The Ultraforge Report

Now You See Me...

2006-05-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

Scientists and tech guys are trying to develop an invisibility "cloak" that can render a man as unnoticeable as the recently ended Tony Danza Show:

Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak Is Possible, Studies Say

The creation of an invisibility cloak like the one used by Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling's books is theoretically possible, scientists said in two studies published by the online Science Express journal.

The key to making an object invisible is to surround it with a cloak made of ``metamaterials'' that are engineered to bend light around an object, continuing on the other side in the same direction as before, Ulf Leonhardt, author of one of the studies, said in a telephone interview. Sound waves, which have a longer wavelength than light, can be distorted in such a way, and light bends naturally in mirages, for instance, he said.

``All one has to do is enhance this bending effect and control it better,'' said Leonhardt, Professor of theoretical physics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ``We've given recipes of how to do this. You have to control structures that are smaller than the wavelength of light -- less than half a micrometer,'' he said. A micrometer is a millionth of a meter.

The authors of the papers set out mathematical requirements for a theoretical metamaterial, that could achieve invisibility. Applications include protecting structures from vibrations, sound and seismic waves, improving wireless communications, seeing through obstructions, and hiding objects, David Schurig, a scientist at Duke University, North Carolina, and co-author of the second paper, said in a statement.

``The cloak would act like you've opened up a hole in space,'' another co-author, David Smith, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke, said in the statement. ``All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space.''

`Broadband Cloak'

The cloaking device posited by the Duke scientists and the paper's third co-author, Professor John Pendry at Imperial College London, would cover the entire light spectrum and other lines of force, such as magnetic fields, Imperial said in an online statement.

``Ours would be a broadband cloak,'' Pendry said in the statement. ``There would be no communication between the object that is cloaked and the outside world.''

Translating the math into a metamaterial that works isn't easy, Leonhardt said, describing his proposal as more ``modest'' than Pendry's.

``If you relax the requirement of perfection in the invisibility, we can have much more modest requirements of the material,'' he said. ``If you're happy with a slight haze, or even things you can't really perceive with the naked eye, but you can with instruments,'' then it's easier to make, he said.

`Spacewarp'

The two Duke scientists are now working on building the proposed material, and the first device would be a few millimeters across, according to Imperial College. When built, a final theoretical device would have just the same effects as the magical cloak in J.K. Rowling's books, the British school said.

``Just as in the Harry Potter film, nobody would be able to see an object if it was cloaked, as it's in a spacewarp, and that's exactly what our stuff would do,'' Pendry said.

The two papers, ``Controlling Electromagnetic Fields'' by Pendry, Schurig and Smith, and ``Optical Conformal Mapping,'' by Leonhardt, were published yesterday by Science Express, the online advance publication of the journal Science. The Duke/Imperial research was supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

A couple of things:

1) Do I even need to expound on the abuses this technology will be put to when(not if...when. Always remember that!) it falls into the wrong hands?

2) For the love of God, somebody please put one of these things on David Hasselhoff, Courtney Love, and every single member of Aqua so sane people can finally forget such evil exists in the world.

Potatoes Make Bad Housepets

2006-04-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

I once had a pet potato. Bad choice. Let me explain why.

You see, the potato is stupid. You can't teach it to do anything. I tried teaching Bruce (that was my potato's name) how to roll over. Nothing. He'd just sit there looking at me like, "What?" Since that didn't work I tried teaching him to fetch. He just sat there once again looking at me with that blank expression potatos always have on their faces.

Teach him to guard the house? Nope.

Teach him to kill mice? Nada.

Teach him to scratch on the door when he wanted to go outside? No. He's just sit there peeing an pooping on the carpet.

He was abysmally stupid, kind of like David Hasselhoff or 50 Cent. Yes, the potato is definitely the least intelligent member of the berry family by far. I should have got a turnip or a coconut instead. They're far more intelligent than potatoes. Some of them even hold high public positions in government or the psychiatric field. Some turnips and cocnuts have even gone on to become famous actors, actresses, and singers who distinguish themselves by becoming spokespeople for Scientology.

