I love this headline - “Carbon dioxide emissions to increase by 40% in 20 years”. It’s one of those perfect excuses to tell your spouse: “This is why we’re never having children.” Looking at it logically, who would want to be born into a doomed world of cancer, death, and destruction of beauty?

Yet we are experience unprecedented industrial growth in developing countries, especially the giants, China and India. The economic crisis of today makes the G20 look upon China as some sort of dictatorial saviour, as if the powerhouse of the East will somehow patch up all the holes that have effected from our ingenious subprime financial system. We applaud growth, we denounce pollution. We contradict ourselves.

My favorite economics professor boldly suggested that the most efficient method is the method taking place right here, right now - it is the lack of incentive and presence of opportunity costs that prevent us from bringing about change. Surely we would all like to drive hybrid cars (well, I do know obstinate fews who insist BMWs are essential luxuries of life, but besides that, most of us), but the cost, the trouble, the lack of supporting infrastructure all make it impossible for a society-wide switch to more environmentally-friendly vehicles. Surely we would all like to reduce the use of plastic, but convenience and utility prevent us from being more considerate when it comes to dumping out garbage that will not decompose for eras to come. Surely we would all like to reduce carbon dioxide emission levels, but underlying factors have it: unless there is drastic change in societal values, changes cannot, and will not, take place.

It is simple as that. People get lung cancer but do not stop smoking. The Japanese have not stopped eating whales.  We do not have societies full of David Suzukis. Read here for a glimpse into our gloomy future.

Well, we all probably know what’s happening. North Korea just launched their second nuke test, it fared a bit better than their first one, and all the big nations are in alarm mode at this time. Russia and China gave North Korea strong criticisms and said that they’re absolutely opposed to this. Meanwhile, Obama has his hands full, again. What difficult times it must be for him.

Apparently the real worry is not that North Korea might launch nukes at other countries, but that they’ll sell nuke material on the black market i.e. open a way for terrorists to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction. This crisis is a bit like global warming, just not having gathered enough media attention. Well, the media is all over it, but in most people’s view, it’s probably not an urgent issue, at least it’s not an issue that would have any impacts on their lives.

And this is what’s scary about it. North Korea seems a bit pissed off at the fact that all other countries are pissed off at it. They’ve launched two missile test in response to the world’s criticisms, signifying that they’re not going to cave into the world’s demands, and Obama - heck, anyone - would face the tough problem of how to get them to listen. If they don’t, well, it could very well lead to warfare as it would just be a matter of time, given that North Korea’s attitude doesn’t change. How troublesome.

Meanwhile, all these events happening also once again brought up the question of nuclear weapons. It’s a simple question of control, but not an easy question to answer. The thing with control is that it requires authority, and authority are human, and humans are not absolute, so the control can never be flawless. No flawless control means there’s always the possibility that control will be lost. And an event of any nonzero possibility will happen if you run the experiment long enough. What would happen then? A scary thought.

And to make matters worse, this is one of the world’s concerns that the average person can do nothing about. I guess all we can do is to lay back, watch history, and hope for a good ending at least for the foreseeable future.

(title credit goes to a commenter of the article quoted)

Here’s a little story from the Globe.

The more I hear these stories, the more I am reminded of the fact that people are not fully understanding the implications of new technologies quickly enough. This is usually a bad thing, but maybe not in this case where it picks out dishonest people and slams their dishonesty in their face.

The Internet is huge and uncontrolled, and in this day and age, the Internet is also an important and irreplaceable portion of our lives. Inevitably, our personal information - bits and pieces of our lives, will end up on the Internet. And of course, what ends up on the Internet will stay there, especially since there are websites like The Wayback Machine that permanently keep track of the Internet’s history. The only way to prevent anyone from accessing these bits and pieces of our lives is to be flawless in our control of security features like passwords and privacy settings, but of course, nobody is that perfect, and oftentimes the effort of ensuring privacy isn’t really worth the gains, depending on how afraid-of-public you are.

There’s one solution though: Simply live a good and honest life, and do nothing that you’d be ashamed of if it goes public. It’s not that hard. There are many bosses out there who wouldn’t hire people if they see evidences of drug use on facebook accounts - don’t do drugs. There are many opportunities that you may be denied if there are traces of distasteful language used by you - don’t swear excessively and certainly don’t be a bigot. Be honest at all times, and don’t do things that piss off other people whom you don’t want to piss off. Live a good life, and then no matter how open your life becomes, the possibility for backlash should still be low.

Maybe one good thing about these social network websites is their ability to keep people honest and responsible for their own lives.