Canadian Canoe Routes • View topic - Best Island, Whitewater Lake, Ontario: July 1981
The Sod Cabin is esp interesting.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Re: The failures of TSA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301978.html
and an amusing rebuttal from Ireland.
"Embracing the Meshugganah" indeed.
and an amusing rebuttal from Ireland.
"Embracing the Meshugganah" indeed.
Bad News About Alpinist
Alpinist LLC to Suspend Operations
Jackson, Wyoming — October 16, 2008 — Alpinist LLC, which publishes the climbing magazine Alpinist, runs the website www.alpinist.com and produces The Alpinist Film Festival, announced today that the October 2008 financial crisis has forced them to suspend operations.
Founded in 2002 by Marc Ewing and Christian Beckwith, Alpinist began in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as an archival-quality publication dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing. The quarterly quickly gained a reputation for both superior writing and beautiful photography; by 2004, Italian climbing legend Reinhold Messner called it, "The best climbing magazine in the world today." Alpinist went on to win numerous awards; in March 2005 it was featured in a seven-page article in Outside Magazine ("The Purists") that explored its impact on American climbing.
Alpinist's website, www.alpinist.com, attracted more than 50,000 unique visitors per month. Breaking news, weekly features, video, and desktop wallpaper images were complemented by reader's blogs and gear reviews, creating a site that thousands of climbers turned to daily for both information and entertainment.
In 2004, Beckwith founded The Barry Corbet Film Festival in honor of cinematographer and adventure legend Barry Corbet. In 2005, the event was folded into Alpinist LLC as The Alpinist Film Festival (AFF). By 2008, the AFF, held each winter in Jackson, had grown to a four-day annual event that attracted more than 3,000 people each year. In 2008, the AFF began touring; events in Bend, OR; Bozeman, MT; and Boulder, CO, exported signature elements of the master festival, such as cocktail hours and live DJs, to create a fun gathering for adventure communities across the West.
"We're extremely proud of what we've been able to accomplish in the six and a half years since we started," said Publisher Ewing from his home in Chicago. "There hasn't been a publication like Alpinist since Ascent"—the iconic climbing publication that emerged from the 1960s to inspire a generation of climbers—"and our readers have been our lifeblood. We owe them everything."
"It's incredibly sad to close after working so hard for so many years," said Editor-in-Chief Christian Beckwith. "That being said, I'm deeply proud of our team for putting out twenty-five great issues, the film festival has been a blast, and I'm honored to have shared all this work and creation with our community. I'll always look back on Alpinist with joy."
Exploration of the options for the various Alpinist businesses are underway. Details will be made available on www.alpinist.com when they are finalized.
Who Would Have Suspected It
about Rob Ford?
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Posted Toronto by Rob Roberts on 10/17/08
By David Menzies, National Post
It's a crisp, cool October Friday evening – perfect football weather – and on a flawless Forest Hill field, the number one-ranked St. Michael's Kerry Blues are hosting the Don Bosco Eagles of Rexdale.
The field at St. Michael's College School is named after billionaire Eugene Melnyk and surrounded by luxury condos; the artificial turf wouldn't look out of place at the Rogers Centre. The young men from Don Bosco Catholic School are a long way from home.
"You should see our field ... oh my God, there are potholes everywhere," says Fatima Langa, mother of Don Bosco's starting quarterback, Jonathan Langa.
Ms. Langa makes for a one-woman cheerleading squad, generating as much noise as humanly possible: blowing a whistle, barking cheers into a plastic blue megaphone, shouting encouragement to her son, pounding her brown boots on a stainless steel bench. In between plays, Ms. Langa hands out Eagles stickers to other spectators, all the while admonishing them to cheer ever-more loudly.
"I'll have no voice left tomorrow," says Ms. Langa.
Coming into this game, the team is ranked number two in the GTA; the Eagles narrowly lost 4-0 to Birchmount Collegiate in the Toronto championship finals last year. But the story of the Don Bosco Eagles is far more than a tale of a successful high school football program.
