A Year of Living Dangerously by FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Andrew’s email response to the article

I read the article. Yes, it’s interesting. I think it’s right about many things – I was in Sweden and Denmark and I can easily see how people from happy friendly cultures like the Middle East or South America must feel disconnected from the boring formal Europeans. One big mistake that I think Europeans make is the way that they show their national pride. Europeans don’t accept immigrants as true members of their own country for 2 or 3 generations. “She’s not a real Swedish, her parents are from Syria.” Swedish people automatically assume some people are not born in Sweden based on how they look. I think Europeans are too proud of their national heritages, so they don’t want to “let new people in”, or else they will ruin it. For sure Sweden felt like a closed society to me. Apart from the crappy weather, this is the main reason I left. But try USA or Canada or Mexico. Do they seem as closed to newcomers?

We are not nationalist in this way like Europeans in USA. Anybody could be an American. probably this is because we are used to massive immigration, but Europeans are not. Also traditions do not matter as much to us, we scorn sophistication and high culture. The highest ideal of an American is the poor immigrant’s son who went from rags to riches (even though this is extremely uncommon) using his brains and hard work, maybe getting lucky, maybe being willing to screw some people over in the process.

Of course, this article is only talking about part of the terrorism problem – the part in Europe. What about Sep. 11? Was that a result of Muslims feeling out of place in Europe? I don’t think so – Saudi Arabians did it – master planned by Osama bin Laden, who had never been outside the Middle East, who has clearly stated his reasons – American military occupation of the Muslim holy lands, and excessive political influence in Muslim countries.

I agree with president Bush that democracy in the Middle East is a solution to this problem. But I disagree that this is the way we should do it. True democracy in Iraq will fail because the USA will always want to have influence in Iraqi politics
(because their oil is so valuable), we will never close our military bases there or in Saudi Arabia, and we don’t really want democracy there – we just want stability – so the oil can flow freely.

My proposal is to encourage democracy and liberalization in the Middle East, but indirectly, and definitely non-militarily. How do we do that? Most importantly, reduce our interests in the region – which is oil. The less we want oil, the less likely we will be to send troops there to protect it. Many ways to do that – like not driving cars… I think this is the main thing. No terrorists from Congo. Or Mongolia. The countries over there with the most oil are the least democratic. Happens every time. Except for Norway. How else? Humanitarian aid. Money for development of schools and roads. Why do the Colombians love Scandinavians but not Americans? Because our aid goes to forcing a political solution upon them that is supposed to benefit us. Scandinavians know that the more you give (really give – not expecting a measurable benefit), the more you get (like respect). What if instead of spending 5% of the federal budget on a military overthrow of Iraq, USA spent just 1% federal budget on health and education in Middle East? A far wiser investment, I think. And finally – the USA and Europe have to simply be a better example to the world of freedom and democracy. Show Muslims that they are free to come and live with us how they choose, not feeling as outsiders, as the article says is so important.

Honza’s response

Amazing comments to the FRANCIS FUKUYAMA article, I almost don’t have anything to add

Regarding the situation in Middle East. It’s good to realize that many of these problems escalated after the Fall of Berlin war and USSR. It changed the balance in this region and gave the US the possibility to acquire a dominant position in this part of world. It had led to the frustration among many people in Middle East which escalated in their anxiety against western countries which has, unfortunately, strong roots since the Israel x Palestinians conflict began.

I definitely agree that money invested to all wars in Middle East and effort spent for securing oil reserves could be better invested into the research in the renewable energies to minimize our dependency on the imported oil.

A., I wish you could see the United Nation Association Film Festival (http://www.unaff.org/) which Zizu and I had a chance to attend couple weeks ago. We have seen many movies with topics covering topics like poverty, globalization, oil factor ( http://www.theoilfactor.com/ ), and many others. I’ll be more than happy to talk more about them when we we meet for Thanksgiving.

