Upcoming Posts:

The modern automobile. A truly unimpressive machine.

Why Foreign Aid Has Been Bad for Africa

What is your 'America age?'

I have to say this popped into my head after reading Okongo's Policy blog about the African immigrant experience. The day you land in America you are reborn in a sense. A new clock starts ticking.So I thought about one of the first three questions fellow Africans ask of one another during the initial introduction. You already know where I'm going with this one.

"How long have you been in the US?" You've heard this asked a thousand times. Its irrelevant how old or young you are. This question is used to quickly asses the askee's state of progress. The way the subject askee answers this question is telling. You can instantly tell what they think of their American experience. The asker's reaction also indicates whether or not they are impressed with the mileage one has covered to get where they are.

So the next time you get asked one this, carefully observe the asker for a sign. Then come back and blog about it.

Taxoplasma: An alzheimer's-linked parasite that causes rats to be attracted to cats?

Toxoplasma gondii is the most mind-blowing parasite that I have ever read or heard about. I was driving home when I heard this story on WBUR radio Boston and it really blew my mind. It sounds like an April Fools' science fiction joke. If this doesn't disturb you, you are disturbed.(Just kidding).

So here is the story as presented by WBUR Boston. The 'toxo' parasite I referenced above has a two phased life cycle. A sexual and an asexual part. The sexual part of the life cycle can only take place in the intestines of domestic or wild cats. (felidae family). The asexual part can take place in any warm blooded mammals including humans. It is the sexual part of the life cycle that gets very interesting.

Typically the virus is commonly found in cat feces.( I did not know that rats do this. Mildly disturbing). So a rat eats the stuff and gets infected. The parasite undergoes the asexual part of reproduction in readiness for the next stage. Somehow in order to guarantee its survival, the parasite travels up the rat's bloodstream and into the brain. It infects the rat's amygdala(part of the brain that affects memory and emotional reactions in humans). Amazigly, this infection causes the rat to be attracted to the smell of cats. The rat basically goes looking for the cat, the cat does what cats do and gets infected. Now the 'toxo' can reproduce and the cycle is repeated. I would not have believed this were it not for the reliable sources. Actual scientist have reported this phenomenon.

Another disturbing finding put forth by two independent teams of scientists is that infected humans are 3 to 4 times more likely to die in a car accident.

On the serious side of things the virus can cause fetal deaths in humans and pregnant women are usually advised to avoid cats. The parasite is also linked to alzheimer's disease and scientists are studying whether the domestication of the cat caused the escalation of incidence of the disease in the 19th century.

Executive Pay: What they didn't teach you in school

It seems like everyone is talking about excessive executive pay nowadays. Obama is talking about it. Germany's Angela Merkel is reviewing plans to possibly put a cap on executive pay for all of Europe. From the millions that AIG was planning to pay out this year to the hundreds of millions Goldman is actually going to pay. The sums are mind boggling not just for size but more so the for their timing. Wall Street is emerging from their worst days since the great depression. So how is it that anyone is getting any sort of bonus?
Now, in school they taught you that shareholders own the company and have a say on the running of the company. If you are like me I imagined 'investor' to mean regular folk invested through their 401Ks and the like. So how is it that executives increasingly seem to reward themselves ahead of the best interests of the shareholders and therefore the company? Many individual investors have unsuccessfully launched proxy fights to rein in excessive pay or at least match pay to performance.

What my teacher never told me is that the biggest investors are themselves institutions. Therefore your ten shares in a corporation don't matter when institutions own the rest of the shares. These institutions because of their block of shares get to pick the board of directors of your corporation. Then those directors seat on the boards of other institutions and it creates a sort of quid pro quo. Approve my 'guaranteed bonus' and I'll approve yours. Being that all these executives have the same mentality of big payouts no matter the financial results, you have CEOs who end up unsuccessfuly running a corporation for three years of less but walking away with almost $100 million in pay. Huge payout for basically failing. This mentality is also contributing to the shrinking of the middle class when you when entry level positions in these same companies (not Goldman of course, its more like $120K there) start at a paltry $33,000 a year and wages today are still at 1998 levels in real dollar terms.

The Mugabe disaster is worse than you think.

