January 20, 2010

Another cold, cold day in Zürich.

The earthquake in Haiti turned out to be as disastrous as the tsunami with expectantly 200'000 dead. However, the worse seems to be yet to come with all the refugees, diseases and upcoming criminality that follows in the footsteps of the disaster. We have constantly been fed with images from the area since a week now and the more you see, the more the whole situation just feel hopeless. Obama has been very quick in sending American aid, it might be out of pure altruism but I guess it is still a great occasion for Obama to score some points on Americas behalf in the world and show the American army in a more positive light than as the invasion force it has been seen as the last decade. No matter if Obama can draw benefit or not, it is a very good thing that they got there quickly with massive help. Probably they learned something from Katrina, in contrast with the European union that has been embarrassingly slow in taking the necessary decisions to gather the forces to help the needing.

To talk about something completely different, the worse trains ever constructed must be the ICN trains in Switzerland. These horrible machines seems to be designed uniquely to make their passengers as sick as possible. According to well-informed forces this could be due to a design error, apparently simulations of the control system was made on the movement only in the lateral direction and hence ignoring the movement in the traveling direction. In order to survive your traveling in Switzerland, make sure that you avoid these trains even though it means waiting half an hour for the next train.

January 13, 2010

A rather depressing day, around Bahnhof Oerlikon, kreis 11.

There was a huge earthquake on Haiti but there is no comment to give, it is simply just terrible.

In Sweden, university educations were previously allowed to have a gender quota and to strive to have half men, half women. After a recent court case they are no longer allowed to keep this quota. Among others, this quota was to to help the men keep some places in the agricultural sector. When the quota is gone it turns out that almost all educations get dominated by women as they generally have higher grades than men. Now when the majority of newly examined doctors are women and more and more engineers are women the salaries for those professions are falling. Women are always prepared to work for lower wages, good grades obviously doesn't necessarily make them smarter. So what shall we do about it? Encourage your daughters to become investment bankers! I am sure that will add some decency into that profession and make the salaries more down to earth or in the worst case, your daughters will finish rich.

January 6, 2009

Central Zürich in the cold.

After a series of large avalanches in the alps with several dead there is a big discussion in Swiss media whether off-pist skiing should be allowed or not and what is the responsability of the people adventuring outside the prepared slopes. On this matter I must agree with what Dominique Perret said in an interview on the radio that the sea and the mountains are the last outposts of freedom and it would be an awful thing to deprive people from this. However, a justified question is whether you are allowed to put other peoples life in danger which you do when you go too close to the slopes or when you get rescued. This week end a doctor in a rescue team died due to a second avalanche during a mission. In Switzerland we are used to getting a helicopter rescue whatever we have been up to but when you consider the risks to which we are exposing the rescuers this right should really not be that obvious.

During the Christmas holidays a "failed" terrorist attack occurred on a plane between Amsterdam and Detroit. The attack might have been a failure in the sense that no one was hurt, however, when we consider the consequences it was indeed a success. Now millions have been spent on new technology so that all travellers have to expose themselves nude in the security checks. How often do you think that these images will find their way to the web? The real terror is not the act of the terrorist itself but the reaction of the acts by us.

December 16, 2009

In front of Migros on Meierhofplatz, kreis 10, can you buy a Christmas tree imported from Denmark nicely put into a net using the tube on the photo above. Apparently Denmark is a huge exporter of Christmas trees even though I personally have never seen anything close to a forest in Denmark. It is somehow ironic that the trees are transported all the way from Denmark as Copenhagen is trying hard to become the symbol of environmentalism. Trying hard but so far we have not seen anything promising coming out from the conference, only a polarization between the rich and the poor countries. Both sides think that the other part should take the burden of saving the planet. They have three days left but you have to be a very stubborn optimist to still believe that anything fruitful will come out of this.

Another chapter in the Swiss-against-the-world-saga has just started. As the last one in a long row of countries trying to get their hands on escaped tax-money kept safe in Switzerland due to the bank secrecy, France is now using illegally obtained lists of bank accounts from a Swiss bank to get hold of their fraudsters.

December 8, 2009

A misty morning on Hönggerberg, kreis 10. Unfortunately I forgot the UV-filter at home so I did not manage to capture the magic.

