Japan Joins Central Asia

The Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi, 小泉純一郎, is off on a tour to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the two biggest countries in Central Asia. Uzbekistan with 27 million inhabitants is the most populous one, and Kazakhstan with almost 3,000,000 km² has the by far largest area.

This is not just a polite trip to some poor countries who need some help. All Central Asia has recently shown a strong economic development. The countries are small compared to their neighbours China, India and Russia, but they seem to have got rid of the stagnating Soviet economic system at least as efficiently as Russia, and their economy is booming.

They work together with the giants China and Russia and the much smaller Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Шанхайская организация сотрудничества, 上海合作组织, shàng hǎi hé zuò zǔ zhī, to further make sure that the countries of the old Silk Road will not be forgotten in the economic evolution of one of the most dynamic areas of the world.

One can note that neither Turkmenistan nor Mongolia is a member of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Hopefully that does not mean that they are forgotten, but only that they are busy with other things, like playing football or building hightech factories.

Kidnapped, but why?

Two Italians, Claudio Chiodi and Ivano De Capitani, have been kidnapped in Niger. (For the geographically challenged: this is not Nigeria. Niger is another country further into Sahara.) There is luckily not enough information to get a good picture of what is going on, and that makes it possible to make interesting guesses.

The kidnappers have issued a statement which says that Niger is not a democracy. However, no one knows who they are and what they are after. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese, who do not live in a democracy, and they do not kidnap foreigners to get their message out. Why would people from Niger do so? What makes anyone start fighting for democracy? It is often a good idea to do so - at least with peaceful means, but millions, probably billions of people across the globe to not bother doing it. Why would those people from Niger do it?

There is a possibility that the kidnappers believe that democracy will solve all their problems. There is not enough food. Bring on democracy! There are no good programs on television. Bring on democracy! There is a drought. Bring on democracy!

(Ironically, each of those problems may actually be somewhat helped by democracy - even the drought. With democracy there is fairly likely to be a discussion about droughts and their causes. If it is possible to solve it through better irrigation systems, a democracy is more likely to apply the solution than a dictatorship, where the ruling group may have little interest in actually solving the problem at all.)

There is also a possibility that the kidnappers want money. But then, why do they not simply say so? Perhaps they just begged the Italians for some money, and got more and more insistent. The kidnappers finally realised that they couldn't get any money from the Italians, unless they kept them there with violence, and then they had to invent an excuse for what they had done - and that excuse turned out to be a political struggle in which they had never before participated.

You will have to solve their problem

A third of China is hit by "acid rain" according to BBC. That is a silly headline for a serious problem. Rain is always either acid or alkaline. It is a simple matter of plus or minus. No one would write a headline saying "plus degree temperatures hit China" or indeed "minus degree temperatures hit China". Temperature is always plus or minus. pH is always acid or alkaline.

However, the problem is real. One of the big problems for China is pollution. In contrast to the old Soviet Union, China is well aware of the problems and tries to solve them. However, the problems are also inherently much more difficult. In the Soviet Union there was mismanagement and incompetence, which could have been avoided. In China there is a huge population with increasing very real needs to get the economy on par with Europe, the US and the rest of the industrialised world.

China has knowledge to solve many of its problems. It also looks for knowledge elsewhere. It is not a country afraid of learning from abroad.

However, it is very likely that the rest of the world also needs to help China solve its problems by cutting down. As China buys and consumes more of the world's resources, there will be less for the rest of us, and the prices of raw materials will go up.

This is not necessarily a catastrophe, but it is a challenge to handle. We will need to use existing resources more efficiently. The problem can be solved, but will it be solved fast enough?

Lottery Strategy

There is an absolutely foolproof way of winning on a lottery - or at least to lose as little as possible.

When you play on a lottery, you do not do it because you want to win a lot of money. Of course, you would not mind winning a lot of money, but if that had been your primary goal, you should instead spend your time on things like founding Microsoft.

In the long run you know you will lose. If you spend a small sum every week to win on a lottery, where they highest win is 100 euro, you know that on average you will spend about 120 euro or more for each 100 euro you win, and that is just throwing the money away.

The main reason you play on a lottery is for the excitement. You want to know that you have the possibility to win a lot of money. You want an excuse for your dreams about buying a new expensive car or a small island in the Pacific. And that excitement is quite easy to get.

Step 1. Identify one of those lotteries where you can win an awful lot of money for a very small fee. If you are European the EuroMillions lottery works fine. They have had several wins of more than €100,000,000.

Step 2. Wait until you know the expected jackpot is exceptionally high.

Step 3. Buy one (1) ticket and no more.

Step 4. Put the ticket in a drawer at home.

Step 5. Forget all about it.

Now, it is very important that you do not check if you won. Just let time pass. You are now the proud owner of the possibility of having won millions of euro.

