Sunday, October 28, 2007
Fair Trade Tirades
Yesterday I was in a café, which (among other coffees) sold fair trade coffee from Indonesia. The problem was, it /only/ sold fair trade coffee.
I never buy fair trade products. Why?
Fair trade implies that other types of trade are /not/ fair. In fact, trade is a wholly voluntary activity, by definition it only takes place when both buyer and seller are satisfied with the deal.
Fair trade gives consumers and producers wrong minded incentives.
Western consumers believe that buying non-fair trade products from developing countries is detrimental to those countries - which is clearly not the case.
Producers are lured into participating in markets (like the volatile coffee market) with the /hope/ of better long term prices, rather than diversifying into other more stable markets. The costs of employment increases which increases unemployment in societies where underemployment is endemic.
Compared to buying fair trade, donating to charity is a less destructive way of helping people out, it may take a bit more of an effort, but at the end of the day your Euro will be more effective.
I never buy fair trade products. Why?
Fair trade implies that other types of trade are /not/ fair. In fact, trade is a wholly voluntary activity, by definition it only takes place when both buyer and seller are satisfied with the deal.
Fair trade gives consumers and producers wrong minded incentives.
Western consumers believe that buying non-fair trade products from developing countries is detrimental to those countries - which is clearly not the case.
Producers are lured into participating in markets (like the volatile coffee market) with the /hope/ of better long term prices, rather than diversifying into other more stable markets. The costs of employment increases which increases unemployment in societies where underemployment is endemic.
Compared to buying fair trade, donating to charity is a less destructive way of helping people out, it may take a bit more of an effort, but at the end of the day your Euro will be more effective.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Pro Evo 2008 on the Wii
Had a glance at the newly released Pro Evos on Xbox and PS3 on Friday - looked like the same as Pro Evo 6 with new licks of paint - definitely not worth €500+.
Saw this by chance, and was blown away...
Saw this by chance, and was blown away...
Football & Globalisation
Economist Dani Rodrik asking some interesting questions about football and globalisation.
My take: globalisation pushes up the standards of football played and makes competitions more competitive and entertaining, which can only be a good thing!
My take: globalisation pushes up the standards of football played and makes competitions more competitive and entertaining, which can only be a good thing!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Me and Jay
Me and JayZ have been through some tough times together; back in the day while I was struggling through college his lyrics would punch me straight in the stomach and goad me back on my feet. At his best he's like a lyrical fight club.
[Marilyn Manson's Holy Wood was also an often needed brutal shot of adrenaline back then too]
Jay's last album was dodgy (who said rapping is a young person's game again?!) but with songs like Oh My God on his new record there's always that hope that he'll get back on track.
[Btw, JayZ/DangerMouse's Grey Album is THE best album of all time - bar none]
[Marilyn Manson's Holy Wood was also an often needed brutal shot of adrenaline back then too]
Jay's last album was dodgy (who said rapping is a young person's game again?!) but with songs like Oh My God on his new record there's always that hope that he'll get back on track.
[Btw, JayZ/DangerMouse's Grey Album is THE best album of all time - bar none]
Saturday, October 20, 2007
WPA with RT2500 on Ubuntu Gutsy
I've just upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy, had a bit of a problem with WPA this time round too, but fixed it by removing the "network-manager" package. So if you include that step for in my Feisty howto it should you should get WPA to work on both Feisty and Gutsy.
[BTW, that howto is by far the most popular posting on this site - even though I am certain my regular readers wouldn't know a Kernel module from a Beowulf cluster :)]
[BTW, that howto is by far the most popular posting on this site - even though I am certain my regular readers wouldn't know a Kernel module from a Beowulf cluster :)]
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Blogger Come Good
Jakarta Casual has landed himself a regular column at ESPN Star!
I suspect it's in an effort to keep him quiet about ESPN blatantly plagiarizing the punditry on his blog.
Congratulations in any case!! :)
I suspect it's in an effort to keep him quiet about ESPN blatantly plagiarizing the punditry on his blog.
Congratulations in any case!! :)
Monday, September 10, 2007
Funny
I thought the Israeli Jewish neo-Nazis were hilarious, but this takes the biscuit.
Indonesia's supreme arbiter of right and wrong has ordered that $106m be paid by Time for defaming Suharto! HAHAHAHAHA
Time claimed that the Suharto family stole $73bn, the Indonesian supreme court commented:
I love those supreme court fuckers.
