Insults Unpunished Here's a blog I enjoyed reading. It's political, it's funny -- well -- it's got to be funny, or we'd all have to go out and get guns. Enjoy.
Posts
US Trade Deficit America currently owes the world about $4 trillion. And it keeps rising everyday. That's damn scary when you realize that America is the world's most powerful economy, and it's intricately tied with every first world economy around the world -- if America's economy hiccups, economists around the world wet their pants. So how did America get there? And how is it going to get out? Read the commentary from Robert Kuttner, of BusinessWeek magazine. One thing for sure -- America's current fascination with hunting terrorists, starting wars and building a wall around North America isn't going to help -- a bit more focus on the economy might though.
The Progress Paradox
Here's a review of the Progress Paradox from BusinessWeek Magazine. This is a book that I am a little curious to read, and goes on my wish list, just below the Philosophy of the Matrix -- why below? Because I'm too much of a solipsist to think that the cure for the world's woes lie in everyone else's reality and not mine. I believe damnit! Anyway, the Progress Paradox -- it looks at the belief American's have that the times of the past were the better days -- the book contends that life has never been as good as it is today. The book addresses the general sentiment that the good times are over by looking at: 1) contemporary material life, 2) why people are so unhappy, and, 3) suggestions on how to treat some of the social problems. One of the book's conclusions apparently is that money isn't necessarily everything -- it doesn't guarantee a happy life. This may be more of a startling revelation for Americans than it is for Ca
Bush OKs Cutting of Alaska's Forests Well, if there ever was an anti-environmentalist, it's Bush. Ever since he came into office, his administration has been trying to open the last US old-growth forest -- and they've succeeded. The administration has given permission for the lumber industry to log and develop 300,000 acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest . What took hundreds-thousands of years to create, Bush took four years of trying to destroy.
Movies I Need to See NOW! LOTR: The Return of the King - and it looks like I'm going to see it today! Big Fish - well, it's Tim Burton. It's weird. It's wonderous. It has monsters -- and they're the good guys! The Last Samurai - it's a remake of so many Japanese movies and westerns -- how can I resist? Looney Toons: Back in Action - oh, why the hell not?! It's silly ole fun! Timeline - I only saw the trailer for this, but it's SciFi, time-traveling, and looks like good action. Might as well! Paycheck - Philip K. Dick's tale of the future gone bad -- good enough for me!
Bush's Deafeat Allows the Environment to Breathe The Bush Administration, among many things, is stupid. Some of the other things they are? Well, stupid ... and stupid ... and hey, stupid too! The administration recently tried to get EPA changes that would allow utilities, refineries and other industrial facilities to do routine maintenance, without having to install additional pollution controls. Talk about duh! At least, not everyone in America is as stupid is the Grand Poobah. Several states challenged the changes in courts and won. The environment can now breathe at little more freely -- for now -- but think America -- think before you decide to re-elect Bush -- the guy's an idiot. The world knows it -- you know it -- it's embarassing!
Guilty of Refusing Queen's Honour This is a good one! Apparently it's a big secret, the list of those who have refused to accept the Knighthood from the Queen -- or the other honours like: the Order of the British Empire, or Commander of the British Empire. That is -- it was secret, until the list was leaked to the press. Naturally, fun ensued!
Amazon More Than Retail Amazon made a name for being a pure e-tailer, and it looks like this year, it will mature to its first year of being in the black. But what else has Amazon set it's sights on? Software. It aims to be the e-tailer platform of choice -- while its merchandise business is doing well, the company is polishing off the software that has the potential to make its services pitch bigger. On the way, it's co-opting the practices of the open source movement, and winning grassroots friends and free labour. More and more, Amazon is beginning to look like the Linux cult -- and it could make a lot of little guys rich in the process. Read the article at BusiessWeek.
NAFTA & Mexico Why has NAFTA soured the palates of many Mexicans and a growing number of Latin Americans? Answer: Washington. More precisely, the Bush Administration (yes -- there is nothing that I can't blame on the administration). Mexico's envoy to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar says Washington "isn't interested in a relationship of equals with Mexico, but rather in a relationship of convenience and subordination." Where the US had the opportunity to play big brother to a developing economy, it has turned that relationship, like so many others, into one where it plays the big bully. Bush is only interested in his war, and closing America to the world -- trade is paying the price, and at a time when the US runs a huge deficit that's being bankrolled by foreign banks. Go figure.
