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Saturday, March 8th, 2008
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11:21 am - Hello, again -- and would you like to take a survey?
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Well, yes, I've been buried in school things. And here is my latest project, for an experimental social science course.
Please, please take the survey here. We need just a few more particpants by Sunday to complete our goal: www.cls-security.com.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 27th, 2007
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2:15 pm - Hello, again. Wanna go on a trip?
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Hi, everyone!
I have about 10 days off between my summer internship and the beginning of school (September 14ish - September 24ish). I'm wondering if anyone wants to travel (part of) the world with me. :)
I'm interested in visiting one of the following:
- Prague and Eastern Europe
- The Baltic States
- Argentina
- Other cool places TBD
Does anyone have a week or so? Please do write back. :)
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(28 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, February 17th, 2007
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1:57 pm - Yeah, I really should update more.
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| Monday, December 4th, 2006
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12:22 am - LJ Genie, can you help?
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My cousin took some really cute videos of my grandmother dancing on Thanksgiving. I'd like to get a copy from him, but they're too big to email (he doesn't have gmail and isn't too web-savvy).
Question: Is there a YouTube-like site that will allow you upload PRIVATE videos? I don't know if she wants the whole world able to see her, but I'd like to get the video shared between the two of us.
Dumb question, perhaps.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, September 15th, 2006
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10:25 am - I live in the best place in the world. Really.
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So I moved into my new house on-campus yesterday. Without giving away too much for potential stalkers, I'll just simply say that it's the best place in the world.
Last night there was the first party of the year. A room was decorated with hundreds of cut-out stars decorated with highlighters that shine under black light. Someone had created a poster that said, "It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value --- Stephen Hawking. So, let's get fucked up." Damn.
So we danced so happily and I had that rising wave of bodygasm, that perfect wonderful loving sense of being in just the right place and illimitably happy. A lot of other people were drunk or more, but as you probably know, I prefer to just be high on life. And high I was.
So after I had had enough of extraversion, I went to my room and finished putting away my clothes and arranging my desk. Then, I heard some noise and went out to see what was going on.
Some of my housemates were juggling chunks of dry ice from the party's punchbowl, lighting them on fire, rolling them around the floor, and having a fucked-up time. They were also musing on which other substances would sublimate (turn from solid to gas without being a liquid). Fuck, I love this place.
Well, I knew what to do in this situation---I told them that I had made dry-ice ice cream for my "Science of Food" class last year. Would anyone like me to make more? On short notice, I didn't have any cream, but I mixed vanilla yogurt with milk and chocolate chips and threw it into the dry ice. Viola [sic].
So, we hung out until 4 am and ate dry-ice ice cream and talked about what kind of doctors we would be if we were ever to be doctors.
I'm going to have to work on my self-control, because this is the most wonderful place and I just want to embrace it 24/7 with both hands. And I still need to go to class and stuff.
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
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1:10 am - Jessica's Poetry Forum, #, um, 20
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When Death Comes
By Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, August 25th, 2006
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8:24 pm - So the London liquid explosive plot ISN'T POSSIBLE?
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Here's an UK Register article that explains some of the logistical problems with the recent Heathrow airport plot.
Basically, this article says that TATP, the explosive that was supposed to be created by mixing two chemicals in the airplane lavatory, has to be kept very cold, takes many hours to form---and is subject to an extreme risk of early detonation, which would have simply killed the would-be terrorist in the bathroom, not the other passengers on the plane.
According to the London Times Online, Palestinian suicide bomber "engineers" who prepare the chemical often have their hands blown off.
What do the chemistry geeks among us think? ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nekrenas?
UPDATE: Here's a link to the article that led me to the Register article above, with some priceless stories of official stupidity in the air. Some samples:
In 2004, a United 747 bound for Los Angeles jettisoned thousands of gallons of fuel into the Pacific and returned to Australia because a discarded airsickness bag was discovered with the letters "BOB" scrawled across it. At its most nefarious, BOB is crew member jargon for "babe on board," but for reasons that defy explanation, the crew mistook the acronym for bomb on board, and went all the way back to Sydney.
