Archive for 2012

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ONE MINE ON A COUNTRY: “The mine will help turn Mongolia into the world’s fastest-growing economy with staggering economic growth of over 30%, up from an already robust 17% last year. Oyu Tolgoi is forecast to contribute close to third of the country’s GDP when it goes into full operation. If you go beyond these rather dry statistics (and NYT doesn’t) you get a better idea of the impact of Oyu Tolgoi on the country of fewer than 3 million inhabitants. The mine will increase the average earnings of Mongolians by 60% – today the country ranks 130th in the world based on GDP per capita at $3,000 and 22% of the population live below the poverty line.”

JIM TREACHER: “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. And if it does, your own government might just lie about it and then stonewall you for… Oh, let’s see… Two years, seven months, eleven days, and eighteen hours. And counting. And hell, I didn’t even work for them. God rest your soul, Christopher Stevens. You tried to make the world a better place, the people you trusted let you down, and now they care about nothing but saving their own asses. You deserved better. We all do.”

WHAT GETS YOU CLEANER? Body Wash, Or Soap? There’s a clear price advantage: “The proof is in the numbers: Old-fashioned soap is just plain cheaper. A 10-ounce bottle of body wash will cost you approximately $0.17 per wash, while a single bar of soap will cost you just $0.012 per wash.”

TALKING WITH WILLIAM GIBSON:

If punk emerged today — instead of in 1977 — how would it take hold on the popular consciousness?

“You’d pull it up on YouTube, as soon as it was played,” hypothesized William Gibson in a recent phone interview with Wired. “It would go up on YouTube among the kazillion other things that went up on YouTube that day. And then how would you find it?”

In the third and final installment of the Wired interview with William Gibson, the noted science fiction author discusses punk rock, internet memes, the dawn of recorded sound, and the now-infamous “Gangnam Style” video by Korean pop star Psy. The video, which has nearly 170 million views on YouTube and counting, has captured Gibson’s imagination.

“That’s something from a subculture we would have no way of knowing anything about, and suddenly it’s on YouTube and it’s got millions and millions of hits, and people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow, will you check this out?’” Gibson said.

I think early punk on YouTube would look something like this.

ARGENTINA’S MIDDLE CLASS IS FED UP:

Thousands of people took to the streets across Argentina on September 13 to protest generalized insecurity, heavy handed state intervention and a looming threat of constitutional reform that could pave the way for the re-election of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2015. Temperatures have hit a boiling point after a very long simmer heated by years of government-denied inflation, nationalizations, import restrictions, and now talks of constitutional reform. . . . Adding insult to injury, the Kirchner government denies the over 25 percent inflation affecting the country since about 2004. Consumers are dizzy and concerned. Their potential for savings has been eroded by run-away prices and a drastically weakened peso. One older woman said to me recently that it reminds her of the 1980s under President Raúl Alfonsín when prices were changing constantly, in some cases before you made it to the check-out counter.

Moreover, the government has flashed back to another draconian measure reminiscent of the 2001 bank restrictions. Argentines can no longer access dollars. The government claims that they can so long as they justify their tax-paying income, but the reality is much more complicated. Argentines can now only access $100 a day for international travel at the official exchange rate of nearly 4.5 pesos per U.S. dollar. These restrictions, of course, do not apply to government officials. Considering that Argentina’s real-estate market is largely dollar-based, these restrictions don’t just impact on well-heeled travellers but have broad sweeping implications for the domestic economy.

Related: “Indec’s economic data have been suspect ever since a staff shakeup at the agency in early 2007 resulted in long- serving civil servants being replaced by political appointees. Last year, President Cristina Kirchner’s government levied heavy fines, and in some cases criminal charges, against numerous economists for publishing inflation estimates that were higher than what Indec reported. Since then, opposition members of congress have released a monthly survey of inflation provided by anonymous private- sector research firms to protect them from prosecution by the government.”

Happily, such things are unimaginable here.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How your cell phone wrecks your relationships — even when you’re not using it. “It’s understandably tempting to play with your shiny new iPhone when you’re out for dinner. But new research suggests that you don’t even have to shower attention on your smartphone to sour your relationship with your dinner mate; in fact, just leaving your phone on the table — untouched — can do interpersonal damage.”

WAR ON MEN: WHO WANTS A BOY? “The conventional wisdom has always been this: Given a choice, couples would prefer sons. That has certainly been the case in places like China and India, where couples have used pregnancy screening to abort female fetuses. But in the United States, a different kind of sex selection is taking place: Mothers like Simpson are using expensive reproductive procedures so they can select girls.”

This will be lauded as progressive, at least until people can select to ensure their child is heterosexual.

NATHAN MYHRVOLD: The Wealthy Should Fund Innovation. “Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin, a company that builds spaceships. Elon Musk has Tesla, an electric-car company, and SpaceX, another rocket-ship company. Bill Gates took on big challenges in the developing world—combating malaria, HIV, and poverty. He is also funding inventive new companies at the cutting edge of technology. I’m involved in some of them, including TerraPower, which we formed to commercialize a promising new kind of nuclear reactor.”

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

READER JAY VAIL ASKS THAT I PLUG HIS BOOK, Lone Star Rising: The Voyage Of The Wasp. Here’s the cover blurb:

George Washington is dead. The American rebellion has failed. Imperial tyranny not only grips the newly pacified colonies, but reaches across the Appalachians to the refugees who cluster there in a fledgling free state they call The Tennessee. So they are not safe even in that wilderness. Led by Andrew Jackson, the refugees flee further westward into the Spanish Empire to a desolate place called Texas. But Jackson is not content to be a Spanish subject. He dreams large. Texas must be free and independent from the corrupt old empires of Europe. But with no army other than the few in the Texas Rangers, and no navy, Texas has no hope of opposing the forces of Spain, which crush one rebellion after another in the New World, until there is no more resistance except that posed by the refugees from British America.

No hope, that is, until David Crockett meets an unemployed naval officer named John Paul Jones II on the wharves at Baltimore.

Together they buy and refit a broken down warship and name her the TS Wasp, the first ship of the Texas Navy. And sail away to seize Spanish treasure and remake history.

Sounds like fun!