Intelligent Design - Simply Wrong

Intelligent design is fascinating, as there is absolutely no argument for it, and yet there are people who believe in it.

It claims to fill in the holes in the theory of evolution, but it does so in such a clumsy way that it fills the holes with nothing but air. At the same time it removes all the explanations there are in the theory of evolution, and replaces them with air as well.

Paul A. Hanle writes that "the notion of intelligent design is clever". No, it's not. It is brain dead from beginning to end. There are some questions to ask about evolution, and not all of them are stupid. However, "intelligent design" is not the answer to any of them.

It is true that our current knowledge of the evolution of species does not explain every detail of what has happened during the past billion years. However, that only means it is incomplete - not that it is wrong.

The Bible is not complete either. It does not tell you which means of transport our souls will use to reach heaven - by train, by helicopter, carried by flights of angels? Nowhere does the Bible specify this. That does not mean that the Bible is wrong. Just that it is incomplete. Like the theory of evolution.

Pan-African

There are a lot of things to say about the expression "ubuntu". It is used to describe some very nice and important things like the necessity of inter-human relations and kindness. The hitch is that it probably does not exist. In Xhosa and Zulu, where the word comes from, it is certainly used with a different meaning from what it has acquired when it became an international word. One dictionary translates it simply as "humanity".

But one thing is certain, it is not "an African worldview". Talking about "an African worldview" implies that people in Egypt have more in common with people in Swaziland or Angola than they do with people in Jordan.

If you are European, try giving an example of a "European worldview", which applies from Albania to Iceland. If you are Asian, try giving an example of an "Asian worldview" which would apply from North Korea to Turkey. If you are American or a journalist at the BBC, just trust me: it makes no sense.

Kant was wrong

The Berlin Opera is hesitant about a performance of Mozart's Idomeneo, as the scenography includes the cut off head of the prophet Mohammad. This, it is said, generates a security threat, considering the ardent responses to the Mohammad cartoons in Jyllandsposten.

Anyone who thinks the answer here is clear, is wrong. Kant's idea of a categorical imperative, which is supposed to be applied to all situations that resemble each other, is an idea for lazy people, who do not bother looking into all the circumstances of each individual case.

Whether the Berlin Opera should perform this scenography of Idomeneo or not, is impossible to tell. Anyone who says they have an answer is wrong.

Let's Solve it Ourselves

A very wise man, me, has reported that the speed by which species disappear from the earth approximates that of a paleontologic mass extinction.

But that is just the natural selection.

Luckily we can create our own new species with gene technology.

Is there anything as beautiful as nature?

Yugoslavia remains

Looking at a map of the remaining candidate countries for the EU, it turns out that the only countries who are left in the line are Turkey, Albania and Yugoslavia. At least that would have been the case, had the maps stayed the way they were 15 years ago.

The situation is a little more complicated now, as Yugoslavia broke up into: Slovenia (already a member in the EU), Croatia and Macedonia ("official candidates"), Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro (why-not? countries).

But for us who grow up when Yugoslavia was still a real country, the mnemonic is "Yugoslavia is in line for the EU".

We are getting two more friends

It was confirmed today that Romania and Bulgaria may join the EU in January 2007.

Let's just not forget that we are not getting two new friends. It is just two of our existing friends that are invited inside. Dear Serbia, Ukraine, Albania, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Swaziland and Belize and all of our other friends out there. We have not forgotten you. We are ashamed of having to say that we have no more room inside right now. You will be invited inside, as soon as we have made some more room.

If it is a day when we happen to behave decent.

Respect or Accept?

The pope has received ambassadors from 22 mainly moslem countries to stress the respect we Christians (agnostics or not) have for Islam.

Personally I have no respect at all for Islam. I think it is a religion that is nuts. But I realise that a lot of of other religions must think the same thing about my own Christianity. Jesus, God's son! Wine turning into blood, and then Christians drink it like vampires! Talk about crazy beliefs!

