone else on wordpress.com, I hope my using it for a few days did not produce any issue).
[Reply]
But Romanian society’s being backward can be traced better through this Eurobarometer.
Let me be more precise:
1. Not less than 86% of the Romanians think religion is important (however only as far as rituals are concerned, their belief does not have any effects in social life, implication, trust, volunteering, helping the others a.o.)
2. Some 73% of the Romanians would like to have a powerful, one man show administration, i.e. dictature (Vlad the Impaler style); no parliament or elections needed
3. Only 16% of the Romanians trust their fellow human beings
4. And then, yes, 91% of the Romanians think homosexuality is unjustifiable.
Actually this goes much further than the homosexuality issue. Most Romanians disregard those that are different, even if it is about a disabled person, a Gypsy, a cyclist or a non-smoker trying to have the “No smoking” sign respected.
I dare ask this religion Romanians think so important: where is the “love thy neighbor as thyself’? The Romanian Orthodox Church keeps on building grand churches and on forcing people learn its teachings. In the meantime, it puts a blame on everything that is any different. While doing so, it loses its very essence and roots, just like the Catholic Church during the inquisition. And then, it is back to number one I guess, to the man with the impale and hammer.
[Reply]
For some reason that beats me, I could post nothing more than a dot above, so here it goes again.
Ruling religion classes out of schools is a good beginning. If someone wants his / her children (or himself / herself) to study religion, one can opt for special courses or theological schools. But imposing religion to all is stupid, it is against one’s right of choosing what to believe in (and especially of choosing whether to believe or not in something).
[Reply]
.
[Reply]
@Davin: Romania was received in the EU because EU companies got to buy Romanian companies for free. It was imposed to us by the EU to not have any big company ran by the state so the country had to sell all the companies, and most of them for ridiculous prices. I told you the story with Arcellor Mittal buying Sidex Galati which is as big as the city of Galati itself and accounted for 2% of the yearly production of steel in the world (!!! so that you see who was Ceausescu) for about 60 million Euro when the Ukrainians sold their similar but much smaller steel factory for 3 billion Euro.
They got our companies for free now they have to keep us. Why wasn’t France imposed to sell the state-owned companies?! They got Petrom together with all the oil in the ground of Romania for 700 million Euro while Dinu Patriciu sold 75% of his much smaller refinery for 2 billion USD.
Do you understand why we are in the EU? Because the Europeans took for free everything that Ceausescu made and that was the price for Romania entering the EU! Are we ready or not? Of course not, but we paid our price and we want to enjoy the show
About the smoke, I think you’re a little sensitive to smoke because in my home for example nobody had ever smoken and still when I go to a cafe and breath second hand smoke it doesn’t affect me that much. It affects my clothes more and that’s what I don’t understand about these people: if they don’t care about the 1000 diseases that they can develop, fine – it’s their health, but how in the world can you stand your clothes smelling like that?!?!
But the damage is much more stronger when smoking yourself than when breathing second hand smoke because the human breathing system (by the nose) has some inbuilt protection against harmful particles that can be found in the air. Most Romanians are very ignorant and lack information that’s why they smoke, that’s why they eat a lot of pork, that’s why they fill the tables at Mc Donalds. Uneducated peasants.
I may be Communist myself but I certainly hate to see ignorance around me, that’s worse than Communism.
[Reply]
Which brings me another point/question. How come for me second hand smoke makes me feel a bit dizzy and gives a sore throat yet all the smokers always seem as lively as ever and feeling great? I wonder if there is a difference in the way smoke directly from a cigarette into a smoker’s lungs reacts and the way second smoke out in the air does with one’s body? Hoe come all these beautiful women smoking don’t have sore throats like I do? Hoe come their contacts are not drying up like mine? How come they don’t wake up the next morning feeling all groggy and fuzzy headed like I do after I’ve spent an evening in a Bucharest cafe?
[Reply]
You know what is modern here in Bucharest? The Diverta bookshop on b-dul Magheru that I’ve just discovered where you can check the web on the laptop and sip coffee and the air is as clear as cafes in Western Europe and America! Really amazing actually! Since I’ve been these past 2 1/2 months I have never had such a pleasant day! I had forgotten what it’s like to leave a few hours of web research clear headed, smelling good and without a sore throat.
[Reply]
I think Romania is in a really unique situation when it comes to becoming a modern society. Just read this from today: http://www.romanianewswatch.com/2009/02/romanian-shepherds-protest-new-eu.html
What other country in the EU still has shepherds–and many of them–who actually practice transhumance?! Romanian shepherds can’t abide by EU rules simply because there isn’t the funding nor infrastructure in place to transport the milk quickly enough for refrigeration. I think it is completely idiotic that Bucharest government officials don’t realize this. Romania needs some sort of special EU status, where it is allowed certain exceptions. You just can’t apply rules that are good for a place like France to Romania! I have no idea how Brussels let Romania and Bulgaria in. If it is an EU rule that you have to pasteurize milk to sell it, then how was Romania allowed in when everyone knows that most of Romania is rural with thousands of peasants and shepherds?! I know I constantly criticize Romania, but there is so much that goes on here that doesn’t make any sense.
[Reply]
School is for academic enquiry. Religion has its place but only in the context of its role in shaping western civilisation (especially the persecution of women, the Jews, the Crusades etc). Religious indoctrination has no place in a temple of reason…
[Reply]
Why get religion out of schools?! That would be the most stupid thing a government could do! Religion teaches you that there’s something else in life except for money, it teaches you that you should also take care of real, spiritual values and not only of business.
How can we think of removing religion from schools when the Arabs hunt us wherevere they can, in the name of religion?! How can we stand ground in the face of Jihad, Intifada, Sharia, etc… if we lose our only reference point that we have in this fight – Jesus Christ and his learnings!
Religion should be forced into European schools, it should be a daily object of study, it is the only spiritual landmark that we have left – us – Europeans and Americans, otherwise slaves of money.
It’s a good thing that we still have religion in schools and it’s a good thing that people go to church in this country. The Christian root is well established on these lands, we never started wars – we were obliged to fight them and God helped us through, God helped us through the hard times before and after 1989 and the devil won’t succeed in driving God’s words off these places.
Now, after the ideological speech, I really don’t understand why you want to take religion out of schools. Religion and God’s word gives strenght to the Arabs to throw themselves in the air taking Christians with them, do we – the people of the civilized society – have anything at all that can give us that mental strenght?! Because money doesn’t give mental strenght it only gives greed and fear of loss. Even if it were only for this sole effect and I would make religion to be studied every day!
[Reply]