Stupid Foreigner's point of view

Would World leaders be astronauts?

2009-10-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

As we can see in this report from BBC, environmentalists always have someone to blame. Normally this someone are the "World Leaders", a specific group amid "the others".
But do they have nothing with the so-called leaders? Don´t they can be one of them? Is not the leadership open for who has ability to be one?
These people must let the saint´s vests away and start to demonstrate effectively, but not just marching, showing the public the reasons of theirs ideas.
People does not destruct the environment by amusement, despite will not change the practices based on nothing. Well explained facts, showing how they affect the people will transform the attitudes, terrorism will just foment fear.
Blame world leaders as if they were not humans as ourself will just produce nothing.

Hypocrisy

2009-09-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Its name is Michael Moore.

The ultimate voice recognisation system

2009-07-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Brought to us by Spinvox.
And that is : low cost datacenters in Africa and Asia.
Well, as a lesson from it it I can get that anyone can be a computer genius.

Was it a once over?

2009-07-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe it is because I definitively would give her a once over, but I have no doubt Obama did it.
Sarkozi? Let´s pass to Carla Bruni the chance of answer this.

Sarah Palin

2009-07-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

She is, for my taste, likely a top model than a role model, but we could not point her as a sphinx. She was true talkative and used to talk the truth, or at least her truth.
Until now.
By this moment there is a Palin 2.0, with enigmas, as the reasons to her near resignation from the govenment of the really great state Alaska.
Which secrets are still inside that mind?
well, waiting and see.

Taking the mask off

2009-06-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Is it Mankiw is doing with the supposed ingenuity of Keynes.
For who still believes in the English charlatan it´s a good class.

Be afraid of your thoughts, they can turn into reality

2009-06-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

As has shown the text of Robert Kaplan, the evil´s axis governments can be near to vanish. And it can be very dangerous to the World.
Beating a dictatorship can be very easy to who has a powerful army, fixing the things or clean its own crappy surely not.

Working for free to a multibillionaire company?

2009-06-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

Is it a joke?
No, the CEO surely asked for this to its staff work a month for free.
It would be funny, if it was not tragic.
As you can read in the link, Time tried explain the reasons of British Airways. I was not able to understand it.
Can you do this?

Luck them have reached this point, they could fall sooner

2009-05-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

For anyone is now surprised by the fate of the Detroit companies, with two of the Big Three on their knees, read the latest post of the economist Mankiw.
The truly surprising is that falling process had not been quicker.

There is no too young to learn

2009-04-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

There are some subjects will accompany you live long. Finances is surely one. No matters how much you have, earning money or keeping it will take most part of your time in adulthood. But, differently of most subjects, this one still brings to people reminiscences of magical thought. No one in its perfect mind would jump from a bridge expecting flying, it is taught since early years that it is impossible, there are natural rules against it called laws of gravity.
Nonetheless there in mentally healthy people that thinks money can reproduce yourself magically. Or believe that can live expending more than earn forever and ever. For secure the next generations avoid be trapped in a circle of unbearable debts, like millions are now, the best solution can be follow the path drawn by this article.
Teaching kids not just the value of money, but how the financial system works will produce much more smart grown ups. Of the kind the Best and the Brightest will not get foolish.

Back to the future

2009-03-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, Argentina and China have given up of be modern states long ago, but return to the balanced trade is a little far away.
Germany used to do it before II World War, and we all know how it has ended up. I hope the leaders of this two countries get better results from the same act.

A new fetish

2008-04-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

From times to times, the media find a new subject that is characterised as a totally new thing, sometimes as dangerous as a menace to the mankind. The last one was the warming of the Earth, but it is been substituted by the ultimate danger, at least of this week, the food crisis.
Let´s think, is there a food crisis? Depends on what you call a crisis. The Oxford Dictionary says: crisis is a time of great difficulty or danger or when an important decision must be made. So... well, I think, no, we are not in a food crisis.
Despite some prices pumping worries into the economists minds, and some governors, they are all but a glimpse of scarcity. The world has never produced more food than today. Malthus would not say I said because he would be to ashamed about the way its previsions have been destroyed by the time. On the contrary of his expectations, the harvests are showing a faster pace of grow than the population.
Perhaps this stupid foreign is nuts, the reader can be thinking: how then are the prices of staple food increasing instead plunging? Because we are in the edge of the greater cultural crisis the mankind has passed by. The globalisation produce a lot of good stuff, but a stress a lot behaviours in the touching new peoples. One of the biggest is the way as the alimentary standards are changing quickly.
More than any scarcity, is the changing of the pattern of consumption that is driving to a dearer lunch. When every people used to have different staple, the prices were easily controlled by the governments, with the most curbing imports to please local farmers. This has prevented the World to create a real global market to the most part of the crops and yet is responsible to the unbalance of the prices.
Of course everybody can say that to the poor it is a food crisis, but it is not. It is just the new surge of the permanent inequality that cyclically hits them with lack of food relieved by humanitarians programs that help more the rich´s consciences than change the structural causes.

