David Attenborough tells the story of the land-living invertebrates. He delves into the private life of Europe's dramatic leopard slug, a common garden resident with a truly bizarre end to its marathon mating ritual; watches the courtship ballet of tiny springtails on the underside of a leaf; sees swarms of bright red South African millipedes find partners, and in the caves of Venezuela meets the giant bat-eating centipede...
Friday, June 30, 2006
Giant Bat-Eating Centipede
David Attenborough tells the story of the land-living invertebrates. He delves into the private life of Europe's dramatic leopard slug, a common garden resident with a truly bizarre end to its marathon mating ritual; watches the courtship ballet of tiny springtails on the underside of a leaf; sees swarms of bright red South African millipedes find partners, and in the caves of Venezuela meets the giant bat-eating centipede...
David Attenborough tells the story of the land-living invertebrates. He delves into the private life of Europe's dramatic leopard slug, a common garden resident with a truly bizarre end to its marathon mating ritual; watches the courtship ballet of tiny springtails on the underside of a leaf; sees swarms of bright red South African millipedes find partners, and in the caves of Venezuela meets the giant bat-eating centipede...
(BLOG) RED: Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
(BLOG) RED: Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin: "Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
Sunday in France
Spent 8+ hours around a table with our brothers and sisters from DATA, talking through how and when best to work collectively, steps to ensure good cross-communication, and updates on summer/fall events.
Covered plenty of (RED) ground too, as we gear up to bring punk rock capitalism to America.
Clear vibe on a cloudless day.
It's been an uplifting session despite the length. We push away from the formal meeting and walk along the beach towards a postcard perfect little cafe right on the water. The tide is rising so we run through waves lapping at the shore. I chuckle as each of us sprint periodicaly across the sand and stones to avoid a soaking.
Just as we sit down a call comes in that hits like a miracle. Bono puts will phone on speaker: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates share news of bracing proportion, which hits the news wires the following day. These men now both have devoted the large bulk of their fortunes to the world's poorest people. They are investing their capital in a mission that won't leave their names on buildings but rather will save individual human beings, most of whom they'll never see or meet.
We are stunned. The whole place seems elevated We say a prayer and make a toast. And smile smile smile.
Towards the end of the night, I have a memorable conversation with Ken, COO of DATA. We fall into a conversation about poetry -- a natural path for two old lit majors after a glass or two of the local grape. I try to recall a favorite e.e. cummings line. Ken confirms it later by email:
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
There's another part that appears earlier, which also bears repeating:
...whatever life you wear/it will become you..."
Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
Sunday in France
Spent 8+ hours around a table with our brothers and sisters from DATA, talking through how and when best to work collectively, steps to ensure good cross-communication, and updates on summer/fall events.
Covered plenty of (RED) ground too, as we gear up to bring punk rock capitalism to America.
Clear vibe on a cloudless day.
It's been an uplifting session despite the length. We push away from the formal meeting and walk along the beach towards a postcard perfect little cafe right on the water. The tide is rising so we run through waves lapping at the shore. I chuckle as each of us sprint periodicaly across the sand and stones to avoid a soaking.
Just as we sit down a call comes in that hits like a miracle. Bono puts will phone on speaker: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates share news of bracing proportion, which hits the news wires the following day. These men now both have devoted the large bulk of their fortunes to the world's poorest people. They are investing their capital in a mission that won't leave their names on buildings but rather will save individual human beings, most of whom they'll never see or meet.
We are stunned. The whole place seems elevated We say a prayer and make a toast. And smile smile smile.
Towards the end of the night, I have a memorable conversation with Ken, COO of DATA. We fall into a conversation about poetry -- a natural path for two old lit majors after a glass or two of the local grape. I try to recall a favorite e.e. cummings line. Ken confirms it later by email:
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
There's another part that appears earlier, which also bears repeating:
...whatever life you wear/it will become you..."
(BLOG) RED: Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
(BLOG) RED: Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin: "Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
Sunday in France
Spent 8+ hours around a table with our brothers and sisters from DATA, talking through how and when best to work collectively, steps to ensure good cross-communication, and updates on summer/fall events.
