It's the time of the year when many gather with family and friends, to share love and warmth, stories of happiness and sorrow, and laughter. It's also the time of the year when we wish each other the best possible for the new year to come. Next year should be even more glorious, joyful and prosperous than the previous one - imagine the challenge these wishes bring with them as you grow older.
I won't wish you the best, for many others have certainly done so already. Instead of looking forward, I wish you time to look back. Take a look back into last year and think about what you have done, what has happened in your life and how you have felt. Try, then, to gather from these experiences the good things and the bad things and see how they were brought about. What would you like to happen again, what would you like to feel again, what would you like to do again?
Not the what is important in that question, but the how: how did you live, how were you back then? And how can you be to create the space for it to happen again? It's a form of taking care of yourself, for only if you feel well, you can take care of others. So I wish you time to reflect, to nurture yourself, for you to feel confident to face the new year, come what may.
Just like this group of Peruvians, sitting in a bus on their way to march the Inca trail. Their eyes all tell a different story. They were sitting quiet in the bus, looking outside; yet, they were also looking inside, inside themselves, building up strength to face the adventure ahead of them. When you're mentally fit and ready, you've conquered half the journey already!
Well, the three most important newspapers in Flanders said so, because they didn't publish this opinion piece I co-authored with a colleague of mine. Not that it is not a hot issue, as this robust exchange of views between Paul de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and Pascal Lamy, World Trade Organisation Director-General, illustrates.
Meh. You get it anyway. With a little help for the Dutch illiterates:
For ten years countries have tried to reach a new free trade agreement within the WTO, the so-called Doha Development Agenda. Negotiations have clearly stalled. The 8th ministerial summit (held in Geneva on 15-17 December) won't change this situation. The sought-after result of the Doha negotiations won't be reached, because the key to development is not even on the table: agricultural protection and food security.
Big players, such as the EU and the US, have anticipated the WTO's gradual opening up of food markets to free trade, by creating agricultural policies that protect (read: give income subsidies to) their farmers from cheap imports, with which they cannot compete. They did this because agriculture is a sensitive issue: for, if a country becomes too dependent on food imports, it can no longer guarantee food provision to its people. A crisis only has to occur for export countries to shut their food supplies (and, as of late, they have occurred rather frequently; just think of the 2008 food crisis). Thus, free trade in foodstuffs forces high income countries to subsidise their agricultural sectors, to prevent cheap imports from killing them.
Low and middle income countries, too, have similar issues; their farmers are often not able to compete with foodstuffs that are produced cheaper elsewhere. The difference, however, lies in the absence of a government budget that is able to protect the agricultural sector and (mainly small scale) farmers, who drown and go hungry. This problem becomes even more acute when taking the many concessions of bilateral trade agreements into account, which tend to grant even more access to food markets than is the case in multilateral trade agreements. That explains why West Africa has been flooded in the past two decennia with cheap imports of grains, rice, meat and milk powder (among others), which have seriously disrupted local production and endangered food security.
This situation is not tenable. Which is why low and middle income countries have proposed to introduce flexible tariffs, to safeguard the development of their own agricultural and food sectors, while maintaining the option to cover any food shortages with imports from abroad. These proposals, however, have never been seriously considered. Yet, so long as they won't, these countries will not gain from negotiating further market access in other sectors, as is the case in the present Doha negotiations.
As a matter of fact, the European Union would also stand to gain from questioning free trade in foodstuffs. The common agricultural policy is born out of free market rules, whereas shifting towards more controlled market mechanisms (to harmonise production and import volumes) could render subsidies superfluous.
About time, then, to see this round of negotiations to the door and start designing free trade that is more just and sustainable, offering farmers in the North and the South a fair chance to supply their fellow citizens.
Several magazines have been publishing special reports about women on the workplace, as of late. As The Economistreports in depth, women are closing the gap with men on the work floor. Not surprising, considering the increasing share of women in tertiary education, certainly in many Western countries. For some reason, however, few women really crack the glass ceiling into the top echelon of businesses. Some of the most common arguments to explain this phenomenon are the incompatibility of such time-consuming jobs and having a family, a lack of interest in such positions (admittedly, a controversial argument) and a work atmosphere unkind to women.
