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When did South Africa join NATO?

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/nat...

Oh, it didn't.

http://www.nationsonline.org/o...

First world is NATO aligned countries, second world is Soviet aligned countries, and third world is non aligned countries. You don't rise into the first world by improving conditions in the country, you do it by joining alliances.

[PedantMode=On]

The various "worlds" are political, not an economic delimitation.

"After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with contrary views on government and the politically correct society:

1 - The bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, the "First World".
2 - The Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World".
3 - The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."" (source)

Third-world countries are often - but not always - developing or less wealthy countries, but also includes nations such as Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, both of which have relatively strong economies.

America by definition can never be anything but a First World country. It's just slowly shifting from an economic powerhouse to one that is in its decline.

[PedantMode=Off]

This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity.

I only take issue with this one statement.

Hopefully that charity is not in the form of free food. That way leads to more poverty, suffering and starvation [1].

(There's also a whole argument on how population will always rise to a limiting cap and how education and Women's rights is creating a cap lower than breeding-until-we-starve or war-ourselves-out. I'd rather focus on the free food fallacy.)

How? Once farmers can afford a better future for themselves and their children then can afford some labor saving devices, those huge populations to till the soil disappear. They can't when their livelihood is undermined by 'charity.'

Let's use the out of date first/second/third world country model, since it fits closest to the breakdown in your argument [2].

It is not the relatively wealthy people living in cities who are staving, but the poor farmers who cannot farm competitively with free food given in terms of 'charity.'

Compared to every other labor-intensive industry, farming sucks:

• needs a lot of land
• needs lots of water (often of drinking quality)
• high future risk
• mandatory large labor pool with neither the free time to improve themselves when in demand or income at all when not in demand.
• the product (food) ships poorly and spoils readily when stored

Even in the "first world" the farmers are heavily subsidized to protect their non-competitive industry [3].

The only real reason to farm (or ranch) is that you cannot get food any other way. (Queue meme about "Star Trek replicators and the post-farming society.")

The only African countries with first-world type wages have barred these 'charity' food dumps and have protectionism for their farmers. Food is expensive there, but then people are not starving due to collapsed local farming industry. (This excludes countries like the Republic of Congo which has incredible wage disparity and a Petroleum based economy.) The old story of an American farmer's child going to the big city to make their fortune seems to work in Africa as well.

The key to bringing a "third world" country out of the third world is to first not destroy its indigenous markets [4]. Then the population curve works out like other industrialized nations as farming efficiency improves and farming becomes a marginalized industry. (Unless you somehow think Africans are different from all other people.)

Dumping McDonald's leftovers onto people never solved anyone's problems yesterday and it won't start solving them tomorrow either [5].

How about scholarships to improve the education of ex-farmers and get them out of what is a dead-end career so they can feed their families?

1. 1. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba547
2. 2. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm
3. 3. http://www.cfact.org/a/2134/Commonsense-wisdom-from-African-farmers
4. 4. http://econlib.org/library/Enc/AgriculturalSubsidyPrograms.html
5. 5. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/it-just-aint-so/ending-farm-subsidies-wouldnt-help-the-third-world-it-just-aint-so/

unlawful to hinder free speech is the best

What if the US isn't doing the best job of defending free speech?

The UN charter states explicitly that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers" From 1948, in it's non legally binding charter, and essentially the same thing in its legally binding agreements that only about 150 countries have signed on to.

Press Freedom from 2005 puts the US at 44th, and significantly lower than say, denmark, finland etc. So why shouldn't one of those countries get control of the internet then, since they are demonstrably more free than the US.

. The UN is over-stepping its bounds; it's supposed to be

The UN is supposed to be whatever the member states want it to be. That's how democracy works. If all of the member states agree that every tuesday everyone in the world has to wear a pink hat, then that can be made binding law. The UN has a collection of agencies of varying efficiency and effectiveness that are tasked with making sure people are fed, that there are international telecommunications standards, that Aircraft all conform to certain guidelines, that there are labour, education and human rights standards everywhere and so on. Now obviously if people don't want to do anything to uphold those rules then the UN doesn't have any capacity to act on its own. Just the same as if the south in the US tried to bring back Jim Crow laws the federal government would have to decide what, if anything, it was prepared to do about it.