Expensing Stock Options To expense stock options or not? That is not the question. The question really is, 'Should companies be allowed to continue hiding their options expenses from investors?' That's what tech companies want to continue doing with their industry wide lobbying of the US Congress. Their ploy is that it will cost the US jobs to overseas tech companies. Bullshit. THe only way to stem the tide of research jobs is to make it so that the US produce smart, competitive, innovative people with technical background -- yes, I know I over simplify, but so is the argument that expensing stock options allow US companies to keep jobs in the US.
Beagle for Christmas The EU will be playing Santa to Mars this Christmas -- on Christmas day, the small probe, Beagle 2, will touch down on the Martian surface. The Beagle 2 will beat two of NASA's probes, Spirit and Opportunity, slated to land in January. The Beagle 2's mission is to look for signs of life on Mars.
Wired News Here's what I found of interest in the last half-an-hour, surfing the Wired site. Flying Saucer - the US Navy is again putting some money behind research into building a flying saucer. This time around, they're funding a Russian group that claimed to have built and tested a flying saucer in the 90s. This is more than just optimizing on the lessons learned from down aliens ;-) -- there's actually some cool physics involved. Kazaa isn't to Blame - here's a shocker for you. A Dutch court threw out a case suing Kazaa for copyright infringement. Apparently, the Dutch thinks software is OK -- what people do with may not be. I like to use the analogy of WMD -- WMDs don't kill people. Saddam does! ;-) Another Blow for the Music Industry - a US federal appeals court threw out a lower court ruling that allowed the RIAA to force ISPs to reveal the identifies of their users. The mass suing of their customers just got a tad harder. Free Your Informa
Windows Shell Replacement Got too much time on your hands? Screw with Bill Gates -- change the Windoze shell. These sites are a good place to start your adventure (or to kill your computer). Shell Extension City - gateway to the world of shell replacements! Litestep - the Litestep shell! ShellFront - a place to get the latest on shells!
Classic Games Here are links to some great games -- stolen from PCFormat Magazine -- May 2003 issue. Title: Blow out! Download: World of Spectrum Title: BMX Kidz Download: World of Spectrum Title: Bombscare Download: World of Spectrum Title: Booty Download: World of Spectrum Title: Brainstorm Download: World of Spectrum Title: Byte Bitten Download: World of Spectrum Title: Carrier Command Download: World of Spectrum Title: Chicken Chase Download: World of Spectrum Title: Dark Sceptre Download: World of Spectrum Title: Dictator Download: World of Spectrum Title: European Five-a-Side Download: World of Spectrum Title: Fahrenheit 3000 Download: World of Spectrum Title: Gothik Download: World of Spectrum Title: Gregory Loses His Clock Download: World of Spectrum Title: Gunstar Download: World of Spectrum Title: Happiest Days of your Life Download: Wor
A New Wireless Age Another article from BusinessWeek magazine. There's about to be an explosion in the wireless industry. Since the 30s the airwaves have been tightly regulated, but the FCC in the US is about to change all that, and poised to take advantage of the free airwaves are companies touting technologies such as Smart Antennas, Mesh Networks and Agile Radios.
The Taming of the Internet Another article from BusinessWeek -- Spam! Spam! Spam! Governments around the world are moving to regulate the internet -- in America, legislation already awaits the signature of the President. A lot of the blame goes straight to spammers, who will undoubtedly be left untouched by the illegalities of what they do -- a lot of us however, will see tighter controls over what we do in the office and what we do at home, as corporations assert control over the use of their assets and local ISPs try to stem the abuse of their networks. Try some of these statistics on for size and ask if you wouldn't want something done as well: 10.4 million spam e-mails are sent every minute worldwide; 74% of executives say e-mail is even more vital to their business than the telephone; 80% of the e-mail reaching AOL is tagged as spam and blocked. That's 2.5 billion messages a day. 7% of US web surfers say they have purchased something from an unsolicited e-mail.
Coming Out in Corporate America An article in BusinessWeek magazine -- even though they comprise 6% of the American population, and are one of the most highly educated minority, homesexuals face stiff discrimation as move up America's corporate ladder. But they are changing the face of corporate America. Openly gay corporate leaders include David Geffen, DreamWorks SKG co-founder, former Quark CEO Tim Gill and Ford Vice-Chairman Allan D. Gilmour. More and more, corporations are instituting policies banning discrimination for sexual orientation in the workplace -- but how much have things changed when 36 states in the US still make it legal to discriminate for sexual orientation in the workplace.