The conference on the climate in Copenhagen started on Monday. So much hope is being put into this conference, some people call it the last chance to save the earth before it goes under due to the global warming. If the politicians take the threat seriously let's hope that they really get to make some important decisions. At the time being I have the impression that the pressure on saving the planet is mainly lying on the shoulders of us as individuals when the real burden should be placed on companies and be guided by political decisions. However, there is no reason to worry about the planet, the planet will always survive. It is the human species that might get erased, that's all.

Tomorrow Barack Obama will receive the Nobel peace prize. Many voices has been raised against it as he does not yet deserve it and that he has recently sent 30'000 more soldiers into Afghanistan. However, I don't really see that he has got much choice as he has inherited all these problems from the Bush-administration. I really think that he deserves the price anyway, he has decided to close down Guantanamo and is clearly pushing for a peaceful solution in the middle east. His visions are clearly peaceful and his election gave to the world something that we so badly needed, hope of a better future.

December 2, 2009

In Kreis 5 around Langstrasse you can find the shops selling all the things you didn't know that you didn't need.

Switzerland is not living its most glorious days. After having once again shown their intolerance towards other cultures by voting for an interdiction for the building of minarets last Sunday the problems are building up internationally as well as within the country. Countries all over the world are condemning the outcome of the voting, from Muslim countries as well from the European Union. Switzerland is adding another brick to the wall isolating them from the rest of the world. It will be interesting to see the economical impact of the now even worsened reputation of Switzerland. Many Muslim countries are encouraging people to withdraw their investments in Switzerland. However, business is business and so far I have never heard of an idealistic businessman no matter what religion he's from, so as long as it is profitable I guess that the money will stay in the country.

The internal problem that Switzerland is now facing is where they should go from here. Is it possible to accept the vote and install the interdiction? It is against the Swiss constitution, the human rights and freedom of religion. Democracy is supposed to be secondary in the country after the Rechtsstaat. This means that the will of the people are never allowed to win over the fundamental values defined in the constitution, to prevent tyranny of the masses. However, it is not trivial to go against the public will within the country. What probably will happen is that the people building minarets will get their case tested in the European Court of Human Rights where the right to build the minarets will be approved.

In the end, this whole voting had very little to do with minarets and more about the prejudices against Muslims in Switzerland. The people who started this initiative have won nothing but a well earned sea of troubles. The Swiss government has done a huge mistake in allowing this voting to take place as they knew already from the start that a positive outcome would be anti-constitutional. The second part to blame for this situation is the 48% of the people with the right to vote who didn't show up at the ballots Sunday.

My remark above that business is business was also shown in the elections last Sunday. Everybody is against a war but when it comes to protecting Swiss jobs the Swiss (or at least the 52% who actually made the effort of voting) still chose to continue the weapon export.

November 25, 2009

The trees have lost their leaves in Kreis 10. Frauenmünster and Grossmünster in Kreis 1 are lightening up the dark and long nights in November together with the newly installed Christmas decorations.

In Switzerland the market of mobile telephony is heavily dominated by Swisscom. Their huge dominance is related to the extremely slow process in Switzerland of liberalizing the telecom market. This gave Swisscom plenty of time to build up their networks in peace and quiet. The late incoming alternatives to Swisscom have had an impossible task to compete against them. Today, the two main competitors, Sunrise and Orange, have announced that they will fuse to keep up. Having only two companies on the market will most likely not benefit the customers so we will probably continue being one of the most expensive countries in this sector as well for quite some time.

Roman Polanski, who was arrested when he was entering Switzerland to collect a price in the Zürich film festival for a crime that he committed over 30 years ago, has now paid 4.5 millions Swiss francs to spend his time in his luxury chalet in Gstaad instead of in jail. It is indeed nice to be rich. What I think is a bit funny with the Polanski story is the attitude of the majority of the Swiss people. Last year they voted for making sexual crimes against minors punishable for longer than 15 years after the crime was committed. However, when it comes to a famous movie director he should be allowed to rape 13-year old girls when he's 40 without being bothered with it when he's 70. Taking Polanski into custody is considered as an embarrassment by the very same people who voted for changing the law. Again, it is nice to be rich and even nicer to be famous.