As you can clearly see, the southern U.S. is in fact much more populated than 95% of the southern hemisphere.

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/world_population.htm

Learn something outside the U.S. before trying to call other people on geography, yeah?

Thanks for playing though.

Can't we come up with something better than an aircraft carrier for comparison? Does NASA have a list of comparison objects that says "400m = Aircraft Carrier"? First, aircraft carriers are about 330m x 75m x 20m. This thing is a 400m sphere, so it's a whole lot more massive. This thing would probably be a better comparison even though it's only 305m across. Anyone know any good rocks or holes on google earth that are 400m across?

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/world_population.htm

The US and Australia are not analogous in population density. Not. Even. Close.

If you are over the age of 15, you should know something about the cold war. Since your UID is lower than mine, I can safely assume you didn't join this site at the age of 9.

[citation needed] indeed

Was that so hard?

Actually, if you look at just the cities and not the muti-city metroplexes, it is indeed in the top 25 in terms of populations.

It is #19 in terms of city proper population.

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/most_pop_cities_usa.htm

Japan is not the most densely populated country of the world, see this map of population density; or this list of countries by population density. There has to be something else that causes this.

Even though I agree with your post in general, Mexico is not considered a third world contry. According to Wikipedia, Mexico is a Newly Industrialized Country (NIC). This may not matter much, but I think it weakens your argument somewhat.

China isn't the third world. What gave you that idea? The world classifications come more from political alignment in the cold-war. In that respect, China is very much "Second World", but they hold an large amount of economic power.

Giving out first-world encyclopedia can be culturally harmful to third-world countries. It would be very interesting, if they did have access, to see what information they would add or whether they would even be interested in adding anything.

Relative to Seoul
Sao Paulo
Mumbai
Jakarta
Karachi
Moscow
Istanbul
Mexico City
Shanghai
Tokyo
New York City
Bangkok
Beijing
and Delhi

I don't think that I can agree that there are areas in the US that are communist or not allied with the US. Its a political definition, not an ecomonic one. Allthough, Berkley does have its own leanings... http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_ countries.htm

No, it actually refers to communist versus democratic countries. 1st world countries are either "within the sphere of US interest" or were democratic and somewhat allied in the cold war. Second World countries are communist. Third world countries are not in either sphere of influence. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_ countries.htm

The country became a first world country only during the last 10 years

That's odd. The Cold War has been over for 10+ years.

First, Second and Third world designations are NOT economic designations! They were used during the Cold War to describe the various alliances and blocs. The "First World" was the US/Western Europe and anyone allied with them. The "Second World" was USSR/East Europe and sometimes China. The "Third World" was everyone else. Since most poorer nations had their own problems to worry about, they did not get involved in the Cold War and were designated Third World countries. This led to the incorrect assumption that Third World = poor, First World = rich, and somewhere along the way Second World just got dropped.

Actually French is spoken in France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco, Luxembourg and large part of Africa.

It is also spoken in the USA in Louisiana.

French is the official language in 40 countries.

But you are probably American right? And you also think that Switzerland and Sweden are the same country? (A very common mistake when I was living in the States).

The concept has been arround for a while.
see here or here for examples.

Conversely I have never heard of old world vs new world except where it comes to speciation. Of course, not living in the old world or the new world might cut down my exposure. :-)

I know other parts of the world don't respect free speach as we 'try' to in the US but this is horrible.
You could have used another country as an example for the respect for freedom of speech and of press.
A current index places the US in place 17.

Here are some lists I found

first world list

second world list

third world list

Here are some lists I found

first world list

second world list

third world list

Here are some lists I found

first world list

second world list

third world list

"41.2% are Brazilians and 23.5% are Americans"

Sorry, I missed the episode when Brazil was evicted from America

Sorry dude, but "Republique Francaise" isn't the name of my country. France is however.

While France may be the short form name of your country, the long form name of your country is actually La Republique Franciase. Did you know your country is a republic? Maybe you should check
here (see "Official Name" on right) or here (see Local Long Form), or here, a French Government site.

