Alexander's

Apart from BP having a little oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and Israel defending it’s borders — by shooting a few Turkish in international waters — lately there has been one other bit of news that reached me.

The Foxconn suicides!

As far as I know they have had twelve (12!) suicides this year alone.

Take Vienna for example. There are almost 1.7 million people living in the city¹ and 2008 we only had 189 suicides.² This amounts to a suicide ratio of about 1:9.000 — Quite low if you ask me.
But I’m not expecting everyone to live as happily as people in Vienna. After all Vienna is, according to the latest Mercer quality of living report, the city with the best living conditions worldwide!

And then there is Foxconn on the other hand. Having an estimated workforce of around 800.000 they already amassed twelve suicides this year alone! If no one puts an end to these conditions we will end up with 29 suicides before the year is over!

That amounts to a ratio of 1:27.800 — a ratio more than three times lower than what we have in Vienna — the city with the best living conditions in the world! If they want to catch up to our rate they can have another 78(!) suicides this year.

Now I know that comparing cultures is always problematic, but even if you just look at China — working at Foxconn actually helps prevent suicides.

I’m not saying working conditions in these factories are ok, but just remember that Foxconn probably has quite good conditions compared to the factory where your expensive designer clothes came from.

If someone was to ask me:”How was you last month?” I think I’d answer:”I can now understand the allure of living like an eremite.”

How come? Well out of the three consumer electronics devices I own two died within that timeframe. First was my iPhone that decided this world was too crule and consequently threw itself into a constant reboot nirvana. From this I learned that leaving one’s phone lying on the table for too long is not a good idea. They need the excitement of constant usage.

I managed to revive the iPhone, to a state where I can still use WiFi, but the phone part is gone for good. Not having mobile internet access hurts a lot! Well at least it still was a good music player — at least until a week later, when the headphone jack died too!

So now I basically have a sixhundred Euro alarmclock.

But loosing a phone is really no big deal. I just told my (shockingly few) friends to contact me per mail and everything was good. Right up until the day I booted my computer and could not enter the password.

After the first keypress it started to choose random key combinations for me — favourites seemed to be screen brightness and shutdown. Apparently the controller chip for the keyboard died over night while the computer was switched off!

So now I hope my friend will bend over again and learn to contact me with smoke signals. On clear and sunny days they might be more reliable that what I used up until now.

PS: This post has no picture and probably funny spelling, since I had to write it on my iPhone’s tiny screen — half of which is used but the keyboard.

While reading TIME magazine I stumbled upon an interesting article¹ about how kids that get spanked grow up to be more aggressive. Apparently children solve problems by mimicking their parents behaviour and not by listening to what they say — who could have guessed?

Groundbreaking as this insight might be for the average psychology student, it leaves an interesting question — What is the right way to teach children?²

Any method applied should not only stop the child from acting in an unwanted way, it should also set a positive example on how adults are supposed to solve these problems themselves. This raises a much bigger question for me:

How are adults supposed find a consensus, if one party is not willing to listen to logical arguments?³

How do I argue with someone that tells me my point of view is invalid, without giving me any reason? How do I break through that thick skull, without actually breaking it, or damaging the relationship in some other way?

A passive aggressive approach seems to work great, but it will poison a relationship really fast.⁴ So lately I find myself more and more drawn to the japanese way. Smile, nod and just avoid that person. If I can’t talk rationally with a friend, why talk at all and if I don’t talk why is he still my friend?

But I still wonder isn’t there a better way?