How can anyone know so much, and yet be so wrong?

The question above was asked by a friend of mine, who had just read an article by a political opponent. The article was full of facts, details, generalisations and references. And yet, according to my friend, the conclusion was completely insane.

Funnily enough, there is a certain negative correlation between the number of facts presented and good judgement.

If one gets a political idea, one sometimes gets hooked up. One talks about it to friends and strangers and tries to convince them. And the more one has tried to convince others, the more difficult it is to admit defeat and change opinion.

So to back up one's opinion, one looks up facts supporting it. Lots of facts. Anywhere. The more facts you have to back it up, the better you feel about it. Of course, your selection of facts is heavily biased, as you only are looking for things backing up your side.

If your opinion had been sound to start with, it is likely that you could have promoted it without obscure facts, but here an emergency fact collection is necessary.

Then you sit down to write an article promoting your views. Of course you use your knowledge - your facts. List them. Stress them. Repeat them. The reader is fairly likely to be impressed by the amount of information, and he will adopt your opinion himself.

If you want further proof that the sheer number of facts does not correspond to the author's judgement, just read this blog again. Here is not one single fact, and yet I am absolutely right.

Japanese bittersweet

Celastrus orbiculatus is a vine, which comes from East Asia. It is called Oriental Bittersweet, Asiatic Bittersweet, Japanese Bittersweet or Oriental Staff vine in English. It is not closely related with the Solanum dulcamara, which also is known as Bittersweet.

The Japanese name is tsuru ume modoki, which means more or less "creeping plumb fake". The kanji are 蔓梅擬. However, like many plant names it is often written with katakana, ツルウメモドキ, or as a mix of characters, both kanji and kana: 蔓梅もどき.

Why I blog about this? What a question! I think this is an important issue the world should know about.

Géopolitique

One of my favorite podcasts is Géopolitique from France Inter. It is the journalist Bernard Guetta, who comes with interesting, thought provoking and wrong statements about world politics. Everything is presented as serious facts, and I'm sure most of his listeners believe him. He is as far as anyone can be from being an agnostic. Just listen to him informing you what "the Russians" think of Boris Yeltsin (Борис Николаевич Ельцин) or "the Israelis" think of Bush (any bush). There is no trace of any nuance there. All 100 million Russians think exactly the same, if you are to believe m Guetta. This oversimplification of reality is what makes this podcast so easy to listen to. The simplicity of lies is so much smoother to the ears than all the nitty gritty details of reality. I highly recommend it.

Without social conventions

Imagine a world without any social conventions - a world where you could do anything you wanted without caring about what other people thought, without any risk for any haughty looks or punishments, no matter what you did. I know just what I would do in such a world: Have red wine to fish. But don't tell anyone!

Gestures

It seems very clear that the character 水 is an illustration not of what water actually looks like, but of what gestures one makes with one's hands, when one wants to describe it to foreigners.

Evaluation

If you want to know if you are good, it is no use asking your pupils. You have to ask your teachers.

If you are too good to have teachers, you are not very good at judging yourself.

17 years

Scientists could have shown, if they only had bothered, that an object that has lasted for 17 years is likely to last for ever. If you have had a car or a stereo for 17 years without problems, then it is likely that it never ever will break.

That's why you should never through away things you have owned for more than 17 years.

When I realised this some time ago (just after breakfast), I set up a scheme for my apartment. Every year in December, I go through all things I have owned for 15 to 16 years. The ones I have never used, I throw away. The ones I have used I also throw away, otherwise my apartment might fill up to the brink with useful quality articles. They may be good, but I value space more than things.

Searching in life is easier than on the net

One day I sat down to look for something on the world wide web. I opened my favourite search engine and for once went to the "Advanced Search" page.

To my surprise they had added the following parameters:

Sort by:

• Quality
• Intelligence
• Originality
• Truthfulness

Then I woke up of course.

Thicker is better

At the company where my sister works, there is a group of analysts with the task to estimate future trends. The manager of that group had a problem measuring the performance of his employees. How do you measure the quality of predictions?

The solution was simple: he uses the number of written pages. The more pages, the better the analyst.

The best in the group managed to produce 700 pages of estimations in one week. So far no one has managed to read more than the first half of the first page, because it is so boring and incomprehensible, but his manager has very good hope that they one day will be able to use the data for something.

