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March 5, 2010
We recently had elections for our municipal governments (or city governments) in Holland the Netherlands (I’ll explain the difference another time).
Here’s a short manual how to turn elections into a joke… for everybody who feels undemocratic, autocratic, despotic, anarchistic or just plan stupid:
- Arrange for a stupid guy who is in parliament to insult large groups of the population as well as foreign leaders
- Make sure that the other parties spend a large part of their time to respond to these insults
- Give the guy lots of media attention, so that his popularity rises and he becomes an important politician
- Fail to have a good debate, fail to address problems, and use mostly oneliners
- Have no real leader in the parliament who restores order
- (Repeat steps 1 to 5 for about three years on at least a weekly basis)
- Add a lawsuit for extra flavour
- Force a decision over the country’s military presence in Afghanistan
- Fail to reach a decision in the (national) governing 3-party coalition
- Allow the government to fall just before the elections
- Have a lot of mudfights between the parties in the national media
- Broadcast several debates between the national leaders of the 8 most important parties
- Completely forget that the voting was for local elections
- And to top it off, have another populist claim that there was fraud
I used to think I live in one of the most democratic countries in the world…
Instead, the elections were a joke. Discussions were fueled by oneliners. Political campaigns were aimed to disgrace the other politcians rather than to explain the standpoints of the parties. National leaders knowingly hijacked the local elections in preparation of the upcoming national elections. Several parties have excluded several other parties from cooperation in any future theoretical coalition government. The only reason we are not a banana-republic is that we’re a monarchy.
I believe that politicians are actually emotionally involved – meaning they make things personal. I don’t want an emotional politician governming my country. I need rational objective leaders who, despite a fundamental difference in standpoints, can communicate as adults and reach a decision.
It makes me sad. The Netherlands, a beacon of freedom, is going through some tough times, politically (the streets are still peaceful, and generally speaking we are doing fine). I hope that things will not crash too hard, and that we’ll recover soon.
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February 22, 2010
My countrymen were complaining about the winter. They said it was soooooo cold. They were getting tired of the snow and ice. They wished that it became a bit warmer again.
Now it’s 5-6 degrees warmer, which means we’re right on the average temperature again. Finally people start to realize that they were wishing for cold rain.
On a sidenote: life is very busy… the frequency with which I post will go down a bit… but I haven’t forgotten about my own blog yet!
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February 8, 2010
I am scared of people who accept zero crime in their world.
In a large world with nearly 7 billion (7,000,000,000!) people, there will always be a few idiots… Yet, people exist who accept none. Typically, these people freak out at the sight of each incident which is reported in the media… even if it’s on a different continent.
A headline like “Person murdered in dark alley” will trigger a storm of hate and dissatisfaction with the world in general. I have seen people blaming the government for not being able to provide complete protection (day and night, for the entire population). I have seen people concluding that “society as a whole is just rotten”.
If you look at the simple statistics however, the main headline of the news should be “99.999% of the people had absolutely no incidents today”… which makes a pretty poor headline, I admit… but it is the most important thing that happens every day. (Yeah, the headline would be the same almost every day).
The world is changing. And for those who failed to notice: it is getting safer. It’s already so safe that we become about 80 years on average (that’s including all the murders) and most of us die of diseases related to old age or cancer.
The media are going through a strange phase. No longer do trained journalists make the news. It’s us, the ordinary citizens, who make the news. We write blogs (Yay for blogging!), but we also select what we read – which in turn generates money through advertisements. And an article like “puppy gunned down by 15-year-old” will actually get 50 million readers. Sadly, many people will read the article and get angry at the entire world because apparently the world is full of people who kill puppies. They totally fail to see that this is just 1 incident… and that a single incident does not require a response. And they don’t read the article next to it that addresses world peace, the economy or the environment. Because puppies are so damn cute, and damnit, somebody killed one! The bastard. Who cares about world peace?
Another worrying development is that politicians follow the news. They have to… They also follow our responses to the news. Obviously, to attract voters, they have to implement measures to prevent incidents.
And this is the point where it all goes wrong. The reply from the average reader is an emotional one. They read the news, and their first emotion is sent to the entire world. Within 5 minutes, the reader forgot. In addition, the reply is often a worthless piece of digi-junk, full of spelling mistakes and logical fallacies. This is an indication of how important the incident is to the readers. They can’t even be bothered to correct a post they make. Or they are not smart enough to turn on the spelling checker.
