North Korea Doc

Well, as long as I'm recommending movies, here's one on North Korea. It's up on Youtube, and you can see the rest of it (8 parts total) clip by clip.

Take a look at the empty streets, except for when people are set up for the benefit of the foreigners. Also pay attention to how all of the footage is near a landmark, hotel or a display of some sort. It's eery, as is the whole movie with the little official snippet facts.

After you are done, be sure to check out the North Korea Friendship Association and their official cafepress store to buy your friendship emblem.

Bangladesh Prostitution

As reported today by AFP and by The Guardian in April, Bangladeshi prostitutes are using cow hormones to fatten themselves up and attract more customers.

I recommend the video link to The Guardian below for the gist of it:
Video, by The Guardian

The AFP story below has some background the video doesn't:
Article, through Yahoo!

It's unfortunate enough that I don't feel like cracking jokes about this one.

Manila Graveyards, Absurd

This is not the first I've heard of people living in the graveyards of Manila, but a recent report by Cecil Morella of AFP returns to the subject.

She tells us that a graveyard in northern Manila, in the district of Novotas is home to some 600 families, some as large as 16 members. This would be bad enough, but a little digging reveals this is not the main graveyard where most of the shanties are found. Manila North Cemetary is home to some 10.000 families. Source and a photo essay here. The people live for under a dollar a day, driven to their family mausoleums or shanties, but this isn't a temporary thing.

I almost missed it, but Morella's piece notes that these are second generation graveyard dwellers. One of the interviewed, 20 year old mother of two said she would like to leave "But we were born here and we grew up here. I don't think we will be able to get out of here."

The news post is here, grim as it might be. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100628/wl_asia_afp/lifestylephilippinescemeterypoverty

Oh, and since Internet is a great but also an absurd way to read about news and places, Google now thinks I enjoy graveyards. Yeah, do a couple of searches along the lines of "manila north graveyard" and the first link will point you to Google maps which populates the window with other destinations you might be interested in, which in my case is other nearby graveyards. Sorry the pic is in Finnish though.

The other absurdity is Wikipedia, which has an article of the same place. It lists the notable burials there, as well as the intention to build a crematorium. Perhaps for people who intend to visit notable dead architects or something?

Stopping the Oil Stopped - Is This Correct?

Can this be right, that BP has stopped trying to plug the oil leak?

Jim Polson for Bloomberg on 1st of June has this to report:
"BP Plc has decided not to attach a second blowout preventer on its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico and efforts to end the flow are over until the relief wells are finished, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, who spoke at a press conference today."

http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-01/efforts-to-end-oil-flow-from-bp-s-leaking-well-are-over-coast-guard-says.html

BP has no press release linked on their website, the main page of which is completely devoted to the spill. CNN only has a report of a saw blade being stuck, slowing down work. Nothing on the "cut and cap" operation being abandoned.

In case the CNN link works, have a vid:


What to bring home from that video? They are trying something again, except that if it works only partly (ie. they succeed in cutting but not plugging) we will see a 20% increase in oil flow in to the sea. Even if by today, Wednesday they have fixed the blade problem and started cutting again, it would take until the end of the week to have finished cutting.

The original plug, the "junk shot", "top kill" and now "cut and cap". Anyone still think this might work?

Here's How You Do It

I would like to point out an article where the author has really succeeded in painting a picture of misery. This report is something the YLE writers should take a long hard look at - they might learn a trick or two.

The gist of it is that China's health care system isn't really working and that it's too expensive for most poor people, especially in rural areas, to afford necessary medical care. This is fine; from there the article goes on to explain what steps the Chinese government has decided on to improve the situation.

Then the article moves on to the human interest half, and oh boy have they got a beauty for us. Gillian Wong and Xi Yue tell of a family whose daughter suffered from a neurological disorder but was kicked out of the hospital (and dropped from a ventilator) because her parents couldn't afford the hospital bills. The girl was then made a makeshift machine from bicycle parts and an old washing machine while the family gathered donations and borrowed money, which in the end totaled 160.000 yuan, her father's salary being 1000/month.

There's also a short story about a group of migrant workers buying a secondhand dialysis machine and using it themselves when they couldn't afford a proper hospital. Somewhere in the between they report how 70 recommended hospitalization never happens as the people can't afford it.