Covered plenty of (RED) ground too, as we gear up to bring punk rock capitalism to America.
Clear vibe on a cloudless day.
It's been an uplifting session despite the length. We push away from the formal meeting and walk along the beach towards a postcard perfect little cafe right on the water. The tide is rising so we run through waves lapping at the shore. I chuckle as each of us sprint periodicaly across the sand and stones to avoid a soaking.
Just as we sit down a call comes in that hits like a miracle. Bono puts will phone on speaker: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates share news of bracing proportion, which hits the news wires the following day. These men now both have devoted the large bulk of their fortunes to the world's poorest people. They are investing their capital in a mission that won't leave their names on buildings but rather will save individual human beings, most of whom they'll never see or meet.
We are stunned. The whole place seems elevated We say a prayer and make a toast. And smile smile smile.
Towards the end of the night, I have a memorable conversation with Ken, COO of DATA. We fall into a conversation about poetry -- a natural path for two old lit majors after a glass or two of the local grape. I try to recall a favorite e.e. cummings line. Ken confirms it later by email:
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
There's another part that appears earlier, which also bears repeating:
...whatever life you wear/it will become you..."
Clear vibe on a cloudless day - A note from Tamsin
Sunday in France
Spent 8+ hours around a table with our brothers and sisters from DATA, talking through how and when best to work collectively, steps to ensure good cross-communication, and updates on summer/fall events.
Covered plenty of (RED) ground too, as we gear up to bring punk rock capitalism to America.
Clear vibe on a cloudless day.
It's been an uplifting session despite the length. We push away from the formal meeting and walk along the beach towards a postcard perfect little cafe right on the water. The tide is rising so we run through waves lapping at the shore. I chuckle as each of us sprint periodicaly across the sand and stones to avoid a soaking.
Just as we sit down a call comes in that hits like a miracle. Bono puts will phone on speaker: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates share news of bracing proportion, which hits the news wires the following day. These men now both have devoted the large bulk of their fortunes to the world's poorest people. They are investing their capital in a mission that won't leave their names on buildings but rather will save individual human beings, most of whom they'll never see or meet.
We are stunned. The whole place seems elevated We say a prayer and make a toast. And smile smile smile.
Towards the end of the night, I have a memorable conversation with Ken, COO of DATA. We fall into a conversation about poetry -- a natural path for two old lit majors after a glass or two of the local grape. I try to recall a favorite e.e. cummings line. Ken confirms it later by email:
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
There's another part that appears earlier, which also bears repeating:
...whatever life you wear/it will become you..."
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Questions Over New Eyesight Drug That May Be as Good as Older, Cheaper One
A drug that can restore eyesight to some elderly people, even allowing them to read or drive again, is expected to win federal approval this week.
But for patients, doctors, Medicare and other insurers, the drug's arrival will pose a conundrum. That is because the medicine, Lucentis, is expected to be 10 to 100 times as expensive as a similar drug that many ophthalmologists say is every bit as good.
But for patients, doctors, Medicare and other insurers, the drug's arrival will pose a conundrum. That is because the medicine, Lucentis, is expected to be 10 to 100 times as expensive as a similar drug that many ophthalmologists say is every bit as good.
Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria
BELULUANE, Mozambique — With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminum smelter amid the cornfields here.
What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill — 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
"You can imagine, it was a huge disaster," said Carlos Mesquita, the general manager. "We could not deal with that level of absenteeism, and we would have had more fatalities. If we didn't treat malaria we could not operate."
But confining measures to the plant, executives realized, would not protect their 1,100 employees, or their $1.3 billion investment, so long as malaria raged all around it, including in the capital, Maputo, just 10 miles up the highway.
And so one of the world's biggest aluminum producers joined in an exceptional partnership with the governments of three countries and with other businesses to take on malaria systematically across a broad region. Six years later, the scorecard is in. Amazingly, malaria is losing....
What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill — 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
"You can imagine, it was a huge disaster," said Carlos Mesquita, the general manager. "We could not deal with that level of absenteeism, and we would have had more fatalities. If we didn't treat malaria we could not operate."
