Saturday, December 7, 2002

The New Republic: IS CHINA'S ECONOMIC BOOM A MYTH? Minxin Pei, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates that corruption costs China as much as 8 percent of annual GDP. The government auditing body has admitted that more than two-thirds of the biggest Chinese companies falsify their accounting--an astonishing statistic given that investors attacked U.S. stock markets in the wake of this year's corporate scandals, even though most economists believe less than 5 percent of American companies cook their books. 7:51:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

How Green Is BP?. The world's second-largest oil company is advertising itself as environmentally responsible a tough sell when you make most of your billions drilling the earth. By Darcy Frey. [New York Times: Science] Long and worth reading. Comments to come. 7:15:59 PM    comment []  trackback []

Scienceagogo has a follow up article on break-through last month that may make inexpensive, super-efficient solar cells possible. If this is actually possible, then it would open up a clear path to decentralized energy. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 7:08:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

A very skeptical view of the iraq inspection effort Debka: "Washington Gathers Own Evidence of Saddam's WMD": Saddam's demonstration of openness is in fact another exercise in obfuscation.... Washington in any case had no expectation of substance from the UN inspectors. Thursday, December 5, the White House declared it already had "solid evidence" that Iraq does indeed have weapons of mass destruction. Where did that evidence come from?... the secret, independent inspection project launched by the United States well before the UN Security Council sent its inspectors to Iraq. 7:03:13 PM    comment []  trackback []

Quotes of the day: "High finance ain't burglary, an' it ain't obtaining money under false pretenses, an' it ain't manslaughter. It's what ye might call a judicious selection from th' best feature of them arts." -- Finley Peter Dunne [via the reliably lucid Jon Carroll] How Gandhi Defined the Seven Deadly Sins: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Commerce without morality; Science without humanity; Worship without sacrifice; Politics without principle [via Ted Smith, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/Campaign for Responsible Technology] 7:01:16 PM    comment []  trackback []