In 2002, military fighters were scrambled when a group of karaoke singers were seen chatting excitedly and pointing at the Manhattan skyline from the window of an Air-India 747.
But of more than 2,300 military intercepts of civilian airliners in North American airspace during the past five years, most amusing was the time a pair of F-16s were launched because two British men had been acting suspiciously aboard an American Airlines flight headed to JFK from London's Heathrow Airport. The men were witnessed making repeated, tandem trips to the toilet. Turns out they weren't terrorists, but they were oversexed members of the mile-high club. They also confessed to smoking crack in the lavatory, and were deported back to Britain immediately after landing.
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| Sunday, August 20th, 2006
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10:47 pm - Non-lj blogging
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Inspired by the success of some bloggers within my friends-of-friends social circle, I think I'd like to try my hand at non-lj-blogging. You know, the kind you can make money at. ;)
So, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for me before starting up: topics to address, pitfalls to avoid, cool things to include, etc.
I'm thinking of making it a "libertarian girl" blog, that will cover some of the interesting stuff I'm learning in my classes, as well as my thoughts on economic, psychological, evolutionary biology, finance, etc. issues. (I know that sounds nauseatingly narcissistic, but I guess that's part of the blog experience.)
I also want to do some "journalism", interviewing cool/interesting/relevant people. Perhaps with video. Wow. I love doing interviews.
School will be very busy when I get back, but I hope I can get this going while still in school. If not, when I'm done. (If blogging is not completely passe at that point.)
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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3:31 pm - Anyone want to buy a rental property?
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I don't usually post housing ads, but my cousin just became the selling agent for a really great property in Encinitas. It's a beautiful, beachside duplex, featuring:
* One-2 Bedroom/1 Bath
* One-1 Bedroom/1 Bath
* Backyard and Patio
* Walking distance to 101 restaurants and shopping
* A few blocks away from Beacon’s Beach and Moonlight Beach
* Possible vacation rental income from $1,000 to $1,500 per week
* Condo Conversion Potential
* Best price on Neptune
Asking price: $1.2 million.
Luscious Photos, Here!
If interested, please email or comment!
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, August 18th, 2006
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5:52 pm - San Diego Wheee!
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I will be holding a sushi lunch on Tuesday, around noon, at Onami restaurant in Carlsbad. It's yummy, it's all-you-can-eat, and select members of the K____ family (including honorary members such as myself) will be there.
Please do RSVP. Please do attend!
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, August 15th, 2006
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3:59 pm - Amazing Journeys
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Since I've been bitten by the travel bug, I'm seriously thinking of taking some time off in the future to go on an amazing journey. One of these times, I don't just want to book something, or even just land in a new place with my brain and a credit card.
I'm interested in reading about any "amazing journeys" that you might have read about on the web or that have been turned into books. Quirky themed trips, original approaches to close-to-the-ground cheap travel, record-breaking journeys, things that have never been done before, travel stories that have been turned into interesting books, etc.
A few that come to mind are:
* Jim Roger's Millennium Adventure, which is a follow-up to his around-the-world motorcycle trip, which he wrote up in one of my favorite books, Investment Biker.
* One woman's story of hiking the Appalachian trail.
* This cool idea I read once but can't seem to search for, where two kids toured the country in a van talking to people in various careers about their lives.
Any other examples?
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 14th, 2006
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11:36 pm - Heathrow Disaster
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I came back from San Sebastian through Paris and then spent a day there. That afternoon, I went to exchange my train ticket and found that I couldn't get into England, no way, no how. Heathrow Airport had been shut down and all of the passengers that had to get back right away, had bought train tickets on the Eurostar from Paris.
I wound up spending the night in a dive hotel near the train station and leaving the next afternoon for London. I delayed my flight a day in the hopes that Heathrow would calm down and left on Sunday at noon.