But confining measures to the plant, executives realized, would not protect their 1,100 employees, or their $1.3 billion investment, so long as malaria raged all around it, including in the capital, Maputo, just 10 miles up the highway.
And so one of the world's biggest aluminum producers joined in an exceptional partnership with the governments of three countries and with other businesses to take on malaria systematically across a broad region. Six years later, the scorecard is in. Amazingly, malaria is losing....
An Iron Fist Joins the Malaria Wars - New York Times
An Iron Fist Joins the Malaria Wars - New York Times: "he tuberculosis world, Dr. Kochi said, used to be just as fragmented and hostile as the malaria field is now. Then, in the early 1990's, an explosion of multidrug-resistant cases everywhere from New York City to Peru to Siberia forced the advent of a new paradigm: four-drug cocktails, taken daily for six months, always under the eye of a nurse or someone else appointed to oversee treatment, even an imam or a faith-healer.
Under Dr. Kochi's leadership, countries were urged to diagnose and treat in standard ways (sputum smears instead of chest X-rays, for example, or four cheap antibiotics instead of exotic drugs and pulmonary surgery). Drug companies were asked to standardize products so each patient could be handed a box with six months' worth of pills. As a result, some partners, like tuberculosis hospitals and makers of the old BCG vaccine, were very unhappy.
Malaria, he said, will need a similar shift, because everything is wrong with the efforts to fight it: lax counting of cases, mixed messages on which medicines to use, counterfeit drugs, expensive consultants, slothful national governments, weak international leadership."
Under Dr. Kochi's leadership, countries were urged to diagnose and treat in standard ways (sputum smears instead of chest X-rays, for example, or four cheap antibiotics instead of exotic drugs and pulmonary surgery). Drug companies were asked to standardize products so each patient could be handed a box with six months' worth of pills. As a result, some partners, like tuberculosis hospitals and makers of the old BCG vaccine, were very unhappy.
Malaria, he said, will need a similar shift, because everything is wrong with the efforts to fight it: lax counting of cases, mixed messages on which medicines to use, counterfeit drugs, expensive consultants, slothful national governments, weak international leadership."
Push for New Tactics as War on Malaria Falters - New York Times
Push for New Tactics as War on Malaria Falters - New York Times: "The mosquito nets arrived too late for 18-month-old Phillip Odong."The roly-poly boy came down with his fourth bout of malaria on March 16, the same day the nets were handed out at the makeshift camp where he lived in northern Uganda. "It was because of poverty that we could not afford one," his mother, Jackeline Ato, recalled recently, seated in rags beneath a mango tree.
The morning after his fever spiked, she took him to a clinic, but it did not have the medicines that might have saved him. He died four days later, crying, "Mommy, Mommy," before losing consciousness.
It is no secret that mosquitoes carry the parasite that causes malaria. More mystifying is why 800,000 young African children still die of malaria per year — more than from any other disease — when there are medicines that cure for 55 cents a dose, mosquito nets that shield a child for $1 a year and indoor insecticide spraying that costs about $10 annually for a household.
An emerging consensus on solutions, combined with fresh scrutiny and a windfall of new financing, are prompting major donors to revamp years of failed efforts to stem malaria's mortal toll....
The morning after his fever spiked, she took him to a clinic, but it did not have the medicines that might have saved him. He died four days later, crying, "Mommy, Mommy," before losing consciousness.
It is no secret that mosquitoes carry the parasite that causes malaria. More mystifying is why 800,000 young African children still die of malaria per year — more than from any other disease — when there are medicines that cure for 55 cents a dose, mosquito nets that shield a child for $1 a year and indoor insecticide spraying that costs about $10 annually for a household.
An emerging consensus on solutions, combined with fresh scrutiny and a windfall of new financing, are prompting major donors to revamp years of failed efforts to stem malaria's mortal toll....
Seed: The Reinvention of the Self
Seed: The Reinvention of the Self: "The naturalistic habitat that Gould has created for these marmosets is essential to her studies, which involve understanding how the environment affects the brain. Eight years after Gould defied the entrenched dogma of her science and proved that the primate brain is always creating new neurons, she has gone on to demonstrate an even more startling fact: The structure of our brain, from the details of our dendrites to the density of our hippocampus, is incredibly influenced by our surroundings. Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells. The cells it already has retreat inwards. The mind is disfigured.
