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murasaki-murasame · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep20

In which Satoko gets sent to gay baby jail for crimes against the aristocracy.

Also I’m finally vindicated in talking so much about Umineko spoilers, lmao.

Thoughts under the cut.

Oh boy where do I even begin with this one, lol.

Well, firstly, I actually like how relatively subdued this episode was, compared to my expectations. Like, Satoko getting sent to a literal on-site prison center is extremely fucked up, but I kinda expected something like her straight up murdering someone. Instead it all started when one of her normal traps ended up giving someone minor injuries, and then after she spent a while in prison, she just went back to school, and ended up going on a trip back to Hinamizawa with Rika and the gang where she stumbled her way into the meta world because haha Featherine go brrr.

Which feels a lot less over the top than I was expecting, but I think it’s a good thing that it didn’t turn into some sort of psychotic mass-murder event or something.

Also, the whole angle of miscommunication leading her to think that Rika ratted her out and got her sent to prison is really neat, and helps make the situation way more messy and complicated without making anyone unrealistically evil or anything. It at least makes it a bit more understandable that Satoko would genuinely blame Rika for her current misery.

I still think they’re both more or less equally in the wrong, though, and they both contributed to the miscommunication. Satoko is basically refusing to adjust to the culture of St Lucia’s, and she’s actively pushing away Rika out of stubbornness, while Rika is leaving Satoko alone to go hang out with her new rich friends, and is giving up on reaching out to Satoko at the slightest bit of resistance from her. So neither of them are really doing enough to communicate or compromise, but it fits with how Satoko is unwilling to change herself, while Rika is desperate to have a place where she can stop putting on a childish act all the time.

It’s kinda interesting how many people seem to fall really strongly into the category of either blaming Rika or blaming Satoko for everything going on here. It probably says a lot about each person’s own personality and their own previous friendships.

I’ve seen people disagree about this, but I actually like that the ‘big incident’ ended up just being that one of Satoko’s normal traps ended up hurting someone. It’s way more minor than pretty much anyone expected, and it feels kinda jarring when compared to all the slapstick comedy stuff in this whole series, but I think that sense of contrast is intentional, and it goes to show just how much Satoko isn’t fitting in with her new environment. She comes from a countryside village where this sort of rough-housing is normal, and everyone’s familiar with Satoko’s traps, and she’s trying to apply the exact same things to a stuck-up boarding school full of rich kids who don’t even know her. Back in Hinamizawa the other club members would just brush off having a metal pot land on their head as part of Satoko’s traps, but in this sort of environment it’s something unprecedented and shocking.

There’s also the fact that Satoko usually sets these traps up in rooms that have much lower ceilings, whereas here she had the pots fall from a chandelier high up in a fancy entrance hall, so it’s likely that they fell a lot further than they usually do, and thus picked up more speed and caused more damage. Which in it’s own way goes to show how Satoko just isn’t used to her new environment, and is still trying to act like she’s back in Hinamizawa where everything’s small and cozy and everyone’s willing to put up with some bumps and bruises as part of having fun.

I still feel like there has to be more that goes on to show how Satoko gets to the point of straight up being willing to repeatedly murder Rika across multiple time loops, as well as hurting all of her other friends along the way, but this whole flashback still isn’t over yet.

I’m also getting more and more convinced now that it actually took a while for her to get to the point of actively trying to murder Rika. I think that throughout the first arcs, she was going through her own whole arc where her motives and methods changed as she became more aware of what was going on.

I’m not 100% sure about a lot of this, but I think that in Onidamashi she didn’t even do anything until the very end. I think that arc was her attempting to just go back to how things used to be, and the stuff with Rena and Keiichi wasn’t planned by her at all. She might have done a murder suicide with Rika to start a new loop afterward, but I don’t think she was trying to kill anyone, or even hurt Rika at all. At least not in that arc.

Watadamashi’s one of the more confusing arcs, but I also get the feeling there that she wasn’t really trying to hurt Rika or anyone else. I don’t think she’s the one who killed Rika in that timeline, and I think her going to the Sonozaki estate at the end of the arc was due to her genuinely trying to figure out what happened to her. Same with her suspicion toward Keiichi.

