Thoughts on Crime and Punishment

Because of the way other people have been responding to me lately, I thought only you would care to listen to these thoughts.  I've been reading Russian Philosophy: Vol. I -- The Beginnings of Russian Philosophy, The Slavophiles, the Westernizers, and its authors Edie, Scanlan, Zeldin, and Kline seem to agree that Russians, throughout history, have been keenly concerned about "practical truth-justice" or "pravada" (pravda or пра́вда), which is now related to Soviet propaganda (no doubt).  I do not know if there has been any separation between propaganda and "pravada" in modern time.  However, according to the same authors, philosophy survived in the Russian tradition via literary criticism, resulting in literature being the best medium to philosophize in the Russian language because of academic censorship in the universities: Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pasternak are examples of writers who concerned themselves with philosophy.

Failed Experiment

I once thought that translating a language would better help you learn it.  I got the idea of learning language through translating from Duolingo.  Though I knew nothing of the program and had yet to join it, its video preview explained that users would learn a language by immersing themselves into it: forcing them to learn.

This attempt failed because I did not have the correct format.  Now, to prepare for undergraduate work, I'm trying to use Duolingo (since I received an invite now and can have access).  At first, I wanted to use it for Spanish, but now I'm using it for German.  It's cute and inviting, but I'm afraid that it's not what I need for the long term.

I've reduced myself to flashcards now.  Hopefully that will help me.

Packing and Reading Russian Children Stories

Instead of amateur philosophizing, I thought I should use this blog as a journal for translating and perhaps a resource for those who are learning Russian/German.  Academically, I'm a Humanities major with an emphasis on the Foundations of Western Civilization, but I also earning a German minor.  That means I'm learning both Russian and German.  What a headache!

My Greatest Flaw

To my Professors;

While having what I thought was light a conversation with a student from the adjacent university, I became aware of an unique dynamic between myself and the other students (a.k.a. normal human beings).  I call these people "other (or normal) students" because I estrange myself from them: I'm incapable of referring myself as part of them.  I have a Napoleonic complex that Raskolnikov and I share: an egocentric outlook on life.