The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain—and Gould’s team has shown that they do—then the playing field isn’t level. Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance.
Viewed through the magnified eyes of a confocal microscope, a newborn neuron looks fragile, almost lonely. Everything around it is connected to everything else, but the new cell is all alone, just a seed of soma and a thin stalk of axon desperately trying to plug itself in"
(..)
Gould’s research inevitably conjures up comparisons to societal problems. And while Gould, like all rigorous bench scientists, prefers to focus on the strictly scientific aspects of her data—she is wary of having it twisted for political purposes—she is also acutely aware of the potential implications of her research.
“Poverty is stress,” she says, with more than a little passion in her voice. “One thing that always strikes me is that when you ask Americans why the poor are poor, they always say it’s because they don’t work hard enough, or don’t want to do better. They act like poverty is a character issue.”
Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain. ...
The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain—and Gould’s team has shown that they do—then the playing field isn’t level. Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance.
Viewed through the magnified eyes of a confocal microscope, a newborn neuron looks fragile, almost lonely. Everything around it is connected to everything else, but the new cell is all alone, just a seed of soma and a thin stalk of axon desperately trying to plug itself in"
(..)
Gould’s research inevitably conjures up comparisons to societal problems. And while Gould, like all rigorous bench scientists, prefers to focus on the strictly scientific aspects of her data—she is wary of having it twisted for political purposes—she is also acutely aware of the potential implications of her research.
“Poverty is stress,” she says, with more than a little passion in her voice. “One thing that always strikes me is that when you ask Americans why the poor are poor, they always say it’s because they don’t work hard enough, or don’t want to do better. They act like poverty is a character issue.”
Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain. ...
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
More on Buffet
Buffet gives away fortune to Gates Foundation
Buffett has pledged to gradually give 85% of his Berkshire stock to five foundations. A dominant five-sixths of the shares will go to the world's largest philanthropic organization, the $30 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yes, that Warren Buffet – the world’s second richest man. The market value of that 85% is about $37 billion! Fortune Magazine has the story and interview, also see the NYTimes.
An announcement that will have repercussion far beyond just development
finance. I didn’t see this coming, at least not for a few more years.
Let’s see how the markets react.
Of course, this come just a week after Bill Gates, a close friend of Buffet, made his announcement that in two years he will shift his attention to his Foundation full-time.
Update: Here is a press conference. The NYTimes also has two good stories. Also see the Charlie Rose Show, during which Buffet says: "A market system has not worked in terms of poor people". And it seems that this is the report that Buffet gave to Gates back in the 1990s that planted the seed that would become the Gates Foundation.
WarrenBuffet on charity...
I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about the debilitating effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a lifetime and beyond of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer. And instead of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds.
--Warren Buffett, explaining why he will bequeath $37 billion of his $40-42 billion to charity
--Warren Buffett, explaining why he will bequeath $37 billion of his $40-42 billion to charity
Sunday, June 25, 2006
In Brazil, Unpaved Path to Soccer Excellence
First came the generation of Pelé, Garrincha, Tostão and Rivelino, followed by Zico, Falcão and Socrates. Since the mid-1990's, Romário, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and now Kaká, Adriano and Robinho have further burnished Brazil's reputation for unmatched excellence. To the average fan around the world, Brazilian soccer appears to be a powerful, well-oiled machine.
But those who know it best are aware that the reality is far more complicated, that the country's record five World Cup championships are more a result of popular passion for the beautiful game, as it is often called here, than of any organized apparatus that methodically finds and develops players.
"There is no system in Brazil," said Carlos Roberto de Oliveira, who, playing as Roberto Dinamite, was a member of the Brazilian national team in the 1970's and early 1980's. "Everything happens on a random, haphazard basis."
To hear Brazilians tell it, organized professional soccer here is chaotic, corrupt and in perpetual disarray. But the game itself is so deeply ingrained in daily life — and in Brazilian identity and self-esteem — that its strength at the grass roots more than compensates for those deficiencies at the top.