Each has his own skills

The farmer does not blame the cow for not laying enough eggs.

A brief impression of a distant country

I just went to Northern Europe on holiday. It is amazing how refreshing the weather is there.



Not only that, but you have the chance to see as many animals as on a safari on the Serengeti.

I am so gullible

I do not know if you have heard of a company called Apple. They make computers, music players and stunning keynote presentations. I was just watching a keynote presentation, where their director, a mr. Jobs, presented new music players. The audience was enthusiastic and shouted and applauded all the time.

My own thought was that the products were probably ok, as the audience liked them, even though I was a little surprised at the exaggerated ovations.

Then it struck me that I had seen another presentation with mr. Jobs some months ago, and the audience had been equally enthusiastic. Note the word "equally". The audience was identically enthusiastic. The products were different, but they applauded in the same rhythms. Their wows were shouted with the same voices.

Only then it struck me that the room must have had loads of Apple employees commandeered in to support their director. I do not mind them being there. It would be silly of Apple not to send people in to support their products.

I only mind myself being so gullible not to have realised it straight away.

Hooray! I found a reason! Then I can have an opinion!

Strangely enough human discussions often follow a boolean pattern. Everything tends to be black or white, true or false, for or against.

"Smoking is bad for your health, so therefore I want to ban it in public restaurants", for example. The argument is catchy. It is good. It is convincing. And it is so simplified that it is wrong.

If man had been able to have serious discussions, the argument would have gone more like this: "I realise that smoking makes life much more pleasant for a lot of people, that it brings money to restaurant owners, that it can be the reason for two people to find each other for a perfect life-long marriage, that plenty of people do not get sick from it, that some tourists get attracted to our fair city if they are allowed to smoke in restaurants, that few things can bring as much happiness as a cigarette after a good meal. I realise all that, but in spite of that, I think the health risks are so serious that I want to ban it in public restaurants."

However, such balanced arguments are as rare as penguins on the slopes of the Cheops pyramid. And why? Because most listeners fall asleep, before the speaker gets to the point. That's why.

The curse of man is that we fall asleep rather than think.

Wake me up if you find any argument against that.

A few hours ago, a few hundred meters away

Around 1 o'clock today armed robbers stole four paintings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice. It was two Brueghel, one Sisley and one Monet. At that time I was only a few hundred meters away. I get a strange feeling from events at locations where I have been, when they are reported in national or international media.

I had read in the newspapers for several days about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, before I realised that I actually had been to Minneapolis once. I had not passed that particular bridge, but I knew perfectly well where it was.

But I was even more moved when I travelled by train around continental Europe in 1980. I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms at stations, waiting for trains, obviously, and sometimes sorting my things out, reading about available hotel rooms and things to see in the city I arrived to. This was before internet, so my news sources were limited to good old paper newspapers.

The third of August I arrived in Bologna. Following my habit I looked for the waiting room, but could not find it. It did not really surprise me, because the station was a mess, with something that looked like building works ongoing everywhere. I walked to the city centre, bought a newspaper and sat down at a café to read it. It was only then that I realised what had happened at the station. It was the strage di Bologna, a terrorist bomb which had killed or injured close to 300 persons in and around the waiting room of the railway station the day before. If I had arrived one day earlier, there was a pretty good chance that I would not be able to sit here typing this blog right now.

Of course I did not know at the time that there one day would be an internet or blogs, but the closeness of the event disturbed me.

This does not make me special in any way of course. There must have been thousands of people who were equally close to being in that waiting room. And thousands of thousands of people get the opportunity to feel lucky each year, when they narrowly escape terrorists, accidents or natural catastrophes. The positive message is that if you ever get close to a catastrophe, it is much more likely that you narrowly escape it than that you perish in it.

If not this, what? If not now, when?

I think it was Time magazine which used this title on the front page as an argument for sanctions against South Africa during the heydays of apartheid in the eighties. They had other better arguments in the magazine itself. Luckily. Because the title on its own is one of the worst ones I have ever seen.

The argument works equally well for almost anything.

Let's assume that an asteroid is charging against the earth threatening to extinguish all life.

• I suggest that we organise a public demonstration against the asteroid. If not this, what? Do you have any other proposal? OK. Then a demonstration it is.


