Sending your dirty laundry abroad doesn't make the world a cleaner place

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2116131,00.html

The U.S. sends its coal to China while closing down their own coal energy plants because it is dirty energy. Surely this is false economy if you offset the global impact of such coal trade. There should be a ban for such activities considering environmental and economic costs of exporting coals from one country to the other. The exported coal will be burned for energy anyway, only thousands of miles away from where it was mined.  The world will still endure the CO2 emitted from plants in China.

What is ironic is the U.S. then imports solar panels from China because the Chinese produces them for cheaper with the help of their government in subsidies.

REF14

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=421623

It seems that REF could have inevitably negative impact on the research culture in higher education. Despite its objective in measuring research output, individuals and institutions partake in planning their hiring "strategically" directly to effect their REF result. It is not short of data manipulation. REF rules cannot sieve out these either because everyone allegedly plays by the rules anyway. Prevalent are practices such as holding out research publication and hiring research staff on temporary or part-time contracts to synchronise with REF cycles. I think it is inorganic and has many unintended implications. For example, resources that would otherwise be used for teaching and learning are unavoidably rerouted to support REF-boosting activities, surges in research activities which are out of sync with global research environment and ultimately REF results which do not reflect actual institution's strengths and weaknesses.

Economic output

I wonder if there is merit in the free market model of utilities provision in most western countries. People have to spend an awful lot of time looking for comparison and even more time reading all the small prints, terms and conditions, compare hundreds of tariff from different providers and various tariff options from the same provider. Judging by the amount of profits that U.K. utility companies make, it is not hard to come to a conclusion that the most of the time, providers (the house) always win either through their the sophistication and complexity of their product/service's arrangements and its marketing.

This also extends to financial products where unsuspecting customers could be buying products without full legal knowledge of what they are buying. PPI, anyone?

Privatisation allegedly creates efficiency and customer choices that are absent in nationalised mode of operation. It is supposedly a win-win situation. But I am not sure it is the case when both companies and customers spend their time trying to outsmart one another. Worse still is when the government feels the need to intervene as is the recent case when U.K. government plans to mandate that utility companies offer the cheapest tariff to all. It seems to suggest that there will come a time when the free market model does not actually deliver in practice.

Paying countries to stop drilling

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/10/11/can-ecuador-trade-oil-for-forests/

President Correa threatens the world with drilling for oil in the environmentally sensitive Amazon unless the international community cover some of this potential income.

North Korean leaders do something similar, holding their own citizen hostage through suppression whilst extracting humanitarian money from developed countries including their southern neighbour.

Could drug producing countries follow suit? By pledging to stop producing drugs, they could ask other countries or the UN to 'pay' for development programmes to substitute for the 'lost' drug income.

Tax heaven destination states could be incentivised to stop harbouring tax avoiders by asking for international financial regulators and foreign governments to subsidize their income.

Artificial Intelligence To Replace Human Intelligence?

BBC's Horizon series sends Marcus Du Sautoy to explore why man developed artificial intelligence, how far we have come and how soon will AI be doing a lot of thinking for us. 


We are the only species that tries to create a non-life entity to do the hard work of "thinking" for us, presumably because a) we believe that our own intelligence can be annexed through artificially created one or b) AI's capability is potentially limitless, as oppose to human intelligence which has limits or c) we want AI to do the hard work to free us time for higher thinking? 


Today, computer algorithms are already being used to make "decisions" for human. Google and facebook design their software to "know and understand" users so that they provide the information of their choosing, mostly to fit with their advertising. The Skynet concept will probably become a reality in our (gen x) lifetime. 


Of the two scenarios, one in which we look for ways to incorporate AI's capability into our own and one in which we assign machines to do the hard work for us, I think the machine has a better idea! 

Breast implant removal on the NHS - another bail-out?

Taxpayers are footing the bills for people to have their breast implant removed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9088943/Breast-implants-NHS-bill-already-in-six-figures.html

It seems unfair for people to live a normal live to have to subsidise for people who chose to take the risks associated with medical procedures for cosmetic reasons. Perhaps a comparison could be drawn with the banks that took risks and are subsequently bailed out. When will people learn and live modestly?