It is one of hope and second chances, with an unlikely protoganist: Toronto City Councillor Rob Ford, best known for generating conflict and controversy at city hall.
Seven years ago, Mr. Ford decided to revive the dormant football program at Don Bosco, which he allows is in a "pretty rough area" of town. More than half of the team's players reside in public housing units.
"Many of the kids on this team don't have fathers in their lives anymore – some never did," says Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford says he wanted to give Don Bosco students something to aspire to other than hanging around the mall after school or linking up with gangs. He was so bullish the football program would act as a catalyst for positive change that he spent $25,000 of his own money to resuscitate it. Today, 80 kids make up the junior and senior squads.
"I know what football did for me as a kid," says Mr. Ford. "I grew up in a family with a few problems, and I probably wouldn't have finished high school without football. I just want to give back to these kids what I got out of football."
On the gridiron, Mr. Ford finds a metaphor for life, and what it takes to be successful. "More than any other team sport, everyone in football must be a team player. It requires ethics and morals and discipline, and the harder you try, the more successful you'll be."
Perhaps the biggest individual success story to date is Jerome Miller, the beneficiary of a football scholarship at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Mr. Miller, a Don Bosco alumnus, will be headed for the National Football League draft upon graduation.
Mr. Ford notes Mr. Miller, before he took up football, was less than angelic, and was hanging out with the wrong crowd. "If it wasn't for football," Mr. Ford says, "I'm absolutely sure he [Miller] would be dead or in jail."
In a phone interview from Rolla, Missouri, Mr. Miller says simply: "Without this program, I wouldn't be where I am today. This [football] was an opportunity, and I ran with it.
''Rob Ford has been able to take a lot of kids off the street with this and [the success of the football program] has made Don Bosco a school where kids want to go to now. I can tell you I'm now living the dream in real life, and I hope it never stops."
Mr. Ford demands every player on the team put effort into their schoolwork. He regularly phones teachers at Don Bosco to check up on his players' academic and attendance records. "If any player skips class or is late for class, the whole team gets punished. And players must get passing grades or they're off the team," he says.
Ms. Langa says Mr. Ford has emerged as a father figure for many of the kids, helps pay for their shoes and bus fare when needed, and holds team barbeques.
''He's doing everything he can to get these kids involved in school and keep them off the streets. He's strict, but he speaks to them man-to-man, not like they're little babies."
Mr. Ford has had to contend with his own demons. He readily admits that despite having a father who was a successful businessman and politician, his family wasn't always a happy clan; indeed, sometimes domestic problems threatened to tear the Ford family apart. As a city councillor today, Mr. Ford makes it a regular habit to criticize the spending habits of his fellow councillors. The result: he is often shunned and even mocked by his colleagues at city hall. An outsider who has experienced his fair share of hardship, Mr. Ford appears to identify with many of the kids on his football squads.
"These guys are my family," says Mr. Ford of the players. "I'll go to the wall for them. I've told them no matter what happens off the field, if you get into trouble and you need to call me at three or four in the morning, then call me."
Have any players ever taken the coach up on his offer? "I've had a few late night calls," he says. "I've had to bail a few out." But he says some parents have "cried tears of joy," because the football team turned their sons' lives around.
"It keeps [my son] busy, keeps him off the street," says Julian Nika, an Albanian immigrant whose son, Christian, plays linebacker, and was there on that perfect Friday in Forest Hill to cheer Don Bosco on.
"We don't know this game in Europe, but believe it or not, I'm now going crazy for this sport.''
A few seats over, the noisy Ms. Langa was especially rooting for a comeback victory over St. Michael's. The last time the two teams met, in July, she says the game devolved into an ugly affair and that St. Michael's players employed trash talk, calling the Don Bosco players "welfare cases" and "homie homeless."
"They were really mocking us," she says.
Alas, victory was not in the cards. The Kerry Blues lived up to their number one ranking, clobbering the Eagles 22-7. But even so, there were few long faces from the Don Bosco parents. In their corner of Rexdale, success can be measured in different ways.