Why would that be? Is there some deeper motive that could explain why, when they are in the driver's seat, we are somehow much more intolerant for their mistakes or shortcomings than we are with those of their male peers? As for the incompatibility-with-a-family-argument, we could probably go back into the stone ages, when women were gathering the low-hanging fruits and men were hunting sabletooth-tigers. Yet, it still requires a society to conform these roles and pass them on from generation to generation. And, lest we forget, not all societies were/are patriarchal. Just think back to the early period of the Mesopotamians, worshipping the 'all-powerful mother goddesses'.
But, at a certain point, the Mesopotamians started using the plough in their food production. This heavy instrument thus became the tool par excellence to be used by men, causing a paradigm shift towards a patriarchal society. It seems that the technique used for farming has influenced many societies all over the world, determining the division of men and women at the work place or in politics, researchers at Harvard University argue. How, then, to break these paradigms? It is not easy, that's for sure. Even the most ardent promotors of women at the work place still suffer from subconscious behavioural stereotypes that keep women in men's shadows, as Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg illustrates very pointedly.
It is clear that we, as a society, have to be aware of the images and roles we convey on men and women. As Tony Porter says very poignantly: when a boy says that it would 'destroy' him if he were told that he plays football "like a girl", what does that say about the image, role and value of girls that we pass onto them?
In the meantime, it won't hurt to make sure that everybody, men and women alike, is given the opportunity to unleash their potential. At the very least, there's an interesting business case to make in favour of inviting more skirts to the boardroom:
McKinsey in 2007 studied over 230 public and private companies and non-profit organisations with a total of 115,000 employees worldwide and found that those with significant numbers of women in senior management did better on a range of criteria, including leadership, accountability and innovation, that were strongly associated with higher operating margins and market capitalisation. It also looked at 89 large listed European companies with high proportions of women in top management posts and found that their financial performance was well above the average for their sector. Other studies have come up with similar findings. Nobody is claiming evidence of a causal link, merely of an association, but the results are so consistent that promoting women seems like a good idea, just in case.
We all know it: China is digging deep into Africa, eager to satisfy its vast resource hunger and leaving shoddily built hospitals and roads instead. Lavish sums of aid money won't make up for this, they're barely a fig leaf to cover up China's erection on the international scene. A lavish donor country, you say? Lo and behold, high end estimates even rank China as the biggest donor only after the US! These estimates, then, would mean that China reaches the 'magic' .7% of GNI spending target, which barely five Western countries succeed to meet!
What to make out of these figures? Having just read The Dragon's Gift, a smashing book by Deborah Brautigam about the true nature of China's engagement in Africa, I am eager to share some of the eye-opening findings. For starters, these high estimates are most likely to overstate China's official aid flows as defined by the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. These exclude a lot of financially attractive investment loans (but still at market prices and therefore not grants) and export credits. The confusion originates in the absence of official aid data released by the Chinese government and the fact that China's Aid Department houses in its Ministry of Commerce. However, few people bother disaggregating data from that Ministry, picking the low-hanging fruit instead and creating a murky - and, I must add, inaccurate - image. As Brautigam writes:
In 2004, The Economist reported an erroneous figure of $1.8 billion for China's "development aid" for Africa in 2002. This was repeated in a Boston Globe article, which became the source for an article in Current History that said the 2002 figure of $1.8 billion was the "last" time "official statistics" on Chinese aid to Africa were released. The Current History article was subsequently cited by researchers at the World Bank, who repeated soberly that "The last officially reported flows are for 2002. For that year, China's government reported that it provided $1.8 billion in economic support to all of Africa." An International Monetary Fund study cited the World Bank report as its source for the same figure. Apparently, no one checked to see if there had actually been any official statistics reported by China in 2002 or at any point before or since for its annual aid to Africa (there were not).
China applies tactics in its Africa engagement that is has learnt from back in the days when Japan was jump-starting China's economic development. Big investments in infrastructure and manufacturing were secured by China's resources, and it was allowed to repay loans in kind (manufactured clothes, minerals, oil, etc.). This resulted in a win-win situation for both countries, stimulating China to do the same. Not only is it investing in those areas, it strongly focuses on training its counterparts and offering scholarships to thousands of young students in a time when most traditional donors are foregoing this kind of assistance. The whole idea is to sharpen local skills and upgrade existing practices in the face of Chinese competition, to increase mutual trade flows. (Like everybody, China is in it for the money.)