Yet politics seems to love incidents. And as I wrote before, they must act on incidents… which they don’t mind. If you wait long enough, there will always be a moment when you get the right incident.
But not only are incidents irrelevant. You can also not prevent them by measures that apply to the entire population. To prevent incidents, you have to make it personal. A teacher cannot prevent a classroom full of kids from cheating at an exam. But the teacher can prevent one or two individuals by looking at them constantly.
And that is why the governments of the world have a legitimate excuse to spy on all of us. They can log our every move on internet. They can store our bank data. They can tap our phones. All because they must prevent the one incident that may happen. A significant part of the population demands from their governments that they find the needle in the haystack.
Democracy was invented in ancient Greece. The people (men) of a city or nation would get together and discuss plans, and vote. Obviously, it was impossible to allow everyone to speak. I imagine that people would make sure that only the smarter people got to speak and that they made sure that the local village idiot was quiet. Our current situation however is one where all the village idiots of the world are able to respond to everything worldwide… together with all the other voters.
A solution to this problem is difficult. But if would help if a new law or rule must have statistical significance before it can be enacted. I propose a law that describes how to make laws, so that means it’s part of the constitution… and that means it’s a pretty big step. But hey, you don’t change society over night, so why not?
It might also help if politicians cannot set their own discussion topics, and if the agenda can only be altered in case of an emergency that requires immediate action (such as an earthquake, war or flood). Or if the agenda of the governments must be set a certain time in advance so that the news of yesterday simply cannot be discussed today.
In other words, while it seems that the average voter loves incidents and small stuff, we still need our governments to look at the big picture. So, please filter out all the incidents.
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February 4, 2010
I’ve put the differences between the US and Europe in a simple table. For your entertainment, you can click on the table too.
Note: I realize that I am generalizing things a bit a lot. Hope you don’t mind. If you feel offended, then I meant all the other people, not you.
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February 3, 2010
So, breaking news in the Dutch media… and after searching also in some articles from the US: The US intelligence agencies knew that the guy who tried to blow up Flight 253 over Detroit (called Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) was a terrorist. But apparently, federal (American) counterterrorism begged to allow this guy to get a visa to be able to board planes and travel to the USA with a transfer in the Netherlands (one of their faithful allies and friends). They decided not just to do nothing, but to actively bypass the system that works and wouldn’t give him a visa, in order to get better intelligence on the terror organisation that was supporting the terrorist.
Eh.
Hello?
Remember the previous time that terrorists boarded planes? Was 9/11 not the very reason that the entire frickin’ world is up in arms at the moment, fighting in Afghanistan, placing counter-terrorism measures on every corner of the street, scanning everybody’s data…
There’s a guy with a bomb boarding not one, but two planes after each other. This is a known terrorist, on the official black list of the agencies. And the Americans just give him a visa, so they can get some information? WHAT? Don’t arrest him? Rather, you let him travel by plane to Amsterdam (which is very near me, and planes that come in for landing occasionally fly right by my place, which is why I am slightly upset), change planes on a huge airport, fly again across the Atlantic to Detroit where he is allowed to attempt to do his terror thing?
Also, can they please inform the secret services of my country, the Netherlands, too if they plan to allow a terrorist to fly in and out of my country? Thanks in advance guys. You’re good allies.
Wow.
I never knew that is how you fight terrorism.
In addition, the Americans knowingly bypassed systems that actually work. So now the whole world is placing these full body scanners that look under your clothes for nothing.
Security officials can check out people’s genitals and women’s boobies, but the system actually worked and the danger was identified also without the scanners. Great job guys. Thanks a lot. Because you wanted to do your stupid investigation, my country is now known by many people as a country that fails to arrest a terrorist. We invest millions of euros into scanning equipment so airport taxes go up. The lines in the airport become longer because somebody has to look at my penis before I board a plane (I feel more sorry for that guy than for myself actually). And what? Did your investigation result in anything new? Did you find out the plan of the terrorist organisation? Not yet? Well, let me tell you then: they try to blow up planes. That’s their plan.
Honestly, why fight terrorism if you’re not gonna arrest the guy with the bomb?
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February 1, 2010
Can engineers be good leaders?
Why are engineers hardly ever the leaders in a country? They seem to have all the qualifications necessary for the job: I’ll just quote wikipedia - you decide if that sounds like a good leader:
Engineers must have the skillset and methodology to problem solve, including soft skills.
