Andy's Mind

After a few months of experience I have to say that developing a business in Poland is akin to trying to run in a swamp. You can start fast, but no matter how hard you try the mud will slow you down. The mud in this particular swamp is composed of two main ingredients – people and bureaucracy. (more…)

In its last issue The Economist writes that 3/4 of young French when would like to become civil servants. And that only 36% of all French think that free market capitalism is the best socio-economic system (less even than in the modern Russia!). That gives an interesting background to the recent unrest in France caused by their government’s pathetically feeble attempt to inject at least a tiny bit of free market into the country’s stagnant economy.

I think it should give a new meaning to the word “french”. In the 18th or 17th century syphilis was known as “mal francaise” (French malady). Right now “French malady” will become a synonym for a lazy, stagnant society trying to ignore reality…

They are going to have a very very unpleasant wake up one day…

I stumbled today across this piece in Newsweek about the rise of movement to legalize polygamy in the US. Of course, it’s very American that every group of likely-minded Americans gets immediately organized, hires lobbyists and has a web site, magazine and weekly meetings throughout the country. What is new is that now all kind of twisted and hurt minds organize to advocate their afflictions as lifestyle choices under the mighty banner of “civil rights”. The article points out that making gay “marriage” legal would open the door to make polygamy legal – and this is indeed only logical. I’ve been long telling everybody that gay activists discriminate against polygamists because if we scrap the old definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman then why limit it to just two humans? In fact, why limit it only to humans? So, the next logical step would be for zoophiles to organize and fight for their civil rights. To paraphrase the Newsweek article – if Heather can have two mommies or two mommies and a daddy why not two daddies and their beloved goat?

I’m in Germany now and I was walking around the CeBIT fair grounds yesterday. I was getting hungry but being a bit jet-lagged from my flight from the US and wanting to see as much as I could before the tiredness would catch up with me I postponed going to one of the many restaurants on the fair grounds. I walked into one but it was full of cigarette smoke. I went to an information desk and asked whether they have any smoke-free restaurant on the fair grounds. The young crew discussed between themselves in German and then one of them replied that there is none – smoking is permitted everywhere. To my visible surprise they added that Germany is a smoking-friendly country. But I digress… (more…)