Swiss minarets

I’m not advocating open season on Muslims, but here’s a thought experiment:
I make up a fertility religion and decide I want to build a 20 meter high penis on a plot of land outside Stockholm. For worshipping purposes. I send in an application to the Office of City Planning and get rejected. “It doesn’t fit into the area and some people would find it offensive,” they say.
Who comes to my defence in the name of multi-culturalism and freedom of religion?

Aussies gun down camels

I had Australians pegged as pretty decent human beings, but now I’m not so sure anymore. Apparently, 6,000 thirsty camels have trashed the town of Docker River looking for water. You would think that the solution to this problem is to ... help the camels find some water.
But no, Australian authorities are instead considering rounding them up with helicopters and gunning them down. Then turning them into hamburgers.
Whatever happened to the carefree, sun-loving Aussies I thought I knew?

Gandhi and Mont Blanc

On October 2, I marvelled at the fact that the people at Mont Blanc had produced a 23,000-dollar pen in memory of Mahatma Gandhi. The rant ended with the acknowledgement that the pen was nowhere to be found on the Mont Blanc website, so I hoped they had been brought to their senses.
No such luck. In this weekend’s super-flashy “Christmas Unwrapped” magazine accompanying the Financial Times, there is a full-page ad for the pen.
Why do I object to this? Because no matter the amount of badly thought-through ideas that sprung from the mahatma’s head, I cannot imagine him taking to the idea of a 23,000-dollar fountain pen. His life was about mainly about fighting injustice through non-violence, not about producing insanely expensive luxury items for people with too much money.

Isn’t life great?

When I grew up in the 1970's, there was no unleaded fuel. Today there is no lead in any fuel on the market. Likewise, catalytic converters hadn't been invented back then. This means that I breathed in mountains of junk that is spared today’s children.

Speaking of junk, there was no recycling when I grew up. We chucked glass, metal, plastics, newspapers, batteries (!) and everything else into the same trash can.

The lake in which I swam as a child was polluted in ways that would horrify today’s environmentalists. In fact, the activist organization “Save Storsjön” was founded in the Sixties but dissolved itself in the early Eighties because they couldn’t find much to complain about.

Moving along, every single company today – local and global – are committed to using green electricity, supporting wind and solar power and leaving as small a carbon footprint as possible. Not so when I was in shorts.

What I want to say is that I am thankful for all the amazing achievements that have been made in my lifetime. I am proud of the human race for being so resourceful, and I have no doubt that we will succeed in cleaning up the stuff that we still have left to take care of.

Don’t listen to people who say everything is getting worse. It’s simply not true.

Credit Suisse

Today something as unusual as a high-five to a Swiss bank. Credit Suisse launched a campaign last Wednesday that features dads posing and playing with their kids. And they’re not dressed in suits and ties.
The text in this ad says “50% engineer, 50% entrepreneur, 100% father." Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I honestly thought dads at this level juggled these percentages a little different.
Anyhoot, three cheers for Credit Suisse!

Why does god need trees?

The Swedish church is up in arms. When is was belatedly separated from the state in 2000, the tax-exemption enjoyed by the church for its woodlands was prolonged for ten years. It probably seemed like a long time then, but time is now up and the church needs to pay tax just like the rest of society.
But it’s 150 million kronor a year, and since nobody feels like contributing much to the church anymore now that it’s voluntary, Swedish bishops are instead racing around in their funny outfits to "de-sanctify" churches so they can be put to better use, or out of their misery. Because there is no money.
Personally, I enjoy popping into churches now and then. When I do, I always light a candle and leave a little change for their upkeep. But as for the 150 million a year, isn’t there an obvious way to make that bill go away? Sell the land! You would cover the first year’s tax in a jiffy, and next year you wouldn’t have any!
But apparently the church would rather tear down their own houses of worship. Then cry about it in the press to emotionally blackmail the rest of us to pay the bill. For the sake of our heritage. All this so the church can keep its land and wealth. What I don’t understand is why the church needs all that land anyway? Isn’t their mission saving souls or something? Or is it managing assets?

The reason we’re miserable

One of my favorite quotes, to keep in mind as the economy picks up:

“Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it’s essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are roots to personal well-being.”
– Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Develop this

When asked what they like about their jobs, almost all managers say they like to develop people and get them to reach their full potential. Has anybody asked what the supposedly ”developed” workers have to say about this? My favorite part of work is being developed by my manager, because without him I would just tread water for the rest of my life.
Hardly.
I don’t know about you, but I take care of my own development. No need for a surrogate parent to assume responsibility.
Pompous jerks.

The Obama Bump

Barack Obama may not have done enough for peace to merit a Nobel Prize, but he is putting in a good effort for world sanitation. If he manages to launch the fist bump as the new international way for us to greet each other, microbe-borne diseases may become a thing of the past.

Because nothing like a fist bump says “Hey, I acknowledge your existence as a life-form on the planet, and I don’t mind sort-of touching you, but I don’t want to get avian swine pest, okay?”

Why I wouldn’t follow Mukesh into battle

I was about to get really happy when I read that Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, was cutting his salary by 66 percent this year.
Then I read on. And grew less happy. Here’s why:
1) He already has 19.5 billion dollars in the bank.
2) His salary for 2009 will still be 3.2 million dollars, while the average Indian makes $3,801.
3) He will make 232 million dollars in dividends for this year.
4) He only acted after Indian authorities called for CEOs to relax their crazy salary increases.
Why is his hoarding a problem? Because the money is just sitting there. It’s not working to make Indian society better, or to advance human development. It’s just sitting there. “Just in cases,” as that Portuguese maid at the end of Love Actually would have said. But which “unforeseen expenditure” are you covering for if you need $19.5 billion as a buffer?
Real leaders set examples, sometimes so powerful that we are willing to do anything (even leave our jobs) to help them succeed. When Lee Iacocca took over Chrysler in 1978 and realized it was on the brink of ruin (yes, it has happened before), he cut his own salary to one dollar for the first year. That’s what I call a CEO who isn’t in it for the money.
Mukesh? Not so much.

Poor big rich man

Imagine giving away one-thousand-two-hundred million dollars. And getting trashed for it. That’s what’s happening to one of China’s richest men, a former grocery store owner named Chen Fashu who got lucky in the stock market and made 3.7 billion dollars.
As soon as he announced his donation (to his own foundation), newspapers started questioning his motives, suggesting that he did it to evade taxes, and asking if the money was really going to charity.
Poor guy.
Then again, maybe Mr Chen is just another stone-cold capitalist who will end up making even more money this way? He says he wants to copy the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and we’ve all seen how that charity pumps even more money into Bill’s vault. (In part by investing in the very drug companies that fight to keep life-saving medicines from the cash-strapped Africans Bill is trying to save. I know, it makes your head spin.)
I hope Chen is legit, but I don’t know the guy from Adam. As for now, though, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. Like Jennifer Connelly’s sappy character from A Beautiful Mind, I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible.