I’ve finally started educating myself on the current economic crisis. However we move past this current credit crunch (soft landing vs. hard landing), the fact is that Americans will likely face a lower standard of living within our lifetimes. You might not have believed that the decline of the American Empire had begun up until 2008, but it’s clearly in motion now.

Unfortunately, the imperial decline could have dire effects, worldwide. Whatever your opinion on the fairness of an empire, one thing it can promote is stability. If our capacity to service our national debt diminishes to the point where we have to remove our military presence from the hundred or so nations where we have bases, we may see scores of regional wars in the power vacuum.

Additionally, an empire in decline has few resources to devote to stewardship of the enviroment (or, put more simply, long-term planning.) We can elect as progressive a government, come November. The US may simply be unable to withstand the political and economic costs of raising energy prices in order to combat global warming.

Perhaps another nation will take up the role of “global policeman.” Perhaps dramatic new technologies will save our GHG-saturated climate. The future is unknown, but the dire scenarios are looking worse and more likely than ever.

I just came across a long-winded blog post from a friend I haven’t seen since high school. He’s now in Shanghai, being annoyed by the coarse manners of the locals. Something about his description of the place really resonated with me. It fully explains why I was so much more comfortable in Hanoi than Saigon, for example. Here’s an excerpt:

And i think that’s what drives me to keep looking for cool places to hang out or live. That’s why I love reading about Austin, Portland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and other meccas for creatives, indies, and dropouts. The act of reading the articles about these places, followed by the act of imagining myself traipsing around these places, is purely fantasy–but that’s what some people are driven by. Maybe “fantasy” is the wrong word: you are driven by the sense that life is still big, and possibilities abound, and that you are free enough to craft, shape, mold that life into something that fits you. You know that you can’t change people (in Shanghai, everywhere) but you dream that there is some kind of place where you can just “fit in.” A place that resonates with you, that somehow possesses the kind of people and culture you need to thrive, to do your work, to relax and enjoy life properly, to lead a good life.

As i just explained, this too is the source of my discontent with China–it’s just too far from my fantasy city-state world where everyone is cosmopolitan and educated, stylish and cultured. Of course, I have never been anywhere that really comes close to that ideal. And even places like Paris and Athens that do come close only do so because I’m viewing them through the rose-colored glasses of the stranger, the one-time tourist. Delve deeper and you’ll no doubt hit a strata of complete asswipes too.

Here’s the full post.

I just got an email about this new citizen journalism site. It looks pretty slick and already has some interesting content from around the world. Getting alternative viewpoints out of China, Iran, or even (at times) the United States is no easy feat, and these guys seem to recognize this.

Check out, for example, their tutorials on how to install Tor on your browser so that you can upload to or browse Demotix without leaving a trail.

Here’s the info from the release:

As many of you already know, my partner Jonathan Tepper and I have launched Demotix, a website for user generated news. Think of it like Flickr or YouTube, but only for original photo/video news taken by freelancers or the man on the street. They/You tell us what is going on, we tell the WWW and the world’s mainstream media. As of today, our site is now live. You can visit us at: www.demotix.com

Why are we doing it?

• Only four US newspapers have foreign news desks (the NY Times, LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal), and there are only 141 US foreign correspondents currently working today (in print and broadcast media)
• In the UK, a 2006 study of the broadsheets showed that more than 50% of the news was directly attributable to press releases
• The world’s media (over 90%) relies on the wire services – the Associated Press and Reuters – for their news. But some 80 countries, or 40% of the world’s nations, have no bureau from either agency.

The news is shrinking daily. We hope Demotix can plug that gap, and more. We hope Demotix will bring Web 2.0 to journalism. We hope to be giving a megaphone to the man and woman in the street with a story to tell.

Eventually we hope that Demotix will be THE place where anyone in the world can go, in safety, to upload news – major, minor, local, cultural, political, whatever. Even before launch, we have agreements with the Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, La Repubblica, and others – and will now supply them with a daily wire and picture feed of ‘citizen’ news. We have also built partnerships with Reporters Sans Frontieres, Witness, Global Voices, Committee to Protect Journalists, Committee to Protect Bloggers, Index on Censorship, OpenDemocracy and others. I have just come back from Cuba and Iran where the feedback we received was fantastic.

Please visit our site and let your friends and colleagues know that we exist (even better, pass this email on to everyone in your address book). Ideally, ask your friends who have interesting photographs and videos of great stories to upload them. And bear us in mind for whatever you witness. We need all the help we can get, so if you know anyone we should speak to or anyone who might be of help to us as we launch the start-up, please put us in touch.

Thank you for your help and please visit our site: www.demotix.com

AB noticed that on the Chinese version of Google Finance, red and green have reversed meanings: red for good and green for bad:

I’ve exaggerated the red because it was hard for my color-differently-abled eyes to see.

Red is certainly a lucky color in China, traditionally. I wonder if green has any cultural meanings. AB did note (helpfully) that “in China, ‘green hat’ often refers to a man whose wife is cheating on him. In the unlikely event of you wanting to give your Chinese friend a hat, steer clear of green.”

Three articles, after the jump. The headlines read: “China to invest $5bn in Congo,” “Alarm over China’s Congo deal,” and “China opens coffers for minerals.” For comparison, D.R. Congo’s GNP was less than $7bn, in 2005.

Screw the IMF and its conditional loans, hm?

(tnx to Desiree for the articles)

Read the rest of this entry »

Mindtangle neighbor Kendo just returned from a year+ in Asia, and has been blogging about it. Most recently, he toured China, with some interesting observations about clubs and nightlife in the cities he visited.

The more I travel through the developing world, the more I’ve learned what inferences can probably be drawn about the nightlife in the area I’m visiting. Clubs are a great way to observe social behavior, and are great anecdotal measures of discretionary income (due in part because clubs induce people to show off their wealth). In emerging countries, the breadth and depth of venue selection is a good indicator of GDP per capita (alternatively, in developed countries like the U.S., there are more shades of gray, where the venue selection could depend on how “happening” the city is. For example, there’s a big difference between how fun the nightlife is in Miami and Pittsburg, although they are about even in per capita economic terms).

Link to the full post. It’s long, but full of interesting perspectives on burgeoning Chinese economies.