To me, that sounds like an excellent list of qualifications for a leader. (Admittedly, not each point is essential, but there are a few important ones which should be there). I believe that in many cases, an engineer would make a fine leader. Engineers are trained to make a short analysis to see the benefits and the costs of a plan. Basically, things only get the green light if is seems worth the effort or costs. And engineers are capable of making an expert judgement. This would make a very predictable and profitable government which would benefit both industry and society.
I have often heard that we don’t want a “technocracy“: a form of government where “decision makers would be selected based upon how highly knowledgeable they are, rather than how much political capital they hold.” That sounds quite undemocratic… well, actually, that sounds just as democratic as our currect system.
No, my question is not why we don’t start a revolution to overthrow our current systems. I am not asking why us scientists and engineers don’t go to the streets and use our above-average brains to invent automatic stone-throwing contraptions and design some production lines for extra combustible tires which we can burn.
No, I am just asking why political parties don’t invite engineers into their party. Why are the engineers left to merely advise people? Or, why don’t engineers form their own political party? So many decisions are technical or optimization questions. All the big projects that countries develop. All the infrastructure. All the allocation of resources (including human resources!)… all those are engineering problems with an optimal solution.
Are the Chinese growing so fast because they don’t care about ecology? I doubt it – we never cared much for ecology either until quite recently. Are they growing because they have a good example in us? I doubt it – they’re rapidly overtaking us. Are they growing fast because they have leaders with engineering skills? BINGO! Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) is a hydraulic engineer. His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, an electrical engineer. The premier, Wen Jiabao, is a geologist and an engineer (geomechanics). I don’t claim that this is the only reason for their success – but it helps.
For example, our Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, is a historian. Gordon Brown, the UK’s prime minister, studied history. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has studied law and business. The American president, Barack Obama: law school. The previous president of the USA, George W. Bush, showed no sign of education at all. The president of India, Pratibha Patil, studied law. Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, economics. The Spanish prime minister, Zapatero: law. Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, studied Chinese (which is actually interesting). The Russian prime minister, former president and expected future president, Vladimir Putin, studied law.
See a trend?
The only deviation from this trend in large economies that I could find is Angela Merkel, prime minister of Germany. She has studied physics. Still, no engineering, but at least something which deserves the name “science”… and I apologize if your country is not here – or if you study economics, law or history. Don’t cry, you won’t be a scientist, but you can rule the world instead.
I hereby ask all the engineers of the world: don’t hide behind your flatscreens. Don’t quietly grumble when the leaders screw up again. Take action. All you need is a significant part of the votes… probably a lot easier than designing a chemical factory or a bridge. Single individuals are hard to convince, but you have to address the masses. That’s just statistics!
[edit] This post was aimed at all engineers, but real action is required from only a handful motivated engineers. I agree with the comments that most engineers will be happy if they can just do an engineering job, and the world needs engineers to do engineering. Modern day Western politics seems to be a lot more about dealing with the media than about actually running a country.
Thanks for all the comments so far!
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January 28, 2010
Internet promised to bring us unlimited information. Some say we entered the Age of Information.
Searching around some forums and blogs however, I would call this the Age of Disbelief and Misinformation. There is an incredible amount of crap on the internet.
More people than ever are convinced that “THEY” (that’s us) are conspiring against THE PEOPLE (that’s also us). They are absolutely convinced because they read somewhere that cars can run on water. And at the gas station, you can only get gasoline and diesel at ever increasing prices. Follow the money, they think, and there’s your conspiracy. Except that cars cannot run on water. Most people don’t know how an engine works, and haven’t heard of a concept called enthalpy, so I can’t blame them.
Climategate gave people the opportunity to extrapolate the fraud. People are now convinced that the entire field of climate research is fraudulent. Glaciers are probably growing. CO2 has nothing to do with warming – it’s just plant food. But I can’t blame the people, they are ignorant. They cannot construct a heat balance. They don’t know what infrared radiation is (it can change the channel of the TV, right?).
The people cannot be blamed for what they believe. They just hear stuff, and make the best of it. They don’t have access to the right information because it is not free (25 euro for a .pdf!), or because it’s just difficult to find, or they just don’t understand it. There are so many creative conspiracy theories that it is very tricky to understand it all. I am a chemical engineer, which happens to be the right profession to know about chemtrails, the climate, acid rain, car engines, etc. And very confusingly: some things are true, some are not.
