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?

Life as a Goldfish

It is often claimed that goldfish have a three second memory. Therefore, if you put two goldfish in a bowl, as soon as they turn around, they would forget about the other fish, and they would be obliged to say: "How do you do. It is a pleasure to meet you. Have you come far?"

Luckily for the goldfish that is just a myth. Goldfish can remember things for months. Just try to borrow money from one. I can guarantee that it will not let you do it a second time.

Now to the interesting part. Some adults actually have the mythical three second memory. They see another person do something silly, and the adult says: "is that not amazing, how silly he is?" Three seconds later, they see someone else do something silly, and they repeat: "is that not amazing, how silly he is?"

This can go on for ever. These adults simply cannot learn that a lot of people do stupid things.

It always amazes me, when I meet that kind of adult.

Business Advice

If you are taking a business decision or a political decision, and you think all the consequences will be good, you can be certain that there are factors you have forgotten.

If you are taking a decision and you think all the consequences will be bad, you are just silly.

The Right Selection

It is easy to stand back and scorn Bush and Blair for their misjudgement of their failure in Iraq. However, it is very likely that their original mistakes were perfectly explicable. They had a lot of high quality information from very good sources, which to a good part hinted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The rest of us had much less information, and from that we judged that it was unlikely to be any WMD in Iraq. The problem was that our information was low quality. It turned out to be a very good selection of data, but the quality was low. CIA provided very good quality data, but unfortunately the selection was very bad.

Picasso's Inspiration

If one were to select the greatest of all the 20th century artists, it is very likely that Picasso would be on the top. He made a fortune of his genius in the later part of his life, and his family goes on doing so today, licensing his name to right and left.

However, if the laws of intellectual property of today had applied in the beginning of his career, it is very possible that he never would have made it. Cubism was created by him and Braque together. It is not unlikely that Braque would have claimed ownership of the style, won a law case and thereby prevented Picasso from ever using it again. Picasso would then not have been able to paint Les demoiselles d'Avignon or Guernica. He would never had risen to fame, and the 20th century would be one great artist short.

According to NPR, Shakespeare wrote only three original plays. The stories for the rest of them he stole from someone else.

Which means that the application of property laws of the 21st century would have killed off both Shakespeare and Picasso.

Which here is mentioned to anyone who thought the laws were there to support great art.


"Bastubadaren" by Tora Vega Holmström

Hooray for government power!

Once upon a time, it was thought that it was the responsibility of the government to make sure public services worked: roads, defence, and later on public communications like mail and phones.

However, in this brave new world of electrons no government, as far as I know, has taken the step that seems logical: to guarantee that we all have a free mail-account and server space to save our data.

Both the technology and the cost is now at a level where it would be very easy.

"It is not needed", you say. "There are plenty of free services out there already."

As far as I know, there is no free service, but there are plenty of ad-sponsored services. And I do not know about you. I freely admit that I do not trust my government very much to honour the confidentiality of my data, but I trust it much more than any commercial provider.