Tataridamashi’s kinda weird in general, and even after all these flashbacks it still feels weird. But with what we’ve seen of Satoko lately, I really don’t thinks he was spending that whole arc just intentionally lying to everyone about the abuse while not actually being abused by Teppei for some reason. Unless she got told about what to expect from Featherine, a post-Matsuribayashi Satoko shouldn’t even have any experience with a timeline where Teppei shows up, and he doesn’t show up in the first two Gou arcs either, so I think everything with her in Tataridamashi was actually genuine.

The stuff at the end of that arc with Ooishi is still a bit of a mystery, though. Maybe that’s where she first starts actively sending people to go kill Rika, but I’m not sure. The question of why she’d change her motives and methods partway through if she started off with innocent intentions is a bit of a mystery, but I get the feeling that Tataridamashi might have been the turning point, since it would have been the point where Satoko really started to realize just how much pain she herself was going to have to deal with in these loops. So that might have pushed her to try and be more forceful in her methods to try and make Rika change her mind about the village, because she wants to get out of the loops as fast as possible, and she’s also stuck in them until she can ‘win’ against Rika. Which would fit with how in Nekodamashi she seems genuinely distressed and conflicted about having to kill people. I think that rather than her just being some kind of sadist, she’s just trying to brute-force her win condition as fast as possible while dealing with the escalating stress of being stuck in this loop.

And even if she got cured of her syndrome over time after Matsuribayashi, being sent back in time to her pre-teen body might mean that she started slowly developing it again as the loops went on, which might have made her more willing to resort to violence to try and escape.

So basically I think the story boils down to Satoko being given the ability to go back in time with time-looping powers, in a way that’s structured as a game between her and Rika where her goal is to convince Rika to stay in the village forever instead of leaving for St Lucia’s. So at first Satoko didn’t really have any reason or motive to be violent about it, but as time went on and she became exposed to all of the different scenarios with her friends going crazy and killing each other, and in general all the trauma that she basically side-stepped in the Matsuribayashi timeline, she got more and more desperate, and more and more violent.

I at least like the idea of Satoko basically taking for granted that she happened to wind up in the good timeline where everything went well and nobody went crazy and killed each other, and now her attempt to go back and ‘fix things’ has caused her to trap herself in the same hellish loop that Rika was trying to escape from in the first place.

I could also totally see Featherine setting this up and watching it unfold because she knew it’d be fun to watch, lol.

And yeah on that note, Featherine’s officially in the story now. So that’s a thing.

I guess we’ll see how things go next week, but I think it’s kinda fruitless to try and deny that this is Featherine. I could see them not using her name explicitly, but for all intents and purposes this is literally just Featherine, and at some point we’d just be arguing about meaningless semantics.

They did adjust her design a little bit to fit the Japanese mythology vibe of Higurashi more, but I’d say her design is still about 80% the same, and they still included both her distinct memory device and the green sash with the medal on it that has nothing to do with Japanese mythology. They just replaced her cane with a staff, adjusted part of her dress to look more like Hanyuu’s outfit, and gave her some eye-shadow.

I get the feeling she’ll just introduce herself to Satoko as ‘Oyashiro-sama’, to explain what Satoko meant about meeting Oyashiro-sama and being made into their new miko, but she’d still be Featherine at the end of the day.

One detail that might go a long way to explain things one way or another is how Featherine mentions having met Satoko at some point in the past. Which might mean that she’ll just straight up say that she’s a version of Hanyuu and reference the events of Matsuribayashi. I know people still disagree on if Hanyuu and Featherine are the same person, but I think that for all intents and purposes they are. If anything, ‘Gou!Featherine’ might exist to show how that transition happened in the first place. Which is probably along the lines of Hanyuu ‘going to sleep’ after Matsuribayashi, physically maturing and having her personality adjust, and then going on to straight up ascend into witch-hood. But we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also seen people suggest that it might tie in to the hypothetical connection between Satoko and Lambda, which might just cut straight to the chase and directly bring Featherine’s role in Umineko into this, but that seems less likely. I still like the idea of Lambda being relevant to this somehow, but I’m not sure if she’ll come into play just yet.

