Mike's Space

If you are from the old school and you still read things printed on paper and in magazines, chances are, you are aware of Life Magazine and the historic photos that it is known for. Well Google is now hosting all the photos taken by life (I assume it is all published photos). Go have a look at some amazing photography…

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

How 'bout the pirates from Somalia who stole the 2nd largest oil tanker. It had something like 100 Million Dollars of oil on it, 1 quarter of the Arabian gulfs daily production. How cool is that, or decidedly un-cool. Depends on how you look at it. It seems like it is total anarchy around the seas of East Africa at the moment. The only thing is that these guys would make Captain Jack Sparrow look like Mary Poppins. Imagine Jack Sparrow with a bazooka, shooting missiles up your ass...

What is sad though, is that Somalia has been going through a lot of strife and civil war for a while now. As per usual, the United Nations, the African Union and pretty much everyone was asking for help on the situation. Now the place has descended into anarchy. Nobody really helped the poor country. BUT! now that it is affecting OIL (Black Gold), and it is really affecting the back pockets of the West and the large Oil Producers, I am sure we will see action.

I was thinking about this on the weekend that has just passed, and I wanted to to get it down and upload it before I forget about it. When we are young, from the age of about 5 or 6, till at least our early 20's (well for some people), we never really appreciate the things in life that we take for granted. I am talking about those things like eyesight and hearing.

It is strange to have your eyesight deteriorate as you get older. Things are no longer what they seem. Road signs that you could see from a few hundred metres away, you now have to squint and drive a bit faster to get a better view. Colours are no longer as vivid as they were. The best example of this was my wife talking like a hippy when she first put on her new pair of glasses, "The trees are so green, the sky is so blue"...

For me, it is not so much eyesight, it is more my hearing. It isn't really that bad, but sometimes I have to strain to hear something. I think it is more the background noise that affects me. If there is too much going on, I end up just ignoring whatever someone was trying to say to me. Hopefully they will just disappear, or there problem will magically resolve itself. Talk about wishful thinking.

I think I am getting old...

I was reading TIME Magazine this weekend and a reader had sent a letter in talking about OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries http://www.opec.org). OPEC is essentially a group of countries who control the import and export of petrol in the world. This guy who wrote the letter was saying that in his opinion, it wasn't the banks that were at fault for the current economic crisis, it should be OPEC. His reasoning is that prior to economic crisis the price of Oil was sky rocketing through the roof, pushing up the price of pretty much everything and this in turn increased inflation, which increased prime lending rates which increased the costs of mortgages and credit card debt. People could not pay their bills and could not pay banks for credit card debt. The end result is that some banks were bankrupt! It kind of makes sense what he was talking about; well it does make sense to me. I am sure there are many other factors at play, but as the one central point that affects pretty much everything, I would be looking at the Oil Price. The same Oil Price which is now almost 50% cheaper than it was in the beginning of the year. Has Evil OPEC caught a "skrik" (South African Slang for "Sh1t themselves"). Too late I fear, the damage is already done.

So if you are anything like me, in the not too recent history you were pondering the following. The human race is eating the earth alive. We are using up the worlds resources at rate the world cannot sustain itself; this goes for food, oil, gold, metal, wood etc.

When will it all end?

Well the world, nature, God (or Gods), karma and everything else, whatever else, has a unique method of checks and balances to assist the earth in continuing its existence. If there is not enough money to buy sushi, sushi restaurants will close. Demand for tuna and salmon and will drop, fisherman could lose their jobs, fish stocks increase. Is it as simple as that? Demand for exotic woods that are used for fancy furniture should decrease as people decide to buy furniture from furniture city. Does that mean the Amazon forests are give a breather for a few years?

Demand for oil might drop because there will be less buildings to build, less construction goods to transport. Airplane accidents could increase as companies seek to cut corners and costs, maintenance could be the first budget to shrink. It's not the right way to do things, but who says we have ever done things the right way. Look at the chaos the world is in at the moment? Its all very interesting, think about it.

