Friday, April 30, 2010

Oil Spill

The oil slick may be reaching the shore of Louisiana today, endangering wildlife as well as an enormous oyster cultivation industry. BP has said it would welcome military/national guard intervention, which has been discussed by Louisiana's governor.

I've avoided writing about it because I just didn't want to think about it at all.


From National Geographic: Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Aerial Views Show Leak's Size

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Leap-frogging


When you don't have the bother of pre-existing infrastructure, like Mongolian nomads, you can skip right to solar-powered satellite telephones.

Nomad Photos -- National Geographic

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

On a lighter note....

I bring you, 10 Tragic Moments in Pants. The only one I disagree with is the Skort - yes, I have proudly worn them.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

WTF?

North Korea may be blowing up South Korean warships IN South Korean waters! What is Kim Jong-Il playing at?

IT WAS a dignified address. Before wiping tears from his eyes with a folded handkerchief, President Lee Myung-bak... read out the names of 46 sailors who died last month when their ship, the Cheonan, exploded in South Korean waters. He carefully avoided pinning the blame on anyone, but on April 22nd, Yonhap, South Korea’s news agency, reported that the government’s military-intelligence agency, using intelligence gathered jointly with America, had concluded the regime in North Korea had deliberately attacked and destroyed the 1,200-tonne warship.
Even if tangible evidence of North Korean involvement emerges, the president’s caution on April 19th will nevertheless be understandable. Hot-blooded retaliation against a nuclear-armed despot would be fraught with danger for the peninsula, and for relations between America and China, the main backers of south and north respectively.
But ever since a preliminary investigation of the Cheonan’s salvaged stern concluded that the blast did not come from on board the vessel, suspicions have turned towards North Korea. This, analysts say, puts Mr Lee in the most delicate position of his two-year-old administration. If the suspicions prove correct, a tough response would be expected and perhaps unavoidable... 
So far, the regime in Pyongyang has only indirectly denied involvement. After three weeks of silence on the incident, it said on April 17th in a news report: “Failing to probe the cause of the sinking of the ship, the puppet military warmongers, right-wing conservative politicians and other traitors in South Korea are now foolishly seeking to link the sinking with the North at any cost.” A non-denial denial. [economist.com]

Friday, April 23, 2010

Religious Zealots with no sense of humor

George and I never watch South Park, but about 2 days ago we stopped as we were flipping through the channels. Little did we realize it would prove to be news-worthy.

All I can say is that it's clear there are some people with ZERO sense of humor.




Energy for Brazil

The vast majority of Brazil's energy already comes from hydropower and they're looking to add the world's third largest hydropower project. The cast of Avatar has been protesting in the Amazon, but the auction went ahead this week, and the Belo Monte project will be built.

The fundamental question is how to walk the line among environmental preservation, forcible relocations and economic development. Some of the fundamental problems with developing hydropower in the Amazon are that in many places the river carries quite a large load of silt, which will eventually diminish the power generation, and that because the Amazon is so far from where the power will be consumed, the line losses in transmission can be 20-30%.


Brazil’s rapidly growing economy needs more energy, preferably renewable. The scale of the dam—it will be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric station after China’s Three Gorges and Brazil’s own Itaipu—is epic. So is the investment, of at least 19 billion reais (nearly $11 billion). But ever since the engineers in BrasĂ­lia rolled out the blueprints for damming the Xingu two decades ago, the project has attracted powerful opposition.
Environmental groups and river dwellers say Belo Monte will flood vast patches of rainforest while desiccating others. “The forest is our butcher shop, the river is our market,” Indian leaders wrote in a newspaper. They were aided by greens from Europe and the United States, including the tribes of Hollywood. James Cameron, a film director, flew in to daub his face in red paint, hug an Indian and join the protest...
Yet greens were not alone in their lack of enthusiasm for the project. Some of the country’s leading builders, such as Odebrecht and Camargo CorrĂȘa, pulled out of the auction, convinced that the government-dictated power rates, capped at 83 reais ($47) per megawatt-hour, were too low to assure a fair return on their investment. (The winning consortium offered a slightly lower rate.) The government had to pledge billions of dollars in soft loans and tax breaks to lure bidders. Even so, two firms in the winning consortium immediately dropped out, apparently because they thought the tariff too low.
Not since a military government quartered the Amazon basin with roads, dams and settlements in the 1970s has Brazil seen such a row over the rainforest. Ironically, Belo Monte is a project shaped by the lessons of the past, drawn and redrawn to cull the power of the forests without razing them. That challenge—developing the wilds and having them too—is in many ways the riddle of modern Brazil. The rest of the developing world is watching closely to see whether it can be solved.
A generation ago similar protests over an earlier version of the same dam—known then as Kararao—forced officials to rethink their strategy. They came up with Belo Monte. It was not just a marketing ploy. Instead of building a great wall across the Xingu to create a massive reservoir, Belo Monte is designed as a run-of-river dam, a technique that harnesses the natural flow of the river to drive the turbines. [economist.com]

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Rahmbo for Chicago?