If you happen to stumble over the ticket in the drawer after eleven months, you can of course check the list to see if you won, but it is hardly worth it. You will not win. And if you check it, you have to buy a new ticket to go on being excited about the possibility of winning.

The best way to win on a lottery is not never to play - it is never to check if you won.

A Simple Read

A researcher claims that Mein Kampf was widely read in Hitler's Germany. That is not very surprising. What is surprising is the journalist's claim that this is news: "Jahrzehntelang hieß es, kaum ein Deutscher habe sich durch Hitlers schwer verdauliches Werk "Mein Kampf" gequält."

This is a fairly common press trick. You invent a non existing "myth" and you debunk it. I have thought about writing books myself using the same method. "For a long time it has been said that Napoléon won the battle of Waterloo. This book shows that is not the whole truth." or "It is usually said that queen Elizabeth II tried to stage a Soviet coup in Britain. However, this book shows that she surprisingly enough did not."

Mein Kampf is not difficult to read, as the journalist claims above. There are no complicated parts. And there are no secret "revelations". It is just a load of very simple deluded statements. Hitler's attacks on the Jews are stronger than the attack of a Scottish tourist, who claims he cannot stand the French because they do not eat rollmops, but they are not any more sophisticated. There is only one reason to believe that the Germans could not possibly have read Mein Kampf - the book is such a clear proof that Hitler was an idiot, so it is a wonder he was not laughed out of power.

However, man has an unfortunate habit of accepting the leadership of idiots.

What Everyone Needs to Know

Pluto is no longer a planet. Millions, probably billions, of school children all over the world will now have to unlearn what they once learnt.

The unavoidable question is: what inspired the teachers to teach them it was a planet in the first place? Is there no other knowledge that is more important? Or at least true?

The First Reader

My friend Aaron requested a link to this page. I will send it to him very soon, and you all know what this means. I will finally get a reader! A reader! Hooray! I am no longer alone is this world!

Keeping a Secret as Open as Possible

There is a fascinating book about the holy grail by Dan Brown called The da Vinci Code. It is fiction from beginning to end, but it is fascinating.

The book raises no interesting questions or issues.

I do not mind that Brown comes with inaccurate descriptions of église Saint-Sulpice, or that he steals the lies of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail to build up a background to the plot. I want to be entertained, and Brown entertains me.

However, I do object to the riddles of Jacques Saunière. If you have something you want kept secret, you invent a safe code for it - not a series of riddles, which people can actually solve. That unrealistic bit struck me as far more disturbing than the bad prose and inaccurate descriptions of Christianity and the world.

Explaining the Wrong Track

South Korea (대한민국, 大韓民國, Daehan Minguk) helps the North (조선민주주의인민공화국, 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國, Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk) with 100,000 tons of rice after heavy floods in the North.

North Korea is one of the big mysteries in the world. What are they after? Even though even people at minister level and high party officials probably have very little contact with the rest of the world, they must realise that they are on the wrong track. Just one photo of any street in the South which actually has cars, instead of the vast emptiness you see in the North, should convince anyone that something is wrong. Or do they have some secret source of joy, we do not know of or do not appreciate?

More likely, it is a case of a locked situation. For some (to us unknown) reason, they cannot find any way to back out of their current system. Someone wants to save his (or his party's? or his family's? or his ancestor's?) face, and has found no way of keeping up appearance if the system would change.

Is the North Korean government evil? No. The only true definition of "evil" is "devil worshipper", and that they are not. However, they could be something much worse than evil: stupid.

Past Experience

We are very good at generalising from quick experiences. A restaurant owner in Paris runs in the rain across the street to buy me an umbrella. After that I have this image of really nice Parisians. I know it was a one time experience. It will not happen again in Paris and in no other city either. But the image of the nice Parisian will never go away.

Why can we not use this kind of quick learning to learn from the mistakes of past generations?

Falsifying Religion

Buddhism is the most powerful of religions. Not because it is the truest one, but because it is so cleverly designed that it is impossible to falsify. Christianity could theoretically be falsified, if it were shown that Jesus was not God. Islam could be falsified, if it turned out that the historic facts in the Koran (القرآن al-qur'ān) did not take place.

But how do you falsify that a soul is reborn, if there is no trace of the original soul in the newborn? And how do you falsify that people reach Nirvana (निर्वाण, 涅槃), if the only thing you can go on is their own tales?

Trusting a Company

Lenovo's profits have fallen a lot recently, mainly due to problems with the PC business it bought from IBM recently.

Some security conscious clients, mainly in the US, have chosen to stay away from Lenovo, as they do not want the Chinese company to get access to their data. That logic is not very clean. It is not because the owner of a company is Chinese that the risk is big. Any commercial company can have security holes at any level. No company is secure in this respect - regardless of nationality.

However, if it became public that a company's top management has authorised data theft from its customer, that company would immediately be dead commercially. There is no difference here between a Chinese and an American company. Both of them have the same interest in respecting their customers' privacy.