No luck. I got to the airport at 7 am and was in line until the plane left at around 1:30 pm (an hour and a half late). They made me remove my shoes twice. I carried only a plastic bag with my passport, a credit card, and my boarding pass. I had to check my laptop, my cell phone, my spare clothes. It wasn't just liquids or gels. Or tweezers or Swiss Army knives. Or any of the ridiculous things they continue to ban. They had a list of things that were okay to bring and all that was not permitted was forbidden.
I must say that I hate airport security. It does NOT make us any safer. The foiled plot by the British police was NOT foiled by airport security. It was foiled by police work, as it should have been. I am so sick of people saying that "it's worth it if it prevents terrorism". Well, perhaps. But it doesn't prevent terrorism. As such, it (the huge economic drain of severely inconveniencing millions of people, wasting vast resources, not to mention increasing the police state) is NOT worth it. There was a plan to mix gel explosives in carry-on luggage over a decade ago that no one talks about, now that our government (and the UK government) are busy closing the latest barn door after the horse has flown. This article has details about the previous plan.
If there was an airline named Terrorist Air, where I could fly freely and happily without any security checks, and just take my chances. I'd happily do it.
After the worst of the fascist foolishness ended, we took off. Prior to landing, the flight attendants on our flight realized that they didn't bring enough pens for people to fill out their landing cards for US Customs. So, they asked if anyone had any pens on board to share, and at least ten people did.
Pens were expressly forbidden at security.
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(26 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
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4:56 pm - I´m in Basque country!
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San Sebastian is lovelywonderful. It´s like La Jolla (in San Diego for you non-CA folks), but very few people speak English, and all of the signs are in Basque as well as Spanish.
It´s a beautiful beach town, with lots of clothing stores, rich people with beautiful shoes, hot tanned babes a la Del Mar (also in CA), etc. I´m really enjoying it, and it´s a great way to end my time in Spain. Tonight, I leave for Paris for one day, London for another, and then home. Sigh.
I bought a Basque language newspaper, because it´s fun to try to decode it.
Things I like while traveling:
* Sitting on a train, eating gummy bears, and reading a good book
* Decoding languages
* Speaking in other languages
* Talking to people with interesting lifestyles (e.g. the Austrian guy who lives in Cali, Columbia on 1000 E per month plus drug supplements)
* Internet ubiquity
* Walking more than 10 miles a day
* The insta-community of hostels
* Being able to come or go on a few hours notice
* Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling new things
* Discovering new food
* Walking around and thinking about stuff by myself
* How satisfying it is to make arrangements for trains, hostels, etc.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
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8:49 pm - Not having such a great time in Madrid
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It might be the really hot temperatures (37 - 40 C), or the constant risk of dehydration, or the fact that my trip is ending soon. I'm not sure. I'm cranky and uncomfortable. I slept about 14 hours last night (probably didn't hydrate enough) and I had to go to three separate stations to get a ticket for tomorrow and I'm actually not going to have a chance to use one of my rail pass days and... well, I'm just not in the best mood. I broke down in tears at the ticket office when they sent me to the third window and yelled at me in Spanish. People in Madrid are definitely not as nice as those in Barcelona (who stop in the street while you're looking at a map and ask if you need help).
Anyway, I'm leaving tonight on a night train for San Sebastian, which is near the French border on the Western side---I came in through Port Bou, which is near the French border on the Eastern side. The next night I'm leaving for Paris, where I'll spend the day. Then, I have one day in London and I leave in the morning for home. Sigh.
I really don't want to go home. I want to be a PT, Perpetual Traveler.
(EDITED) I met a US Army guy last night who tried to pretend he was in "International Development". (He said it in sentence case, like a book title he'd memorized). He was a hugely built short guy with lots of stories about being chased after by Uzbek whores, arrested in Costa Rica, and killing people in Afghanistan. It interested me how cynical he was about power. The anti-war folks are so idealistic, and I find it odd that the troops are not so. The Army guy, who is getting his degree in political science, actually referred to Afghanistan as a "war of all against all", and said that there was no solution. You just keep killing people---and killing people doesn't do anything at all. He thought Afghan culture was the nastiest thing he'd ever seen.