So is it a question of a figure? Would $40bn, $30bn, $20bn be more accurate non-defamatory figures?
(I wish I could come up with something more intelligent, but that judgment and article is satire enough.)
I wonder will Time now leave Indonesia? I wonder is this going to be the new face of repression - the ever-so-legalistic-Singapore-way - sue the hell out of those who raise their heads above the parapet. It's even better in Indonesia, cos the Supreme court will pretty much write a blank check - the court will cut themselves a fat commission in any case.
Indonesia's supreme arbiter of right and wrong has ordered that $106m be paid by Time for defaming Suharto! HAHAHAHAHA
Time claimed that the Suharto family stole $73bn, the Indonesian supreme court commented:
"...the article has damaged the reputation and honour of the grand general of the Indonesian armed forces and former president of Indonesia"HAHAHAHA
I love those supreme court fuckers.
So is it a question of a figure? Would $40bn, $30bn, $20bn be more accurate non-defamatory figures?
(I wish I could come up with something more intelligent, but that judgment and article is satire enough.)
I wonder will Time now leave Indonesia? I wonder is this going to be the new face of repression - the ever-so-legalistic-Singapore-way - sue the hell out of those who raise their heads above the parapet. It's even better in Indonesia, cos the Supreme court will pretty much write a blank check - the court will cut themselves a fat commission in any case.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Kubuntu Freezes
[***This fix is much better -- i.e. it actually works!! :);)***]
Twice over the last few months my Kubuntu started to freeze - another symptom was that I couldn't use hibernate.
I figured out the problem was that the swap partition was not being picked up (text on the bottom right of ksysguard will say that swap is unavailable, and the swap graph should be empty).
Luckily the solution is easy!
In the system settings, go to advanced settings and then click on "Disk and File Systems".
Log into administrator mode, and modify the partition which has no mount point, type, device and is deactivated.
Modify the partition, by ensuring that it's Swap and that the option below is "auto" - not "noauto"!
Now you should be ready to go!
[Edit: the swap partition line in /etc/fstab will look something like this:
UUID=22f029fb-e472-43d4-8e64-a49358a9f890 swap auto 0 0
but should look something like this:
UUID=22f029fb-e472-43d4-8e64-a49358a9f890 none swap auto 0 0
hibernating messes around my swap for some reason, which is kinda crap, will have to look into this further...]
Twice over the last few months my Kubuntu started to freeze - another symptom was that I couldn't use hibernate.
I figured out the problem was that the swap partition was not being picked up (text on the bottom right of ksysguard will say that swap is unavailable, and the swap graph should be empty).
Luckily the solution is easy!
In the system settings, go to advanced settings and then click on "Disk and File Systems".
Log into administrator mode, and modify the partition which has no mount point, type, device and is deactivated.Modify the partition, by ensuring that it's Swap and that the option below is "auto" - not "noauto"!
Now you should be ready to go!
[Edit: the swap partition line in /etc/fstab will look something like this:
UUID=22f029fb-e472-43d4-8e64-a49358a9f890
but should look something like this:
UUID=22f029fb-e472-43d4-8e64-a49358a9f890 none swap auto 0 0
hibernating messes around my swap for some reason, which is kinda crap, will have to look into this further...]
Monday, September 03, 2007
Christine
Debs night. Apparently the Make Up artist that did her make up did Iggy Pop's the weekend before! Good practice :) :P
Breaking the Law
Elvira Arellano (an illegal immigrant) took refuge in a Chicago church for a year, before venturing out and being deported by police - leaving her son (a US citizen) in the States under the guardianship of the church.
A network of teachers and families in France hide and protect immigrants and their kids from deportation.
Somehow sounds like the plot of a Heroes episode - or even echoes of occupied Europe.
In both these cases, I don't think you can say that the Church or the network of families and teachers are morally wrong when breaking the law (what does that tell you about immigration laws?). In fact, I know of no reasonable moral code which judges rights and wrongs based on where one chooses the live.
[And I know for a fact that there is very little (if any) economics based reasoning for restrictions of movement]
A network of teachers and families in France hide and protect immigrants and their kids from deportation.
Somehow sounds like the plot of a Heroes episode - or even echoes of occupied Europe.
In both these cases, I don't think you can say that the Church or the network of families and teachers are morally wrong when breaking the law (what does that tell you about immigration laws?). In fact, I know of no reasonable moral code which judges rights and wrongs based on where one chooses the live.
[And I know for a fact that there is very little (if any) economics based reasoning for restrictions of movement]
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