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The UNESCO http://www.unesco.org/ has had for some time initiatives like http://www.astronomicalheritage.org/ to promote and/or protect dark night skies.

...power to control..

For the people, some 6 billion plus to communicate openly they will find they are no different in their daily living and can become friends.

But for those in positions of power and control, they would not want this to happen as it takes control and power away from them and even exposes them as the perpetrator of all the bad shit they put on the rest of us.

Here is an example of what better can be done and raises the question of why is it not being done Want to beat terrorism, then remove the reasons that motivate terrorism.

It is some fraction of 1% of the population that is causing the problems for the rest of us.

If you don't like grape jelly on your peanut butting and jelly sandwich, you are a terrorist.

But as a matter of fact, there are anonymous remaillers and other such support for genuinely anonymous internet based communications even set up on servers at universities of law.

Of the reasons for this is that supporting freedom of speech for those who may otherwise be subjected to restricted speech laws in the country they reside.
Where there is wrong doing going on and victims of such, the victims are provided a way to communicate that provides some level of anonymous.

In regards to terrorism, if you were a terrorist, would you not want some verification of who you are communicating with regarding your associates in regards to committing a terrorist act?

So the reality of this connection between anonymous and terrorism is no more valid than claiming anyone with a motor vehicle is a terrorist.
It is actually more an act of showing intent to suppress freedom of speech and supporting terrorism.

Language is a tool that is onl as useful as the two or more parites who use it with an agreed upon meaning of the abstraction used.
With this in mind and knowing a terrorist party could easily devise double talk vocabuilary that could easily slip b y NSA or other security agencies in teh world, we are all suspect of being terrorist simply because we communicate.

Don't like grape jelly on your peanut and jelly sandwich ... who is to know that is NOT a code phrase to initiate acts of terrorism?

But the genuine honesty of the mater is much simpler.

The how to stop terrorism and the ability of those interested in committing terrorism from being able to enlist the help of others, is to remove reason for anyone to commit a terrorist act.

for starters What The World Wants as opposed to what military supporters want.

Really?:) Ask the papa where you got this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale

The wiki even tells you, Mammoth Hot springs in Yellowstone.

Or this: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/145

There is a Glacier National Park in the US too, in Montanna, of course global warming is doing its best to ruin that one. You can find a lot of that in Alaska also.

or http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1195

don't have many fjords in the US, certainly nothing as spectacular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Palisades is one US example.

Really?:) Ask the papa where you got this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale

The wiki even tells you, Mammoth Hot springs in Yellowstone.

Or this: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/145

There is a Glacier National Park in the US too, in Montanna, of course global warming is doing its best to ruin that one. You can find a lot of that in Alaska also.

or http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1195

don't have many fjords in the US, certainly nothing as spectacular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Palisades is one US example.

>My father has traveled much more extensively than me, and he agrees that it is absolutely not necessary to visit other countries if you don't want to.

Really?:) Ask the papa where you got this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale
Or this:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/145
or
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1195

>My father has traveled much more extensively than me, and he agrees that it is absolutely not necessary to visit other countries if you don't want to.

Really?:) Ask the papa where you got this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale
Or this:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/145
or
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1195

During the civil war the slaves developed a method of communication that went unnoticed except by those who knew about it.
They would sing song in the fields that woudl help to spread the word regarding teh undrground railroad.

Today common conversation communication can as well be used where there really is not anything to decipher.
Language and its abstraction work by attaching meaning and only work as well as the argeed upon meaning by those using teh abstraction.
It doesn't matter what meaning is attached so long as those using it understand what is being communicated

Everyone has heard of double speak, where what is communicated is meant to be perceived by the public one way but internally the very same words mean the opposite of what the public perceives. and this is just one example.

There is a saying, "locks as for honest people" meaning here if some dishonest group wanted to communicate without concern for NSA data mining, they could do so easily.

However, considering the massive amounts of data that is transfered from voice to digital on a daily or hourly basis and what the limits we have in computing power, its simple not possible to data mine for the terrorist threats from terrorists who want to avoid exposure and use such common conversation meaning dishonesty.

But it is very possible, very probable, and very reliable that such data mining be used to determine the attitudes of mass population mindsets and mindsets of population sections as well as spying on targeted US citizens that might influence such population in a direction counter to the "why determine the populations mindset and changes in it?" The unsuspecting American public is so easily influenced by the media so by knowing the overall attitudes of the American public and using the media to influence American attitudes, you have a feedback loop of CONTROL.

To properly address terrorist threats is to simply remove the reasons any terrorist group could play off of, that they won't be able to gain a following.

The World Trade Center was attacked on two different dates. The NSA had to know it was a target and why.
It was because of the effects of the trillion dollar bet in south East Asia. Even Ted Turner publicly said 9/11 was an act of desperation and he'd know because his CNN News did a story on the effects as did also ABC. Follow the Money is the reality here.