However, the trend is that there is a suggested conspiracy in everything. People don’t believe anything anymore. Rather than the Age of Information, we’re heading for the Age of Disbelief and Misinformation.
Science is undermining itself. (Yes, I blame us, the scientists). Somehow, we accept that all our work is only available in incredibly difficult papers. We accept that you have to pay 25 euro to get 2 MB’s of information which was submitted and reviewed for free. We keep stuff secret because we’re afraid that colleagues in other institutes and companies will steal our brilliant ideas. We actually do work very inefficient and we do absorb a lot of money (the latter point is something that “the scientists that conspire against us” are often accused of), and for the outside world it is true that nothing much comes out of it.
If we would live in a dictatorship, we would not have to fear. We would probably live in a science-city: a place dedicated to science. People have no voting right, and the big chief hopefully played Civilization and understands the importance of science. But, we live in a democracy. The people can vote. And the majority played Counterstrike and see no point in science at all. Nothing ever comes out of it, right? The result is that the Parliaments of the free world and the US (that’s sarcasm), are now asking for an investigation into Climategate, because they are not sure anymore that the climate is actually changing. And they are right to do that because they represent the people! And the mere fact that they investigate this might affect our research budgets, and might change some laws that affect industry!
In short, what worries me is that people don’t believe anything anymore. And resulting from that, they don’t trust any institute or government anymore. And what will happen when a group or an entire population doesn’t trust anyone anymore I’ll leave to your own imagination.
The solution therefore is to make science more transparent. We, the scientists (who conspire against ourselves), must share our information with more people. With everybody. Articles should have a layman’s chapter. Not the stupid introduction which is always the same, but a proper layman’s chapter written by the author and reviewed by a layman. I am not suggesting that it is in baby-language. But just a paragraph which summarizes what you did, and what you found, as you would explain it to your friends in the bar (assuming you have friends outside of your narrow field of science).
Also, peer-and-layman reviewed articles should become available to all. The subscriptions just totally suck, and 25 euro is way too much for a piece of text. I propose nothing less than completely nationalizing and subsidizing all literature, including distribution (that is downloading) and searching (Google or a dedicated program such as Scifinder).
It is absolutely ridiculous that in the Age of Information, the best information is not available to all.
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January 25, 2010
We love disasters. First it’s the immense power of mother nature that fascinates us. Then, the beautiful human tragedy which moves us. And finally the possibility to donate to charity to make us feel good again. It’s a perfect story in 3 parts.
The latest disaster was the earthquake in Haiti. This country was unknown to many people. It’s the poorest country on the western hemisphere, and the life expectancy is only about 60. Compared to the Netherlands, or any other rich country, that’s not very old. Nobody cares – low life expectancy isn’t a disaster.
The news reports that 120,000 people died in Haiti. A quick google search for ‘starvation death rate‘ shows that the amount of people (worldwide) that starve every year is, well, significantly larger than the 120,000 dead people in Haiti. Again, nobody cares. We have some organizations that fight a losing battle against starvation, but most people I know prefer to eat the food from Africa rather than make sure that Africans have food.
Another interesting fact is the world population counter. 1.8 people die every second and more than 4 are born every second. That means that on average 155,000 people die every day. Makes such an earthquake rather insignificant, doesn’t it? Also, it takes only 8 hours for 120,000 babies to be born. And regarding growth (birth minus death), the entire loss of life in Haiti was compensated in a little over 14 hours. Yes, the world had compensated for he loss of 120,000 people before most people had even heard about the news.
The point I try to make is a cold, emotionless one. Haiti is not important. We are only watching it on the news because it interests us, not because we really care about Haitians, Haitese, Haitonians, Haitioners or whatever. (Correct one is, of course, ‘Haitians’).
War is a good example to predict our behaviour towards Haiti. Fresh new wars are always a good news item. First a show of weaponry which fascinates us. Then some tragedy which moves us. And then we can be patriots to feel good again. Until it starts to be a daily grind. It’s not fascinating anymore. It becomes an overdose of tragedy, and it turns out that our support isn’t helping much.
In Haiti, in 6 months from now, the country will still be poor, there will still be people who mourn their dead relatives, people who are permanently injured. In short, it’s not fascinating anymore. It’s too much tragedy, and our help hasn’t helped for the long term.
We like the 3 part story with a feel-good ending. We don’t want the truth. Who even remembers what the previous disaster was?