[Link to the article]

My mobile office

Problem with moving around

I’ve been moving around quite a lot, making it difficult to maintain a permanent physical address, phone and fax numbers. Email has proved to be my most effective and reliable mean of communication for personal and business inquiries, keeping in touch with closed ones and exchange information with strangers. However, there are many businesses and offices which still operate the traditional way: exchanging information only through phone and faxing.

I’m not going to add a mini fax machine to my belongings nor running around in a strange city looking for a fax-sending service. Faxing services are not popular even in America so it’s hard to find them everywhere else. I tried in Europe. Sending a fax to US from Europe will cost a lot of money. It’s already cost sending faxes in the USA. Then I can forget about being a frugal traveler doing business on the move.

Mobile office

That’s why I compile a list of free and minimum cost communication means you can use for personal and/or business purposes.

1. Free local phone number for voice message: You can get a free local number from aim.com with the area code of your choice. For example, mine is 510-824-5066. You can call this number as if you call any regular home and cell phone. I will receive an email through my aim mail account and can down load your voice message. This is useful in case you don’t want to give your real phone number on the internet and have your phone rung off the hook by unimportant or ill-intended people.
2. Send fax for free: There are many businesses which exchange documents and papers through faxes beside emails, some of which faxing is the only option. If your papers are in digital form, why should you print them out before faxing them? This costs paper and devalue your fax machine. Try faxzero.com. The free service limits how you fax and how many times you can fax, but it is enough if you only need to send a few faxes once in a while. If you don’t have a fax machine (like me), you can take a pictures of your papers and convert them to .pdf, one of the two acceptable format by Fax Zero.
3. Receive fax for free: You can also get a free fax number from efax.com. Your fax is delivered as an email attachment. You need to download a small piece of software from EFax to view the document. You can export it to a picture format (TIFF) which you can keep digitally or print out and file it. Again, the limitation is because you use their free services. I think you can pay to get more features which I haven’t checked out because I’m not interested in paying right now. If you want to send me a testing fax, feel free to do it. My number is (678) 550-6510 / 6785506510 (the latter number is for the lazy bum who just wants to copy and paste.)
4. Call for free or for a low price: Right now I’m using Skype to call people and businesses. Fortunately, there is a promotion in USA and Canada which you can call any numbers for free. No restriction. No string attach. I’ve been calling people like crazy for the past few months. Some calls lasted over 2 hours during peak hours. Imagine how pitiful my cell-phone bill would look? (I didn’t have a traditional line at the time.) I also use Skype to call people overseas. The rates are very low, and I don’t have to worry about carrying phone cards and lose them. I think that calling US free toll numbers from abroad is also free. I called a few times and my Skype credits didn’t dent one bit. To use Skype, it’s best if you have a fast connection. I never try it with a model connection, so I don’t know if the call can go through.
5. And of course keep your existing or create new email addresses and use them. This information might seem redundant to you, but you will be surprised to know many young people in smaller cities don’t even have emails address. It’s not because they don’t have the computers and Internet connection but because they see no need for it.

The remaining obstacle

Physical mailing address. How can I access my mail any where, any time?

Online money making activities

Ah, I’m one of those old-time fashioned who wants to lead a romantic life. By romantic, I don’t mean rose-filled bed room’s floor, champagne dinners nor abundant sunset-watching. In this romantic life, I’m not bound by any systematic ideologies and conventional wisdom. I can pick up my belongings and drift to some place else whenever I want to.

Nice, but you might wonder unless I have a rich family’s backup, how I can financially support myself? This question conveys the theme of this site: be financial responsible and accumulate wealth while exploring and living life however way I choose it: The Pragmatic Bohemian.

I came up with a few options:

1. Freelance
2. Take on technical projects.
3. Run successful web sites and earn money from advertising.
4. Run an online business where I don’t need to maintain inventories.
5. Investment.

Let see.