Maybe it's time for you to learn a bit about your own country. And I can site a few hundred more examples if you'd like, as well as plenty for "Repubblica Italiana". So, before you start telling me what's wrong with the name of MY country, get familiar with the name of your own!

Fat lot of good being a Rhodes scholar did for Clinton's intellectual reputation! But speaking of low grades...

Bush got higher grades at Yale than Gore did, despite Gore getting into Yale through his father's senatorial connections!

Some references: (Yes, the last one is a link to a conservative site. Gasp!):

Nations Online
Quest for the Presidency
Larry Elder

In other countries, however, including western countries like Germany and France, freedom of expression is non-existant -- you may only say what the government allows you to say. In the two countries I've mentioned, it's not much of a problem, because they've basically only banned racist expressions. (emphasis mine)

Now I would not state that I live in a state as described by Eric Frank Russell, quote: "Anarchy in action - an excellent model of an anarchist or free society", but still - a little more precision might be appropriate (even on /. where there presumably are also some who are responsible for all the fine documentation ... erm). .

According to the Worldwide press freedom index (yes, of course it is biased, yes, the social sciences are fuzzy, blahh...) Germany ranks 7, the US comes in at 17 (France is at 11).

CC.

Actually Japan IS a third world nation along with the swiss. For a similar but differing view look here

According to my sources your definition is not correct.

The phrase is pretty much universally used in this sense. Most think the phrase originated from some writer in France, and the terms parallel the French First, Second, and Third estates.

In the grand scheme of things Europe is small potatoes. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is. So is North and South America. Asia is the new superpower continent. With China and India coming in at 2.2 billion people or so. Asia is estimated at 3.7 billion people, over half of the world's population. Japan seems like a much more logical choice if it's based on "useful" places, whatever that really is.

World Populations

This is a mater of debate!

From here

The origin of the terminology is unclear. In 1952 Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, wrote an article in the French magazine L'Observateur which ended by comparing the Third World with the Third Estate: "ce Tiers Monde ignore, exploite, meprise comme le Tiers Etat" (this ignored Third World, exploited, scorned like the Third Estate). Other sources claim that Charles de Gaulle coined the term Third World, maybe de Gaulle only has quoted Sauvy. However...

• The term "First World " refers to so called developed, capitalist, industrial countries, roughly, a bloc of countries aligned with the United States with common political and economic interests: North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
• "Second World " refers to the (former) communist-socialist, industrial states, (formerly the Eastern bloc, the territory and sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic) today: Russia, Eastern Europe (e.g., Poland) and some of the Turk States (e.g., Kazakhstan) as well as China.
• "Third World" are all the other countries, often used to describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The term Third World includes as well capitalist (e.g., Venezuela) and communist (e.g., North Korea) countries as very rich (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and very poor (e.g., Mali) countries.

Satellites: 4
#1 Moon, average distance: 384,000 km (211,265 miles)
#2 Asteroid 3753 Cruithne
#3 Asteroid 1998 UP1
#4 Asteroid 2000 PH5

The Page of #2 Cruithne's Discover has details on the weird "resonant" orbit of #2. #3 and #4 are from same team, and are equally weird. Note that "Horseshoe orbit" is relative to the supposed primary (Earth) as opposed to the actual primary (Sun) around which the pair are mutually resonant. The previously referenced space.com article said it had a booster-like orbit, implying chaotic, but didn't indicate if it was a ?stable? chaotic orbit, a single-lagrange-point orbit, or a quasi-stable multi-lagrangian horseshoe orbit of a temporary (10kyears) or what.

We dont need no stinking .sigs

Another important defect of this system is that in modern society most people live in cities, and as such the keys are not randomly distributed, but very much clustered. To find a movie key, for example, one just needs to try GPS locations of few big cities (SF, LA, NYC etc.) to hit the paydirt.

But likely, this key search won't be needed at all, because whoever posts the material on Usenet will put the necessary serialz ^W GPS code into the accompanying note. The only problem is to apply the key to get the raw contents, and that is not too difficult because all the strength of the crypto is in the key, not in the algorithm.