Africa: The new Chinese Colony

It now appears the fate of the African people is to be looted and taken over by the Chinese. The Chinese have quickly discovered that they cannot maintain their economy and population burdens within their own borders. They have been very busy signing exclusive contracts all over Africa for raw good and materials to bring back to China in order to keep factories humming along. And the icing on the cake is that Africa is now China's best new market to sell their goods to. So its like saying 'Hey sorry we took all your minerals, metals, timber, and oil, but look on the bright side - you can buy it all back from us in the form of Chinese goods !!'

Here is the article I read that has a more detailed overview of this serious issue:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1036105/How-Chinas-taking-Africa-West-VERY-worried.html

The Latest Bailout Request: U.S. Automakers

Seems that GM/Ford/Chrysler and the good old UAW were in Washington this past week to beg for some of that taxpayer honey. The problem is that how do they think they are ever going to be able to pay these loans back? I mean their business has been shrinking for years thanks to the innovations and quality of the Japanese automakers building cars here in the U.S. I have to admit some of the latest vehicles to come out of Detroit are truly world class and its a shame that they are in the position they are in. But really it was their own fault. They knew they could not sell to the SUV crowd forever given the massive appetite for petroleum in developing nations and that it would have an eventual effect here. So here they are in midst of a credit crisis with the wrong product mix for the times combined with unsavory union contracts that guarantee that a heavy slice of anything they make goes to pay pension and healthcare costs. People argue that we must not let these companies fail, that it would have a catastrophic affect on the economy and employment in this nation. But is that really prudent to toss good money at a failing business model and hope on a wing and prayer that they can pay the government back in the future? They must be allowed to fail and reorganize into tightly run, competitive and innovative companies that can thrive in the long run.

No more bailouts please!!!!

It seems that government cannot let the markets function properly like they were designed to do and that both parties are to blame. When times are good and people make nice profits investing in real estate or companies rake in the profits, do these individuals suddenly share their fortune with U.S. taxpayers? Hell no. But suddenly when people are loosing their homes because of risky real estate investments or companies are going under because of poor planning and financial insight they are all in line for bailouts. Its ridiculous and undermines the way the free markets are supposed to work in this nation. Here are some articles about my point:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122463178413656455.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122506830024970697.html

The Greed Bubble

"Greed is good - greed works" proclaims the character Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's 1987 movie Wall Street. The current crisis facing the U.S. financial market and citizen is what I like to call the collapse of the 'Greed Bubble'. People are scrambling madly around now trying to find out who is responsible for this mess when the whole time they should be looking at themselves. It was greed that led people to apply for loans they knew they could not afford by standard lending practices and to take out large home equity loans to pay for fancy cars and big screen TV sets. It was greed that drove mortgage brokers to qualify people for no money down, interest only loans, etc with the crazy belief that home prices would keep rising to the moon so they could make their fat commissions. It was the banks that packaged these stinky loans and sold them to investment houses because of greed. It was the investment houses that made these into securities and gave them an AA bond rating to sell to investors because of greed. And at last the investors who bought these securities in the hopes of making high interest returns. It was a great scheme that worked until the mortgage rates started adjusting on people and the rest was history. The whole moral is that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn't. The age of accountability is here now that the greed bubble has popped. A time of reflection for both the Government and the American public over how greed can get out of control and ways to recognize it in the future. Greed is good, but in the future it will have to play by the rules and live within its means.

Seven years later

Today is the seventh anniversary of 9/11. In many ways in my life it seems like it was just yesterday but at the same time long ago. I remember driving to work in Reston running late and getting a call from my Mom that there was an accident in NYC, that a plane had crashed into the WTC building. As soon as I reached work however, I found everyone huddled around a big TV upstairs and saw the 2nd plane hit myself. Everyone was strangely silent, only gasping when replays of the impact played over again. We witnessed the plane hitting the Pentagon on the news and at that point everyone was dismissed from work and heading home to loved ones. I went to my window office downstairs instead of leaving and sat at my desk with only the light from the outside coming in, thinking to myself in silence. A strange calmness soon took over me then. So many chaotic things were happening in my life on a personal level at the time that just seemed to parallel the destruction of the towers themselves. It was a big turning point for me, a return to recognize my needs that I had been ignoring for a long time and the same time I think for a country to recognize some things it had been ignoring. That time in my life and the people in the office I worked at will always be etched in my mind because of the date 9/11 alone. I wish all the best to those whose lives were affected directly that day seven years ago.

Nav System

I am traveling in New England this week on vacation and making good use of my $120 super cheap Chinese made navigation unit. It has been pretty good so far except for the couple of times it froze up completely and a few times it completely got confused. I keep seeing ads for expensive models that have the ability to reroute you around backups which at first seems like a great feature. But the reality is as more and more of these devices get onto the road and become affordable for everyone, the route around backups will become the new route because everyone will be taking the side road. So I guess its a matter of enjoy it while you can, since there are a limited amount of optional routes that can be used by an ever increasing amount of vehicles.

