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Friday, November 28, 2008
High productivity=low reproductivity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Japan’s workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in the country’s latest attempt to avert demographic disaster.
The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home with their wives than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex.
A recent survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month.
Many couples said they didn’t have the energy for sex, while others said they found it boring.
A quarter of the men surveyed said they were “too tired” after work, while just under a fifth of women said intercourse was “too troublesome”. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.
Japan’s birth rate, at 1.34 - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable.
If the rate persists, demographers warn that Japan’s overall population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million.
Earlier this month the crisis prompted Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business organisation, to implore its 1,600 member companies to allow married employees to spend more time at home.
Several firms have organised “family weeks” during which employees must get permission to work past 7pm, but most continue to squeeze every last drop of productivity from their staff.
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Taliban forms its own OPEC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Taliban seem to have formed their own version of OPEC — in their case the Opium Producing and Exporting Cartel — complete with export limits designed to keep the price of their commodity high. The proceeds are used to fund Taliban operations against the U.S. and the Karzai government.
Says The New York Times:
UNITED NATIONS — Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says….
Last year, the insurgents made as much as $300 million from the opium trade, by United Nations estimates. “With two to three hundred million dollars a lot of war effort can be funded,” said Mr. Costa, an Italian diplomat who has served at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for six years.
But after three years of bumper crops, including this one, the Taliban have succeeded almost too well, producing opium in amounts far in excess of world demand. The result, Mr. Costa said, was now a glut that was putting downward pressure on the price, which had dropped by about 20 percent.
The fact that prices had not collapsed already, he said, was evidence that the Taliban, drug lords and even some farmers have stockpiled the opium, more and more of which is also being processed in Afghanistan. “Insurgents have been holding significant amounts of opium,” Mr. Costa said.
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The nightmare in Mumbai continues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, while we were feasting surrounded by friends and family, a group of well-trained, well-armed terrorists were wreaking havoc in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay.
The violence continues, with government forces still trying to hunt down and kill or capture terrorists. The death toll has topped 140, and will likely go higher. The English-language Indian press and blogs (here’s a site compiling blogs, including first-hand reports) are full of reports of horror, bravery, anger, threats — the reaction an echo of our own responses not that long ago to Sept. 11.
A lot of the anger is directed at a perceived lack of security in India, but the truth is that a dozen or more well-trained gunmen, acting in coordination, could wreak similar havoc in any major city in the world. The terrorists were reportedly dropped off in dinghies by a larger ship offshore, and it is all too easy to imagine similar attacks against Miami, New York, Los Angeles or other US ports.
Initial indications are that the attackers were Islamic extremists and may have trained in Pakistan, heightening India-Pakistan tensions as well as those between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations. In other words, the terrorists are succeeding in that goal as well.
