Doug eat dog

Looming water crisis in China

Cities in the North China Plain, such as Shijiazhuanh, are experiencing a boom in the local population due to local economic growth topping 11 percent. To support all these people, the underground water table below the plan is being reduced by roughly four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater.

Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

According to Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has worked for the world bank and China’s Ministry of Water Resources, China will run out of groundwater within 30 years if the current rate of extraction continues.

The other coast for today

Pet tchotchkes have gone a bit too far.

Today's Bizarro

The Feline theocracy has some competition.

Moonbases into McMansions.

Ever wonder why we don't have moon bases now like in 2001? Mike Gerber has a theory.

WAR, INC.

Got this one from Dennis Perrin.

India is outsourcing outsourcing

One of the constants of the global economy has been companies moving their tasks — and jobs — to India. But rising wages and a stronger currency here, demands for workers who speak languages other than English, and competition from countries looking to emulate India’s success as a back office — including China, Morocco and Mexico — are challenging that model.

In May, Tata Consultancy Service, Infosys’s Indian rival, announced a new back office in Guadalajara, Mexico; Tata already has 5,000 workers in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Cognizant Technology Solutions, with most of its operations in India, has now opened back offices in Phoenix and Shanghai.

Wipro, another Indian technology services company, has outsourcing offices in Canada, China, Portugal, Romania and Saudi Arabia, among other locations.

And last month, Wipro said it was opening a software development center in Atlanta that would hire 500 programmers in three years.

For its part, Infosys is building a whole archipelago of back offices — in Mexico, the Czech Republic, Thailand and China, as well as low-cost regions of the United States.

Original NYT article here.

Comix Monday

Snow!!!

Summer is definitely over. We got snow today down in the city. Ok, so maybe it was really hail, but it looked like snow this morning.

Jane Fonda to blame for global warming - So says NYT

The New York Times in a feat of contortionist logic has declared that Jane Fonda's 1979 movie The China Syndrome is responsible for the death of the US nuclear industry. They claim that the movie's release just prior to the Three Mile Island accident helped to fan the publics' fear of the industry. Somehow, they forget that the movie was largely ignored until the actual incident and that the industry was already wounded by scandal and corruption.