A decade later, a tempered vision of NAFTA – Industrial space that was once hotter than a jalapeño pepper is cooling as companies that flocked to Mexico in the 1990s are looking to China, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere for lower wages and better all-around conditions. Overall, the number of jobs in Mexico’s so-called maquiladora assembly plants, while still well above what they were when the revolutionary free-trade agreement took effect in January 1994, are down more than 20 percent from their peak three years ago. [Christian Science Monitor]

It seems that many of these free trade arrangements include forcing our trading partners to guarantee the protection of our intellectual property while protecting our agricultural subsidies. If the trade laws were rewritten without the subsidies, I think most of critics concerns would be addressed as we’d see more of the benefits being distributed to the poorer agricultural workers in our trading nations. Continue Reading »

Macworld Wish List for Steve by David Miller – Macworld SF is like a second Christmas for many Mac users. And it all begins with Steve’s keynote address. What new goodies are in store for this coming year? Here’s a wish list from Mac DevCenter writers. [MacDevCenter] Continue Reading »

Suing Nemo: Litigation Hits The Undersea World – As if there wasn’t already enough controversy over Simba and Kimba, Toon Zone alerts us to an article at BBC News Online about an author of children’s books in France suing Disney. The author, Franck Le Calvez, claims that many of the characters in Disney/Pixar’s smash hit Finding Nemo are similar to characters in a book he published a couple years back. The main character in his book is Pierrot the Clown Fish and a surgeon fish and cleaner shrimp are also featured. Le Calvez’ lawyer, Pascal Kamina, contends, “The similarities are sufficiently troubling for us to ask for an explanation from Disney,” while Disney claims, “The allegation is totally baseless – Finding Nemo is a work that belongs to Pixar and Disney and is an independent creation.” Apparently the ocean is now also going to need lawyer fish.

Based on reading through some articles, including one at the BBC regarding the author’s claim that his book is infringed upon, it seems like a coincidence.

IMF Presses World to Scrap Farm Subsidies – The world economy would gain an annual boost of 128 billion dollars if lavish farm subsidies were scrapped, the IMF said in a report. Industrialized nations spent more than 300 billion dollars last year on agricultural subsidies — six times the total government aid to developing countries, the International Monetary Fund noted. [Global Policy.org]

I find it amazing how much attention “Fair-Trade coffee”:96 manages to attract by people who practically ignore this larger issue. It must be the humanizing effect of having the mental image of a person as opposed to the larger academic debate. Combined with the feeling that ending subsidies will hurt farmers with the belief that buying Fair-Trade coffee simply helps everyone (except the distributers we’re trying to cut out) and I suppose we have our explanation.

chaotic intransient prose bursts: They called it “ecto” – With a new name, I felt the program should be cleaned up as well. I re-coded everything from the ground up. There are a lot of improvements now and a lot of new features, most of which have been repeated user-requests. The final product is now ready for beta testing. For the first round, I am going to invite users who have donated to download and test the program. In the second round, a free public beta version will be made available. If you did not receive a beta test invitation by the end of December 30th and you are sure you have donated, just drop me a note by email. [Kung-Foo.tv]

Glad to see progress on a new version, as Kung-Log has been mostly my favorite program to post to my MT blog with (The MT Bookmarklet being a close second).

The Echo Effect in the Blogosphere – I wish there were a Universal Story ID Number (USID)  in the blogosphere.  Then I wish my RSS Feed Reader could organize my content by the USID so that I could turn off a story and all comments related to that story.  [< a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/MikeWalsh/" class="extlink">Mike Walsh's Social Software Stuff]

He brings up an interesting point of how with an increasing amount of content we separate the wheat from the chaff. How do we do that? Continue Reading »

OnStar Considered Harmful – “A few weeks ago Slashdot ran an article on the privacy issues in EzPass. Some of the comments referred to other things Big Brother could do with GPS in cars, and now the New York Times has run a column on what else your car is saying about you (free registration req’d). From the article: ‘Aviel D. Rubin, the technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said that every new technology with the potential to invade privacy was introduced with pledges that it would be used responsibly. But over time, he said, the desire of law enforcement and business to use the data overtook the early promises. “The only way to get real privacy,” he said, “is not to collect the information in the first place.”‘” [Slashdot]

While privacy is a valid concern, I have to wonder how many people who are paranoid about people tracking their cars have cell phones? It makes me wonder who is supposed to care about the slightest details of the actions we make everyday. Besides, I personally wouldn’t object to law enforcement being able to track people with an equivalent procedure to a phone tap, and can see the benefits of finding lost kids, or help during medical emergencies.

Racism in Lord of the Rings – Okay, yes, it’s true. Many of the Orcs (and the super-Orcs) are dark-skinned and have slant-eyes. They are also how shall I put this? Orcs! Ya frickin’ idjit! One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people like me who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, “Cool, Orcs!” On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim “black people!” Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters. [Instapundit.com]

I think that it’s hard to accuse Peter Jackson of racist overtones considering how closely his interpretation tracked descriptions in the book. Since Tolkein’s work is written in the context of a native mythology for England, I think we can forgive allusions which may no longer be politically correct.

– Iran Quake Toll Rises to 25,000; Injured Fill Hospitals, and Streets – KERMAN, Iran, Dec. 27 — As rescue workers raced to the ancient city of Bam, officials there raised the death toll from its 12-second earthquake on Friday to 25,000, and worried that it could go much higher. [NY Times]

This is truly horrifying, terrible news, both in scale and human suffering. It is comforting however to know that whatever political and historical differences may exist that it is possible for humanitarian concerns for injured and grieving human beings to prevail, as shown by the aid now flowing in from across the world. My prayers and hopes go out to the survivors.

The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know – A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic’s gallon jar of pickles. [FastCompany]

It’s an interesting article about changes Walmart is forcing in the way companies do business and whether or not they make a profit doing so.