• I suggest that we complain at Microsoft's helpdesk about the asteroid. If not this, what? Do you have any other proposal? OK. Then Microsoft's helpdesk it is.


• I suggest that we pray, that we burn witches, that we launch a military attack against a foreign country, that we clap our hands and brush our teeth, that we throw away our old socks, that we order red wine to fish, that we buy a new car. Do you have any other proposal? But we have to do something. We cannot just remain passive and see that asteroid smash into us. If not this, what?
  

The catch phrase "If not this, what?" is a way to pretend a displacement activity is backed up by logic.

Brack

This is how you learn a language. This is how you adapt to your environment.

At each level of saltiness of water, almost until it is completely saturated, there are life forms adapted to it. There are freshwater fish that want almost no salt at all, and there are seawater fish that need at least 30 grams of salt for each litre of water. For these levels and each level of brack water in between, there is life for which this environment works.

At each level of knowledge of a language, there is an environment where that level works. You may not be able to say more than "one beer, please", but it is a phrase that works in a bar. You may not be able to spell properly, but you may anyhow be able to discuss the current political situation in Belize. Then, feel free to discuss Belize. Look for the situations that work with your level of brack water. Practice what you know. Without practice you will never succeed.

You may not be able to write elegant sonnets in the foreign language, but you may at least be able to write blogs.

Brick

This is how you learn a language. This is how you widen your horizons.

You can reach a certain level in most things by adding lumps of clay. Learning a language, you can learn, say 50 words a day for a long time, and then you will soon know a lot of words - perhaps all the words of that language, and you will not understand much and you will not be able to express anything in that language.

Because all you added was clay.

To make a stable structure you also need bricks. At each moment when you build a house, you need to know when you can add clay and when you can add bricks to make it taller. Too much clay, and it will not be stable enough to hold its own weight. Too much bricks, and the wall will fall over if you lean against it.

When you learn a language you need bricks as well as clay - grammar as well as words. The tricky thing is to know when in the learning process you need more grammar and when you need more words. Besides there are different kinds of clay and bricks that do not work equally well in all positions in the building.

Next time you want to learn a new language, go to the nearest construction retailer for advice.

Clay

That is how you learn a language. That is how your workplace works. That is what you know of nuclear physics and gossip.

Have you ever tried to build a tall tower of wet clay? You start with one lump, add another one, a third one on top of those ones, and after a few more lumps it will all fall to pieces.

However, if you add one lump and let it dry, you can add another lump the next day. And then, when they are both solid, you can add a third one on top. Letting each lump solidify before you go on makes sure that you have a working base to build on.

When you learn a new language, you start with a few words and one or two grammatical rules. Once you have used them enough for them to stick in your brain, you can add new ones, which build on top of the previous ones. You do not have to wait of course. You can be immersed in new words and rules, but only a few ones will solidify each day for you to have something to build on next day. This is why you cannot learn a foreign language over night.

In your workplace it works the same way. If you one day add 100 new employees to a group of 10, you will probably have chaos for some time, and it is possible that the experiences of the original group will be drowned in the chaos. However, if you add one new employee a day, it is much more likely that they can integrate into the group and help building the organisation. (To be honest, that is not always good. Sometimes the initial group has some bad habits, which perpetuates unless they get a shock treatment.)

Learning nuclear physics is the same thing. You learn about atoms, neutrons, electrons and protons. Only once you have solidified that knowledge in your brain, it makes sense to talk about electron orbits and quarks and Heisenberger.

And the gossip of tabloids works the same way. No one is interested in whether mr. Smith goes to prison, as no one knows who he is in the first place. He is wet clay with nothing to rest on. However, once it turns out that he used to go fishing with a known actor, who we learnt to know through previouos tabloids and movies, and who now has solidified in our minds, the clay of mr. Smith has something to rest on, and his prison sentence will make sense and concern us. And as soon as we are used to mr. Smith, we will be interested to hear about mrs. Brown who was his sister, and who came fourth in some sport in the Olympic games. And soon we have built a tower of gossip, aere perennius.

The first time you watch a soap opera, the actors are wet clay. The second time, they have hardened and make sense, and the producer can add more actors and other television series which build on the first ones.

This is why God created Adam from clay. He always hoped Adam would make it in show business.

