Christmas is decided under the Tree

Another Christmas under my belt. Literally. But apart from my joyful and triumphant culinary sins weighing in at 2 kg, for the first time I got a little worried about how to deal with the real ones. Not mine, necessarily. They are too bountiful and numerous to address anymore. But everyone’s or more precisely: what is the foundation of our society going to be without an alternative anchor to the religious cult called the Catholic church?

I left the institution of Church a while ago and never thought too much of it. To anyone with a semi-enlightened mind, the Catholic church is half meaningless ritual and half incomprehensible mumbling. Apart from some decent songs I enjoy, the church’s contribution to my spiritual guidance is less than church bells are to GPS receivers. The fact that the overly important “urbi et orbi” blessing of the Pope not only eradicates sins, but according to official Vatican doctrine actually “works” just as well via TV and radio, says it all. (More precisely: the sins are not eradicated, but via this blessing you are relieved of all penance for them. Very handy blessing. I wonder if there is an equivalent on World of Warcraft.)

As a concession to my parents whose upbringing causes an uncomfortable unease to celebrate Christmas without attending mass, I joined them to High Mass on Christmas Day, 10 a.m., in a very traditional and Catholic neighborhood. Referring to past experiences, I urged them to leave early anticipating scarce parking and full pews. To my complete astonishment, the service was nearly unattended. We double-checked whether we were at the right place, whether this was in fact a Catholic church, and whether some natural disaster such as an earth quake or a viral outbreak had eliminated the grown-up population of that town. But the fact remained that not even a third of the church was filled, when the priest entered to commence the service.

The Church is dying in our country faster than we probably assume. It’s like Climate Warming: the real data always exceeds the original projections. I never thought I would witness an half-empty church on Christmas Day. And this somehow makes me sad. Yes, a lot of mind-boggling bullshit was read and said during mass. Maybe some of it made sense at some point in time, but they don’t really expect the phrase “the Word has become Flesh and this is the most important secret of Christmas” to catch on easily with today’s youth.

But the priest’s sermon really raised a point: can we successfully live in societies without absolute values? Is everything decidable by the democratic process with its ever-shifting forces? Is Christmas decided under the tree, e.g. by how many presents we make and receive? Do relative values (majority against minority) suffice? It’s a valid consideration and unfortunately a clear sign of desperation on part of the Church. It seems like an argumentation of last resort to point to its function as “glue” for society. And I don’t agree the Church to be the safe keeper of absolute values. Its history is as bloody and treacherous as any earthly state’s. But the Bible is. And other religious texts just the same. But the teachings of the Bible do form a common value system, a consensus, that keeps us from murder and mayhem. I wish the Church could transport that into our times. But after 2,000 years it seems they’ve lost their drive. The need for absolute values and an authority to represent them hasn’t been more evident than in this year of constant crisis.

The Hype Cycle

Although already established in 1995 by Gartner Inc., the Hype Cycle has not caught my eye until recently. It’s a wonderful way of describing and structuring the overhyping of new technologies by illiterates. The high expectations, the nervous commotion caused in lower ranks by some passing comment from the CEO based on a single newspaper article read in his or her Sunday paper, all that is summarized nicely in the Hype Cycle.

It starts with the technology trigger, the discovery or development of a something new: mobile payment, cloud computing, speech recognition, or whatever. As soon as hungry journalists try to feed their families by digging up new trends, this technology suddenly gets confronted with completely over-inflated expectations. It is seen as the solution to every problem. In a frenzy, new scenarios are envisaged of how we will all live in 2, 5, or 10 years and get attributed to the hip, young, and fresh social groups of today recognizable by their innovate hair styles.

This “Peak of Inflated Expectations” is shortly followed by the cleverly named “Trough of Disillusionment”. Expectations aren’t met, failures outnumber success stories, adaption is slow, and the press ultimately abandons the subject. You might remember the virtual World called “Second Life”. In the peak of inflated expectations, the press suggested that we will all live parallel lives in this graphical nightmare that reminded me of the early days of 3D gaming on Commodore 64 (I’m thinking of the simple but effective game called ‘Comanche’). A lot of companies spent a lot of money buying land and programming their representations into this “Second Life” without reflecting how stupid, boring, and superfluous it really was. The truth of the matter was that nobody needed a second life, especially not a virtual one. The entire story imploded within a short period of time… trough of disillusionment.