The important thing for man is not to find good things with and respect other people's beliefs. It is much more important for man to accept other people's crazy beliefs than their sensible ones. Accepting madness is the most urgent challenge.

Our Enemy: The Young Ones

After unrest at Nørrebro in Copenhagen (København), 266 people have been arrested.

The strange thing here is that no one seems to know why it all happened. There was a demonstration "for" Ungdomshuset (the House of the Youth) at Nørrebro. The demonstrators had not told the police about the demonstration in advance, and some of them claim they simply "defended themselves".

When we are young we want to see results - quick visible results. If the result happens to be arson and vandalised buildings, so be it - as long as it is a result.

Unfortunately it is quite common that we stay young the first 90 or so years after our fifth birthday.

A Proof of the Obvious is Usually Wrong

It is now claimed that the Iraq war worsens the terror threat.

As it is so obvious that it is true, it is likely that the report that concludes it is bad. The New York Times realises it is obvious, but "this is obvious" is not news. They need a report or something to refer to - something new that happened.

Consequently they look desperately for any source that says anything remotely like it, and then publish it without critically evaluating the source. It is not needed, as it came to the obvious conclusion.

Sadly, this kind of less than serious journalism may be the only way to get the truth through the thick skull of a rather dim friend of mine who is president of a superpower somewhere.

No surprise, but a waste of... everything

The Saudi government has predictably denied the reports of yesterday.

Yesterday newspapers all over the world reported a guess. Today newspapers all over the world say "oops".

It is no surprise. But it is remarkable that so much time and resources were spent on such a meaningless exercise.

A great story

There are reports that Osama Bin Laden, أسامة بن لادن , is dead. There was originally one article in one fairly small French newspaper, L'Est Républicain, which claimed that "it is said that" he is dead. That has been taken up by newspapers all over the world.

One cannot tell from this incident that he is alive. Or dead. But one can tell that reports are easily accepted worldwide without criticism by journalists who see a good story.

And what if it does not stop there?

There have been different calculations how long it will take China to get to the same development level as the industrialised world. The poor countries of the world together already have as big a Gross Domestic Product as the rich countries combined. China is likely to become the biggest economy of the world around 2040.

And what happens if it doesn't stop there? If China not only becomes as rich as the Europeans and Americans, but if it just steams ahead, and leaves the West behind? And what if this happens without their introducing free elections and democracy?

Pleading Innocent

It turns out that the dinosaur Coelophysis most likely was not a cannibal after all. It is embarassing that this horrible calumny has lasted for so long. An excuse to the poor animal is needed.

As unfortunately no Coelophysis are alive any longer, you can instead apologise to its closest descendants - the birds. Next time you see a sparrow or an ostrich, don't forget to ask for its forgiveness.

Cinematographic History

Max Pégas (1925-2003) was a French film producer. The ingredients of a good film are an interesting story, good humour, talented actors, beautiful scenery, skilled photographers and a surprising ending. Pégas' films lacked all that. He tried to compensate by using settings where the textile costs were very limited, like the beaches of St. Tropez. One could claim that his films were a waste of time and money. In fact, one should do so.

Democracy is no religion

It would be irrational to treat democracy as a religion or a god, which had to be obeyed. There is nothing sacred with democracy. Democratically elected officials have made millions of mistakes during the past millennia. And democratic referendums have given ridiculous outcomes.

There may be many cases, where other systems would have served a much better purpose.

But the funny thing is that those cases seem very, very rare. It is not difficult to find examples of democracies making mistakes, but it is very difficult to find cases, where one could be certain that another system would have avoided those same or even worse mistakes.

When Sonthi Boonyaratglin, สนธิ บุญยรัตกลิน, takes power in Thailand, ราชอาณาจักรไทย, there is no reason to believe that this improves anything. Sure, some of the mistakes of Thaksin Shinawatra, ทักษิณ ชินวัตร, will be corrected. However, there is no safe guard against the flood of brand new mistakes Sonthi Boonyaratglin may commit instead.

