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?