A Day in Downtown DC

Small, but beautiful: whenever you go to DC, go to the Renwick Gallery (how convenient, it's just next to the White House).
Not only are its temporary exhibitions breath-taking (if you think we glass is only useful for windows, think and watch again, cf. picture, source of the picture: http://www.linotagliapietra.com), but worth-a-visit is also teh George Catlin Indian gallery.

Lino Tagliapietra is a son of Murano, the famous Italian glass-blowing industry island nearby Venice. The connection to the US: he became acquainted with a glass blowing school in Seattle and helped to create talented people over there.

George Catlin (folk art?) anticipated the trouble between the Indians and the White Man and painted a couple of hundred pictures to contribute to the preservation of Indian tribes.
Besides him, you can find other stunning oevres, such as a seemingly veiled clock, whose perceived covering linen is actually wood (very fanzily made; even from a 2 feet distance you can't tell that this is actually wood, it's made so wel).

It's not just cool that there is no admission fee, but also that the museum actually consists of two buildings (i.e. the second part of American Art is together with the portrait gallery at F Street further to the East, let's call it the real SAAM).
The SAAM houses an amazing amount of presidential paintings and other inspiring pictures about American history. And if you fall almost asleep (e.g. because you sleep not enough also during your holidays), then you get a boost by a coffee and "gourmet" cookie at the "Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard" (i.e. the courtyard is covered by a 900-ton (really? so says the flyer), 28'000 square feet glass roof consisting of 864 individual glass panels.

go there and enjoy:
http://americanart.si.edu/

In times of trouble, it's always good to reinforce your confidence in democracy, its institutions and recall its ideas. Ideally, a walk on the Mall makes you thinking and inspiring.
But not only - a closer look, and a healthy portion scepticism reveals that the many lights on a Saturday evening 8pm in the many (and the many big) federal office bunkers, ahm, buildings along/around the Mall, is most probably not because zealous and hardworking employees...
People here seem to talk much about change, how to relaunch the economy ... and about climate change (watch out, the oil price is down to around 40$/b compared to the 145$/b this July...!). Why only talk and await a big push in the green direction when everybody can make a (little) difference on his/her own - AT NO COST? It just takes the willpower of a second to switch off the light in the evening and switch it on in again in the morning.
[if they have a central on/off switch for the whole bureau, why not use motion-detectors, so you won't even need to do the job on your own?)?
Energy efficiency does not just mean MPG (miles per gallon, which is here ridiculously low anyway) and it's not coming from big companies only, but from the bottom - from each individual. If we do not believe in change and our OWN capacity/discretion to (at least initiate it), then we do not need to listen to people promising us the same. Both need each other - otherwise it's not going to work, whether the world is flat, hot or crowded or not.

What makes you tick?

"to commit every nerve, every muscle, and every drop of sweat to a work, to a great task; to grow with the work, to become greater oneself in the struggle with one's betters - and then to be able to say at the end: I die, but there remains something that is more important than my life and will last longer than my body: my work."

[Morgenthau, H.J., (?) School Composition, "Was ich von meiner Zukunft erhoffe, und worauf sich diese Hoffnung gruendet", as cited in Frei, C. (2001). Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography. (p. 80) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.]

My home is my castle

Would you like to see an example of America's infrastructure?

"....Address the Lauinger Problem", as The Hoya (student newspaper at Georgetown University) put it in an editorial (issue of Friday, Dec. 5, 2008). Indeed, our campus' main library is not only not known as a beauty, it has some other severe drawbacks.

I can't put it more vivid terms than the editorial: ".. not just because it's physically ugly, outdated and decrepit. (Earlier this semester, for instance, Lauinger's ceiling was leaking so much that many stacks had to be covered with blue tarp to protect them from water damage.
In its current configuration, Lauinger stifles the intellectual life of our community. With only a handful of meeting rooms and woefully inadequate study space, it remains stuck in an obsolete notion of what a library should be. In the 21st century, a library must be more than a warehouse for storing books."
And it goes on: "Changes must reflect the need for expanded study and meeting space, and for the development of a more inviting learning environment. Lauinger must become a destination, not a mark of shame on our campus."