Please note that I am not criticizing organizations like the red cross who travel worldwide to save lives. I am just writing about the people who participate in the aid from their sofa. I believe that aid should be organised by my government. I pay enough tax. A nation-wide, or even Europe-wide organisation which is also in power of the military might be able to make a much larger contribution. I propose a sort of disaster-insurance for nations… with a proper discount for poor countries.
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January 22, 2010
Take science. Why are some topics applied, and some not?
Quantum mechanics: changed the world
Climatology: doesn’t change much in the world
You would think that the climate is a lot closer to what people can see and feel around them. But the weird quantum sciences were actually applied all over the place and nobody acts upon all the climate warnings. Why?
I’ll tell you why. All sciences that were applied were opportunities, while all those that were not applied merely described a problem. People don’t like problems, we like opportunities. In other words: the climate isn’t gonna make anyone rich… but quantum computers are.
So, this article should not just describe the problem, it must come with a solution. It’s not that hard:
Give people the right information, and action is gonna happen. This is why “awareness” really isn’t enough. I am aware that I need to crap, but unless a toilet is nearby I won’t act. I can express my awareness of the fact that I need to crap, but that is not going to help. Creating awareness is the behaviour of a 4-year-old: “Mommy, I gotta go to the loo!”. Adults however will independently and actively search the location of the nearest toilet. “Awareness” is nothing but complaining and hoping that others help you out. People who want to “create awareness” just want to make their whining acceptable.
The same goes for many problems. That is why they are called “problems”, not “opportunities”. I hate problems… and being an engineer, I will quickly convert any “problem” into an opportunity. If I cannot find the “opportunity”, then it’s likely a waste of time.
Regarding climate change: where’s the money? We don’t need to know how much CO2 emissions are avoided by installing a wind turbine. We want to know what the economic payback time of a windturbine is.
I am aware that my coffeecup is empty. I will not tell all my colleagues about this problem. I will not attempt to create more “momentum” through a “growing awareness”. I have the opportunity to refill my cup… therefore I tell my colleagues that “I am going to get some coffee, does anyone else want some as well?”
The solution therefore is: Communicate the opportunity, not the problem.
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January 19, 2010
We’re suffering from an overdose of information. Quality-information is impossible to find for a number of reasons.
We’re constantly spammed. On any topic, there is more b*llsh*t than quality material, and it seems that every research topic has its skeptics nowadays which spam the world with misinformation. I understand that some people are evolution-skepics because of religious reasons. Climate-skeptics, alright, it seems we spend a lot of money on it. Cars-running-on-water-skeptics – guys, you’re nuts. Acid rain skeptics haven’t really followed the news: chemical engineers made the acid rain go away. Moon landing skeptics need another hobby, you’re so 1970’s. And the list goes on and on.
In addition, the quality information is contained in scientific publications which themselves suffer from at least two downsides: they are not for free and they are completely impossible to read. Every article starts with an introduction which uses sentences that make Kafka look like a kid, but which contains only information that everyone in the field already knows. Safety first. In addition, the goal of the publication is to make sure everybody knows that you did something, without telling them exactly how you did it. The goal of a paper is not to make the information known to all – but to make sure everybody knows how good you are. Of course, we wouldn’t want someone else to take our idea and improve it, would we?
So, in 2010, with the Information Age well underway, we’re still in a situation where it is often easier to redo a certain research rather than to look up previous results… which is horribly inefficient. I can see a number of solutions:
1. Make all information free. If I publish a paper, I get nothing. Why would the publisher get 30 dollar every time someone downloads a .pdf even if the downloader doesn’t make use of all the search engines that are available? If anything, at least give me a piece of the profit… When publishers get too little through downloads, they act like the end is near, but when they get all the money, and the author gets nothing, well – I guess that’s alright then is it?
It is ironic that the music industry tries to get money from downloaders to be able to give the artists a fair share, when other (scientific) publishers already get money from downloaders but give nothing to the authors. I might write a separate post on this topic another time…
2. Companies and institutes need a proper librarian who can find stuff, especially online. I don’t wanna do it. I am horribly inefficient to do that task.
3. Scientific papers must be re-written. The current style of long sentences to condense the information as much as possible is irrelevant in an age where we download Youtube movies of several MB’s just to see a cat jump into a box and fall over. In addition, I believe that the whole concept of 2-dimensional presentations of information is rather obsolete. Why are scientific papers still published the same way as in the 1800’s, with the only exception that they are now connected to a search engine? Surely, there must be different methods…
4. It must also be honorable to publish failures. A publication about failed experiments can save someone years and years.