Some technologies, however, make sense, and companies will further explore their benefits by gradually building compelling use cases and a subsequent followership. Real practical applications are developed, prices become affordable, and customers gravitate towards the new solution. Take cloud computing. It took ages for people to even understand what it is, then suddenly scenarios were up in the air predicting the end of physical memory. Soon after it imploded because of grave security concerns and untold dangers to life as we know it to now gradually become a part of our normal daily routines. Telekom wrote me a letter today offering me to test their free cloud offer.

This is called the “Slope of Enlightenment” and it climbs all the way up to the “Plateau of Productivity” where the application of the new technology becomes widely accepted, the press isn’t a factor anymore, and the development continues into its 2nd and 3rd generation (take MP3-players, USB-sticks, smartphones, etc.). That’s the point where it usually gets too late to enter the market. You want to invest right between disillusionment and enlightenment. Granted, the Hype Cycle is not a cycle at all. It’s more of a wave. And as most frameworks, it is retrospective and not prescriptive. It remains a mixture of knowledge, judgment, and pure luck, whether a technology will actually pick up and become a stable business model in the long run. But it helps tremendously to take the hype out of the big noise and buzz caused by the people who have no own gut feeling as to what the market actually wants.

Let the little children come to me

They say you shouldn’t mix friends and money, or you might loose both. I say what really puts a perfectly sound friendship to the test are children. Highly unpopular opinion, I’m sure, but where can one be more brutally honest and straightforward than in the comfort of one’s own blogosphere.

I love children. I really do. Especially, when they are cute, pretty, friendly, quiet, and say things that make us all go “ahhhh”. But children change everything, in particular the nature of relationships. Most obviously for the immediate parents who forfeit sleep, sex, and self-determination, but win what young fathers describe as “warm glow that you cannot describe”. That last point is curious as a recent Germany-wide study on happiness concluded that children don’t add happiness to parents, but rather to grand-parents. For parents, they are happiness-neutral. So, there must be some generation-spanning concept here that we are missing.

But children change all other social relationships as well. First and foremost effect is that parents immediately get cut out of the honest feedback loop of their friends the day the first baby gets born. As a sociological rule, young parents get lied to. Yes, their baby is so pretty, even though it looks like a gremlin. After being involved in a serious car crash. Yes, their baby has exactly its mother’s eyes and its father’s chin, even though there is objectively no resemblance at all. Yes, the name the parents chose is so beautiful, imaginative, and compelling, even though you still wonder whether that shampoo back in Thailand wasn’t called something similar.

Secondly, you never see them again. Their world view turns pre-Copernican and in this Babyocentric System the sun, planets, and the Earth revolve around their house. Yes, you can come by and visit any time. Sure thing. And if you’re lucky and the conversation is less than 90% about the children, you’ll even have a decent chance to keep that friendship going for some time. But if you are so selfish to assume that friends should be able to come by your place maybe once for every 10 times you’ve driven to their place, then all hope is foregone.

Surely, having a child – especially a newly-born – is a lot of work and totally encompassing. And it is wondrous and special to see a new life, a new person being formed and developed. It is a hell of a commitment and a huge responsibility, too. Granted all that. Plus it’s a big service to society and the human race to keep our species and societies alive, to pay our pensions, and much much more. But to be fair, young parents should not expect their friends to be as involved, enchanted, and delighted as they are themselves (or assume to be as the happiness study points another way). And parents should continue visiting their friends despite having a baby. Even in the fictitious tale of the Bible, Jesus says in Matthew 19:14: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

What a Waste!

I really had no idea. Half of the World’s production of food gets thrown away. Half! 50%. We throw away as much food as we eat. Take two carrots, well one gets thrown away. Not that we know exactly. It’s a proxy derived from several different industrial nations in Europe and of course the resource waster number 1, the USA.

