I am a heretic!

They could burn me at the stake for this post. But what the heck, people who know me can vouch that when I have something to say I will say it come hell or high water.

If you have been reading my posts in this blog you know my rantings about Greeks, the moral and the intellectual decadence of modern Greece bla bla bla which I encapsulate it in the term barbarism.
So the question is how do you fix it?

How do you teach people that when Fitch down grades Greek debt to BBB+ from A-, as they did yesterday, three downgrades away from calling it "junk", it is not the case of a stupid foreigner who has a personal vendetta against Greece, and  that the cost of the downgrade will come out of the people's pocket, not EU's or somebody else?

How do you teach that education must be meaningful that should produce educated citizens that can contribute to the moral, intellectual and productive uplift of this country and not a piece of paper?

How do you teach that tolerating youth burning downtown Athens is not on and that it is not OK for students to throw rocks at policemen and burn their cars and when the police try to catch them to chastise them?
How do you teach that profit is not a bad word?

How do you teach that being on the take is not cool?

How do you teach a nation not to drive pass red lights or go the opposite way on one-way streets, not to park on side walks or drive drunk?

How do you teach a nation to respect the work they do, do it concientiously and efficiently?

How do you teach a nation to respect the environment? The animals?

How to make the judicial system more equitable and speedy?

How do you fix the media to stop serving personal agendas and improve the quality of the product they produce?

How do you teach policemen not to smoke, watch TV or drink beers while on duty?

How do you teach people not to be racists?
How do you enforce the Law?

There are hundreds of these questions. For each, there is a solution or solutions, however, no government dares to fix them because of the political cost involved. The people that Greeks elect to govern them are leading the country into a "field of dreams", of a virtual reality subsidised with EU funds and excessive borrowing, "caressing the ears" as the Greek expression goes of the electorate, providing "bread wine and shows". Now, this "musical" has run out of money...The party is over...Time to pay up...Time to face the music...Time to end barbarism...

So I have come slowly to the conclusion that Greeks need a massive shock therapy. And thus maybe the answer is that this tremendous financial crisis that Greece just enters, as there is a long torturous road still ahead of us, will shock Greeks out of their pants so drastically that giving up their bad habits and behaviours will be a small price to pay in exchange of avoiding massive unemployment and poverty.
A blessing in disguise?????????????

PS: M.K, a TV journalist, a PASOK "party dog" that has been exalting the PASOK social sensitivities and purity of thought the last 20 years, a mental midget, last night, on prime time news, asked the PASOK Paliamentary spokesman whether PASOK, after the markets, Trichet etc are telling Greece that they have to take serious and painful actions, realise the severity of the situation and continue to recommend pain free measures? I was floored. M.K to ask this question to his "masters", and with such intensity. Has he finally seen the light? Even the "party dogs" are realising that something must be done.
Is it possible that the Oracle of Voula is right and we are witnessing an inflection point?
For the record, the spokesman answered, in true socialistic vernacular, that these people are after "profit" whereas PASOK is after the good of the Greek people. God help us!!!

Unfathomable Greeks

Disclaimer: I did not vote for New Democracy (ND) or PASOK.
Greeks are world famous for their unpredictable and counter intuitive behaviour.
A recent classic example of Greeks being maverics in their thinking is the ND party elections to elect a new party leader after losing the national elections and were relegated from a governing party to an opposition party.
Two were the main contenders Dora and Samaras. Dora lost and Samaras won by a country mile with a huge turnout of voters that spend more than three hours to vote due to a computer hiccup wasting a beautiful and sunny Sunday.
Dora, a woman, that inherently would have been the prefered choice of the female ND voters, has been a dedicated member of the ND party for over 20 years, with a very articulate opposition against PASOK, all the years her party was in Opposition, and an adequate performance as a minister of foreign affairs  for the last 51/2 years her party was in government, having an excellent international profile.
There are two reasons why Dora lost.
Now, please follow this "logic"
1- She is the daughter of Mitsotakis that in 1966, yes forty  three years ago, left the centrist/socialist party of the grand father of current PASOK PM, the party that was the precursor of PASOK, causing the then government to fall, the palace to get involved and eventually the junta dictatorship to be established. Dora was 12 years old then!
The funny thing is that ND is basically right wing, hated the grand father of current PM, and his progeny as well, were supportive of the palace and of the junta. Doh! So they punished Dora 43 years on for her father being a hero of the right wing philosophy!! The double whammy here is that they voted for Samaras who in 1993 as a minister of foreign affairs (!) of the ND government, chosen by the PM of the time who was Dora's father!! defected causing the fall of the Dora's father government, ND losing power, and the re-emergence of their arch enemy, PASOK, that ruled Greece for an 11 year stretch after that. Needless to say that Samaras went and formed his own party, against ND, and failed and was in political exile from ND for 15 years.
2- Although Dora, was against going to premature national elections, her boss, the PM, declared them anyway, and she, as a good party soldier, supported the PM and party line and went out of her way to get the party rationale across, did not cause the party to split on the eve of national elections by going against the party line. So, for being a good soldier, the voters punished her as being responsible for the loss in the elections. Btw, ND lost by 10 percent points, which is huge, and the known deficit at the time was 6-7% and unemployment was 6%. Had they done the elections on schedule six months later with the true deficit at 13% and unemployment at 15%  they would have lost by at least 20 percent points.
Aristotle would be going ballistic up there! hahaha!

No way Jose 2. Lateral thinking

Yesterday, George Jr. upped the ante in our negotiations by telling me that the teacher chastised a couple of his mates that did homework over the weekend beyond what was assigned to them. After, letting a few minutes pass to recover from my shock and let my steam blow off, I found a Solomonian solution. George Jr., agreed and we did extra math exercises on scrap sheets of paper and not on his exercise book, so that his teacher wouldn't know. So everybody's happy.

If dogs were investment bankers...

Dogs are smart. They are team players with tremendous emotional intelligence. My Bobby, aka Bobbinakos, reconfirms to me the above, every day.