Anyway, Bruce was about as sharp as a koosh ball. So what else could I do? I killed him, cut him up, fried him in a pan, and ultimately ate him. He was delicious.

Oh, look. You're getting all judgmental with me now. You're probably a member of People For The Ethical Treatment of Berries or some shit like that. Well, screw you and your sissyfied emo hand-wringing. Bruce was too stupid to care what was happening to him. Besides, I see you self-righteous bastards sneaking off to McDonalds when you think nobody's looking. Freakin' hypocrites. Who are you to criticize?

Bruce was stupid, ugly, and useless. He deserved to die.

This psychotic episode has been brought you by the fine folks who make Lithium™.

Lithium™. It's Lithi-umm-umm good! :p

L. Ron Hubbard, Sorcery, and Flying Saucers

2006-04-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

I love urban legends and conspiracy theories. I'm not saying I believe them. I'm just saying that I find them amusing. In fact, the bigger the amount of bullshit contained in a conspiracy theory/urban legend, the more amusing it is to me.

And that leads me to my latest entry. It concerns an amusingly bullshit story about Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory wunderkind Jack Parsons, and the infamous Aleister Crowley. They were all connected by a magic(k)al operation known as The Babalon Working:

In its initial stages, The Babalon Working was intended to attract an elemental to serve as a partner for Parsons elaborate sex magick rituals. The method employed was that of the solo VIII Degree working of the O.T.O, the quasi-Masonic organization reformulated by Crowley in the earlier part of the century in accordance with his Do What Thou Wilt mythos of Thelema. Parsons used his magickal wand to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as The Scribe in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.

Apparently, it worked. In a letter to Crowley dated February 23, 1946, Parsons exclaimed, "I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since."

The elemental was a green-eyed, flaming redhead named Marjorie Cameron, (later of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome film, an artist of some reknown and a primary force in the New Age Goddess movement). Cameron was only too happy to participate in Parsons' sex magick and now Parsons could get down to the real business of the Babalon Working: the birthing of a moonchild or homunculus. The operation was formulated to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet for the appearance of the goddess Babalon in human form, employing the Enochian Calls [angelic language] of Elizabethan magus John Dee and the attraction of the sex force of the duo's copulation to this end.

As Paul Rydeen points out in his extended essay Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon: "The purpose of Parsons' operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah. To wit: Babalon incarnate as a living female, the Scarlet Woman as consort to the Antichrist, bride of the Beast 666. In effect, Parsons also claimed the mantle of Antichrist for himself, as the magickal heir of Crowley prophesied in Liber AL: 'The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them [the mysteries of the Apocalypse]. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West, for from no expected house cometh that child.'"

Without the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist cannot make his manifestation, the eschatological formula must first be complete. In whiter words, with the magickal rites of the Babalon Working, it was Parsons' goal to bring on the Apocalypse.

I have no doubt that they actually attempted this "Babalon Working" ritual even if I doubt that it actually produced a "Moonchild". But one thing is clear: Hubbard and his cohorts were trying to summon an extradimensional entity to this plane of existence and were using the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley as their template.

These events were probably the basis for a completely bullshit legend: The legend that Hubbard and Parsons used a sorcerous ritual to summon up the UFOs that people report seeing from time to time.

The story goes that Hubbard and Parsons went out into the Southwestern Desert at the behest of the JPL. Their goal was to perform a series of incantations that would open up a nexus to another dimension. Supposedly the incantations worked and a "dimensional portal" opened up in mid air before them. Something flew through. In some versions of the legend, the thing that entered our world was "The Third Book of the Law" or some such nonsense. In other versions, it was a flying saucer. The beings within cut a deal with the JPL. In exchange for liscence to come an go within our dimension and do whatever they wished, they would share vital technological and esoteric secrets with the U.S. government. Those who believe this legend also tend to believe that many technological advances from the internet to Tang were handed down to us by metaterrestrial sorceror-scientists to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and from there to the rest of the world.

Some even expand the legend further. They say that the extradimensional beings worked with another government before they worked with the United States: Nazi Germany. They hold that the Thule Society had used magic(k)al riuals to contact the metaterrestrials in a similar manner to the way Hubbard and Parsons would a few short years later. However, the aliens abandoned the Nazis at some point for unguessable reasons precipitating the downfall of the Third Reich.