Brautigam has done an amazing job in revealing the more precise nature of China's engagement with Africa, and there are so many more facts and stories that nuance the West vs. China aid debate ('you cannot reduce poverty and live in a five-star hotel at the same time' vs. 'you cannot finance a presidential palace for a dictator and call it foreign aid'). The biggest lesson I draw from her book, is that we have to go look for the facts, not only China's, but also our own. As long as we cannot prove that our way of delivering aid or casting embargoes is truly resulting in social justice, stability and prosperity for the people our governments mean to help, and that it is the only possible way to do so, we shouldn't condemn actors that try it differently. (Because our banks, too, give loans to corrupt countries, just as our governments deliver weapons to torture-prone regimes.) Rather, we should learn from them and combine the best of both worlds, if we truly mean to contribute to a better present and future. In the meantime, I can only recommend reading The Dragon's Gift yourself!
A few weeks ago, I attended a Red Cross information session in a buddhist temple near Antwerp. It was the first time I'd been there, so I was paying close attention to our host's tour of the site. We ended in the praying/meditation hall for a last few words on what buddhism now actually entails and how people practise it. As I've had an interest in this life philosophy for quite a while, but never really gotten into the matter, I was curious to learn about the basics. One of the 'attitudes' to put into practice in your daily life, has struck me in particular, so here's me sharing this valuable insight with you!
One should not hold any grudge against anyone else for matters they are not responsible for. Or, put differently, before blaming a stranger for something, think again about why it is that you're cross with that person. You'll find that in most cases, there's no reason to feel angry with that person.
Pick your favourite one
At least, that's what I've experienced ever since. Long-legged as I am, I often felt bothered by streets or paths filled with slower walking people. But, then I realised, they're not blocking my way on purpose, they can't see me rushing from behind, so I can't blame them for not being able to see me. The same goes for getting mad at train personnel for a train that arrives late - they can't help it that there's a red sign in front of the train, they're just there to make sure you arrive safely at your destination. That's what you did, so be happy! And let's be honest, it certainly happens once in a while that I'm that slow walking person in your path, and I know, as a matter of fact, that it wasn't my intention to block your path!
If I then try to analyse why it is that I feel angry or upset, then I usually discover it's because I just couldn't bother leaving a bit earlier to make sure that I have sufficient time to make it to my destination; or that I am still dealing with some work issues completely unrelated to the person I was feeling upset about. Realising all this, has helped me tremendously in feeling happier in my everyday life. I feel a lot calmer and I have a more positive attitude towards the outside world. People feel this kind of energy. In fact, if more people would think this way, it'd be a lot nicer out there!
To complete this post to happiness, I leave you with another buddhist attitude I just recently discovered, but which I know will help me tons in being happier with life as it comes my way. If you can in any way contribute to the solution of a problem you're facing, then do so in every possible way you can; if not, then don't worry about it, because it is out of your control!
A few weeks ago, Vredeseilanden held a workshop on 'The Farmer Effect', how different actors driving sustainability in agricultural value chains lead to improved livelihoods for small-scale farmers. Put simple, a bigger income allows farmers to invest in their land, education, health and whatnot. As reporter of the event, I wanted to record the talks to facilitate writing the report afterwards. This set me on a quest for tape recorders, which turned out easier than expected. Seems like bosses still like to tape themselves…
I ended up buying two simple devices - basically the two most basic recorders they had, due to budgetary constraints and the limited use they would serve. As there were no devices on the shelve, I ended up buying the recorders on display. When unpacking the boxes, I noticed that one recorder was missing the USB-cable to connect it to a computer. So I went back to Media Markt, the multi-media supermarket where I'd bought the devices, to fix this problem or get my money back so I could buy another basic recorder elsewhere.