The other day my brother, Alex, was very surprised that Bobby didn't touch the lamb that was in his bowl as baked lamb is Bobby's most favourite dish. I told Alex, that Bobby is actually implementing a very wise and prudent investment strategy that if it were followed by Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns we wouldn't be in the financial mess we are in right now. You see, I never feed Bobby off the table when I am eating. My brother, however, does against my advice. So, whenever my brother is at the table eating, Bobby will never touch his food that is in his bowl, irrespective of whether it's his fourite dish or not. For Bobby, the lamb in his bowl is "in the bank" as they say in the investent parlance hence the profit is "booked" no potential "upside" in focusing at this "asset". So, now that this asset is secured and not losing any value, he focuses his resources in the "options" market, which has a very narrow time window (the time it takes for my brother to finish his meal), pursuing a potential "upside" by being very charming to Alex on the possibility that the option will payout in extra food from Alex's plate. Prudent portofolio management, hey?
Dogs can outwit the best Harvard MBA's of Wall Street. Hahahahaha!

PS: For all dog lovers out there go and see "Eight Below" either in the movies or in DVD. This is a story inspired by an actual event that happened in Antartica some years ago and involved six Siberian Huskies and two Alaskan Malamutes that were sleigh driving dogs. The human acting in this movie is atrocious, the dogs, however, will move you to tears.

An unwinnable war

After months of obfuscating and navel gazing Obama decided to follow the advice of the military and send more troops to Afghanistan.

I was disappointed, because, in my view, the way the US is conducting the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. I am not addressing whether the US should be in Afghanistan or not etc., this is not the purpose of this post. Americans are there, rightly or wrongly spending $1.0 million per year per soldier to beat the Taliban (the Students) or $50 billion a year or twice the GDP of the country!!!! What I am saying is that the von Clausewitz way of conducting the war of outgun, outnumber and outspend, may have worked in the Normady invasion in 1944, it ain't working in Kandahar. The spectacular way the US has annihilated Saddam Hussein's army in 1990/91 gave a very useful lesson to everybody else on how NOT to fight the US. Doh!!

To win the Taliban, you need to win the hearts and minds of the Afghanis. Instead of sending West Point graduates to conduct an outmoded text book war, send Georgia Tech engineers to build schools, hospitals, roads, electricity grids, water mains and create businesses, jobs etc.

The Oracle of Voula has spoken!

PS: Click here and it will link you with a very nifty site that has live totalisers of the cost of the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and the total of both since 2001. These totalisers are clicking upwards at very high speeds bringing the cost of both wars for the US very fast towards $1 trillion so far, split 75% Iraq, 25% Afghanistan.

I like it!

According to a report by the Anatolia News Agency, the chairman of Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Board (BTK) said that The Anaposta project will see email addresses added to identity cards from birth, with each account having a quota of 10 gigabytes.

"... Every child will have an e-mail address written on his/her identity card since birth. So, will have a mobile network that can be used thanks to id number match and foreign networks, such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, will not be used anymore"

GG: Clever!

Bar Stool Economics

Some of you may already have seen this, but I thought it is worth posting it. A bit long but worth it, especially the last two paragraphs.

This is of course a light hearted way to poke fun at "the system", but still yet an interesting look at the tax system. It also observes how we can sometimes get caught up in our own worlds such that we lose sight of the forest through the trees. It was developed by David R. Kamerschen Ph.D., Professor of Economics, University of Georgia.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier. Are you listening Mr. Papakonstantinou, Greek Minister of Finance. Rich customers may stop coming to the bar and start drinking beer overseas! :-)))

No computer has disproven Peano's axiom of 1+1=2

Just back from the bank where I spent exacly one hour to do a sizeable transaction involving three steps. Breaking a US$ CD, converting the proceeds to euros and wiring those euros to a different bank in Greece. I walked in the bank after printing my balances from the ATM and being armed with the calculator of my IPhone. The young Relationship Manager  gives me the details of the transaction off his computer that, unfortunately, didn't jive with what my calculator was saying. They were short $372. He started the mumbo jumbo and I said, I don't buy what your software is saying, please disprove my simple arithmetic. Back and forth. Second MBA walks in, more mumbo jumbo. I stick to the findings of my hand held calculator. They caucus. They bring in a third player, a woman, God bless her, that after reviewing everything states the obvious, that my arithmetic is unassailable, they will go with my numbers and on their own time they will find what went wrong. Finally Diogenes ended his search to find a reasonable person.
The beauty of it all was that because of the delay the exchange rate improved in my favour by $492.
Peano rules!
GG 864 - Bank 0. Yihaaa!

"Test of Life"

A neighbour, 53 years old, that lives in the same apartment building as me and I know him since we moved in 8 years ago, and have socialised with him and his family, was given, by his doctors 4 weeks to live, devastating news to his family, relatives and friends and me but not unexpected as he was in very poor health the last 4 years, with his situation worsening the last 6 months.
As I reflected on this solemn news, I asked myself whether he passed Popi's "Test of Life".
Popi, was telling me and anybody who was sad with her health situation ever since she was diagnosed:
" Don't be sad. I lived a fantastically happy and fulfilling life. Had a loving grandson, daughter and husband. Had faithful friends. Met great people, travelled the world and seen its wonders, received good and gave good. I have no regrets. I am blessed"
So the "Test of Life" for my neighbour is whether he had a happy life and whether he received good and gave good. From the little I knew him from before he got sick, he didn't seem to be a happy man, nor that he had a happy childhood or a life as a grown up, a husband and a father. The last four years his illness made him very, very unhappy. Net, he did not pass Popi's test, which makes me very sad.

Non, je ne regrette rien

I was invited to "Cucina Povera", a wine bar restaurant next to the Old Stadium (Eforionos 23 & Eratosthenous, Pangrati)
Location: "off Broadway" on a side street

Furniture: IKEA plus

Beer: Excellent Spanish/Catalan Estrella, with higher than average bitterness reminding me of Aussie beers, and their crisp finish.

Wine: Impressive list of excellent wines to chose from. The Sauvignon Blanc by the glass was very good

Ambience: Packed, need a reservation, wine bar atmosphere

Food: Modern Greek. Very good. Narrow menu for Greek standards.

Service: Excellent. Waiter wearing a French béret to go with the background songs of Edith Piaf

GG: Non, je ne regrette rien! Fully recommend it

	Edith Piaf - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

No way Jose!

I had a kerfuffle with George Jr., my grandchild, that left me gobsmacked.
George had just finished doing his math homework (he loves maths and he is very good at it) and I asked him to do the next exercise in the book that was not part of his homework. He flatly refused, because his teacher had not given that exercise as an assignment. No matter how I tried to convince him with all the arguments you can imagine he held his ground. No way Jose!!!
I recalled my post of 22-1-09 titled "Infinite working hours" and Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions on Greeks where they exhibit a low IDV (Individualism) and the highest in the world UAI (Uncertainty Avoidance Index ie searching for rules to avoid responsibility)
I think there are two reasons for George's intransigent position on the homework issue:

1- He doesn't want to be different from his classmates. Avoiding being considered/treated like a nerd or in Hofstede's terms he has low Individualism (IDV)
2- He is abiding to rules, bureaucracy, avoiding taking risks. In Hofstede's language he, as most Greeks, has a high Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)
PDI= Power Distance Index ie Acceptance of inequalities
IDV=Individualism
MAS= Masculinity
UAI= Uncertainty Avoidance Index ie Avoidance of ambiguity, risk aversion, searching for rules.

Well, more observation and understanding of George's desire to just blend inoffensively with the rest of his classmates is required, which I will of course do.

Soweto

Soweto when I first visited in the '80's

Soweto now!

"500 Days of Summer" by Marc Webb with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

A charming romantic comedy. The movie starts with the break up of a 500 day relationship between two young people and looks back in search for clues of what happened that led to the break up.The young man believed in true love and the woman didn't. At the end she came to believe in love albeit with a different man and he was heartbroken, although the last scene gives some hope of moving on with his life. The punch line was that love exists and it just happens.
 A real relationship with ups and downs, not the usual sugar coated Hollywood fare. I liked the fractured non-linear way of telling the story.
Both protagonists were very good in their roles.
I liked the movie.
If half rating points were allowed I would rate it as a 3.5.
Alas, I can only give it a 3 out of 5 rating

Going to the movies

The new expression that is en chaleur these days in Greece is "suspension of disbelief". This is what the Greek Finance Minister is asking from the other EU partners to do vis a vis Greece and its current deplorable economic situation. Nice, catchy, expression which translates to "Why don't you go to the movies for a while". ('suspension of disbelief' is an expression that is used with movie audiences in particular where suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment. Hence the title of this post)

Let me tell you, mate, that its a nice try but no cigar. Because:

-The EU do not have governments as members but countries. Therefore the argument that we are a new government that replaced a bad government, and hence give us a break and go to the movies for a while does not play. You are Greece not PASOK or New Democracy.

-Having you and the Prime Minister going on international TV (CNN, BBC etc) assuring the world that Greece is not going to go bankrupt is stupid and achieves the opposite result. What is the intented audience? Obviously not the bankers or the bond holders of Greek government bonds, because your desperate plea reconfirms their fears as they do not change their mind on the basis of wishful thinking and at any rate they hate when people ask them to go the movies. If the target audience is the English speaking tourist then are you indirectly advertising that Greece is going to be a cheap tourist destination as the struggle to avoid bankruptcy will force prices lower?

-Chastising Greek banks for borrowing from the Central European Bank at 1% buying Greek government bonds, using them as collateral, and earning 4% on them when nobody else is buying your paper as the insurance against default, the infamous CDS, is eating all the profit margin. This practice accounts for 50% of the substantial profitability shown by the banks in 2009, albeit 46% lower than 2008, but at least its positive. Now that you have blown the whistle and the practice has stopped you should not now cry wolf when the profitability of the banks disappear next quarter cratering the Greek stock market as banks, seven in total, represent a huge 35% of the stock market capitalisation, 10% of GDP and 50% of the after tax profitability of all publically traded companies in Greece! BTW, only 2% of the bank profits go to bonuses for the "golden boys" and all bank employees and 48% go to the public as dividends which are an important income contributor of the Greek middle class. And now you are romancing with the Chinese to sell 26 billion euro of your debt paper and become their hostage. At least you will be in good company as you will be sharing your cell with the US. Hahaha!

-Crying foul one day that international profiteers are selling off Greek equities and tanking the All Share Index and the next day when the market goes up you are smiling and proclaiming that you have won is childish. Profiteers made the killing  both ways when the market is up and when it is down. They are looking for volatility that is caused by uncertainty. Doh!

Ouf! I need a break from all this. I am going to catch a movie... :-)))

"D-Day" by Antony Beevor

I have read two of Beevor's books, "Stalingrad" and "Berlin", loved them both and I have
 included "Stalingrad" among my top 10 best ever books. So I didn't hesitate to get his latest book, "D-Day". Not as good as "Berlin" and definitely inferior to his masterpiece "Stalingrad". Here, Beevor, gives a detailed, blow by blow, analysis from the field commander's and fighting soldiers, Allied and German, point of view, of the first weeks of the Normady invasion. Very well written that made the reader empathise on a personal level with the real protagonists of this operation, against, sometimes, the backdrop of some monumental mistakes their military leadership with their inflated egos have commited.

Reading this book, I started, also, appreciating Eisenhower's contribution to the success on the Normady invasion, keeping the disparate team of characters and prima donnas that were the leaders of the invasion like, Patton, Monty, Bradley, Churchill, de Gaulle, Air Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory and others, in check. Not an easy feat!