A revelation

There is something that should not be hidden by me, but it will be hidden nevertheless, as I do not know it.

Thanks for nothing

In the small village where my grandmother grew up, there lives an author, Bobby Brown.

Bobby had published a theatre play when he was only 17 years old, and it was widely regarded as one of the worst plays ever written in that part of the country. The plot was complex but yet boringly obvious. It would have lasted at least five hours, if there had been a theatre group reckless enough to perform it.

Bobby had paid for the publication himself, but the only copies that were ever sold, were ones he had smuggled onto the shelves of the local bookshop, where a few tourists by mistake bought some. (All copies were later returned, including one bought by an old lady who was almost blind. Her heirs found it in her library, covered in dust 15 years later. When they opened the book and realised the bad quality of the play, they promptly returned it. She had used it as door stop.)

When he turned 30, the local newspaper had a story about how lucky the town had been that Bobby had never since published anything. It then became a recurring theme to thank him for not publishing.

This weekend he turned 90 and the village council organised a party to celebrate and thank him for his long abstinence from any further production. As a sign of gratitude he got an eraser in gold.

You can fool all of the people all of the time

In my long series of idiotic things wise men have sad, we today come to the second one. Abraham Lincoln may once have said "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all the time", but no one knows when, where or why he said it.

Nevertheless the saying is clearly false.

A saying only has a meaning if it can be verified or falsified. The only way to falsify the saying would be to find something which really fools everyone all the time. But as soon as you realise it is fooling us, there is someone who has realised that it was foolery. As there is no theoretical way of falsifying the saying, it must be void.

And what does "all the time" mean? If it means "during the full lives of a generation", then we actually do have an example of something that fooled all of the people all the time: the saying itself. People have believed it for well over the lifetime of several generations since Lincoln died.

A paradox is a statement that can be neither true nor false. Lincoln's saying is not even a paradox, because it is false. And as he probably did not say it, it is not even a saying.

Anyone who believes the opposite is fooled.

The economy of more immigration

The International Herald Tribune has an article about immigration as a means to solve economic problems. Lant Pritchett, who puts forward the ideas, is no idealist. He thinks with a purely economic mind. How much money do "rich countries" earn by letting in more immigrants, and how much money do "poor countries" earn by sending surplus labour abroad? Both sides win, so let's do it, is his credo. However, he is willing to accept that the workers are denied the right to bring their families and the hope to ever get citizenship.

He points out that incomes in the rich countries today are about 50 times those of poorest ones, but in the late 19th century, the ratio was only 10 times.

Regardless of his other opinions, that seems to be the crux. As the richer countries keep the people who happened to be born in poor countries out, the differences increase. The bigger the difference, the worse the conflicts when they happen.

If the difference had stayed at a 10 to 1 ratio, would thousands of people have died trying to reach Europe the last few years? If the difference increases above 50 to 1, how many people will die in the future? How desperate measures will they be prepared to take?

The really ridiculous thing is that the real difference actually is smaller than 50 to 1. Prices in rich countries tend to be higher than in poorer countries, so even if you have a higher salary, you are not necessarily much better off.

That is why opening the borders may be such an efficient solution. Prices go down in the rich countries. Salaries go up in poorer countries. Prices may also go up in poorer countries and salaries may go down in richer countries, but it is not certain. What is certain is that the differences would diminish, and with them much of the current tension and the risk for future conflicts.

An empty space

I just learnt that Povel Ramel passed away yesterday at the age of 85 years.

It is usually silly to talk about "the greatest artist of all" or "absolute geniuses" in art, as the perception of literature, music and art are so personal. However, if someone were to claim that the four greatest artists all categories were for example William Shakespeare, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pablo Picasso and Povel Ramel, I would have a hard time finding any arguments against Povel's place in that list.

Povel is an excellent example of how a great artist can be constricted to relative obscurity in the world, as the tool he uses to express himself is a fairly unknown language. Rowan Atkinson, Mike Myers, John Cleese and 大山 (Dàshān) are able to make audiences of more than a billion laugh in English or Chinese. Povel reached less than 10 million Swedes.

His music was great, his shows and films very amusing. But his verbal virtuosity was unmatched as far as I can tell.

It has been said that it is worth it to learn Russian in order to experience Pushkin's (Александра Сергеевича Пушкина) poetry in original. Likewise, it is worth it to learn Swedish just in order to experience Povel Ramel.