The World is Run by Taxi Drivers

Not only do taxi drivers control a big part of our transport industry, they control our media.

I just made a search on news.google.com for the words "thailand", "taxi" and "driver". It turns out that I get 120 matches from professional journalists around the world, who used taxi drivers as an important source of information about the recent undemocratic coup d'état.

Nobly Wrong

The UK defence secretary, Des Browne, claims the West has a noble cause in Afghanistan.

I perfectly agree, but that is without importance, as long as he cannot convince the Taleban he is right. Yes, I said "convince" them, not "fight" them.

Who cares about the Panda?

If the pandas were to disappear from the earth, that would actually not be a big deal. If our grandchildren won't be able to see any tigers or bald eagles, so what? And to be honest, when was your life last disrupted because of the lack of dodo birds?

Plenty of species go extinct all the time. That is the way it has always been since the beginning of life on earth. If one species more or less goes extinct today does not matter.

What is more disturbing is that the number of species that disappear is increasing. A lot. There is something called a "background rate" of extinction, which is the natural rate of extinction, when nothing particular happens, like an asteroid hitting the earth or so. Current estimates give that we currently are at least 50 times above the background rate. And the earth may within a few decades reach 10000 times the background rate. This would mean that we currently are entering an era of mass extinction comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Ours is a time of record breakers.

There is much more information about this available on the net including a very simple graph.

Beautiful Lies

When you watch a documentary, be it about nature or some exotic place, where you never have been, it is always a good idea to try to watch around the corners. What may be just outside the picture? Why did the cameraman cut at that place?

In general, the more beautiful the photography, the less trustworthy the content. If a photographer is able to evoke extraordinarily amazingly pretty pictures, that means that he is very skilled in doing that. And that also means he is very skilled in avoiding the ordinary and ugly, which is the most representative of any place in the world.

Take any famous and beautiful city, Rome, Heidelberg, Nice, Kyoto (京都), Macao (澳門, aò mén, ou mùn), Boston, Timbuktu, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, San Francisco... They all have nice parts, but the most representative picture of any of them is one of utmost normality.

Oops from the Pope

The Vatican is concerned that the protests against the Pope's recent talk about Islam "might develop into violence directed at the tiny city state".

It is of course not a matter of "the Moslems" being a threat. The threat is that among the more than 1 billion Moslems in the world, a tiny fraction may be so upset that they choose violence to vent their anger. Even if only 0.000001 % of all Moslems do so, that still means a group of ten people, who with the right skills may do some serious damage to the church.

Freedom of speech

It was so much easier to defend the freedom speech in the past, when there was no technical solution for people to publish their drivel to the entire world. The advance of technology has made the subject much more sensitive.

Damn you, Gutenberg!

That's not a Language. THIS is a language.

When you learn a foreign language in school, you are usually exposed simply to vocabulary and grammar of the spoken language. However, there are such a lot of other communication means that are linked to different groups of people.

When an Italian shakes another Italian's hand every day in the morning, the message is not different from the Japanese who bows to his compatriote or the American who waves his hand and says "whazzup!" They are all different ways of expressing a greeting.

Far too often one can hear things like that the Italian in the situation above is more formal than the American. He is not. He just manifests his greeting in a different way. He greets in a different language.

But language goes further than that.

The way the Japanese keeps saying "mmm" during a conversation is a way to express a range of feelings - not just an acknowledgement that he is still awake, as when a German does the same thing. It can mean "that surprises me" or "I know, but I appreciate that you know it too" or "I wish I had something sensible to say".

Even facial expressions can be language dependent. All humans smile. That is universal. But some people have a habit of constantly raising their eye brows to stress that something is astonishing. All humans understand it, but some people have made more of a habit of using it than others.

