Hey, you're always asking me where I find stuff...
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Little Link List 21
Next time I'm in Tokyo - I'm going to look at scale model cities!
Births, deaths, CO2 - a realtime look at how fast we're reproducing and emitting CO2;
Bo Diddley - "Bo Diddley" (video).
Births, deaths, CO2 - a realtime look at how fast we're reproducing and emitting CO2;
Bo Diddley - "Bo Diddley" (video).
Labels: bodiddley, globalwarming, tokyo
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
So, what fish should I eat?
I really like eating fish, but I'm becoming a bit concerned about the sustainability of eating fish. When I go to a supermarket here in Hong Kong and see Alaskan crab, Atlantic Salmon and Southern Ocean bluefin tuna for sale, I start to think that something is wrong.
It seems incredible to me that I can buy a piece of fish that was caught thousands of miles away and yet is still basically affordable. The effort that goes into catching fish is tremendous - there's no way I'd want to spend a winter in the Southern Ocean looking for Patagonian toothfish. The reason the fish is affordable of course is economies of scale - fishing trawlers take so many fish they are able to make a lot of money on volume, despite the difficulties involved in catching them.
Outside national boundaries, the ocean is basically unregulated and a free-for-all is going on. Without regulation of fish stocks overfishing is destroying the viablity of many species. At the moment we have abundance of many things, but I can see a not-too-distant future where abundance won't the norm.
OK - so what can we do? Well the first thing would be to stop eating fish that are in danger, and stop eating fish that come from thousands of kilometres away. Fortunately there are guides that help you make those decisions. The Australian Marine Conservation Society has a guide that lets you know exactly how endangered a fish is. Unfortunately they charge $10 for it. Still, here it is. Another resource is available for free from fishonline.org. Print out the guide and memorise a few species that are OK to eat, and next time you go to a restaurant, check the menu for the safe species.
tags: overfishing | fish
It seems incredible to me that I can buy a piece of fish that was caught thousands of miles away and yet is still basically affordable. The effort that goes into catching fish is tremendous - there's no way I'd want to spend a winter in the Southern Ocean looking for Patagonian toothfish. The reason the fish is affordable of course is economies of scale - fishing trawlers take so many fish they are able to make a lot of money on volume, despite the difficulties involved in catching them.
Outside national boundaries, the ocean is basically unregulated and a free-for-all is going on. Without regulation of fish stocks overfishing is destroying the viablity of many species. At the moment we have abundance of many things, but I can see a not-too-distant future where abundance won't the norm.
OK - so what can we do? Well the first thing would be to stop eating fish that are in danger, and stop eating fish that come from thousands of kilometres away. Fortunately there are guides that help you make those decisions. The Australian Marine Conservation Society has a guide that lets you know exactly how endangered a fish is. Unfortunately they charge $10 for it. Still, here it is. Another resource is available for free from fishonline.org. Print out the guide and memorise a few species that are OK to eat, and next time you go to a restaurant, check the menu for the safe species.
tags: overfishing | fish
Labels: fish, overfishing, sashimi, tuna
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The New Territories
On the weekend we went for a brief trip to the New Territories. The what? Yes - the New Territories. The bit of China that got handed over to the British in 1898 - 57 years after they took possession of Hong Kong. Hence the name "New Territories".
These days the New Territories are the remnants of the rural areas of Hong Kong - a conglomeration of old Hakka villages and new urban high-rises. It's quite an interesting place. The pace of life definitely feels slower than on Hong Kong Island or in Kowloon, and the residents look a little less well-off. (But there are still a lot of BMW's and Benz's zooming around.) Piles of wrecked or disused cars and shipping containers are lumped next to old temples, ancestral halls, houses and farms, all lined up along tiny winding roads. And then suddenly there'll be a sleek modern KCR railway station, conveniently located near a dozen or more towering apartment blocks. The whole place has a faintly transient quality - it's the buffer zone between Hong Kong and China, and buffer zones always feel a bit looser than other places.
I had the feeling that everyone was waiting for someone else to come along and tidy it up, but that no-one was particularly anxious for that to occur either. Unfortunately I don't really have any photos - for various reasons we ended up seeing most of what we saw from the inside of a public minibus, and when we finally did manage to get out and walk around we'd ended up at a Buddhist temple that seemed to be in a transitional state itself - moving from being a monastery to a theme park.
I guess the next thing to do is head north a few more kilometres and visit the ultimate human intertidal zone - Shenzhen.
tags: hongkong | newterritories
These days the New Territories are the remnants of the rural areas of Hong Kong - a conglomeration of old Hakka villages and new urban high-rises. It's quite an interesting place. The pace of life definitely feels slower than on Hong Kong Island or in Kowloon, and the residents look a little less well-off. (But there are still a lot of BMW's and Benz's zooming around.) Piles of wrecked or disused cars and shipping containers are lumped next to old temples, ancestral halls, houses and farms, all lined up along tiny winding roads. And then suddenly there'll be a sleek modern KCR railway station, conveniently located near a dozen or more towering apartment blocks. The whole place has a faintly transient quality - it's the buffer zone between Hong Kong and China, and buffer zones always feel a bit looser than other places.
I had the feeling that everyone was waiting for someone else to come along and tidy it up, but that no-one was particularly anxious for that to occur either. Unfortunately I don't really have any photos - for various reasons we ended up seeing most of what we saw from the inside of a public minibus, and when we finally did manage to get out and walk around we'd ended up at a Buddhist temple that seemed to be in a transitional state itself - moving from being a monastery to a theme park.
I guess the next thing to do is head north a few more kilometres and visit the ultimate human intertidal zone - Shenzhen.
tags: hongkong | newterritories
Labels: hongkong, kowloon, newterritories
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