Everything is Cyclic

A few years ago, I had breakfast at the same time in the morning twice. First in Osaka (大阪), then, having crossed the international date line, in Honolulu.

I recently had a similar experience. I checked in for a two hour flight one day. The next day, I went to the same airport and checked in again for the same flight.

Phileas Fogg gained one day by crossing the date line. Could he have saved a day by checking in for the same flight twice in a row as well?

What is more likely to make us younger? What is more likely to make us more experienced?

North Korean Yeonpyeong Attack - Not on Purpose?

In spite of the international outrage, the recent North Korean attack on the South Korean Yeonpyeong, 연평도, islands may have been a clumsy mistake. The attack seems so utterly pointless that not even the North Korean leadership perhaps thought of it.

Imagine this scenario. You are a North Korean soldier. You have heard all your life that there are evil countries like South Korea and the US who constantly are trying to attack the country you live in, and where you, in spite of some hardships, have had a fairly decent childhood. Now, this is the real thing. You are a soldier close to the border, and the evil enemies are close by. Suddenly, you see and hear the South firing with canons.

You know that your duty is to defend the country of your family and friends. (You do not have to think about the fact that you defend Kim Jong Il, 김정일, and the communist party as well.) You give alert. "We are under attack." Surely that is the only reason why the South would fire their canons - to attack us.  They are, after all, evil - that's what you have heard all your life. Your officers panic. They also want to defend the country of their families and friends. They immediately order retaliation.

This is important. This is to defend the peace of your community, to make sure that nothing harms your parents, your sisters and brothers, your friends and your small innocent nephews and nieces, perhaps your own children. It is such an important task, and you are part of it. Of course you have to fire, fire and fire again, against the evil anonymous enemy out there.

This goes on for about an hour, and 170 shells have been fired. During most of this time, the South shoots, now definitely at you and your friends, who have done nothing worse than trying to defend your near and dear. You finally stop shooting, when a senior officer gets involved and tells you to. About one hour later, the South stops their shooting as well.

You make your report to your command, who send their report to Pyongyang, 평양, where the top leadership has to try to explain the incident to an annoyed international community, without admitting that their country messed up.

I do not know if this is how it happened, but it seems as likely to me, as some well orchestrated North Korean plot to achieve something one does not even know what it might be. My experience is that politicians make a lot of clumsy mistakes. I am willing to believe that the North Korean politicians are as clumsy as the ones in the West.

The Euro - not that much of a crisis

Ever since Greece got into financial trouble at the beginning of this year, there have been people, mostly from outside the currency union, who predict its sudden demise. I will stick out my usually so agnostic neck here, and say that they are talking utter rubbish.

Is there a crisis? Yes, of course it is. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, all have huge economic difficulties. However, it is not a crisis that is worse than other economic crises in the past. The world economy is a dynamic system, and there are bound to be crises popping up here and there, like in Denmark in 1987, the United Kingdom and Japan in 1992 or Taiwan and Korea in 1997. All those countries had their own currencies, and that did not save them from any crisis at all. Some of them have recovered, like Taiwan and Denmark, and some have not, like the UK and Japan.

The recent crises within the Euro area proves that the Euro is not a fool proof way of keeping a country out of economic troubles, but I do not know anyone who ever claimed it was.

There is a crisis, an issue, a problem, a situation, and now politicians and the market forces are working on solving it. We do not know yet, how good or swift the solution will be, but it is very likely that there will be some solution.

The Euro prevents some traditional ways of solving the problem. Spain cannot devalue its currency to get more competitive. However, devaluations are very blunt instruments. With a devaluation, everyone in a country gets temporarily poorer. Everyone will get less money to buy imported goods - and domestic goods, made of foreign parts. A domestic company which needs foreign parts to sell on the domestic market will be hit by a devaluation, perhaps so much that it actually goes out of business, causing unemployment and further disasters. If Spain would devalue its local currency, it would lower the salary for all those people who work for financially sound companies, as well as the ones that need to become more competitive.