"What this program has done for school spirit and bringing the community together ... it's incredible," says Don Bosco principal Sebastian Karubia.
Photo by Tyler Anderson, National Post
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Another election map
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Map of the Week by Toronto Star on 10/17/08
Four GTA ridings were won and lost by less than 2% of the vote: Brampton West (which came down to 133 votes, or 0.25% of those cast), Mississauga-Erindale, Oak Ridges-Markham and Brampton-Springdale. York West was the region's most lopsided contest - Liberal Judy Sgro crushed her closest challenger by over 40% of the total votes.
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Curvier Playmates Coming!
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed by pk on 10/17/08
This paper has been making the rounds, so after a tough week let's call it the research paper of the week. The gist: Given current economic conditions, we can expect heavier, older playmates going forward, with larger waist-to-hip ratios. All of a sudden, I feel like a man out of time.
Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and Economic Conditions
Past research has investigated ideals of beauty and how these ideals have ranged across time. In the current study, facial and body characteristics of Playboy Playmates of the Year from 1960-2000 were identified and investigated to explore their relationships with U.S. social and economic factors. Playmate of the Year age, body feature measures, and facial feature measurements were correlated with a general measure of social and economic hard times. Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.
More here.
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Intersecting arcs: McCain, Powell
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via James Fallows on 10/19/08
The plotlines and character-motivations of the two Bush Administrations, 41 & 43, are perhaps too broad and obvious ever to support a first-rate novel. At least that is what reviews of Oliver Stone's W suggest to those, like me, who have not seen the film. (Not yet on the pirate-video market here in Beijing. Maybe next week.) Or if could be simply that Stone and other Bush chroniclers have taken a family saga of Shakespearean scale and presented it without corresponding richness and nuance.Still, someone will eventually do something compelling with the intersecting stories of John McCain and Colin Powell, including the latest chapter that began today.
Close contemporaries, born eight months apart; both headed toward military careers, but from very different starting points -- immigrants' son, versus son and grandson of admirals. Lives changed by the Vietnam War, including ultimately putting both on the track to top-level politics.
Powell declining to take what could have been a promising path to the Republican nomination in 2000; McCain trying hard for that nomination but losing out to a slime-rich campaign by GW Bush and Karl Rove. It was during a debate in this campaign that McCain delivered his famous and withering line directly to Bush's face, about his campaign's character-assassination ads. The line, spat out with more contempt than anything McCain later displayed toward Obama, was "You should be ashamed" -- and, when Bush tried to answer, "You should be ashamed."
After that, diverging arcs: Powell providing cover and legitimacy for the Bush-Cheney WMD argument in favor of the Iraq war, and despite acclaim for his record as Secretary of State clearly understanding how his historical standing had been diminished. McCain increasing his "maverick" reputation, before that term became a joke, right through his defense of John Kerry against the Bush-Rove Swift Boat ads in 2004.
And now the arcs reverse again. Powell, with his endorsement of Obama, taking a cleansing step not because he is endorsing a Democrat or the person who, instead of him, has a chance to become the first black President. But rather because Powell is at last free to say the many "Cut the crap!" things that his fealty to the Administration had kept him from saying publicly while in office or until now, ranging from the perverse effects of anti-Muslim hysteria to the dangers of scorched earth political campaigns.
Meanwhile, John McCain, once laid low by those very tactics, embracing them as his best chance for victory this year. Powell, tainted by his association with the Bush Administration, choosing at age 71 to restore his reputation for recognition of higher principles. McCain, who earlier opposed Bush tactics, choosing at age 72 a path that in the end is likely to bring him both defeat and dishonor. Maybe we need a Shakespeare to do this story justice.
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The centripetal web
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog by nick on 10/19/08
"A centripetal force is that by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or any way tend, towards a point as to a center." -Isaac Newton
When I started blogging, back in the spring of 2005, I would visit Technorati, the blog search engine, several times a day, both to monitor mentions of my own blog and to track discussions on subjects I was interested in writing about. But over the last year or so my blog-searching behavior has changed. I started using Google Blog Search to supplement Technorati, and then, without even thinking about it really, I began using Google Blog Search pretty much exclusively. At this point, I can't even remember the last time I visited the Technorati site. Honestly, I don't even know if it's still around. (OK, I just checked: it's still there.)
