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May 07 Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year--nearly three times the world's foreign aid budgets combinedSource: Jason DeParle, "A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves," The New York Times Magazine, April 22, 2007, p. 52
Quoted in delancyplace.com daily email, 7 May 07
More:
"About 200 million migrants from different countries are scattered across the globe, supporting a population back home that is as big if not bigger. Were these half-billion or so people to constitute a state--migration nation--it would rank as the world's third largest. While some migrants go abroad with Ph.D.'s, most travel ... with modest skills but fearsome motivation. The risks migrants face are widely known, including the risk of death, but the amounts they secure for their families have just recently come into view. Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year--nearly three times the world's foreign aid budgets combined. These sums-- 'remittances'--bring Morocco more money than tourism does. They bring Sri Lanka more money than tea does.
"The numbers, which have doubled in the past five years, have riveted the attention of development experts who once paid them little mind. ... A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, as part of the solution to global poverty. ...
"The growth in migration has roiled the West, but demographic logic suggests it will only continue. Aging industrial economies need workers. People in poor countries need jobs. Transportation and communications have made moving easier. And the potential economic gains are at record highs. A Central American laborer who moves to the United States can expect to multiply his earnings about six times after adjusting for the higher cost of living. That pay raise is about twice as large as the one that propelled the last great wave of immigration a century ago. ...
"Yet competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss. About half the world's migrants are women, many of whom care for children abroad while leaving their own children at home. ... Television novellas plumb the migrants' loneliness. ... [A migrant] does not say he is off to make his fortune. He says, 'I am going to try my luck.' "
April 28 Counterfeit products account for 2.4% of global trade, $500 billion annuallySource: OECD report, quoted in Foolproof fingerprints: the counterfeit killers, New Scientist 21 Apr 2007
Quote: "According to a forthcoming report by the OECD, counterfeit products account for 2.4 per cent of global trade - about $500 billion annually; more than the GDP of Switzerland. And it's not just electronic goods. Everything from condoms and car tyres to medicines and aircraft spares is being faked " April 01 Computers now consume about 10% of the electricity generated in the USSource: Mark Mills, an analyst with Digital Power Group, a Washington DC-based energy research firm, quoted in The waste at the heart of the web, New Scientist, 5 December 2006
More from the article:
As microprocessors become faster, with more and more processor units, their energy needs, and the power required to cool them, have skyrocketed. Mark Mills, an analyst with Digital Power Group, a Washington DC-based energy research firm, says computers now consume about 10 per cent of the electricity generated in the US - and that figure is set to double in the next decade.
Why is this happening? It's not a straightforward case of proliferating desktop PCs sucking up more power. What's at the root of the power consumption hike is a seismic shift in how we use computers, with online activity at the heart of it. As applications offering video access, music, photo storage and even word processing move the data off our desks and onto remote servers, a power-hungry beast is emerging: the data centre - sometimes called a server farm - that has to store and retrieve all your stuff.
. . .
In terms of the individual user, an energy-use audit by Mills and his colleagues found that the creation, packaging, storage and movement of just 10 megabytes of data - from the making of the hardware to the running of the system that delivers it to you - requires the energy equivalent of burning 900 grams of coal.
Six million Indians sign up for a mobile phone every monthSource: At Your Service, The Economist, 29 Mar 2007
Quote in context:
"THE rapid growth of India's telecoms industry is visible not just in the subscriber numbers—over 6m Indians now sign up for a mobile phone every month—but in other ways, too. This week the government was to have announced the winners of an auction of the rights to create and run networks in remote rural areas. Around the world, such networks are often subsidised by a “universal service fund” (USF) paid for by taxes on existing telecoms services. Auctions are held, and the network operators that demand the smallest subsidies win. They must then provide a certain number of public payphones, as well as signing up subscribers. But something rather odd happened in India: in 38 of the 81 regions on offer, many mobile operators bid zero. " February 27 Supporters of the arts are nothing like the rest of the populationArts donors are 32 percentage points more likely than the general American population to say they have no religion, 18 points less likely to see homosexual sex as wrong, 10 points more likely to describe themselves as politically left-wing, and 12 points more likely to support abortion on demand.
Source: Study in Public Administration Review by Arthur Brooks and Greg Lewis, cited by Brooks in Are Culture Wars Inevitable in the Arts?, Mar 2005 February 10 For the seventh year in a row, identity theft is the top consumer complaint to the FTCSource: ZDNet "IT Facts" column, http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=12406 citing US Federal Trade Commission http://ftc.gov/opa/2007/02/topcomplaints.htm
It accounted for 36 percent of the 674,354 complaints received between January 1 and December 31, 2006. Catalog sales and Sweepstakes/lotteries (both 7%) ran a distant second and third.