I just read the book “Taste the Waste” – a shocking account of probably the biggest stupidity of us “developed” nations and perhaps the easiest solution to most of World’s problem. Read it and watch the movie that is out in theatres at the moment! You’ll be surprised that it talks about you!

First of all, not all the food that we grow on our wonderful fields even gets harvested and makes it into the food chain. The weird looking potato, the carrot with two legs, the lettuce that is ready to go, but hasn’t been ordered yet by grocers, just get left there to rot. I always thought that everything gets harvested and is later sorted into individual sale, bulk sale for processing, and probably even animal feed. The heart-shaped potato has all the nutrients, tastes the same, and is just the same as the perfectly round one we are used to. Who cares about the shape of the original potato when ordering fries, mashed potatoes, or dumplings? But it is left on the field or gets plowed under. Unbelievable.

Then the producers and supermarkets throw away a lot. We consumers are used to full shelves and availability of any exotic fruit not only all year around, but also from 8 am to 10 pm and later. Leaving out all the produce all day leads to enormous waste. Whatever lettuce wasn’t sold in a day, gets thrown out. Products with an expiry date two days into the future, get thrown out regardless. Some donate their waste to soup kitchens, but most of it gets thrown into dumpsters that even compress all the fresh food on the spot into useless mash. How much more cynical can you get.

About the expiry date: on meats, dairy products, fish etc. it has to be observed, of course. On any processed food, it is the date until which the producer will guarantee certain product qualities. The dessert with whipped cream will have perfectly stiff cream up until that date. The nitric in it will evaporate eventually and the whipped cream will go soft. That doesn’t mean you cannot eat the product anymore. It is perfectly safe to eat and fine way beyond the printed “best before” date. “Best before” means “still okay for some time after”. But we seem to have lost the ability and confidence to use our senses (look, smell, and taste) to determine if a food is fine to eat or not.

Then we throw away the rest at home. We buy too much, keep leftovers while already anticipating the garbage as its destination. I am guilty myself. How many breads, moldy cheeses, salads, rotten fruit, and other previously good foods have I thrown away and could have avoided it? How many times did I order food even though I had enough in my fridge?

Why is this important? Why should we care? Well, around a billion people suffer and die of hunger in the World and it doesn’t seem entirely fair and morally sound to start with. But the real and unbelievable fact is that food production is responsible for a large portion of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere. We think of climate change being caused by industry and cars, but agriculture as such contributes at least 15-20%. The processing, storage, and transportation of food probably adds another 10%. And we are wasting half! Half in terms of labor cost, direct cost of the product, and environmental cost in the form of carbon emissions. How absolutely stupid! It doesn’t even make economic sense. There’s a real business case to change this ridiculous behavior and progress on the more than mildly important goal of reversing climate change.

The worst of this waste is throwing away meat. Producing meat is the most energy intensive food in terms of feed and water and the worst in terms of climate gasses. 91% of all agricultural surface is for feeding livestock. The livestock in the USA alone produce 130 times more excrement than all human beings in the entire World. That’s a lot of shit and throwing away meat – apart from the fact that a living creature had to die for nothing – is like spilling oil into the ocean or burning tires in your backyard. Our grandparents knew better. They knew what it is like not to have any food at all.

The trend is your friend

When certain managers spot a trend, it’s fairly certain over. Not surprising. It takes some time for a trend, hype, or other cool development to get noticed by the people that make their money travelling to eCommerce, Digital Marketing, Web 2.0, and similar fairs to show off the same YouTube video for a year or two before updating the presentation with other entertaining stuff. The trend scouts, gurus, and think tank thinkers of the World are just as lazy as the rest of us.

Interestingly, the managers and decision makers that react strongest to these trend presentations typically are men in their mid-forties, working in middle to upper management, carrying most of their weight around the middle. They insist on getting iPhones against all company policy and casually toss them on the table in meetings demonstrating their undeniable up-tempo. They talk about mobile payment, fabbing, and near field communication – words they’ve memorized from over-priced newsletters they secretly read on weekends. They aren’t the nerds that actually write the newsletters and gadget blogs. They are members of management that at an early point in their career were considered creative and consequently were put in charge of “strategy” or “innovation” or “business development” or “R&D” and now constantly need new material to speak of. Why? Well, without any real business responsibility, your name doesn’t come up naturally on the CEO’s agenda.