I have been deep in thought about some of the problems the world finds itself in, namely the "Credit Crunch/Sub Prime" crisis and the "Tainted Chinese Milk Products". I think the root cause of both of these problems can be found in the pursuit of capitalism above all else. It begs the question why business ethics would appear to have totally disappeared. We all strive for a capitalist society where we seek to make profits and money. Communism and Socialism are bad, bad, bad. BUT! You now have a situation where banks have to be bailed out by governments, who, one would assume will keep a conservative hold on the banking system. So ultimately, does the free market system really work if it pulls the globe into a recession? Does it work if it kills babies, and puts thousands in hospital? All in the name of money…

I don't know, I suppose the world is a very strange and cruel place. Unfortunately, there are not many people who strive for the greater good.

I think it is incredibly important to educate and develop your mind. I never studied anything tertiary, which maybe is a good or bad thing. I did try a degree a good few years ago through an open distance learning University, but that never worked for me. I think a big part of my failure with that degree was that I wasn't sure exactly why I was doing the degree, except for the fact that "It was a degree". As I am getting older and more mature I am establishing exactly what I want out of my career and what I want to do with myself. My idea of what it is I want do with my career naturally develops and evolves as I encounter more people with different views, different ideologies and new opinions. As this thought process has developed, it has made me think about the current education process which is followed in South Africa (which I assume is pretty much the same all over the world). You go to primary school, high school and then college or university. At that age, how do you know what you want to do with yourself and your life? I am sure many people realise halfway through a degree "I am not actually sure I want to do this". I myself am only really deciding on the career path I want to follow, and I am now aligning my education and development along the same lines.

Not sure what my point is…

Just study lots!

So I have been dealing with this new monster called "Knowledge Management". It could be termed as a new management discipline, for a community definition look at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management . The promise of a sustainable competitive edge is what presents itself, and nobody can deny that this is something we all would love. So I have been trying to create an awareness of KM within my company which is proving to be a challenge. My first problem is that just on a conceptual level it sounds "too good to be true". How can something which is not a fancy new product make us competitive? And also continue to make us competitive for the future? That is just on a high level. On a much lower operational level is the issue of pulling everything together into a successful KM platform. This is not just an IT thing; your information technology infrastructure should be there to provide the "vehicle" for your KM strategy. Anyways, I will keep my blog updated as to how things are going.

There are an increasing number of articles by newspaper columnists (white and black journalists) who are telling us about the immigration situation and how, due to the present situation, white people in particular are preparing to immigrate again and discussions seem to be focused around leaving the country. They also talk about how South Africa has conquered many obstacles in its short life time of being a democracy, and the latest problems of ineffective power stations and power grids, is just a small issue. While I do agree, we South Africans are a tenacious bunch, with an extremely high tolerance level for bullshit, I do think it is unnecessary to start picking on the whitey's. What we also need to consider is the following. To immigrate to another country, you need to be either highly skilled, or have some mega cash to invest into your new homeland. Other countries are not just going to take some schmucko because he doesn't like where he lives. In our current environment of "affirmative action" employment policies, its becoming increasingly attractive for skilled people to work overseas (note I said skilled people, not just "white" skilled people). And if the package deal of working overseas, also means living in an environment where there are more stable economic policies, a working power infrastructure, accountability in the government (you don't get to work in the high office if you are an ex-criminal), low interest rates, policeman who want to be policeman (not because it was the only job going), no minibus taxis (and the taxis are made accountable for their actions, just like ordinary drivers, wow), and of course low crime rates, then that's just a bit of a bonus for skilled person who decides to immigrate. I am not saying that affirmative action is bad, all I am saying is that it is creating an environment where it is attractive for white skilled people to work in other countries, because your chances of real career progression might be somewhat "un-equal" in the current environment.

Have you ever wondered why some people swear to God? Is their magical thing that happens when you swear to God, in that you instantly tell the truth? And if you don't believe in God, does it add any more weight to a religious person's argument when they swear to God? My problem is that I am sure that many people, even though they swear to God, they probably do still tell a lie. Or even better yet, I swear on my mother's grave. Why doesn't any swear on their father's grave? And if your Mother is still alive, does it count if you swear on her grave, and she doesn't have one yet? What would happen if I swear to God to a Hindi or a Muslim? Do they care, or will they still think I'm a lying bastard. Anyone know the answer to this one...