With the Euro, there will be no devaluation, and financially sound Spanish companies will be able to do business as usual. Other companies will have to take some drastic measures, like laying off people or lowering salaries. However, if there had been a devaluation, Spanish companies would get more competitive, and some companies outside Spain would get less competitive in relative terms, and they would run into problems. When there is a shortage of money, someone is inevitably hit. The question is who and how.

The Euro in its present form is a new concept, and no one knows exactly what solutions will emerge, but there will surely be solutions for a lot of the people involved. For some people, there may be no solution, and their living standard will be permanently lowered - just like in other crises in countries with their own currency.

But let's assume for a moment, that the Euro is to be blamed for the current problems, how would one get rid of it?

That is a real problem. It is almost impossible to do so.

A country with a poor economic situation could be tempted to leave the Euro to be able to devalue. The problem is that it inevitably would be known in advance that they would leave, and before the cut-over, everyone would rush to remove their money from the poor country, as everyone would know that the currency was meant to lose value. People would transfer all their savings abroad. Companies would transfer their headquarters and capital abroad. The flow of capital would be immense. The intended effect, a loss of value of perhaps 5-10%, would extend to a drainage of the entire country's resources.

A country with a good economic situation could be tempted to leave, not to be dragged down with the falling value of the Euro. The problem here is the same, but with inverted values. Everyone would know in advance that the country would leave with the intention of pushing up the value. There would be an enormous pressure to buy assets in this country to take advantage of the appreciation to come. This would drive the currency so high, that the salaries in the rich country would become impossibly high. The companies would not be able to afford them, as their products would be too expensive to export, and mass unemployment would follow.

This means that it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for anyone to leave the Euro - at least for the purpose of fluctuating a local currency up or down.

Besides, there are all the practical costs we paid once when we joined the Euro, that will need to be paid again: transition of accounting systems and software, replacement of all slot machines (like parking meters, vending machines, ATMs), distribution of the new currency and elimination of the old currency (the Euro that is still valid in other countries) and so on.

In addition, for every country leaving the Euro, the old arguments are still valid. International travel would become more expensive, as we would have to start paying exchange fees again when going to neighbour countries. International trade would be more cumbersome and more expensive, as each transaction would have to pay for the risk involved. That would lower the trade volume, and one thing no economist outside North Korea denies today, is that trade is necessary to generate wealth.

At last someone to talk to

There is an elderly (and charmingly fictitious) lady in our house. She lives on her own, but clearly has a need for company all the time. When you bump into her in the corridor, she will talk about this and that with you, until she suddenly turns around and tries to involve your neighbour in the conversation when he tries to sneak past.

Recently the block got an elevator with a synthetic voice, and the lady adores it:

I can go up and down for ever talking with the elevator. It is so polite.

"You have reached the third floor."

"Yes, that's it, isn't it? Golly, are we there already?"

"You have reached the fifth floor."

"Are you sure? I could have sworn it was the sixth floor. Yes, look at that. That's where the Duponts live. I recognise their pretty door mat. It is the fifth floor indeed."

"You have reached the second floor."

"You are having me on, aren't you? This is the fourth floor. No, there is no use arguing, I'm sure it is. I should know, shouldn't I? I have lived in this house for years. You were installed just a few weeks ago."

"You have reached the seventh floor."

"Oh, that is my favourite. Did you know it was? I like the view from the windows here. You can see the roof of the Negresco in the distance. It is so lovely. Thanks for bringing me here..."
And it never gets tired of talking with me!

Life is never boring for people who can appreciate a talking elevator. If they only taught people how to do it in school, the world would be a much happier place.

Me - A Gentle Savage

If you travel in a country where not everyone has access to basic education, you will meet people one could (politically incorrectly) call "savages". Most of them would definitely not be savages in the sense "wild brutes", but in the sense of a gentle savage - a mostly nice person who has limited grasp of civilisation. They will probably speak more languages than you do, but that will be local languages, and they will not be able to write anything down. They will not know basic things about astronomy, quantum physics, banking systems, foreign countries, the theories of relativity or evolution. They will often be nice people, just like you and me, fun to chat with and helpful if they see you have a problem. However, due to their background, they would score low on a typical intelligence test, even one designed for people who cannot read or write or count. Their lack of education and experience would make it difficult for them to fit in the rich part of the world.