I guess when they were in their thirties, they still had a decent chance to keep up with what’s going on. At least they understood and possibly even used new technology as part of their daily routine, not as a scientific experiment. But they weren’t high enough up in the hierarchy to be in charge. In your fifties, nobody expects you to pull off the innovation show, but in your forties, you are really screwed. In charge, but not in charge.

So, they follow buzz words like moths the light. They desperately try to remain interesting for the CEO. Make him or her believe that somehow it is worth while to keep the department, giving him or her a welcome distraction from the boring numbers of the underlying business and quarterly reports. They let them ride on Segways, make sure they have the latest apps on their iPad, organize a jolly ride with an electric car. They are – let’s face it – the CEO’s jesters. Making him laugh, wonder, and telling him stories of far away lands. Being in charge of innovation is being in the entertainment business. And that’s were the trend is your friend.

Things you don’t know

There are many things we don’t know. For example, did you realize that the traditional Olympic torch relay was started by the Nazis at the Olympic games of Berlin in 1936? They were the first to do this. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to keep on doing that? Then again, sack hopping was an Olympic discipline as recently as 1904.

Did you know that there are no words in the English language that rhyme with “orange”? Or “month”, “silver”, or “purple”? Isn’t it peculiar that 3 of these words are colors? So, don’t worry about writing a song about colors. In German the word “Mensch” has nothing that rhymes with it. No rhyming word for human being. Hm.

-40 degress Celcius are exactly -40 degress Fahrenheit. Strange, but true. If you are a fan of Boss Bottled or Hugo Boss jeans, you’d be interested to know that Hugo Ferdinand Boss was a really big Nazi in the Third Reich. He designed most of the uniforms for SS, SA, Wehrmacht and Hitler Youth. He employed forced labor to produce then. How they managed to completely erase this questionable history and nowadays be one of the most respected designer brands in the World, is quite amazing.

Greece is broke, but rich in other terms. The Greek national anthem has as many as 158 verses. No wonder it took the Greek parliament so long to finally agree on the budget measures to save their dwindling economy. The national anthems of Great Britain and Liechtenstein have the same melodies by the way. And the melody of the American national anthem is actually based on an English drinking song.

The internal version number of Windows 7 at Microsoft is Windows 6.1. Luke Starwalker originally was meant to be Luke Skykiller. At 10 m depth under water, you are unable to fart. Americans represent around 6% of the World’s population, but consume around 60% of the World’s resources. The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his “signature” on the (English) keyboard.

I’m not so sure about the last one, but the rest is pretty interesting, isn’t it?

111111

Today is November 11, 2011. The beginning of Carnival in Germany, St. Martin’s Day, and probably the busiest day for Wedding Chapels since September 9, 1999. Don’t you love it when people choose a really easy to remember date for their wedding? Do they realize what they are telling the World? “We are part of the slower-thinking community and have trouble remembering things as significantly as our wedding date.” They probably celebrate their Birthdays on New Year’s just to be safe. Or maybe people get married and divorced so often nowadays that you need that extra anchor as a reminder.

But what I realized when looking at the calendar was that today is the day with the most occurrences of a single digit in its date in our entire lives. As far as I know none of us experienced 6 times the same digit in a date ever before. 5 at best. And for the next hundred years the most digits we’ll ever see also will be 5, for example on February 22, 2022. But a baby born today and turning 100 will even be able to experience a day with 7 digits in its date namely on November 11, 2111. I wonder what that will feel like.

I stumbled over this (admittedly very meaningless and arbitrary) fact when naming a power point file for a meeting today. I always go by the convention “YYMMDD File Name version number.extension”. So today would be “111111 Meeting v1.ppt” and that is just beautiful. I know many people have different conventions for file naming, but I can confidently say that they are idiots, because my way of doing it is the only sensible one.

What people often do is put the date on the end of the file, such as “Meeting v1 111111.ppt”. What good is that for? Most people on this planet have their file folders sorted in alphabetical order. The YYMMDD convention guarantees that all documents are sorted in chronological order. You will always be able to find what you’re looking for.