Microsoft's Swastika One of Microsoft's fonts contain the symbol of the swastika. MS quickly released a patch to remove the symbol. I don't get it. The swastika is used in many cultures and was used before Hitler took it, in Asia. That being said, people who take offense to things like that should really think hard about it. We're putting a lot of power into the symbol by denying it. The more we deny it, the more power it has. There is nothing offensive about the swastika -- what's offensive, was what it was used to symbolize. The Buddhist religion uses the swastika to symbolize the footsteps of the Buddha.
US-Visit Well, nowhere in the US constitution does it say the Americans really have to give a rat's ass about non-American rights -- so, that's exactly what the US government is planning on exploiting with US-Visit -- the biometric database that will be filled with fingerprints and pictures of everyone entering the US from abroad. The plan is to have visitors names and fingerprints rapidly compared with those of known terrorists -- but who's a known terrorist? And what other non-mentionables will the US run visitors against? On one hand I agree with the Americans -- it's their country, so they can decide to welcome whoever they like -- but with the pendulum of American foreign policy, who really knows how the database will be used, and against who? The US makes some interesting friends overseas -- today's known terrorist may just be someone that one of the US government's 'friends' don't like today. Or the US may allow immigrants into the count
Steady Supply
From InformationWeek Online -- it looks like it's going to be a jolly season for retailers -- estimates are that retail sales will be up 5.7% this season over last year's, a 3.5% increase that will ring in $217.4 billion in November/December -- at least in the US. But usually the trend in the US gets reflected in Canada. A lot of the increase will come from companies being able to meet consumer demand -- companies that invested in Supply Chain processes and technologies over the last few years will now be reaping the rewards. A lot of those systems and processes are around planning and forecasting systems.
The Rise of India The cover story of the Dec. 8 issue of BusinessWeek magazine -- about the India's growth, its brainpower, and how corporate America is being reshaped. From the 90s, America saw the trend to outsource call centres and development jobs to cheap labour in India. Everyone have heard of the stories of people call help desks and not knowing that the person on the line engaging in small talk is actually have a world away, and has never seen North America. In the 70s and 80s, America saw its manufacturing jobs migrate to Asia (predominantly China), then in the 80s and 90s, it saw it's electronics engineering dominance wrested by Asia (Korea, Taiwan, etc.) -- but as it lost those jobs and underwent periods of pain that saw unemployment as workers were retrained, it emerged with a higher class of employees and jobs -- jobs that offered higher wages, greater benefits, etc. What now however, as India takes on the American service and research jobs? Two paths lie ahe
Trade War? Since the Bush administration took power, the US has been slowly sliding into protectionism -- 9/11 only served to accelerate the process under the guise of security. As a colleague of mine likes to say, "security has trumped trade." But the 9/11 is now only the latest excuse that Bush is using to reinforce the wall around America -- the economic slump the world has been in, resulting in the loss of American jobs and an upcoming election, has put the Bush administration in the position where short term gains and appearances far outweighed long term stability and growth. Recently, the US has been belligerent in its responses to rulings handed down by the WTO. Granted the WTO has mostly sided against the US in the past, but when you really dig into the heart of the matter, you'll find the US the cause of most of its woes. If it wasn't for American businesses striving to give American consumers the lowest cost at the price of American manufacturing jobs,
The Top Givers Another from BusinessWeek Online -- America's top givers -- the people, who've made the billions, and are giving back during their lifetime. I, like everyone else, like to take a stab at Gates every now and again, but between him and his wife, they've $24,976 million dollars away to charities they support -- that's over 50% of their wealth! After reading this article, I actually felt like rejoining the human race.
Wal-Mart Nation Americans it seems are finally waking up to the horrible noise of the Wal-Mart nation. After decades of businesses working hard to driving costs down, therefore keeping prices down, the downside of the strategy is showing up as a social disaster waiting to happen. Lowering costs to give consumers the lowest price has it costs. Among them is the paying of workers lower and lower wages, the outsourcing of jobs to temps or overseas labourers, and keeping the working stiff just where s/he is, as there is no possibility of career advancement, therefore no hope of ever achieving the American dream. It's a disturbing trend that's not just perpetrated by Wal-Mart, but also other businesses trying to keep pace.