This is how you write a scary hospital story. They couldn't just do a human interest piece and a separate report on what the government plans for the health care improvements but at least it beats the hell out of the YLE report where they published stories of people complaining about the Swine Flu.

The AP article titled "China Tries to Fix Crumbling Health Care System" is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091130/ap_on_re_as/as_china_fixing_health_care

Ocean CO2 Horrors

Would you like to see some grim figures?
Head over to this Time article about the oceans:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091119/wl_time/08599194039100

The gist of it is that the oceans last year absorbed about 2.3 billion tons of carbon (about one quarter of all man made carbon.) This puts the total in the oceans at about 150 billion tons. They note that from 2000, the amount of carbon deposited has increased 29% and the oceans have absorbed 10% less.

Quick math time. This means we deposited 1.5% of the total last year. Also, counting back with the 29% figure we learn that in 2000, the oceans held approximately 132 billion tons of CO2.

This is from historical data, but let's project that a bit, for the next 10 years assuming a continued 29% growth: the oceans will hold a very rough 177 tons of carbon by 2019, except if we loose another 10% absorption. We might well have that 17 tons extra in the atmosphere.

Back to the Time article. According to it, the 150 billion tons of carbon, were it released back to the atmosphere would raise the co2 concentration to 460 parts per million. But according to my calculation, we will be releasing more than 11% of that (17 tons) even if the oceans continue to function like before. This does not account for the reduction of absorption rate as concentration increases.

My numbers are not very scientific at all, but they are scary. That 460 ppm is over the upper safe limit and we seem to really try to get there. The current estimates maintain that the growth of emissions will continue, as China will catch up to and pass USA (which will still continue of course.)

The article continues to explain how this will affect the ocean, I just put together the numbers for the atmosphere.

The Time article is grim reading, but I hope the little math exercise shows just how bad the situation is. If you have more solid numbers or better math, please feel free to comment.

Providing Background

Since AP does not link directly to their sources, I'll help them a little.
I'm talking specifically about this post:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091028/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentgreenpeace

The news post does not make a huge deal out of a Greenpeace report about China - and they shouldn't since it's only one source. It does however note the amount of dangerous chemicals and heavy metals in the Pearl River of Southern China.

I'll refrain from commenting on Greenpeace and their style of reporting bad environmental news, but to my untrained eye the numbers on the report are quite impressive. Besides, I'm firmly in the camp that believes large Chinese factories do pollute.

Here is the link to the report I wish the original author had included:
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/hazardous-chemical-pollution-o.pdf

Yes, it's meant to be scary if you care about the Guangdong waters but damn if that isn't a lot of heavy metal in the water. Besides, you don't see anyone claiming the water isn't in use. The locals have even arranged mass swimming events in Guangzhou to prove how clean the water is. Yeah, you probably float in it very effortlessly.

Assuming a dead rat didn't float in to the Greenpeace sample jar it's a scary read. Here, I'll post a pic of some unrelated bad looking water I've seen in China just to repeat the point - China is relatively stable, but what if the rural regions run out of potable water?

Reading Between the Lines in China News

I'll show you a neat trick. Start by checking out this tidbit, feel free to just glance over it:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_re_as/as_china_water

Then think about the scale of the effort. The Chinese are willing to build a water diversion all the way from Danjiangkou to Beijing to water the capital city area. Now if Danjiangkou is unfamiliar, not to worry, google maps shows where it is:
Google map links are huge

You will have to zoom out a little bit and then some, but that's just to emphasize the distance. It's a long, long way from Beijing.

Now please go back to the original news article and see if you can find any numbers. I'll help again. 330,000 people will have to relocate, the project will cost $63 billion, it will finish 2014 and it will provide a quarter of the water Beijing needs.

This gives us a lot to work with. 900 kilometers, billions of dollars and just five years to completion. We have translated an article topic from "China news" to What Is Really Going On

"China starts resettling 330,000 for water project" can be read "The Chinese have huge problems supplying potable water"

I can only assume the original AP author wasn't given the permission or didn't have the time to actually write anything except the facts. He or she couldn't get to the obvious conclusion that the greatest challenge facing China in the near future is not going to be economical, it is going to be ecological.

Nothing will drive a mass of people from their homes like the lack of water, and if Beijing is getting this treatment, they will think they should too. The article appears innocent enough, but for me it's scary reading.