Fashion is an obvious part of our language. Fashion changes from one country to another. If you were in Moscow in the mid 1980s, you could see thousands of people in jackets of a reflecting fabric in pale colours - not entirely different from science fiction films of the epoch. In Shanghai at the same time, everyone wore Mao uniforms. And in Piccadilly Circus people had green hair and safety pin through their cheeks. All of those were simply a way of telling the world "I know what kind of clothes other people wear, and I conform to it." The ways of telling it was different, and the groups of "other people" were very different indeed, but the message was the same. Wearing a Mao uniform in Moscow or green hair in the City of London would have sent a completely different message.

Even the way you walk can be part of your language. Once, late one evening in the suburbs of a Chinese city, I saw the dark silhouette of a woman walking in front of me. It struck me that that way of walking hardly occurs anywhere outside France - and sure enough, she was dijonnaise. Like the mustard.

Three Kinds of Lies

If you watch television you are likely to be exposed to three kinds of lies.

The first one is the worst one. It is the documentaries and news programs. They are horrible, as they claim to show the truth, and some gullible people may think they do so. In addition they often talk about important matters, like politics and the state of the world, which means their lies have horrible consequences.

The second lie is almost as bad. It is the shows and dramas. Think of Friends, Othello or East Enders. The bad thing here is not that anyone believes they describe real events. No one does. The bad thing is that some people may believe that the world works that way. People may believe that there are people who react like the actors in Friends. That people laugh like they laugh in East Enders. Or that the good way to speak is the way they speak in Othello.

The third lie is not really that bad. That is my favourite. It is the advertisements. There is not a grain of truth in them, but everyone knows they are there just to sell, so no one believes them for a minute. And how could one claim a lie is a true lie, if no one believes it?

Never Trust a Documentary

There is a 1996 documentary by Isabelle Roumeguère about the yáodòng, 窑洞, 窯洞, in the Shǎnxī, 陕西, province of Northern China - Le peuple des cavernes. A yaodong is a dugout in the mountains used as dwelling. The word means "oven cave". The program is about the construction of a new yaodong.

What is striking is how exotic it all seems compared to Europe. Especially, as it is not exotic. Like in other documentaries, the cameras carefully avoid everything that looks normal and zooms in on anything that looks exotic. In some of the dialogues the people talk like bad actors. This may be partly because they are too conscious about the camera. But in some cases it is clear that the scene is staged, and that they are told what to say.

And yet it is a both interesting and entertaining program.

Eat Less Fruit

Apple had an event today when they presented a range of new product updates and a new little box which will make your television do some useful things.

Apple is scary. I have used their products for about twenty years, and I will go on doing so, but it is not my own choice. The problem is that they have an absolute monopoly. If you want a useful computer, there is only one brand available - and that is Apple. If you want an mp3-player that is not ugly, there are a few ones available: iPod, iPod nano and iPod shuffle, and they all come from Apple. If you want an intuitive and safe way of buying music online there is only one provider, and that is iTunes from Apple.

I really wish there had been at least one more high quality electronics and media provider.

Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky

Some research now hints that man is responsible for the recent strong hurricanes.

Assuming this is right, the US may finally accept that it needs to control its carbon dioxide emissions more. However, it is possible that it claims it needs to maintain present levels. It is possible that the US will claim it has the right to keep its current emissions, and that the third world should avoid increasing theirs.

The complication here is that we need a price on natural resources. The US can claim that it has the right to continue as it does today, in the same way as South Africa has the right to the diamonds that happen to be within its habitual theory and Zaire to its own gold.

The US needs to actually cut its own emissions. It needs to make itself poorer through political decisions - and that is rarely a vote winning idea.

Got no milk

Danish export was seriously hit after the row with Muhammad cartoons earlier this year.

However, it would be wrong to say that the publication of the cartoons caused the hit. The cartoons were published 30 September 2005. Not until at the end of January, the first Moslem country started boycotting Danish products.

What caused the hit was the orchestrated response by a large number of Moslems. They were told how to react, and they reacted accordingly. And the reason they were told so, was because the Danish government was unable to handle the issue properly.

The annoying thing is that the Danish government claims it was "right". Of course they were right. That is not the point. The point is that if everyone stands by their right, chaos will reign.

