Time to Revisit China's and the World's Foreign Currency Exchange Rates

Watching how a change in the amount one country's currency, such as a US dollar, can buy of another country's currency, such as Chinese yuan, illustrates globalization at work. Currency exchange rates certainly demonstrate how countries are interconnected.

     What brings this subject to mind (after it was addressed in the earlier post, "When to Buy/Sell in the World Market") is today's Chinese devaluation of its currency by about 2% against the US dollar. Based on information in the earlier post, kids who have an interest in finance might conclude China was attempting to reduce the price of its exports in order to compete with lower priced goods from other countries. China's imports of luxury goods and electronics from the US would cost more, and US tourists in China would get more for their money.

     In the past, China selected a midpoint currency conversion rate that fluctuated between 2% above or below the US dollar. As a result of China's first devaluation, the US dollar could buy 6.22 yuan compared to 6.11 the day before. The next day the value of the yuan dropped a little over 4%, but that is nothing like the 20% to 40% devaluation that would be needed to compete with much lower priced competitors like Vietnam or Burma. Although China did not want to risk losing investment capital that would exit a country whose currency has this kind of weak buying power, subsequent devaluations have caused capital to flee.

     The truth is, demand is weak within China, as shown by Alibaba's slowed quarterly growth. China's $50 billion canal project in Nicaragua has been put on hold until 2016. While no reason was given, the stock market dip has caused the fortune of Wang Jing, CEO of the HKND Group funding the canal, to fall from $10.2 billion to $1.1 billion. Yet, in December, 2015, President Xi Jinping announced China would be giving Africa emergency food and $60 billion in grants and loans.

     Weak demand throughout the world is hurting all exporters, including South Korea and Taiwan. Countries that depend on their commodity exports to China are especially hard hit as reported in the later post entry, "Falling Commodity Prices Spur Diversification in Emerging Markets." A 2% currency devaluation and even a 20% devaluation will not cure sluggish worldwide industrial and consumer demand.

   

   

   

   

   

Girls of All Sizes and Cultural Backgrounds Can Be Smart

Kids always have loved playing with dolls, but the dolls have changed from country to country and throughout the years. Today, four dolls from MGA Entertainment have different cultural backgrounds, but they all are smart. Each doll comes with an experiment kit that can create a working volcano, lava light, glow stick necklace, or blueprint for a skateboard using ingredients kids have in their homes.

These new dolls are sold at Walmart, Toys "R" Us, Amazon, Kmart, and Joann Fabrics and Crafts. A Netflix Original series, titled Project MC2, features four girls, inspired by the dolls, who join a top secret spy organization.

For other examples of girls doing great things, see the earlier posts, "Break into a Happy Dance" and "Girl Power?"

Games Techies Play

LEGOs, videogames, robots, and drones blur the line between play and war. Consider the 45 foot by 44 foot Star Wars X-wing fighters built from LEGOs (See the documentary film "A LEGO Brickumentary."), the "Battlezone" videogame that the U.S. Army has used as a simulator to train tank operators, wars between "BattleBots" on TV, and drone races in soccer fields on Saturday afternoons.

     With theatrical lighting, announcer commentary, and brackets worthy of college basketball's "March Madness" in the U.S., home made "BattleBots" fight robot wars on television. Some "BattleBots" are works of art, but other determined teams only create spinning, crushing, jabbing, remote-controlled machines in order to destroy their opponents.

     To navigate the cones and pylons that mark a drone race course, pilots wear first-person-view (FPV) video goggles, rely on a live camera feed, and use joy sticks that control the pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle of their tricky-to-fly, remote controlled quadcopters (four-propeller drones). A segment on the TODAY show June 1, 2016 claimed drone competitions are going to be the next big thing. Find out more at droneworlds.com and dronenationals.com.

     Where can techies learn to be "playful?" Try the maker spaces mentioned in the earlier blog posts, "I Made This Myself" and "Robots for Good."

   

What Do Starbucks and ISIS Have in Common?

Whether you're friendless in a big city or big school, you're going to be drawn to a welcoming environment. Baristas who greet you by name and remember your order and organizations that promise boyfriends and a purpose in life have found the secret of success. They are not going to point out the down sides associated with what they offer.

     What can be done to counteract the lure of terrorist groups and gangs? Offer positive alternatives for bonding in sports teams, theater productions, church choirs, robot competitions. Provide classes in school and out that teach skills directly related to landing a good-paying career. Publicize internships that provide experience, not just in taking orders, but in an environment that invites them to contribute ideas and to learn to lead in a way that doesn't offend others.

     Separation of church and state need not be interpreted to rule out studying world religions in schools. Unless myths about Catholics, Muslims, Jewish people, Buddhists, and other religious followers are dispelled, these falsehoods will continue to undercut positive beliefs that can foster tolerance. Just as the Internet can be used to bully and promote violence, techies can use social media to muster posses that post cartoons, jokes, and songs that focus on fun and inclusion. What stylish young woman who works out to keep her figure trim and who keeps up on the latest mascara, nail polish, and hair and skin care advice really wants her boyfriend to demand she wear a burka?

Does the Technological Age Require Too Much Work?

We all know it's easier to take a selfie than to do math homework. Yet this age of rapid technological advances and big data requires close attention.

    But there is a temptation to blindly accept accelerated technological developments, because understanding the pros, and especially the cons, of vaccines, smartphones, and other scientific and engineering marvels is more difficult than doing math. It even is difficult for human subjects of a drug experiment to read, much less understand, things like the side effects they might develop.

     Blind acceptance is a major mistake, especially for kids around the world who have an aptitude and interest in asking questions to help them understand how things work and for kids who want to control what Wendell Wallach calls technology: A Dangerous Master.