It's indeed a sad reality: Tables and chairs are worn out and seemingly never clean, the restrooms seem to be not properly taken care of, the computers are slow (except those in the Media section on the first floor), the heating system is crazy (either too hot or too cold, and the air filter are either too loud or (but usually and) not really working well so its a stuffy atmosphere to work in. Copy machines are often out of order and ...
And one wonders about the ridiculous security measures (whenever you enter, show your ID; as if that would prevent somebody to make nasty things...; however, sometimes the guards are too much into a conversation among themselves...).

However, one must point out that the staff is really friendly and always ready to help. And, a big advantage compared to the University of St. Gallen: you can download journal articles and papers online from home by logging in - you do not need to download them on the campus.

A nice idea from Singapore: RFID chips to make everybody able to check out books individually instead of waiting in line for too long and bothering the circulation desk guys (who are students, and sometimes do not seem to be very committed to do their job).

Go on, and keep on fighting for the good sake

"Sometines, bad things are good for us, because they teach as a lot of things. Who would we be if and what whould we learn about life, if we didn't have bad things anymore, and trust me, God doesn't give you more than you can take."
[A friend of mine, December 2008]

Bird of prey

You'll be sick, if you continue like this...

The F-22, too good (and expensive) to become widely used?

While we're in a financial/economic crisis and a new administration is incoming (promising to cut the Defense budget), you wonder what happens to big projects such as F-22 (which was downsized several times already).

One of the most expensive fighters (Raptor) becomes a prey of the congress. The new plan to invest huge sums in America's basic infrastructure to boost and retool the economy is probably not focusing on such projects as the Raptor.

Nevertheless, cool website> http://www.f22-raptor.com/

And the Chinese? They seem to make a copy... (surprise?), or at least something, that might look like a copy (even though apparently several design studies exist, the J-XX seems to be based on the Flanker platform, with resemblance to F-22, F-16 etc.)

some sources:

http://www.sinodefence.com/airforce/fighter/jxx.asp

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1600141/posts

White -

hey, the first day (Saturday) when snow was falling (quarter of an inch or so - and disappeared the same evening).

Instead of white snow, this is maybe black snow (i.e. surprise):
An old boy after years of introspection may see that he maybe did sth on wrong grounds
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/international/george_bushs_ploetzliche_reue_ueber_den_irak-krieg_1.1367934.html

Notes of a day

In Switzerland, you usually collect your leaves (if you have a garden) with fallen branches of trees, cut gras and other "green waste" and put them into a green container/trash bin. Then, a truck stoos by every other week or so and the bin's contents get poured into the truck.

In America, the team of 534 N Monroe Street performed an extra effort at 11pm on a Wednesday night to get the huge pile of leaves - brushed/collected together the Saturday before - to the street, hoping that a truck would collect it as scheduled the next morning. There is not green waste bin, so the leaves get "sucked in" [remember Electolux' famous ad from the 1970s or so: "Nothing sucks like Electrolux" - poor Swedes]. Indeed, 14 days later, a truck came by and did the job: A lawn sign two blocks away reminded the neighborhood "Vacuum leave collection, Nov 25". Strangely, just one block further, huge piles of leaves still embellish the streets - maybe the truck lost its breath?

yeah, you really can suck leaves: http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/EnvironmentalServices/swd/EnvironmentalServicesSWDLeafCollectionSched.aspx

and something else sucks money...:

I was honored to join the selected many (who had an invitation/reservation/links to Congress(wo)men or else) today and visited the all new Congress Visitor Center CVC (costs: just 630-odd m$) before it's actual opening on Dec 2. Apparently, construction took about 7 years and the result is gorgeous: Virginia sandstone, the large "Emancipation Hall" reception hall, embellished with some statues that have been moved from the Capitol here (among others Astronaut Swigart of Apollo XIII and the plaster version of Lady Liberty (the lead one is on top of the Capitol dome) and of course an impressive exhibition hall with an abridged version of the Senate's and House's history. An exciting movie introduces the audience to this Temple of Liberty.

In any case: it's worth a prolonged visit and also worthwile to spend some thoughts on liberty and the purpose of good policymaking.