It is really a sad day, or as Povel himself put it:

Laj dadaj dadaj uti den korpsvarta natt
dajda hm de dystra toner dm daj di daj...

No one left in the office

There has been trouble at my sister's company again. At the annual shareholders' meeting last week, the board was sharply asked to improve efficiency.

The CEO, a young chap called Bob, then decided to lay off the entire work force to employ new people, who better would fit into the company culture. The problem was that the CFO, a vile bloke called Pete, discovered this was going on, so he laid off the CEO. As the CEO laid off everyone except himself and the CFO laid off the CEO, there was no one left.

Apparently Bob and Pete met at a pub to discuss the issue, each bringing the few legal papers they had managed to get from the office, before it was sealed off. It turned out that all their actions had been legally valid. There really was no one left working at the company - not even themselves.

An additional difficulty was that special regulations forbid the owners from meddling into the business of the company between the annual meetings, so no new board can be appointed before next year, and no one can be employed before then.

However, it seems to be no big problem for the company. It will continue to receive licensing fees from its customers for a long time.

There will not be any problem for my sister either. She anyhow wanted to take some months off to try to understand my blog.

It may be more difficult for Bob and Pete. It turned out that their severance packages consisted entirely in the right to additional unpaid holidays.

You don't have to accept my opinion. I'd prefer to keep it.

There is something fundamentally unsound with people who try to promote their opinions. They thrust themselves upon others, grabbing our attention and stealing our time. I do not want to fall into that trap and therefore only try to promote other people's opinions, never my own.

The secret guide to the mystic sites of Paris

One of the stranger things in the publishing business is the number of non-fiction books with titles like "the mystery of..." or "secret guide to..." The common factor for those books is that they never contain any mysteries or secrets. Quite often the author does not know much about the subject either. Why else would he call it a mystery? I decided to provide you, avid reader, with the same service for free. From all the cities in the world I know, I choose Paris, which I do not know at all. Here are its secrets uncovered.

Paris is a city with plenty of extraordinary tourist sites. I am not going to give away what they are, keen reader, but I will give some hints.

One mystic spot is one of the biggest conglomerates of office buildings in the world. One of the most distinctive and mysterious buildings there, a huge arch, was built in 1982 by a president who prefers to stay anonymous. Still today, so many years later, very few people have learnt by heart the exact number of votes he was elected by.

Somewhere in the city there is a huge art museum with some of the most enigmatic paintings in the world. If you show yourself worthy by sending me enough money, I will reveal the name of it - but never its location. Against an additional fee, I may also mention the names of some of the paintings to look out for, and perhaps, but then I break a holy promise, which parts of the world they originated in. But do not expect too much. Do not pursue the vain quest to learn the artists' names. I will give no details but that one of them comes from the small village Vinci.

You should definitely try to find the well hidden monument to the unknown soldier (capitaine Jean-Pierre Caunnard). It is surrounded by one of the biggest and most secret traffic roundabouts in the world. When no foreigners are watching, the Parisians go there and sit in traffic jams for hours performing their secret rites of mystical hand gestures towards the less skilled drivers.

But most secretly of them all, well hidden in an obscure part of the city is one of the tallest and most enigmatic buildings of the world. If you were to find it, you would have a splendid view of the city. It was built for the top secret world exposition in Paris 1889. Some people have spent years trying to find it. Admittedly, those people have usually looked in the wrong city, and they were not very bright, and there have not been many of them, but they nevertheless spent a lot of time - at least a few hours or so. And those were very secret hours indeed.

Public Transportation Fun

There are two main reasons for taking public transport instead of your own car. The first one is the environment. We have only one planet and we should take care of it.

The second one is that it is fun.

Oh, I remember when the ticket machine at the railway station refused to take the first seven of my bank notes. It calmly and methodically spat them out, one by one, until it finally accepted the last one. By that time the train had already arrived at the platform. As soon as the driver saw me, he closed the doors and sped off, leaving me there with a ticket I could not use, as I now had to take a taxi to catch my plane instead. Oh, I laughed!

Or when the last bus just passed me as I was waving at it at the bus stop. It was just hilarious how I had to walk three kilometres in the rain at one o'clock in the morning.

