Categories
Photography

[631] Of if internet is down, then go to a wet market

My life almost ended a few days ago. My internet connection died out on me and caused me to live in agony for three days. Three freaking days. Do you know how it felt like?

Terrible! It was as if I had lost a cause to live!

But at least it gave me a reason to pay a nearby wet market a visit. I brought my camera with me too.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

The first is my first visit in more than almost five years. Fun. It wasn’t too smelly as I had imagined it before. Well, I’m not being truthful about the fun part. I mean, it’s fun seeing economics at work.

In one case, there were two traders and each was selling the same good – noodle packs. However, price was dissimilar and I saw most people went for the cheaper ones. It’s cool seeing competition at work and knowing that rudimentary economics work. It’s weird however that the undercut trader never really reduced her price.

And somehow, price ceilings enforced by the government were never observed because the market prices seemed lower. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, in the picture, the guy is selling coconut milk. Behind him a huge stock of coconuts.

And alright. I lied. The photo was taken a few days earlier before my connection went kaput. Instead, I spent the whole three days trying to figure out what was wrong. I disabled the network card, re-enabled it, uninstalled it, re-installed it, power cycled it, hammer’d it, unscrewed and re-unscrewed it and then finally calling for tech support. And damn, tech support was damn stubborn. At least, he was polite.

I told him the possible source and he wouldn’t listen! He kept suggesting steps that I should take that I had taken! Bah!

Categories
Photography

[630] Of a sparkling vase

For some reason, I decided to get a little bit creative when I saw my mom’s vase. I’m not sure whether it’s crystal or glass but I know almost dropped it.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved.

It took me 15 shots to get it right. It was simply hard for me to get the right kind of lighting to produce the picture. This photo is the final shot. It’s less than perfect due to the camera’s flash but what the hell.

Categories
Environment

[629] Of Amazonian desert

Is Amazonian rainforest a myth?

AP Photo/A Critica, Euzivaldo Queiroz. Fair use. Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photo/051010/481/sao10110101847;_ylt=AiHhwtdyKdTP_xBGp.RKnAW9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-

I saw the picture while reading about Amazon’s latest crisis. Some parts of Brazil are currently experiencing severe drought. The situation is so bad that water level at parts of the mighty Amazon River dropped below its seasonal normal.This is more frightening considering the fact that water level dropped five feet 35 miles from Manaus while the Amazon near Manaus looks something like this:

Public domain. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amazon_near_Manaus.jpg

Both pictures are not mine and I hope fair use is applicable for the first photo. The credit for the first reads AP Photo/A Critica, Euzivaldo Queiroz. The second is a public domain media taken from Wikipedia.

Categories
Economics

[628] Of have we gone passed some kind of second derivative for oil demand fuction?

How high will price be before consumers cut back demand for crude oil? I asked the same question more than a year ago.

It seems that USD70 per barrel is the price. My gut tells me that the prices which demand turned direction is lower due to lag. Probably in the range of USD60 to USD70 per barrel. Even before that, SUV sales had decreased tremendously.

Crude oil prices at the New York Mercantile Exchange for November delivery hover around USD62 per barrel while November Brent lingers at USD59 per barrel. The fall in crude prices started during early September after prices reached USD70 per barrel in last August. The fall is happening in spite of production capacity loss due to Hurricance Katrina.

So, are we going to see continuing fall in prices?

The looming winter in the US and Europe is expected to be colder than usual. Unless prices could cushion its rise during the upcoming winter, I don’t expect this price decrease would continue unabated.

But some innovations might help reduce demand of crude oil just like what happened during oil crisis in the 70s. Malaysia is planning to mix biofuel with gas while hydrid vehicles are hot in the US. Still, we may only know for certain where we are when the northern winter ends in April next year (May for People’s Republic of Ann Arbor).

Whatever it is, a falling demand is a bad thing for OPEC. They do have the incentive to increase production to lower prices a bit. The last time crude oil prices broke some records, oil became really cheap for about two decades because fuel consumption efficiency was forced to increase.

p/s – wow! Deja vu!

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[627] Of where is the anti-corruption agency?

So, Mohamed Isa Abdul Samad has been found guilty of corruption by UMNO disciplinary committee weeks ago. He made an appeal and the committee reduces his penalty.

However, why the case hasn’t been brought up to anti-corruption agency? Am I missing something here? Is federal law inapplicable to a political party’s internal matter?

p/s – two persons won the Prize in Economics for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”.