94 too many

94 Taliban, طالبان, fighters have been killed.

This is excellent news from a military short term tactic standpoint. However, it is very bad news from a long term strategic standpoint. If 94 Taliban were killed, that means that there were 94 Taliban there, who were willing to fight for what they believe in. And what they believe in does not seem to be Western democracy.

The fact that 94 were killed, means that there are hundreds and thousands more, who are prepared to fight. The failure of the West is that we have not been able to communicate well enough with those people to convince them to put down weapons.

Operational Skills

Kenneth Branagh has directed a film of Mozart's The Magic Flute, Die Zauberflöte.

According to this article, he admits that he did not know much about opera, but that he claims he learnt some in the process. One thing you cannot learn is what it is like to have an experience of opera year after year and, perhaps, even remember it from when you were a kid. Branagh will not be able to relate to that kind of long time familiarity.

On the other hand, that is not a big problem. A lot of his filmgoing audience will not be able to relate to it either.

Resolving a sixty year old issue

To get some more Korean friends after that last post, I will now, for free, offer a solution to the problem with North Korea 조선민주주의인민공화국.

The huge problem with North Korea is not that it is difficult to get rid of. It might easily disappear overnight, if they suddenly realise that they are on the wrong track.

The huge problem is how to handle the reunification with the South. There are more than half as many inhabitants in the North as in the South, and the difference in development is much bigger than it ever was between East and West Germany. And East Germany's population was less than a third of the Western population. Besides almost all East Germans had West German television, so they knew what was going on elsewhere. The North Koreans do not have the privilege of access to foreign media. And in spite of those advantages, the reunification of Germany was fairly painful, and still now, 17 years later, there are big differences between the two parts of the country.

So how can Korea handle that kind of reunification successfully?

Easy. Don't reunify. Unify with another country!

Once the North Korean government falls, it can be incorporated into China, 中国, instead of South Korea. The level of development is closer, and with China's population of 1.3 billion inhabitants, it won't hurt much with just 23 million poor new citizens.

The North Koreans cannot complain, because they get access to a more developed country than their own. The South Koreans cannot complain, because they will not have to take care of their poor brethren. And the Chinese rarely seem to complain when they can grab some more territory.

Resolving a thousand year old issue

To many of us the recent row between South Korea and China over academic research about Balhae, 발해, 渤海, Bóhǎi, is simply bizarre.

How can you take "diplomatic measures" against an academic paper? If an academic paper is wrong, you refute it with another academic paper, not by aggressive demonstrations.

However, in this realistic world of ours, you have to accept the importance many South Koreans attach to this issue. If it is important to them, it is a delicate issue, in spite of the fact that what they claim is completely wrong.

You are welcome. Yes, all of you.

1400 African immigrants have arrived to the Canary islands recently, and there seem to be more and more of them coming.

Let them come.

One of the things future generations are probably going to loathe us for, in the same way as we loathe the Romans for deadly gladiator battles, is border controls.

Morally, it is very difficult to argue for locking people out from certain parts of this planet, just because they lack the right country name on the cover of their passport. Why should someone from Boston have a better right to move to Los Angeles than someone from Tijuana?

When you are born into a citizenship, certain things can be extremely difficult to change in your life. Those of us who are happy enough to be born with a EU passport have the enormous privilege to move to any other country within the European Union. But what makes me, Mr. Agno, more suitable for this than Mr. Tanaka, 田中さん, who was born with a Japanese passport? What have I as an individual done to deserve it? And what has Mr. Tanaka personally done not to deserve it?

There is no moral right to exclude anyone here - just a traditional right, and as traditions change, this one will certainly do so too.

But what about the practical implications? What about all those millions of poor people who will come and live next door to us?

If we open all borders to all humans tomorrow, things will certainly change. However, there is a very common misunderstanding that "foreign countries" or at least "poor countries" are horrible places to be in. They are not (for the most part). There are happy people everywhere. There are sad people everywhere. There are rich and there are poor. There are people of all kinds.

