This is Part 1 of the book I just finished reading. Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L Friedman. Yup, he is the same guy who wrote that the world is flat a few years back that highlighted how the internet and global supply chains is flattening the world. Now he is on to his next book that is highlighting Hot= Climate Change and Global Warming, Flat = Globalisation and Crowded = the growing middle class. Here is the first part of my summary.

Part 1: Where we are

1. Where birds don’t fly

American has gotten distracted by its war on terror and has become more insulated and loss its path from global leadership. Friedman argues that green is a new national strategy to take its economic to its new heights.  

2. Today’s Date 1E.C.E

The trends of Hot, Flat and crowded are converging.

 1.     Hot= Global Warming

2.     Flat= Globalisation of marketplaces

3.     Crowded= Growing competition for resources 

 The convergence of these 3 trends increase the magnitude of problems: energy supply and demand, petrodicatorship, climate change, energy poverty and biodiversity loss

 We have to do something about these 5 problems as they determine peace, security, economic growth and human rights. 

Part 2: How we got there

3. Our carbon copies

This chapter focuses on energy supply and demand.

 The American lifestyle is wasteful and being emulated in developing countries. If all of them reach American standards, the demand will be so high the Earth will not be able to provude the current level of resources to all. There will be intense competition for resources which will lead to conflict.

 Thus a more sustainable growth model is required. The US needs to take leadership as it is the country using most of the resources right now. 

4. Fill em up with dictators

This chapter focuses on petrodicatorship which is a political development in oil producing country. 

As energy demand exceeds supply, oil prices rises which then gives oil producing countries a lot of money. The influx of Oil money influences politics in countries and turns it less democratic and more anti American. It also fuels terrorism and armies. 

First Law Of Petro Politics: As oil prices does up, the less freedom in petrolist countries 

Thus reduction of oil use is necessary. 

5. Global Weirding

This chapter focuses on climate change. 

Climate change is real and proven. We are not sure if they will happen even faster than previous predictions. We are not sure of the changes that might happen because we have not accurately modelled the complexity of the climate. 

We need to increase national awareness of climate change. 

6. The Age of Noah

This chapter focuses on biodiversity loss. 

Rapid climate change and human development destroys biodiversity. Loss of biodiversity directly affects human life quality. Degrading the environment means that we have to do more that the climate used to do for us. 

Later is too late and we have to stop biodiversity loss now. 

7. Energy Poverty

This chapter focuses on energy poverty in developing countries. 

1.6 Billion people do not have access to electricity grid. Without energy, almost all aspect of life is affected. The poorest are the ones most affected by climate change.

Without electricity, one has no access to machines and communication necessary for making a living in this flat world. 

This keeps the poor poorer. 

With communication and electricity, we can move to a more sustainable work life style 

8. Green is the new red white and blue

We have passed the point where we cannot put off dealing with the 5 problems.

The true costs of the problems are becoming clear in a transparent flat world which demands accountability. 

America must take the lead because if it does not it will lose its global competitive edge. America can because it still has innovation, research and capitalist funding that is still leading edge in the world. 

Plan A (There is no Plan B) 

Code Green: Friedman proposes a Code Green Plan and highlights the need for a whole new system to power the economy. Need to replace the entire input of the system (dirty fuel) 

The components of the Plan are Clean Electrons, Energy Efficiency and Conservation 

Clean Electrons: We need to simulate innovation to find a source of electrons that is abundant, clean, reliable and cheap. 

Energy Efficiency and Resource Productivity: In the short term, we must reduce the demand because Clean Energy will not be here soon. 

Ethic of Conservation: Responsibilty for the earth. Changing our lifestyle to something that has less effect on the earth  

What We Need: A system of government policies, regulations, research funding and tax incentives that would stimulate a system for innovating, generating gland deploying clean electrons, energy efficient and resource productivity along with an ethic of conservation 

On the next summary, I will cover the remaining portions of the books.

Part 3: How We Move Forward

9. 205 Easy Ways To Save The Earth

10. The Energy Internet: When IT Meets ET

11. The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out Of Stones

12. If It Isn’t Boring, It Isn’t Green

13. A Million Noahs, A Million Arks

14. Out Greening Al-Qaeda (Or Buy 1 Get Four Free)

Part 4: China

15: Can Red China Become Green China

Part 5: America

16. China For A Day (But Not For Two)

17. A Democratic China Or A Banana Republic

So for the last few weeks my girlfriend and I have been evaluating insurance policies for her. Basically it came down to a debate of 1) “Whole Life” – (WL) or 2) “Term + Invest the difference” – (TID). Before this evaultion, I always believed in “Term + Invest the difference” because the cost was lower and the returns from stock investment would be more than that I can get from whole life.

However there is always a nagging doubt that term might not be the right choice because it doesn’t cover you in old age which is the time when you might need insurance the most. In the end after much discussion we came up with a strategy that both of us thinks make financial sense. Thanks to my girlfriend whom helped put the nagging doubt to rest by crystallising my thoughts.