I asked the lady at the service counter to whom I should direct myself with my problem of the missing USB-cable. 'The guy from the store section where you got the stuff from', she said. 'No no, I can't help you with this,' the guy from the store section said, 'go to the repair desk.' I already feared that answer, as this usually is the place where you spend hours waiting before you get attended. I was lucky, only half an hour was my share of waiting and witnessing how many products cannot be repaired because fixing that small problem would cost almost the same as getting a newer version of that product. 'Ok,' the repair desk guy said, 'we'll just have to send it back. Here's a receipt to get a voucher at the service counter.'
It's been now almost 40 minutes of being told to go from one place to another, waiting and not being helped that much. I was eager to get it all over with and get my money back - they couldn't fix the problem and, being the last models of that series, the shop couldn't offer me another recorder of the same series, nor did it have any alternative within the same price range. 'I'm sorry,' the twenty-year old lady said to me at the service counter, 'it's not our policy to give you a refund; we only give vouchers.' I tried to explain to her that I didn't want any voucher; as the shop couldn't satisfy my need, I had to be able to get my money back to do so elsewhere. To no avail - along the process I had somewhat run out of patience, and my grumpiness was easily passed on to her. She was clearly in no mood or capacity to accommodate my sense of customer dissatisfaction. 'Take it or leave it,' was the snappy verdict.
As I left the store with the 'gift card' - almost thrown at me, because I had dared to object to the no-money refund policy and, as a consequence, complicate her life behind the counter - I could not help but wonder how symptomatic this experience had been of the consumption-driven society we live in. Goods are produced not to last, but to be sold. They often brake down, sometimes far too easily. It's not producers' or retailers' policy to repair your good, but to stimulate you buying the newest version of it (you know, to keep labour going). To reduce your resistance to this vicious cycle of consumption, they cook your brains while you wait in endless lines of understaffed customer service desks and are attended by unexperienced assistants who are hired according to their ability to parrot the shop's policy - otherwise they might even sympathise with complaining customers and help them finding a solution, oh horror (and wast of time)! The message is clear: keep shopping and don't bother about the complete irresponsibility of this unsustainable waste-generating consumption industry.
I guess by now most of the 6.999 million people will have heard the news: we've hit the 7 million mark! But should we congratulate ourselves, or rather feel sorry for overcrowding our planet? Well, the thing is not that we're too many to fit - it would take an area smaller than Luxembourg to fit us all, shoulder to shoulder. Nor is the problem how to feed the whole population - there's plenty of scope to increase yield per ha in vast parts of the globe. Just consider, for example, that many farms in sub-Saharan Africa yield only 10% of their north-American peers.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that our patterns of production and consumption are simply not sustainable. Period. This is all because of the technological advances we have made over the past centuries, which made man redundant in many aspects of what is supposed to be his productive life. And let's face it: why pay someone who's prone to failure and fatigue, when a machine can perform the same job at a fraction of the cost and without nasty labour unions nagging about physical and psychological well-being?
The demand for educated labour is being reconfigured by technology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labour was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labour in the 20th. Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings. They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire a flesh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software package) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.
Now, you cannot simply have 6 million bums while the remaining 1 million are working, can you? So we simply had to come up with unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, which would require people to staff repair offices, call centres and other customer services, while keeping factory workers happy with supplying the ever-continuing demand of unsustainable products, invented by engineers to last as long as not to upset customers (too much), but as short as to keep them buying the gimmicks they invent every other year or two.
Because of this problematic situation - a growing (skilled) workforce and a general lack of labour demand for basic products and services - jobs have always been a sword of Damocles hanging over politicians' heads, especially in periods of economic downturn. Heck, even the weapons industry, to name but one, gets away with crying foul when governments dare not to approve a murky deal with a semi-friendly autocrat - while in reality they only employ a few hundred people and represent (in most cases) less than one percent of GDP. I don't know the solution to this problem, but maybe it's time for more ideas to have sex?
It's been a few weeks since my last post. I have been busy, indulging myself in cultural nights out, meeting friends and family all over the place. But I also have been quite tired. Although I like to pretend I can manage a few nights with less than 7 hours of sleep, if I do so, I feel too exhausted after work to do anything active in the evening. So it's a good thing I haven't been writing, because I did not have the energy to give you my thoughts. For me to feel well, I need sleep. Although I'm well aware that my mental well-being is beyond salvation, letting things rest, giving myself time to look around and soak up the colours of life does bring me a good deal along the road towards feeling more energetic.