Today there was a bus driver who closed the door behind me, before I had been able to ask him if I was on the right bus. As I was standing on the lower step, the door crushed my foot. As I gave a jolly scream of somewhat agonizing pain, he kindly opened the doors again, and that jammed one of them against the hand of a gentleman next to me. It was so funny! No, it was not the right bus, but this one went to the hospital, so that was anyhow convenient for us.

Speedy wealth

I spent part of the day at the local car competition in a small town. This kind of events create a lot of carbon dioxide, and therefore really threatens our environment. Even in the lunch tent people were smoking like chimneys to do their best to reduce what little oxygen there was. Oh, it smelt good! I cannot stand the smell of oxygen.

The picture below shows one of the more environmentally friendly cars. It is broken, and therefore emits no carbon dioxide at all.

The hill side in the background leads up to the prince's palace. If you were to climb it, you would get exhausted, burn a lot of oxygen and emit a lot of bad carbon dioxide. Stay on the ground for the sake of the environment.

Advice from a wise man

Being agnostic does not mean that you cannot listen to advice from others. I find it rewarding to read the educational fables of Jean de La Fontaine, Aesop (Αἴσωπος) and Ivan Krylov (Иван Андреевич Крылов). I think you can learn a lot from classic theatre like Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck (Vildanden) or Lorenzo Da Ponte's Così fan tutte.

One of my favourite theatrical characters is Major Dennis Bloodnok. In the many places he appears he has for example the following comments:

On Pleasure

I behaved like an absolute bounder and a cad. It's the only way you can enjoy yourself these days.

On other people

You naughty imbalatoola you!

I'll mugle your crampons with me griff club.

You naughty-nitty-naughty-nit gentlemen you.

Comments regarding Foreign Relations

Knuckle me sombrero and Spanish me knuckles!

Volkeshere berebackter, kabloong un kablootsiempire grung dang!

Achtung, gaflooden gablootz!

Soliloquies

Just like Hamlet, he excels in his sololoquies, when his thoughts are undisturbed by others:

Aeiough! Bleiough! Arangahahhh! Kitna Budgy Ha!! Aeiough! and other naughty noises.

Great galloping crabs!

Crod me klerdler and hit me naughty splow!

Nadger me standing load!

Great boiling buckets of bringe!

Great knobbly plates of toes!

Great naked kippers!

Fling me mottles overboard!

Slud blan dweee!

Lower me gringers!

Grab me scalibers and thud me gringes!

Great steaming heaps of green splat!

Noddle me steaming chuff!

Mashie me mogler with a thin crippler!

Flud me cystern with galloping crabs!

Great steaming lumps of therk!

Shutter me donger and thud me crimik!

Great brown nutted nurglers!

Murgle me rogers!

Graze me grundles!

Thud me gripkins!

Thud me cronker stops and duffel me latches!

Great larruping nurglers!

Thud me marling-spikes!

Great scorched thund bringe!

Flatten me Cronkler with Spinach mallets!

Flatten me krurker and nosh me schlappers!

Thud me cringing nurglers!

Great thundering widgets of Kludge!

Griddle me grodkins!

Strice me dongler and hell me iron thudders!

Great crongolers of steaming thund!

Great dollops of steaming thund!

Seekoo henk!

Oh, me puckes!

Thud me fneficks and fetch my fungs, and other time filling in phrases!

He already tried that

Someone asked why God did not put some more obvious proofs of his existence in the Bible. He could, for example, have given the millionth number of π and asked mankind to check it out, once we had developed computers to calculate it.

Well, he actually did try it. He did write it down. He also explained that the moon was not made of cheese and that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox did not contradict quantum theory. The problem was that the early editors of the Bible had no idea what he was talking about, so they thought it was a typo and removed those paragraphs.

It is a good point though, and perhaps it is time for a new edition of the Bible with some new information that hitherto has been hidden for man. He could for example explain string theory or write down where I left my car keys this morning.

The battle's lost and lost

The 2nd tour of the French election is over. Luckily for France, the president does not necessarily do very much. He is head of state and has a lot of power on paper, but if he chooses to just relax during his term and leave governing to the government, few people will complain.

The high voter turnout may not be best explained by most people's enthusiasm for their candidates, but perhaps their intense desire that the other guy would not win.

Democracy won

The first round in the French presidential election is over.