     Even without reading Wallach's new book, parents, teachers, and young people can begin observing proposed and implemented new technological developments:

•  self-driving cars
• genetic engineering
• virtual reality
• 3D printers, some of which can create human tissue and bone 
• stem cells
• military robots
• drones
• nanomaterials

What are these gadgets and breakthroughs expected to do? How will they affect each of us? How will a complex sociotechnical system function successfully when it requires technological components to work together with people, institutions, environments, values, and existing social practices?

     Wallach points out how humans are responsible for making the correct responses when a piece of space junk is about to hit the International Space Station or when automated stock trading systems and safety controls for nuclear reactors fail. The trouble is: pressure to derive economic benefits from growth hormones or the desire for political, personal, and other payoffs can cause scientists and engineers to underestimate the probability of unanticipated events and even to have no idea of what the probability of something like an oil spill from drilling in the Arctic might be.

     Wallach stresses the necessity of creating a critical mass of informed citizens and scholars willing and able to raise concerns about technological developments, their impact on society, and the time needed to design adequate safety mechanisms. Informed young people are living at a time when they have opportunities to make their concerns known: in classrooms, at town meetings, through their social media networks, in contacts with political representatives, through call-in programs, in surveys and polls, by writing letters to editors, at science fairs, and by writing blogs.



     

     

 

Australian Report Links Indonesian Pilots to Islamic Militants

A recent Australian report about Indonesian pilots with ISIS ties raises questions about a possible relationship to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March, 2014.
(See earlier post, "Who Needs International Expertise?")

     According to the Australian report, Ridwan Agustin was a proud Indonesian pilot who flew AirAsia flights to Hong Kong and Singapore prior to September, 2014. Thereafter, he changed his name to Ridwan Ahmad Indonesty and began expressing support for ISIS. AirAsia stated the company no longer employed Ridwan Agustin and his wife, Diah Suci Wulandari, a flight attendant, but refused to provide details of the flight routes they flew.

      By March, 2015, the Australian Federal Police reported Ridwan listed his location as Raqqa, Syria. Since 2012, an estimated 500 people have traveled from Indonesia to the Middle East, including Iraq and Syria, to join terrorist groups estimated to now total 800 ISIS radicals in Indonesia. A weekly report for March 3-10, 2015 from the National Counter Terrorism Center mentioned Malaysians and Indonesians had formed a joint weapons training unit, Majmu'ah al'Arkhabiliy, commanded by ISIS in Raqqa, Syria.

     Access to and knowledge of aviation security and safety makes radicalized pilots a serious threat. Some 300 pilots, flight attendants, flight instructors, radar and air traffic controllers, and ground crew from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Switzerland, Germany, France, the Middle East, UK, and USA exchange information on Instagram and Facebook.

     There are five known ISIS recruiting centers in Indonesia, one of which was responsible for killing 202 people in the 2002 Bali bombing. Another attack in Bali occurred in 2005. Reports are pending for a crash by AirAsia Airbus 320 en route to Singapore that killed 155 plus the crew in December, 2014 and for an Indonesian military airplane crash in July, 2015 that killed at least 135.

     An Indonesian military-trained pilot, Tommy Hendratno (also known as Tomi Aby Alfatih), who had known connections to Ridwan Agustin and who expressed concern for the plight of Muslims and support for ISIS, flew private charter and commercial flights to Bali, Malaysia, and Dubai for Premiair before he quit the company on June 1, 2015. He had attended three training sessions (the last one in February, 2015) in the US at Flight Safety International in St. Louis, Missouri.

   

   

Break into a Happy Dance

What do festivals and weddings include? Dancing. Whether dancers are doing a Mexican Hat Dance or Horah to the tune of Hava Nagila at a Jewish wedding, there's a smile on everyone's face. Through the years, the same happy attitude has accompanied the slow graceful French minuet, spirited Italian tarantella, Virginia Reel from Scotland, Irish step dancing, Poland's mazurka and polka, the Sailor's hornpipe, clogging, square dancing, and break dancing by b-boys on the street. Colorful costumes often add to the joy.

  When Michaela DePrince was a hungry little girl living in an orphanage in Sierra Leone, Africa, she saw a magazine picture of a happy ballerina standing on her toes and wearing a pink dress. To be happy, she thought, I want to be like that girl. Defying all expectations, she was adopted and, carrying the picture of the happy ballerina with her, she came to the United States. As soon as her new momma saw the picture, she said, "You will dance." Ballet classes followed, and Ms. DePrince, now one of the few black ballerinas in the world, dances with the Dutch National Ballet. She tells her story in Ballerina Dreams.

     Misty Copeland, who just became the first female African-American principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater's 75-year history, is another happy ballerina. Her memoir, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, tells how she pursued her career despite beginning ballet lessons at, for a ballerina, the advanced age of 13.

     Dancing is for the very young and very old. Multicultural Kids (multiculturalkids.com) offers children All Time Favorite Dances on DVD and CD formats and international tunes for dancing on Ella Jenkins Multicultural Children's Songs and I Have a Dream World Music for Children by Daria. Making conversation with two elderly women at a party, I asked how they met. "At folk dancing," one said, and, on the spot, she did a few steps to show me one of their dances. At the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the Ko-Thi Dance Company (ko-thi.org) gives children and adults lessons in traditional dances from Africa and the Caribbean on Saturday mornings. For world travelers, trips can include learning a few steps after watching hula dancers in Hawaii or girls performing the classic Khmer apsara in Cambodia. Trip planners at AAA.com/TravelAgent promise travelers to Argentina will never forget their private dance lessons at an authentic tango house in Buenos Aires.