Tuesday, January 8, 2008

[greater_noakhali] Bangladesh is building 2000 new cyclone shelters - build them using floating

Bangladesh is building 2000 new cyclone shelters - build them using floating technique
 
If we do not start this today, few years from now, someone else will be effected. Netherland and EU can help us in providing new technology.
 
 
All new government initiated projects in the areas where rising sea level is expected to adversely hit, should adopt this new technology. Without going into details, we are providing two news item from two countries. Our policymakers, designers, architects and engineers should read these two news item together and they should seriously consider whether the two information should be combined together to make Bangladesh better prepared.
 
If Netherland can plan to upgrade or build all the regular houses, we can at least start that process with the cyclone centers. Don't you think so?
 
If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columinsts in regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence.
 
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Netherlands floats new housing idea

August 21, 2007

 

Many towns plan to accommodate floating homes in face of climate fears

(AMSTERDAM) The Dutch answer to fears over climate change and lack of space is a modern three-storey luxury villa with a roof terrace, large living room, three bedrooms and, crucially … a water-proof hull.

Dozens of Dutch municipalities are planning new districts with room for floating homes and, as more and more socalled water lots become available, the market is experiencing a boom.

`There is this idea that it's reassuring that these houses will stay afloat even if the Netherlands is flooded,' Yvonne de Korte of the Amsterdam architecture centre Arcam told AFP.

In the Netherlands, a densely populated country where one third of the land is below sea level, the threat of rising sea levels is a constant one.

`We are no longer only worrying about global warming, we are now actively looking for solutions for the consequences of climate change,' climatologist Rik Leemans of the Wageningen University said.

`There has been a real change in the Dutch mentality … Before we were hiding behind our dykes. Now we are finding ways to create space for rising water levels and looking upon it as a chance to develop new ideas,' he added.

The Dutch government is not only keeping up the maintenance on its impressive system of dykes and flood dams, but has also launched plans to divert rivers and create designated delta areas that can be flooded in case of a sudden rise in water levels.

The luxury floating villa by ABC Arkenbouw on show in Amsterdam together with the exhibition `Living on Water' is a prototype aimed at people who buy so-called water lots in IJburg.

IJburg is a new housing development built on an artificial island in the east of Amsterdam and is expected to house 45,000 people between now and 2020.

The water lots in the new neighbourhood are on sale for between 110,000 and 140,000 euros (S$228,000 and S $290,000) and allow people to moor a floating house on a special landing.

`It is a great new market, we are building 40 floating homes this year and plan 60 next year,' said Marian Spenkeler of ABC Arkenbouw.

The company is specialised in building houseboats, the classic barge type that you see in the canals of Amsterdam, and is now turning more and more to constructing boathouses that look like floating villas.

`It attracts all kinds of buyers from young families with kids to pensioners,' Mr Sprenkeler said.

The floating villas cost around 250,000 euros. Taken with the price of the lot, this is a little lower than the prices for comparable family homes on IJburg.

The boathouse is built with the latest technology with all modern conveniences and floats on a concrete pontoon that doubles as a partly submerged basement with bedrooms.

For most of the 20th-century houseboat dwellers were, according to architecture expert De Korte, considered `a fringe group, poor people who did not have enough money to buy a real house on firm ground'.

In the 1970s houseboats become a popular choice for hippies as the ultimate sign of rejecting the bourgeois lifestyle.

In the last 10 years, that has changed as living on water has become increasingly fashionable and a number of housing projects started including water houses in their development plans.

To give an idea of the different forms of living on water Arcam has organised an exhibit in Amsterdam with models and real houseboats, including one over 80 years old.

 

Source: Business Times 14 Aug 07

 

 

2,000 new cyclone shelters to be built this year in Bangladesh
Tuesday, 01.08.2008, 03:03am (GMT+6)

Source: http://www.banglade shjournal. com/article/ Bangladesh/ 157/

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan 7 (BSS): Secretary of the Bangladesh Ministry of Food and Disaster Management Dr Mohammad Ayub Miah today said 2,000 new cyclone shelters will be built in the coastal areas of the country's 15 districts as part of the government's disaster preparedness.

A sub-committee for setting up the cyclone centres has been formed which will submit a report within this month on how the cyclone centers could be make sustainable, he said this while inaugurating a workshop on 'Cyclone Sidr 2007: Early Recovery' at BIAM auditorium here this morning.