It might annoy some people, but I hope that they just commit to having Satoko and Lambda literally be the same person, and just have it be a bit of a time paradox where maybe Satoko becomes Lambda after going through this loop, and she then goes back in time and gives Takano her blessing to trigger the original events of Higurashi. Which might be a bit of a clunky retcon that’d annoy people who don’t like paradoxes, but honestly at this point it’d be the most satisfying way to actually explain who Lambda is, and how her relationship with Bern even started in the first place.

This also feels like exactly the sort of situation where Featherine would grant Satoko the powers of a witch as part of setting up this whole loop, like what Lambda did with Takano and Beatrice. Satoko gets to become a new witch of Hinamizawa for the duration of the time loop, and maybe at the end of it, both she and Bern ascend into full-fledged witches who leave their game board and become voyagers.

Though, like with how I think they’ll avoid outright using the name ‘Featherine’, they might just use the word ‘miko’ as a sort of analogue for the concept of witches, so it fits Higurashi’s setting more.

There’s also the point that, as Satoko mentioned, she had broken into the Saiguden as a child, but I dunno if Featherine is referring to that. Honestly that whole plot point still feels super weird to me. She brings it up in this episode, so it’s not like Ryukishi forgot about it, but then we see that even in this loop, the statue is unbroken, which just raises the question of if it’s some kind of major oversight or retcon about what Satoko did when she broke into the Saiguden as a child.

Anyway, the real question with all this super heavy-handed Umineko stuff is whether or not this is actually going to lead to something along the lines of an Umineko anime remake [or a Gou-style sequel]. It really feels like they’re risking alienating people on both sides of the aisle if they bring in Umineko elements without doing a whole lot with them.

I have a lot of thoughts about how some kind of new Umineko anime could work, but I’ll just make a separate post about that if I want to go into it in detail.

I’m also wondering more and more whether or not they’re even going to be able to wrap up Gou’s story itself in just four more episodes, or if we’ll get some kind of second season. I still feel like we’re in an awkward situation where four episodes doesn’t feel like enough to wrap things up, but even one more cour feels like more than we need, considering how deep we are into the end-game. Unless things massively switch course for a second season, I dunno if there’s that much material left. Considering that this isn’t even acting like a remake anymore, I doubt they’ll go back and cover some of the stuff they’ve glossed over like Meakashi and Tsumihoroboshi. But who even knows.

One option is that Gou could directly lead into a new Umineko anime, especially if they go down the route of doing a Gou-style sequel to Umineko rather than a regular adaptation. There’s a lot of ways they could handle it.

Also, we STILL haven’t seen the animation for the new ending theme, so unless we’re just never getting any, I think it’s probably going to include stuff like Featherine that would have been a spoiler before this episode. The way that they only played the last section of the OP visuals also makes me wonder if maybe they’re going to adjust those as well, even if the song stays the same. I could at least see them explicitly showing Featherine rather than having her be a silhouette.

Anyway, I’m still enjoying this arc a lot, and I think it actually serves as an interesting continuation of the VN’s story, but as a whole I think it says a lot about Gou that it feels more interesting to just speculate about the Umineko references going on, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #This amount of Umineko teasing is actually going to give me an aneurysm :v

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111novosti-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://111novosti.tk/weird-and-wonderful-pseudo-scientific-world/

Weird and wonderful pseudo-scientific world

The human mind has always created the theory, tempting, but unverifiable.

Even if homeopathy really is pseudoscience, which it proclaimed the Board of the Academy of Sciences, she at least has the potential to be the most decent and fashionable pseudo-Sciences. Anyway, as many millions of patients who claim that they homeopaths have helped, not going anywhere.

There are, however, many kinds of human activity, which in the last couple of centuries, were summed up under the category of pseudoscience or recognized as such at the academic level or at the level of public opinion. Complete clarity, which would be recognized by all, in any case. So the expression has to be chosen with care.

Children ancient innocence

A kind of «Queen of pseudoscience» by right can be considered astrology — the study of the influence of celestial bodies on humans and the world. Here, truly, the eternal occupation — historians bring her age up to one hundred thousand years. Certainly astrology is known since Ancient Egypt, Babylon and India. In those days, a human infant, the heavenly bodies, stars and planets were associated with pagan gods.

