Friday, July 23, 2010

Sea levels rise in Peninsular

It was reported in the Star that sea levels in Peninsular Malaysia will rise by 10 to 13 cm in the next 100 years. Well, most of us couldn’t be bothered about what is going to happen in the next 100 years as we are certainly turning into ashes by the times. Coincidentally, two days ago I watched a Taiwan documentary also on global warming and it was highlighted that the melting of North Pole has resulted in the marked reduce in the population of polar bears.
Scientists believe that Polar bear is on the way of extinction probably in the next 100 years due to global warming as satellite images by NASA indicating that the size of North Pole has shrunk too quickly and Polar bear are losing their homes due to the melting of the sea ice habitat.

As the human being progresses, more and more CO2 and other green house gasses are released to the environment, causing the average temperature of the earth to increase at a worrying pace. This is further hampered by deforestations through logging activities and very soon there will not be enough plants to inhale the CO2 and exhaling O2. When that happens, our future generations may have to put up an oxygen mask before they can walk on the street.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

La Nina is brewing

La Nina is brewing as there are more and more rains pouring down coming into the second half of the year after a prevailingly dry weather in the preceding months. There are currently extreme weather conditions at the North and South hemisphere; Northern hemisphere is affected by extremely hot condition while Southern hemisphere becomes much cooler.

As it was quoted by one Taiwanese meteorologist, the weather is just like a pendulum, where there is extremely dry weather, excessively wet weather will follow suit. And what is the cause of such extremely condition? Global warming of course and we are all to be blamed for such abnormal weather occurrences.

Greedy people cutting down trees excessively for their own wealth but blamed it to the development. More and more green house gases are released every day and we point our fingers to the developed nations but when the extreme weather phenomenon occurs and resulting in disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, floods, hail storms, hurricanes and so no, it affect lives regardless of rich or poor.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Subsidy cut

The government has started to implement gradual removal of subsidies for petrol, sugar and other consuming products as the price of Ron95 has gone up by 5 sen, LPG plus 10 sen while sugar price has gone up 25 sen a kg. Like it or not, we have to learn to cope with the increasingly high living expenditures arising from the cutting of subsidies to avoid the country from becoming bankrupt as what lamented by Idris Jala.

Each and every year the government spends billions on subsidies, and its purpose is none other than helping the poor folks to cope with the ever increasing cost of living. The gap between the rich and poor in this country is one of the most alarming one in the world as reported recently. Let’s not talk about demography and all these highly complicated social complexities but just focus at a company for instance, a worker or junior staff is drawing around RM 700 to RM 1000, but the highly paid senior managers can draw up to RM 15,000 – RM 25,000 a month. See how big the gap is. And all the prices for the consuming products are the same no matter how poor or rich you are.

As the rich people are coping well with the gradual removal of subsidies, the poor will continue to suffer. As there will be chain reactions, petrol gone up, everything else also going up and the cost of living becomes burdening. As the rich fellas continue to vroom theirs expensive cars on the roads, the middle class find it harder to pay the installments of their Proton and the poor fellas are forever struggling with the poor service of public transport.

Like it or not, polarization is becoming more and more alarming. And how the government is going to use the saving derived from the cutting on subsidies? Hopefully not to benefit only their cronies.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Oracle Paul picks Spain



The Oracle Paul has spoken again and Spain will be the 2010 World Cup Champion. I guess football punters around the world are getting excited again and most of them will be putting their bets on Spain as what predicted by the so far 100% accurate psychic octopus.

It was reported by William-Hill, one of the world largest sports betting bookmaker that the highest World Cup bet so far was Euro 500,000 placed by a punter who apparently refused to believe the prediction of Paul on Spain/Germany semi final and lost his money. There were also Euro 80,000 and Euro 10,000 bets placed on Germany which also went kaput.

Paul also made good predictions on Euro 2008’s matches. It was all the way right until the final where it picked Germany to be the Champion but it was wrong at that crucial moment resulting in the punters all had to spit out their gains earlier. That has given rise to a conspiracy theory that Paul was actually manipulated by the bookies. Whether Paul makes a good prediction or not doesn’t concern me. I’m just looking forward for an all fired-up final match between Holland and Spain.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Hey, you're right again, Paul.

Paul the psychic octopus is proven right again as Spain stunned Germany 1 – 0 in the World Cup semi final. A strong header from Carlos Puyol, which was the solitary goal in a rather subdued game shunned the favorite from entering the final. Unlike theirs previous matches games where they trashed England 4 – 1, then Argentina 4 – 0, the Germans' performance was below par.

A good job done for Spain to effectively shut the attacks of the Germans, but a defensive play by both sides had resulted in a rather boring match, an anti climax for a thus far pretty exciting World Cup matches which saw most of matches conceded many goals and also unpredictabilities such as the match between Uruguay and Ghana.

Well done, Paul, a small brain of yours is more farsighted that more of the sport experts and also football pundits around the world. Having seen how German trashed England and Argentina, many could have predicted that it would be a walk in the park for Germany especially seeing Spain were not so convincing in theirs earlier matches.