Where Do I Get My Music?

I get my music (currently) from a website called allofmp3.com . CD’s tend to be around $1.50 which is dramatically cheaper than iTunes. Even though the collection is not as good as iTunes, it is rather extensive, generally meeting my musical needs.

 However, it turns out this Russian based company is heavily affecting the politics of the region.

It suprised me today to come across a little blurb about the site in the new edition of my favorite magazine: ForeignPolicy. It turns out that allofmp3.com is the largest illegal distributor of music in the world that earns a profit. Not only that, but its affecting Russia’s chance at getting into the WTO. The US would like Russia to disband the company before entering the WTO, and given Russia’s attempt to compete with the world economy, there’s a good chance that will happen.

Anyways, intellectual property is yet again stirring up controversy, nothing too new.

Kidnapping of Journalists

Today an American reporter along with his New Zelander assistant were kidnapped and randsomed for the release of Muslims detained by the U.S.

Obviously, because the U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists, much less unknown terrorist groups (the Holy Jihad Brigade doesn’t even have a website), it won’t do anything publicly about it. But upon reading this article I came across something that struck me as brownie points for the U.S. reputation.

Mahmoud Abbas was reported to have said that the release of the the captured reporters has become a national priority. In addition, protests were held in order to encourage their release.

Palestinians are helping the U.S. out in a very sticky situation. Regardless of what results from this little fiasco we can infer that Hammas does not have complete disregard for America because of their support for Israel. This gesture made me feel more confident about the way the U.S. handled their support for Israel in the current war.

Paper or Plastic?

 According to Newsweek, America is starting to go “green.” In the past several months it has become trendy to make the enviromentally savvy decision. So what’s the next step?  

Well let’s start with something familiar to us: Paper or Plastic? This is the question that plagues all grocery shoppers just when they think they’re done with making decisions at the store (Is it worth getting the half priced Safeway brand version of this product?). In fact it used to throw me into turmoil when I’d checkout at WholeFoods. However, recently it has not been a problem for me because I know which is the “green” decision for me.

Paper: Paper bags use about twice as much energy as plastic and are harder to reuse. The paper comes from either paper farms or (god forbid) recycled paper. Although these paper farms require the use of land, particularly Tropical Forest’s land is of concern, they are supported by the “green” community because their philosophy is “reaping only what we sow“. Paper provides a more sturdy bag but is not resistant to liquids.

Plastic: Plastic is made from petroleum and other by-products of the oil industry. It is fairly effective as a bag for carrying weight, but lacks support when left to sit on the ground. Often plastic bags will roll over with it’s contents onto the floor. They are a bit cheaper to produce but are raising some eyebrows among concerned environmentalists about their liter productivity. They also do not biodegrade easily.

 Apparantly Australia is on the front lines of this Paper or Plastic War  . They have passed a bill to reduce the amount of plastic bags used. By 2008, they hope to have no plastic bags left in the entire country.

“The amount of petroleum used to make one plastic bag would drive a car about 115 metres. The 6.9 billion plastic check-out bags we [Australians] use every year is enough to drive a car 800 million kilometres or nearly 20,000 times around the world.”

Today, as I was checking out my large coagulation of food, I responded “Paper” simply because it didn’t make sense for me to use even more petrol. I suppose I use paper lavishly but that’s because there’s a plethora of trees and not so much of a reserve of oil.