War is ugly, best summarised by General George Patton addressing his troops before a battle: "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country"

I was surprised to read in Beevor's account of the invasion of Normandy that the British under Monty didn't contribute much in the first 8 weeks of the invasion, as the terrain was so different to the Al Alamein desert, where they had excelled, and that there were serious thoughts of replacing Montgomery. An ironic snippet 40 days after D-Day, Generalfeldmarschall Rommel was seriously injured and taken out of the war on the road near Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery, the name of Romel's greatest adversary, hit by British Spitfires.
There is an excellent section of the book that deals with the rationale of deciding to kill Hitler on July 20th, 44 days after D-Day. It taught me reading it that some of the greatest military minds in history like Rommel, Kluge, Spiedel, Stulpnagel etc (Guderian knew of the plot), missed one of the cardinal rules in negotiations (here GG goes again coaching) that of "putting yourself in the other party's shoes", because although they were correct in "reading" that the Allies would never sit on a table with Hitler or one of his 'paladins' such as Göring, Himmler or Ribbentrop,  they really thought that with George Patton rushing towards Berlin from the west and the eastern front with Russia collapsing, the Allies would accept anything short of total capitulation of Germany, especially after their experience with the Armistice of 1918 that ended WWI but did not curtailed Germany's imperial visions. They erroniously thought that the Allies would agree to the restoration of Germany's 1914 borders AND recognise Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland and the  Anschluss with Austria. Bring me the bucket. The rule of thumb here is to ask yourself: "Would you have accepted this if you were in their shoes?", and anyone with a business IQ above room temperature would have told you "Never!"

Rating 3 out of 5, for the book, for Patton's line 6 out of 5 :-))

Genesis curios

Even if it is an allegorical story, Genesis, is  held dearly by the three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, however the story line is not very robust.

002:017 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest there of thou shalt surely die. (GG:What's wrong knowing good and evil?)

 

001:026 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (GG: Is this majestic plural? Angels? More than one God?)

 
003:022 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, (GG: How many were they?)
to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: (GG: Why not?)

003:023 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. (GG: Were sent away but not killed as originally stated. No reason given for not delivering the original threat)

Christianity uses exactly the same text of the Judaic Book of Genesis, as part of the Old Testament.
In Islam, the story in its core is different as the sin originates from Allah, and it is He that decides to deceive Man, and angels are clearly mentioned in the garden of Eden, as they were asked to prostate in front of Adam after He created him, which they did, except Iblis (Satan). In the Judaic version, no angels are mentionned in the garden of Eden. The difference in the origin of sin between Islam and the other two religions is a cardinal point of difference that gives insight to certain behaviours of the respective believers. The Qu'ran makes it perfectly clear that the origin of sin is Allah and no person is free to chose good or evil. Allah leads people astray (Sura 7:1780)
Adam did not bring sin into the world, as the Old Testament claims, but Allah had destined Adam to sin 40 years before he created him. (Bukhari, vol 8, Hadith No 611). Huge difference

PS: Btw, a hadith mentions the height of Adam and Eve as 60 cubits ie 27.4 meters (10 stories high) each and Eve being 3.2 meters wide, and of course in The Book of Genesis Adam lived 930 years.

GG: I am wondering whether I should start a third  series of posts on discussing the major religions a la "Down Memory Lane" and "My Management Series", for example " The Comparative Religions Series", in order to give insights to the "clash of civilisations". Too contraversial? Too hot a topic? Not interesting? Hmmmm!

From my management series: Mentoring live 1

I have added a new mentoree in my group of mentorees. A young man, 22 years old, struggling to finish university, respects me a lot and wants to improve. Yesterday, I had my third meeting with him, always in public environments, so he feels comfortable and enjoyable ie restaurants, cafeterias etc.
The three key steps in mentoring are:

Step 1: Identify the top 10 areas for improvement

My first assessment, after three meetings, that I have also shared with him, is as follows;

1-Lazy & abhors any kind of stress.

2-Misses the big picture. Sticks on irrelevant details.

3-Must have an answer on everything
4-Doesn't have a personal point of view. Everything is gray, "this is how things are", "all are innocent", "all are guilty" or what his "tribe" (his entourage) say etc. He is "loose" on everything.
5-Elevates personal beliefs to universal truths
6-Has a very high opinion of himself and his intelligence. Knows it all.
7-Frustrated that people he considers less "intelligent" than himself are successful whereas he doesn't get a break. Always blaming others.
8-Has very poor listening skills & doesn't take feedback well and does not act on it.
9-Depressed because he knows his future will not be bright but is not prepared to make any effort to change it. Solutions must be such that current level of "fun" is not compromised.
10-No respect, no empathy for people.
The biggies, of course, are 1 and 8.
Obviously a lot of the above areas of improvement are interrelated.
Of course, I play here with a marked deck because our huge age difference reinforces the perception of youth, I fear, that I am "malakas" ergo whatever I tell him are "malakies". He, however, eagerly seeks to meet and talk. A good sign.
Step 2: Synthesise to the vital 3
1- Inflated ego
2-"Fun" at all costs and with no trade offs
3- Hates rules and boundaries
Step3: General approach

• Needs to expand his smarts and current knowledge base to be able to get the future he deserves.
• "Fun" is totally necessary at his age. Needs to slowly over time move the "fun" fulcrum to different types of fulfillment like, recognition, respect from others, self esteem, self reliance, success, love, affection etc. whilst building emotional intelligence, with the total payout in emotional fulfillment being ten fold bigger than the gradual reduction of "fun".
• He needs to learn the rules and boundaries that are laid out in his professional future and the "penalties" for not abiding them. Then he can make informed decisions on which rules and boundaries not to adhere to.

Step 3: Effect paradigm shift
With logic, negotiations, debate, parables, examples, connecting the dots with current affairs & personalities, jokes etc at his level (youth, his "tribe") and in his "world" (music, girls, parties etc).

Very interesting case! We'll see how it plays out. I'll keep you posted.

Elated!

I received, yesterday, a letter from the CEO of a consulting Client of mine that was thanking me profusely on the work I did for them, asked me for my services on new work and gave me an unexpected hefty bonus as a show of his appreciation for the quality of services rendered.

To still dazzle my customers, so many years on, gives me immense satisfaction.

I am a very happy person.

Couldn't resist thinking "What if..."

As I was reading an article where a woman that changed her name to Jesus Christ, showed up for jury duty in Birmingham Alabama on a murder case, I thought, what if she was selected for jury duty when the alleged 9/11 master mind, Islamic jihadist, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, goes on trial in Manhattan next year.

The son of god in judgement of the emissary of the prophet.