His claim is that their environment makes it necessary for them to be extremely harsh and cruel to survive. (I'm not sure why this isn't true of modern-day Mongolia or Uzbekistan, for example.) He said that generosity is regarded as weakness. Hishis friend, an interpreter who speaks English and wears Western clothes, said that he would kill his new bride if she wasn't a virgin---this despite the fact that this was a really dumb idea, as she is a Danish citizen (although of Afghan origin, like the friend). When he heard this most Western Afghan say that, he felt such despair.
Also, his role in the Special Forces is to "build infrastructure". They do things like hand 50 lb sacks of wheat to Afghans (so it looks like the food is coming from them, to provide them with authority), who then turn around (sometimes quite literally) and either resell them, store them for personal use, or demand favors in exchange for them. He wants to get out. And become a bush pilot so he can "make fucking bank" off of the UN in Africa.
Ah, corruption.
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| Monday, August 7th, 2006
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2:04 am - Madrid!
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I got up way too late this morning, and couldn't get on a train until 7:30 pm! So I wound up having a whole day to kill. I did my usual intense walking-around-the-city for 5 hours. I left my bags in a random hotel and took off for the beach. (It was fun to stay in a super-cheap hostel and then leave my bags in a beautiful gilt hotel for the day. Yes, the people of Barcelona are awfully nice!)
I must have walked about 10 miles today, from the hotel, around the beach, and then back. I walked down Passieg de Gracia to the beach, and then up through the Ciutat Vella ("Beautiful City"---the old city). I saw a real life nudist Mediterranean beach. I wish I could upload my pictures of the "Platges Naturalista" signs. No, I didn't take any pictures of naked people. Sorry.
It's good that I got so much walking in, because I then spent 5 hours on a train.
I think the woman at the train station lied to me---she said something about my train pass requiring her to charge me for two days of travel instead of one for trips made at 6 pm that end in midnight, because 7 pm is when a new day starts. She put me on the 7:30 pm train, first class, saying that they had amazing food, and plenty of room. Well, she was totally wrong. The food was terrible. Airplane food, and not first-class airplane food. But I was starving after so much walking and I ate everything, including a few extra rolls.
I have this conservationist mode I go into when I'm travelling---hoarding food, making sure to always leave something in reserve for next time, maximizing my consumption when I'm hungry by eating all of the condiments and choosing drinks that have the most nutritional value and most approach food. I think it's a legacy from my grandparents' experiences in WW II. I have a sort of automatic survivor instinct that kicks in when I'm traveling, especially alone.
I got into Madrid at midnight and am writing this at 2 am. I didn't want to like this city, because I quite identify with Barcelona's position of rebellion, but I think I'm going to like it. I like the looks of it so far. We'll see tomorrow.
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| Sunday, August 6th, 2006
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2:37 am - Salons
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One of my life's goals is to have a salon in my home---no, not a hair salon, but a salon like the San Diego Futurists, but all the time. A place where interesting people congregate to share ideas, start ventures, and crash on the way to their next place.
I just found a cool online course on the history of salons. I'd done some research on my own, but never seen it all in one place like this.
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(29 comments | comment on this)
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12:24 am - So I finally decided... on Spain
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Leave it to me to decide on the third option.
Prague was really far by train (a two-day journey, just to go there and back), so I decided to leave that for another time and head to Barcelona, a place I've always wanted to visit. This summer's trip to Costa Rica (before I went to London) was the first time I've traveled abroad alone (without a friend or a tour), and this trip to Spain has been my first unplanned solo adventure. I love it! There's a kind of contentment you only get on the road, sitting in the train, eating gummy bears and reading a good book, knowing that you are going somewhere, at the same time that you are doing nothing. Sometimes I wish I had company (and would have preferred to go with a friend), but other times, it's just fun being able to be my impulsive self without inconveniencing anyone.