Sadly, there are a lot of security precautions that hugely restrict visitors' moves. A visit in 1998 was rather simple: you just walked into the Rotunda and there friendly guides welcomed you (guess what: there was no such thing as a bag control or x-ray). Now, it seems there are more policemen than guides...

http://www.aoc.gov/cvc/project_info/index.cfm

Reflections on so-called "elite education"

Deresiewicz, W. (2008). "The Disadvantage of an Elite Education". The American Scholar, Summer 2008, 77/3, pp. 20-31.
The author was English teacher at Yale (and thus may have some provocatively exaggerated points, but the core isn't that bad, I'd say:-)

"The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from" (i.e. you cannot relate to ordinary ppl anymore, the claim goes).

"The second disadvantage, implicit in what I've been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth ... all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE." (and, one ought to say, sometimes a false sense of self-esteem...).

on elite uni's and their exlcusivity-drive, reinforcing the self-perception of the "best and the brightest": " There's no point in excluding people unless they know that they've been excluded" (otherwise there is no "exclusive society:-)

"The elite like to think of themselvesas belonging to a meritocracy, but that's true only up to a point. Getting through the gate [of the school, i.e. getting admitted] is very difficult, but once you're in, there is almost nothing you can do to get kicked out" [yeah, maybe, but the fear persist...; on the other hand, there are parallels to management establishment where "eine Hand waescht die andere", i.e. mutual protection of who's "in the club".]

The perception of being 'entitled" to money, fame, power...

"... students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They've been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure ... "
[Good point, although the author is here much too narrow and simple-minded. I think the phenomenon goes much deeper...]

and what the guy thinks of the true nature and purpose of an (elite) school:
"their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul ... feel like freaks ... searchers."
[a bit less metaphoric, please - ok, he is English teacher...-, but this is quite true, at least in my eyes. It's the perennial quest, the thirst to know and experience more...]

"Being an intellectual means thinking your way toward a vision of the good society and then trying to realize tht vision by speaking truth to power. It means going into spiritual exile...."
[ok, cool. Sadly, instead of pondering the financial meltdown and the political consequences, all we do is solving problem sets and embracing the Neyman-Pearson Theorem... (I just come from trying to read the stats book...)]

issue needs continuous treatment...

Financial Crisis and its ramifications...

In "Blue & Gray", the biweekly official Georgetown gazette for faculty and staff (there is btw also "the Hoya", published by the students), of Nov 17th, 2008, there was a brief article about Georgetown's endowment.
Apparently, the fund's volume dropped below 1bn $. It lost 9.5% of its value in Q3 2008 and overall 12.5% in 2008YTD.
Tough times ... however, the author of the article points out that Morgan Stanley's MSCI (global equity index) lost 26 (same time frame may mean 2008YTD, I guess). Anyhow, compared to Yale's or Harvard's endowment, Georgetown's is pretty small....

Another hot issue this week was (and still is) the possible 25bn $ loan for Detroit's Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler). However, it is highly unclear whether there will be money, how much, for which purposes and with which strings/conditions attached. There is no clarity whatsoever about the automakers' current financial health: will the go bankrupt withouth the federal money injection? If so, when (end of the year, in some months, never)?
Even if the money would help (how to spend it most efficiently, given the complexities and sizes of those firms?), is there enough oversight to avoid just preserving outdated plants/management styles/ill-fated worker benefit programs etc.?
It seems that noone wants a breakdown of the US auto industry, but can a gov't bailout help? on the other hand, if there is no help, what if all three go bust and some 4-5m jobs are lost in the aftermath?

We might assume that Congress, after playing hardball tactics to get more facts and clearer conditions on the package, finally grants money for the carmakers. Let's hope that it really helps to change the industry. The US auto industry urgently need a DRASTIC change (with or without public money), so let's just hope pouring money over it won't help them avoid changes and make them look forward (energy challenge, fuel efficiency, environmental standards, design revolution, sizes & tastes) and not backward (outrageous health care and pension packages).

Mitt Romney is apparently an outspoken critic (cf. "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt", NY Times, Wednesday, November 19, 2008, page A31): "with it [governmetn money], the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market share, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

On the other hand: how can you explain in simple terms why to bail out a financial system with 700bn, while being stingy about 25bn for cars and 4m jobs? Most people possibly don't easily understand stability and systemic issues and rather care more about their job. In any case, policymakers face a huge challenge to restore confidence: in the system, in the individual's power to keep on fighting for him/herself, in America, and, in politics.

