Attention grabbing headline, but not relevant anymore as the Dow has since risen back above the psychologically significant 10,000 mark. Where the Dow is headed is still a mystery, but I know from my recent trip to the US, the second wave of this recession seems to be coming around. Quite a while ago a former colleague of mine talked about how the commercial real estate market would follow the home prices down, but it was a matter of when. Well seeing the large amount of empty store space in one of the most vibrant cities (Austin) in one of the most well-off states (Texas), I could just imagine how the rest of the country is doing. Is this recent dip in the Dow an indication that the commercial real estate problems are now going to cause problems? If so, I wouldn’t want to be in Obama’s shoes right now—I think he’s exhausted his nation’s appetite for stimulus funds.
Just a few observations from my trip to China. Seeing the growth of Shenzhen and the skyscrapers of Pudong in Shanghai, one cannot help but be impressed by the progress made in the last 30 years. I even got to ride on the Pudong Mag-Lev train to the airport. Very impressive.
I was instantly reminded of the constant debate, start, cancel, debate, start, cancel cycle that we seem to be involved in for Ottawa’s transit system. Will it ever got off the ground?
I’m not promoting China’s political system, but they can get things when they need to. (But may not care about all the consequences).
Perhaps there is some middle ground that would allow functional democracies to accomplish things a bit faster. The US was able to put a man on the moon in a limited amount of time–is there a lesson to be learned there?
Been some busy months in my life that have kept me from posting. My brother was in a life-threatening cycling injury in the US, I’ve had a two week work trip to China, all the while trying to keep the family happy…but enough of all that…experiences that could fill a blog on them alone. But from now on I’ll try to keep going with some regular commentary on the world of engineering.
As I end this post–one comment, Apple did mess up with their antenna design. Oh well, we all make mistakes every now and then.
Just a quick post on this one. Read the story on EE Times, and looked a little further into it. This can’t be coincidence with the upcoming delivery of the iPad. Should Apple (and others) reconsider using Foxconn?
Coming soon to stores on April 3rd, the iPad is causing quite a stir. Will it be “all that”?
The most interesting part about the iPad, the Kindle, and other tablet PCs and e-readers (and yes I know e-readers and tablet computers are really different things!) is what it might actually do to the print (newspapers and books) industry. It seems logical to me (someone who reads quite a bit online, but not much printed material) that we may finally see less trees being converted to paper. I bold the “may” because people have predicted the paperless office in the past.
It will be hard to fully get rid of paper, but the e-reader/tablet idea might reduce some paper usage. We shall see how this all progresses in the next few years.
I’ve been following health care reform in the US, but only on the periphery. It sounds like there are no major changes taking place.
Saying this, I just wanted to pass along this post from Loring Wirbel on his blog. Sometimes it’s just to hard to get excited about the minutiae of details that go into these large pieces of legislation. Especially after it gets diluted to appease so many different interests. Sometimes there are many things that keep us occupied.
Again, I’m a little late on the ball, but definitely had to comment on Ann Coulter’s recent visit to Ottawa. I am by no means a fan of Ann Coulter, but think that the University of Ottawa did themselves a disservice by sending the letter to warn her about her speech. I believe this was a mistake. The way to confront ideas that you don’t believe in is to engage in discussion and bring to light the problems with their ideas. Not to stop them from talking at all. Again–this letter was probably a mistake.
On the other side, I agree with letting the protesters also say what they want. Free speech should be applied to both sides.
But now the damage is already done. There is a lot of controversy about who actually had the final decision to cancel the show. Whatever the case may be, Ann Coulter is now playing the role of the victim. This martyrdom, along with all the extra press from this incident, will no doubt be used to her advantage.
Having listened to the No Agenda podcast for a while, it has been interesting hearing them say over and over again that taking donations keeps them out of the hands of the major corporations that normally control the media.
I just read an interesting blog entry from Lou Covey’s State of the Media blog. It talks about how corporations are now fully sponsoring television shows, not hiding it, and really how this has been part of media since time immemorial.
I must admit, that I prefer the more overt advertising that comes up in the shows mentioned, than the sneaky methods of subverting mainstream media messaging. I guess there will always be corporations that will present entertainment as advertisement, we should be used to it. Hey, some of these shows could be quite good. But I would recommend when watching any television show or reading any newspaper (paper and online) think about the advertisements you see. Do they just want eyeballs? Or are there some other things going on behind the scenes?
Just a note that I do not think there are too many hidden messages…the main goal is still to entertain first–keep your ratings high so your show doesn’t get cancelled.
Another interesting point brought up by the No Agenda guys recently–pertaining to the most recent Pentagon shooter. The mention of the 1991 death of Marine Colonel James Sabow, brought up some old news…and an enduring controversy. I really don’t have too much to add to this, but feel some of the coverage of this should be brought up again. See a recent article here: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march172010/jim-sabow-tk.php, and a more detailed post here: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/03/03/forensic-evidence-supports-marine-murder/
I will not judge in this particular post, but it does sound like some interesting things were going on at the El Toro Marine base in the early 90′s.
Oh well, I guess we’ll see with this post.
Anyhoo, listening to the No Agenda guys while walking the dog tonight, I hear many things that were blog worthy. The first item to go up though is on the humourous side of things.
One of their memes is media assassination. They happened to play the audio on this video from The Onion News Network. It’s a pretty funny commentary on the bullshit we sometimes see on the major news networks. Anything to keep a story going! Listen to it without watching the video and you can visualize many different stories that they might cover. LOL!