But those who know it best are aware that the reality is far more complicated, that the country's record five World Cup championships are more a result of popular passion for the beautiful game, as it is often called here, than of any organized apparatus that methodically finds and develops players.
"There is no system in Brazil," said Carlos Roberto de Oliveira, who, playing as Roberto Dinamite, was a member of the Brazilian national team in the 1970's and early 1980's. "Everything happens on a random, haphazard basis."
To hear Brazilians tell it, organized professional soccer here is chaotic, corrupt and in perpetual disarray. But the game itself is so deeply ingrained in daily life — and in Brazilian identity and self-esteem — that its strength at the grass roots more than compensates for those deficiencies at the top.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Kurzweil set to unveil portable reader for the blind
...a five megapixel digital camera attached to the back of a Windows Mobile
5.0-powered PDA, which is loaded with software that uses optical
character recognition and text-to-speech technology to read aloud the
words contained in user-captured photos. Once it's called into action,
the $4,860 device supplies the operator with an initial "situation
report" that attempts to describe whatever's in the camera's field of
vision; if the report indicates that the desired text is within range,
owners can then choose to snap a photo and listen to the resulting
translation.
5.0-powered PDA, which is loaded with software that uses optical
character recognition and text-to-speech technology to read aloud the
words contained in user-captured photos. Once it's called into action,
the $4,860 device supplies the operator with an initial "situation
report" that attempts to describe whatever's in the camera's field of
vision; if the report indicates that the desired text is within range,
owners can then choose to snap a photo and listen to the resulting
translation.
Latin America's Choice
Good points on development in general and Latin America in particular from Tom Friedman of the New York Times...
There are a lot of ways to describe Latin America's challenge today. Some will tell you it's the age-old question of overcoming the staggering gap here between rich and poor. Some will tell you it's rooting out corruption and misgovernance. But I come at this issue with my own perspective, and I would describe the big question facing Latin Americans this way: Are they going to emulate India or get addicted to China?
This question was, at least implicitly, a subtext of the recent election here in Peru. But it's true throughout this continent, which has always been better at mining its resources than mining its people.
Let me explain by introducing Gabriel Rozman — a Jewish technologist of Hungarian roots who was raised in Uruguay, educated in America and now heads the Latin American operations of India's biggest software/outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai.
Mr. Rozman runs Tata's Latin American business out of Montevideo, where 550 Uruguayan programmers, trained and directed by Indians, are writing code and running the computer systems for companies all across this continent. They are backed up by Tata engineers in India, Hungary, China, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina. India now thinks Latin America is its backyard, too.
And so does China. China, though, is almost exclusively focused here on extracting natural resources — timber, iron, soybeans, minerals, gas, fish meal — to feed its voracious appetite and keep jobs and factories humming in China. There is nothing wrong about that. America and Spain did the same for years — and often rapaciously. Today, China's appetite is helping to fuel a worldwide boom in commodity prices that is enabling a poor, low-industrialized country like Peru to grow at 5 percent.
But countries that get addicted to selling their natural resources rarely develop their human resources and the educational institutions and innovative companies that go with that. So after the ore has been mined, the trees cut and the oil pumped, their people are actually even more behind.
"Why can't Latin America do what India is doing?" Mr. Rozman asked when I spoke with him in Washington last week. It can, he insists, but only if it changes — fast. "Right now I have 500 job openings I can't fill, and the problem is education. The prestige career to follow in India is engineering, and in Latin America it is [still] law or being a notary public."
"We need more computer courses with real standards and starting at an early age," he said. A lot of higher education in Latin America is modeled on the French/European system, which is better at producing philosophers than programmers. Philosophers are important, but not in bulk.
Latin America also has to do a better job of teaching English, he added, and eliminating the red tape that prevents economic integration in Latin America and makes it very cumbersome to start new businesses here.
"To go from Argentina to Montevideo is only a 20-minute flight," Mr. Rozman explained, but in terms of the economic integration demanded today by global firms, they are 10,000 miles apart. In addition, most of the legal systems in Latin America are designed to promote agriculture and light industry, not intellectual property or innovation. "All the laws were made for another type of society," he said. "If we don't get caught up with the next wave, we're in trouble."