I bought a train pass that will let me travel for 5 days (in 2 months) through three countries (in this case, France, Spain, and Portugal). I set off for Paris in the afternoon, then switched to a night train. I arrived in Barcelona in the morning, after meeting a quite pleasant Argentinian and having some fun discussions in Spanish with him. (He works in a national park in Patagonia, as a park ranger, and lives in a house without electricity, running water, or a telephone. In the winter, he doesn't see another person for several weeks. He was traveling through Europe for a couple of months to climb the Pyrenees and the Alps. I struck up a conversation when I saw the ice hammer he was carrying with him!)
Along the way, I read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which is a good book, but very narrowly focused on the Spanish civil war. (One might think that there's not much applicability to Barcelona today, but I saw a lot of graffiti with the slogan "Catalonia is NOT Spain!" Evidently they are still fighting the good fight, begun back when Spain was a series of principalities, like Italy in Machiavelli's day, and Catalonia, Aragon, and Castile had not yet united into one country.) I really like it here---it reminds me a bit of San Francisco, with its rebellious history, its emphasis on art, its proximity to the coast and mountains at the same time.
I went out that day and saw the Gaudi buildings, for which Barcelona is famous, and just soaked up this lovely place. I also got to see the University of Barcelona, which is the most beautiful university I've ever seen---and I've seen a lot of universities! It's made of tan stone like Stanford, but with better gardens, lovely gothic ceilings and Moorish tiles in the hallways between classrooms, and it's in the center of the city, right off of the Ramblas.
The stock exchange is on the main street, and, not ever having seen the one in my own country, I thought I'd see the one here. One of the guys there, astonished that someone from the US would walk in off the street, speak to him in Spanish, and want to see his workplace, gave me a guided tour. There are a lot of computers there, and a set of walled compounds made of cubicle board for each brokerage firm. Everything is done electronically, with the exception of a small pit, not much bigger than a hot tub. Once a day (at 11 am, he informed me), someone from each of the brokerage firms with a seat on the "Borsa de Barcelona" gets up, goes to the pit for an hour or so, makes deals, and then sits back down.
I slept in a lot the next day, and didn't do much other than go out to eat amazing paella and walk along the water. Paella is one of my favorite foods, and it was amazing here. (Although it was invented, supposedly, in Valencia, it's very common here, since Valencia isn't that far away.) My two new Italian friends and I split two kinds of paella, fisherman's and "mixt". I really had a good time with them, discussing, well, comparative linguistics, which is to say that we compared cuss words in Italian, Spanish, and English. Like real grown-ups. You understand, don't you? They wanted to know if "bitch" meant the same thing as "whore". And they had never heard of "slut", so I got to define the differences quite finely.
Today was one of those perfect travel days. I got up early, got on the Metro and went to the Zona Universitat.
(I guess I should digress here and mention Catalan, because I've found it pretty interesting. For any Spanish speakers reading this, Catalan is like Spanish with a few French words thrown in and a bunch of the endings and spellings changed. So, "pasaje", or "passage" in English, becomes "paissage" in Catalan, and "caja", or "box" in English, becomes "caixa", pronounced "cazhja". My favorite Catalan word is "borraixeria", which is like the Spanish "borracho", which means "drunk", as in intoxicated. If a cafeteria is a place where you get "cafe" and a "joyeria" is a place where you get "joya" [jewelry], then yes, a "borraixeria" is a place where you get drunk. In the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, from what I've seen, it's called a "bar". Catalan uses the "tat" ending instead of "dad", so it's "universitat" not "universidad"---like "secretariat" in French. If I stayed here for a while, I bet that my ability to spell in Spanish would go to hell. Catalan is so similar, except that everything is spelled "wrong".
