Some People are Special

Some people are better than others in cooking, wrestling, or memorizing numbers. There were and are plenties of gifted people possessing great abilities of excellent level. But among many abilities I value a lot the ability to risk your own life in order to save the life of another. I don't know if I could do that, but I've just read about a woman, who did it 2500 times, which is more than inspiring. Her name was Irena Sendler.

On Virtual Countries

When I got upset by the nationalistic moods in discussions around the elections in Latvia, I started to think of a country that would appreciate their citizens despite their ethnic origins. Certainly, none of the existent countries would match, so I started to think of a virtual country that doesn't have any territory, but is recognized by others and has most of formal attributes, such as passports, government, (virtual) diplomatic missions, etc.

Of course, I asked the mighty internet if anyone had already had such idea, and, of course, they had. An article of the DaVinci Institute covers the possibility of creating new countries. It shows that it can be both good and bad. For example, international corporations, such as Microsoft, can declare themselves as independent countries to avoid the pressure from local governments.