The subject of Emanuel running for mayor was brought up on last night's episode of Charlie Rose on PBS. Rose asked the former Congressman from Chicago's North Side if there's any other job he'd like in government and Emanuel said he'd like to run for mayor of Chicago. That is, if the current mayor, Richard Daley, does not seek re-election.

Emanuel said he misses having contact with constituents. He also emphasized he loves being the president's chief of staff. [http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=41432]
I'm not sure Chicago needs a partisan bull-dog for mayor. Well, we now have a non-partisan cult-of-personality, so take your pick.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A nascent Slow Travel movement?

As one who has just had a trip to the Riviera cancelled because of uncooperative volcanos, who shall remain nameless, the following article caught my eye:

Governments, businesses and most travelers, irritated by disrupted itineraries and worried about lost productivity, are delighted to see planes back in the sky. But I, for one, wish this blessedly jet-free interlude could have continued a little longer. In the eccentric, ground-level adventures of some stranded passengers — 700-mile taxi rides through Scandinavia, for instance, perhaps a horse-drawn stagecoach over the Alps if things got really desperate — I’m reminded of the romance we trade away each time we shuffle aboard an airplane. [nytimes.com]
If only I'd booked the QE2 in the first place...

Friday, April 16, 2010

Burma with nukes!

Even as President Obama won agreement from world leaders this week to block the spread of nuclear weapons, the United States is facing a new—and unexpected—nuclear foe: Burma.
National-security officials tell The Daily Beast that U.S. spy agencies and their Asian counterparts have stepped up surveillance of potential nuclear sites in Burma in recent weeks in light of evidence that suggests the country’s brutal junta is trying to buy nuclear-weapons technology from North Korea. [dailybeast.com]

Fatwa against Terrorism

The jihadists, it seemed, had just added a new target to one of their death lists. His name is Tahir ul-Qadri, and he's no government official. He's one of Pakistan's leading Islamic scholars, an authority on the Quran and Islamic religious law.
It's no wonder the terrorists want to see Qadri dead. Last month he promulgated a 600-page legal ruling, a fatwa, that condemns terrorism as un-Islamic. A few Western media outlets gave the news a nod, but the coverage quickly petered out. And that's a pity, because the story of this fatwa is just beginning to get interesting. "I have declared a jihad against terrorism," says the 59-year-old Qadri in an interview. "I am trying to bring [the terrorists] back towards humanism. This is a jihad against brutality, to bring them back towards normality. This is an intellectual jihad." This isn't empty rhetoric. Last year militants killed one of Qadri's colleagues, a scholar named Sarfraz Ahmed Naeem, for expressing similar positions. [foreignpolicy.com]

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Worth seeing again

You've got to love our elected representatives, who think that islands can tip over. Has this guy ever been to an island?

Hats off to Adm. Willard for not laughing out loud. I wouldn't have been able to manage this with a straight face.

And the appropriate response...

Guam anti-capsize relief program - funny.

Central Asia Primer

Here's a nice summary of the situation in Central Asia, as well as on how the US views the region:

U.S. policymakers increasingly view Central Asia as a transit point to somewhere else. It is a region through which oil and natural gas flow to Europe, reducing U.S. allies' dependence on Russian energy supplies. It is a region through which fuel, food, and spare parts flow to surging U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reducing their dependence on a precarious Pakistani supply route. Officials and policy experts even have a new name for this region that captures its status as a logistical intermediary, rather than a set of distinct countries that matter in their own right: They call it the "Northern Distribution Network."

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Remember - Putin was KGB

I can't even imagine the national trauma that Poland is going through and how this is going to effect the country for years to come. Many have noted how suddenly warm and fuzzy Putin is towards the Poles. Amazing that he has to actively demonstrate that he isn't responsible for the elimination of the top of Poland's government.


Russia's never been known for its smooth diplomacy, or its empathy. So what was going on?
Kremlin-watchers say Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev were determined to quash speculation that Russia was responsible for the disaster. "This was a natural PR move, designed to neutralize any possible speculation about this very delicate and tragic event," said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Moscow office of the Heritage Foundation.
The matter is especially sensitive because the crash that killed Kaczynski took place as he was about to mark the 70th anniversary of a grim event that continues to poison Russian-Polish relations: the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, Stalin's effort to decapitate the Polish leadership during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland. [foreginpolicy.com]