Great idea, hey? Hahaha

The EU paradox

Brussells are seriously considering to accept Turkey's application to join the European Union, with Greece's total support (!) despite its deplorable human rights record, religious intolerance, the Kurdish problem and the occupation in Cyprus, and will not contemplate discussing any relationship with Russia because of the Georgia story.
Protecting status quo and the balance of power of the Big Three (Germany, UK, France) in the EU is über alles.
What fools!

Polling closed on the question: "How do you find the humour of this blogger, in general?"

The results are in, 20 blog readers voted

Funny: 45%
Quirky: 55%
Not funny: 0%
Which reflects quite closely my self assessement.

Thank you for taking the time to vote

From my management series: Being customer centric - Two case studies.

Case 1-Going out of your way for your customer
How many executives can claim that they have "slept" with their bottler?
Well, I have!
An Arab bottler , my customer, was visiting the site where we were constructing his bottling plant, in the middle of nowhere 500 klm south of where his office was. After a long dinner with him and his entourage of 4 people, he felt that it was too late for him to drive back home and decided to stay the night. As no rooms were available in the hotel, he decided that he and his entourage would sleep in their cars. I offered my room and my offer was readily accepted. To cut a long story short and spare you the gory details, the two chiefs, the bottler and moi, slept on the double bed and the four guys of his entourage on the floor!!
The things I did for my bottlers! Ah! Youssef Bey, you were snoring like a runaway train. Hahaha!
Case 2-Commanding respect and trust
Letter from bottler, owner of a bottling franchise. Keeping your customers mesmerised for over six hours helps gaining respect and trust. Don't try this at home :-)) (click on the letter for enlargement)

A conjecture of a 'delivery guy'

Background: By August this year I was "in flow" after putting 300 manhours in developing my 130 slide seminar on negotiations, which required me to refresh my reading on at least 15 books on the subject and reflect on 30 years of negotiation experiences. When I finished, in order to keep the andrenaline rush going I decided to write a novel. A novel that had nothing to do with my schtick, or my life. Just a work of fiction of any genre, that will catch my fancy, from comedy to tragedy with all the variations in between. And I was not, of course looking at producing a masterpiece.
Finding: No matter how hard I tried I couldn't even start. I had dozens of ideas and concepts but couldn't put them in black and white. I have gone through all the gyrations to thinking on how to put these ideas in a sequence that has flow and meaning on to a plot etc. Ziltch.
Conjecture: I developed this conjecture that plausibly explains my total failure in this.
When you have been trained for 40 years to be a professional 'delivery guy' it is almost impossible to write a book other than a book on either your expertise or your life. A 'delivery guy' is trained to be action orientated, results focused, delivering results. He is intense, cutting the fluff, data based, factual, making decisions. Hates long memos that lead to no conclusions, cunundrums, dilemas, unresolved issues etc.
Btw, I can't think of any author that was a 'delivery guy' and wrote a novel or a play. Usually they write about their experience/knowledge or their lives.
Next steps: I will back off from my desire to write a book or a play, for the time being till I find a crack at this conjecture.

PS: -You can also notice that my 'delivery guy' traits are quite apparent in my GG Wired blog posts that tend to be, short, structured, data based when I can find it in the 20 minutes it takes to write, logical with a point of view with hopefully some humourous twist to them. "Puffing", exaggerating, the point I highlighted the headings on this post.

-I was reading the other day that Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, was writing his novels on idex cards (see photo) and then he would number them in proper sequence. Hmmmm! Interesting thought. I might test this archaic approach if and when I try again.

A Greek tragedy

Scene1 Act 1

From the Iliad Book 16

Achilles: "Why are you crying, Patroclos, like some girl,
an infant walking beside her mother,
asking to be picked up..."
Patroclos: "Achilles,
Peleus' son, by far the strongest of Achaeans,
don't be angry with me. Such great despair
has overcome the  Argives (Αργείους). For all those
who used to be the bravest warriors
are lying at the ships with sword and spear wounds
powerful Diomedes, son of Tydeus,
hit by a spear, famous spearman Odysseus
with a stab wound, and Agamemnon, too..."

Scene 1 Act 2

PM Andreas Papandreou to his Finance Minister Tsovolas (1983) (singing) : "Tsovola! Thosta Ola" (Tsovola! Give Everything)
Tsovolas : "OK boss". "All in"
 Chorus (All Greek PM's since 1983) :
"There will always be a Troy to sack
We will always get by with OPM" (OPM no relation to opium. It's Other People's Money, which is as addictive as opium). The Beatles song "With a little help from my friends" playing in the background

One Scene before the Epilogue

Three actors on stage
The Banker: "Show me the money"
Hellas: "Joaquin save me"
Joaquin Almunia: : "I will save you if you behave. No more lying, no more fudging the numbers. Fix Social Security"
Hellas: "No problemo. 'Argives (Αργείοι), we must fix social security. We will do it painlessly, observing the famous three socialist conditions: 1-We will not increase retirement age. 2- We will not increase pension contributions. 3- We will not reduce pensions'"
Joacquin Almunia : "Freeze government salaries"
Hellas: "No problemo. We will freeze salaries above 2,000 euros a month, which represents 3% of government employees. Rest will get a 2% raise "
A nurse rushes on stage to revive Almunia as the Banker is loading his gun and Hellas exits in a hurry to catch "Al Tsandiri News" on TV.
Samuel Beckett enters the stage and proclaims: "Ok guys, I will take over from here. This play is now right up my alley".

A box of "Amber Leaf" hand rolling tobacco as currently sold in the UK

Good job!

Front

Back

Smoking is still the biggest killer, where it causes, in England alone, the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year.

Did I do the right thing?