I am utterly frustrated because I hate searching for information. It’s a dull and time-consuming job for which you are never rewarded. In the best case scenario, you find what you need, and you can continue. In the worst case, you fail to find your information, and you find out only much later when someone else asks: “haven’t you read this-and-this publication?” and you look like an utter n00b. That happens a bit too often to me.
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January 13, 2010
Often I hear colleagues, friends or just random people complain about the media. The media always seem to change the meaning of the message that people told the journalist. It’s more than likely true that this happens a lot – perhaps always. Most people are aware of this.
Well, if you are aware of this, then why do you make the same mistake every time? Why trust the journalist? And worse, why blame the journalist afterwards?
I have made a short checklist to be used when you talk to a journalist, or when submitting an article to be used in a semi-scientific or non-scientific magazine or newspaper.
- Write down your message, including your introduction and conclusions
- Delete the entire chapter about your methods, but leave any sentence regarding dangerous experiments in
- Replace “might be” by “is”
- Replace “could be” by “is”
- Delete “probably” and all its synonyms
- Replace any percentage higher than 50% by “100%”
- Replace any percentage lower than 50% by “0%”
- Remove any formula you wrote down
- Replace any unit of power by a unit of energy (Watts become Joules) and vice versa
- Remove all references
- And finally, add a picture that is not relevant
Does the message still say what you want to say? If your answer is no, then you should change the message. Do not expect a journalist to get it right. Journalists have no experience in your field.
Too often have I seen the scientists become all enthusiastic when talking to a journalist. They will explain their work, and probably make no mistakes there. But the journalist will always ask about future predictions and applications. Aha! This is where you have to watch out. This is where the scientist actually does watch out. This is where the scientist has to improvise. The scientist starts to use words like “maybe”, “could become” and adds a disclaimer that “lots of research is still needed”. And this is where it all goes terribly wrong.
The journalist might think that this is the most interesting part of the whole story. And in addition, the journalist will use my guide. And your name. And the name of your organisation. And even if there will be a rectification, it will be on page 58, bottom right corner, and nobody will read it.
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January 11, 2010
[old man's voice] I remember the good ol’ days when the Discovery Channel / National Geographic Channel had only good-quality documentaries… [/old man's voice]
So, I watched a “documentary”. Something about weapons. Big tanks, Big bombs that never miss and Autonomous aircraft.The latest weaponry is often equipped with artificial intelligence… or is even completely autonomous.
Through satellites weapons are able to communicate, with HQ, and also with other robots. Arm those robots with so-called “smart bombs”, and you have a situation where someone in the Nevada desert can bomb any person anywhere on earth without ever having to leave the comfort of his bunker…
Actually, this was quite informative. I realized that we’re only a few years away from a situation where a few rednecks in the American desert can terrorize the world with a robot army.
Of course, the propaganda sells this situation as one where the lives of our sons aren’t jeopardized anymore. Where the bad guys can be neutralized without risking any lives. Where the bad guys can’t hide anymore from the continuous surveillance robots in the sky.
However, I was wondering how long it will be until a few people in their bunker seize control of this army? It is undeniable that there are idiots. Every organization has them… so the US army/airforce/navy has them too.
In addition to that – history has shown that sometimes the idiots can take power of a country. In a few years, multiple countries will have this technology. What if one of them becomes an evil dictatorship?
Then there is a problem with all artificial intelligence and all computers. Bugs. The problem is twofold: First there is the obvious danger of hitting the wrong people. Me for example. Or you. But you can also hit “the wrong people” – sorry guys, it’s a bug. We don’t want to fight you. We accidentally dropped a bomb on your government building, but we didn’t want to – really!
After watching the propaganda for 60 minutes, I concluded that I dislike these developments. I am a pacifist… and to see all this beautiful technology developed for such a poor cause – makes me wonder: who are the stupid engineers and scientists who designed and built these things? SHAME ON YOU!
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January 4, 2010
How to be modern and hip in the New Year: DO’s and DON’T’s
DO
- Invest in weapons. The next attack will be on Yemen, and why wouldn’t you profit from that too?
- Ask your boss for a bonus, and suggest he or she gives one to him/herself too. Make sure that your contract will also contain short-term bonus deals which are in no way related to your actual performance.