Delusive opinions

2008-03-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

More and more analysts foreseen that oil prices will shrink just because consumers from the USA will use it less, dragging down the revenues of the companies and, consequently, making them cut speculative deals. The experts add that, even the energy usage rates do not plunge, the present charges drive to new sources´ development. I hope so, but I am not optimist about this based in three reasons.
First, once it is reached a energy usage level, it is not likely to reduce it unless by means of severe economic depression. Ok, the USA is in a recession, everybody knows, but nobody is saying it will be that bad, yet, and most economists say the World will pass throughout the year growing just a little bit slower than has done in the quinquennium.
Second, it is a myth to say the OECD members are turning more energy efficient annually. They are just importing more goods, hence using energy abroad.
Third, expecting the oil can be replaced by a new source in a short time is a wishful thinking. In most of the booming economy countries, petroleum is already a alternative source by coal and it will not be left behind as a supplier without a good and reliable substitute, which existing technology does not offer in the needed scale.
Then the consumption of oil is bound to increase rather reduce, pointing the prices up.

You can always count on... II

2008-03-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

...the hypocrites.
The former New York Governor has made a career fighting prostitution rings. Apparently the rings have struck back.
Many are comparing Spitzer with Bill Clinton. It makes some sense: both are politicians , democrats, and were caught in sex scandals. But, well, Clinton has not paid for it. He has not expend money nor let the political job. Home run for the "come back kid".
In the opposite direction, Spitzer has paid, as the news are saying, $80,000 dollars in hooker´s bills (strike one), has resigned from his mandate (strike two), and has Biblically known Misses Dupre, a.k.a. Kristen, (it was definitively not a strike, considering the pictures I have seen on the news I even would love pass the same experience if I could afford- he can easily say in your face Bill).
So, as we saw, the results were all but alike, and the hypocrite that climbed fighting prostitution is facing ruin for using it. Poetic justice.
Just a commentary: when all parts are in a consensual agreement prostitution should not even been considered a crime, despite it the ex-prosecutor have battled it as a crusade, so he could not appear as a usual costumer VIP.

You can always count on... I

2008-03-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

...the authoritarians.
They will never fails who wants free media coverage.
If the demonstrators in New Delhi had have completed their march, nobody outside such downtown would even know about it. Now every single person that watches news broadcasting has seen people been beaten and arrested.
I am sure that the people around the world is actually bound to say "Free Tibet". Or at least the citizens which enjoys democracy are more likely than yesterday to blame China . Thanks to the repression of a bunch of red wore by the India´s authorities to take the graces of Chinese Comunist Party.

More debate, please

2007-02-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

More than anyone, USA need change their energetic matrix and costs are not a good parameter to stop putting the wheels of innovation rolling.
As innovation I’m not talking about new technologies or sci-fi stuff, but just the tested and well-known concepts in a intelligent new way.
Think about the transport; that is one of major oil demanding industry in that country. Just adopting the hybrid technology in all their cars, USA would cut their oil needs in a third part. And hybrids are a totally proved technology.
And why not increase the rates of biofuel use? Is not energetically stupid when farmers that grow oil-rich crops use Arabic prospect fuels instead backyard made biodiesel? Moving something a half-world to move a equivalent energy doesn’t seem sensate in my point of view and if a govern worried in make itself free of oil-rich countries humours don’t see it, needs take a pill of reasonability.
Other way would helps is the electranet proposed by Al Gore. Linking all majors regions by transmission lines and using many forms of generation with small decentralized power plants combined with the already in use big energetic facilities.
Imagine if all the roofs around the Midlands were covered with photovoltaic panels (there are already some 40% efficient in the solar light conversion). Maybe it couldn’t provide all the electricity needed, but could afford a big part. The same for the existent technologies to catch energy from sea waves, tide, wind and geothermal.
A matrix with just one of these compounds could not guarantee the country needs but if all of them were exploited at same time, USA will make itself a liquid exporter of energy.
Some will say all these ways to generate are more expensive than the oil-coal burning plants and it could hurt the typical American family’s budget. I would ask: How much is this budget wounded for the military expends necessary to guarantee the Middle East oil’s supply? Or the lives lost in these wars? Or environmental messing provided for the gases wasted in oil burned (greenhouse ones or not)?
The oil advocates’ use say there is not a substitute for it. This is partially true.
There is not one substitute that can replace oil in all its uses, but there are many that can do it in many kinds of use.
Limiting the debate just in costs is good just for the big oil companies and the oil-rich countries that control the international prices. Other parameters could be environmental, health and wages distribution.
A working-well capitalism don’t like oligopolies and dislike it more when it is in a so central issue.