United Nations development Programme (UNDP) and the Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) jointly organised the workshop in cooperation with Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme
(CDMP).

With director general of DMB KH Masud Siddiqui in the chair, the function was addressed, among others by UNDP country director Manoj Basnyat, chief of programme division of the Ministry of Planning Dr Idris Ali Dewan, director of DMB Mohammad Abu Sadeque, high officials of different ministries and development partners.

Dr Mohammad Ayub Miah said Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country and the recent cyclone Sidr had caused massive damage to lives and properties particularly in agriculture sector.

The government, he said, is taking a comprehensive and 12- month loss recovery programme aimed at reducing the loss of cyclone survivors in the southwestern coastlines of the country.

KH Masud Siddiqui underscored the need for carrying out more research on disaster preparation with a view to strengthening the country's disaster preparedness.

Manoj Basnyat appreciated the government's ongoing coordinated efforts aiming at reducing the sufferings of the Sidr- hit people.

"We are ready to provide necessary assistance to Bangladesh for early recovery of the economic loss suffered the country due to the cyclone Sidr," he added.

 

@ The Bangladesh Journal

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Deep condolence for the Sadr victims. May Almighty give the family members of victims enough strength to recover from this great loss soon. Let us extend our hand to them the way we can.

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[greater_noakhali] Noakhali Web News Published in The Daily 'Prothom Alo' & 'Amardesh'

09 January 2008

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http://www.prothom-alo.com/mcat.news.details.php?nid=NzcyODI=&mid=MTE=

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http://www.amardeshbd.com/sub_section.php?issueID=671&sub_section_id=17&NewsID=154294&NewsType=bistarito

Thanking You

Mohiuddin Sabbir

Sub Editor, Noakhali Web

www.noakhaliweb.com.bd

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Deep condolence for the Sadr victims. May Almighty give the family members of victims enough strength to recover from this great loss soon. Let us extend our hand to them the way we can.

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[noakhaliweb] Noakhali Web News Published in The Daily 'Prothom Alo' & 'Amardesh'

09 January 2008

Daily Prothom Alo

http://www.prothom-alo.com/mcat.news.details.php?nid=NzcyODI=&mid=MTE=

Daily Amardesh

http://www.amardeshbd.com/sub_section.php?issueID=671&sub_section_id=17&NewsID=154294&NewsType=bistarito

Thanking You

Mohiuddin Sabbir

Sub Editor, Noakhali Web

www.noakhaliweb.com.bd

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[greater_noakhali] The way you look at it............

If our vision is narrow, we will see the partial thing…….
 
So, lets widen our vision and see the full view…… follow the link below......
 
 
Thanks….
Olin


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Deep condolence for the Sadr victims. May Almighty give the family members of victims enough strength to recover from this great loss soon. Let us extend our hand to them the way we can.

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[greater_noakhali] Some free market lesson for all of us

Some free market lesson for all of us

The following article is being forwarded to those of our past and present policy-makers who thinks free market economy is something that brings welfare automatically. There is a growing evidence and thoughts in support of the idea that free market economy has brought welfare to the people when it was (and when it is) managed (fine-tuned) properly.

Pictures of the past policy-makers like Mr. Saifur Rahman and Dr. Osman Faruq should be hanged upside down in our current policy-makers' offices and houses to remind them that what has been practiced in the name of free market in last couple of years were stupidity. It did not help either the policy makers nor the people in general. Probably Adam Smith wasn't so sure about free economy as was our previous policymakers. It is our hope that current policymakers takes the context of the situation into consideration to make sure that they do not taint a very successful policy (in general terms) by not guiding it properly. With all the hue and cry, US economy is probably still more protected than many other economies of the world, many in the world might aruge. The Indian economy is another example of how to manage an economy while the body language is still in favour of free market.

Policy-making in the real life scenario is not a lab where you do something and expect that some good will happen. Policy making is about making sure (with some reasonable uncertainty) that the target clients are benefited out of the policies.  

This article should act as a guideline for the economists in the current interim government and other govt. agencies to take some bold decisions to ensure peoples welfare - in the short term and as well as medium to long term. Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, Dr. Mirza Azizul Haque, Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed - among others - should take note.
 
If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columinsts in regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence.
 
Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line
 
============ ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= =====
Note: This is a freelance column, published mainly in different internet based forums. This column is open for contribution by the members of new generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 71. If you identify yourself as someone from that age-group and want to contribute to this column, please feel free to contact. Thanks to the group moderator for publishing the article.
============ ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ======
 
 
Economists question dominance of free-market ideas
By Patricia Cohen
Published: July 11, 2007


Source:
http://www.iht. com/articles /2007/07/11/ business/ economics .php

NEW YORK:

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy.

But in recent months, economists have engaged in an impassioned debate over the way their specialty is taught in universities around the United States, and practiced in Washington. They are questioning the profession's most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy.

"There is much too much ideology," said Alan Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is "often a triumph of theory over fact."

Blinder helped kindle the discussion by publicly warning in speeches and articles this year that as many as 30 million to 40 million Americans could lose their jobs to lower-paid workers abroad.

Just by raising doubts about the unmitigated benefits of free trade, he made headlines and had colleagues rubbing their eyes in astonishment.

"What I've learned is anyone who says anything even obliquely that sounds hostile to free trade is treated as an apostate," Blinder said.

And free trade is not the only sacred subject, Blinder and other like-minded economists say. Most efforts to intervene in the markets - like setting a minimum wage, instituting industrial policy or regulating prices - are viewed askance by mainstream economists, as are analyses that do not rely on mathematical modeling.

That attitude, the critics argue, has seriously harmed the discipline, suppressing original, creative thinking and distorting policy debates.

"You lose your ticket as a certified economist if you don't say any kind of price regulation is bad and free trade is good," said David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has done groundbreaking research on the effect of the minimum wage.

Most economists are still devoted to what is known as the neoclassical model. Philip Reny, chairman of the economics department at the University of Chicago - the temple of free-market economics - said the theory and methods were "taught to avoid personal biases and conclusions that aren't found in the data."

Like any science, he said, the field changes course slowly: "It requires evidence, and if evidence is there, it will accumulate and positions will move." He added, "I personally have a lot of faith in the discipline."

But as issues like income inequality, free trade and protectionism have become part of the presidential candidates' stump speeches, more thinkers have joined the debate.

In addition to Blinder, other eminent economists like Lawrence Summers and the Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof have pointed out what they see as the failings of laissez-faire economics.


"Economists can't pretend that the consensus for free markets and free trade that existed 30 years ago is still here," said Robert Reich, a public policy professor at Berkeley who served in President Bill Clinton's cabinet.

Part of the reason is the growing income inequality and dislocation that global markets and a revolution in communications have helped create. Economists who question the free-market theories "want to speak to the reality of our time," Reich said.

Meanwhile, critics have also pointed out the limits of standard cost-benefit accounting to measure items like the cost of inequality or damage to the ecosystem.

The degree to which economists wander from the mainstream varies widely.

Dani Rodrik, an economist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, for instance, said, "I fall into the methods of the mainstream, but not the faith," which he defines as the belief that more markets and free trade are always good and government regulation is always bad.

Thinkers like these may come up with controversial ideas but are hardly marginalized. Other economists, however, go much further, and try to chip away at the field's underlying theoretical foundations. So while Blinder, Card and Rodrik might be considered mere heretics, this second group has earned the label "heterodox."

Although the meaning of the term is slippery, Frederic Lee, an economist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who edits the Heterodox Economics Newsletter, says it refers to those who reject the neoclassical model, which Milton Friedman helped create, and which Ronald Reagan championed when he took over the White House.

Reny and others point out that the increasing popularity in the mainstream of behavioral economics, which looks at people's complex psychological reactions to events, has offered a fuller picture of how consumers operate in the marketplace. Still, Lee criticizes neoclassical economics for maintaining that the market, if left alone, would ultimately find a happy balance.

He also takes the discipline to task for relying on abstract theories and mathematical modeling instead of observation and sociological analysis.

In Lee's view, for example, oil companies - not the natural workings of the market - determine gas prices.

According to his estimates, 5 to 10 percent of America's 15,000 economists are heterodox, which includes an array of professors on the right and the left (post-Keynesians, Marxists, feminists and social economists).

Heterodox economists complain that they are almost completely shut out by their more influential neoclassical colleagues who dominate most American university departments and prestigious peer-reviewed journals that are essential to gaining tenure.

There are a few university departments where these iconoclasts are welcome, like Amherst in Massachusetts, the New School in New York and Lee's home base, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, but these are exceptions.

The New York Times

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Deep condolence for the Sadr victims. May Almighty give the family members of victims enough strength to recover from this great loss soon. Let us extend our hand to them the way we can.