Attempts at scientific verification of astrology — with its exposure, of course, was done. The most eloquent of them lasts to this day: British scientists since 1958 to track the lives of real people, born with an interval of 4.8 minutes, which, according to astrological concepts, to be considered «twins in time». There is no similarity in the characters and the fates not observed. But no one cares. Mass culture and any press that wants to exist on the people’s dime, as was not without fortune, so can not do now.

The «sister» of astrology is the alchemy. Descended from heaven to earth the belief system that gives hope to receive precious metals and stones from cheaper materials. She, too, originated in the ancient world, when the Sun, as it were patrons of the gold, and the planet — other metals (Moon — silver, Mars — iron, mercury — mercury).

In VIII century in Persia Jabir Ibn Hayyan introduced the concept of the philosopher’s stone — a magical substance capable to turn everything into gold, and simultaneously curing all diseases. Throughout the middle Ages in Europe were made desperate attempts to find the philosophical stone or something to get gold. It turned out only a lot of personal tragedies.

However, between lightweight heavyweight astrology and alchemy there is considerable difference. Alchemy is the sister of the deceased. After all, chemistry and materials science in a New story was developed enough — and gold, and lots of other things are proven ways.

Alchemy died a natural death, bringing great benefit. Alchemists made many discoveries of associated — so if Columbus discovered America in an attempt to get to India, then, for example, Johann böttger in the early XVIII century in Saxony, failing to get the gold, invented porcelain.

A kind of parody of alchemy in the late twentieth century can be considered the mysterious story of «red mercury». Went to the USSR persistent rumors about this alleged metal with miraculous properties – their set was very varied. The «red mercury» was selling all kinds of crooks using mercury with broken bricks and other materials. In reality, a single gram of such material submitted no. There is a theory that «red mercury» actually invented by the KGB, to her as bait, to catch spies and traitors.

The fruit of pseudo-scientific synthesis

Of the occult Sciences follows a series of «applied» pseudo-Sciences or practices. These are all kinds of witchcraft and divination. In the nineteenth century high society in Europe and America experienced the spiritualism or spiritism — contact with spirits of the dead. Although the Baptist of spiritualism, Emmanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer lived before, but the practical craze began in 1848 in upstate new York, «the sad detective», when some sisters Kate and Margaret Fox came into contact with the spirit of the murdered in their house dealer.

Started from the bottom — but that they occurred at the right time practice was keenly sought after by the nobility of New and Old world. Among the many interested in spiritualism were such famous people as Vladimir Dal, a distinguished chemist Aleksandr Butlerov, and even Tsar Alexander II. In a cozy dimly lit parlors, under the rotation of the polished table, the man somehow managed to hear what he wanted to hear: the voice of Pushkin or of cardinal Richelieu, or their own grandparents, those who use it.

The position of spiritualism is very much shaken in the twentieth century, when the First world war killed millions of people. Of course, very much like to communicate with their spirits, but in the face of millions living in pain all this was too obvious dummy. But spiritualism is not dead! In the modern metropolis to find a lounge where you can play around the table and hear the voice, the big problems will not make.

For advanced highbrow intellectuals of the nineteenth century prepared the temptations — such as, for example, theosophy. Today, the vast majority done not know, what famous Helena Petrovna Blavatsky — and why such a popular Orthodox lecturer of the present day, as the deacon Andrei Kuraev, spent so much effort on debunking and at the same time on the exposure spouses Roerich. For the vast majority of us, Roerich is just an artist, someone brilliant, someone, maybe not — but what is there to break chairs, very few people understand.

In the end, however, no real, tangible results for humanity are not given any intellectual exercise Blavatsky with all the religions of the world — not even the intervention of such an extraordinarily gifted and versatile man as the founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner. He was involved in architecture and pedagogy, reformed Christianity and gave practical advice on how to end the First world war and to organize life in the new Germany and Europe — and all this magnificence had nothing left except for ongoing disputes of a handful of intellectuals, some «Waldorf schools» and specific sections of the dance.

Life convinced people that science and religion should be separated. In the modern world actively survive science — and, above all, natural and religion in the form of a rigid Orthodox churches, or churches that is adapted to modernity. «Synthesis» did not work.

