Winning is not important

They try to save the Tour de France from the doping scandals.

The problem is that it is so important for the participants to win, so the temptation to use doping will always be there. The solution is to make it less important to win. Instead one could base the rules on Just a Minute. You count points, but you do not really care about who won. The exact number of points is never revealed. No prices are handed out. And if there is a argument about the points in a particular stretch of a mountain stage, Nicholas Parsons always is the one with the last word.

The dangerous environment

The current financial crisis is a real problem for the environment. The subprime problems and the story of Jérôme Kerviel take the media's attention from the problems with global warming. As this is going on, public consciousness diminishes, and the environmental problems rise.

On the other hand, it works the other way too. Sooner or later, the media will start talking about the environment again, and people will forget about financial issues. It is all the fault of the environment. Cannot anyone stop the environment, to protect the world of finance?

Misnomer

There are few things as rare in this world as common sense.

I wonder where it is common.

Seeing blind?

According to Nature the blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) swims away from light. It "can sense light when young, even though their eyes lost their function over a million years of evolution." I do not believe that at all. I think it just has good memory.

The noble art of disagreement

It is fully possible to disagree with someone, even if you understand the motivation for his opinion.

Just try.

And flights of angels...

I just learnt that all living creatures without exception sleep - from highly developed Nobel prize laureates to the primitive house fly or the even more primitive telemarketer.

But what about plants and flowers? They sleep all the time, the lazy skivers.

Them too

The military is sometimes a forgotten group. During the Iraq (العراق) war, the press angrily talked about Iraqi civilians being hurt. But what about the Iraqi military? There were certainly thousands of conscripts who wished nothing more than to go home, who were killed by American fire. Did that not matter? Did their mothers cry less, because their sons were part of the army?

The end of Language

I just realised that Language is disappearing. I read a few pages in báró Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy's classic The Scarlet Pimpernel from 1903. I was awed at the language. Not that I had never read any pages in it before. But it just struck me now that all the prose one reads nowadays, on the internet, on television screens, even in newspapers, is null and nothing compared to the prose of Emmuska. Four thousand years of civilisation, and people suddenly stop mastering language.

Perspective

Le Monde today has two articles about human rights.

The first one is about Hú Jiā (胡佳), a dissident who has been sent to prison. The headline, Pékin traque les opposants avant les Jeux olympiques, implies that he is not the only one who has troubles with the government.

The second one is about Guantanamo. Eighty demonstrators against the prison made their way to the Supreme Court in Washington, where they were arrested.

Both articles are interesting. Both articles are important. However, both articles lack attempts at explanations. Why do the Chinese authorities imprison Hú Jiā? What is the rational? And why does he protest and so few others? Why did the American authorities arrest eighty demonstrators? What drives the demonstrators? What drives the authorities not to see what drives the demonstrators?

In other words, neither article supports a dialogue. It would have been so nice if they had been the only articles in the world that had that problem.

2 kinds of opinions. And mine.

There are two main kind of opinions. It is the one of hate and the one of love.

The one of hate may be things like "I hate parking tickets" or "I hate the government" or "I hate the people of the next town".

The one of love may be things like "I love our police force" or "I love the oldest presidential candidate" or "I love my own town".

My own opinions are of a third kind: I have no idea what I want.

But I like your kinds of opinions too.