Most of the signs here are in both Catalan and Spanish, and the ones that are only in one language are in Catalan, not in Spanish as you might expect. It's strange to me that the Catalonians (as they think of themselves) speak a language here that is not spoken anywhere else in the world, and this is a very worldly place. People here are truly proud of Catalan, and call the language of Spain "castellano" (Castilian, from Castile, one of the fifedoms that made up Spain before it united), not "español". It seems to me a great perversity to have a perfectly good international language, spoken by millions of people as the primary language in dozens of countries, but they use Catalan as their primary langugage. They don't seem to resent talking in Spanish, but they do see it as a second language. It's quite different than the Dutch, who speak English as a matter of course and don't seem to take any particular pride in their language one way or the other. But perhaps I didn't catch all of the subtleties of that situation, since I'm a Spanish speaker, but don't speak German. If I spoke German, perhaps the Dutch attitude towards their language would have seemed similar to the attitude towards Catalan here in Barcelona.)
Wow, this has turned out a lot longer than I thought it would.
Well, I digressed a bit, but I must say that I went today, after going to visit the University Zone, to Figueres to see the Dali Museum. It was truly marvelous and I much recommend it. Figueres is in the Costa Brava, about 2 hours North of Barcelona, and it's a beautiful little medieval town. The Dali Museum is fabulous---it made me long for Burning Man. I think that would have been something he would have enjoyed.
I'm pretty tired and should go to sleep. I'm heading for Madrid first thing tomorrow morning.
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(15 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
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2:38 am - Decisions!
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So, I think I'm going to take a hybrid solution to the dilemma I posed the other day about whether to stay here or go to Eastern Europe. I really enjoy the classes; I really enjoy Camden Town; but I just don't think they're worth the money, especially since I'm not taking them for a grade.
Here's what I think I'm going to do:
* Rent the apartment
* Drop the second session class
* Attend the first few lectures of class, see if I find it amazing. If so, stay here and keep going to class. They're lectures, so I can just sit in and no one will really notice.
* Take off for Eastern Europe if I don't like it/take long weekends/etc., but have a home base in London.
What do you guys think?
Damn! I have a huge difficulty being decisive. Those of you who know me personally are permitted to roll your eyes pointedly. :)
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(17 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, July 17th, 2006
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2:33 pm - WTO and IP regulations
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Well, I've learned a lot about the International Political Economy in my introductory course, and here's a brief summary, as far as I understand it, of why the WTO now deals with internal issues more than tariffs.
First of all, the World Trade Organization (WTO) grew out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had the goal of reducing tariffs caused by the narrowing of international trade after WWII. At that time, tariffs averaged 40%.
GATT was very successful in providing a framework for countries to get out of the business of tariffs. Now, only a few countries depend on tariffs for revenue (preferring to use income taxes, VAT, etc.). Of course, so was technology, which made it possible to transfer information and goods at an accelerating rate.
The WTO came into existence during the Uruguay Round in 1993 and became an organization in 1995. The big difference between the WTO and GATT is that the WTO has standing under international law, and that WTO members were responsible for bringing their domestic laws into line with international trade regulations. This means that WTO rules MUST be made into law inside of a country, whether or not the citizens of that country want them to. This gives huge power to the representatives at the WTO. This is what people were freaking out about in Seattle in the early 2000s.
The WTO rules by consensus, so 149 countries have to agree with each other in order for anything to pass. This works about as well as you might expect. The WTO works (as did GATT) on the principle of "multilateralism", which means that you can't give a trade benefit to one country without giving it to every other one in the agreement.
Regional agreements (as I mentioned in my last post) are the only big exception to this. So with NAFTA, the US can give special benefits to Mexico and vice versa, and not be subject to WTO proceedings. This is one (of many) reasons, why there has been a huge growth in regional agreements. They are a way to get out of having to negotiate with 148 other countries to get anything done, as well as a way to make smaller, more immediately relevant agreements with just a few other countries.