Fair, some go for the YYYYMMDD convention. I’ve seen a lot of 20111111 files going around. Those most likely are people that got really scared by the Y2K bug (something the younger generation will never understand or probably even hear about) or are terribly precise in everything they do. But let’s face it. The chance that my documents will last until the year 2100 and then get confused with newer versions is pretty inconceivable. Believe me: this is more pragmatic thinking that lack of self-esteem.

P.S. I just realized that February 22, 2022 also has 6 identical digits. I forgot about the first 2 in 2022. Nevermind.

St. Anachronistic

I might be gradually turning into a grump. Yesterday, my village celebrated St. Martin’s Day and I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I did as a kid. This particular festivity, usually held on November 11, commemorates the legend of St. Martin of Tours, France who lived in the 4th Century. He started out as a Roman soldier, then got baptized and became a monk. His greatest deed according to legend was cutting his cloak in half and sharing it with a beggar on the street who was freezing in the snow.

So, most likely St. Martin was a really nasty and evil man. I mean, we all know how legend grossly exaggerates the virtues of a person. If all they could come up with was praising him for sitting on a horse, cutting a piece of cloth from his assumingly enormous cloak, and then throwing it down at some person on the street, you really start to wonder. Granted, in the 4th Century the Catholic church was pretty young and fresh, and needed to quickly recruit a sufficient number of holy people to worship. You could think of Catholicism as a startup looking for new hires back then. Standards to join must have been really low. If you accidently dropped a piece of chicken on the floor and somebody else took it, you instantly got blessed. Drop another and you were right on track to holiness. Now, of course, the ranks are filled and someone like Mother Teresa had to really go the extra mile, performing miracles and good deeds by the dozen just to get considered.

With this meager record of greatness, I wonder why St. Martin’s Day is such a big thing here. Children build lanterns weeks in advance to carry them through town in a procession and then convene at a monstrous bonfire on a field. This year’s gigantic fire coincided with the news that Humanity’s carbon footprint has in the past year exceeded even the worst case projections and catastrophic consequences for the planet are now becoming very hard to avoid. In that context I didn’t find it comforting to see this enormous amount of energy and carbon being released into the atmosphere without at least being used for heat or light or both.

Once their parents had enough Glühwein, the children start roaming the streets in little groups ringing doorbells and singing St. Martin songs for sweets and often little amounts of money. Parents supervise this procedure and to outsiders it would be difficult to explain the difference between St. Martin’s Day and forced child labor. At least in my neighborhood, Children will probably be able to keep their loot and won’t have to hand it over to their parents.

The real meaning of St. Martin’s Day of course is lost and obsolete. On the one hand, in the Byzantine calendar the 40 day fasting period that now is observed before Easter, started that day giving it the same celebratory function as Carnival today. On the other hand, November 11 was the day that taxes had to be paid to the liege lord. In an agricultural economy, taxes were paid in kind, so in grain and animals. Especially geese were slaughtered for “Martini” to not have to feed all of them through winter. As start and end of the agricultural cycle, land lease contracts until today use Martini as a dating reference.

With our lives completely disconnected from those agricultural cycles and produce available all year round for some decades now, the traditional Thanksgiving and St. Martin festivities have lost relevance and meaning. The emergence of Halloween in Germany points to a longing for a different tradition. I don’t think the majority of people know what to make of St. Martin today. The trick-or-treating of Halloween interestingly comes close to the St. Martin tradition of singing for sweets, so the shift will be smooth and uneventful, but it will happen in time.

I, after careful consideration, dislike

Every website, every page, every article, every posting, every comment on the web now comes with an “I like”-button from Facebook and/or a “+1” from Google. At first glance, it seems like an efficient way to express one’s opinion. At the core of the growing “social” web structure is the belief that we trust our friends more than corporations, so the “I like” expresses endorsement and approval, even guidance to us lost souls in an uncertain world.