Some years ago, a very intelligent little girl asked me "when does the world start?" I did not understand what she meant at the time. She may not have understood it herself. But I think the world soon will start, and it will leave me behind as a gentle savage.

Hardly any adults today have had access to internet all their lives. All adults have been raised by parents and teachers who lived most of their lives without internet. However, there will be more and more adults who do not know of any world without computers and the internet. And they will get children and will teach young people, who have had computers around them since before they were born.

The coming generations will get education and experiences and stimulations that we older people can never catch up with. We will to them be savages, hopefully gentle ones.

What Camera did Irving Penn use?

There is a good old apocryphal story about the author Ernest Hemingway and the photographer Irving Penn.

Ernest Hemingway to Irving Penn:
“Your photos are really good. What camera do you use?”
Irving Penn to Ernest Hemingway:
“Your novels are excellent. What typewriter do you use?”

The problem with the story is of course that it does not give the important information, which camera did Penn actually use? Luckily, the National Portrait Gallery in London can inform us that he used Rolleiflex, Deardorff V8 and Hasselblad. And certainly a bunch of others during his long life.

Ernest Hemingway used a Corona #3 typewriter when he want to Europe in 1921. Thanks to this blog for finding references about this in Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 1969, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons. He is also supposed to have used a Royal Arrow, Underwood and Halda. Three of his typewriters allegedly still are at the Hemingway villa Finca Vigia in Cojimar Cuba.

A similar story is told about the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 – 1516) who is supposed to have asked Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528) for the brush by which Dürer managed to paint so realistic beards. Dürer gave him a perfectly ordinary brush; it was his own skill that made the beards lifelike. 

The Corona typewriter in this picture was probably not used by Hemingway.

Staggering Happiness

There is a rumour... (Actually, no, there isn't. But there could be. And perhaps soon will be, if people read out this blog to each other in a mumbling voices.) Anyhow...

There is a rumour that a team of zoologists from the university of Cuxhaven have found a new species of cockroach in South Eastern Sawarak on the border to Indonesia. The exterior aspect of the cockroach is somewhat unusual, but what is stunning is its mind.

Several tests of the hormones in this tiny animal, showed that it was the happiest thing ever identified. The structure and concentration of the chemicals showed that it was far happier than even a grown up human can ever aspire to become. It was happier than a winning football team and even happier than hundreds of dolphins playing with red plastic balls.

Naturally, the researchers felt bad about destroying such intense happiness, and none of them wanted to harm the cockroach in any way. Consequently, the cockroach gained the privilege to walk around in their morning cherry jam and eat as much as it wanted.

This is the first known example of an animal having developed a call for envy and compassion as self defence.

Fighting Islamisation - a Strangely Consequent Approach

My brother-in-law, Bob, was really upset the other day. He discovered that their new neighbours were Muslims.

"This needs to be stopped!" he said. "They move here, to a nice Christian neighbourhood..."
"Well, the couple across the street are atheists."
"Yes, but I'm sure they do not mean it. If they had to choose, I'm sure they would be Christians."
"Your next-door neighbours on the other side are also atheists, actually. And the Smiths further down the street. And the Joneses further up are Hindus."
"Yes, yes, but they are not Muslims. And that is the point. We non-Muslims need to stick together."
"Because you have zero confidence in Muslims?"
"Stop right there! I have little confidence in Muslims. Not zero. Zero is a concept we Westerners imported from the Muslim world eight hundred years ago. It is a Muslim idea, and we do not need it."
"We do not need the number zero? What about typing the year you were born, 1970?"
"That can easily be done with good Christian numerals: MXMCLPRSPQRX or something like that."
"Are you feeling well? I could get you a brandy."
"Never will I drink that disgusting Muslim drink."
"What? Muslims do not drink alcohol."
"True, but the chemical process of distillation is something we Westerners learnt from the Muslims during the middle ages. I will never drink any distilled drinks again."
"You need to sit down. Help yourself to some fruit, if you want to."
"Don't you have any non-Muslim fruits?"
"What?"
"Look in the bowl. Full of Muslim propaganda! Peaches, apricots, oranges..."
"... which we all got from the Muslims. I get the idea. A glass of water then? Or a cup of water, in case we learnt how to make glass from the Muslim world."
"A cup will be fine, thanks."
"Good. Lemon with that?"
"Lemon!"
"Sorry, probably something we got from the Muslims, right?"
"Absolutely. Like artichokes, aubergines, saffron and spinach."
"Well, I was not about to offer you any slice of spinach in your water."
"Fine!"