From the FTC page:
January 18 73% of American adults are Internet usersPew Internet and American Life survey, April 2006, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Internet_Impact.pdf Phone survey of 3,011 adults, 18 and older, conducted November 29 - December 31, 2005 January 15 In 2008, most people will live in citiesSource: Worldwatch report "State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future," reported in "World first: In 2008, most people will live in cities," Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor 11 Jan 2007
More from the Monitor story:
"Eight of the 10 most populous cities are on or near earthquake faults. Some two-thirds of the cities projected to exceed 8 million residents by 2015 are in coastal areas where sea levels may rise as a result of climate change."
"Of the 3 billion people who live in cities today, about 1 billion are in slums without clean water, adequate toilet facilities, or durable housing. Some 1.6 million urban dwellers - many if not most of them children - die each year due to causes associated with the lack of clean water and sanitation."
From the Worldwatch release:
"Africa now has 350 million urban dwellers, more than the populations of Canada and the United States combined. Asia and Africa are expected to double their urban populations to roughly 3.4 billion by 2030"
"An estimated 800 million people are involved in urban farming worldwide." January 14 U.S. companies spent approximately $5.8 billion powering servers in 2005 and another $3.5 billion or more keeping them coolSource: IDC analyst Michelle Bailey, quoted in "IT confronts the datacenter power crisis," Dan Goodin, InfoWorld, 6 Oct 2006
This compares with approximately $20.5 billion spent purchasing the equipment.
More from the article:
It took Heineken 15 months and 20 different versions to to create the Light version of its signature brewSource: A Shining Light For Heineken, Adrienne Carter, Businees Week, 15 January 2007
See also, for a more skeptical view: Heineken Chases Light Sales. To Thine Own Self Be True?, David Kiley, Business Week, 1 March 2006 January 06 COBOL accounts for 75%of all computer transactions, and 90% of financial transactionsSource: Gary Barnett, Research Director, Ovum, "The future of the mainframe," Oct 2005 In context: "Despite the excitement that has surrounded the Web and new programming models like Java and J2EE (as well as Microsoft’s .NET), older, less ‘trendy’ technologies account for the vast bulk of computer processing today. "For example, Cobol remains the most widely deployed programming language in big business, accounting for 75% of all computer transactions – and it is not going to go away. Cobol is pervasive in the financial sector (accounting for 90% of all financial transactions), in defence, as well as within established manufacturing and insurance sectors. We estimate that there are over 200 billion lines of Cobol in production today, and this number continues to grow by between three and five percent a year." December 29 Just a third of adults in the US say they're very happySource: Pew Research Center study, February 2006
More from the executive summary:
The happiness trend line has been flat for decades
Nearly half (49%) of those with an annual family income of more than $100,000 say they're very happy. By contrast, just 24% of those with an annual family income of less than $30,000 say they're very happy.
Married people are happier than unmarrieds. People who worship frequently are happier than those who don't. Republicans are happier than Democrats. Rich people are happier than poor people. Whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks. Sunbelt residents are happier than those who live in the rest of the country.
On the other hand, People who have children are no happier than those who don't, after controlling for marital status. Retirees are no happier than workers. Pet owners are no happier than those without pets. Eighty percent of owners buy holiday and birthday gifts for petsSource: 2005 Pew Research Center survey quoted in "Passion for pets makes PetSmart a success," Carol Woolf, Bloomberg News, carried in Seattle Times 29 Dec 2006
More: "85 percent of pet owners call their dogs members of the family, as do 78 percent of those with cats" Pet-item sales and services have the second-fastest growth for U.S. retailers after consumer electronicsSource: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, quoted in "Passion for pets makes PetSmart a success," Carol Woolf, Bloomberg News, carried in Seattle Times 29 Dec 2006
More: "The U.S. pet industry has expanded 36 percent to $45 billion in 2006 from 2000." December 28 Humans sequester one quarter to one half of all net terrestrial primary productivity to our use--- Lord May of Oxford, 2005 Royal Society Anniversary Address (PDF), citing Vitousek, P.M. et al., Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis. BioScience , 36(6), 368-373 (1986).More: "More than half of all the atoms of nitrogen and phosphorus in green plant material that grew last year came from artificial fertilizers, rather than the natural biogeochemical cycles that built the biosphere and which struggle to maintain it." |
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