I have been very strongly pushed to apply for the opened position of Secretary of Health responsible for Hospital Procurement, with the new government. I have been strongly recommended by an ex-junior minister of the governing party and heavily pushed by party people to the current junior minister responsible for Health, the political supervisor for that position. Btw, I did not vote for the governing party, I voted for the Green Party that didn't get into Parliament (minimum threshhold 3% of votes), but eventually venceremos. Anyway with all of this heavy touting I had very good chances of getting this job, and help my country to save hundreds of millions of euros a year that are being currently "wasted" in Health. After considering all the pros and cons I've decided against it and I let the dead line of Nov.12th  pass. Main reason for not going through it was the certainty of being sued by the people that are going to see their super inflated margins and the uselessly high order quantities disapear (QuantityXPrice=Cost). A very real possibility as I had first hand experience from my stint at the Greek telco, that took me 5 years to fight off all the various litigations, including a personal threat on my life etc.
The problem I have is that behaving like a wimp, I cannot now, be critical on the wrongs of the Greek political system, as I had the chance to be 'inside the tent' and help fixing the system, instead of being outside it, which reminds me of the immortal words of Lyndon B. Johnson for J.Edgar Hoover "Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in." not that I want to be compared to the allegedly cross dressing head of the FBI :-))
Joking aside, I am really wondering whether I did the right thing declining.
I am not a young idealistic hero anymore. I am just an acerbic old man who doesn't want to spend the rest of his life fighting lawsuits in Greek courts. I will, however, be totally peeved  seeing the fathers of barbarism in this country continue partying and me watching them when I could have contributed in stopping the orgy.

PS: The job, for at least a couple of years, would have been full of 1 &2 (Fun & Learnings).

From my management series: Mentoring/Coaching Part 2

I have received a couple of emails asking me what's in it for the mentor to spend all this time and effort in mentoring and one email asking who taught me mentoring.
-What's in it for the mentor?
It's the utter satisfaction you get from seeing your mentoree improving as a professional and as a person. The feeling is awesome!
An example from a colleague:

-Who taught me mentoring?

• My father's house in Alexandria and in Athens was always full of  "students" who came to be coached by my father, pro bonno, on how to improve their clay pigeon shooting skills as my father had their total respect, him being 6 times Greek champion and sliver medalist in the world championship held in Moscow and was a member of the Olympic team in the Rome Olympics. One of his students, a woman, became European champion, and another became a world class shooter. My father was also the chief coach of the Greek national team in clay pigeon shooting for 5 years. So, I had the greatest coach ever as a father.
• My father was a great story teller, a raconteur, using witty analogies and parables to instill in us values and behaviours.
• My father cared about people and impacted the lives of friends and relatives in a profound way. I care about people too and I strongly believe that, people, with the exception of those that don't want to change, can demonstrably improve with a little help.

Net, like father like son

From my management series: Mentoring/Coaching

As I was looking in my files, in the unlikely event to find a copy of the "famous" Elvis has left the building email, for my post of last Friday, I found this, which is the organisational anouncement on my departure from my last international assignment, that of Sydney, Australia (click on scanned document for enlargement)

This triggered my thoughts on trying to crystalise, as part of my management series of this blog, the key success factors of a good mentor/coach. Yep, I was a very good mentor/coach on both the profeessional as well as the personal development front. I have consciously and in a structured way mentored/coached in excess of 150 people in 35 years, and indirectly influenced, and impacted, unbeknownst to me, a fair amount of others. My success rate, I think, is quite good because all my mentorees, except two that were dismal failures, showed substantial improvement that was sustained and after the mentorship period was over.

148 out of 150, 98.67% batting average. Pas mal du tout. Moody's would have given me a AAA rating, not that I have any respect anymore, since the meltdown, to Moody's or anybody else of the rating agency community :-)))

The top most important skills one needs to have to become a good mentor/coach are:

1-Commitment
2-Commanding respect
3-High integrity
4-Connecting the dots

 Of course there are a host of other skills that can be listed that contribute to good mentoring/coaching. The point I am making here is that these four : commitment, commanding respect, high integrity and connecting the dots are absolute must haves

Religious freedom of expression

In a referrendum conducted yesterday the Suisse voted "OUI", 57%, in favour of the resolution to forbid further construction of minarets in their country (not mosques, only minarets), Le Monde reports.
Muslims in Switzerland are 4% of the population, and have a mosque density of 3.3 mosques per 10,000 Muslims (100 mosques for 300,000 Muslims). This vote is in direct conflict with their constitution that now needs to be ammended.
GG1: I am not in agreement with the whole thing.
GG2: I did some maths and got a funny result: Cairo has 15 million Muslims out of 17 million population and 4,000-odd mosques and prayer halls as per the BBC this yields a density of 2.7 mosques per 10,000 Muslims ie Switzerland has 20% higher mosque/Muslim density than Cairo!
Is this correct or is someone on cheap Egyptian hashish?

Faites vos jeux. Rien ne va plus

The countries whose people indulge in high stakes gambling.
"All in" as they say in Texas Hold 'Em poker game!

Country Ranking. Number of cigarettes per adult per year (full list click here)

1 Greece 3,017
2 Slovenia 2,537
3 Ukraine 2,526
4 Bulgaria 2,437
5 Czech Republic 2,368

The risk of dying from lung cancer is 22 times higher for male smokers than male nonsmokers and 12 times higher for female smokers than female nonsmokers

GG1: Smoking is like playing Russian Roulette. You get the thrills, but you get the bullet too.

GG2:The latest New Zealand research showed that, lung cancer risk rose by 5.7 times for patients who smoked more than a joint a day for 10 years, or two joints a day for 5 years, after adjusting for other variables, including cigarette smoking as there are higher concentrations of carcinogens in cannabis smoke than in cigarettes.The study showed that smoking one joint is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes (see photo below). 

Currently the proposal in California in legalising marijuana is to tax it at $50 an ounce or about 87 cents a joint which is equal to the current California tax for a pack of 20 cigarettes. It makes sense.
GG3: The average taxes on a pack of cigarettes in the US are 50% lower than Europe, and California taxes are 35% lower than the US average. Arnie, wake up!
GG4: The tobacco industry has been waiting for the legalisation of marijuana for years now and they are now eager to open their marketing and new product plans that they have stashed (haha) all these years, under lock and key.