- Racism and nationalism. It’s popular. It’s simple. You don’t need to think. Your country is the best, the rest sucks.
- Invest in oil. It’s the biggest business in the world, and Copenhagen was a failure.
- Complain. You remember the good old days when it was all better, don’t you?
- Hate your government. They waste your money. Anarchy would be so much better. You, for one, would do fine without any government – especially paying no tax at all would be a nice change.
- Complain about the bail-outs. Or about job losses. Or both. Hey, governments can’t do it right anyway, because you would do it so much better.
- Invest in hedge funds. These guys might destroy a company or two, but their shareholders will never lose money in the process.
- Put all your information on internet. Oh, no, wait… you already did that in 2009 using facebook and all the other popular stuff which distracts you from your work.
- Eat tuna. Quickly, before it’s extinct.
DON’T
- Believe global warming. After all, it turned out that winter is still pretty damned cold, so clearly only fools believe in this nonsense.
- Be green. Why would you? An egoistic and egocentric approach of life goes unpunished anyway.
- Protect your privacy. Everybody who likes privacy practically sides with the terrorists and illegal downloaders (which is essentially the same thing).
- Give money to the poor. Unemployment might rise, but why should that affect you?
- Vote for change. The world is fine as it is, except that it was even better before.
- Care about your neighbours. After all, the bastards probably hate you too.
- Be tolerant. Life is so much easier if you’re allowed to openly show your dislike of everything you hate so much. Why keep it in?
- Be modest. You’re the best. You deserve that bonus. You are much better than the fool who provides you with food or the idiot who just cured your cancer or fixed your house.
- Care about nature. It’s free, it’s for everybody, and nature can surely take care of itself.
- Ignore incidents. Rather, use Google to read about each and every incident in the world and demand strict laws to prevent such a horrible thing from ever happening again.
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December 15, 2009
Who came up with the brilliant idea of having the holidays at the end of the year?
Who came up with the brilliant idea to finish all kinds of projects and reports at the end of the year?
The people who invented the holidays really should have talked to today’s managers to avoid this clash of interests. Both want to have it all in December.
In all fairness, the holidays were invented quite some time ago. They were first. And New Year is by definition the change from one to the next year. But is there anything against ending a project in mid-February? Against a deadline in April? Or November for that matter? Come on, managers… you all know very well that December is a few days shorter than the rest of the year because of the holidays.
Oh, well… At least Santa never misses his deadlines 
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December 8, 2009
Nobody wants to take measures to stop the population growth in the world. The Chinese are the only ones who had the wisdom to already take measures themselves. The Western countries proudly point out that they’re so wealthy that people have no “need” for many kids. But some African countries manage to double their population every 20 years. Nobody will tell them to stop making kids – that’s their business. We’ll just provide some help.
So, when is the population too much? It is certain that at some point it will be too much. We only have so much sunlight, and so much surface area on earth. It is also certain that we have not yet reached the limits of our growth. Some people are starving, sure, but with proper management we could feed the whole world.
But at some point, it is too much. So, when is that?
At school, we learned that poor people have more kids so that the kids can take care of their parents when they grow old. This suggests that poor countries have a growing population because they are poor. And indeed, there may be a correlation between wealth and the amount of kids. But, when two things correlate they do not necessarily have a direct relation. Maybe it is education? Wealthy people have better education, spend more time raising their kids, get less kids?
In addition, why the hell didn’t my parents make more kids? We’re all so wealthy, but if each kid helps the parents when they grow old, my parents would have become millionaires when they’d had 12 kids. I don’t know many people who don’t want to become a millionaire.
So, we can try to make everybody rich. Educate everybody. We’ll assume that this will work. Everybody will follow our Western example of making less kids with more wealth. But, will we succeed in making everybody rich before we reach the real limits of growth? Or what do we do if the correlation fails and the population keeps on growing regardless of wealth or other factors associated with wealth?
I believe that while our leaders discuss some silly CO2 tax, and some few hundred billion Euro shift of money to assist some countries to fight global warming, the real issue is overlooked. Population growth.
It’s so much easier to prevent a kid to be there at all than to save a kid from starvation. I think that development aid should only be given to countries who manage to keep their population at a certain level (with humane means – i.e. contraception).
Right now, we have a situation where we help one kid to be educated, but two more are born at the same time.
I realize damn well that this is a very sensitive point. I realize damn well that this is (nearly) blasphemy for many people. But… please realize: the question is not if we should take measures – but when.
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