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December 18, 2006
Auto-Buying Boom in China?
As written in "The dragon at Detroit's gate":
With 1.3 billion people, an economy growing at a sustained rate of 8-10% a year and a middle class larger than the entire population of the United States, car fever has hit China on a monstrous scale. Millions of Chinese with growing disposable income can now abandon their bicycles and motorcycles in favor of a family car.
So, what happens when a large population like that suddenly goes out and starts buying cars for the first time? I would expect the price of oil to go up quickly as the demand for gasoline increases. After some time, I expect that pollution levels would rise a lot, too.
Personally, I wish that I had the option of riding a train to work each morning. I've enjoyed the MRT rail system on my visits to Singapore. But I live in the US, not far from Detroit. Those are two reasons it would be highly unlikely I will ever see a public transportation train around here.
Posted by lsloan at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
MiracleSight Screensaver for Cameras
The Miraclesight application looks great. A cool camera toy and a screensaver in one. But it doesn't work on Intel-based Macs yet. Pity.
Posted by lsloan at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
Chinese Musical Instruments
I really enjoy traditional Chinese music. I was surfing the web this evening and one thing led to another (as the web is often wont to do). I found this page for Music Office, apparently run by the Hong Kong government. It describes various Chinese instruments and has some nice, full-length songs with which they are demonstrated.
I like the erhu and the yangqin best.
Posted by lsloan at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)