And so that's the way the legend goes. Complete and utter bullshit? Of course. Amusing and fascinating in an odd way nontheless? Absolutely.

Woman Feeds Pet Bee Steroids!

2006-03-15T19:05:00.000-06:00

Holy shit! You really need to see this thing! How did she manage to tame the damn thing and keep it from flying away? It's wings don't look damaged:

I hate those freaking things, by the way.

The Continuing War In Iraq

2006-03-13T20:22:00.000-06:00

Once again the same old "Did we have a right to invade Iraq?" debate seems to be heating up again. Maybe you've been noticing this yourself. It's the sort of tired political debate that comes and goes like a bad rash.

I have a problem with Dubya. Now understand that I'm not upset we sent troops there in the first place. I'm not upset that Kofi Annan, Jaques Chirac, and Gerhardt Shroeder got pissy because they knew their Oil for Food scandal would be exposed. No, I'm upset with Dubya over the execution of this war. His complete underestimation of the dangers our troops would face and the tenacity of the enemy. He's been way too soft on them, in my opinion. For example, he should have reduced Fallujah to smoking rubble after those animals murdered our civilian contractors who were trying restore running water and electricity to that benighted town.

Mr. President, since our troops are over there how about we win the damn thing? Don't you think that would be just a peachy keen idea?

March of the Machines

2006-03-12T19:12:00.000-06:00

Okay, you've got to check out this thing. It's trippy and fascinating. And yet, it's also slightly disturbing to watch for some strange reason.

I can't wait until the military makes a larger version of this contraption with armor and swivel-mounted chain guns.

Conflicting Views On Chinese Econmic Might

2006-03-12T17:06:00.000-06:00

Many people view China as potentially being the next economic superpower. Among other things, they're extending their influence farther into Africa and Latin America, working hard to increase their engineering prowess, looking to acquire the strategic resources of other countries, and are attempting to start making jumbo jets again.

However, China's economic prospects don't always seem rosey. For example, China had roughly 87,000 incidents of civil unrest this past year, prompting government officials to recruit extra police for 2008 and embark on a "New Deal" social spending program that might not work.

But this piece is probably the most skeptical opinion I've seen to date about China's long term economic strength. It gives more weight to Idia:

To begin with, you have to be careful about return on capital. These are accounting returns and very dependent on management discretion. I always take them with a grain of salt. Let us face it — nobody has made money in China.

That is the reality. People are investing in China on promise that there will be returns in future.

In a sense, there are two sets of rules. They viewed India as a conventional investment. They decided that they would invest more in India only if the original investment made money. For China they set aside those rules. They invest in China because of the potential. To put it differently, investing in China is viewed as an Option. The advantage in being viewed as an `option' is that more uncertainty feeds into its value. In conventional budgeting, more uncertainty reduces value. There again we have to see if there is a transition and companies can start thinking that we can no longer afford to view China as an Option.

The pundit may be somewhat biased due to his Indian roots. But what if he isn't?

Draw your own conclusions on this one.

Terri Hatcher Breaks Her Long Silence

2006-03-08T19:47:00.000-06:00

Actress Terri Hatcher of Desperate Housewives fame has revealed a secret from her childhood and sent a child molestor to prison as a result:

Santa Clara County prosecutors say Terri Hatcher helped convict molester

NEW YORK Santa Clara County prosecutors are acknowledging that one of the stars of the television show "Desperate Housewives" help put a Sunnyvale child molester behind bars.

In the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, Terri Hatcher tells the magazine that her uncle -- Richard Hayes Stone -- sexually molested her when she was five-years-old.

The 41-year-old actress says she learned in 2002 that a 14-year-old victim of her uncle had committed suicide.

Concerned that he would escape charges of molestation, Hatcher went to Santa Clara County prosecutors.

After Hatcher came forward -- Stone -- who was then 64-years-old, pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation in the case of the 14-year-old victim.

He was sent to prison for 14 years.

Scource

It must have been horrible to keep something like that bottled up for such a long time.

