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Text of the page (random words):
to get rid of cash entirely when i first wrote about it two years ago i outlined the steps that a government must take in order to enforce this and i was right i also wrote and so little by little there will be no cash in the country everybody regardless of whether they want it or not must use a credit card or some form of electronic transaction unlike the us or the uk credit cards are not free i am charged something like 50 us dollars per year for a credit card the cost is 0 for my us credit card and commented on the fact that if anything goes wrong with electronic cash then it is the individual s responsibility in sweden what i did not anticipate was that there would be some voices in sweden that would be against such a change i read about this yesterday on bbc it is an interesting article but maddy savage the bbc business reporter doesn t seem to know all the facts or understand the severity of the situation i don t blame her it s hard to know when the policy to design a cash free society is hidden therefore any inference on what is going on can only be made by observations of the consequences and changes that can be witnessed by living in sweden and seeing the difference between now and say four years ago here are then some further comments responsibility if you only use cash and lose your wallet then you just lose your cash but worse much worse things can happen if you use electronic cash the question is who is responsible if you lose your cash then clearly you are responsible if someone steals money from you electronically by compromising the electronic banking system then rationally speaking it should be the bank that should bear responsibility but not in sweden it is almost always the case that the responsibility is upon the individual vulnerable group s the bbc article says some worry about the challenges it poses for vulnerable groups especially the elderly in fact this is very true i know elderly people who do not use smart phones or computers are these people considered undesired citizens in sweden at uppsala a town big village with no traffic and plenty of parking it was decided that parking fees be imposed almost everywhere 24 hours a day what is worse is that you can t pay with cash or even credit card you are forced to have a smart phone with an app a swedish elderly lady i know used to visit her friend several times a week and drive to her because she can t walk the increase in the cost and the inconvenience of the payment method forced her to cancel her visits and she now stays home all the time does anyone care about her mental health foreigners visitors what about people visiting sweden from abroad how can they pay if you must have a swedish phone a swedish id a swedish app well again sweden does not care this happened to me several times when i was a newcomer to sweden i would try to pay with say my mobile phone but it was impossible data leaks the aforementioned bbc article states swedes are very trusting but i think that is changing for example the recent cambridge analytica scandal has made people more aware of how their data is being used but they don t mention what is worse the huge scandal that took place a few months ago because sweden outsourced al most all details of nearly everyone in sweden to some private company and then all data leaked to unknown sources leading to the biggest data leak in history yes swedes are trusting but they shouldn t blindly trust their government however since trusting the government in sweden is for now much strongert than a religious dogma this will not be easily reversed if a cashless society is desired then this should be designed carefully by revealing all steps of the process by being frank about the goals by talking about responsibilities in case of data breach by making everything very clear to everyone i believe that the cashless design will be successful not because the steps above will take place but because it is happening under the carpet and in ways that nobody can ever voice any disagreement in the end it will be triumphantly announced that the people wanted a cash free society the people got it long live the people i shall conclude this posting with three images giving a very partial glimpse of what the future is like not just in sweden but even in your country sweden simply represents the future faithful believers giving money to their church using electronic means homeless person accepting monetary alms via electronic means swedish title says we only take cards no cash notice that the sorry for any inconvenience is mentioned only in english this is actually a very common phenomenon the words sorry and apology are meant to be only for english speakers who still believe that the words are not obsolete posted by takis konstantopoulos at 7 4 18 no comments labels avoidance of responsibility politics religion 4 july 2016 what is the eu the brits voted in the referendum whose question was clear should the uk stay in the eu or leave after they voted many went to the internet and typed on google what it the eu that is to say they had no clue what they were voting for and then they typed what will happen if we leave the eu are we surprised no many voters far more than the small margin between the leave stay outcome have no clue what they re voting for they re just following like sheep someone who s shouting they listen to the one who s shouting louder they only thing they don t do is think so whoever says that the people of the uk decided that uk should leave the eu is wrong many of them didn t decide they just voted at random influenced by demagogues nothing special with the uk of course it would have been the same in many countries many people vote for reasons unrelated to what the actual vote is for unless we take into account these random uninformed votes the result is not correct we need to allow for the probability that a voter acted under the influence some influence searches for what is the eu and what is brexit spiked in the u k after polls closed google trends via npr posted by takis konstantopoulos at 4 7 16 no comments labels idiocy politics 5 june 2016 paris critically flooded paris hasn t seen so much rain for a century i m visiting université paris sud for a couple of weeks but i m staying centrally in the cinquième arrondissement it s been raining like crazy it feels more like february than june gray skies and temperatures hovering around 13c many places have been closed the orsay museum is closed the basement of the louvre is closed nôtre dame is closed the walkways at the seine are flooded the seine boats are not operating water has gone through the walls of parts of the métro the university paris sud was closed for a few days because of floods that affected electricity here are some photos from central paris posted by takis konstantopoulos at 5 6 16 1 comment labels climate 23 may 2016 tatoo obsession in sweden swedes have a huge obsession with tatoos tatoos have become so commonplace in sweden that stockholm is now believed to be home to the world s most inked population outside of tribal societies source i wrote about this in an earlier post because one of the first things i noticed in sweden was that shops that carry magazines and newspapers have many more publications devoted to tatoos than to news sometimes one cannot find newspapers other than trash tabloids but there are surely several sometimes dozens tatoos magazines always