Dianetics and Scientology

A kind of «synthesis of science, religion and philosophy» in the twentieth century can be considered Dianetics and founded on its basis of Scientology. It’s not very clear where religion, and where the intricate psychology to the organization of people’s lives – and all this with the American scale. In Dianetics Russia entered in the 1990s along with Western Protestantism, then the interest in it has waned.

Once the heyday of occultism in the twentieth century took place in the Third Reich. In God Hitler clearly did not believe, but really wanted to presenet the power of supernatural forces (the astrologers the Fuhrer was). For some actions the Nazis used some kind of «sciolism» — the notorious «measurements of skulls», for example. To this day there are willing to dig up something useful («technology» what is that?) in the activities and the heritage of the Nazi «scientific society «Ahnenerbe». Amid the horrors of the Second world war it looks unbecoming.

In the modern consumer society has taken a strong place in their respective age forms of the occult. First of all, the ESP and parapsychology.

Since the 1970s, in the USSR and in the West much earlier, there are a lot of people, supposedly possessing supernatural powers. Basically, it is manifested in three types of activities: «the healing» (including just «laying on of hands»), transfer or read thoughts at a distance, and also seems to be useless, but showy action when «matchbox around the room fly».

The society was no lack of witnesses to the supernatural, happily healed the sick — but all the miracles occurred behind closed doors, with a single witness. The newest scientific testing of psychics were not.

With pretensions to rationalism

The twentieth century brought to the stage a new pseudo-science is very materialistic, done without supernatural forces, but also promised exciting breakthroughs. There is not a place special.

Still it is not clear whether the pseudo-science of eugenics — the science of improving the human breed. Originated eugenics is also quite long — the relevant wishes I was still in the ancient sages, not to mention the author of «City of the Sun» Tommaso Campanella.

But eugenics is bad «heritage» in the last century. It is actively practiced by the Nazis — but even without the Nazis, in the most developed countries like USA and Sweden, thousands of people at a young age were subjected to forced sterilization as inferior – and, «under the hand» got in and some people with minor disabilities, who, having lived to a ripe old age, served his state in the court.

Today eugenics is slowly resurrected in decent form in the framework of genetics. Gradually strengthened the hope that humanity will rid has from severe hereditary diseases – and there, you see, can turn and walk up to the peaceful production of «high blondes», if it is so necessary.

One of the most violent dramas on the relatively peaceful scientific field just linked with genetics, of course, the notorious «Lysenkoism». The phenomenon is not necessarily to call by the name of «main character» — the «people’s academician» of Trofim Lysenko. His doctrine was the official name — Michurinskaya agrobiologia. Although, ironically, an outstanding plant breeder Ivan Michurin direct relation to it was not – he was just «very timely» died, and his name was appropriated as a banner.

In conditions of a rigid authoritarian state, as was Stalin’s USSR, even in science for prosperity could count one who will be able to like power. For it and fought a large group of biologists headed by a real «man of the people», the agronomist Lysenko, from the beginning of the 1930s, and to the notorious session of the Academy of agricultural Sciences, 1948, when they temporarily win.

In words, they did not completely deny genetics – and, incidentally, of the words «genetics is the whore of imperialism» Lysenko seems to be not talked about. After dropping his great rival Nikolai Vavilov in 1940 out of the chair the Director of Institute of genetics Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he took it himself.

This allowed Lysenko to achieve unprecedented rise not only under Stalin, but then the second time when Khrushchev – after the opening of the DNA helix by Watson and Crick, when the correct genetics became obvious to the world. However, Khrushchev was not enough business to «Watson».

The passion according to aliens

One of the most famous pseudoscience of modern society is, of course, UFOlogy is the study of space aliens and their vehicles, unidentified flying objects (UFOs). This current can even be considered one of the most noble and humanly understandable, along with homeopathy.

After all, people would like to communicate with brothers in mind from cosmic civilizations. Naturally, any signals that could be mistaken for the phenomenon of aliens, was perceived with great enthusiasm, especially at the dawn of the space age, beginning in the late 1940-ies.