If we open all borders tomorrow, things will change, but not as dramatically as most people seem to assume. Things will not change more than what we can adapt to.

In the economically poor world, things will change for the better. Unemployed people will be able to move to where they can get decent jobs. Rich people in the poor countries will get it much easier to travel and spend their money for the benefit of the tourism industry everywhere. And as people easily can move back and forth between countries, it will be much easier to get a common agreement on how the world shall be run.

Isn't all that just an unrealistic dream? May be so, but it is a beautiful dream.

Melting Gas

It is possible that a vicious circle speeds up global warming.

As the climate gets warmer, more of the Siberian bogs thaw and release methane in the atmosphere, and the methane contributes to global warming, so the climate gets warmer and....

This is not the only possible vicious circle with global warming. The melting of glaciers can also contribute, as snow and ice reflects sun rays more than earth and stone.

The obvious conclusion is that we're all going to die. We're going to die!

However, before we do that, we have to do some important things, like increasing our oil consumption, which is good for the economy. Who would like to die on a planet in a bad economic state?

A virtual Watergate

The liberal opposition party of Sweden, Folkpartiet, has intruded in the computers of the current ruling party, Socialdemokraterna.

They, or to be precise - some of their workers, have during a long time regularly logged into the social democratic net to get internal documents for the election campaign.

That is bad. Very bad. And unexcusable. And probably criminal. But is it as bad as the newspapers make it look?

The task of a journalist is to report facts - not to guess and phantasise as I do. And thereby they lose an important point.

The temptation in this case has been much bigger than the temptation of a house burglar. A house burglar has to at least leave the street to get into your house. In this case, the temptation was simply to guess a good password in the party worker's normal chair.

Assume the following situation. You have a house, and you decide to remove the front door completely, so anyone can come and go as they want. If someone enters your house, it is still against the law, but you can hardly play surprised if it happens.

And assume you have a dedicated room, where you never go yourself. It has no door to the street, so anyone can walk in. You install a one way window between this room and your main apartment, so anyone in this wide open room unseen can see whatever you are doing.

It is hardly surprising if someone repeatedly walks into this isolated room, if you do something interesting, like oil painting or cook exotic food.

It is not excusable, but neither is it very surprising if it happens.

And that is the point a journalist cannot make on this issue.

It is real steel this time

The profits of the biggest companies of China, 中国, are soaring. The growth is mainly in four sectors: energy, chemicals, banking and steel.

The last point is especially ironic.

In 1958 China decided to make a Great Leap Forward, 大跃进, dà yuè jìn, into the industrialised world. Do do so, they set as goal to double the steel production within a year. The long term goal was that China's steel production should surpass the one of the United Kingdom. People all over the country were encouraged to set up backyard furnaces and produce steel. Metal, in case you are not aware, is not anything you can eat. It turned out that one could not produce high quality steel in backyard furnaces, and the output was virtually useless, in spite of the amount of effort put into it. Why this came as a surprise to the enlightened leaders of the country is difficult to say.

And now, almost fifty years later, high quality steel is one of the leading sectors in China. It got there not through entusiasm and encouraging propaganda, as Mao Zedong, 毛泽东, tried to do it, but through the evil capitalism he so ardently had tried to fight. China today produces about 30 times as much steel as the United Kingdom (英国).

Washing Feet

South African former minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok has apologized for his past atrocities. He did this by washing the feet of Reverend Frank Chikane, who used to be an anti-apartheid activist and member of UDF.

This act of reconciliation has not been well received by everyone. The columnist Malala in the newspaper the Sowetan writes "That Chikane allowed this man to wash his feet was the sickest thing ever heard in this new South Africa."

In this The Sowetan is wrong. They are not wrong in expressing their feelings. They would not be wrong in saying "we feel sickened by this." That would be perfectly justified. Malala is not wrong in writing "This is the sort of infuriating, condescending rubbish that we have listened to from the assorted apartheid killers over the past 12 years and I am sick of it." But it is completely wrong to write that it is sickening.