1. Freelance:
   • Pros: steady source of income and good contacts once I establish contacts and secured many freelance projects.
   • Cons: hard to find as I’m new to this area. Stressful as I have to constantly find projects to do.
2. Technical projects:
   • Pros: Good money.
   • Cons: Outsourcing has driven the pay so low. I worked as a programmers before and didn’t like it one bit.
3. Ad-sponsored web sites (passive income):
   • Pros: Earn money even when I don’t work. I write whenever I want, whichever I want.
   • Cons: Must have a high-traffic site before I can see real money. Have to post new content often to keep readers.
4. Online business:
   • Pros: I am my own boss. My ability to make money depends solely on my desire to make money.
   • Cons: Sure heck gonna be a lot of work.
5. Invest (passive income):
   • Pros: The name itself says it all.
   • Cons: Can be risky. I don’t know anything about investment.

—–

Quick summary of my earning from online activities (no thing much)

• Adsense: $33
• Amazon Marketplace Purchase: $6.82 + $35 (before minus shipping cost)

I will wait to see how my Adsense turn out in three more months.

—-

I’m currently researching about starting an online business and also creating an ebay store. Here is my plan for next 20 days.

• Research.
• Write down a detailed business plan.
• Create a simple online store prototype.
• Decide what I want to sell. (I know more when I come to Prague.)

Whacked myself on the head to force out this post

I have not blogged for a long time. Shoo me to the devil. Shoo! Shoo! For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on my new/old site about Sarajevo. I officially admit: this city and the country haunt me. I first blogged about Sarajevo on sarajevo.wordpress.com, using the free hosting service provided by WordPress. However, I want to grow this site and use it as a learning experiment to built and maintaining  other sites in the future, so I decided to host it somewhere else. I like to stay away from the computer and technology as much as possible but still want to improve and sharpen my technical skills. Going to school and taking technical courses is NOT an option either. Therefore, the best solution is to take on a technical projects.  

Anyhow, Sarajevo Travel Guide now has a home at beyondsarajevo.com.  I use a free WordPress template and dress it up a little. Don’t you dare go ballistic about the site’s visualization. I never said I was a pro web-designer anyway. 

I see this Sarajevo Travel Guide as a stepping stone for me to build others more successful and worthy sites in the future. For example, I’m planning to create a site about Prague and the Czech Republic once I arrive in November. I have not nailed down the site’s content as there are so many things about Prague and the Czech Republic.  

Last night I had a nice dinner chat with my Japanese boss about everything: shipping logistic (I work for a import/export business in California) to  Japanese culture. This is the reason why I really forced myself to crank out this post to jot down notes about this conversation. And as you can see, there is no such note yet.

I will update as soon as I have some free time as I want to finish setting up my hosting account for a Vietnamese version of the Sarajevo site, then I’ll go to bed.

Bravo, I’ve been waking up a bit early in the morning for the past month follow a technique instructed by Steve Pavlina. I will also write a post about this.

C.D.
Happily going to bed!

Picking a Web Host and Domain Name Registrar

Web host

 

Two months ago, I decide to register for a paid web hosting service. Free services were good, but they offered very limited features: only good enough for me to run simple sites and blogs.

It took me a few days to research for a decent web host although I did not know how to define a “decent” web host. For me, it had to meet a few criteria:

• Positive or at least neutral reviews or comments from users.
• Cheap
• Reliable
• Provide a lot of space, high bandwidth
• Multiple domain and sub-domain support.
• Come with Fantastico feature (allow you to install many popular CMS and Blogging software with just one click.)
• Accessible customer support

After read many web hosting review sites, both random and sponsored. I nailed down to a few options:

• Dreamhost
• Dot5hosting
• Bluehost

I eliminated Dreamhost as it had too many negative comments from users. Dot5hosting and Bluehost meet most my criteria. The only obvious difference to me is Dot5hosting does not have Fantastico. I decided to wait for ONE more day before choosing either one–sometimes procrastination paid off. The next morning, I came upon a user’s brief mention of HostMonster. I checked it out and couldn’t believe their plan

• 50 GB hosting space
• 999 GB of transfer
• Unliminted domain
• Fantastico
• 4.95/month (but I signed up for a 2 years for only 95 dollars)
• 1 free domain upon registration and remains free as long as you host with them.

