Humid Day Ahead

While you sleep in the UK, the sun rises in Singapore through the City haze - another humid day ahead.

Oil reaches $120 a barrel — chilled air spills from the department stores cooling those passing-by.

Greed

On the screen was a page never seen before when logging into the bank. Wary of phishing I looked carefully, and it seemed to be OK, secure connection, etc. But you never know, and I noticed in the small print the usual rip-off telephone rate should I be unfortunate enough to need to call and listen to the 100 options at 4p a minute. But what really annoyed me was the set-up charge. What on earth do they do — plugs into switchboards?

"Calls from BT landlines will cost a maximum of 4p per minute and a 6p call set-up fee."

I remind myself that this mischief originates, not with some abstraction "the bank", but with an individual. Maybe they brainstorm new ways of ripping-off the customer.

I must be getting old!

Grain shortage?

Today's on-line edition of the International Herald Tribune (IHT) suggests genetically modified crops may get a better press in this time of rising prices, saying:-

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

But The Economist is direct: "The changes reflect changes in demand – not problems of supply such as harvest failure."

Never take what you read at face-value – nothing in this world is simple. Nor are ad hoc solutions sustainable policy.

Hunger

"Last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%. These were some of the sharpest rises in food prices ever. But this year the speed of change has accelerated. Since January, rice prices have soared 141%, the price of one variety of wheat shot up 25% in one day"

"The changes reflect changes in demand - not problems of supply such as harvest failure. The changes include ...the sudden, voracious appetites of western biofuels programmes, which convert cereals into fuel."

From The Economist April 19th 2008, "The new face of hunger"

"The middle classes in poor countries are giving up health care and cutting out meat so they can eat three meals a day. The middling poor, those on $2 a day, are pulling children from school and cutting back on vegetables so they can still afford rice. Those on $1 a day are cutting back on meat, vegetables and one or two meals, so they can afford one bowl. The desperate - those on 50 cents a day - face disaster.

Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day."

The Economist, Leader "The silent tsunami" April 17th 2008

Changing Skies

I have an east-facing office on the 7th floor and can enjoy the beautiful skies that often precede the sunrise. One morning last week there was a striking cloud – maybe from a fire somewhere – back-lit by the rising sun.


Soon the upper winds were spreading it out, and within an hour it was gone.


It's very humid at present with almost daily thunderstorms – often timed for when I want to go home.


An umbrella is pointless against this.

Not a ThinkPad - for once!

My latest "toy" is the Asus eeePC. It's a low cost and lightweight "sub-laptop", with in-built wireless, perfect for travel. What is most striking is the very fast boot time (at least for the Linux version), well under a minute. It has no hard disk, but 4GB of solid-state memory and uses the cards common to cameras for expansion.

Asus eeePC

Cost, about S$600 (c. GBP200).

The New Casinos

Wall Street knows no excess. The International Herald Tribune today reports that:

"Combined, the top 50 hedge fund managers last year earned $29 billion. That figure represents the managers' own pay and excludes the compensation of their employees."

That's $580 million apiece, though some "earned" more, some less. The median earnings for an American family over the same period — $60,500.

Jade Mountains

As it's – unofficially – "Blogger Appreciation Day", I'll thank my good Sangha friend and teacher Rev Master Mugo at Jade Mountains for kicking me back into life – without trying to. That's how it works. Moving Mountains is even better in the new format of Jade Mountains, well laid-out and better spaced. It all works!

"Train as though your hair were on fire", she said.

The Lift

My train tonight stopped just opposite the lift, so in lazy-mode, I got in to go down one level to the concourse. Only it didn't. Two gentle drops of foot or so, and we stopped, looking at little more than eye-level along the platform, to the bemusement of waiting passengers. It was one of those lifts on a hydraulic ram so we were not going to plunge anywhere and we were released after ten minutes.

Lift logic interests me. Our laboratories have three lifts at the end of the building, and from the 7th floor, I have come to realize that getting the first lift down to ground can be a mistake, if one seems likely to follow. The first will make several stops, (maximum number seems to be three), whereas the later lift will go straight to ground. Of course, it's a gamble. There must be a whole arcane science of lift programming. What I need is a code to override all settings, something like Ctrl-Alt-Del, but in numbers — straight down, no stops. Maybe it exists?

View from afar

Can we destroy what sustains us?


Sometimes I think we are sleep-walking into disaster, no-more so than with "global-warming", or "climate-change" as the spin-doctors would have it. I was struck by this picture of the earth and moon taken from by an imaging satellite orbiting Mars that trained a camera on its home planet. Strikingly blue and home to a sometimes destructive species, H. sapiens.

I watched a short video clip of Al Gore talking about the crisis we face. He confronts what could easily become despair and offers everyone a challenge. 15 minutes clip - recommended.

London

I was in London last week for a much-needed few days out of Singapore. London may be scruffy in places, people put their feet on the seats and chewing gum is everywhere, but it is alive. I cannot remember a time when Tottenham Court Road was not being dug up, but that inevitability is my landmark. Likewise the deafening sirens from ambulances or the fire service – just ten minutes walking along Euston Road provided an unmarked police car at speed and an ambulance in quick succession. Unlike Singapore, they don't hang around waiting for the lights to change but push through the congestion on the wrong side of the road if necessary.

Euston Road may be an arterial route but has many treasures, including the British Library, The Wellcome Trust and the splendidly renovated St Pancras Station. The Wellcome Trust is now housed in a modern glass and steel building while the renovated original home houses the Wellcome Collection. I was there one day too early for the current exhibition "Life Before Death", a striking topic for our age of permanent distraction. As Rev. Master Mugo comments at JadeMountains, a must-see meditation.

The Wellcome Collection has links to some of the images as does the Guardian.

Further down, past the British Library, is Barlow's great train shed, St Pancras Station, a wonderful example of restoration and remodeling. The cost must have been eye-watering, but the results are stunning. I traveled to Sheffield during the re-construction and saw at least the top-side of a massive civil engineering project.

And it shows the correct time!

William Henry Barlow must be well-pleased with his great train shed.