What I am certain of is that many would like to see the “I like”-button introduced straight into the real world, enabling commentary on everything from politicians, restaurant meals, sexual encounters to the state of their garden. But does the “I like” actually mean what it says? Do people really like the things they clickingly applaud?

When I see an “I like”-button enticing me to click on it, it’ll say something like “224 people like this. Be the first of your friends.” So, doesn’t the fact that 224 people already approve, leave me with very little choice? How could I disagree with this overwhelming body of evidence pointing to clear and present likeability? And liking seems to imply an element of timeliness. Why else would it be important for me to be the first of my friends to like this?

All the “I like” ritual actually does, is get your name on other people’s wall (or whatever these halls of mental prostitution are called). It’ll say “Andrej and 224 other people like this”. Wham. One small hit from the attention drug. Enough to stop the shaking. What else could this be about? People think up anything to get a reaction from their virtual friends. Real example on Facebook: A person writes “don’t feel well today” and “4 people like this”. Another writes “I can’t take it anymore!” in an obvious attempt to get others to ask “What is going on?” and “6 people like this”. You can also “like” the responses, by the way. What is there to like about this unbelievable trivial crap?

I demand the introduction of the “I dislike”-button. Why can you only like and not dislike? Is abstinence from liking the same as disliking? No, it isn’t, because that is indifference. Better yet: I would like to see the “I think dead ants have more life in them than you and your utterlessly mind-numbing contribution”-button. Why no “get a life”-button on Facebook? Or as Oscar Wilde put it: “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” That would really be “-1”.

224 people really didn’t enjoy reading this posting and felt bad about themselves afterwards. Be the first of your friends.

How now brown cow?

This morning I met possibly the most playful cows in the Universe. I was walking my dog early in the day, the path trailing a field with around 30 bovines on it. I am no expert, so to the best of my knowledge we are talking about young bulls, but don’t take my word for it. Unlike regular cows with their long female eye lashes and pretty faces, these bulls looked like young mischievous teenager boys.

Two especially daring ones came galloping in my direction. I could tell they were up to something. Their boyish hairdos flying in the wind, the two bulls came running toward my dog with the rest trotting behind. Luka, my dog, didn’t know what to make of the situation. She charged the fence, let out a confused bark, and dashed off along the path. But the cows, completely unimpressed, went galloping straight after with the rest of the gang becoming more confident and closing in. Luka got into complete distress alternating her gaze between me and the 30 bulls honing in on her. Between my little dog and the massive bovines was no more than 3 metal wires. With every bark, the bulls shrieked away a little, but came closer and closer just the second after.

I realized then and there that the cows were teasing the dog. They were taking the piss out of her. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. They probably wanted to show the little noise maker who is the boss on their farm. I went up to the bulls and tried to pat them. They shied away a little, but didn’t mind the contact too much. They followed us the entire way, waited at the edge of the field, and followed us the entire way back. Wonderful, wonderful creatures.

We normally regard animals as passive objects, as if they were a little dumb and dull. Children knock on aquarium glass to get a response from the fish snorkeling away their lives in that transparent prison. Cows are meant to stand around pointlessly on fields. Same goes for horses which have boredom written all over their faces. We don’t expect much from them. We don’t see them as active, live beings with feelings, will, and even something like a sense of humor. But why not? These bulls were seriously out for a laugh, and Luka was the victim of their prank. It’s humor, it’s intelligence. It’s life. It’s wonderful.

Genes

Every time I shave, I use too much shaving cream. I’ve never developed a sense for the right amount to extract from the dispenser and apply to my face. Even when I remember to limit myself on shaving cream, I end up with at least twice the necessary amount. I try to add it to the already thick layer on my face hoping for an even smoother and closer shave, but it won’t stick anymore and has to be washed down the drain. What a waste.

Some people have something I call the discipline gene. I know I don’t. They join in all the fun activity, but never fall out of line. They never drink too much, leave the party at a reasonable time, balance their diet, tell funny, but clean jokes. Some of them are even smokers – or at least call themselves such – and manage to have just 2 or 3 cigarettes a day. In the evening after dinner, just to socialize. No addiction, just a willful balance of sense and sensibility.

