the darkerside to rants

Both the National Post as well as the Globe and Mail have their frontpage dedicated to China today. The Globe turned their entire front page into chinese (well almost, they replaced their name with Chinese Characters as well as the main headline) and the National Post is looking closer at the “hunger” for resources that the “Red Dragon” seems to have right now.

All of this was sparked by a bid by the Chinese Government owned Company China Minmetals Corp to buy a Canadian Company by the name of Noranda Inc.(Stock) a Canadian Mining and resource company. This has caused some concern here in Canada as some are wondering if we are throwing away the key to our own resources.

China meanwhile doesn’t really seem to have a lot of choice.

The move by state-run China Minmetals to buy Noranda Inc. is stoking fears of an all-out takeover of Canada’s resource sector and a call for investment restrictions to be imposed on China.

The country’s super-heated growth has caught the world off guard and put acute demands on the country’s resources. As a result, China is forced to look abroad to oil and mineral rich countries like Canada to feed its needs. “This is just the beginning,” says David Hale, a noted China consultant and fund advisor in Chicago.

“They’re desperate for raw materials and they’re prepared to pay a high price to get those materials. China will be looking for more resources in Canada.”

This could be bad news for all of us, not just for china, let’s think about this for a moment.

One of the best indicators that we are steering into a direction that can’t be good is the news that China has record oil imports, this in and on itself might not be to surprising, but you might be interested to know that China isn’t importing oil for very long.

Currently, China is the world’s third largest oil consumer, behind the United States and Japan. It is expected to surpass Japan within the decade and by 2020 reach a consumption level of 10.5 million bbl/d. China only recently became a net importer of oil, as consumption exceeded production for the first time in 1993. By 2020, China is expected to import 8 million bbl/d, more than the projected net imports of Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Australia combined. Oil production in China was virtually nonexistent 50 years ago. Production rose from 0.5 mb/d (thousand barrels per day) in 1970 to 3.2 million bbl/d in 1997. In 1990, China exported five times more crude oil than it imported, yet by 1997 its imports had grown to twice the size of its exports.

There are 1 illion people (1/6th of the world population) living in China, another 1.2 billion people are living in India and a mere 300 million in the US and Canada. If you have a look here you’ll come to realize that the picture is somewhat out of whack. Try to imagine what will happen when China has the same standard of living for it’s 1 billion people as we do, add on top of that india….. What do you think will happen?

Toronto already has pretty bad air quality and it ain’t really getting better, regardless if the Ontario Government is gonig to close coal fired power plants by 2007 or not. There are only 4.5 million people (give or take) living in the GTA, now try to imagine what would happen if suddenly 1 billion people would fire up their cars in the morning, use as much power as we use and just live as destructive as we do.

The current resource hunger that China is showing is not in the least because of us.

In 2001 the total exports from China to Canada totalled roughly 1.1 trillion USD. China has become a huge factory for the Western World, especially for your friends at Walmart, so it makes only sense that they now want resources, don’t worry, you’ll get it back in form of cheap TVs, clothes and other “indispensible” items.

And now I stop before I start ranting…. Just keep thinking about “selling out” when in the end your buying habits are supporting exactly that.

Today at Moonbean Cafe:

Yummy, together with a good book.

I am on a trip down memory lane right now, first reading up on old consoles, and actually looking at my Dreamcast that is sitting stowed away in a box…. Ahhh, life was so much easier back then.

Anyways, one of the other things I found out is that Bards Tale is coming to the XBox next week, which is sort of rather cool.

I remember playing this back in Highschool….. Geez, I am old.

The Bard’s Tale is an action/role-playing game in which the player takes on the role of the Bard %u2013 a sardonic and opportunistic musician and adventurer, driven by carnal rather than noble pursuits. The Bard is not interested in saving the world, his humble motivations are strictly “coin and cleavage.”

These ten are specific guidelines for the Buddhist life, as undertaken by the Zen trainee. When they become our blood and bones, we are a true child of Buddha. When we deliberately ignore any of them, we create a separation between ourselves and the family of Buddha.

1. I will refrain from killing. Since all beings are one within the Buddha Mind, how could I willingly cut off the life of any creature?

2. I will refrain from stealing. Since it is my true wish to give up all attachments, how could I willingly grasp after anything which is not freely given?

3. I will refrain from abusing sexuality. Since physical affection is a deep expression of love, and love is an aspect of the Unborn, how could I willingly debase this sacred love by merely gratifying my desires in a way which uses, harms, betrays, or abuses anyone?

4. I will refrain from speaking untruthfully. Since my heart’s desire is to be one with truth, how could I willingly deceive anyone by any means whatsoever?

5. I will refrain from selling the wine of delusion. Since clear awareness is the door to enlightenment, how could I willingly hinder the Way for anyone by enticing them into partaking of substances, ideologies, false beliefs, or anything whatsoever which befuddles or intoxicates?

