Esoterica
Mass Replacement of Workers by Robots Will Cause Massive Chinese Unrest
Here’s an technology story that portends civil unrest in China during the this and the next decade: SHENZHEN, July 29 (Xinhua) — Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday. The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night. The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou. Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions. The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland. For more than 60 years, the Chinese Communist Party has been carefully (some say dictatorially) trying to grow the Chinese economy without creating civil unrest resulting from first industrialization and lately a conversion to a capitalistic economy. How to keep the country fed when farmers are tempted to quit the plows for higher paying factory work? How to keep the factory workers happy without slowing down production or causing economic inflation? Etc. The bloody Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 showed just how close to boiling over social unrest is in the People’s Republic of China. If Foxconn, whose workforce is already anxious (some suicidally so), plans to replace a large number of workers with millions of robots, how soon before other Chinese factories similarly replace their own workers. What will such conversions means to the hundreds of millions of factory workers in China. Unemployment. Perhaps there employee retraining programs will be offered, but for hundreds of millions of workers? And to do what? During the early 1800s in Britain, textile workers who were replaced by machines protested and rioted. They were called Luddites, after a figure from English myth. I wonder what will we call the Chinese software factory workers who will be replaced by robots and who will surely protest and riot?
What if Jean-Paul Sartre Had Written ‘Star Wars’?
[French dialogue with English subtitles]
Lack of Enforcement is the Real Problem With Nuclear Power
Most of the world’s most controversial subjects tend to polarize people’s opinions: people not only disagree about the subject, but do so by being either completely for or against the subject. Generating electricity from nuclear power is one of these subjects. Too bad, because it’s people’s polarization itself that prevents a solution. Yes, nuclear power is environmentally clean and therefore nuclear power should be used. Yes, nuclear accidents will happen and therefore nuclear power shouldn’t be used. However, the reality of the subject isn’t at all that polar. Among the people who know that is the board of editors of Scientific American magazine. They include people who not only understand both sides of the issues, but realize that the ultimate problem about nuclear power generation isn’t nuclear power but the cases of duplicity, corruption, and incompetence about it. Here is their editorial about it, which appeared in the June issue of their magazine. I applauded the editorial when I first read it earlier this summer: “…If we gave it up, what would replace it? Pollution from fossil-fueled power plants shortens the life span of as many as 30,000 Americans a year. Coal companies lop off mountaintops, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas threatens water supplies, and oil dependence undermines the nation’s energy security. Then there is the small matter of greenhouse gas emissions. Clean renewable technologies will take years to reach the scale needed to replace the power we get from splitting atoms…. “…The industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) claim that nuclear power is safe, but their lack of transparency does not inspire confidence. For example, an Associated Press investigation in March revealed 24 cases from December 2009 to September 2010 in which plant operators did not report equipment defects to the NRC…. “…The trouble is that regulations are not being enforced rigorously. The NRC has to mete out stiff penalties for violations and make every action transparent to us all…. “…If exercises showed that residents around a plant could not leave quickly enough, the NRC should consider shutting it down. A good test case is the Indian Point plant 38 miles north of New York City. Evacuating the 20 million people who live within 50 miles staggers belief…. “…If an operator proposes a site that is too close to an earthquake fault, or too close to oceanfront that is vulnerable to a tsunami or hurricane storm surge, or downriver from a huge […]
Fighter Plane Mows the Lawn
Think that the airliner you’ve been on flew a bit to low when coming in for a landing? You don’t know what flying low is. Watch the first of these two Argentinian fighter jets fly low enough to get grass stains on its fuselage.
How Not to Joke (Worse Attempt of 2011)
Karl Stefanovic, co-host of the Today show in the Australia tries to tell a joke to the quite attentive Dalai Lama. Maybe it will work in Stefanovic’s next incarnation.
A Prospectus for Tea Party Land
I’m thinking of raising capital for a new venture—Tea Party Land. This amusement park located in Middle America will have little or no government, ban admission to immigrants, and comprise Hannity Town, Old Testament Ingrahamstan , Beck Fantasyland, Coultershire, and O’Reillytopia. All its streets will lead to Fox Castle where every hour on the hour Princess Palin appears from a balcony. Tea Party Land will be the first family amusement park to feature rides engineered according to Creation Science and Supply-Side Economics: such as the Holy Rollercoaster down the mighty Limbaughorn, the Trickledown Waterslide (is your mortgage underwater?), and It’s A Cool Cool Cooling World. What other rides, cuisines, and features should we include? (Photograph, Tea Cup Ride on High Street, Solihull, courtesy of Ell Brown on Flickr.)
Charming Mashup
Charming mashup of Oliver Laurel & Stan Hardy’s 1937 Way Out West dance scene with Cachao’s Oye Como Va played by Santana.
Screw Company Stockholders
The infamous ‘Screw Company Stockholders’ headline from the November 13, Willimantic Chronicle (Connecticut, USA)
The World’s Most Politically-Incorrect TV Advertisement
The most politically-incorrect television advertisement I’ve ever seen. It’s from Dutch TV, produced by PMSvW-Young & Rubican.
Amber Heard for Equality
Amber Heard for Equality
An Old Chestnut: The Original Trailer for ‘Star Wars’
Here’s an old chestnut: the original Star Wars trailer exhibited six months before the film’s release. It’s a collection of seemingly random clips—probably because much of the unfinished movie has yet to be filmed—when the movie studio wasn’t sure what the film was about or if the film would bomb or hit. The trailer also lacks the firms musical score. Note the voiceover’s unintentionally tentative tone!