China is in the news these days for buying up Unocal, Maytag and IBM PC. If you check out the latest CIA world factbook you can see that China’s purchasing power is more than half of US with the second largest economy. If you project out the growth rates (9.1% and 4.4%) you can see China catching up to the US in 2015 when we both have $19 trillion economies (maybe $23 trillion adding in inflation).
China will continue to grow its economy faster than US because its per capita income is still quite low ($5600 vs $40000 in 2004 est) and will still be less than 1/3 of US per capita income in 2015.
My favorite implication is for space policy. A China committed to space nostalgia (e.g., Moon landings) might get the US to devote thought to rationalizing commercial space policy. Mike Griffin started in this direction.
I’m heading off to DC for the next week, and will probably be consumed in tasks there. I’ll have broadband in the hotel, but I don’t know how much time I’ll be spending there, other than to sleep, so no promises. Maybe Sam can pick up the slack from Tenerife.
In his own private war, a Swede (acting against stereotype) who was a hostage in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to hunt down and kill his former captors. No Stockholm Syndrome for him, apparently.
If they’re smart, they’ll subcontract it to some Iraqis. Otherwise they may just become hostages themselves…
In his own private war, a Swede (acting against stereotype) who was a hostage in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to hunt down and kill his former captors. No Stockholm Syndrome for him, apparently.
If they’re smart, they’ll subcontract it to some Iraqis. Otherwise they may just become hostages themselves…
In his own private war, a Swede (acting against stereotype) who was a hostage in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to hunt down and kill his former captors. No Stockholm Syndrome for him, apparently.
If they’re smart, they’ll subcontract it to some Iraqis. Otherwise they may just become hostages themselves…
Reporting to you from Tenerife, Spain. It is a Canary Island in the Atlantic on London time with a decidedly Mediterranean culture. Tenerife claims to have the highest point in Spain, which I am told is the top of Mt. Teide the volcano, but the high point for me is the beach. This is my first trip ever to a European beach. I was in Denmark in the summer ten years ago, but it was not a “beach year” that year.
There are many people from the UK and the nordic countries that spend every waking minute in the sun. You can see hundreds of people sunning themself with or without (cloud) cover. Nothing tops (seeing) them.
The difference in the suit laws and custom explains many of the other cultural differences between Europe and the States. Topless bars are probably more lucrative in the States. US titillation in the movies plays ho hum in Europe. Foreign ho hum scenes titillate in the states. I prefer the pure tan to the Puritan.
Sundae toppings are also missing. One restaurant had 30 desserts including banana splits and a dozen ice cream sundaes and no chocolate sauce. I think that chocholate sauce has been devalued because Nutello (chocolate hazel nut butter) is what substitutes for peanut butter here.
I started to contemplate how biologists would determine why my radio does not work and how they would attempt to repair it. Because a majority
of biologists pay little attention to physics, I had to assume that all we would know about the radio is that it is a box that is supposed to play music.
How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken. We would eventually find how to open the radios and will find objects of various shape, color, and size (Fig. 2, see color insert). We would describe and classify them into families according to their appearance. We would describe a family of square metal objects, a family of round brightly colored objects with two legs, round-shaped objects with three legs and so on. Because the objects would vary in color, we will investigate whether changing the colors affects the radio’s performance. Although changing the colors would have only attenuating effects (the music is still playing but a trained ear of some people can discern some distortion), this approach will produce many publications and result in a lively debate.