Tue, November 4th, 2008: Being Election Officer

A student as election officer…
Tuesday 4.11.08: I went to bed at 3.30am (doing readings for courses and reading the guide for election officers). I got up at 4.10am, cooked eggs and ham to eat breakfast with bread and cooked spaghetti (to take with me as lunch). After taking a shower I walked two blocks to be on time at 5am at the Arlington Arts Center (my polling place). Overall, about 18 election officer were assigned to work in this precinct. At 5am, we built up the voting room, i.e. set up the desks, chairs, voting machines, leaflets, marked queuing lines on the floor etc. The actual voting room was approx. 5 x 10 meters in its size. When the first voter came in, he went to the desk for with the three poll books (3 electronic ones) to check-in as voter (i.e. the ID, name/address is checked and compared to the registration rolls on the poll books). If a voter was correctly registered, he got a yellow voter permit for the day to vote on all issues. Other colors restricted special voters to the federal elections or the presidential elections only.
Then a voter would proceed to the second desk was for deciding whether to vote by paper ballot or by machine. Each voter could opt for either one. If the choice was voting by machine, voters kept their yellow (or other colored ) permit and went on to stand in line for the machines (we had four, i.e. WINvote machines).
If opted for paper ballot, the two election officers at the desk took the yellow card and handed out the paper ballot (Arlington County ballot, contained: election of president/VP, one Senator, one House Rep (8th district), one member for the county board and two persons for the local school board as well as five ballot issues (four about whether to issue bonds for some purposes (for the metro, utilities, community infrastructure and public schools) and one about whether to activate a Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Arlington (was rejected clearly).
The voters then filled out the paper ballots at a desk (four seats only, with cardboard shields on the side, so no one could look on their ballots), and put it through the scanner, next to an election officer, called Accuvote which optically counted the vote.
The Winvote machines were touch screen-based systems (strangely, the Virginia state legislature apparently decided in 2007 against the purchase of more touch-screen or similar voting machines, so the electoral Board decided to opt for optical scanners (rental!!) in order to make sure to have enough capacity on election day).
Voting on the Winvote machines was straightforward: in order to re-activate (after a voter has posted his votes and finished the process), each time an election officer had to take the next person in line and put in his card to activate the system for the voter to start casting his votes (i.e. to prevent multiple/abusive use). Besides one brief incident (apparently related to power supply) the machines worked fine.

The precinct (Monroe, # 49) has about 1600 registered voters, of which about 900 or so voted. Both Winvote and Accuvote machines (overall five devices have been at our place) have an individual tally which we printed out three times after the closure of the polls at 7pm. Then the tallies have been checked, added together etc. If I recall correctly, Obama won by a sizeable margin (about 600 votes against McCain’s some 260).

From 6am onwards, I worked first at the Winvote, welcoming voters and advising them how to operate, and handed out stickers (“I voted in Arlington”) until about 10am, when the major wave of voters was over. Then I voted by myself on the Winvote and subsequently took a seat at the table with the paper ballots (worked (and more talked there between 10-1 and 5-6pm) and in between sitting around and waiting, eating, trying to learn (while falling asleep several times) Micro (last midterm was Micro, on Nov 7th). I had some good conversations with fellow election officers. One had Iranian roots and worked as a director in a law firm, another was originally from Dakota and worked for the FDIC. I could share some thoughts about the Swiss system (how they vote over there, the referenda of Nov 30 in Switzerland etc.) A Japanese-American woman invited me to a Japanese-US panel on education and IT later on. Particularly glad I was when one of my fellow roommates came at about 4pm to cast his vote and take this picture.

Stunning was that most of the voters came early in the morning, so that after 10am not many people came (between 1 and 4pm was almost nobody voting). The first people started to build a line in front of the polling place at 5.30am, so between 6 and 9am we all have been pretty busy and the place was crowded.

Freedom

The land of the free has elections next Tuesday. What about the state and quality of freedom in this country? Given its huge challenges and the many tasks that the next president face may make us think about how freedom will be affected. Some helpful inspiration:

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." [Moshe Dayan]


"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." [Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888]

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." [Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952]

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." [Abraham Lincoln]

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" [Benjamin Franklin]

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." [Goethe]

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." [Rosa Luxemburg]



http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_freedom.html

Indulgence....

