Not so sure

Here is a description how to be successful at Harvard. I'm not sure they are telling the whole truth and I'm pretty sure this is not unusual.

To be a pilot?

Wanna be a pilot? Try to hack into Boeing 787 while flying it as a passenger. Maybe you will get access to the operations of the plane and will be able to fly it. I can't recommend doing so, what if you encounter Blue Screen of Death? Hard reset in this case might be too hard...

Why Czech Blogs sucks?

I have been reading more than 20 blogs, approximately half of them in Czech and the rest in English. I have stop reading most of the Czech blogs, because they suck. It puzzles me - what so different? Why most of the Czech bloggers are offensive, aggressive and often wrong?
Maybe I know only those blogs in English who are very successful and thus passed the "test by audience" that Czech blogs do not have to pass to be known, simply because there is not that many Czech readers.
I don't think this is the whole story. I suspect that there is something about our culture and schooling that makes us unable to discuss (I'm not that much different, probably - it's a matter of culture, not a language).
The list of blogs I have been reading but stopped:
Pooh.cz
Pixy.cz(and clones at respekt.cz),
Ivo Lukacovic Blog
Jiri Pallas

and many other I do not remember anymore...
The "best" blog I have never read (Radek Hulan's Ego, aka the one who shall not be named), because you have to be brain dead to do so.

Publish your book

At high costs, you probably could always publish your own book. But it was probably never as easy as it is with Lulu.com. It's not only easy, it is also cheap. You can publish a 300 page paperback for about $10. To put this in perspective - this is cheaper than most paperbacks in Czech Republic.
I should get started on that story I'm thinking about for sometime...

The Czech Story

I believe Czechs are a very special, unique nation. Not necessarily in a good way. We have been conquered several times and had our share of collaborators. Only very few people have survived without a peck of dust on their soul (or reputation).
One movie says it all. In "Musime si pomahat", there is no positive (good) Czech character. The story goes like this:
Czech family (Marie and Josef Cizkovi) agrees to hide a Jew during second world war. Josef is pretty nasty towards him (jealous and mean). Their "friend" Horst is a collaborator with Germans and convinces Josef to work with him for Germans. Local "good guy", a member of the revolutionary guard who after the war decides who was a collaborator (to shoot them, not to give them a trial), won't help the Jew and is willing to scarify his life in exchange for an illusion of safety for his family. The Capitan of Czech legion is willing to shoot an innocent men based on a single witness, without any evidence or trial.
There are only two positive characters - Marie (she is Slovak) and possibly the Jew (German). Everyone else collaborates in one way or the other. All of them can be viewed as "good" people - they want to help others, but not at a too great risk for themselves. The good nature usually wins at the end, but the fight is difficult and the behavior is often morally suspicious to an external observant.
I can imagine that other nations like Americans (or any other nation who was never occupied for a significant period of time) can hardly understand the problem. Since we had to deal with it many times throughout our history (last, but not least during 40 years of Russia's influence during communism ), it defines us and our behavior. It makes us unique, aware of the parts of soul other nations never saw.
I hope it will help us in the future. We are not any worse (or better) than nations. We just know what we are.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my grand-mother, who was born in the year when the Czechoslovakia was established (1918), witnessed the First World War as a very little baby, survived the Second as a 20+ year old, and 40 years of occupation by Soviets. She had 4 children, 7 grandchildren and 3 grand-grandchildren. She died today.

Drugs for happiness

People say that half of the people in the US is using some kind of mental health drugs. I'm quite sure it is not that many, but it certainly is a lot. Especially people who are middle-aged and older, divorced,...
Often, one considers these people inferior, "puppets" without free will because of the influence of drugs on the mind of the user. I used to agree - my mind is the most (the only?) useful thing I have and I do not want to damage it or alter it any way (yeah, I don't do drugs).
However, I don't agree anymore. Many drugs are designed to minimize negative consequences and many are not addictive. And they make their users happy. Why not to use them? If somebody had a difficult life, uncountable tragic experiences and memories, doesn't it make sense to suppress them a little? What's wrong with being simply happy? Who cares that it is not "natural" happiness? The drug user cannot tell and why should people around him care?
I won't start taking them myself, not now anyway. But I think it is an option one should consider. There is just one happiness. And it feels great.

Google and Microsoft

Some people say that Google is the new Microsoft. They usual do not compliment the business success or benefits to the users, but they mean a new, big monopoly, that will, to put it economically, extract the surplus from you as much as possible.
Google is indeed successful. Google dominates market for search, text ads, has a strong position in mail. Google offers wide range (and fast growing) of services ( list here, just take a look, you would be surprised how many. And Google enters the Instant Messaging market (GTalk), Phones ( Android) etc.
Most of these service benefit experience users, but their simplicity and well-thought design makes them attractive for low-end consumers, too. For example, Wal-Mart is selling $200 PC with Linux preloaded with many Google applications (like Google Documents instead of Microsoft Office suit etc.), and has a big success with it.
As we all know, you cannot please everybody, so some people are scared and are getting angry. Google has access to so much information about you, is becoming so strong and big that it is not hard to imagine it will become (almost) a monopoly, like Microsoft. And such monopolies are not good for consumers (nor even for security, as everybody without firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware and malware running Windows can probably testify).
Having such monopoly in information services would probably be disastrous, right?
No, not really. The reason why Microsoft is a problematic monopoly while Google is not is in the "networking" properties (in economic sense) of their services. Microsoft is building things that you want to use because others are using them. You cannot switch because your documents will not be accessible to others, you could not download as many programs as there are for Windows (who would write them for operating systems nobody is using, right). With Google, this is not true. Not only most services do not have network benefits (like Gmail - you can read your emails anywhere you want, even if I send them from Gmail; you can search with Yahoo and I can search with Google and there is no big problem for either of us because of that), but they are designed to be open. For example, Google Documents allow you to export your documents to wide range of formats so that they are accessible for you colleagues. That is something Microsoft was never serious about.
OK, it is possible that Google is doing the second part (openness) only to enter the market and will stop when it has its monopoly positions. Maybe. But the first part will be still true. I can use any Google services I want and you do not benefit (nor you are harmed) by using other services. Moreover, it is very easy to switch - the only thing it requires is for you to learn some new things (shortcuts, commands etc.) It does not require you to convince your boss that Microsoft Word is really not a good format for in-firm documents.
Therefore, I'm not particularly concerned about Google. Moreover, the part when Google would be fighting with Microsoft over the world dominance would be long (they both had cash to burn) and fun (for the consumers).

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.]

Future

Obviously, the future is closer than I thought. I'm not sure whether I want to go with the flow or try to resist it and end up like some of these loser in the science fiction stories...

PF 2008 from San Diego