March 17, 2010

View over Central with the university and ETHZ in the background taken from the bus 46 bus stop in front of the station. I totally forgot everything about photos today so a quick photo with my mobile (Nexus One) had to do the trick. The winter seems to finally start giving in to spring in Zürich and even though the morning was freezing the afternoon was really nice and warm.

It has now been a court decision in the US that the government will not pay money to parents who claim that a preservative in vaccines have triggered autism in their children. The court ruled against the parents since there are no scientific proofs what so ever that autism can be triggered by vaccines. This is just a myth that was created as a scientific had manipulated data that created an apparent link between vaccine and autism. It is quite chocking to see how this myth has gained influence and many parents refuse to vaccinate their children against the diseases that was nearly extinguished but now are coming back in regular outbreaks. As a parent in Switzerland you often hear about this myth and it is no longer considered obvious to vaccinate your children. The vaccination rate in Switzerland against the measles is as low as 87%.

One example of this phenomenon are the measles epidemics that as late as in 2009 killed an unvaccinated child in Switzerland. These epidemics mainly hits the Rudolf-Steiner (Waldorf education) schools where parents are discouraged to vaccinate their children against a number of potentially deadly diseases and encouraging the parents not to worry about whether the children will dies because if they do, it was probably their destiny.

Another example of huge skepticism against vaccinations could be seen during the swine flu hype. Whereas the Swedes were queuing for hours and fighting to get the vaccines, the Swiss only used a tiny portion of the vaccines bought by the government and finished by passing them all on to poorer countries. Now, the swine flu never really got the serious outbreak that we all feared so the consequences of the vaccination refusal didn't get so serious but who knows what will happen next time.

March 10, 2010

By the Limmat at Unter-Letten. We all got some spring feelings last week but this week they are all gone, the snow is back together with an icy cold wind.

Monday 8'th of March was the international women's day. It didn't get so much coverage in Swiss media but more in the Swedish, wonder if that is somehow significant of the women's roles in the different societies? Anyway, one of this years themes was maternal mortality. This is luckily no longer a problem in our part of the world where we over the last 100 years managed to get the mortality rate down to quasi zero. Today 99% of the deaths related to childbirth is in the developing countries where out of 100'000 pregnancies over 1000 finish in death for the woman compared to 7 in Switzerland. One of the worst countries is Niger where every 7'th woman dies due to pregnancy related complications. Apart from not having access to proper health-care a part of these deaths are related to illegal abortions and female genital mutilation. Another part is also related to the low age of the mothers forced into marriage as adolescents, in many countries in Africa maternal mortality is the primary cause of death for women between 15 and 19 years old.

When I consider the childbirth experiences of my own friends, I would estimate that two of them would definetely have died 100 years ago or if they were living in Afghanistan. One or two would have had life-threatening conditions. Living in the "right place at the right time" they could all go home from the hospitals with healthy babies four days later.

March 3, 2010

The ice-skating rink at Heuried, Zürich Kreis 3. For a short while we thought that spring was finally releasing us from this terribly long winter but we were not that lucky.


This picture was actually taken yesterday from my office. We have been fortunate to have the opportunity of following the mounting of a building from very close. Building the foundation of this building was very long but now they are putting it together in an IKEA-like manner with an amazing speed. The building seems to grow one floor every day. At least the workers here don't need to ask themselves at the end of the days what the have actually achieved.

Apple is filing a lawsuit against HTC mainly due to their operative system, Android. Indirectly this is a lawsuit against Google. It will be interesting to see where this will lead in the long run. Apple must of course feel threatened that so many phone manufacturers chose Android. If Apple will win it will be very nasty for many mobile companies but I guess they will not cede without a fight and sue Apple back if necessary. This will probably be a long and nasty story.

February 24, 2010

Graffiti at Letten along the Limmat, this is somewhat a free zone for graffiti artist of varying quality but some of them really stand out from the crowd.