A Food Contradiction

I was reading today on CNN that oceanic dead zones are increasing rapidly and becoming a global problem. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of dead zones is the use of large amounts of fertilizer which eventually leech off the land and into the water, eventually traveling to the sea. Corn, which is the largest crop in the U.S., is especially fertilizer intensive. When in the ocean, this fertilizer causes the production of huge algae blooms which starve the water of oxygen, killing the seafood around it. So basically in the quest to grow more and more grain to feed the population of the world, we are inadvertently killing the seafood we depend on as well. If it continues, we would see a future when a seafood meal would be a very rare delicacy, something the average person could not even experience. Being a person who loves to eat Maryland crab, this is a very sobering thought indeed.

Best of Craiglist

I have been trying to sell a rug and table on craigslist for a while now without any luck. I'm not sure why they haven't been selling, after all they are from that trendy furniture store West Elm, which should mean something. Maybe people just have been cutting back on spending or are on vacation. Who knows. The best thing about craigslist though is the Best of Craigslist - the posts that are so bizarre or funny that they gain a special status in the heart of all the craigslist users out there. Here are some of my favorites:

Ad #1
Ad #2
Ad #3
Ad #4
Ad #5
Ad #6

Where is the bottom?

The recent news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the icing on the cake of the housing crisis facing the U.S. right now. The foreclosure rates have not settled and still appear to be rising. Financing is getting harder to get for home purchasers right now causing less money and interest that is much needed to be invested in the struggling industry. This is not a normal recession or downturn right now like many economists have predicted. When the housing industry can become stabilized and reaches the bottom is anyone's guess. I was lucky when I got my home this April that I had a good salary and down payment to cover financing, but I think I was the exception and not the normal home buyer. I feel sorry for many Americans now, their dreams of owning a home or getting financing are in a big jeopardy until the economy recovers from this mess. At least the prices keep dropping right? Well that is not good news for all the people who bought when the prices were inflated the last few years and now owe much more than their property is worth. I may soon count myself in this category myself - even though I bought this year, I noticed prices falling every month so far. I took this into consideration when I was buying that prices would continue to fall, so I hedged my bets by buying a place close to downtown as data has shown that the most severe price drops are happening on the outer suburbs of the D.C. area.

Viral Parasites

Its an amazing time to be alive, especially in the field of Biotechnology.   I believe a majority of the scientific advances to be made in the 21st century will come directly from the understanding and manipulation of genetic material.    Today I read two very interesting articles on Wired.com, one that talked about French researchers discovering a small virus (called Sputnik) that actually infected and hijacked another larger virus to force it to reproduce the DNA of the attacking virus.   Can a cold virus catch a cold is the question now it would seem.   But the researchers were still arguing over the fact that a human type virus might be too small for another parasitic virus to come along and infect it.   Here is a photo from the article showing the smaller virus attacking the larger one.  

Union Dues

I work for a company that employs a rather large labor union to handle the maintenance and installation of our various products.   (Note that I cannot be more specific due to privacy issues)   It is the time once again that the labor contract has expired and is up for negotiation which is the case every few years.   I am not against labor unions and the right to organize in this country, but I am against these same unions asking for benefits and considerations that the regular non-union members don't receive.    For example my pension was eliminated recently and I have to contribute to healthcare via my salary, but the union members still have a full pension and healthcare upon retirement.  I think GM recently came up with a good model to handle retirement and healthcare costs, which was to make the unions themselves responsible for them.  To hand over the funds that are maintained by the corporate entity and let the union management bear the costs of maintaining these benefits for their members.   

Me vs The Tree

I haven't written in a while now thanks to a brief altercation I had with a tree in my front yard.  I was having fun trimming branches off with a tree saw and making a general mess of things when a fragment of wood from above landed in my eye straight on.    I ran into the house and washed my eye out thinking it was just some dirt, but I soon found out I had purchased a one way ticket on the pain train for not wearing any protective eye wear.   The funny thing was that earlier in the day I was wearing protective goggles to work underneath the car, but for some reason I didn't wear them for working on the tree.   So I ended up scratching my cornea pretty well according to my eye doctor.   Let me tell you it feels like something you never want to experience, like someone is poking your eye every few minutes and swelling like you just took a punch in a drunken bar fight.    Today I almost look and feel normal which is a relief, but I will never make that mistake again....