Some people warn against register your domain name through a service as they, not you, will own the domain. If your web host goes out of business in the future or you decide not to host with them, you have to ask them to transfer the domain name to you. There are people who lost their domains once their hosts said bye-bye. I asked HostMonster a few times, and they said they would transfer the domain name to me if I decide to leave.

 

So far I encountered no problem with my account. Customer service is A++. I called them many times for help and satisfied every single time. They really live up to their promise 24/7 support.

I’m not paid by them to have this review. So check them out and see for yourself; try to find negative reviews or complaints about them and let me know also. I tried but came up empty.

Hey, if you decide to sign up for an account after reading my post, give me the credit for referal by sign up through this link. Very good karma. Once day, some one else will do the same for you. Thanks.

Domain name registrar

I current have two domain names with GoDaddy. Nothing special about this company except I read many good reviews about them. To tell the truth, their name “GoDaddy” sucks and does not strikes me as strong, profitable company. When I first saw the name, I thought to myself: “this must be one of those shady, unreliable online business.” Bite me! A few months later, I stuck with them. Another reason why I chose GoDaddy was that I saw their ads alot on the web. Look like advertising paid off.

Book “Mind wide open” by Steven Johnson

Johnson describes how the brain works by taking a look at his own. He describes and shows his own MRI scan, pointing out the various parts of the brain and what they do. Johnson talks about how physical changes (including chemicals and medications) affects the brain and how we think. He links things in an intriguing way, showing how, for example, his reaction to glass windows following 9/11 is connected to the functioning of amygdala, the part of the brain that plays a big role in fear responses.

For the past two years, I’ve become interested in the study of human motivation, attitude, and behaviors. Researching these subjects led me to the discovery of a neuroscience which connects the brains and to human behaviors. Very cool stuff.

This book will be added to my book list.

[PC Magazine, issue Oct 5, 2004.]

Book “Mind wide open” by Steven Johnson

…Johnson describes how the brain works by taking a look at his own. He describes and shows his own MRI scan, pointing out the various parts of the brain and what they do. Johnson talks about how physical changes (including chemicals and medications) affects the brain and how we think. He links things in an intriguing way, showing how, for example, his reaction to glass windows following 9/11 is connected to the functioning of amygdala, the part of the brain that plays a big role in fear responses.

This book will be added to my book list.

[PC Magazine, issue Oct 5, 2004.]

Daily notes: Photography and graphics

How to manually set the correct white balance

Place a white piece of paper or card board in the middle of the scene.

• Zoom in on the paper, filling up the frame.
• Select "Manual" from the white balance menu and take a picture of the white paper.

==> This process tells the camera what white should look like under the current lighting.

Colors "seen" by the camera are affected by different light sources, so digital cameras use white balance to make a picture look genuine. Don’t ask me any further though. One of the most common setting where the white balance goes off is fluorescent-lit area.

The picture has a visible dark-green cast as seen here. 

Resolution – Photo sizes

1.3 MP – 3.5×5 to 4×6
2MP – 4×6 to 5×7
3MP – 5×7 to 8×10
4MP – 8×10 to 8.5×11
5MP – 8.5×11 to 9×12
6MP – 9×12 to 11×14
8MP – 14×17 to 16×20

Focus (simple notes)

• Auto focus: the center area of  the frame
• Spot auto-focus: a tiny spot, can be anywhere, smaller than the center area.
• Flex (zone) auto-focus: focus on areas which does not need to be the center area.
• Continuous (tracking) auto-focus: lenses refocused continuously, good for tracking moving objects.
• Predictive auto-focus: too complicated, I don’t 

PNG Transparency in IE

IE does not correctly display PNG with great color depth than 256-color-palette  To render it correctly, Microsoft use AlphaImageLoader. Osola even goes as far as writing a Javascript to loop through each images on a website and apply AlphaImageLoader code to them.

[PC magazine, issue Oct 5, 2004]