6. I will refrain from speaking against others. Since it is my wish to live by the compassion within my heart, how could I willingly speak hurtfully or disparagingly about anyone?

7. I will refrain from being proud of myself and belittling others. Since the false notion of self is the very thing I seek to abandon, how could I willingly inflate it with pride, much less do so through seeking to denigrate others?

8. I will refrain from holding back in giving either Dharma or wealth. Since charity is the first sign of enlightened action, how could I practice stinginess in any form whatsoever?

9. I will refrain from indulging anger. Since it is my heart’s wish to let the love within it flow forth unboundedly, how could I hold onto and nourish angers and resentments which may arise, much less act openly upon them to cause harm?

10. I will refrain from defaming the Three Treasures. Since these are my true refuge and the very Way, how could I turn from them myself, much less cause doubt about them to arise in others?

… though you’d have to move to Japan, like Hrvoje is doing right now.

Ken Kawakita is sitting on his living room floor, checking train schedules on the Internet, using a laptop computer running Windows over a wireless AirPort from Apple Computer. His son, Taro, 11, is downloading a game on his iBook over the same network, while daughter, Mari, 13, converses with a friend by e-mail over her mobile phone on KDDI’s “au” network.
.
Takao, Ken’s wife, has a mobile phone on the table near her hand, although she is not using it at the moment. Like her daughter’s and many others in Japan, its carrying strap is decorated with trinkets, showing the affectionate place they hold as a personal item. Daughter Hanna, 8, is asleep on the couch, but she could easily be surfing the Internet on her Mac.

Read the rest online.

(via Jean Snow’s Blog)

Was in a Chapters today who has a deal with Starbucks to offer their fares. When I walked through the Starbucks section I saw a total of 3 Notebooks out…. ALL of them Macs, all of them Powerbooks….

Okay, I only have an iBook, but I have to wonder if I am now a snob as well? Or does Apple automatically mean Starbucks?

Indymedia has an article that goes a bit more into detail about the seizure of their Server equipment on October 7th.

Today, October 8, 2004, Indymedia has learned that the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a US company in the UK originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland. More than 20 Indymedia sites, several internet radio streams and other projects were hosted on the servers. They were taken offline on October 7th after an order was issued to Rackspace, Inc., one of Indymedia’s web hosting providers.

I have to say in a way this is scary. This is about a news Site where pretty much the whole thing was ripped out from under the publisher and no real explaination is given. I guess Redundancy is the key in the future, but how this would be done is anybodies guess.

There is a discussion going on over on Slashdot.

Looks like Starbucks is going to raise their prices, and apparantly that got Slate worried enough to write something about it. One of the more interesting little facts is the amount of caffein you get with your Starbucks coffee:

The Wall Street Journal earlier this year sent samples of coffee from Starbucks, 7-Eleven, and Dunkin’ Donuts to Central Analytical Laboratories. The lab reported that a 16-ounce Starbucks house blend coffee contained 223 milligrams of caffeine, compared with 174 and 141 milligrams in comparable amounts of Dunkin’ Donuts and 7-Eleven coffee, respectively. According to the Journal, the average Starbucks coffee drink contains 320 milligrams of caffeine.

I was at a Starbucks yesterday, having an Cafe Americano, it was sucky at best, almost like they scraped the Espresso out from the bottom of the barrel, rather weak in taste and bah.

I guess once you had good coffee you can’t go back to the drivel that is Starbucks.

(via Boing Boing)

A while ago I heard about Nokia’s Lifeblog which on the surface seems to include a nifty idea of tying your cell phone (which most of us carry around all the time) with your life.

I just got reminded of it, because Warren Ellis got one and wants to play around with it. So I went back to the Nokia site (linked above) to investigate it a bit further.

First of all I have to say I think the software in and on itself is cool. BUT:

1. It is only available for Windows PCs (at least for now) thus it is utterly useless for me.

2. It just seems to be a “diary” it doesn’t seem to allow me to “tie” it (for example) into my website here and have the ability to instantly post to the server.

This is IMO a serious flaw. To make it really useful I should be able to send images and videos from the phone to the “lifeblog” (be it an app on my pc at home or public on the net). Maybe a “category” feature with restrictions would make sense. I could think of “friends”, “Public” and “Private”.

But as it stands, it seems I have to hook up the phone to the PC, download the images into the Lifeblog software and be done with it.

In essence it is like iPhoto for my PC, with the ability to also store Video clips I have taken with the phone.

But seriously, if I go through all that, why not just install Gallery locally and do it that way?

And the Nokia 7610 it works with isn’t really all that exciting either, though I have to admit a 1MP camera is nice, especially when comparing it to the one in my Z600.

Note, that he is not trying to flame
me or anything.