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[greater_noakhali] Truth Commission - a dysfunctional aspect and some thoughts

Truth Commission - a dysfunctional aspect and some thoughts
Could this become a liability for the nation and for the society, too?


The system of caretaker government was proposed, fought for and
eventaully implemented with a good intention. The expectation was
that it will solve the conflict between political parties and prevent
the systemic irregularities in our election system. However, there
was a definite dysfunction aspect of the system which our the-then
politicians didn't see, couldn't anticape or didn't have the capacity
to think or at the least, they could care less to think!


So, we know what happened as a result. To solve a problem within the
politicians (their lack of moral and tolerance), we asked for help
from our justices. That did not solve the problem. Rather the choice
of justices became so skewed that they became the problem, in
addition to the politicians. Many of them are still problem, as
evident from the speeches of the Cheif Justice.

Our point is - instead of solving the problem at the root, we wanted
to hide the problem with the help of the justices. The hiding was
successful, temporarily, but eventually, it corrupted our place of
dependence - it corrupted our justice system itself.

This is a old story - we all know this. Still, we wanted to do the
analysis to make aware of the issue.

The idea of truth commisison is not new - as it was in the case of
caretaker government. However, the context of in which the idea of
Truth Commission is being implemented here or is being planned to
implement, that context is unique.

In our view, there are two major justication for such an effort.
First and foremost, to make use of alternative tactics to reduce the
tremendous pressure that our justice system is currently going
through. Second, to give a section of the offending parties a second
chance with a view that they would become good and contributing, law-
abiding citizens of the country.

Very good objectives.

But what is not being discussed is the dysfunctional aspects or
possibilities of this inititative. Who is responsible to think about
that?

Let us mention few of the possibilities:

1. If they are pardoned with financial penalties, they will become
new, smarter corrupts. Make no mistake - it does not matter how much
you fine them, they will create new wealth with more sophisticated
crimes, but in a protected legal environement.

2. It is the network of connection that is their strength, not the
wealth. If you take the wealth from them, even if you take all of
them, that would not be an issue. Wealth is the just an outcome of
their strength, not the strength itself.

3. So, if you want to weaken them, it is the network that you have to
break. How? Thats your job to find out.

4. Without weakening them, if you allow them to compete in elections,
that will be too dangerous. This should not and must not happen.

5. Without weakening them, if you do not allow them to compete in
elections, that might be even more dangerours. Basically, the truth
commission beneficiaries will become the elite of the new mafia in
Bangladesh. They will eventually increase the size of underground
economy. There is a chance that they will create dummy candidates,
just like Hasina and Khaleda (during their early days), who will be
controlled behind the scene.

6. The basic assumption that they will start behaving is totally
wrong. It is not about race or something like that. It is about
power, money. It is basic to the human nature.

7. If the truth commission were to be successful, it has to punish
them in a way that is less stressful to the society. The punishment
may be light, but it has to be enduring - it should not end. What
kind of punishment that could be?

8. Teaching in road-side community schools? Personally watering a
portion of the city roads for life or at least for reasonalble number
of years? Being under continous audio and video survilence for a good
number of years? This audio and video should be made public property
and make them available for researchers, behaviorual scientists?
There could be many more enduring but light punishment that people
can suggest - if the commission asks for such ideas through a public
announcement.

9. The basic idea is if you pardon or reduce punishment, that is
fine. But you have to make sure they do not retain the capabilities
to do harm to the society again, if they wish to. Do not assume that
they will become feresta. But if you can fight them, let them go with
less punishment. But make sure they are weakened.

10. Do not repeat the the mistake that was done while planning and
designing the Caretaker System.

Even if it is a stop-gap measure, it might have long-term
implications for the country. Just look at the problems arising from
not completing the job of trying the war criminals!

If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time,
please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columinsts in
regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an
ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media,
discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and
give due diligence.

Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line

============ ========= ========= ========= =========

Deep condolence for the Sadr victims. May Almighty give the family members of victims enough strength to recover from this great loss soon. Let us extend our hand to them the way we can.

[Disclaimer: Any posting to this group is the opinion of the author himself. Authors of the messages to the Group are responsible for the accuracy of their information and the conformance of their material with applicable copyright and other laws. Many people will read your post, and it will be archived for a very long time. The act of posting indicates the subscriber's agreement to accept the adjudications of the moderator]

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