"Good to be God" by Tibor Fischer

It's a very funny book. The humour is black and wacky, the kind I like. The shady characters in the book like the Hierophant, Cosmo, Dishonest Dave or the DJ duo Gamay and Muscat that lose their job to a cigar smoking monkey are super. An excellent "beach book", light reading full of very original and hilarious situations.
The hero is a loser, down on his luck, and was given a chance by joining the God squad, running the :"Church of the Armed Christ". Wacky!
 Highly recommended reading on flights that are 3 hours or longer eg Athens to London, will be an ideal environment to read it as long as the person sitting next to you in the plane doesn't mind your certain outbursts of laughter as you read this book.

Rating 3 out of 5.

Flabbergasting!

Vanuatu's prime minister Edward Natapei lost his seat in parliament on Friday due to a simple paperwork error, officials said, throwing the tiny Pacific nation's politics into turmoil. Prime Minister forfeited his seat after missing three consecutive sittings without notifying the speaker.
GG: And I thought that the Greek government was bureaucratic. There is always a bigger fool

"Whatever Works" by Woody Allen with Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood

Woody Allen making a movie in New York about New Yorkers. How could I miss it. Woody is not acting in this movie, but Larry David is. Larry looks like Woody, acts like Woody, in fact he is better than Woody on both these counts. I have seen Larry before on "Siefeld" and "SNL" episodes and I always liked his trade mark hypochondriac New Yorker characters he usually plays. Evan Rachel Wood, I only seen her once before in the very forgettable role of the daughter of Mickey Rourke in the "Wrestler".

Well, the movie was GREAT! 100%. The script was full of Woody's quirky, caustic and iconoclastic humour. Witty dialogue. I loved Larry's bantering with a surprisingly good Evan Rachel Wood. I laughed my heart out. Very few people in the cinema were laughing as much as me and my parea as some of the jokes and play of words were "difficult" for the level of English of the Greek audience and in a lot of instances the Greek subtitles couldn't translate the subtleness of the humour.

Rating 4 out of 5.

Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home

An interesting recent article in the NY Times ,click here, on the subject of discipline. It describes the three principles of the super famous dog trainer Cesar Millan. I've seen him on National Geographic on TV and read one of his books, and the guy is faaaaantastic. He is called The Dog Whisperer because of the effect his methods have on dogs which is similar to horse whisperers that tame wild horses. His method is based on the trinity: exercise, discipline and affection.

The article says that some people started applying Cesar's dog training approaches not only to their pooches but also to their kids, with excellent results.

Replace exercise with play and affection with love, which includes affection, keeping discipline, summarises where I stand on parenting.
GG a.k.a The Child Whisperer.

Costco giving the finger to Coke

Further to my Nov. 17 post "Be prepared to walk away", on the news that Costco in the US has dropped Coke because of price dispute, now Costco is "giving the finger" to Coke increasing the heat a notch. "A la Reine" as they say in chess when you check the Queen. Your move Madame

PS: Notice the small sign of Pepsi that sneeked-in in the upper right corner of the photo. Guerilla advertising. Bishop to H8. Good move Pepsi!

I knew it.

I was always saying that this mindless spending of Dubai on all these crazy development projects, hotels etc. will come to an end soon. It didn't make sense. I closed my 24/11/08 post titled "Dubai Inc. Fom Boom to Bust" with the following: The super bash at the Atlantis Palm Jumeira Hotel reminds me of the orchestra playing as the Titanic was sinking.

Well, it happened, the government of Dubai, in a blunt acknowledgment of the severity of its financial position, said on Wednesday that it had asked its banks for a six-month stay on its schedule of debt repayments. Hello! I don't call myself the Oracle of Voula for nothing, predicting the collapse a year ahead. Pas mal du tout
I am planning to go there on holidays/business in February, 2010. Maybe I should renegotiate the hotel rates. Hmmmmm!

For comparison purposes, the credit default swaps (CDS) for Dubai ie the insurance premium for protection against country default, (remember yesterday's tongue-in-cheek post "One month to Christmas" suggesting the Church actually selling CDS's?), has risen on the news by 131 basis points to the very high level of 571 basis points, when Greece's CDS are in the neighbourhood of 200 basis points. So Dubai's CDS are almost 3 times higher than Greece's, when Greece is one step away from insolvency and default. The markets are currently assessing that the risk of Dubai defaulting is the same with that of Kazakhstan!!! Next stop for Borat is Dubai. Hahahahahahahaha!
In the event you want to hear the music that was played when the Titanic was sinking, click on the mp3 gadget below. The musical arrangement is called "Nearer My God To Thee"

	Titanic Soundtrack - Nearer My God To Thee .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

The custom puppy

"In 1997, the year scientists announced they had created Dolly the cloned sheep, Lou Hawthorne began wondering what it would take to create a genetic replica of his mother's dog Missy. In 2007, his company BioArts did it, and in 2009, Hawthorne delivered puppies to five customers who paid an average of $144,000 for copies of their canines. (The company also created, pro bono, five clones of a search-and-rescue dog that worked at the World Trade Center after 9/11.) BioArts has since said the pet-cloning market is too small to be commercially viable, but for pet owners who jumped at the chance for a second chance, the puppy love lives on. "

GG: I am thinking the pros and cons of this. My jury is still out . The cunundrum here is that if it's OK to do it for the dog you love, is it OK then for say a child you lost? Not an easy dilemma I think.
Any thoughts from you guys?