Indulgence is when ...

... you can read again a newspaper after having had to deal only with econ/math/equations for weeks to study for midterm exams
... dedicate your time again to do some politics (e.g. vote early in the US for the presidential, House and Senate elections as well as some local elections and local ballot issues; e.g. Swiss politics, as Swiss voters face 5 federal referendum issues on Nov. 30th, as well as Cantonal government elections in Aargau)
... finding time to dive again into some political philosophy (and being reminded how sad it is that no party in the USA reflect this brand of thinking, i.e. cf. e.g.
F.A. von Hayek, "Why I am not a Conservative"
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=53

and, of course: indulgence is when a friend spontaneously invites you to original Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup lunch at a Pho75 restaurant (cheap, simple, but great food) in Falls Church.
The beef briskets gets cooked in the hot soup (a bouillon) whith bean sprouts, rice noodles, Thai basil and some other herbs. Dunk the beef slices into the pepper/chilli sauce and enjoy!
Afterwards feel even more comfortable by sipping iced Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk .. hmmmm.

Sound bites and punch lines

Ceci n'est pas une gaffe...

If you watched this night's VP debate (ahem, was it really a debate?), you may understand what a gaffe may be. If it is successful, it may be called sound bite, particularly when A delivers it to score points relative to its counterpart B (which may then be called a 'punch'line:-).

Maybe also thoughtful, some funny comments, given by Thomas L. Friedman (NY Times, Wed, Oct 1, 2008, page A31) - hopefully, this is enough of citation), about what for possibly most seem more of a concern than talks on issues which are not really addressing the questions in so-debates.

"I've always believed that America's government was a unique political system - one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong."

We have House members, many of them whom I suspect can't balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don't understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can't deal with this crisis this way. "
[the House rejected the bill on Monda, Sept 29, the Senate passed it on Wed, Oct 1]

"We're all connected. As others have pointed out, you can't save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in row boadt with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world is really flat. We're all connected. 'Decoupling' is pure fantasy."
[didn't he write a book with the 'flat'-title...?:-)]

"I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we've had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn't seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.
The story cannot end here. If it does, assume the fetal position."

How is America?

When you live for some period of time abroad, you wonder how to depict the more and less subtle differences. Sometimes you do not even recognize them, sometimes you do not know how to conceptualize them.
Here is one, I (still) cannot make sense of.

To my experience, it seems that stairs are usually a representative part of a building, and for this reason it may seem legitimized to put them on a crucial spot in the building.
Even more, security, safety and emergency concerns may impose additional restrictions on how to design a building and its stairs. no wonder, that soccer stadiums tend to have many many gates, in order to fill/empty the structure quickly (quess what would happen in panic, when you seem not to be able to move out quickly? Don't tread on me...). And so it comes that you see not only audience, but many gaps due to gates and stairways which cut across the rows of seats.

But let's look at a more common type of stairs, in buildings of every day use. We might expect huge stairs in huge buildings, for huge crowds and to make a huge impression on the visitor. this may be valid for Gaston/Healy Hall on the Georgetown Campus (likewise for European palaces, but similarly - scale adjusted - also for single households).
But - where are the stairs in the Walsh School Building? Where are the stairs in the ICC building or in the Lauinger library? They are not representative, not impressive, but closed up, away from the main hall/entrance room/atrium. As if the stairs are not a part of the building, but something to hide (and indeed, their walls are sometimes not even painted). And those stairs are small, maybe not even 1.5m (or 6 yards?) wide...
WHY????
Given that those few elevators are slow, old and small, they do not tend to provide enough capacity for the loads of students, faculty and others to get through the structure.
Is there any good reason for this? Cutting costs? Space constraints? Static challenges?? Or just different conceptions of how (thought of) modern buildings should look like?

If you have a powerful explanation, let me know.