Once again Libya is on the headlines. One of Gaddafis Swiss hostages was liberated and could return home whereas the other was thrown into prison for another 4 months. The plot thickens as Gaddafi himself declares a jihad against Switzerland because of the minaret voting. Luckily for Switzerland Gaddafi doesn't have much more credibility among Islamic fundamentalist than he has in the rest of the world so there is still some hope that we will not get a band of suicide bombers on our necks. Even for a dictatorship it is amazing that that a person can remain in power that changes his mind as often as the journalist changes the spelling of his name (Khaddafi, Khadafy, Ghadafi, Gadafy in numerous variations). The only hope for the Swiss hostage seems to unexpectedly come from the person who put him in the situation in the first place, Ghaddafis son Hannibal. The conflict with Switzerland started as the Swiss police was intervening as Hannibal beat up his staff during a stay in Geneva. I guess that you can not count on the good heart of Hannibal but maybe he has got some more brains left than his aging father and therefore sees some advantages of not pissing off the entire international community.

February 17, 2010

Kreis 5, this old bridge was accidentally bombed by the English during the second world war in 1940. I think I read somewhere that they were heading for Nüremberg in Germany but they missed with a few 100 km.

Theo Frey, a Swiss news photographerthat was active during the 40'ies, took some pictures of the event when it happened. He also produced a large collection of photos from Zürich and Wallis during this time period which is really fascinating to watch. You can find some of the pictures on the web.

More old pictures of Zürich can also be found in the archive of ETHZ.

February 10. 2010

Are we in Moscow or in Zürich? It is honestly hard to tell these days as there seems to be no ending to the snowfall. Luckily most services still work well as for example the garbage collection. In Zürich there is a hard core system for the garbage that needs some time getting used to. All garbage needs to be put in special bags, Züri-Säcke, for which you pay about 2 chf per bag of 35 liters. This can be quite annoying as a start but really encourages people to reduce garbage and recycle as much as possible as this is free of charge. The recycling is indeed free but strict rules must be followed, at least concerning the paper. Old paper needs to be put in perfect piles and be nicely tied up using a special recyclable ribbon. If you fail your piles will be left on the street and exposed to all your curious neighbors who will easily figure out who the pile belongs to and give it back to you. The best way of avoiding embarrassment is to make sure that you always put a copy of the Migros-Magazine (German version of course) on top of your pile to blend in with the Zürcher.

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver are approaching and will start on Friday. As it is an El Niño year this year the temperature in Vancouver is 4 degrees warmer than usual and there is no snow in sight. The solution that the Canadians have found for this is to fly in snow with helicopters from other regions to dump them on the Olympic slopes. This is adding up to all the other ecological disasters that organizing the Olympics imply. At least now Vancouver can be pretty sure that they will warm the planet enough so that they can apply for the summer Olympics as well.

February 3, 2010

View over Zürich from Käferberg where the children are enjoying the melting snow.

The story is repeating itself, over and over again. Once again a list of foreign tax fraudsters, this time it is the Germans and not the French or Americans, has been stolen from Swiss banks and the "thief" has offered Germany to buy the list for 2 million euros. Having their hands on the list they estimate that Germany can collect 100 million euros in hidden tax money. Angela Merkel is seriously considering to buy this list as Switzerland will not provide this information for free. How long time will it take for Switzerland to abandon this absurd bank secrecy and wash away all the dirty money and its filthy reputation? Switzerland is so strong in innovation, technology and biotech, just to name a few areas, that they can afford to bring back some morals into the economy.

The Bundesrat is taking the story with great calm as usual as they always have their priorities straight. Didier Buchalter made a great example when he decided to push his 100 days review by one week because of his wife's birthday.

Avatar, Avatar, Avatar is the name on everybody's lips. After almost two months since the film was released the cinemas are still full every night. People are watching it not only one but two or three times. Is it really such a revolution?