EU and Czech Republic.

IDnes - Czech news website has decided to completely ruin its already poor reputation by publishing this piece called "End of the old times". Author, Petr Kostka, claims to be an economist and seems to aim to join a group of "economists" around Vaclav Klaus (he will appoint couple of Board Members of Czech National Bank, so it's good to be a member of such group) by his article that tries to criticize European Union.
Unfortunately, the author does a very poor job at what he is doing and some of his claims seem to reach level previously rarely found even in the worst articles. For example, he claims that EU resign on military power and that USA, who twice sacrificed millions of its soldiers and citizens may not do so again. (I leave this pearl of wisdom without further comment).
He is weak in other arguments as well. He criticizes strong over-bureaucratic center, which is not unusual (and may be even correct), but does not tell us anything else. He also criticizes that the internal market is not free enough.
It is not clear what Petr Kostka actually wants. Part of the article seems to want EU to do more, some of it want it to go away.
And this is the core of poor Czech criticism in general. We are there, EU is not going away. Plenty of things are wrong (some of them are great), so let's fix them. Occasional proclamations like "too much bureaucracy" without any additional detail certainly won't help.
P.S. Those who know me probably remember the time I was criticizing EU. I still disagree with many things it is doing, yet I have come to accept the good things. Thus, I want to criticize to improve it, not to destroy it. Because that would be the return of old times we certainly don't want to see.

House of dreams

Many people in Europe dream of living in a house. Most people in the USA do. After living in both worlds for a while, I think I understand why.
In cities in Europe (from which I know mostly Czech Republic, but it is similar elsewhere as far as I can tell from traveling around), there is a plenty of public spaces. The forests and hills in the countryside are mostly open to public (not true in UK, for example) and there is a plenty of historical places to visit.
In Czech Republic in particular, I takes me 20 minutes on bike to get to a forest, where there are no cars, no people and basically no rules (no signs every 20 meters). It takes an hour by train to get basically to anywhere around Prague, with trails for hiking everywhere. There are historical things to see (castles, churches,...), hills to climb, just things to do. If I need to get out of the city, I does not take much effort. Of course, since there is so many of them, the density of people is low. If you have one (Central) Park in the City (there are more, but you get the point), no surprise it is full of people. Since there is so many of them, there does not need to be special rules (more people, more rubish) and some of the people in Europe have to habit to take their trash with them, not to drop on the ground, which limits the need for the rules.
Thus, the need to have your own private place is not nearly as strong. Everybody would prefer to own a house, because you don't need to think about neighbors, it is even closer to the nature, air is cleaner and it is less hot in the summer. But you don't need the house as a place where you spend most of the time because there is nowhere else to go.
In the US, it is rather depressing if you don't have a house. There are no places to go - most places are private, only parks are accessible and there is plenty of people and rules. You want to have your own place without any rules, where you can hang out outside.
Of course, there is more space in the US, which makes it possible for everyone to live in a house, and people are richer so they can afford the house (mostly, of course not in NY). Since so many people are able to afford a house, almost nobody lives in an apartment. In Czech Republic, most people do (about 2/3, if I can remember correctly).
The consequences of this difference are enormous. First, you cannot provide public transportation for low density areas at reasonable costs. Which means everybody needs a car, which means you need plenty of roads. Even poor people need cars because they cannot get to work otherwise.
You need car to visit public offices, to shop even at a grocery store (till I was 25, I never went to a grocery store by car and I was shopping for my family till I was in fifth grade). Car is a luxury in Czech Republic, used over the weekends to get out of the city. It is a pure necessity in California.
Low population density makes other things more expensive and harder to do - elections, services (like cable TV, internet connection, garbage collection and recycling), mobile phones. It makes it much harder for police and firedepartment to cover large areas.

After this experience, I will still dream about my house. But I know that the fact that I (and the rest of the citizens of Czech Republic) spend 2/3 of our lives in apartments is not such a bad thing.

GM food and EU

Genetically modified plants are highly regulated. They are tested in a very, very thorough way. They are often beneficial. For example BT corn has a gene that allows it to generate toxin that prevents some pests to eat it ( NY Times ). Thus, there is no need to use pesticides to kill these pests. This saves other plants and beneficial insects, bees and what not.
Even though there is some theoretical danger that the special gene will "transfer" to other plants and thus create a nasty pesticide-producing (or pesticide-resistant) plants, no such even was ever recorded. Laboratory testing shows that such events are possible, but very unlikely. I also do not think that such transfer would be a disaster, even though it is not something you would like to see.
Precautionary arguments were used to forbid planting genetically modified plants. The citizens of the EU are being scared by GreenPeace and other organizations painting GMO as the biggest threat every (even more dangerous than nuclear plants, imagine!).
Because of the enormous benefits that genetic modification offers to the farmers and eventually to the consumers, the EU is probably the last place on earth where GMO are not being grown.
Of course, no "disaster" caused by GMO ever happened and it seems that the level of testing and principles of the technology are such that nothing will ever happen. The fears of the EU seem stupid, and possibly economically disastrous in the future.
Yet, I have a strange feeling when I think about the "prohibition" being abolished in the EU. You never know, something may happen (it is after all cutting edge of the technology), we do not understand everything. It is not a bad idea to have place when you do not grow GMO just in case something goes terribly wrong. Unfortunately, such precaution comes with a very price (taxes on agricultural imports and subsidies for farmers). Given that nobody really knows what the dangers are and what is the price we pay (the latter probably easier to estimate than the former), it is not clear what the policy decision should be.
[As far as I understand the technology, the best combination for us would be to allow imports of GMO products but not to grow them here. If we do not import seeds, we should be safe.]

Fun about Nobel Prize

This is how Comedy Central depicts Oslo, Norway:


For readers who did not get it even after reading left-upper corner, this is not in Oslo or even in Norway. Look closer to the center of Europe