The new corporate trend: “onshoring”

Ha! What did I tell you? It is wayyy past my bedtime and I should be sleeping (especially since I’m sick and feel like I’ve been run over by a truck), but just stumbled on an interesting article from one of my favorite economic development blogs: Design Nine. He points to an article in the journalgazette.net.

Recall that in the midst of all the market doom and gloom, I recently said:

I’m actually ironically optimistic about the outlook for suburban and rural economic development. A weaker dollar will make outsourcing less attractive. That will bring manufacturing jobs back home. I can imagine a boon in suburban and rural development. Just imagine if communities developed decent broadband via fiber-to-the-home/business. Suddenly, there will be attractive jobs and living standards in affordable places.

I admit that the quote is a bit misleading because Andrew Cohill has influenced the way I think about things, but still timely I think. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Small-town America: The new Bangalore?

[snip]

Onshoring, in fact, is becoming trendy.

Some U.S. companies recently have pulled back from India to set up shop in rural areas where access to high-speed broadband connections isn’t the problem it was just a few years ago and where lower real-estate prices and wages are attractive.

Note that the key to onshoring is an investment in telecommunications infrastructure. In particular, fiber-to-the-home. It is quite sad to see so many municipalities rest their hopes on wireless broadband. That will only end in tears as the reality of wireless broadband becomes apparent. Any community that is not investing now in fiber will lose out on an important opportunity that is now beginning to present itself: onshoring. As Andrew will tell you more eloquently than I could, an intelligent investment in a communities future MUST involve a combination of both fiber and wireless and I would put wireless as a distant second. I can explain in gory detail why wireless will fail if you like (I did my PhD in the subject), but for now need to hit the sack.

Go onshoring! Go USA!

Thousands of seabirds found dead in southeastern US

Hmm… this story appeared on one of my CCD RSS feeds this morning:

Thousands of Seabirds Found Dead in Southeastern U.S

Excerpts (my emphasis in bold):

From all appearances, the birds are starving to death. But no one can say exactly why. “Some feel it’s a natural phenomenon,” Watson says, but he has doubts. “I think the thing that has caused some of us to question this is that it appears to be occurring more frequently.”

[snip]

They may have lacked food when they were being raised as chicks, he says, or just after they left the nest. He speculates that the timing of food availability could have been off, or that the young birds may have missed the feeding locations, en route.

Whenever I hear stories like this, e.g. bees not finding their way back to the hive, birds not finding feeding grounds along the migration path, my thoughts always come back to navigation and the impact that electromagnetic radiation can have on it.

It is undeniable that both bees and many birds use magnetic fields for navigational purposes. It is also undeniable that wireless internet devices, e.g. Wi-Fi routers, data intensive cell phones, iPhone, etc., have greatly increased in popularity. Not only is the proliferation of wireless devices of concern, but it my opinion, the frequencies of that radiation is different than it has been historically. There is a lot more electromagnetic noise in the frequency range greater than 1 GHz these days. For example, Wi-Fi, WiBRO, and WiMAX operate at 2.5 GHz (the same as your microwave oven).

Colony collapse disorder and the sun’s magnetic poles

I just read the craziest suggestion ever to explain colony collapse disorder

Do you think that the sun changing magnetic poles affected bees?

Or is it?

CCD and electromagnetic radiation

As I was saying, I’m not so sure that electromagnetic radiation should be so easily dismissed as a possible cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Colony collapse disorder

Colony collapse disorder is another issue I blabber about to anyone who will listen. I remember the first time I heard about it was on the way to work in an interview with May Berenbaum (Go Illini!!) on NPR.

Bee Deaths, Loss of Navigation Cause Concern

The first thought that ran through my head was the possible impact of electromagnetic radiation on the bee’s ability to navigate. When I got to a computer, it didn’t take long to determine that electromagnetic radiation can in fact impact the ability of the bee to navigate similar to the way some birds use the earth’s magnetic field for navigation.