Well done, Terri. Well done.

The Chinese Government Hates Roger Rabbit

2006-02-28T15:35:00.000-06:00

Here is an interesting article concerning foreign animation in China:

Who Framed Roger Rabbit could be out of the picture in China - along with many other cartoon favorites. China has announced a ban on TV shows and movies that blend animated elements with live-action actors, a move aimed at nurturing local animators and apparently curbing the use of foreign cartoons.

Besides Roger Rabbit, the 1988 feature film in which actor Bob Hoskins performed beside several animated characters, popular children's TV shows featuring human hosts and animated elements such as Blue's Clues from the United States and Britain's Teletubbies could be included in the ban. And Space Jam, the 1996 film featuring basketball great Michael Jordan alongside Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck could also be shelved.

The government's main television and film regulator sent notice Feb. 15 to broadcasters and theaters that such films and shows could no longer be shown and that violators would be punished. It did not say what the penalties would be.

It also did not give examples of banned programs but described them as "so-called cartoons that mainly feature real people and only occasionally have computer-generated elements." Communist authorities are eager to expand the country's animation industry and also are worried about the influence of foreign pop culture on Chinese children.

The cartoon ban is intended to "promote the development and prosperity of the cartoon industry in China," said the statement issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

The broadcast administration's statement said it planned to review programs that had previously been granted licenses to make sure none of the banned programming is aired.

Phone calls to the administration's main office on Thursday weren't answered.

Japanese and Western animated programs have gained a foothold in China but the government wants to develop its own industry.

China already limits foreign cartoons on television to 40 percent of all cartoons broadcast. It has said it might ban all foreign cartoons from prime-time television once the quantity and quality of domestic productions is considered adequate.

Yet foreign cartoons dubbed into Chinese are a staple on late afternoon and weekend television.

Chinese studios have taken advantage of low labor costs to build a growing business handling the labor-intensive animation of cartoons for foreign studios.

But they've had little luck building up their own brands.

There are few Chinese-made cartoons aside from a handful of traditional tales such as Journey to the West and some government-financed titles.

Socialist protectionism of the cartoon industry? Now I've seen everything.

The Continuing China Censorship Controversy

2006-02-19T19:51:00.000-06:00

The Chinese government recently defended its right to censor internet content in response to criticism from the free world and even former ranking Chinese officials.

The overall media picture in China is murky right now. One minute, they're freeing an imprisoned news editor and re-opening an investigative newspaper. The next minute, they're throwing other journalists in jail and shutting down hundreds of other periodicals.

But the most disheartening discovery about the censorship in China? It's the fact that many Chinese netizens just don't seem to care:

The issue of China's Internet censorship is bigger overseas than at home. Many Internet users here shrug off debate about the "Great Firewall" and how it restricts the Internet.

"Here in China, we get very used to this," said Jin Kaixiang, an elevator salesman, who added that he spends about three hours online daily.

Like many of China's 110 million Internet users, Jin sees censorship as a nuisance that he can do nothing about.

"I don't think it will change in the next few years," added Hao Mengyuan, who works at a publishing house associated with China Politics and Law University.

China's Internet-filtering system has become an issue in Chinese-U.S. relations. At a congressional hearing Wednesday in Washington, legislators grilled executives from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. about their role in helping China filter information or track down those who run afoul of restrictions on free speech.

Earlier in Beijing, Chinese authorities dismissed concerns about censorship, denying that they widely block Web sites and asserting that they've never arrested anyone for expressing an opinion on the Web, despite a series of detentions that indicate the contrary.

"No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the Internet," said Liu Zhengrong, the deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, according to the China Daily newspaper.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based advocacy group, says 49 Chinese are known to be in prison for "posting on the Internet articles and criticism of the authorities."

There could be other, unknown cases. Asked at the hearing how many times it had turned in e-mail users to government authorities, Michael Callahan, a Yahoo lawyer and company executive, said Chinese law prohibited revealing such information.

Yahoo complied with a Chinese demand for e-mail information about journalist Shi Tao, who was convicted for sending information about a Communist Party decision through e-mail and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Callahan said his company was distressed over Shi's case but had no choice because its Chinese employees would've been subject to criminal charges if it had refused to comply.

