… and compare them to adults 18-24 in nine countries around the world. You may have heard about the lamentable scores of Americans (who came second last). Only 17% of them could find Afghanistan on the map (21% of Canadians and only 28% of Brits, sad to say – the Germans were top with 55%). Now see if you could do better.

I got one wrong – I guessed the religion with the largest number of adherents wrong.
(found via Guardian Online)

The BBC World Service‘s Assignment programme reports from China’s old heavy industrial heartland on the desperate plight of the workers there. It isn’t news but it is poignant and depressing to learn that away from the glitter of the coastal provinces workers are struggling to make ends meet and government officials are robbing both them and many of the new neo-capitalist entrepreneurs that emerge.

I didn’t realise that in China there is no longer a welfare system or free medical care as I had assumed there would have been during the more “pure communist” era.

The Economist produces yet another survey defending increased immigration to the West. It’s a mixed blessing – on the one hand it correctly points out that Western countries need immigrants and that countries that have a lot of emigrants can also benefit if they return.

One interesting effect of tight immigration policy they point out which is obvious if you think about it is that it tends to encourage those immigrants who make it in to stay even if they would prefer to return to their own countries, since it is difficult to leave and come back again.

One interesting partial solution The Economist mentions is the idea of selling temporary work permits, with the price going partly back to the country from whom you are emigrating, alongside a bond which would be refunded once a worker returned to their country of origin. That would help control the process while taking it partly out of the realm of illegality (a similar argument to the taxing of currently illegal drugs with the money to be spent on treatment centres, which also makes some sense to me). Unfortunately, most of the survey is only readable by Economist subscribers.

Here are the related items The Economist pointed to:

Britain’s Home Office publishes “The Migrant Population in the UK: Fiscal Effects”. The National Academies Press posts “The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration” (the NRC report 1997). Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti posts its report “Managing Migration in the European Welfare State”. The UN offers highlights from its study “World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision”.rd herrington lawrenceville 1098ringtones 8125 preloadedringtones 8stops7psychology criminal farrington full a2 studyringtones nandi aldo90064 avenue barrington 2515adkins familytree england warringtonringtones 100ree 3585i nokia Map

To me the most interesting thing about this article revealing the contents of Saddam’s email box is not the contents themselves (though there are a surprising number of people who want to help the guy out, apparently) but the fact that it is published at all. If someone at Wired had hacked into, say, Tony Blair’s email box do you think they would have been allowed to publish those results?poster serenity moviesex female pics free free ejaculation moviessex movies flashmovie sex samplein disney subliminal messages movies sexualmovie thumbs shemaleclips silvia saint moviedipping skinny movies Map

When in summer the US simulated an attack on a militarily powerful middle eastern regime, it lost. Oops!

I am strangely fascinated by 40s and 50s era propaganda – obviously so is Micah Wright who has created a fascinating collection of posters with new slogans to replace the old WWII ones.

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• the world trading system is “unfair”: the poor countries face protectionism that is more acute than their own;
• the rich countries have wickedly held on to their trade barriers against poor countries, while using the Bretton Woods institutions to force down the poor countries’ own trade barriers; and
• it is hypocritical to ask poor countries to reduce their trade barriers when the rich countries have their own.

How many of the above do you believe? Well, according to Jagdish Bhagwati, a Professor at Columbia University, writing in the Economist this week, none of these are valid.

In fact, asymmetry of trade barriers goes the other way. Take industrial tariffs. As of today, rich-country tariffs average 3%; poor countries’ tariffs average 13%. Nor do peaks in tariffs—concentrated in textiles and clothing, fisheries and footwear, and clearly directed at the poor countries—change the picture much: the United Nations Council for Trade, Aid and Development (UNCTAD) has estimated that they apply to only a third of poor-country exports. Moreover, the trade barriers of the poor countries against one another are more significant restraints on their own development than those imposed by the rich countries.

If anyone hears of a specific rebuttal of these arguments from a credible NGO or academic, I would like to read them.lactating nipples hairyteens pics nude tiny youngmilk gallery link pissing pussysinterracial breedinghairy ass indianphotos asian naturistnaked housewives naughty maturehousewife interracialnasty gay hot sexwith peeing website girls and pooping a

US media gadfly Michael Wolff (author of the excellent early dotcom book “Burn Rate“) suggests that thanks to the pressure of free music and the fragmentation of taste the music industry will shrink and profits on a huge scale will dry up. He provides an interesting analysis of the effects that the consolidation of the US radio industry and the switch to CDs have had on the music business… Thought provoking.

(Thanks to the often-interesting boing boing for the link).

Salon reveals Penguin Putnam is running online courses on how to write featuring, among other things, the chance to have 7,500 words from your book read and commented on by an editor. Initially, this was to be an in-house editor but after a blizzard of submissions Penguin has altered the terms to “a professional editor” under Penguin’s supervision.

Of course the advice in the course itself may well be worth the money, but as for paying to get your manuscript noticed, as Geoff Kloske, an editor at Simon & Schuster told Salon, “I find U.S.P.S. is the best way to submit your work to an editor, and last I heard a stamp was 34 cents.”ga sex albany singlesphotos sexy amatureall pornstarsporn alicia machado videorape teens charged with 2002 3vintage 1930s pornameture vudeos sexpregnancy pregnant acclaimed and sex Map

I was surprised to read that according to a transatlantic survey in Spring 1999, the majority of the population of the “big 4” European countries tend to be in favour of globalization and inward foreign investment, and don’t view American popular culture as a threat. I thought anti-globalization propaganda had been much more effective – I guess because I read the Guardian!