That next wave is called "follow the sun," he said. "We like to start a project in Bangalore or Mumbai, then, as the day moves on, move it to our offices in Eastern Europe and then to Latin American." Tata expects its engineers in each place to be equally trained, speak English and have the computing infrastructure to seamlessly receive and hand off projects. This is a global-scale business.
"We have 50,000 employees in India and are going to 100,000," explained Mr. Rozman. Eventually, Tata will grow to 100,000 in China. "But I can't go to 100,000 in any one country in Latin America, so I have to be able to put [the whole continent] together."
Latin Americans may think that their big choice is between two models of Western capitalism — a European welfare state model and a hyper-competitive U.S. model. But before they divide their pie, they need to expand it — and here their most important choice is between an India example that focuses on developing human resources and a China syndrome that focuses on selling natural resources. Since countries tend to do either one or the other, here's hoping that Latin America discovers India before it gets hooked on China.
There are a lot of ways to describe Latin America's challenge today. Some will tell you it's the age-old question of overcoming the staggering gap here between rich and poor. Some will tell you it's rooting out corruption and misgovernance. But I come at this issue with my own perspective, and I would describe the big question facing Latin Americans this way: Are they going to emulate India or get addicted to China?
This question was, at least implicitly, a subtext of the recent election here in Peru. But it's true throughout this continent, which has always been better at mining its resources than mining its people.
Let me explain by introducing Gabriel Rozman — a Jewish technologist of Hungarian roots who was raised in Uruguay, educated in America and now heads the Latin American operations of India's biggest software/outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai.
Mr. Rozman runs Tata's Latin American business out of Montevideo, where 550 Uruguayan programmers, trained and directed by Indians, are writing code and running the computer systems for companies all across this continent. They are backed up by Tata engineers in India, Hungary, China, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina. India now thinks Latin America is its backyard, too.
And so does China. China, though, is almost exclusively focused here on extracting natural resources — timber, iron, soybeans, minerals, gas, fish meal — to feed its voracious appetite and keep jobs and factories humming in China. There is nothing wrong about that. America and Spain did the same for years — and often rapaciously. Today, China's appetite is helping to fuel a worldwide boom in commodity prices that is enabling a poor, low-industrialized country like Peru to grow at 5 percent.
But countries that get addicted to selling their natural resources rarely develop their human resources and the educational institutions and innovative companies that go with that. So after the ore has been mined, the trees cut and the oil pumped, their people are actually even more behind.
"Why can't Latin America do what India is doing?" Mr. Rozman asked when I spoke with him in Washington last week. It can, he insists, but only if it changes — fast. "Right now I have 500 job openings I can't fill, and the problem is education. The prestige career to follow in India is engineering, and in Latin America it is [still] law or being a notary public."
"We need more computer courses with real standards and starting at an early age," he said. A lot of higher education in Latin America is modeled on the French/European system, which is better at producing philosophers than programmers. Philosophers are important, but not in bulk.
Latin America also has to do a better job of teaching English, he added, and eliminating the red tape that prevents economic integration in Latin America and makes it very cumbersome to start new businesses here.
"To go from Argentina to Montevideo is only a 20-minute flight," Mr. Rozman explained, but in terms of the economic integration demanded today by global firms, they are 10,000 miles apart. In addition, most of the legal systems in Latin America are designed to promote agriculture and light industry, not intellectual property or innovation. "All the laws were made for another type of society," he said. "If we don't get caught up with the next wave, we're in trouble."
That next wave is called "follow the sun," he said. "We like to start a project in Bangalore or Mumbai, then, as the day moves on, move it to our offices in Eastern Europe and then to Latin American." Tata expects its engineers in each place to be equally trained, speak English and have the computing infrastructure to seamlessly receive and hand off projects. This is a global-scale business.
"We have 50,000 employees in India and are going to 100,000," explained Mr. Rozman. Eventually, Tata will grow to 100,000 in China. "But I can't go to 100,000 in any one country in Latin America, so I have to be able to put [the whole continent] together."