Settled in Arlington

Hey

Life has been and is still quite hectic. After having introduced my successor (intern) at the bank, I ended my internship, packed my few belongings and took the plane to NYC (yes, it's apparently much cheaper to fly to New York (via Dusseldorf), from ZRH, instead of heading directly to Washington (Dulles)). The bus from NYC to hot-humid DC was a mere 20 bucks (there are many Chinatown buses).
I think I still have to get used to many small things here (e.g. why the hell do they use different sheet sizes? Nobody here knows the DIN A4 page, they all use standard 10 (8.5 x 11 inch or so, which is a bit broader, but less long).
After a strenuous two week math camp I try to get used to the semester which started this week. And I am still waiting for most of my textbooks (which are usually bought second hand here, as the prices are just crazy). However, an annoyance is amazon, where I ordered most books. There is not just a huge difference between the shipment date range and the delivery, but they apparently postpone bot date ranges. So what seemed to be a matter of 3-5 days becomes not a waiting time of 3-5 weeks.... not enough calamity: here you pay also the transport costs while e.g. amazon germany ships the books for free if their value exceed 50 bucks.

Let's see, what else is coming

Saying goodbye to the army

What a special feeling, to turn back all army stuff (yes!, always surprising for foreigners, the Swiss keep their army rifle with 50 bullets at their homes as soldiers) that I kept for the last five years. However, after the 15-week recruit school in 2003, I just served one WK (annual repetition course that takes 3 weeks) in 2006, while the other years I "postponed" it:-) and - given the recent turmoil around the army, it's a goodbye with a multitude of meanings.

But, I fulfilled another annual duty so far, i.e. the also mandatory shooting on a 30om range with the SIG 550 (aka assault rifle 90 ("Sturmgewehr 90") of the Swiss Army) and I scored quite satisfactorily.
After that, furbishing and greasing, the weapong together with the uniform, bags and stuff turned went back to the army base.






The incident on the Kander river, some weeks ago, that killed 4 soldiers on a boat trip, stirred up emotions and all kinds of political opinions about what to do and what's wrong with the army.

Since the lost popular vote on the proposal for an army base in Rothenturm in the early 1980s (the location was a natural preservation area) and the first people's initiative to abolish the army altogether (also in 1980's) and the end of the Cold War, there is a kind of a vanishing consensus about what the purposes of an army should be.
Some important trends of warfare have been overslept, some equipment is outdated, the selection of the officers is ambiguous and a career in the army - in opposite to Cold War times - is highly unpopular in the business world.
Incapable officers, a lack of commitment and a complete lack of a meaning or understanding (in what to do on a daily basis in their role as soldiers if a war would erupt) have hollowed out this organization, so much that dramatic changes seem to be a necessity.
Who knows, maybe we too shift to a professional army (away of our Miliz-model), or reduce the size again dramatically.
One thing seems plausible: amidst all that shit around the army, we're definitely not in the need of new war planes, but of a huge clean-up in organizational/structural terms.

SWFs are here - no need to fear

Hot debates emerged in 2007 about Sovereign Wealth Funds and their implications. Be it oil exports, FX reserves or fiscal surpluses, the Mid-East and some East-Asian growth-states saw their SWFs mushrooming in the last few years.

An easy reader and entry for laymens is provided by the Council on Foreign Relations:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/15251

Some nice stuff is also avaiable at the IMF and the Peterson Institute for Int'l Economics (mainly written by E. Truman).
Check it out, and you won't have that much fear anymore, even though some policy questions remain and, as Larry Summers last July pointed out, potential problems exist.
What about a Code of Conduct and the reliance on market discipline and its forces? Will this work?
In the long run, not even hard-core special interests can stem themselves against the logic of a good return (cf. the problems with the Chinese CIC...)

Financial Integration in Asia - And Why It's NOT Really Happening

Hey

Since the Asian Crisis 1997/98 there's been much talk on economic and financial integration in East Asia. However, EA seems to integrate more with the world than with itself (so, who is the true globalizer?).
More on the topic at:
http://www.aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP13_Cross-border_Financial_Asset_Holdings.pdf

or will that change when China takes over the world leader role (creating a new "hub-and-spokes" system in EA?)? ...

we're curious...

ADI (more stress with papers)

Uff . . . stress with paper writing

.. being behind with writing is awful, but the topics aref fascinating; cf. read news about Asia's burgeoning bond markets (even though they are still pretty small and illiquid):
http://asianbondsonline.adb.org/administrative/abm_overview.php

Wanna hear music from Switzerland?

