Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

For more about me, please read this.

Categories
Economics Environment

[532] Of the next step

The Kyoto Protocol has been in force for than three months now. I haven’t read much development on it save that some countries are planning to leave the Protocol and its legacy behind after it expires. They say it is too costly to do a Kyoto part two. At the same time, I doubt many parties of the Protocol will be able to meet the reduction goal by the year 2012.

Don’t get me wrong. Though Kyoto is not as effective as most would want it with people on one side says it’s too costly and the other saying too little too late, it is still an important step to be taken. It essentially set the pace towards greener future.

But still, one will have to wonder what is going to happen after Kyoto. Many have mentioned the need to get China, India and other developing nations to join hand in hand. But whatever is going to happen, I’m noticing a new trend in combating climate change.

Kyoto has been targeting governments. Maneuvering with such target in mind is hard given the fact that the Protocol almost died with the pullout of the US. The Protocol only got through with Russian ratification.

The near death experience probably made a lot of people to have a second thought. Hence, attention has shifted from government to organizations down the hierarchy – states, cities, private firms.

Some states in the US have their own initiative to reduce emission despite the federal government refusal to ratify Kyoto. Development in those states, California in particular has been rather encouraging. California, San Francisco in fact, has always been a leader when it comes to taking care for the environment. When I was in San Francisco, I saw first hand why – large fleet of its buses is zero-emission buses, electrically powered. I have not seen anything like it before.

Today, UN World Environment Day that is be held in San Francisco. Though the conference itself is not about climate change in particular, it will however touch on renewable energy and in general, sustainability, which go in line with methods to cut emission down.

And all these sustainability ideas won’t come true without the green technologies which come from many firms such as Toyota, Honda and General Electrics. General Electrics lately has been campaigning hard to reinvent itself as a green company. Its Ecoimagination campaign to me is impressive so far. I’m not however sure whether this is a real effort or simply another green-washing as done by Exxon and others.

Yet, all of the steps and trend is useless if there is no green grassroots. Then again, these green steps started because of expanding green grassroots. What makes me wonder is how the green grassroots started and then skipped everything between private citizens and the governments. It is weird to see only after the jump was made, everything in between starts to build up.

But in the end, it is good to see green ideas are being embraced by the bases and more importantly at the moment, privates firms. I’d guess it is not too premature or showing too much confidence to say, welcome to the green century, despite the death of environmentalism.

Categories
Environment Photography Politics & government Travels

[531] Of oui versus non

The European Union is in such a mess right now. One would believe that the main pillars of the Union would strongly support the roof. Apparently, that is not so.

Right now, the French are having a referendum to ratify a new EU Constitution that would bring EU members closer. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side one stands, according to the April 30th issue of The Economist, 20 polls revealed that France is set to reject the European Constitution. Add in the error, result could go either way. Wikipedia as usual provides a fine explanation of the drafted Constitution.

The final result will be as close as 2000 US presidential election. Whatever the result maybe, I do hope it will be an oui.

I do think the formation of the EU and the subsequent activities to strengthen a central government takes away the autonomy each member enjoys. I prefer a decentralized system while idea of a super state scares me. Somehow however, charms free-flow of capital and labor is too great to resist. Of course, in the EU, free-flow of labor does not quite exist yet given that the newcomers are currently being barred from the Schengen zone. Still, sooner or later, it will be a reality and hence reestablishing the great free trade era prior to the 1930s.

The reason why I support a stronger European Union is that I would like to see a counterweight to Pax Americana; I admire the US as much as I admire any other great civilizations in the past. Fact is however, a unipolar world will never be safe.

Another main reason why I support the EU is because of ASEAN. If Europe one day is united under one banner, perhaps ASEAN should pursue almost the same path as the EU is taking right now.

From purely economic point of view, the use of a single currency will lead to an explosion of trade between members of a single-monetary zone. Of course, setting a uniform interest rate will be hard but unification could be done stage by stage. For instance, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand could be the first to use a single currency. These three countries have about the same rate currently and they’re neighbors. And then, if situation improved in the Philippines and Indonesia, then they could be included in the zone. And when others progressed (which is going to take a very long time), they could be invited to use a single currency.

Later, with a population size similar to Europe, perhaps ASEAN would have a bigger role to play on the world stage. And then, we all could play World of Warcraft and kill Onyxia together, including all fractions of the horde too.

p/s – My favorite city is now San Francisco. New York falls to the second rung.

Captured the city skyline from Municipal Pier. The Transamerica Pyramid is clearly visible while the Russian Hill to the left. (or right-side of the photo. I’m still confused about which side is the right/left on a picture.)And I can’t believe that I walked all the way from a Caltrain station south of San Francisco to the Marina Boulevard up in north San Francisco.

pp/s – Star Wars, I love. Go to the cinema, you must! Watch all the episodes again, I will!

ppp/s – I learnt that the UN World Environment Day will be celebrated in San Francisco from the 1st till the 5th of June.