It's a pretty basic principle of life, in fact: you cannot give, or treat other people well, for that matter, if you don't give yourself a moment off, or a treat you would usually forsake, when you could use a little dose of happy feelings. Of course I am not the first one to come up with this attitude, but it never hurts spreading the word.
Now then, two weeks ago, I was walking down the Antwerp Central train station, plenty of positive energy inside of me, to catch a train to the Netherlands for a job interview. As the escalator goes down, I get surpassed by someone who I think was in a rush to catch the train. Instead, he stops abruptly a few steps below me and starts talking to me in English. He had noticed that my coat had a label that said 'Quechua' - "that's a French brand, do you speak French?". He himself did, as he was from Burkina Faso. "No kidding, wait a sec, Ouagadougou is your capital, right?", I said, still convinced this was just a warm hearted fella sharing some positive energy in a morning chat with a random stranger. (happy face)
Not so. By the time we had reached the platform, it turned out he had missed his flight to Brussels ("look, the Schengen visa in my passport says I should have gotten here 10 days (!) ago") and so he had missed the people from Amsterdam who had invited him to come over in the first place and who were supposed to have picked him up at the airport. He had tried going to some immigration offices to seek help, but no one could offer him any, as he was here on a legitimate - albeit moneyless - basis. If I could spare him a ticket to Amsterdam, he asked. I kindly declined, pointing out I was unemployed. Instead, I gave him the address of the Amnesty International office, which wasn't too far off, as I honestly had no clue who could help him. "And a dime to eat? I haven't eaten since yesterday…" (sad face)
an angry Mongol warrior slitting my niece's throat for a nickel
I never really know well what to do in such situations. I want my job to be helping people by giving them a voice or the means to improve their lives. But does that mean I have to give something to everybody who comes asking for it in my face? For now, I ease my conscience with the fact that I don't earn any money, which makes it more difficult for me to give a financial contribution. Unfortunately people here don't have the creativity that I witnessed in Latin America and Asia to make money - be it selling biscuits or sweets on street corners or entertaining people waiting at a crossroad while dressed as Charlie Chaplin - there's a myriad of ways to have people give you money! As for when I eventually will make money, I still haven't figured out what I'll do, but I'll have to make a choice somehow. With hindsight, I guess I should have bought the guy his train ticket (although his was a murky story), if hadn't had to catch my train. Because, let's be honest - there is no inherent virtue in money. Its natural state is to flow, so let it flow to those in more need of it!
A few years ago, I was taking up French evening classes. The audience consisted mainly of working people, with just a few students like me. After a few classes a pretty, shy girl in her early twenties joins in. She introduces herself briefly, saying her name and that she comes from Romania. My first thought was: how good of her, she's spiking up her French to improve her work prospects - in the informal cleaning industry, that is. Dutch being nearly impossible, she should get around well with French. Never mind that the language school was in Leuven, a major university city in Belgium. Never mind that if she didn't know Dutch, and really wanted to find such a job, she probably would have been gone straight to Brussels in the first place.
It's the perfect, yet very embarrassing, illustration of what the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie talks about in her TED-talk: it is easy to judge people by their nationality, rather than as the person who they are by their own right. It is dangerously easy to forget that everybody has his or her own story about who s/he is as a person. Yes, nationality can play a role in it, but it's not because you're from an African country that you listen to tribal music every single minute of the day, or that you don't know what an electric cooking stove is. It's not because you have a cleaning lady from a poor family, that they aren't capable of being creative, of producing quality products they can sell to generate an income.
When I walk on the street, when I sit on the train, or when I am traveling in far-away countries, I always wonder what people's story is. Especially with those old people whose wrinkled faces vividly tell you that they've gone through quite some history. Even though I die to hear their stories, I'm often too embarrassed to ask. I envy people who have this natural flair and get all these stories out of people. Like this guy who has walked from his home in Belgium to Santiago de Compostela with a camera on his shoulder, meeting the most random people on his way, who tell him their deepest life stories.