Most Chinese Internet users appear unaware of the jailings and nonchalant about the barriers that prevent online research into topics such as democracy, religious freedom, human rights and other sensitive matters.

Even some proponents of free speech dismiss the American debate over how to deal with Internet companies that are accused of helping China neuter the Internet.
Some bloggers say bringing officials from U.S. Internet companies before Congress is unlikely to help the situation.

"These are regarded as simply Western exercises in self-absorption, self-indulgence and self-flagellation, and completely alien to the Chinese situation," Roland Soong of Hong Kong said on his EastSouthWestNorth blog this week.

Another critic, Zhao Jing, who blogs under the pen name An Ti, said in an essay last month that the battle for Internet freedom must be fought by Chinese in China.

"I don't think that the U.S. Congress is able to defend the right of freedom of speech of Chinese people," said Zhao, whose blog Microsoft shut down in December.

Most Chinese go online for gaming, e-mail, news, weather reports and blogging, and say they rarely encounter signs of censorship.

"I can find all that I want," said Chen Zhao, 24, a Tsinghua University doctoral student. "I seldom find pages I can't open."

Another student, Wang Jinlin, supported the censorship. "Some things are not good for people to read," she said.

A dissident writer, Liu Xiaobo, said he supported efforts to hold American Internet companies to account but that it would be more effective for President Bush "to speak frankly to Chinese leaders and urge them not to pressure U.S. companies to provide user information" facilitating the arrests of critics of China's one-party system.

In Washington, the Internet executives said that even if they banded together, they had no leverage to change the Chinese government's policies. The state company Baidu is the leading search company in China.
As the American debate intensifies, Chinese officials misrepresent the extent of Internet filtering. In remarks widely reported in China's newspapers, Liu of the Internet Affairs Bureau said China blocked "a very few" Web sites, mostly those that had pornographic or terrorist content.

China doesn't make public the list of pages it blocks or filters, but Internet experts abroad say they number in the tens of thousands.

Blocked news sites include The Philadelphia Inquirer, BBC News and the Voice of America. China blocks most pages linked to the Pentagon, the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, information on how to bypass Internet filtering, anything on the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and many other topics.

But fear not. I believe China will have a truly free internet within our lifetime. The blogosphere is just that amorphous and all-encompassing.

I Journeyed To A Super-Massive Black Hole And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

2006-02-19T15:05:00.000-06:00

Professor Emeritus John Nance describes a journey to a super-massive black hole:

Blasting off at noon today, our ship reaches the moon 2.5 hours later and crosses the orbit of Pluto before month's end. March 16 finds us 21 billion miles from Earth and traveling at more than 16,000 miles per second. If we continue at this rate, then we will reach our destination in only 550 million years.

But things begin to get slightly weird by late July. Even though we have traveled barely one-tenth of a light year, all of the stars ahead of us appear to be about 10 percent closer than they were when the trip began. They also have turned slightly bluer.

And things get weirder still. The sixth anniversary of blastoff finds us approaching the star Spica. We see it with our instruments, not with our eyes; its once-white light has become ultraviolet and invisible. Behind us, Earth recedes at just 5,000 miles per hour short of the speed of light and earthlight has faded into infrared. Astonishingly, Messier 87 is now only 180,000 light years away. It seems almost possible that we will get there before we die.

In fact, the utterly counterintuitive mixing of space and time predicted by Einstein in 1905 and confirmed in a myriad of experiments since allows us to reach our destination in the 34th year of our journey. But only at a price that I should have mentioned before we left. Everyone on Earth will be 55 million years older. I hope you said your goodbyes with feeling.

No sense dwelling on that now. Up ahead, we can just make out a broad disk of glowing gas. An upward swirling vortex of even hotter gas is streaming by us on our right. We are close to our goal. We need to be careful.

If we could ever manage the feat of getting that close to a black hole, it would be a stunning scientific achievement. The data we could collect on the way and at the destination would be staggering.

But I'm going to wax satirical over this instead of expounding the the theoretical gains in knowledge to humanity from such an improbable journey.