Moreover, large sums of money on UFOlogy spent is not the Soviet Union, and the United States – the only superpower that could afford it. The Americans engaged in the analysis of UFOs very seriously in 1950-60-ies. No live aliens or UFO material, no one showed.

Supporters of UFOlogy, whom many today, ignoring the fact that cosmic distances are too great and contacts with brothers in mind is not tolerated.

In the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation on UFOlogy lot of money not spent. Among domestic ufologists have outstanding female test pilot Marina Popovich, who retired actively writes about his encounters with UFOs in the sky.

Geniuses are recognized partly

Besides the famous «big» pseudoscience, there are still plenty of «small» pseudo-scientific currents associated with the name of one, not too successful leader. In this connection it may be mentioned, for example, the theory microleptinae protection Anatoly Katrina.

Katrin hard to build a theory of some ultralight elementary particles – Tau – able to organize the defense (and «Russian protection») of a righteous man. And at some point seriously interested in the domestic defense industry. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and Kathryn died in 2001.

Worthy place in this series of teachings is the theory of torsion fields. For the first time this concept introduced by the French mathematician Elie Cartan in 1922 – as a physical field generated by torsion of space.

On domestic soil this theory already in the 1980-ies. developed the late Anatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov alive. They also managed to interest the defense Ministry, the KGB and other higher authorities the alleged effects of torsion fields – in the field of superconductivity, medicine, etc. Anything real is not given.

The most recent time reminded the national audience about such well-forgotten concept as telegony – the belief that the first sexual partner the woman has an effect on offspring from all subsequent ones. Telegenically abstracts used by some clerics, in an attempt to curb promiscuity. Commitment to the telegonia ascribed to the new authorized on the rights of the child in Russia Anna Kuznetsova, but she does not confirm this.

Also just recently, last year the Commission of Sciences to combat pseudoscience recognized as such, the dermatoglyphics is the discipline that studies signs of patterns on the skin of the Palmar side of the hands and feet of man.

Too natural, but not accurate

In the field of Russian Humanities most brilliant, outrageous and instructive example is the new historical chronology of academician Fomenko.

A truly outstanding mathematician, whose achievements in pure mathematics one does not question, Anatoly Fomenko at some point took over the story – and in no time defeated all historical science, without leaving stone upon stone.

It turns out that the whole story was falsified – especially the Romanov dynasty. First, on the basis of astronomical observations Fomenko came to the conclusion that history is much shorter, and antique invented.

But not in history as such «delicious part». Ultimately Fomenko and his literary co-Gleb nosovskaya, releasing book after book, was in its own way a coherent concept, the essence of which is very pleasing to the Imperial mind, «once we owned the whole world.»

«Both Europe and Asia have been conquered from Russia-Horde.» «Of course, in modern Russia, the elephants are not found. But the word «Russia» has radically changed its meaning over the last few hundred years. Previously, Rus or Russia, i.e., scattering, called the entire «Mongolian» Empire. In which the elephants of course were carried out. For example, in the Empire included India, and Africa».

Ideas Fomenko fit perfectly into the Imperial and nationalist consciousness, although not all modern «Imperials» and the nationalists agree with him, there, too, their disputes are raging. However, there is a question: even if this is so, and we had the whole world – we present what is joy?

Professional historians such theories clutching his head: they really realize how huge the world of history. Even world government, which never existed, and it would be absolutely beyond the power to falsify many of the dead languages, or boundless amounts of archaeological finds. But every reader of his opinion.

Speaking about the Sciences, unfairly declared pseudoscience and rehabilitated, usually together with genetics, Cybernetics remember. But in the exact Sciences, everything was much different than in biology. Persecution under Stalin, Cybernetics is mainly expressed in a number of alarming publications in the Central press, and computer technology in the Soviet Union was engaged actively.

We can assume that from time to time in different countries will appear in the self-proclaimed «great scientists» who will be to overthrow the whole direction of the world of science – and strongly oppose the transparent and public inspection of their theories. They will argue that the insidious enemies will steal their ideas or destroy them.

New and well forgotten old pseudoscience can certainly bring some harm – in the form of medical charlatanism or, for example, grandiose projects for which power can a temper to allocate a lot of money. But in General, the science in the world is becoming more check.

Prepared By Leonid Smirnov

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