Down memory lane: Elvis has left the building

Yesterday's incident with Elvis the puppy triggered my memory.
As a corporate gladiator I had a simple and very effective set of rules that told me when it was time to leave a company or a geography/division and and go somewhere where I would have a better chance satisfying the rules.
In every company I was in, I frequently put the company or division to the test by me trying to answer three questions, in decreasing order of importance, (why is it always three?), after making sure that the corporate values of the company I was working for were not in conflict with my own:
1-Am I having fun here?
2-Do I learn new things?
3-Am I making money?
If I got two no's, I was out of there.
I have used it 6 times in my business life, changing companies (always resigning) and 6 additional geographic/divisional moves with excellent results. System never failed, and I had a fantastically enjoyable career. Obviously, in the early years question 3, money, was always in play and later it was always the 1 &2 that triggered the "walk".
My last job, the Greek Telco, which I joined to fulfill my personal objective to help my country with the Olympics, gave me lots of 1 & 2, but after the Olympics I "walked" because my job was not fulfilling any of the three criteria.
So where is Elvis in all this?
Ah! On the last day of my notice period in the telco, Nov. 30th, 2004 at 5:00 p.m exactly, as I was ready to leave my office for the last time I pressed "Send" on a farewell email, in Greek, to my team and peers thanking them for their support etc.
As a post script I wrote in English "Elvis has left the building", meaning "that's it", they are not going to see me in the telco building again, the same way in Elvis's concerts this classic line was said over the PA system so that people shouldn't wait for Elvis to return to the stage etc and was eventually adopted in the English vernacular. I didn't realise that this expression was far above the level of text book english of the email recipients. Till today, whenever I meet old colleagues from the telco, most of whom for some unfathomable reason think I am a god, ask me: which Elvis, isn't he dead?, what building?, why did he leave? etc. which totally cracks me up.

Mega day at "Mega"

Just back from my Thursday visit to "Mega" supermarket.

Youpee. I got all I wanted including the elusive three: Sushi, lentil soup and Ajax for the salts.

My losing streak is over.

GG 3 Mega 0. Finally, finalement, epitelous, finalmente, akheeran!

Thanksgiving

Today is the fourth Thursday in November, therefore, the US celebrates Thanksgiving, and the traditional Thanksgiving menu often features turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.
Tomorrow is Black Friday, the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping in the US, one of the biggest shopping days of the year there.

I say, because of the economic down turn, Americans should go for hot turkey today and go 'cold turkey' on shopping tomorrow.

Thus spake the Oracle of Voula. Hahaha

Les apparences sont souvent trompeuses - Looks are often deceptive

Went for dinner to "Spuntino", an Italian restaurant in Glyfada (Fivis Str. 19). Ambience was "cold", no relation to the warmth and coziness of the old "Spuntino" before it relocated. Food was average to good, service was excellent, wine "Vivlia Chora" red ergo good and music was very good in the first half and crapolla in the second.
Half-way through the meal a lady at my table, beautiful, tiré à quatre épingles , suave etc was telling me about her newly acquired puppy called Elvis (great name for a dog, second only, in my view, to Argos, Ulysses faithful dog, that waited for his master for over 10 years to return from the Trojan war) and that the puppy is not yet house broken bla bla bla and that she brought a dog trainer who advised her to kick Elvis every time he peeed in the apartment, and she did that with no success. What kick the puppy!!! I went ballistic and let her have it in giga tons of agro. I told her that if she touched a hair of Elvis again I will personally kick her ass before reporting her and her deplorable dog trainer to the police. My evening was totally destroyed. I will pursue it and find the name of this vicious trainer and take care of him. What thoroughbred barbarians! Yaack.
Little Elvis have no fear, George is here.

Anna, Anna, Anna... Part Deux

News flash: My Anna (btw, I don't know whether I will keep my endearment with her for long if she continues the way she is currently going), apparently, whilst keeping the pre-election PASOK promise of abolishing the minimum base 10 pre-requisite for entering a Greek university, now, her team are proposing a new twist. They are considering to replace the base 10 requirement with an algorithm that says if your score is 50% that of the best in class score of the chosen major, at the chosen uni, then that is the minimum base. In other words, the new philosophy is that instead of having a requirement of a fixed minimum amount of "knowledge" to get you in a university, with this algorithm you only have to be 50% less stupid from whoever has the highest score in your selected major, the selected geographical university, that particular year. In other words the game is "Follow the Bozo" along the lines of a clever poker game called "Follow the Queen", for those of you that are big gamblers, a very probable hobby if you are Greek, a robust prediction based on the very high number of smokers in Greece. (lol).
Who are these people in the ministry of education that come up with these ideas? Where do they come from? How is it that a truck hasn't hit them yet? How is it that no one hasn't put a "contract" on them, yet? Hahaha!

One month to Christmas.

As Christmas is approaching, one month to the day from today, as per the Gregorian calendar, apologies to the old calendarists that follow the Julian calendar, my depression index increases, this will be my third Christmas without my Popi, causing my normally high reflective state of mind to go on over drive.
So, as people grow older, a natural process that occurs every nano second to the entire population of humans and all living things on this planet, the odds of surving the "next day" become shorter. An absolute mathematical certainty, as the direction of the vector of the fourth dimmension, Time, is pointing unrelentingly and irreversibly forward.
"A very morbid line of thinking George!", one might shout. Relax guys. I am just setting up the props, my point is somewhere else, bear with me and I think you will like it.

So, as the odds get shorter and people realise that the time they spend on earth is infinitesimally small compared to the infinity of a potential after life, the need for one to hedge his bets increases. Enters the "Church". One can view the "Church" as a "house", in Las Vegas terminology, where people hedge their bets against the eventuality of a Godless afterlife. Or, in Wall Street lingo, if you want, "Church" is an institution that sells CDS's (Credit Default Swaps) against default of a Godless afterlife.

The beauty of these hedging instruments that the "Church" is peddling, is that nobody knows whether these instruments do "payout" at the end, as no stories from satisfied customers or customer complaints can ever exist. A very nifty business model!

Did you like the post? The photo? Do you think I should patent this thinking? "Church" selling Credit Default Swaps? Hahaha!

PS: All of the above is written totally in a tongue-in-cheek and humourous spirit, in an attempt to see life and some of its serious existential questions through a heretical and hopefully funny lens. I hope it didn't offend the religious beliefs of any of my readers.

Dumb!

Greece:
With the highest number of physicians per cap

(Graph taken from "The Euro Health Consumer Index 2009")
Delivering the worst HIV care in Europe beaten only by Romania for the last place in Europe.

(Graph from "The Euro HIV Index 2009 Report")

To the dumbest youth, where 40% of them never use any protection during sex and the second dumbest, after Norway, population where 70% of Greeks in general reported having had unprotected sex without knowing partner's history (based on 2005 data, Global average 47%)

PS: AIDS in Greece, is of course, on the increase with infections up 20% (Kathimerini 18-11-2009)

Cat vs Dog