I went to the kitchen to get a cup of water without lemon or spinach. When I came back, Bob was busy tearing my nephew's pocket calculator apart with a penknife.

"Bob, what are you doing?!"
"Look at that! Sine, cosine, tangent, all Muslim inventions. I will remove the buttons from this sinful gadget."
"No, you will not. That sinful gadget is not yours."

I pulled the calculator from him and looked at it.

"You removed the division sign. Do you want to imply that we learnt division from the Muslims?"
"No. We Westerners have always been able to divide, as have all civilisations, I guess."
"And?"
"It is the slash to separate numerator and denominator that is a Muslim idea. We cannot have that, can we?"

I sighed and switched on the radio to get some music to calm down with. Bob immediately started to scream and covered his ears.

"Switch it off! Switch it off!"
"What now?"
"It is the Beatles!"
"And the Beatles were Muslims?"
"No, but they play guitars. Guitars are measly Muslim instruments that were brought to Europe through Spain in the middle ages."

I switched channels.

"And what about Johann Sebastian Bach's incredibly Christian Mass in B-minor? I can hardly think of any more Christian piece of music."
"This is nothing to joke about." Bob rushed up and switched it off. "The violin has its roots in the Muslim instrument rebab. I refuse to listen to that Islamic noise. No symphony orchestras when I'm around, please!"

When he rushed up, he dropped the cup of water on his shirt. I offered to lend him a dry shirt of mine, but he pointed out that cotton was brought to the West by Muslims. I offered to go to the pharmacy around the corner, to buy him some sedatives, but he pointed out that pharmacies were a Muslim invention.

"Bob," I finally cried. "You are mad. You are nuts. There is no reason in anything you say. You should be locked up in an asylum."
"Yes," he answered. "Yes. Yes and No."
"What?"
"Yes, I am mad. And I am proud of it. There have been mad people around in the West since the beginning of time. It is a good old Christian state of mind. However, the idea that one should take care of the mad people in asylums, that is an invention from the Muslim world, just like other hospitals, so I absolutely refuse to be treated in an asylum."

Ehm

I forgot what I wanted to write now.

Do you remember what you wanted to read? If so, please write it down on a piece of paper and read it out with a loud and clear voice.

No computers, please

There is a New York Times blog about a coffee shop where they do not allow computers. Or e-Book readers.

The logic of the coffee shop may have something to it. They want a rapid turnover of clients so they get rapid turnover of money. If people have too nice a time, playing computer games or reading long novels, they can stay for ever and take up place for paying customers.

However, why stop at electronic devices? They should prevent anyone from having too fun. No paper books. No newspapers. And something that is even more time consuming than reading is of course: friends. There should be no talking allowed. No chatting. No laughing. Preferably no drinking or eating either.

That would really make people leave quickly.

The World is not Boolean

Being agnostic does not always mean that you do not know. It often means that you know that you do not know. That means that you have more information than someone who considers himself informed.

I just read this in a booklet about evolution:

Mutations can be:

• harmful
• beneficial or
• neutral

That is a good example of an informed statement that is blatantly false. The general idea is of course right, and it is something to keep in mind if you want to learn about evolution.