Apparently, scientists have fully decoded the humane genome, but I haven’t heard about the discovery of the discipline gene, yet. I know it’s there, because I see those awfully constrained people that instinctively know how to let just the right amount of joy into their lives. Sometimes, in very rare circumstances, you will be able to spot someone with the discipline gene loose it. A little too much wine, a few cigarettes too many. You have to pay close attention. It’s like spotting a rare and shy species in the bush. They initially get silly, then silent, drift away and fall asleep on the couch. The next morning they won’t be seen only to show up late in the afternoon all breezy and bright. They will never speak of this incident. And the next possible occasion, they’ll find some excuse to leave even earlier and smoke only one cigarette. The genes keep them in line and compensate for the error.

I’ve had my genes tested. I sent a saliva sample to www.23andme.com, a company in Mountain View that will analyze your genes and match them against a plethora of research. I learnt that I am unlikely to have an alcohol flush reaction (what do they actually mean by that and what is it that gets flushed?), cannot taste bitter well, have wet earwax, and most likely blue eyes. But what shocked me even more when I read it with my green eyes was that I have a 35.2% risk of getting type 2 diabetes. According to 23andme (named after the 23 chromosomes) the average risk of developing type 2 diabetes is only 25.7%. So, that leaves me with an elevated risk of nearly 10 percentage points.

‘Actually, when you read on, only about 26% of diabetes cases are linked to genetics. The rest is brought on by the choices you make in life, in this case smoking, fatty foods, no movement, and so forth. So my personal genetic risk would be about 9% (35% x 26%), whereas you average people are roaming the Earth with a meager 7% (26% x 26%). Insurance companies of the World, be warned! I am fatally doomed. Not only do I miss the useful discipline gene, I have a 2 pp higher chance in life of getting type 2 diabetes. Well, at least I can start smoking then, eat a huge steak, and garnish it with whipped cream. Did I mention that I never developed a sense for extracting the right amount of that either?

Urbi@orbi

Yesterday, they said something really funny on TV: “So, did you hear that even the Pope is now openly distributing his email address?” – “No, really? What is it?” – “urbi@orbi”.

I’ve never made that connection, even though it is so obvious from the sound “urbi et orbi”. Someone was really clever there and that is innovation at its best: taking something known and turning it into something completely new. I believe that innovation inherently is no more than deconstruction and reconstruction. That’s all you have to know to be able to be creative. No one sits down in a dark room all by himself and comes up with some brilliant new idea that fundamentally changes the world. An artist cannot create a drawing without any reference to thought, experience, and inspiration. Even the ones that created new styles, were usually extremely firm in the established techniques. Picasso wasn’t unable to paint accurate faces and therefore became famous for the distorted ones. He could paint traditionally and realistically perfectly well and that was what he needed to create an entirely new perspective. Innovation is deconstructing the known world and reconstructing it in a new way with all its bits and pieces.

I’ve read that some of the big famous innovations actually happened by accident. Teflon, penicillin, microwave ovens, and even post-it notes were discovered simply by chance and it took brilliant minds to understand their usefulness in another context. I like the story about corn flakes. Apparently, the brothers Will and John Kellogg were Seventh Day Adventists and were looking for a wholesome good vegetarian diet that they could feed patients of a sanitarium that John was in charge of. When they left some boiled wheat sitting out, it turned stale, and rather than toss it, they flattened it to make long sheets of dough. What they got were flakes which they toasted and which were very well received by the patients. They patented these wheat flakes under the name of Granose. Later they tried corn and thereby invented the nowadays so popular corn flakes. The brothers subsequently had a falling out. Will insisted on adding sugar which John thought lowered the health benefits of the flakes, so he never joined the company. Tragic.

What was really tragic yesterday, was the awarding of the Nobel prize for medicine this year. Its principal recipient is Professor Ralph Steinman for revolutionizing the understanding of the immune system. The only problem was that Steinman had just died 3 days ago and the committee – not allowed to grant this recognition to deceased persons – was unaware of this fact. At least they’ll give it to him posthumous. But that the man died of cancer is tragic enough. That he missed the ultimate scientists’ award by 3 days, is really bad luck. Urbi@orbi.