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/02/25/carl-jungs-five-key-elements-to-happiness/

My interpretation of “The more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it” is that "deliberation suggests" expected result which is happiness. But since you cannot guarantee that someone will reach the level of happiness that is deemed satisfactory to them because of changes or variation in life or that each person's standard is purely subjective, there is a high likelihood of disappointment due to the aforementioned factors.

For some, it may be that only the first element contributes to their happiness.

Being reasonable

The main reason why we feel frustrated is how we perceive others' behaviour to be unreasonable. When we ask other people to do something for us and they do not which we interpret it to be unreasonable. That causes frustration. When other people ask you to do something. You think they are being ridiculously unreasonable in what they ask or in the timescale they ask you to do it in. When you explain to them and they don't want to listen to you. You are frustrated. They are also frustrated because they can't get what they want from you.

If people can be objective about what is considered reasonable or unreasonable disputes would be resolved by applying tan equation to calculate whether someone acts reasonably or not or how reasonable they are on the scale of 1-100. Then people wouldn't be frustrated. Unless it is human nature to get what they can't have and we are doomed to forever be frustrated because we are never satisfied with what there is here and now.

Graduates and the job market

Employers surveyed by Personnel Today claim that today's graduates' quality is too poor for them to be recruited. They cite three areas that graduates lack: skills, knowledge and attitude. If such is definitely the case inspite of high graduate unemployment then there is some clear missing link here. Assuming that the employers genuinely have high standard in their recruitment criteria, we have to question why degree education fails to equip graduates with the skills, knowledge and attitude they need to become employable.

Arguably, degree education does not have to purely cater for the job market. People may enter into a higher education establishment in pursuit of knowledge. With the degree, they have the option to choose between a graduate or non-graduate career. On the other hand, EUA in their Aarhus Declaration 2011 insists that (European) countries must invest in their higher education, especially in the economic crsis "...by striving for excellence in teaching, research and innovation, by offering opportunities to diverse groups of learners, and by providing the optimal creative environment for the talented young researchers that Europe needs universities are increasingly central to future growth and to the consolidation of Europe's knowledge society." Sure, there is demand from the society for qualified individuals to help progress its social and economic agenda which can be fulfilled by those with graduate calibre but can anyone tell how many degree-holding citizens we need to generate a per cent growth?.

Perhaps the survey result combined with graduate unemployment rate merely reflect the fact that the needs for population with higher education in the UK has been artificially inflated either by Britain's aspiration to catch up with Scandidavia's HE-educated population or by Labour governments' policies and their obsession with targets and results. Or maybe this is a natural process for a society weeding out redundancy in its higher education sector as Ian Jack of the Guardian anecdotally offered his observation about a "sports journalism" degree.

Nationalism and national debts?

When Thailand went bust in the 1997, it seemed straightforward what the Thais had to do to fix the problem. They were drowned by massive amount of foreign debt due to unscrupulous public spending, large construction projects which were not needed and not conservatively funded, mostly through foreign borrowing made worse by the devaluation of the Thai currency. It was clear that the government and the people had to live within their means, spend less, work harder, export more and save up to pay off the debt. Luxury goods were (and still are mainly) mostly imported so it made sense for Thais to cut down on this type of spending. Many tour operators that organised foreign holidays went out of business. There is a whole generation of people growing up with campaigns for Thais to eat, buy and holiday locally to keep the money in the country. 15 years on the mood for patriotism for economic reason is still in around. People learned their lesson, for now at least.

Britain, however, relies heavily on imported products - basic and luxurious. Its manufacturing capacity is not competitive, making local goods more expensive that the imported equivalent. People want things cheap, even at the expense of the economy and social impact. The country still has faith in its service industry and believes its debt can be controlled by being able to sell these services to other countries. It will be a tough ride as long as in national psyche, people still consume the way they have done which contributed to the economy tanking. They will continue to buy clothes made in China, fruit grown in and flown from South Africa and holiday in Florida or Australia whilst the government gives contracts to foreign firms with the cheapest bid, buys trains made outside of the UK and pays non-UK-based doctors to come over for a weekend so that NHS targets are met.