However, there are not exactly three possible labels for each mutation. We cannot take a particular mutation and classify it as "harmful" and nothing else or definitely "beneficial". And we rarely can claim it to be absolutely "neutral".

Unless you define what those terms mean, the statement has hardly any information value at all. Beneficial for what? For the individual? For the group? In the current environment? In any environment? When the individual is young or when he grows old? For males or females?

Sickle-cell anaemia is caused by a mutation that also happens to make the person immune to malaria. Is that "beneficial" or "harmful"? Both. If you live on Greenland, it is a bad mutation, but if you move to Congo, that same mutation can help you.

One could go out on a limb here, and say that each and every mutation has some beneficial and some harmful value. Sometimes, it is almost entirely beneficial and sometimes almost entirely harmful, but most of the time somewhere in between.

There are admittedly "neutral" mutations. Those are mutations that have absolutely no effect whatsoever.

The point, however, is that we have a tendency to put absolute labels on things, and think using those labels. Was the war in Iraq "good" or "bad"? Is the lady in the at the news stand down the street "nice" or "nasty"? Are state subsidies to collapsing banks "good" or "bad"?

The answer to all those questions, if one thinks about it, is "neither". Or "both". A bit of this and a bit of that.

This does not mean that it does not matter. It matters a lot, when you are leader of a country and a major bank collapses. You have to choose: either you save the bank or not. Just do not think that the decision will be "right" or "wrong". It will be mostly right or mostly wrong. It may help some people long term, and harm other people short term. The decision will be partly good and partly wrong. The task is to figure out which decision is more good and less bad.

But if you describe the world in absolute terms, you describe a world that does not exist.

Poor white South Africans

An acquaintance of mine had seen a television program that clearly was based on Finbarr O’Reilly's photos. The program had apparently been biased in a way to tell the story of the current horrible situation of the poor whites in South Africa, ignoring the situation of poor blacks.

What the program did not mention was that there always have been some poor white people in SA, just like one of the comments says below the NYT article: "The emergence of Afrikaner nationalism, over 100 years ago, was tied, in part, to a desire to lift poor white Afrikaners out of poverty." There have of course been many other poor Europeans in Africa, notably Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique.

The implicit statement of the television program, that black majority rule makes loads of white poor for the first time in Southern Africa's history, is clearly wrong.

But as a white European, it is not easy to find any acceptable reaction to O'Reilly's pictures. One has to sympathise with the poor whites, of course, as one should sympathise with poor people of all colours in all countries. On the other hand, it feels very awkward to pick out this particular group, when there are plenty of poor blacks in South Africa and plenty of other poor people in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola and so on all the way to the United States and Zimbabwe.


Food is handed out to residents in Coronation Park. Photo: Finbarr O’Reilly

Karlfeldt vs Dickens vs Eliot - three learned men

In the poem Sång efter skördeanden the Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt, describes how Fridolin "talar med bönder på böndernas sätt men med lärde män på latin" - "speaks with peasants in peasants' ways but with learned men in Latin".

It is a very useful expression in Swedish. The problem is to find an equivalent English saying that describes the ability to change language and style according to whom you speak with.

The best thing I found so far is originally from Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend:

‘For I aint, you must know,’ said Betty, ‘much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.’

The last sentence, He do the Police in different voices, was taken up by T. S. Eliot, who used it as the working title of The Waste Land.

Unfortunately, that phrase is a far cry from Karlfeldt's lines, at least for my purpose to describe someone who is able to adapt his language to the situation. If anyone has any better proposal, feel free to post it.

We are completely cut off, but it does not really matter

Strange that the current eruption of the volcano of Eyjafjallajökull is not more noticeable than it is. All air traffic in Northern Europe is cancelled. And yet, we do not really care. We communicate with family and friends and foes that are thousands of kilometres away as easily as we always do using the internet, even if hardly any physical transport can take place.

Diagnosed psychopaths

In my (fictitious) sister's company, all management went to a psycho-therapy training. Part of the training was a so called ppt test, which unfortunately showed that all managers without exception had psychopathic tendencies. They were therefore all dismissed and sent for urgent treatment.