Whether you accept an apology or not is a deeply personal thing. It is one of the things neither man nor God can judge over. Other people can say that they would not have done it. They can say that it should not have been done. But only each individual can decide what they get upset by. Each has his own feelings. Neither God nor the Sowetan has the right to change that.

No French, Please! We're Flemish.

In Merchtem, in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, school pupils will no longer be allowed to practice their French.

It does bring up memories of Franco's Spain, where Catalan and other regional languages were forbidden.

The sad thing is that it seems to be a decision taken with no research into what it means. The goal, to make the pupils speak better Dutch, is of course laudable. The means, however, are idiotic.

To start with it is impossible to keep this rule up. Pupils who chat with each other in the corridors, where no one can hear them, will go on speaking French, when they find that more convenient. And the fact that they know they are breaking the rules, will make them lose respect for rules in general.

According to the article, parents will be allowed to use interpreters during parent's meetings. What that means, I cannot tell. Does that mean that a teacher, who is perfectly able to speak French, will talk Flemish to an interpreter, who will translate what was said to French? The parents will answer in French, and in spite of the fact that the teacher already understands it perfectly, the interpreter will bust in and translate it to Flemish.

In spite of this, I guess there is something more behind it, than what the article mentions. It is fair to assume that such a silly rule would not have been implemented, unless there had been a reason for it. It is possible that there is a clique of French pupils, who use French not only to communicate, but also to consciously annoy teachers and other pupils, who have a less than perfect understanding of it.

In that case, one can see that the school wants to do something about it. However, it is difficult to see why they chose to do this.

Four and Twenty Stress Cases

Blackbirds are apparently adapting to city life.

And just like us, they get more stressed in the busy cities than their relatives in the countryside.

But in contrast to humans, blackbirds in cities get more resistant to stress than blackbirds in the countryside. Each generation can take more and more stress, and evolution runs much quicker with these little birds than they do for us. A blackbird in the wild rarely gets older than five years.

Ironically, it seems birds adapt better to the stressful environment we create, than we do ourselves.

A High Record in Afghanistan

The opium harvest in Afghanistan attains the record of 6100 metric tons, which means that 90% of all opium in the world comes from that country.

Is is often said that the farmers need to survive, and they get the best return on opium. A farmer does not, after all, work mainly to get rich himself, but also to feed his wife and children. If he can do so better by cultivating poppy instead of wheat, of course he does so.

However, the story is not really that simple. The talibans at first encouraged poppy cultivation, but then banned it fairly efficiently, and it was only with the Western invasion that the cultivation took off again. Suddenly the farmers lost much of their moral reluctance to cultivate poppy, and criminal enforcement disappeared.

It is true that the Western powers try to get a good relationship with the Afghans and to help them get some order in the country. The problem is not that the Westerners do not try. It is that they fail.

Brainy Ignorance

A new gene has been discovered. It is not unique to people. It appears in for example rodents as well. And yet they claim this is "a remarkable discovery". The reasoning is that it appears more in humans than in other mammals, so it may have something to do with thinking.

More interesting than what may have something to do with thinking is what we do not know about it, and that is about everything.

Scientists have isolated regions in the brain that take care of different functions like visual input. They have noticed that those regions show more activity when these functions are performed. But that is about it.

We do not have any answer to the following really fundamental questions:

How is information stored? It could be stored with one bit per brain cell. There could be several bits by cell. Information could be stored using quantum physics. Or it may never be stored at all as discreet information, but only as fuzzy clouds that stretch over large areas of the brain. If the last thing is true, it would be impossible to tell when we have truly forgotten something. Let's say I see a rose the 1st of January, and I notice it is white. This information may be stored more or less densely over a large number of brain cells. After one week, the trace of this information may be diminished by 5%. If asked, I can still easily recall that it was white. After one more week, the trace is diminshed by another 5%. I can still recall it, but with a little more difficulty. After two months, I have really big difficulty to recall it. After ten years, the information has come so close to 0, that I to all intents and purposes have forgotten it. However, there is no fixed moment, where one can say "that was the moment you forgot it".