Doping

2006-06-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Everybody say that sportive doping is cheating, but most part of these same people use doping in work or study.
The modern doping methods don’t increase directly the ability during the competition. It increases the ability of train in the same way coffee is used to keep the somnolence away for sleepy students preparing for the finals.
If it is encouraged in our children why is it said cheating when is used for athletes?
If we say that drugs can’t be used for players to stay in practice we need say the same when it is used to keep the vigilant recruits working.
And we need call dope too the material advantages some have over the not too rich athletes.
The moral issues are rigid just in the head of rigid people. Call a person immoral because it doesn’t follow the same moral vision that you is dangerous.
You can be calling yourself of this.

Evil axis

2006-05-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Too much was said over the danger that Syria, North Korea and Iran represent to planetary peace but the action of the auto-impost sheriff is going to other direction.
Mexico was put this week under the spotlight as the most dangerous country in the world for the U.S.A..
Its frontier are now more militarized with the national guard sendidng personal over there.
The "wall of shame" will be amplied more than 300 miles.
OK, it´s part of the country sovereign defends its frontier the way it guess better but how explaim two allied - both signatories of a comercial agreement with U.S.A. (nafta) - that are Mexico and Canada can receive treatment so different.
Latinization of North America is a no-return reality. Threat the undocommented with criminalization and point the Army´s weapons against the workers exporter countries will not solve the problem.
To say the truth, it will create a lot of others.
After lose a war, to find another external enemy - quiet and peaceful this time - is everything the "president of war" needs.
But we not. "All we need is love" as the Beatles have preached wisely many times. I could add we need some money too but surely they know more than me.

Ethanol: why?

2006-05-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

If you live in U.S.A. probably heard about how Brazil have coped imported oil dependency investing in ethanol as a fuel for its cars.
I´m afraid the people has not told you all the truth.
Yes, it´s true Brazil has nominal authonomy in oil and the ethanol helped it a lot but it is definitivaly not a easy way for follow; the program has more than 30 years over here and it is based in very specific points of my country. Despite it, bigger part of this authonimy as garanted by producing oil, not ethanol.
First; the total comsuption of oil in Brazil is about 1,7 million of barrels per day and the ethanol that is used daily is equivalet to 200 thousands of barrels of oil, basically as cars´ fuel.
The energetic matrix in U.S.A. is a lot different but if we don´t consider this will realize the size of it is too big for change quickly. They use about 20 million barrels daily and if start to burn ethanol in the same proportion Brazil does this will need about 2,35 million barrles of oil equivalent.
The biggest produce of ethanol, yes yet Brazil, makes about 15 billion liters every year. For provide the amount the U.S.A. would hipotetically need in this case 12 Brazils wouldn´t be enough.
The ethanol would be very scarce and the prices very high, and the main reason the people is given to adopt this as fuel is the high prices of gas.
Second; Brazil had when started the program - and still has - not utilized lands to grow its for-ethanol crops. In the U.S.A. any favoured crop will substitute other one, depends on the sell value of them. Instead foreign oil dependency maybe foreign corn or sugar cane dependency.
Does all this mean U.S.A. should´t adopt ethanol as a combustible?
No, this doesn´t. U.S.A. should adopt this but gas prices is the worst reason.
It can be used for ecolocical reasons, for estrategical reasons ad until for economical reasons but before defends it everyone should read more about it, don´t swallow the ethanol producers´ speach as they pray this.

Starting

2006-05-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

As a foreigner, I think can see the facts in a different way.
It can have some value for the readers or not, I hope it has.
Fell free to correct me or disagree with me, I don´t know english that much and any comments about it will be good.