The kinds of things the WTO discusses now are generally "non-tariff" barriers to trade, because most of the tariff barriers are gone---tariffs now average 4%, not 40%. A good example of a non-tariff barrier to trade would be an industrialized country accusing a poorer country of creating a barrier to entry by having no labor laws (child labor, working conditions, etc.) or environmental regulations (emissions requirements, etc.), saying that because the poorer country doesn't have these rules, they can flood the market with cheaper goods. In that sense, it's actually an instrument of protectionism, not liberalization.
As regards IP, developing countries view American (for example) IP laws as a barrier to trade. Why do we need such a stringent copyright on Mickey Mouse? Isn't that an entitlement that interferes with their production of Mickey Mouse-decorated goods? (I agree with their conclusion on this one; I'm against absurd extensions of copyright law.)
So it's not just IP: it's all of the machinery of the nanny and welfare state, brought to poorer countries by richer ones. And it's the lowering of IP restrictions, by poorer countries so they can compete in the "culture" market.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
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(33 comments | comment on this)
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12:25 am - And here I am... here on my own again
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Today I spent the whole day with myself and a really good book---William Gibson's Neuromancer. Yes, I'm 22 years late, but I'm glad I finally joined the cult. It's good. I'd love to read a book about "The Making of Neuromancer", a book biography. It's a pretty amazing achievement. Just reading it makes me feel like a ninja.
I went to the gym at the LSE and had to climb up four flights of stairs, cross over a walkway, go down three flights, cross the floor, go up two flights, and go through a door marked "Alarmed" to get to it, all because they have some sort of bullshit security that keeps them from just opening the front door. When I told security (and the guy at the gym) that they needed to put up signs so people could find their way, they both responded that it "wasn't their job". I was told (erroneously, perhaps) that that was a common UK attitude. Anyway, it's something that I hate more than anything: entrenched incompetence.
But I worked out and read my textbooks and had an interesting idea. As I understand it, before WWI, Europe was tied up in treaties that led (nearly inevitably) to war. I was just reading today that the number of regional trade agreements has skyrocketed over the past 10 years or so.
Now, just to clarify, a regional trade agreement ranges in depth from a free-trade area where countries remove tariffs between them, but are free to choose how they treat countries outside the agreement (like NAFTA) to customs unions (where they adopt a common set of policies towards imports from countries outside of the agreement, like MERCOSUR in South America) to common markets (which allows free movement of labor and capital within the agreement, like the Andean Community) and economic union (where the countries adopt a common currency, like the European Union).
So, the number of these regional agreements has more than tripled in the past 10 years, and trade under them exceeds 50 percent of all world trade! These agreements used to be largely regional (like NAFTA or the EU), but now they often take place between countries that you wouldn't think had any logical relationship, like South Korea and Chile.
These agreements are basically a huge loophole in the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, which is one of the reasons they are so popular. By joining a regional trade network, a country gets more control over its agreements (only having to negotiate with one or a few partners, not hundreds), a way to ease industries used to protectionism into free trade (or, more pessimistically, to avoid free trade altogether), and finally (I found this one most interesting), as a signalling mechanism for smaller, poorer countries to the WTO and industrialized countries that they can be trusted, because there is better trade monitoring in these smaller agreements.
Anyway, I was wondering if these trade alliances might serve the same purpose as the WWI treaties, when/if there's another world war precipitated by American militarism. (I'd love to hear any opinions on the trade agreements and/or war.)
(Btw, I haven't posted on it yet, but the WTO is not entirely about free trade. It used to be about reducing tariffs (back when it was GATT and average worldwide tariffs were around 40%). Now that tariffs are at 4%, it's more about creating transnational regulations.)
After the gym, I went to Camden Town, which is the fabulous part of town I mentioned in my earlier post. It's full of punks and ravers and their associated wannabes. It feels like Burning Man, in fact---but without the artwork, and with more wannabes.
I hung out and read my book and then ate some lovely Thai Red Curry with pumpkin and took a double-decker bus and came home. Yum. :)
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