At sublight speeds, who would be insane enough to spend the remainder of their life cruising to such a place? You'd be very old or at least middle age by the time you got there and you'd most likely never get back to Earth. That and the fact that Earth would be 110 million years older from the POV of the spacefarers by the end of the return journey. So far, this journey sucks.

And what is there to do near a super-massive black hole besides collect scientific data and fight for your survival? No beach to lay out on while sipping some exotic drink with a tiny umbrella in it. No casinos to blow your money in. No gift shop. Legal hookers like they have in Vegas your thing? Forget it. Want to see a show with Tom Jones or Wayne Newton singing? Sorry, but you're out of luck pally. Want to go on a tour of movie stars' homes? Oops! Sucks to be you!

And to top it all off, what if they lost your luggage?

The End Is Nigh

2006-02-18T21:08:00.000-06:00

Evil and depravity, thy name is David Hasselhoff:

Seriously, all Hasselhoff ever seems to do musically is cover other people's songs. But it could be worse. He could always attempt to write his own material.

Is China Softening Towards Tibet?

2006-02-14T18:48:00.000-06:00

"I believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world."-The Dalai Lama in a 1992 speech

Will China loosen its grip on Tibet? The Dalai Lama certainly seems encouraged:

Expressing optimism over the ongoing dialogue with the Chinese leadership, the Dalai Lama on Friday said the fifth round of talks would take place soon on the issue of granting autonomy to Tibet.

"The Chinese authorities and the exiled leaders of Tibet have taken a number of confidence building measures over the years to bring a thaw in their relations to pave the way for grant of autonomy for Tibet in future," the Tibetan spiritual leader said after inaugurating a three-day international conference on Buddishm in Asia at Sarnath near Varanasi.

Advocating autonomy for Tibet under the constitutional framework of the Republic of China, the Dalai Lama said talks with Chinese authorities were heading in the right direction in this regard.

He said four rounds of talks with Chinese leadership had already taken place and the fifth round would take place soon to carry forward the ongoing dialogue on the issue of grant of autonomy to Tibet.

China has also allowed Tibetans to visit the exiled spiritual leader. However, there have been contradictory actions on the Part of the Chinese government. Google.cn still allegedly filters out the 14th Dalai Lama. If that's true, it's a safe bet that Baidu is doing the same. Furthermore, author Wang Lixion has recently expressed deep mistrust towards the Chinese government over this issue.

Personally, I join Mr. Lixiong in his skepticism.

Mars Rovers: Built To Last?

2006-02-14T18:10:00.000-06:00

Remember the two Mars rovers we sent to the Red Planet nearly two years ago? They were only supposed to last about three months. Well, guess what? They're still going:

NASA's robot rovers are still trundling across the surface of Mars, about 21 months after scientists expected them to sputter to a halt.
The twin vehicles were only supposed to last three months. Instead, one mission researcher said they're "living on borrowed time."

In the two years since Spirit and Opportunity first landed, the golf cart-sized rovers have set all sorts of records. Most importantly, they succeeded in finding evidence that water once moved across the face of the Red Planet.

Steven Squyres of Cornell University said the research team continues to push the rovers to greater exploration because they're "living day to day."
As Squyres puts it, they're "so past warranty."

It's so unusual to see a government agency perform beyond expectations.
Now I've seen everything.

China's Energy Consumption Policies

2006-02-14T17:52:00.000-06:00

The Huffington Post is of the opinion that China is successfully reducing its oil consumption:

Keen on shaking their addiction and not wishing to follow the American example, China has instituted measures opting for alternative sources of energy be it hydroelectric, wind and solar, alternative fuels, etc. Conservation in a very practical and effective way is being instituted as well such as taxing gas guzzling clunkers. And with results! China's economy expanded near double digits last year, yet imports of crude oil were reported to have fallen back by 5 %! While domestic production of crude oil increased some 3.5% to approximately 1.25 billion barrels.

While it's true that China is pushing for hybrid cars, it has also been reported that China's oil consumption will most likely increase this year.

Otherwise, Mr. Learsy wrote a good blog entry, in my opinion.