Take Climate Change Seriously

There is one thing most of us can do to slow down or stop global warming. It comes for free - it even saves you some money. It increases your welfare or at least economic well-being. It gives you more free time, better social life.

Yes, I'm talking about NOT having babies.

The subconscious urge to spread your genetic material makes you have sex, not to have babies, and you can do that safely and comfortably these days. And you should find a restraint on the conscious level, because you now know you will save plenty of resources and reduce your CO2 (etc.) emissions.

Defend Yourself

How would you defend yourself if you were a small country, say Georgia, against somebody like, I don't know, Russia?

Obviously, raw military power is useless. It is not feasible to build regular army strong enough to defend your country against opponent that much bigger. One would hope that NATO and such organizations could help. But our own pre-WWII experience suggests otherwise.

Other means are difficult to obtain, and if your country signed certain international contracts, also illegal. I'm talking about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Such weapons won't help you in a local fight, they won't drive insurgents away but may deter your opponent from a full scale invasion.

As a legal and feasible method I see only special form of military training. You need to teach your people how to use guns, grenades, rocket launchers and explosive in a partisan war. Basically, you need to teach them how to become terrorists. If you opponent comes, your people will be learning it anyway - like Czechs (few of them) did when Germans came. Or even fewer when Russians did.

Let's hope it's not what Georgians are doing these days. It's kind of hard to prevent the people to use this partisan knowledge later in other causes. Like defending Islam, for example.

Anyway, all my support goes to Georgia. I hope their suffering will help others to remember that Russians are not a civilized nation and it seems unlikely they will ever be. Unfortunately, that does not mean that anyone who can do anything will do something. So what, Russians are conquering one small nation, right?

Well, one at a time. That takes Ukraine and Slovakia to get to Czech Republic.

Game over

I'm leaving for Prague next week. My stay here is basically over and so is probably this blog.

4th of July

I celebrated the 4th of July at the beach. Swimming just a little deeper allowed me to see a bunch of dauphins very closely. Being closer than 50 meters from them was really cool.
Unfortunately, after I came back to the beach to my stuff, I did not find my new sandals. I hope they serve the new owners well.

Happy days

I'm happy to inform you that this information came by mail

Your plans to leave the U.S. on the [July 16] have been approved...

Great! So I'm actually allowed to go home. I should not forget to apply for permission to breathe when I get there.

Graduate Education

So graduate education makes you stupid. I think this is sadly true for everybody. Except for me, of course.

Question of the day

Q:How stupid you have to be (even for an American) to watch Fox News?

A: Obviously a lot:

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential first ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

This is John Scalzi at Whatever.

Just so that you know. This shit happens here every single day. And Fox News has a motto: "Balanced News" (and variations thereof). Sometimes, I feel like I'm going to spend a long time in the bathroom after just seconds of these "balanced" news.

Why revenue sharing failed

It was a nice experiment. Apple sells the phones for almost full price and gets a share of revenues from those who subscribe to AT&T. The AT&T did not suffer badly - it pays only for those who actually use its services. At first, it looks pretty good, especially for Apple. It is a nice example of market segmentation (discrimination). If warranty and safety is valuable (or service provided by AT&T does not seem much worse than others), you pay full price. If you do, you still pay for the phone. Apple gets less, but more than if you would not buy at all.
What did not work well is that more people choose to unlock and jailbreak than anybody expected. In the profit equation, revenue was probably high enough, but the share of people delivering this revenue was too small.

Too good to be true

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. New IPhone, 8GB, GPS, 3G, whatever, for $199? This beats every phone in Czech Republic on quality or price and most phones on both. Sure, if you HAVE to subscribe to AT&T for $70/month, total cost to ownership are around $1900 (I pay basically zero for voice), which is way out of my league.

Time Inconsistency

There are things I really don't like doing, yet I know I should. And since I know I should, I schedule them well in advance in a way that it is basically impossible to call them off. I don't really mind - it is far away, so it does not seem to be that bad. But as it is approaching, I realize how unhappy I'm doing that particular stuff. Yet, I cannot call it off, so I keep thinking "I won't do it next time". But I know I will...