What has happened to once-proud Zimbabwe is the stuff of movies. Horror movies. Outbreaks of cholera, biting hunger and severe oppression. Inflation? Currently at 20 million percent according to CNN. Alternatively, you can take the much more conservative official figure of 11.2 million percent. Disputed elections and loss of life on the continent is no longer news so I will not dwell on that.
Here is the bad news. The bad news is that Mugabe has presided over all this pretty much unscathed. After the so called presidential election many people thought that Mugabe would disappear. Zimbabwe was under the kind of despair and tension that one would have thought could lead to a French-like revolution. There were rumours the West would 'ask' Mugabe to disappear to a friedly nation in exchange for not getting his assets frozen and getting whisked to international court. Then there was the expectation that South Africa with their growing refugee problem would not let things stand. They would surely force him out for the good of both countries.
Alas, several months later Mugabe is still running things. Imposing sanctions under these circumstances is downright moronic. How does a president who is willing to bring his country to its knees for the sake of power feel the pressure of economic sanctions?
Now, this is the saddest thing I have seen in a long time because of the precedent it sets. If this is the worst case scenario and the feckless president survives, imagine how heartened the other 'moderate' dictators must be. It doesn't bode well for Africa. While many have a tendency to over-report the dark side of Africa, this is truly deserving of the world's attention. Too bad that attention has not amounted to any action worth paying attention to.

Health Care Tip for Obama

Its easy to get tired of all the coverage of the health care debate. There are no good alternatives for escaping the media coverage of the debate. Not many people would trade their cable news for actual reading of the thousands of pages floating around Congress. Like it or not it is much easier to remember politicians' sound bites than it is to remember the complex details of the debate. This is where Obama should come in and play the sound bite game a la Palin's 'death panels'.

For instance, one of the reasons wages have stagnated in the US (reportedly at 1998 levels compared to inflation/cost of living) is due to the explosion of health care costs. Basically, Obama should go out and say "guess what dudes, the reason are not getting a raise is because your employer is too busy trying to keep up with exploding health care costs". People would remember a nice sound bite to that effect. Self interest being what it is for all of us humans, we'd be quick to embrace that message.

Could Kenya have been the ‘The Garden of Eden?’

This thought has crossed my mind more than a few times now. I now all the scientific evidence points to the Middle East but scientist have also been known to be wrong and sometimes biased. So ignoring the Middle Eastern evidence think about this.

            Think about Rusinga Island, which lies to the East of Lake Victoria. The island is the site of the oldest fossilized remains of early man. It is also rich with fossilized remains of other mammals, some dating back as much as 18 million years. The there is river Nile. Anyone that has ever heard of the bible knows its significance. Lake Victoria also happens to be the source of the Nile. I don’t claim to be a scientist or a theological expert. In fact my little presentation here would make a good scientist weep. But I’m just saying.

Growing The Economy: Quick and painless idea

Here is a quick and easy way to stimulate a lot of economic activity in Kenya without too much sweat. This should be free of political wrangling and would also not require major reforms within any of the three arms of government. What's this simple idea? Implementing a street address system for the entire country.

Having lived in the US for the last decade it is still hard at times to imagine that Kenya has no street addresses. If you wanted to visit my home outside Nakuru town you couldn't do it without an extensive amount of 'turn by turn' directions. I might even invoke a 'mugumo' tree or two to help. God forbid a new road was paved without my knowledge which is not all that unusual in the countryside. Then you would be really lost.
Now imagine that an effective street naming system was implemented throughout the country. This would unlock as much economic activity as the arrival of cell phones and affordable motorcycles. What this would do is enhance the communications revolution that has happened thanks to cell phones and motorcycles(the latter aided by availability of micro loans). Basically, this would free up business owners' time by not having to deliver shipments themselves. It would also free up capital that would otherwise be used to purchase delivery vehicles. It also means that consumers would also be free to go about their business without wasting half their work day picking up pretty standard products like fertilizer in the case of farmers. All they would need to do is call up their supplier and have it delivered. Results, a lot of cost savings.
There is even more good news. Well, potentially. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this would be youth that we are always trying to elevate with never-ending funds that never seem to reach the intended beneficiaries. A lot of them already own motorcycles that they use to transport people. The 'boda boda' phenomenon. They would just add cargo to their list of services.
Kenyans have proven to be adept at adapting new technologies. Just look at the wildly successfull M-Pesa money transfer from Safaricom.These too would have have a similar effect as entrepreneurs everywhere rush to capitalize on new possibilities. So while we grapple with other more basic problems like water shortages, lets keep this on our agenda too. It could actually ease the delivery of said water.