The more people I meet, the less I associate them with countries. Rather, I start associating countries with those people. Myself, I've given up trying to hide my true story. You never know who it is you're meeting, if you're going to see him or her ever again, and, most importantly, how impacting the real story of yourself can be on that person. I'm always surprised by the amount of goodness that I find in people. It often makes me wonder - where is it, then, all this negativity I hear about in the media? What stops us from a peaceful society, where people actually enjoy living together and embrace diversity?
I guess it's just that much easier to hide in your own shell, keep that hostile - because unknown - outside world far away, prey to your prejudices. I am guilty, too. Aren't we all, sometimes? But then I think of all the missed opportunities to share a positive view on our society with others, all the fascinating people that are walking around there, bringing hope by being the persons they are, instead of the negative people take them for. It could be the beginning of wonderful friendship with a talented exchange student seeking opportunities she doesn't get back home to put her great talents to practice, I can tell you that!
One thing is very clear to me: our 'developed' societies are not sustainable. The sheer demand of natural resources to keep our patterns of production and consumption going far outpaces our planet's capacity. Every year we set a new record in consuming the earth's resources "available" for that year's consumption (last year we did so already on August 19th). Understandably, then, the energy business is frantically looking for new sources or techniques to keep the machine running. We may have found a winner: shale gas. At least, that's what The Economisttells us when introducing its special report on natural gas:
If the boom persists gas may take coal’s place as the world’s second-favourite fuel in just a few decades, and millions will breathe easier as a result. This is because, even were it not cheap and plentiful, gas would be attractive simply on the grounds of cleanliness. It is true that there are questions about the harm that may be done by the “fracking” process that liberates shale gas; there is an urgent need for systematic before-and-after environmental audits. But once the gas is out of the ground, it is a great deal cleaner than coal. It does not distribute neurotoxic mercury around the planet; it does not clog city air and the lungs of those who breathe it with soot and sulphur. Gas is a boon to public health.
But, how clean is shale gas really? The Dutch programme Tegenlicht recently aired a superb documentary by Josh Fox on the very topic of shale gas and hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking): Gasland. Starting with a letter he received to lease his land to a shale gas company for the sum of 100,000 USD, Josh sets out on a journey to learn why his land is worth so much. Turns out, this 'boon to public health' is more of a bomb to the health of the people living nearby extraction sites. Honestly, if you can set your tap water on fire with a lighter, or if your animals start to loose their fur for no obvious reason, something's rotten in your back yard…
Also, the claim that shale gas is that much cleaner than coal, and that we will breathe easier, is not entirely true. During the fracking process, a lot of methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more harmful than CO2 - is released into the air. The environmental impact of shale gas is at least 20% greater than that of coal when compared on a 20-year horizon, scientists of Cornell University have argued.
The last word about shale gas hasn't been said yet, that is clear. Yet, there is a smell about the whole fracking business - especially when insiders start comparing it to the infamous Enron corporate politics (see p.5 of documents leaked to the NYT). Interestingly, this boom in shale gas has attracted foreign investment. India's biggest firm, Reliance Industries, for example, is reported to have stakes in several projects in the US. So now it's the Indians who are messing up American's back yards, for a change...
When I had just embarked on my discovery of international politics (and whatnot), Kevin introduced me to The Economist. 'A must read, Tom, if you want to stay on top of things in this world. Sharp analyses, I'm telling you. My advice - subscribe, asap!' I still am, six years later. It's pretty addictive, I'll admit to that. It's just that they cover such a variety of issues from all over the globe, so reading your weekly issue feels like getting the hang of what's up in the world.
It's not until recently, however - say a year or so - that I started reading the whole issue, from cover to cover. Although the magazine is called 'The Economist', surprisingly most of its content is just reporting on world politics (with a strong economic focus, at times). But the 'Business' and 'Finance and Economics' sections had never appealed to me - too difficult when not having a clue about those topics, I thought. Turns out, they're quite readable even for an economy illiterate, and pretty damn interesting on top of that!
