Horticulture22 Mar 2009 03:59 pm
March 2009
China19 Mar 2009 08:35 pm
Oddities and paradoxes of China …
brands are such a great thing. As a marketer they make you go weak at the knees when they are well designed, eccentric, idiosyncratic and well marketed, when they have something distinctive to say and when they manage to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside…
Photography05 Mar 2009 09:44 am
Will somebody please turn the tap off …
As some of you might have read: China was facing a severe drought not too long ago (sometime at the beginning of Feb). Indeed, China declared an emergency water shortage in eight northern and central drought-hit regions, where almost four million people were suffering water shortages. With much of China’s farming still relying on rainfall, since farming communities still have a poor irrigation system, prolonged drought and therefore a meager harvest could have devastating effects.
And you might have also read about the artificially created snow fall in Beijing, where a special chemical (most probably silver iodide) was sprayed into the clouds to make artificial snow to combat the drought. Results were pretty immediate and within a few hours Beijing was covered in snow, ending the longest drought in 38 years. Ah, the wonders of cloud-seeding … and ignoring some of the controversy surrounding the effectiveness (and ethics?) of this process: problem solved you might think. But think again …
