Me in the TV

Diploma for participating in live TV broadcast

I was in the middle of cleaning my inline skates' bearings when my scientific adviser called me. I thought he finally found some time to check my thesis's plan, even if the probability of such event is even lower than the probability of the question he asked me: 

- "Do you have a time to take part in the discussion on the TV today?" 

- "Let me think about it..." - I said while was cleaning my fingers from the lubricant, - "OF COURSE I DO!... By the way, what is the subject of discussion?"

He told me that it is something about the waste. Some local channel was looking for the expert on the subject.

Two hours later I was at the office of the "Your public television" channel ("Ваше общественное телевиделие"). The channel is owned by the guy with a 15 lines of titles (on the cover of his book they gave me in the end) - Alexey Lushnikov (Vkontakte). The office is situated in one of the yards of Vasilievsky Island, St. Petersburg. From the outside it looked like a cafe: a large windows, a reception table like a bar and personal dressed like waiters. A relatively small room was decorated with the pictures of people (obviously local) who were unknown to me. The next moment they shoot me.

They told me that this will be a live broadcast (wow!) and there will be just one another invited guest, and... the topic of the discussion is about green plantations in St. Petersburg ((O_o)) Definitely it was not my subject, so it was decided that I will be asked about greenery biological waste utilisation.

After briefing we (Olga Alexeevna - the old ledy, pro in greenery; Alexey Gurnev - the anchorperson, ex-director of the North-West branch of the Federal Centre for Beautification and Waste Treatment; and me - the amateur generalist) passed to the basement - location of the studio.

Fortunately, the programme lasted only 30 or 40 minuets so the probability to say anything stupid about green plantations was quite low. As an "expert" I stated that biological waste from greenery, which usually end up in landfills and causes trouble to landfill maintenance, should be recycled ;-) for example as a compost or given as a firewood to old people in suburbs for free (this option was pointed during briefing).

In the end they gave me a diploma and the book by Alexey Lushnikov "Antiutopia 2012". The book contains all sorts of inconvenient truth about Russia and Russians, for example that Russians hate Russians more than any other nation.

I thought that that the event was over, but there was an afterparty... a sort of. On a bench in the yard next to channel's office in front of the couple, who were kissing and drinking beer, Alexey Gurnev and I had a conversation about the shit happening in Russia and St. Petersburg in particular. There were almost nothing new to me, except some more or less nasty facts about St. Petersburg Scientific Centre for Environmental Safety Russian Academy of Sciences (one of two institutions I'm working at the moment; another one deals with spatial planning). The most interesting thing he told me related to his membership in United Russia O_o. It was most unexpected: he looked like a reasonable man, why in the nine hells would he mess with thieves? The reason was interesting - he (and his comrades) would like to seize the power in this party and clean it up from criminals and corruptionists...

So there is a noble conspiracy inside United Russia, heh... Actually I thought about this opportunity several years ago... I fear even if they will succeed this story will be the same to that of hero who killed the dragon, but became the dragon himself. Our nation have already faced such scenario in 1917...

There should not be any political parties, any presidents, any governments, just because power has such inalienable effect as abuse. New technologies allow us to take joint decisions about our future as a nation, as a citizens of a settlement, as a specialists in the given area, etc. We don't need to delegate decision making to any one else any more. We have to take our lives in our own hands. This is the future, face it.

As I was maturing, my political view mowed from monarchism through socialism towards anarchism, which was unavailable option in our history due to technical limitations. Humanity matures too - anarchism will be recognised soon, and sustainable communities will be the first to taste it.

The conversation was already over. I decided not to talk about dragons and anarchism. May be another time?... I had to return to my bearings' cleaning - sunny evening still was promising a nice skating...