The company could of course not work without management, so the shareholder's board were in a hurry to employ new managers. To speed up the process, they borrowed the ppt test to quickly identify candidates with the kind of psychological profile they considered desirable.

The Final Language

All the different languages we have in the world today are the evolutionary result of people trying to communicate as efficiently as possible with different starting points. As time goes on, people will select more and more efficient features in their languages. Of course one feature that is efficient in one language may not be efficient in another. For example, Chinese has much fewer possible syllables than English, so it is efficient to add tones to make clearer distinctions between syllables. As English has more syllables, it does not need tones.

Languages will drift around, picking up and dropping features that are efficient for different purposes: clarity, speed, variety. But sooner or later, all languages will reach the ultimate stage, where they have turned into the most efficient language possible. I call this ultimate language Magnusianian Languagistically Perfectissimotasticanianish.

You do not believe such a language will ever appear?

I challenge you. Just wait 20 000 years and see, what the world will come up with.

The Joy of Getting Well

Few things can give you such pleasure as a really annoying illness. It does not matter if it is life threatening or just a cold. The only point is that it shall be annoying. It shall cause you such grief that you can think of nothing else for one or a few days. Pain, fatigue or a runny nose. It is impossible to ignore.

Then you get well. And suddenly the world looks bright again.

If you never had been ill in the first place, it might never have looked bright. The end of your illness is what the world waited for to start looking bright.

From Hanzi to kana to konfusion

Today's language lesson comes from Asia, a continent I like as much as I like all the other continents.

The three characters you see in the column to the left above are Chinese characters - hànzì in Chinese. In Japanese they are called "kanji". The first character, 己, is today pronounced "jǐ". However, a thousand years ago or so, it was probably pronounced more like "ki" or "ke".

The second character, 止, is today pronounced "zhǐ", but back then, it was probably more of "te". The bottom character, 毛, is today pronounced "máo" - yes, like chairman 毛 of the Chinese communist party. A thousand years ago, however, he would probably be called chairman "Maw" or something like that.

That was the first column.

The Japanese, who did not have any writing system themselves 1500 years ago, decided to use the Chinese characters. They took 己 and decided to pronounce it "ko" - almost like the Chinese. However, they decided to simplify 己, and instead wrote コ. Or こ. Likewise they made two different versions of 止: ト and と to write "to". And chairman 毛 was used to write "mo" in the simplified shapes of モ and も. The variants you find in the second column are called "katakana" and the variants you find in the third column are called "hiragana".

Now, you probably guessed what the fourth column is. Yes, it is exactly the same three characters again! It is the hiragana variant written in a font inspired by the 12th century poet and calligrapher Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家).

The font's name is Kazuraki (かづらき). If you also want to be able to write Japanese in a way so people will not be able to read it, you can buy it from Adobe.

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The above and many other ancient Chinese pronunciations can be found at Rinet. A lot of what we know about ancient Chinese pronunciation comes from the works of Karlgren.

The Wisest Liar

If you come to a primitive community, like a medieval European town, an Arabian 7th century Rashidun desert camp or a 13th century Kamakura Japanese fishing village, where would you go for information? Who is the most knowledgeable person in the place? The priest of course!

The irony of it is that the most knowledgeable persons are the ones that most certainly would disagree with each other most vehemently if they met. One of the three priests might be right, but the remaining two would be liars. And they would still be the best source of information.

Do we have similar sources of information today? Discuss.

Meat Eater to help the Animals

Me: Here you are, eating a big steak. I thought you were vegetarian.

Him: I was. But I realised that there were more important things in the world than my own health.

Me: Like...?

Him: Biodiversity. Imagine if everyone stopped eating meat. There are all those species that have been bread by humans for hundreds or even thousands of years with one single purpose: to be eaten. If we stopped eating them, species like farm pigs and broiler chickens would have nowhere to live, and we would lose them as species. The only way to make sure that they survive as a species is to eat them as individuals.

Me: I think I'll have a salad. I would not risk salad going extinct.