Manufacturing is China's forte, and the IT world is India's. Transporting India's products is a matter of sending electrons over the telecommunication infrastructure. China's products (and raw materials too) need to be physically transported. Up until the recent astronomical increase in oil prices, transport costs were practically negligible.
Not anymore. A story in the NY Times says:
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
Meanwhile the cost to transport electronic data? The marginal cost is almost zero!
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Friday, August 01, 2008
A new round of conflicts and instability?
While the focus is on Iraq, and about the violence going down there, a couple of serious developments elsewhere that can have wide implications:
It appears that Pakistan's ISI was indeed actively assisting the Taliban in the bomb blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul. Both Afghanistan and India are tightening the squeeze on Pakistan. And the US too is pressuring Pakistan. It is a country with a weak government, a president (Musharraf) pushed to corner. Earlier I commented that Pakistan might be ripe for a military coup, except for the fact that Musharraf is already in pseudo-power.
And, Indian and Pakistani forces traded fire at the Line of Control, raising doubts on how long the five-year old ceasefire agreement will last.
All is not well on that front.
It appears that Pakistan's ISI was indeed actively assisting the Taliban in the bomb blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul. Both Afghanistan and India are tightening the squeeze on Pakistan. And the US too is pressuring Pakistan. It is a country with a weak government, a president (Musharraf) pushed to corner. Earlier I commented that Pakistan might be ripe for a military coup, except for the fact that Musharraf is already in pseudo-power.
And, Indian and Pakistani forces traded fire at the Line of Control, raising doubts on how long the five-year old ceasefire agreement will last.
All is not well on that front.
Pills will replace exercising: eat all you want :-)
No, this is not from The Onion. And it is no April First joke either.
This is from the Scientific American. Yes, that is right. I suppose this means that we can eat the cheesecake and have it too. Excerpt:
Scientists have found a drug that mimics the effects of a workout by, among other things, increasing the body's ability to burn fat.The study shows the pill can also increase endurance; lab mice that took it ran more than 40 percent longer on a treadmill than their untreated peers."It's tricking the muscle into 'believing' it's been exercised daily," says Ronald Evans, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, Calif., and co-author of a study published in Cell. "It proves you can have a pharmacologic equivalent to exercise."
This is from the Scientific American. Yes, that is right. I suppose this means that we can eat the cheesecake and have it too. Excerpt:
Scientists have found a drug that mimics the effects of a workout by, among other things, increasing the body's ability to burn fat.The study shows the pill can also increase endurance; lab mice that took it ran more than 40 percent longer on a treadmill than their untreated peers."It's tricking the muscle into 'believing' it's been exercised daily," says Ronald Evans, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, Calif., and co-author of a study published in Cell. "It proves you can have a pharmacologic equivalent to exercise."
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