It was a great Sunday, just coming back from a “promenade” out of Muir woods, a day in between conferences and work in San Jose. I took indeed 2 weeks off from my regular-pay-the-bill-job in order to check out the Silicon valley… My feelings are pretty ok, people work hard there, 18 hours (counting stopover) flight from home, and frustratingly, it looks like home (which is pretty strange), hearing French in the streets, the San Francisco bay area, 5 000 000 people, all nationalities being certainly represented, where Googles, Yahoos, Oracles got born and became worldwide… interesting.

This trip made me understand one thing : work, but do what you like. Why should you bother yourself with what you don’t ? You would be considered as “dumb” there.
I was :-), but I have plans now.

“I find myself at perhaps the most famous university in the most powerful country in the world. With your permission, I will say a few words on the subject of the politics of a great power.” … (for the full speech : civilisation’s thin veneer, 1995, Vaclav Havel, Harvard University)

Writer, dissident during the soviet regime in the former Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel got elected (1993 & 1998) president of the independent Czech Republic right away after its independence.

He became Doctor Honoris Causa from Harvard University (1995).

Harvard, one of the most famous and traditional USAmerican universities (Republican vision mostly)… where official speeches make clear analogies between New-York and Rome, the US and the Roman Empire, preach about the American duty to educate the world according to its values.
Some of my friends studied there, and went through the PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) Master, and frankly speaking, even if some of them are great minds, when topics were about the US, a clear-cut rationality was no more. A US values brainwashing university ?

The speech, you should take the time to go through, is pretty much a double-edged criticism of great powers, as their responsibilities about the current globalization and localization trends. To great power, there is a great responsibility,… but a great humility as well.

Human Development Index
Top thirty countries (HDI range from 0.965 down to 0.885 - for more information about HDI)
Out of 30 countries, 21 are in Europe (6 in the top 10).

1. Norway 0.965
2. Iceland 0.960
3. Australia 0.957
4. Ireland 0.956
5. Sweden 0.951
6. Canada 0.950
7. Japan 0.949
8. United States 0.948
9. Switzerland 0.947
10. Netherlands 0.947
11. Finland 0.947
12. Luxembourg 0.945
13. Belgium 0.945
14. Austria 0.944
15. Denmark 0.943
16. France 0.942
17. Italy 0.940
18. United Kingdom 0.940
19. Spain 0.938
20. New Zealand 0.936
21. Germany 0.932
22. Hong Kong 0.927
23. Israel 0.927
24. Greece 0.921
25. Singapore 0.916
26. South Korea 0.912
27. Slovenia 0.910
28. Portugal 0.904
29. Cyprus 0.903
30. Czech Republic 0.885

They are one of the primary reasons why this country is so dynamic… a meeting point of personalities not afraid of risks and taking up challenges.

Go through this USA immigration quiz,… your ending scores might not be that high, but you’ll clearly get a different vision about immigration. You’ll get to know more about this phenomemon part of a certain exodus (read the related articles in French)… more positive, different from the usual negative one vehiculated in Europe.

what about your home country ?
How immigrants are considered in your home country ?
Do you think this is part of a growing trend ?