Latin Americans may think that their big choice is between two models of Western capitalism — a European welfare state model and a hyper-competitive U.S. model. But before they divide their pie, they need to expand it — and here their most important choice is between an India example that focuses on developing human resources and a China syndrome that focuses on selling natural resources. Since countries tend to do either one or the other, here's hoping that Latin America discovers India before it gets hooked on China.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Immigration Consensus
Editorial from the wall street journal on immigration....
Finally a consensus has been reached on immigration. No, not among politicians, who can't agree on a rational immigration reform. The agreement is among professional economists.
In an open letter sponsored by the Independent Institute to President Bush and Congress last week, more than 500 prominent economists, including five Nobel laureates, proclaim that "immigration has been a net gain for American citizens." The letter adds that "while a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to the economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, gains from immigration outweigh the losses." Alan Greenspan often made this same point about the benefits of immigration while he was Federal Reserve Chairman.
What is striking about this immigration letter is that it is signed by economists from different fields of research, political affiliations and ideologies. It is possible that no other issue in the economic field, with the exception of the benefits of free trade, inspires such unanimity of professional opinion as immigration does.
Several years ago the Cato Institute surveyed the past presidents of the American Economic Association and the past chairmen of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Eighty percent agreed that immigration has had "a very favorable impact on the nation's economic growth," and 70% said that even illegal immigrant workers "have a positive economic impact." These experts agree that on balance immigrants don't displace native workers, depress wages or abuse welfare. If only these economic facts could break through an immigration debate that is dominated by emotion and political fear.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
World Refugee Day
By taking action right now, you can help turn a potential
setback to the effort to stop the genocide in Darfur into an
opportunity!
Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick - who
personally helped negotiate a peace agreement between the Sudanese
government and Darfur rebel groups - resigned.
Zoellick served as an advocate for Darfur within the Bush
Administration. With him now gone, we must keep the pressure on
President Bush to act. And since today is World Refugee Day -
created by the UN in 2001 to recognize the millions of refugees and
displaced people around the globe - there is no better opportunity.
Click here to send a message to President Bush.
Remind him on World Refugee Day to appoint a coordinator of US policy
in Darfur and to push for creation of a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.
Last month, Deputy Secretary Zoellick aided in brokering a peace
agreement - an important first step. Yet with hundreds of thousands in
Darfur already dead, millions more displaced and many at risk every
day, we must continue to press for a solution.
That is why we are asking President Bush to appoint a special US
envoy to the region and to press for a UN peacekeeping force to be on
the ground in Darfur no later than October. We cannot wait any longer!
Join us in asking President Bush:
- To push for a UN force for Darfur;
- To strengthen African Union troops already in Darfur until the UN arrives;
- To continue supporting humanitarian assistance programs in Darfur; and
- To appoint a special envoy to coordinate US policy in the region.
Click here to email President Bush today. Today is World Refugee Day today - a day set aside to remember the millions of refugees around the globe - and now is the time to remind President Bush of the plight of Darfur's 2.5 million refugees.
Thank you for your continued support.
In Somalia, Islamic Militias Fight Culture Wars
MOGADISHU, Somalia,
June 18 — Flush from a military victory earlier this month that caught
Washington and the world by surprise, Islamic militiamen have begun
waging smaller battles — cultural, not military ones — in and around
Somalia's shellshocked capital.
A week ago, when Mexico and Iran
were still playing the first half of their World Cup soccer match,
gunmen allied with the Islamic courts burst into a tiny theater in the
Hiliwaa neighborhood of north Mogadishu, condemned the place as ungodly
and angrily switched off the television set.
When they caught
sight of a man with a trendy Afro, with lines shaved into it, they tied
his hands behind his back, took out a pair of scissors and evened it
out into a scalp-revealing buzz cut.
"They said, 'Your hair is
against our culture and is not Islamic,' " recalled the man, Abdi
Fatah, 26. They whipped him with a belt, then jailed him for three days.
With
the old warlords gone, Mogadishu is safer, and more dangerous, too. It
is a happier place, and a more oppressive one. It is a capital city
that is also a rundown shantytown, churning with change. Where exactly
it is headed nobody knows.