available i tested this today at the main airport in stockholm i asked at pressbyrån if they have any newspapers they pointed out expressen to me i said that s a tabloid do you have any regular newspaper they pointed out aftonbladet to me i replied that this is also junk press any serious newspapers no none and yet they had several magazines on tattoo it s very hard to find newspapers at the main airport of stockholm as for foreign press forget it there is none but tatoos are everywhere there is even a tatoo parlor at the stockholm airport http www swedavia com arlanda about stockholm arlanda airport about stockholm arlanda airport news worlds first tattoo studio at an airport and they re proud about it it s the first airport in the world to have a tatoo shop caveat there s nothing decent to eat at stockholm airport but there s a place where you can get a tatoo i guess it s important to some to get their tattoo before they fly i observed these peculiarities long time ago but i didn t know that sweden has as many tatoos per capita as in tribal societies n b see my old posting on 3 swedish fetishes http randomprocessed blogspot fr 2011 09 three swedish fetishes html m 0 posted by takis konstantopoulos at 23 5 16 1 comment labels sweden tatoos 15 february 2016 maps lie more than one usually thinks i performed the following experiment with students of mathematics i showed them a map of russia on google and took a point very far to the east uelen a village in the chukotsky district next to the bering sea and a point very far to the west venekyulya a region in the leningrad oblast at the border with estonia the distance between uelen and venekyulya is roughly the largest distance between two points in russia which is about 6000 km i asked the students to draw a path between uelen and venekyulya whose length is 6000 km some drew the path p1 shown below which is a straight line between uelen and venekyulya on the google map others realizing that the map is a projection of a sphere drew path p2 slightly curved upwards when i showed them the actual path see below they were all surprised they thought it was wrong how can it be that the straight line path is so much curved upwards well that s because the distortion of the map increases very rapidly when we move away from the equator if i had shown them the actual map on a sphere then they would have known what to do they would have drawn an arc between uelen and venekyulya that is part of the unique great circle between them that is the circle centered at the earth s center and containing uelen and venekyulya this arc almost but not quite passes from the north pole to see this we need to look at the earth downwards from the north pole the picture then becomes clear and the apparent contradiction is resolved credits for this image go to https www jasondavies com maps rotate the moral of this is that we should never believe what we see in fact we should never believe in anything only when we have further evidence provided by experiment measurements or mathematical proof should we believe what we see but then the verb believe becomes irrelevant at this point we know we do not believe we may believe something temporarily until further evidence or we may believe something because someone else we trust has done the work for us but we should never believe something because our eyes saw it or because a teacher once told us or because the government or administration says so or because a religious for example book writes one thing that bothers me with some students and some teachers of mathematics is that they may be comfortable with the geometry of a 5 dimensional hyperbolic space because they may have seen it in class passed an exam on it or doing research on it but may be uncomfortable with down to earth sic geometry including knowing 2 3 proofs of the pythagorean theorem o tempora o mores posted by takis konstantopoulos at 15 2 16 1 comment labels belief fallacies maps older posts home subscribe to posts atom t h e b o t t o m l i n e what measure theory is about it s about counting but when things get too large put otherwise it s about addition of positive numbers but when these numbers are far too many the principle of dynamic programming max_ x y f x g x y max_x f x max_y g x y the bottom line nuestras horas son minutos cuando esperamos saber y siglos cuando sabemos lo que se puede aprender our hours are minutes when we wait to learn and centuries when we know what is to be learnt antónio machado αγεωμέτρητος μηδείς εισίτω those who do not know geometry may not enter plato sapere aude habe muth dich deines eigenen verstandes zu bedienen dare to know have courage to use your own reason kant who am i takis konstantopoulos http www2 math uu se takis view my complete profile customer service at the main airport of sweden scandinavian airlines refuses to take responsibility events description posting 1 posting 2 insulting reply by sas this happened at stockholm airport that is the airport of the capital of sweden not the airport of ouarzazate in the country of the kind berber people i m not the only one to have problems with sas and the stockholm airport here s another blog archive 2018 1 april 1 how to force a cash free numismatic policy to peop 2016 9 july 1 june 1 may 1 february 2 january 4 2015 16 november 2 october 2 september 1 july 2 june 4 may 3 april 1 february 1 2014 38 december 5 november 3 october 5 september 3 august 2 july 1 may 1 april 3 march 4 february 5 january 6 2013 28 december 8 november 2 october 2 september 6 june 1 may 1 march 6 february 2 2012 49 december 2 november 6 october 6 september 4 august 4 july 4 may 4 april 2 march 4 february 7 january 6 2011 56 december 9 november 2 october 4 september 5 august 4 july 6 june 5 may 5 april 2 march 6 february 5 january 3 2010 78 december 7 november 6 october 5 september 2 august 11 july 7 june 5 may 8 april 5 march 5 february 8 january 9 2009 62 december 9 november 12 october 4 september 4 august 2 july 2 june 1 may 2 april 3 march 2 february 8 january 13 2008 31 december 6 november 11 october 6 may 6 march 2 labels used in this blog 21st century absurdity academia alcohol amusement parks animal behaviour architecture art astronomy avoidance of responsibility belief blogging bullshit business child abuse christmas cinema citation wars climate con artists creationism intelligent design crimes critical thinking cruelty data death death penalty denialism dishonesty economics education environment epidemics evolution fake journals fake teaching fallacies fascist faces fascists feminism fiction film finance freedom of information freedom of speech freedom of thought fundamentalism funeral offices gender genocide geocentrists geometry germany greece guns h index hacking hijab history humour idiocy impact factor iniquities injustice irrationality irrelevant japan knowledge on the internet language law lennox literature maps mathematics miracles morality music nationalism not humour numbers paranoia patriotism peace pedagogy perceptions ph series philosophy photos physics plagiarism poetry political correctness politics pope pseudo mathematics pseudo science puzzles quotes racism rationality reason religion religion politics religion reviews research russia saints sas science self infatuation signposts simple facts spam statistics stupid laws sweden tabloids tatoos teaching of probability texas torture untheism vatican weather weird acts welcome wondering links richard dawkins net triangulations greenshinto...