Amazing how much you can learn by expanding your horizon, going beyond what you already know, with what you already feel comfortable. So it is that I came across this very intriguing article in the 'Science and technology' section. Turns out there is this spider species in Central America, the Leucauge argyra, that has an interesting way of reproducing. Usually, the male spiders make plugs of mucus to seal the female's orifice after mating (other animals do it too, apparently). With this species, however, the female has been observed doing that to herself, for a very peculiar reason:
Spider sex is unusual in that males transfer their sperm to the female on small limbs called pedipalps. They use these to pick their sperm up from their genitals and insert it into the female’s sexual orifice, rather than copulating directly. […] On the 14 occasions [observed] a sexual plug was made, the female produced it without assistance from the male. On ten of these occasions the male’s pedipalps then seemed to get stuck while he was transferring the sperm (which is rarely the case in other species of spider), and he had great difficulty freeing himself. In two of those ten instances, he was eaten as a result. The two researchers conclude, therefore, that what was once a mechanism which allowed females to discriminate between males has evolved into a way of trapping them so that they can be consumed at leisure. Whether only high-quality males, whose sperm the female also wishes to keep, are affected is not yet clear—though eating such males may bring the bonus of denying their sperm to rivals. Whatever the details, for male Leucauge argyra this behaviour gives a new meaning to the term “unsafe sex”.
Yes, utter randomness. But that's why I like it! Often, my best ideas are inspired by other disciplines or areas of work. Not that I'm saying women should start plugging themselves with mucus for safe sex, but you never know which brilliant idea might arise from these unexpected articles or encounters. I'm not doing it enough myself, but: dare to leave your comfort zone and dig into terra incognita, you never know what you may come across…
If it weren't for the sugar cane liquor before, I'd never put this anaconda up my shoulders...
The Dutch were not the only ones to loose during last year's World Cup finale. I was one among many others who had received some tech-loving visitors in my house while I was watching Spanish history being written on one of the many outdoors screens. It was a memorable day, indeed!
In spite of hustling down all the main black markets in Lima (in case you were wondering - La Cachina and Polvos Azules), looking for my little black MacBook, I didn't get closer than finding someone who had been offered the little black magic the very same day it had been stolen.
Apple-users among you will know that it was more out of personal affection that I wanted my MacBook back (and the small fortune that it had cost), rather than for the data lost. Thanks to Time Machine my new MacBook (not so new, but shht!) looked exactly the same as my old one, and this includes Safari's bookmarks, history and whatever else you may have forgotten to back up otherwise. Except for… Address Book.
As I came to learn, Time Machine does not automatically back up your contacts, you have export your contact database [file > export > address book archive] for you to have a file that can be back-uped. That is, if you don't want to manually input all the contacts you previously had stored in your Address Book.
Unfortunately, there is no option to export your archive to another format other than .abbu (only readable by Address Book). There had to be a solution, I reckoned, and one was found: Address Book Exporter. It allows you to export your whole archive, or parts of it, to a .txt file, which can then be easily copy-pasted into Numbers/Excel, turning your contacts' info into more manageable data. You're welcome!
This fascinating piece in The Atlantic came to my attention via the wonderful world of interlinkage between blogs. As it has the statistical potential of benefiting nine out of ten of this blog's readers (if there were so many, that is), here's your recipe for freeing up your internet searches.
90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all. "90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell [someone at Google who gets paid to look at people - I believe they call that 'anthropology'] said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for. At the end I'll say to them, 'Let me show one little trick here,' and very often people will say, 'I can't believe I've been wasting my life!'"
While I'm at it, I might as well share xkcd's golden security tip: stop inventing ludicrous passwords, just go for something long and keep it simple!
The saga continues! Turns out, Belgium is not the only anomaly on the European continent when it comes to bananas… The BBC, always running the extra mile to inform us about the latest edge-cutting news, has a new scoop for this blog: Iceland is Europe's biggest banana producing country! Yes, you got that right - Iceland. Apparently the volcanic fumes coming out of the ground can be converted into energy and heat for the bananas to grow in greenhouses…
Ok, maybe Iceland is not Europe's biggest banana producing country. Certainly not if we're to believe the FAO - zero production. Now, that's not entirely true, they do grow bananas there. Just search for it on YouTube and you'll find a dozen or so informational videos on the topic. Yes, in Icelandic.