Democracy won.

To start with, close to 85% of the voters went to the urns. That means that more voters cared about the result than they did in the last election in 2002.

The second good news is that most of the really silly candidates got just a few percent of the votes. For example the high profile but stark raving mad leftist José Bové got just 1.4%. And the trotskyist Arlette Laguiller, who has participated in every presidential election since 1974 got no more than 1.5%, down from an insane 5.7% in 2002. Among silly rightist candidates Philippe de Villiers got just 2.5%, and that will hopefully discourage him from continuing.

The French voters have taken a big step from silly candidates to just slightly silly candidates.

Between the devil and the deep blue eyes

There is a presidential election coming up very soon. It is in France.

Not very long ago I claimed I came from France. (It is a lie of course.) The reply from the nine year old who interviewed me was: "France, what is that?" And then followed a discussion whether France and Germany was the same thing or not.

For the French presidential election we all need a candidate of course. It is like watching a football match. You cannot possibly endure 90 minutes of Manchester against Watford, unless you get an opinion on who should win, so you care at least a little about where the ball rolls around on the grass.

The three possible candidates are Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal and François Bayrou. Then there are a large number of impossible candidates.

The only one I do not want to win is Sarkozy. Royal and Bayrou are wishy-washy and say what they think will get them votes. Sarkozy, already knows what will get him votes, so he says it all the time. That is what makes him dangerous. He has opinions.

Royal and Bayrou have all the wishy and washy flexibility needed to face a dynamic world, and they seem prepared to abandon any conviction they happen to have, if needed. Sarkozy may not actually have any opinions, but he is such a good actor that it seems he has strong opinions, and therefore he has to stick to them.

When the world changes, he will be unable to adapt to it, and he is doomed, and France will be doomed too.

In the end, Sarkozy is actually the only possible candidate. He is strong enough to become one of the candidates in the second round because of all the people who are blind enough to trust him. Royal may not be that strong or have that blind voters, but people will vote for her in the first round anyhow to avoid any risk that the widely (and rightly) despised Jean-Marie Le Pen will spoil the party, like he did five years ago.

And in the second round, enough people will do anything to avoid Royal's election, including voting for Sarkozy. Who unfortunately has opinions.

Il dolce far il deadline

There was a management consultant coming to my sister's company. He gave a two hour presentation on the importance of strict deadlines in all planning.

After the presentation, everyone started defining precise deadlines in all their schedules. In less than a month it lowered the stress level a lot. If you set up a deadline and miss it, then you can forget about that task and start waiting for another task to come up.

Pointing fingers

Perhaps surprisingly, 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova has been published in mainland China (as 西方历史上的100部禁书). I held a copy in my hand as late as today, and there is a reference to it here. Note the reference to the publisher (出版) in Beijing, 北京.

But perhaps it is not that surprising after all. A strategy Beijing has recently applied to defend itself against accusations of human right abuses has been to attack the West in its turn for the same thing. If the US can keep people without trial in Guantanamo, why cannot we stretch the laws? is the logic.

Likewise 100 Banned Books shows that the West has a long tradition of banning classical world literature, so why would China be unable to ban literature in its own country?

Whether China's logic is very valid or not, is not that interesting. What is interesting is that it is difficult to take human rights criticism seriously from any country that does not respect human rights itself - no matter which reasons that country has for its behaviour.

Ju ware

In the National Palace Museum of Taipei (台北) there is an interesting exhibition about Ju ware or Rǔ (汝) porcelain.

The Chinese character for Ju/Ru consists of the radicals for water 氵 and woman 女, which together make a beautiful combination. But try avoiding the character when you go to Japan. In Japanese it is one way of writing a not very nice word for you, "unu". The Chinese variant simply is a place name, as far as I understand.

Ju ware was made during just a few decades around the year 1200. One should not be misled to think that it is full of radiant expression. It is striking in its very strict shapes and sobre blue colour. It is actually so discreet that it almost could fit in the porcelain department of an Ikea store, even though it obviously is of a bigger historic interest. If you go to visit the exposition, try to go there early in the morning. In the afternoons the room is full of tour guides explaining Ju ware to their groups like a big Tupperware party.