Hey, maybe I am kind of chauvinist, but when I've heard this for the first time, it was quite relaxing.
http://www.elianaburki.ch/?get=musik

The Artist combines funk chill-out music with an alphorn. The alphorn, as everybody knows (:-)) is uniquely Swiss (I guess at least), i.e. a 3.5m long instrument. All you need to have is a strong belly/strong lungs and just simply blow in, possibly as strong as you can. You can even produce different tones. It's quite fun - and cool music.

Preparing for the big blockbuster

Protests wherever you look

Hum, strange ... you wanna celebrate the Olympics, but - boom - there is blood, violence and turmoil in you country. Sad, but maybe not so surprising, if you take the cries for autonomy and the claim to be supressed for granted.

However, it gets silly, if you blame others and refuse to talk to them by putting words into their mouths they never have used. How can effective and goal-oriented communication work like this? Or is the goal simply not to talk (to a in the West quite famous and bold monk?).
Even more strange it gets if you blame "the West" (what is that exactly? maybe something to eat...hmm:-) to be partial and systematically misrepresent information (which of course you (can/are allowed to) do, because it's your right and your "domestic affairs", thank the UN-charter's territorial integrity of states).
Of course information and media are not always impartial, how could they? The human being is fallible, has hidden agendas, pays attention more to sensational than dry news etc.
But the good thing about pluralism is pluralism of information, debate and challenging positions. This does not mean that the truth is revealed just around the corner. It can (sadly) mean that one copies from the other, herding behavior etc. However, it tends empirically to evolve critical thinking (every once in a while), a mentality of mud-racking/investigative journalism, a mentality of healthy scepticism and has at least brought us (or scientists) the method of falsificationism (Karl Popper's legacy:-)
So, while we should reprimand ourselves of being sometimes distorted and (too much) simplifying, we should be grateful of the other to have reprimanded us about some imperfections of our media system. This helps to improve it and develop debate.

However, why one still sticks to near-waterthight censorship and keeps believing to have the legitimacy to blame others on reporting standards, is too much for me. Maybe I am truly just a stupid white man; however, at least I don't measure with two different gauges...

Hey, btw: also the Swiss have their small turmoil/strike: some old folks believe the state-run railway company SBB (or the federal government directly) shall provide them eternally with the same jobs as yesterday. The funny thing is that the proposed restructuring measures wouldn't have led to firings (they could have kept their jobs, just at different factory...).
Crazy that you allows those folks to strike for the 4th consecutive week (this never happened before in Switzerland, maybe except the general strike in 1918 ... 90 years ago).
As SBB Cargo has sky-rocketing deficits anyway, maybe it would be good to go ahead with the reforms at a fast pace. Think about Reagan you fired all (!) striker of the air traffic control in the early 1980s...
(i.e. tabula rasa sometimes helps)

Hopefully we can enjoy a nice summer. Maybe the nomenklatura who self-celebrates itself at the Olympic Games sooner or later may come to the conclusion that pluralism is needed to develop its country further...

Year of Renewal

I am doing my last two papers at the university, before I - probably - say goodbye to my alma mater. Who knows where I will be taken in next fall?

I'll also step down of some more political functions this year. I am sure I will miss the fun I enjoyed during my four years as International Officer of the jfs (Young Liberals of Switzerland). However, there always comes a time when change is needed in order to find progress. And noone is irreplaceable...

It's cool that there are so many people out there craving for liberty, freedom, peace and progress. By the way, do you know an old European comic ("Asterix"; has also been poured into movie form...) about a tiny village in France of the Roman Age, which defends itself against a mighty empire? As they have a magic elixir that provides them with super (muscle) power, they and their two heros, Asterix and Obelix, dare to fight the Romans and subsequently defeat each of their attack.
Sometimes, a small island (Formosa) in the pacific ocean reminds me of this miracle, that free people who have determination, can make a difference and will reach what they dream for.
And they do so in a quite original way:
http://www.vivataiwan.tv/ :-)

Exams are over - I AM BACK

Relaunch of this Blog - ADI is alive again, after the last HSG exams. Picture taken in HK, Dec 2007