Saturday, January 29, 2005
Saturday January 29th
Many of us know someone who has MS. I saw this article today "Chronic Lyme borreliosis at the root of multiple sclerosis - is a cure with antibiotics attainable?" written by Fritzsche M. of the Clinic for Internal and Geographical Medicine in Adliswil, Switzerland.
Worldwide, MS prevalence parallels the distribution of the Lyme disease pathogen Borrelia (B.) burgdorferi, and in America and Europe, the birth excesses of those individuals who later in life develop MS exactly mirror the seasonal distributions of Borrelia transmitting Ixodes ticks. In addition to known acute infections, no other disease exhibits equally marked epidemiological clusters by season and locality, nurturing the hope that prevention might ultimately be attainable.What if?
Mover Mike
Chrenkoff in Through the Glass Darkly has an excellent post on how those like Slate's Fred Kaplan are part of a "school" that think America is a declining country. In the post he talks about the future of China and I was reminded of a recent (Jan. 14th to the 22nd of 2005) series of articles in the Asia Times:
Part 1) The Great Wall of shopping
But in a country where in 2003 (the latest data available) the average per capita disposable income in urban areas was 8,472 yuan ($1,033) a year, while for farmers it was only 2,622 yuan ($319) a year, who's really climbing the Great Wall of shopping?
Part 2)Selling China to the world
Made in China, move over: make way to Bought by China. The Middle Kingdom is no longer happy to be "just" the factory of the world, inundating us all with low-tech and mid-tech goods, from textiles to cell phones, from computers to toys, from cameras to bedside lamps.
Part 3)The hottest label: China chic
China entered 2005 celebrating a textile Big Bang: the end of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, with all quotas on textile imports lifted by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Textiles represent 6% of world trade. China's current share of the US market is around 17%; it may soon rise to 50%. China's current share of the European Union market is 18%; it may soon rise to 30%
Part 4)The peasant Tiananmen time bomb
Last October, The Chinese Peasant Study (more than 7 million pirated copies have been sold. The 460-page yellow-bound volume with the title in black characters can be easily found under the counter, even in some bookshops, for 22 yuan {US$2.65}) won the prestigious Lettre Ulysses Award, sponsored by the German magazine Lettre. The gritty, emotion-packed literary reportage depicts economic exploitation, social injustice and political oppression in rural China - as well as some extraordinary tales of resistance. It took three years to write and consumed all of Chen's and Wu's savings. They visited more than 50 towns throughout agricultural Anhui province, talked to scores of senior officials in Beijing and interviewed thousands of peasants to explain how, in its mad urbanization drive, the party not only neglected the lot of 900 million peasants - deprived of decent health care, welfare, education, the right to have more than one or two children - but also treated them harshly, plunging them in a guaiqian (vicious cycle) in which nothing has fundamentally changed a social structure that has been systematically exploiting Chinese peasants for centuries.I suspect the MSM have created another Super Power that threatens the growth or life of the US, much like they did with the Soviet Union and the Economy of Japan and now China. China is undergoing tremendous growth and has put awful pressures on wages and employment of workers here and around the world. However, let's not ignore their problems.
I am always amazed at how this country continues to thrive and create new businesses even with the politicians and taxes and regulations.
Mover Mike