The right distance to religion

Religion can be a serious subject, at least for those who believe in it. However, the simple fact that religion exists (not God - religion) affects all of us. Before Christmas most shop windows are full of Christmas decorations on the continents around the North Atlantic, and, strangely enough, in places like Japan and China as well. We need excuses to party - and religion is not a worse excuse than your birthday. And that is the case even if the religion does not happen to be yours.

One of the strangest festivals of religious origins is the carnival. Originally it was supposed to be a time, when you partied and stuffed yourself before Lent that is introduced by Ash Wednesday. However, as more and more of us have stopped bothering with Lent, what remains is the party. It now often stretches into the supposed period of restraint that was the original reason for the party.

Well, who am I to complain? More people get happy from parties than from mortification. Some illustrations of the party bit can be found here.

Censorship has a point

According to a South China Morning Post podcast (and presumably their paper edition), Beijing (北京) will initiate a point system for Mainland Chinese media, just like many countries do with driving licenses.

With driving licenses it is usually a fairly well defined system. You have 10 points to start with. Every time you are caught driving against red light or for some other infraction, you lose one point, and when you are down to zero, you lose your license.

How it will work with media in China is less clear, but each media outlet will get 12 points, which may be deducted, whenever something is published against central directives. When they get down to zero, they will have to close down.

Reporters without borders are critical to the system, but their arguments are only based on the fact that they are against censorship. Given that censorship exists in China, and that it is likely to exist for a long time, it may be good to formalise it, and this may be as good a way as any other to do it.

There are two kinds of censorship. There is the irrational random one, which reigned in Stalin's Russia. People had very little idea what one was allowed to say. Inadvertently they could write things, which might send them to Siberia or the execution squad. Then there is the formalised censorship, where the rules clearly are laid out. People can get information about what kind of issues may be discussed, and which opinions are not suitable for publication. Clearly well defined rules are better than irrational decisions.

Whether China will implement this in a constructive way is yet too early to tell.

More information...

Mathematics of Evil

Evil = Ignorance * Power

That formula works most of the time. When it does not, it is because one ignores the essence of ignorance.

Finally peace

The company where my sister works had huge problems with stress. Everyone from the CEO to the man employed to dry everyone's umbrellas on rainy days felt overly stressed. A few months ago they all went to a two week intense course in Buddhist meditation to calm down. The result was impressive. 78% reached Nirvana and 100% found inner peace and the answer to the Universe's eternal questions, far above the target numbers of 30% in Nirvana and 45% with inner peace.

Unfortunately, after the course was over, none of the employees turned up at work again.

A man of principles

A man of principles is a man who knows what he believes in - often before he has any idea what it is all about. A man of principles is a man who wants to have a ban on water, as people sometimes drown in it.

A union that never happened

In the news people are surprised at the suggestion of 10 September 1956 by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet to create a union of the UK and France under the British monarch. Both France Inter and NPR have podcasts about this as well.

There are two reasons the suggestion of a union is not surprising at all.

The first one is that the times were very different in 1956. France and Britain had fought together in the World War, and both now desperately tried to defend their empires, which were quickly crumbling.

The second and more significant one, is that people always have had crazy ideas. Just look at any blog, and you will find plenty of silly ideas. M. Mollet was in no way immune to craziness.

A country that never existed

The International Herald Tribune today points out that "Iraq has always been an artificial entity — an incongruous collection of sectarian groups cobbled together by the British empire and then sustained by Sunni terror."

Disregarding the fact that they thoughtlessly almost imply that all Sunni Moslems are terrorists, there is an interesting point in saying that Iraq is an artificial entity.

Citizens of many European countries and of the USA and several other places on the globe seem supposed to identify themselves with their country. Ask a Dane if he is Danish or European, and their is a pretty good chance that he answers "Danish". Europe is something that comes as an afterthought, and sometimes not at all.

Perhaps, and I am really guessing here, a solution for Iraq is to abandon all pretensions of being a country. By forming tighter bonds with countries with a lot of Sunni like Syria, Jordan and Kuwait, with countries with a lot of Shiites like Iran and with a lot of Kurds like Turkey and Iran (again), the Iraqi might find an identity of "Mesopotamians" or "Middle Easterners" and content themselves with Iraq as a purely administrative region within a larger area - a European Union type of unity consisting of the countries around Tigris and Euphrates.

Where is Alexander the Great (Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος) when you need him?