Banners seen in the photos are almost omnipresent in San Francisco. Too bad I didn’t have the time to hang around the city longer. Else, I would certainly want to check it out.

Categories
Liberty Pop culture Sci-fi

[530] Of Revenge of the Sith

The latest installment to Star Wars saga is explosive. I saw it in the morning at a local cinema and I very much love it. It is better in many aspects when compared to the first two prequels. Revenge of the Sith is involving because instead of depending solely on choreography of lightsaber duel and special effects, Episode III rely more on emotion – betrayal, to me, seems to be the central theme.

My two favorite moments are when the clone troopers turn on the Jedi and when Anakin loses to Obi-Wan. The betrayal, if it is not for the original trilogy and the expanded universe, would have been shocking. I was especially moved during the assasination of Ki-Adi-Mundi.

Most memorable quote is spoken by Padme Amidala: “This is how liberty ends: with thunderous applause“. What makes the quote memorable is its great relevancy to the real world.

Seven bucks well-spent.

Well, I’m off to San Francisco to meet some people. Later.

Categories
Economics Gaming Humor

[529] Of auctioning in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft in-game economy is confusing to say the least. To be fair, it’s confusing at the first glance and it will make sense after awhile.

While I was browsing an in-game auction house for materials that I needed to brew a few potions, I found that that the price of the end product is lower than the total cost of materials needed to make the end product. I’ve heard about this phenomenon earlier in World of Warcraft forum but never really had the curiosity to investigate it myself. I was more interested in killing some other players and brag about it. But

For instance, to make a major healing potion, one needs mountain silversage, two golden sansams and a crystal vial. When I checked the price of silversage, it was priced at 99 silver (1 gold = 100 silver = 1000 copper). According to a census by Allakhazam, the average price is 72 silver. A sansam costs 39 silver on average while a crystal vial cost 20 silver from an NPC vendor.

And guest how much, on average, does it cost to buy a major healing potion.

If you’d guess around 1.70 gold (which comes from 72 + (39*2) + 20), you’re wrong. On average, the potion costs just 1 gold.

Funny isn’t it?

This sort of pricing is ruining my in-game profession, which is an alchemist. I gather all the materials and make those materials into potions. Most of the time, I buy the materials instead of looking for them. Gathering the materials takes extensive effort.

By looking at the current trend, it seems that I should simply collect the materials and immediately later, sell them straight to the market instead of using up the materials for potions and then offer the market the end product. This is a way to get around the weirdness of the in-game economy. But it certainly doesn’t explain the anomaly of the economy.

One explanation for what seems to be a weird pricing is that some sellers actually gather (or in fact, gotten it for free) the material instead of buying it off from someone else. With that, their cost, strictly speaking from monetary perspective while ignoring the effort needed to search for the materials, is lower than those that get their material from the market.

This explanation makes perfect sense. However, I wouldn’t these people that gathered the material by themselves gain higher mark-up if they had priced their items as if they had bought it from the market? Shouldn’t more profit and more gold be the goal? Moreover, these sellers don’t seem to add their effort into the price, which is ludicrous. As if, their effort shouldn’t be rewarded. Or maybe they just have different preferences, which is generally lower than those that think like me.

Because of these people, which I call “deflationers”, prices of everything related to alchemy are deflated, save those highest levels potions. In the end, every decent alchemist is forced to sell at lower prices.

Then, I realized, this is game theory, with a pun.

p/s – Leeeeeerrrroooooyyyyy Jeeeenkiiinnsss. Warning, large vid file. 16 meg.

Categories
Gaming

[528] Of Onyxia the dragon

I’m currently preparing for a guild raid on Oxynia. Oxynia is a dragon, an terrible one, in the World of Warcraft. There are two more steps that I need to take before the most anticipated event by my guild, Sanct, in this MMORPG start. Sanct is probably one of the largest guilds on server Destromath, with nearly 250 characters. Up-to-date, 40 guild members have pledged to meet up at 13:45 PST.

My preparation started nearly two days ago. Yesterday was the day when I sat in front of my computer, with the game loaded, for nearly 15 hours straight trying to get everything right. It was crazy feeling – started just after noon and ended roughly four o’clock in the morning in the next day – at the end of the session, my eyes couldn’t open anymore, my left arm tendon that was badly damaged started to feel different (like it was going to fall off) and worst of all, my ass hurt.

A 15-hour of continuous game play is no joke. I skipped my lunch, took my dinner in front of the game and even almost slept on the keyboard. If I could take a leak on my chair, I’d have probably done that too.

After this, I plan to read The Onyxia Bible thoroughly and then log back into a world where killing is encouraged and the economy is messed up.