Starbucks takes a shot

It was announced today that Starbucks took their first quarterly loss ever as a business.   Obviously the economy has something to do with it, but what about those die hard caffeine addicts needing the morning fix?   Are they buying cheaper McDonalds coffeee?   Bringing their own in the thermos?   As for me, I purchased an automatic expresso machine a couple of months ago to satisfy my cravings instead of paying 4 bucks at Starbucks.   But I think the problem for Starbucks goes deeper than just the coffee.   I recently went to a downtown coffee shop in the U street area and it was everything that Starbucks is not.   Instead of that antiseptic chain store environment, it was full of eclectic furniture and comfy places to sit.  Full of people enjoying themselves and talking to one another and a calendar full of local music appearances.  Starbucks is not the place I would like to hang out in -  on one of their hard chairs and tables overlooking shelves of merchandise instead of tasteful decorations and artwork.    They really need to recreate that comfortable environment to have more business.   After all, part of enjoying coffee out of the house is about the scene, not just the taste of the brew.

Free Bike Yo!

I have to admit it. I'm a bike and biking junky. As a kid I used to retrieve bikes from the garbage and abandoned bikes out of the woods and bring them home much to the chagrin of my parents. Just as recently as a few years ago I owned four different bikes and was working on picking up number five. Someone asked me why I needed so many kinds of bikes and the answer is always the same - each one is different, it has its own personality. Recently I have been excited to have rescued two bikes from the trash. One is a cool '80's Peugeot that someone just tossed out of the garage onto the curb and is in great condition, and the other one is a Giant aluminum frame mtb that was ridden to hell and back found by a dumpster in Georgetown, most likely an old student bike. So I have two project bikes to work on and will hopefully be fixed up soon and enjoyed by new owners instead of ending up in a landfill somewhere.

The Universal Mind

I thought of and interesting idea today. What if every individual was intelligent as the person sitting next to them at any given moment? Its not too difficult to imagine a future when wireless data speeds enable people to be permanently connected to the internet at high speed data rates. Just like you would recall facts and knowledge from your mind, lets say you would be able to recall the same facts and knowledge from the the "Universal" mind of the online world. The dissemination of knowledge would take place not through classes or talking among peers but just simply via the connection itself to the bigger model of the common brain or singular knowledge. I envision a point where this might happen - if not in my lifetime then shortly thereafter. That kind of thought intrigues me. What would people discuss if they had the same access to knowledge and recall as the person sitting next to them? What experience would be shared that would be unique or set itself apart from you could access online or would your experience simply be assimilated into the vast electronic stream of consciousness?

Why the economy is like global warming

Environmentalists speak of greenhouse gasses and the fact that even if we quit all emissions right now, the effect of what has been already introduced into the atmosphere will have consequences well into the future for climate anyway.   The same model applies to the current state of the economy and financial problems in the U.S.   We as a country have introduced policies and have been tied to programs that will place enormous financial pressures on the future generations to bear.   Entitlement programs like social security and medicare consume more and more of the budget every year and will soon be bankrupt unless taxes are raised or benefits reduced.    Pensions of citizens working for private corporations are being eliminated and frozen putting the retirement savings of the average person into the whims of the financial market and most certainly less income at retirement.   Meanwhile, government and state employees still have protected pensions which are being funded by the taxpayers who enjoy no such retirement programs because their respective companies have eliminated those programs.   In addition to entitlement programs, spending by the government for the Iraqi war is pushing the national deficit to new record levels over 9 trillion dollars.   One can only conclude that future generations of Americans will not only face a climate disaster, but a fiscal one as well.  Current and future generations most certainly will see a reduction in the quality of life that no one likes to think about.     It may mean a large part of the population will see such reduced benefits and savings that they will never even be able to consider the possibility of retirement at all and will have to work their entire lives for an ever shrinking way of life because of inflation.   

Cicadas

What is it about the cicadas in summer?  They are probably one of the most hideous insects to look at and they molt leaving their old shells stuck everywhere.   But the sound they make is pure music.  To me it is the true sound of summer.   Reminding me of barbeque cookouts with friends and family that take place on sweaty July weekends.   The sound of being out of school as a kid and biking as far as you can until you get scared you are too far away from home.   The sound that you hear that last moment after you leave the diving board at the pool and fall quickly to the inevitable belly flop on the water below.   The sound that could be the reminder of the first person you kissed on a sweet soft summer night,  or the time you got ice cream all over your shoes because it melted too fast.   Whatever memory it may bring, that ugly bug really does make my summer experience complete every time I hear it's music wafting down from the treetops.

Neighbors

Its always sort of an anxiety moving to a new neighborhood and finding out who your new neighbors are.    So when I moved in a few months ago to my new home, I was really happy to find a really cool and intelligent couple around my age living next door to me.   Unfortunately they told me they were moving to Malaysia and selling their home.   Even worse, my girlfriend and I had them over to visit for some wine and some snacks before they left and it turns out they are really engaging to talk to and it looks like we would have been really good friends if they had been staying. I guess I just hope that whoever buys the house next to me is cool or at least doesn't mind loud movie soundtracks late at night.