How is information identified? Currently we have no idea how information is recalled and identified. If I see a picture of a rose, I immediately know that it is a rose. However, no one knows how the picture is recognised. How does the brain know that a plastic red rose in your hand and an abstract painting of a white rose both are roses?

How is information processed? When I see a rose, I stretch out my bare hand to pick it, but I suddenly pull it back, realising that roses have thorns, and put on a glove first. No one knows how I connect the rose with the glove. And even less so, if I have to do something completely new, like using a sock instead of a glove, as I do not have any glove present.

How is information retrieved? The eye receives much more information than we get from standard internet connections. Just check the quality of the pictures of streaming video, and compare it to the quality of what you see, when you watch the view of a valley from the top of a mountain. How is all that large amount of information retrieved, filtered and stored? No one knows.

What is really frustrating is that we can simulate a lot of those things fairly well with computers. However, we know that we use completely different methods from the brain, and we do not know how the brain does it.

This ignorance of ours, I think is remarkable. The discovery of a gene that perhaps may have something to do with humans is not.

How not to Win a War

There are wars one can win, and there are other ones.

It is a fairly simple mathematical formula. If you can kill off your enemies faster than you get new ones, you can win the war. If not you cannot.

The conflict around Israel is not that complicated. However, all sides have children, who grow up and join the struggle on one side or the other, so the conflict perpetuates. It is a war that cannot be won with military means.

The current administration in Washington has succeeded in seriously pissing off even its own allies. It is therefore not surprising that young people around the globe take its politics as an encouragement to hit back against it.

If you want to win a war, it is never a good idea to encourage people to join the other side.

Bad Guys are also Good Guys - but Dangerous

People with dreams are not... and some presidents may disagree with me here, they are not evil. Misguided, yes. Often awkward, yes. Sometimes dangerous, yes. Almost always impossible to reason with. But that is not evil. "Evil" is a word that works in books like "The Lord of the Rings", but in real life among real people it is void of meaning.

Thought Provoking but Wrong

It has recently been said that Africa may be the next big stage for Al Qaida, القاعدة‎.

That is thought provoking and therefore probably very wrong. Al Qaida will never get a strong grip of Africa, as it is an organisation which claims to be Islamic, and the vast majority of Africans are not Muslims. And the vast majority of the ones who are Muslims, are sensible and peaceful people, just like most Muslims elsewhere in the world, when they do not feel threatened.

However, let the thought experiment go on a little. One of many complicated reasons why Africa economically is the poorest continent today, is probably the past influence of the Soviet Union. Not only did the Soviets encourage a non working economic model, they did so with such a fervor that the scared West did not have much choice but to fight back, supporting guerillas and stirring up a lot of civil wars in the continent. And as the West fought back, the Soviets got scared and had to fight back even stronger, stirring up more civil wars.

The base mistake here was when people believed in an economic theory which was rubbish. And the subsequent mistake was when people could not handle the people who were wrong.

Let us now assume that Al Qaida succeeds getting a lot of influence over Sub-Saharan Africa. The consequence could be that another misled belief in something replaces the decaying belief in communism. And the consequence could be that Africa's problems are prolonged even more.

As said before, it is not very likely. But if it happens, let us hope that the West finds other weapons of fighting it than it did against communism. Africa is worth a better fate.

An Emperor Less

It is almost exactly 200 years since Sacrum Romanum Imperium, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, finally disolved. This peculiar empire lasted in one form or other for almost 1000 years without ever being any strong monolithic body. It was more often like a loose federation of smaller states.

Like the European Union today.

Screaming Back

They have found Edvard Munch's paintings"Skrik" ("The Scream") and "Madonna".

Is that really news? Did it matter that they were gone? Few paintings have been so much reproduced as Skrik. We all knew it. We have seen copies and cartoons on the theme for more than a century. Did the world lose much when the originals were lost? Would it lose much if they were lost for ever?