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According to Wikipedia, he is a mathematician at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Here is his homepage hosted by the university. Maybe he was a night watchman, but it looks to me like he's a professor now...

Considering costs of between US$50 billion and US$70 billion for the 1991 Gulf War, arms purchases since the war of around US$50 billion, and approximately US$26 billion lost in aid to Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the Saudi economic position can be pictured as one that was not enjoying good health for the decade 1985-95.

> My first thought would be Diplomacy, since success in that game is based on communication, deal-making and -breaking, and manipulating others for personal gain.

Which AI agents already do.

> There is currently a Diplomacy AI project based on negotiation-free (nopress) play

You're a bit behind the times.

When I did my B.Sc. (85-88), there was a computerized Diplomacy game run by Sarit Kraus that included AI agents as well as human players. All negotiantions were done on-line using a formal language that proved to be surprisingly expressive. One did not know who the other players were (or even whether they were human) until the game ended.

I only participated in one game. At the end, we found out that there were 4 human players and 3 AI agents (playing independently), one of which won the game.

I believe that Sarit and others made some progress in the 15 or so years that passed since then.

It follows that multinational corporations and foreign institutions investing in the developing world and dependent on collaboration with the indigenous people may profit from preserving indigenous ritual practices and the environment in which they take place. The well-documented water temple system of Bali represents a case in point (see Lansing, 1991, for an authoritative study). A lake in a volcanic crater on the island as well as the rains that run off of the volcano irrigate Bali's rice fields. The Balinese have developed what has proven to be an ingenious cooperative system of aqueducts to supply water in equitable amounts to the surrounding farmers. At the heart of this coordinated effort lies an indigenous religion that worships, among other deities, Dewi Danu, the goddess of the waters emanating from the volcano in whose honor an immense temple stands at the volcano's summit. Smaller temples for worship are located at every branch of the irrigation system and at the fields onto which the aqueducts empty.

The wisdom and success of the Balinese water temple system became clear when the Asian Development Bank imposed a farming alternative on the Balinese in the 1980s. The Asian Development Bank concluded in 1988 that, "The substitution of the "high technology and bureaucratic" solution proved counter-productive and was the major factor behind the yield and cropped areas declines experienced between 1982 and 1985 ... The cost of the lack of appreciation of the merits of the traditional regime has been high. Project experience highlights the fact that the irrigated rice terraces of Bali form a complex artificial ecosystem which has been recognized locally over centuries" (quoted from Lansing, 1991, p. 124).

Lansing, J. S. (1991) "Priests and Programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali ", Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leviatan, U., H. Oliver, J. Quarter (1998)

blog-O-rama

Why on earth would corrupt Texas oil men want to promote fuel efficient vehicles? Since most of the crude oil comes from overseas the big american oil companies make money based on how much oil they refine. If production or consumption slows, OPEC will simply raise the price of oil and keep the same profit margin. In fact it's in their best interest to slow production so they can keep the golden goose alive as long as possible.

Ok that covers Dick and Dumbya. Now as to government momentum as a whole is concerned. I have been starting to think that perhaps the strategy that the US government is taking is to use up all foriegn oil as soon as possible. The OPEC nations(sans venezuela) are all despotic regimes. As such they tend to spend a lot of money suppressing their people and retaining power. None of these countries seem to be planning for a future without oil. If the oil stoped flowing tomorrow, what would these countries do for income? Would the US be interested in holding Israel back any longer? All ambivalence about Israel would surely vanish and our "friendly" relations with the Saudis would evaporate as quickly. Let's look at the Saudi situation for a moment. People usually think the Saudis are extremely rich but what most people don't realize is that Saudi Arabia has been running a huge deficit.

The Saudi royal family has had to deal with a great deal of opposition in the last few years and it has been increaingly difficult to appease or suppress the public. Certainly their dealings with the west do not go over well with saudi subjects, yet their diplomats continue to tell us that they have their people's support. It's clear that they have conflicting desires, they need our money but they would also like to cut our throats. Likewise I think the US government is more interested in keeping the region only marginally stable, enough to keep the middle eastern leaders preoccupied while we buy up all the oil. And convince them to spend their profits on our weapons, to use on each other of course.

Cat

Also, 61cm is no big deal to the government; the government has long had access to much better equipment than civilians have access to. The US govmnt has been doing this sort of thing since the 60's, it's only recently that it's become available to the public. This is partially because of government restrictions and treaties (sorry for the old link, I haven't kept up on this sort of stuff), but also because of the costs involved.