Eideard

Always good for what ails you.

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A shortage of chopsticks in China has become so acute that a US company has begun exporting millions of pairs to the country.

Georgia Chopsticks, based in the southern state of Georgia, is producing two million sets of the traditional eating utensils each day. It is operating around the clock to keep up with demand and hopes to be exporting 10 million pairs a day by the end of the year, each set complete with a label marked “Made in USA.”

Amid a shortage of wood in China the abundant poplar and sweet gum trees in Georgia were found to be ideal for chopsticks, producing straight, pliable and light coloured implements. They cost less than a penny each to make and are being sold in Chinese supermarkets.

Jae Lee, a Korean-American who started the company, said: “When I opened this business the reaction from my friends and family was ‘Are you crazy? Making chopsticks here?’ But we’ve shown you can make something happen.” The factory opened in Americus, a recession hit town with 12 per cent unemployment and 450 people applied for 60 jobs.

Susan White, one of the workers, said: “I thought what everyone else thinks. Everywhere you see in America it says ‘Made in China’ and you wonder if in China they ever see ‘Made in America.’”

Now you know. Someone with an eye to small-time commerce instead of ideology can make it big in the export market to China. You don’t have to restrict yourself to industrial-strength machinery or earthmovers.

One bottle of Mollydooker Velvet Glove

More than A$1 million of wine has been destroyed in a forklift accident in Australia.

The 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove shiraz sells for A$185 a bottle, the AFP news agency said. Winemaker Sparky Marquis told reporters he was “gut-wrenched” that 462 cases of wine had been smashed while being loaded for export to the United States.

“When they opened up the container they said it was like a murder scene,” he said. “But it smelled phenomenal.”

Mr Marquis told the AAP news agency the shipment represented one-third of his McLaren Vale winery’s annual production. “It’s a massive loss. We’re going through all of the 462 cases at the moment just to see what we can save out of it.”

The wine was, however, fully insured.

Agence France-Presse said Kerry Logistics, which was handling the shipment, moves more than 20,000 containers a year. Spokesman Brett McCarthur said the company had never had a malfunction of that type before.

“It was very hard to make that call to Sparky,” he said.

I have to laugh at myself over this one. I did pretty much the same thing once – though not with as expensive a commodity. I managed to drop double-stacked pallets with almost 400 pairs of full-size truck mirrors on board. Once.

I truly was surprised I wasn’t fired on the spot.

Switzerland-based Global Wood Holding will invest 900 million euros to grow Eucalyptus trees in Tunisia and export the wood to Europe, creating 45,000 jobs.

The project will be sited on 160,000 hectares in the Tunisian desert some 500 km south of Tunis.

The company’s deputy chairman Aldo Bonaldi, speaking at news conference with Tunisian State Lands Minister Fouad Dagfous, said he expected to export two million tonnes of wood each year.

The project would be completed over 15 years, he said.

Eucalyptus has attracted attention from development researchers and environmentalists. It is a fast-growing wood, its oil can be used for cleaning and functions as a natural insecticide, and it is sometimes used to drain swamps and thereby reduce the risk of malaria…

Generally, anyone who wishes to impede an earth-based project providing both jobs and improvements to the environment [like reforestation] can find some tame “analyst” to back up their criticism. It’s reaching a bit to oppose eucalyptus trees used for forest industries – but, I imagine that some junk science skeptics will come up with something.

Meanwhile, the Swiss and Tunisians are going ahead with providing jobs, income and reversing desertification.

Microsoft said today that it is scrapping its aging Windows Live Spaces blogging technology and will instead make WordPress the default blogging option for Windows Live. It’s the latest move by Microsoft to use Windows Live to connect to other leading Web services, rather than rely on its own, less popular options.

For example, Microsoft has shuttered its not-so-widely-used Soapbox video-sharing site and now gives users of Windows Live Movie Maker the option of posting to Facebook or YouTube. Within Windows Live Photo Gallery, people can post to Windows Live, but can also share photos directly to Facebook and Flickr.

“There are 30 million people who are actively using Windows Live Spaces and have been eagerly awaiting the next set of new blogging features,” Microsoft’s Dharmesh Mehta said in a blog post. “For these customers, Windows Live and WordPress.com have worked together to build a simple way to move your blog posts, comments, and integrated photos right over to WordPress.com and start taking advantage of all their new features…”

Microsoft said that users can start migrating their Windows Live Spaces blog to WordPress today and that WordPress will be the default option when its updated Windows Live Writer blogging tool comes out later this fall. Windows Live users will also be able to send an update to their friends when they have a new blog post, Microsoft said.

I continue to be astounded at Microsoft business incompetence. This begs the question of what is it they actually do with all their employees. I realize their pay sucks compared to many other high tech firms; but, still – they continue to flounder with semi-established packages – then, relent and let them die.

Though I am pleased to see their clients arrive as an addition to the WordPress community.

Seminarians on a class outing in India

Young men willing to join the priesthood are plentiful in India, unlike in the United States and Europe. Within a few miles of this seminary, called Don Bosco College, are two much larger seminaries – each with more than 400 students.

As a result, bishops trek here from the United States, Europe, Latin America and Australia looking for spare priests to fill their empty pulpits. Hundreds have been allowed to go, siphoning support from India’s widespread network of Catholic churches, schools, orphanages, missionary projects and social service programs.

At least 800 Indian priests are working in the United States alone.

But these days the Indian prelates have reason to reconsider their generosity. With India modernizing at breakneck speed, more young men are choosing financial gain over spiritual sacrifice.

“There is a great danger just now because the spirit of materialism is on the increase,” said Bishop Mar James Pazhayattil, the founding bishop of the Diocese of Irinjalakuda, as he sat barefoot at his desk, surrounded by bric-a-brac mementos of a lifetime of church service. “Faith and the life of sacrifice are becoming less.”

Some of the forces contributing to the lack of priests in Europe and the United States have begun to take shape here.

All of which are truly positive forces. India is moving into the 19th and 20th Centuries. And conscious of what the 21st Century has to offer. Why stay stuck in the 14th Century?

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Venezuela is ordering one million low cost laptops for its school children. The machines will be based on the Intel Classmate laptop that has been designed for school children.

Venezuela is buying the portable computers as part of a $3bn (£1.66bn) bilateral trade deal with Portugal that also covers housing and utilities.

Portugal is manufacturing the laptops under licence from Intel and are broadly based on the chip maker’s design of its Classmate computer.

Dubbed Magellan, the laptops will have on board low-power Intel Atom chips designed for laptops. They will also sport digital cameras and a broadband net connection. As an operating system, the machines will run a version of Linux developed in Venezuela.

The trick here is that the Portuguese government got the license from Intel and set up manufacturing to supply these critters to their own school children. Looks like someone was smart enough to understand they might further defray expenses by building an excess for export.

How long before we see these in Best Buy?