Technorati's technical glitches were part of the reason for the change in my behavior. Even though Technorati offered more precise tools for searching the blogosphere, it was often slow to return results, or it would just fail outright. When it came to handling large amounts of traffic, Technorati just couldn't compete with Google's resources. But it wasn't just a matter of responsiveness and reliability. As a web-services conglomerate, Google made it easy to enter one keyword and then do a series of different searches from its site. By clicking on the links to various search engines that Google conveniently arrays across the top of every results page, I could search the web, then search news stories, then search blogs, then (if I was really ambitious) search scholarly papers. Google offered the path of least resistance, and I happily took it.
I thought of this today as I read, on Techcrunch, a report that people seem to be abandoning Bloglines, the popular online feed reader, and that many of them are coming to use Google Reader instead. The impetus, again, seems to be a mix of frustration with Bloglines' glitches and the availability of a decent and convenient alternative operated by the giant Google. The first few comments on the Techcrunch post are revealing:
"switching temporary (?) to google reader, bloglines currently sucks too much"
"I got so fed up with bloglines' quirks that I switched over to Google Reader and haven't looked back"
"I've finally abandoned Bloglines for the Google Reader"
"Farewell, dear Bloglines. I loved you, but I'm going over to the dark side. I don't love Google Reader, but at least I can get my feeds"
"Bloglines, please stop sucking. It's been a couple of weeks now. I don't want to have to move to Google Reader. Sigh."
"Thanks for the tip about exporting feeds to Google Reader. I made the transition too. Goodbye Bloglines."
During the 1990s, when the World Wide Web was bright and shiny and new, it exerted a strong centrifugal force on us. It pulled us out of the orbit of big, central media outlets and sent us skittering to the outskirts of the info-universe. Early web directories like Yahoo and early search engines like Altavista, whatever their shortcomings (perhaps because of their shortcomings), led us to personal web pages and other small, obscure, and often oddball sources of information. The earliest web loggers, too, took pride in ferreting out and publicizing far-flung sites. And, of course, the big media outlets were slow to move to the web, so their gravitational fields remained weak or nonexistent online. For a time, the web had no mainstream; there were just brooks and creeks and rills and the occasional beaver pond.
And that landscape felt not only new but liberating. Those were the days when you could look around and easily convince yourself that the web would always be resistant to centralization, that it had leveled the media playing field for good. But that view was an illusion. Even back then, the counterforce to the web's centrifugal force - the centripetal force that would draw us back toward big, central information stores - was building. Hyperlinks were creating feedback loops that served to amplify the popularity of popular sites, feedback loops that would become massively more powerful when modern search engines, like Google, began to rank pages on the basis of links and traffic and other measures of popularity. Navigational tools that used to emphasize ephemera began to filter it out. Roads out began to curve back in.
At the same time, and for related reasons, scale began to matter. A lot. Big media outlets moved online, creating vast, enticing pools of branded content. Search engines and content aggregators, like Google, expanded explosively, providing them with the money and expertise to create technical advantages - in speed, reliability, convenience, and so on - that often proved decisive in attracting and holding consumers. And, of course, people began to demonstrate their innate laziness, retreating from the wilds and following the increasingly well-worn paths of least resistance. A Google search may turn up thousands of results, but few of us bother to scroll beyond the top three. When convenience meets curiosity, convenience usually wins.
Wikipedia provides a great example of the formative power of the web's centripetal force. The popular online encyclopedia is less the "sum" of human knowledge (a ridiculous idea to begin with) than the black hole of human knowledge. At heart a vast exercise in cut-and-paste paraphrasing (it explicitly bans original thinking), Wikipedia first sucks in content from other sites, then it sucks in links, then it sucks in search results, then it sucks in readers. One of the untold stories of Wikipedia is the way it has siphoned traffic from small, specialist sites, even though those sites often have better information about the topics they cover. Wikipedia articles have become the default external link for many creators of web content, not because Wikipedia is the best source but because it's the best-known source and, generally, it's "good enough." Wikipedia is the lazy man's link, and we're all lazy men, except for those of us who are lazy women.