Ubi Bene Ibi Domo

We all long to go home occasionally. Yes, we all do. It is no oversimplification. There are no exceptions.

However, "home" can be so many places. Home is wherever you feel you are in control, where nothing can hurt you. To some, it is the house where they spend every night. To some it is the journey through distant countries, where each day is different, and every night a new bed is slept upon. But where they know the variations between each day are not bigger than they can handle them.

Rational Name Changes and Others

In South Africa they now consider changing some apartheid street names. It is one of those questions that do not have a right answer. Or, perhaps, it has too many right answers that happen to contradict each other.

The issue of changing names is of course an old one - probably as old as man himself. Lutetia became Paris. Byzantion (Βυζάντιον) became Constantinopel (Κωνσταντινούπολη) which became Istanbul. Except in Greece, where they still call the city Κωνσταντινούπολη, and why not? The "Turkish" name, İstanbul, is very possibly of Greek origin as well.

In communist times, there was a story about a Russian who was interviewed for a job.
"Where were you born?"
"Saint Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург)."
"Where did you get your exam?"
"Petrograd (Петроград)."
"Where do you live now?"
"Leningrad. (Ленинград)."
"Now, let's talk about your ambitions. If you could live anywhere you wanted, where would you like to live?"
"In Saint Petersburg."

If he survived until 1991, his wish came true.

People in that city by the Gulf of Finland often continued to call the city simply Peter (Петер) even during Soviet times. All other names were too unwieldy. And the name Leningrad has not disappeared either. The territory surrounding the city is still called Leningrad district (Ленинградская область) for example.

It should perhaps be mentioned that the city was named by, but not after, Peter the Great (Пётр I Великий). Peter the Great in no way was a saint. The Peter that gave his name to the city was the one of Christ's disciples, who is supposed to guard the gates of heaven.

The argument for changing names of places, is usually that you do not want any association with the person whose name it bears. And the argument against it, is usually that no one any longer think of the person. It is simply a name.

It often becomes a heated argument between people who say it is just a name, and people who claim it is not.

They are both wrong of course. It is just a matter of perception. If enough people are disturbed by the name, you have to change the name. It doesn't really matter if it is a rational feeling they have or not, as long as it is genuine.

Throw Away Your Books

There are few places I love as much as bookshops. It is often one of the most quiet places around. People walk around - pull out a book, read a few lines, put it back and check another one. Books for thousands and thousands of euro are there at your disposal. You have the right to go around for as long as you want - picking, choosing, discarding, and then, once you have found the perfect book, just the thing you need and desperately want, you can go up to the counter and...

That's where the dream usually stops for me nowadays. I love bookshops, but I hate owning books. Every book you own demands its own place - its own few centimeters in the bookshelf. It wants you to carry it around when you move. The bookshelf wants to take up wall space, which otherwise could have been used to put something that really was intended to be beautiful, like a painting or an old musical instrument or even a nicely shaped branch you found in the garden. The book demands all that, and you soon discover that the master is not you, it is the physical object of a book, which has you in its hands.

What about reading then? Well, I can easily load as many books on my Palm pilot, which fits in my pocket, as my grandfather read in his entire life. Why give in for the demands of books, when you can use computer files, which take no physical space at all?

The problem is the bookshops. I still love them. What I usually do is to buy at least one book at each visit. Then I throw it away in the nearest dustbin. Buying the book, I economically support the existence of bookshops. Getting rid of the book, I rid myself of its demands on me. And by not giving the book to any of my friends, I force them to buy books themselves, which then supports the bookshops.

The sin is not to throw away a book. The sin would be not to have bought it in the first place.

Shrinking News

Gannett is a newspaper holding company which prides itself with owning about 100 newspapers out of which none is important at all.

Anyhow, they now launch newspapers in the "Berliner" format, which is only slightly bigger than the size often referred to as "tabloid".

The shrinking newspapers is a strange phenomenon. In 2003 British The Independent introduced a tabloid version of itself, and for about half a year, their readers could choose between the full broadsheet form or the tabloid format. Most people choose the more convenient tabloid version, which obviously is easier to read in crammed places like buses, underground trains or supersonic jets. Svenska Dagbladet in Stockholm and La Repubblica in Rome also went for smaller formats, and since a large number of European newspapers have gone for either Berliner or tabloid format.

The question is not really why they change to smaller formats. The question is, "why on earth didn't they do it earlier?" It seems obvious that a small format is preferred by most people.

One thing that has prevented it is probably fashion. Especially in the UK and in Scandinavia, small newspaper formats have traditionally been associated with trash press and bad journalism. To distance itself from that, "serious" newspapers have stuck to big and inconvenient formats - something you would have to fight against to read.

With the advent of the internet, the papers have to fight with all means - even by making themselves readable.