Is it such an odd idea, for people in Iceland to grow bananas? If you think of it, actually it is not. It might even be more sustainable than importing them from Ecuador or Costa Rica. You're using thermal energy, which would have gone lost otherwise. You don't have to exploit the local farmers for your products to stay competitive on the global markets. You don't have to ship them all across the globe.
So, if you live in Iceland, my advice would be: go for it! You might even want to export some to the rest of Europe, and beat Belgium as Europe's biggest banana exporter.
However tempting, this post is not about the political Spielerei in Belgium that, by now, cannot interest no one any longer but the odd political scientist [in Dutch] or rating agent. (For those of you who have just tuned in, Belgium has been without a newly elected government for over 400 days now…) Instead, I want to share with you the most surprising discovery I made today: ranked by value, Belgium is the world's second largest exporter of bananas. Wohow, slow down, say that again? Belgium? Exporting bananas?
Seriously, I'm not making this up. The FAO does. Ok, admittedly, by export quantity, Belgium only comes in sixth, after Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala. But still… Belgium? July has just been named the 'saddest' month of July in the past thirty years because the sun had taken so much time off for holidays.
A quick search on the wonderful world of the web revealed that a Belgian company called Leon Van Parijs is the European distribution hub for Alvaro Noboa, a 'great bad man' from Ecuador. And where else would they be headquartered but in Antwerp [in Dutch]? This family business has been importing and redistributing (tropical) fruits since the early 20th century and is currently the sole centre to spread the Bonita love all over Europe.
All of a sudden, I remembered that the WTO has a plethora of rules of origin to determine where a product comes from. The EU will most certainly also have its own set of regulations to top that. So, no doubt Leon Van Parijs mastered the art of ripening the Ecuadorian bananas in Belgium before redistributing them, therefore turning them 'Belgian'. Selling them ten times more expensive than their original export price, then, squares the circle [in Dutch].
Lest we would start worrying about the implications on the farmers in Ecuador of these profit driven multinational enterprises, I'll leave you with another fun fact of the day to make you go bananas. India tops by far and large the rankings of banana producing countries with over 27% of total world production, yet manages to export only 30,402 of the 26,996,600 tons it produces. Watch your step, then, next time you're in India: that makes for 224,380,316,312 peels to slip on!
Here's to starting anew - a new look, a new profile picture, heck, even a new photo album. Why? There have been hundreds of topics crossing my mind, of which I said: this would make for a good blog entry. None of them made it here, as you can see. Enough of thinking about it, time to write some of those random thoughts down and try to make sense out of them.
The past few months have been quite eventful, filled with unexpected surprises and life-changing encounters. All this time, I have been looking for a meaningful job - alas, unsuccessful. Yet all these surprises and encounters have helped me to realise what it is I want to do with my life: to share. To share the little I know, the stories I picked up along the road, the joy of a smile and the passion to change lives for the better.
Asking myself if there would have been as many trees when this temple was actually in use
If that's what I want to do with my life, I might as well start here, right now. Wherever my professional wanderings will take me, writing will be intricately intertwined with whatever I'll be doing. No excuse, then, not to practise a bit more. I hope to manage translating my thoughts into concise blog entries, because, let's face it, no one has time (or the concentration skills?) any more to read a substantial piece of information passing their computer screens.
However, judging from the wanderings of my mind, this could turn problematic. Hence, a self-imposed limit of five paragraphs per entry. If I can't tell it in five, that means I'm on the wrong track, not being able to single out the essence of my thoughts or simply rambling and therefore wasting your time. After all, creativity starts when you cut a zero or two from your budget; it should work here, too.
I won't delimit the scope of this blog as I previously tried to do. It plainly didn't work, as you may have noticed. This should be a free space for whatever I feel like sharing with you, whether it is an inspiring TED talk I saw, a new MacOS trick I just discovered (but that I should have known ages ago) or the sheer randomness of being hit by a Korean old lady while waiting for a bus in the middle of nowhere. With such a gamut of topics, it's impossible to please all, I am aware of that. So, dear reader, if you don't like one entry, suck it up and come back later for the next journey into Tom's mind, five paragraphs at a time!