Now, it's true, as well, that Wikipedia provides some centrifugal force, by including links to sources and related works at the foot of each article. To its credit, it's an imperfect black hole. But compared to the incredible power of its centripetal force, magnified by search engine feedback loops and link-laziness, its centrifugal force is weak and getting weaker. Which is, increasingly, the defining dynamic of the web as a whole. The web's centrifugal force hasn't gone away - it's there in the deliberately catholic linking of a Jason Kottke or a Slashdot, say, or in a list of search results arranged by date rather than by "relevance" - but it's far less potent than the centripetal force, particularly when those opposing forces play out at the vastness of web scale where even small advantages have enormous effects as they ripple through billions of transactions. Yes, we still journey out to the far reaches of the still-expanding info-universe, but for most of us, most of the time, the World Wide Web has become a small and comfortable place. Indeed, statistics indicate that web traffic is becoming more concentrated at the largest sites, even as the overall number of sites continues to increase, and one recent study found that as people's use of the web increases, they become "more likely to concentrate most of their online activities on a small set of core, anchoring Websites."
Chris Anderson's "long tail" remains an elegant and instructive theory, but it already feels dated, a description of the web as we once imagined it to be rather than as it is. The long tail is still there, of course, but far from wagging the web-dog, it's taken on the look of a vestigial organ. Chop it off, and most people would hardly notice the difference. On the web as off it, things gravitate toward large objects. The center holds.
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Friday, October 17, 2008
World Animal Day
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via The Big Picture on 10/17/08
World Animal Day was observed earlier this month - on October 4th. Started in Florence Italy in 1931 at a convention of ecologists, World Animal Day has since expanded its focus from its original intent, which was to bring attention to endangered or threatened species. The day is now set aside as a time to reflect on all of the animals we share this world with, and our involvement with them - and to spur action to commemorate that respectful relationship. Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third are probably threatened with extinction, according to an update of of the Red List (an inventory of biodiversity issued by the IUCN), released on October 6, 2008. Below is a collection of recent photos of animals around the world - Happy (belated) World Animal Day. (38 photos total)
Green Sea Turtles in the waters of Bora Bora, Tahiti are seen in this undated photograph from an exhibit titled "Irreplaceable: Wildlife in a Warming World," recently shown at the Peerless building in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The exhibit showcased animals most threatened by global warming, such as green sea turtles. The gender of sea turtle eggs are determined by temperature, which means global warming would upset the natural gender balance. (Michele Westmorland)
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
We're Number Six! We're Number Six!
Ahhh, the greens taste bitter to the Grits
I don't know about you, but I would have rather heard stories about Sinclair Stevens running to be Prime Minister, than about Jack Layton running to be Prime Minister. (and Stevens' controversial move to focus on the "dinning room table" rather than the kitchen table)
I would have rather heard about vote splitting on the far far left, than on the left.
I would have rather heard stories about the marijuana party's war room than about the Conservative Party's. (guess which one was more mature?)
I would have preferred Jane Taber focus on "anonymous Animal Alliance insiders" than "Liberal sources".
And how come we never heard about the leadership struggles going on inside the "work less" party? (probably because they only ran one candidate)
So I applaud these parties for overcoming the media bias and tying the Greens in the seat count. I sincerely hope they are all considered for inclusion in the 2010 debates.