First let’s make sure you understand both term and whole life insurance

Term

“With term insurance, you’re covered only during the life of the policy, while you’re paying the premiums. If you carry a term life insurance policy for 50 years, regularly pay the premiums, and then quit paying and die a year later, you’re out of luck. (Well, you’d be out of luck regardless – but, in this case, your beneficiaries are out of luck, too.)” 

Whole Life

“Whole life insurance, meanwhile, is designed to cover you for your whole life. These policies charge you a fixed premium each year, one that’s typically higher than term insurance. The advantage touted by insurance companies for whole life insurance is that, while part of the premium covers what term insurance would cost, the surplus resides in an account that pays interest and accumulates a cash value. As this “accumulation account” grows, your premiums can decrease over time. Eventually, in some cases, the interest earned can pay the premiums for you. So, you won’t be paying any more premiums, but you’ll still be covered for the rest of your life.” http://www.fool.com/foolu/askfoolu/2002/askfoolu020725.htm

 So if you distill the 2 polcies these are the differences between the 2

 1.     Forced Savings in WL

2.      Cost of premiums (WL is more expensive)

3.      Coverage after 60-65 years old (That WL has whereas TID doesnt)

 Of the 3 differences, only the coverage after 60-65 years old  cannot be replicated by a TID strategy so that is what we based our decision upon. 

Since the main diffierence of WL and TID is that WL covers you after 65 years old, we should then only buy WL for that function and only intend to use its insurance after 65 years old.

The strategy goes as follows

“Before 65, buy enough whole life that you will need in old age and then whatever amount of term you need to get enough coverage for current times. After 65 discontinue your term policies and hold on to your WL policies.” 

The reasoning goes like this:

Before age 65 is when you have the most liabilities (loans, dependants etc) which means that the need for insurance will be highest at this point. However to get whole life is way too expensive for the average person to consider so  the cheapest option is term insurance with a critical illness rider. Plus getting whole life also means that you are probably wasting money in old age since you do not need that much coverage.

After 65, most of your liabilities will have been repaid and your dependants would have grown up and thus you no longer need the insurance to ensure their livelihood or pay off debts if something happens to you. Also after 65 years old, term insurance cost also skyrockets so it is not something that is worth keeping for its cost.

Yup, so that’s the strategy. As for timing and how much to get, it based on each individual but do remember that $100,000 might not be worth much when you are 65 years old so that you need to increases your coverage as inflation catches up.

I think the most important lesson is that one should always think about what they are buying and why they are buying it. If you are reading this, most probably you have already done much research on financial planning. But most people will not have research on what to buy so go out and spread the message to them.

In the next blog post, I will discuss which WL policy we chose and why we make that selection.

Ok…so I have step on a minefield and it blew off my legs…

I am making sure this does not happen again so I am inviting food bloggers to give me suggestions here just so I know what they are thinking.

There are a few things that I hope I can be more clear about.

1) Do you all really mind the linking of your blog post from other places?

2) How do you view food blog aggregators like foodlah.com and foodbuzz.com

3) What is your primary motivation for writing a food blog

4) Who is your target audience for your blog?

Hi people,
Firstly, Please take a look at Hereing.com for some background context. It is basically a food/resturant review aggregator. When you click on a resturant, you will be shown the resturant’s rating and all the reviews by bloggers about that resturant.

How the system works is that a user submits a blog review to hereing.com under a resturant that is being reviewed by the blogger. During the submission process, the required fields are source, title, review and rating.

Here is where I made the mistake. Some bloggers will put ratings in their blogs some won’t. But because I coded hereing.com’s rating field to be complusory, I had to put in a rating when I was submitting the review.  This wasn’t a problem if the blogger had specific ratings in his own post but when a blogger didn’t put in the rating I had to gauge by reading the blogger’s review and then tried to put in an approximate star rating.

And at this point, the minefield under my feet exploded. You can read it here http://food.recentrunes.com/?p=2237

Long story short: it is misrepresentation to help people rate their review.

Lesson1: dun be lazy I already had misgivings about helping bloggers rate their reviews but because I was lazy to change the code, I just put in approximate ratings. But because of this episode, I had to go back and correct it anyway so that ratings are no longer compulsory. darn…if only I knew…

Lesson 2: Engage your users…early…You never really know what other people are thinking. the only way to find out is to ask them early. I didn’t do that. I just decided to build the system and start submitting reviews. If I did that, the “helping people to rate review is wrong” mine wouldn’t have exploded because I would not have made the rating field complusory.

And then as the list of comments grew longer, I started seeing how varied ways of how people think. For example, there was 1 blogger who didn’t want to be linked. As a blogger, I could never understand that. But she put it clearly that her blog was semi private and she didn’t appreciate the attention. This is still something that i have to get my head around but I guess I need to code a block list so bloggers can submit their own site to be blocked.

My thoughts: I really want to build something that food bloggers will use and readers will find it useful. So my next post will be more proactive and engaging all the bloggers whom I have linked to before in asking them for their opinion.