In the old Mogadishu, militiamen would barge into a home and haul a
girl or woman away and rape her. Bullets rang out routinely, and gunmen
set up roadblocks and charged taxes on anybody who happened by.
Fewer
guns are visible now. The man-made roadblocks have disappeared, leaving
livestock and huge craters as the main obstructions to navigation. But
a new, more silent battle is under way, for control of the Islamic
movement in Somalia....
The scramble for power in Mogadishu is taking place behind the
scenes, in mosques and private rooms where clan elders gather. It
filters to the surface only in the mixed signals that are being given
about what people can wear now, and what they can do.
The
capital's Islamic leaders find themselves in an unfamiliar spot. No
longer can they just preach about the way things are supposed to be.
Now they face the challenge of running a broken-down city of two
million suffering souls.
(..)
When they could manage to track down the gunmen running rampant in
the streets, some courts adopted stringent forms of Shariah, cutting
off thieves' hands, executing killers and doling out lashes for lesser
crimes.
Soon, the clan-based courts merged in a powerful alliance
that eventually took on and toppled the warlords who had been ruling
and running roughshod over Mogadishu residents.
But those courts
owe part of their strength to the Bush administration, which tried
secretly to undermine them. In recent years, American intelligence
agents paid warlords to root out Islamic militants operating in
Mogadishu. The United States said a small cell of Al Qaeda,
made up of foreigners, had set up shop in Mogadishu after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks and were being protected by court leaders.
(..)
But there have been other confrontations. Earlier this year, Islamic
militiamen stopped Ismahan Ali Mohamed, 18, on the street and ripped
the long, tight-fitting skirt she was wearing. They ordered her to wear
a looser garment next time.
Now, she wears a flowing hijab on the
streets that covers all but her face. "It feels heavy and it's not
comfortable," she said, removing it inside a hotel restaurant to reveal
a bright pink outfit that still covered her but allowed more of a
glimpse of what was underneath. "With this, I feel happy and beautiful
and free," said Ms. Mohamed, an aspiring actress.
A friend, Ubah
Mohamed, 34, who runs a beauty shop, said she feared the new rules. "If
these Islamic people get their way, we'll have to cover all the way,"
she said. "I'm a beautiful girl and I like to show others how beautiful
I am. Behind the veil, no one can tell."
Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31,
who publishes a small newsletter devoted to women's issues, heard from
a man involved in one of the Islamic courts that her publication would
probably be shut down. "He said, 'Women have a right to sit in your
house and do domestic things,' " she said. " 'You don't have a right to
do a journal on human rights.' "
Monday, June 19, 2006
All-American Islam
Most American mosques import their clerics from overseas
— some who preach extremism, some who cannot speak English, and most
who cannot begin to speak to young American Muslims growing up on
hip-hop and in mixed-sex chat rooms. [Sheik Hamza] Yusuf, 48, and [Imam
Zaid] Shakir, 50, are using their clout to create the first Islamic
seminary in the United States, where they hope to train a new
generation of imams and scholars who can reconcile Islam and American
culture.The seminary is still in its fledgling stages, but Mr. Yusuf and Mr.
Shakir have gained a large following by being equally at home in
Islamic tradition and modern American culture. Mr. Yusuf dazzles his
audiences by weaving into one of his typical half-hour talks quotations
from St. Augustine, Patton, Eric Erikson, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Auden,
Robert Bly, Gen. William C. Westmoreland and the Bible. He is the host
of a TV reality show that is popular in the Middle East, in which he
takes a vanload of Arabs on a road trip across the United States to
visit people who might challenge Arab stereotypes about Americans, like
the antiwar protesters demonstrating outside the Republican National
Convention.
Personal Trainers Available by Download
That is the question an increasing
number of would-be fitness buffs are asking, as more trainers package
their services in audio or video files that can be downloaded into an iPod or P.D.A. for a quick trip to the gym.
The
idea dovetails with the suddenly voracious appetite for downloadable
media among online consumers and the long success the fitness industry
has enjoyed in selling home video products like workout tapes. And
while this trend is too nascent to be judged a success (there are no
Tae Bo sessions for the iPod yet), it does hold great potential for the
personal training business, which has historically been marginalized by
high prices.
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