6. Christian Heritage: 26,722 votes (average: 453 per candidate)
7. Marxist-Leninist: 8,753 votes (148 per candidate)
8. Libertarian: 7,382 votes (284 per candidate)
9. Progressive Canadian: 5,920 votes (592 per candidate)
10. Communist: 3,639 votes (152 per candidate)
11. Canadian Action: 3,508 votes (175 per candidate)
12. Marijuana: 2,319 votes (290 per candidate)
13. Neorhino.ca: 2,263 votes (323 per candidate)
14. Newfoundland and Labrador First: 1,801 votes (600 per candidate)
15. First Peoples National: 1,640 votes (274 per candidate)
16. Animal Alliance Environment Voters: 529 votes (132 per candidate)
17. Work Less: 423 votes (423 votes per candidate)
18. Western Block: 195 votes (195 voters per candidate)19. People's Political Power: 185 votes (93 per candidate)
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via CalgaryGrit by calgarygrit on 10/16/08
We all knew the order the major parties would finish on election night - there were few surprises there. However, the real battle, was the race for 6th through 19th. Yet due to the intense media bias against them, we didn't hear their stories:I don't know about you, but I would have rather heard stories about Sinclair Stevens running to be Prime Minister, than about Jack Layton running to be Prime Minister. (and Stevens' controversial move to focus on the "dinning room table" rather than the kitchen table)
I would have rather heard about vote splitting on the far far left, than on the left.
I would have rather heard stories about the marijuana party's war room than about the Conservative Party's. (guess which one was more mature?)
I would have preferred Jane Taber focus on "anonymous Animal Alliance insiders" than "Liberal sources".
And how come we never heard about the leadership struggles going on inside the "work less" party? (probably because they only ran one candidate)
So I applaud these parties for overcoming the media bias and tying the Greens in the seat count. I sincerely hope they are all considered for inclusion in the 2010 debates.
6. Christian Heritage: 26,722 votes (average: 453 per candidate)
7. Marxist-Leninist: 8,753 votes (148 per candidate)
8. Libertarian: 7,382 votes (284 per candidate)
9. Progressive Canadian: 5,920 votes (592 per candidate)
10. Communist: 3,639 votes (152 per candidate)
11. Canadian Action: 3,508 votes (175 per candidate)
12. Marijuana: 2,319 votes (290 per candidate)
13. Neorhino.ca: 2,263 votes (323 per candidate)
14. Newfoundland and Labrador First: 1,801 votes (600 per candidate)
15. First Peoples National: 1,640 votes (274 per candidate)
16. Animal Alliance Environment Voters: 529 votes (132 per candidate)
17. Work Less: 423 votes (423 votes per candidate)
18. Western Block: 195 votes (195 voters per candidate)19. People's Political Power: 185 votes (93 per candidate)
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Maps: How the GTA voted
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Map of the Week by Toronto Star on 10/16/08
Four maps look at the four largest parties' support in isolation: Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, and New Democrats.
The next two maps look at turnout rates and how they vary between ridings, and second-place parties throughout the GTA.
There is a lot of information presented. Please use the comment section to discuss it.
Part 2 of the dog map will appear next week.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Freshbooks launches benchmarking features
we may want to profile them some time.
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via mathewingram.com/work by Mathew on 10/14/08
Just a quick post to say congratulations to my friend and fellow mesh conference organizer Mike McDerment, the CEO of online-invoicing service FreshBooks. The company just launched a quarterly industry-benchmarking feature, which involves releasing aggregated data from the various industries that use its invoicing services, so that other companies in those industries can compare their vital statistics — how long it takes to get invoices paid, what proportion of revenue is recurring versus new, etc. As Mike explains in the video I've included with this post, this kind of info can be a very powerful tool for companies to use, particularly small and medium-sized businesses that are trying to gauge how they compare to their peers in the industry. Congrats to Mike and the rest of the team.
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Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Pakistan, The Land That Financial Bad News Forgot: Part II
Sent to you by nigel via Google Reader:
via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed by pk on 10/11/08
Given all the pain in markets last week, I thought it would be a good time to check in again on The Land That Financial Bad News Forgot. Yes, Pakistan.
If you recall, the wise folks running the Karachi Exchange decided back in August that they would put a floor under the KSE at 9100. After falling for months, no longer would investors have to worry about their stocks falling further. They could only fall enough to take the index to 9100, and then ... well, they couldn't fall further. Bad news be damned!
So, how has that "no bad news thing" worked out? Is everything happiness in Pakistan, what with having simply outlawed bad news from having any impact on share prices? Well, here is the 3-month chart of the KSE:
It looks more than a little reminiscent of a dying patient hooked up to an EKG. After a few palpitations, the Karachi market has now flat-lined. It has fallen to the 9100 floor -- okay 9182 -- and now sits there, in the uncomfortable the way non-viable markets do. Volumes have collapsed, going from a healthy 186-million shares a day to a comatose million shares a day, a 99.4% decline. It is simply no longer a viable exchange, with companies unable to raise money and investors unable to get liquidity or -- heaven forfend -- buy shares. Nothing.
Well, that's better than falling further, right? The KSE had dropped 40% before the floor was put in, so you might (were you a true nutter optimist) argue that this is better.
And you'd be wrong. The Karachi Stock Exchange and the Karachi SEC are meeting this weekend to decide whether or not to simply close the exchange for good. At the same time, the "badla" rate, a sort of interest rate at which investors can borrow money, soared to 100% on Friday, making the record-high Libor look positively like a giveaway. It is, in short, really, really bad.
But the news gets even worse. The country's debt has been downgraded by S&P deep into junk status; it has just enough foreign reserves to pay for two months of imports; and Pakistan looks increasingly like it will default on a major loan on Friday, plus it has $3-billion more in upcoming debt payments. Unless something happens quickly, we are about to see what happens when you have a systemic collapse in a nuclear power next door to a terrorist hotbed.
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Digression: Mount Whitney, Age and AMS
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via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed by pk on 10/12/08
Interesting new research paper in one of my favorite journals (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise). Two things caught my eye. First, that the likelihood of developing acute mountain sickness -- an altitude-related disorder that can be life-threatening -- fell with age. I am a frequent high-altitude trekker, and that is news to me. Second, it is fascinating that 41% of the trekkers on Whitney had AMS, and yet 81% of those people still reached the summit. As the quotation goes, In the midst of life we are in death.
Here is the full abstract:
Mt. Whitney: Determinants of Summit Success and Acute Mountain Sickness
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 40(10):1820-1827, October 2008.
WAGNER, DALE R. 1; D'ZATKO, KIM 2; TATSUGAWA, KEVIN 3; MURRAY, KEN 4; PARKER, DARYL 5; STREEPER, TIM 5; WILLARD, KEVIN 5Abstract:
Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of summit success and acute mountain sickness (AMS) on Mt. Whitney (4419 m) and to identify variables that contribute to both.Methods: Hikers (N = 886) attempting the summit were interviewed at the trailhead upon their descent. Questionnaires included demographic and descriptive data, acclimatization and altitude history, and information specific to the ascent. The Lake Louise Self-Assessment Score was used to make a determination about the occurrence of AMS. Logistic regression techniques were used to calculate odds ratios (OR) for AMS and summit success.
Results: Forty-three percent of the sample met the criteria for AMS, and 81% reached the summit. The odds of experiencing AMS were reduced with increases in age (adjusted 10-yr OR = 0.78; P < 0.001), number of hours spent above 3000 m in the 2 wk preceding the ascent (adjusted 24-h OR = 0.71; P < 0.001), and for females (OR = 0.68; P = 0.02). Climbers who had a history of AMS (OR = 1.41; P = 0.02) and those taking analgesics (OR = 2.39; P < 0.001) were more likely to experience AMS. As climber age increased, the odds of reaching the summit decreased (adjusted 10-yr OR = 0.75; P < 0.001). However, increases in the number of hours per week spent training (adjusted 5-h OR = 1.24; P = 0.05), rate of ascent (adjusted 50 m[middle dot]h-1 OR = 1.13; P = 0.04), and previous high-altitude record (adjusted 500 m OR = 1.26; P < 0.001) were all associated with increased odds for summit success.
Conclusions: A high percentage of trekkers reached the summit despite having symptoms of AMS.
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