This was avoidable but caused by greed. And on the other hand there is What The World Wants that shows that we do have the manpower, knowledge and not only the natural resources but the finances to remove reasons for terrorists to gain a following. And even more important, the question of: Why is this not being done?

Given the death and torture imposed upon innocent people during the Spanish inquisition and the fact Galileo was exonerated so very very late (1992 where it only really was to serve the church not this innocent but long dead person) and the fact that Indonesia by CIA records is 88% Muslim, its clear that religion is an excuse both ways. An excuse to use by the bad, be the bad being believers or non-believers. But 9/11 was about money, wrongful World Stock Market manipulations backed by political controlled military, hence the Pentagon and probable White house targets. It was about money not religion, regardless of what you call such evil dishonesty as happened in the stock market.

But if you wanted to get a very accurate view of the general population attitudes for such a media feedback loop of CONTROL , then what the NSA is doing with data mining will clearly work.

Recent Firefox code names have been national parks

Firefox 3.1 Shiretoko NP
Firefox 3.0 Gran Paradiso NP
Firefox 2.0 Bon Echo NP

You have to spend tons of money on spying on those who will get pissed off about the tons of money that is being spent on spying, instead of doing far more productive things with the money that those who are being spyed on, would benefit by.

As an example of what people want vs. the amount of money being spend to support pseudo defense against terrorism. Money that clearly should instead be being used to remove the reasons for any terrorist to exist or have the ability to gain support....

It is interesting that the current economic ballout of $700 billion is ...... well see the chart at the above link to the then military budget. And note the cost of eradicating small pox from the world, and recall Bush publicly using small pox as a terrorist possibility....

And the terrorist of 9/11..... a little investigation very strongly points to world stock market manipulation via nickel and dime draining of south east Asia as the main motivating and force behind the terrorism of 9/11. Even Ted Turner publicly said 9/11 was an act of desperation.

Would you pay for a service that was not working for your benefit? I suspect the answer is NO.
But you are paying taxes for a service that is not working for your benefit. Why? Because you are being threatened, terrorized to do so.

Boston Tea Party is history.... we all need an organized "stop paying for a service that are being used against us" effort.
Its very clear that there is an unhealthy power and money addiction being backed by threat from the government controlled military and police.

The amount of money being spent today as "protection money" is most certainly criminal in comparison to what it can be better spent on to make this world a lot safer via. making it a better world to live in for everyone. (except for the power, money and war mongers which are less than 1% of the over 6 billion human residents of this planet...)

A peaceful and effective effort to stop paying for a service that is so clearly and obviously not working. Any suggestions?
   

Wikipedia has a petty good analysis of most/some of them. Wiki tends to get somewhat biased and noteworthy sometimes so here are a few other sources with he raw language of the treaties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

A problem is going to be that I don't know for sure if I can (have the skills and patients) make you understand them. I barely understand most of them myself and I'm not in a position to teach on them. You should be able to get them on your own though. Remember, the treaties usually don't have the text of a law in them. They will say a country has to make a law doing X. This is where the disputes and cross border things come into play. When X isn't completely covered, the treaty ensures that it will be. I'm just going to drop some links without actually hyper-linking them. The slash code might make links from them or you can copy and paste.

Berne Convention http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html
This is the part that says the other countries have to make protections.

UCC
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1814&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

WTO
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/legal_e.htm

WIPO
http://www.wipo.int/standards/en/

This site which is part of the WIPO site seems to have collections of laws concerning copyright in other countries.

There are more, those are the big ones. They, as well as Wikipedia, will link to more but you will have a good Idea after a getting through a lot of that and might not need them.

http://www.maropeng.co.za/index.php/exhibition_guide/footprint/ implies we use 'around' 2.2 hectares per person for the typical American lifestyle. (Other sources quote number as

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_b/mod09/uncom09t05bod.htm has the mean as 1.8 hectares per person available.

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.md.suspop.13Dec07.pdf - is a bit more of a scientific analysis, on a related point, but isn't looking at quite the same thing - conclusion is approximately the same though - the world cannot support the current population at the top level of lifestyle.

This may not be quite what I said, but ... distribution isn't the _only_ problem we (and by 'we' I mean, those who aren't currently enjoying the rather nice lifestyles) face.

I'll troll for better sources when I finish work, as I'm fairly sure I've seen this question before (and it'd be nice to have sources on hand)

As a counter to terrorism.... knowledge begets knowledge and specific knowledge begets its own with tunnel vision

What the World Wants and from this we can pretty much knopw that its some fraction of a percent of the population on this planet that are in positions of abusing the rest of us with positions of power and dishonest use of that power.

The idea of a utopian society is not a realistic idea, as we all seem to have different ideas as to what that would be, meaning someone will be unhappy and consider resistance to the utopia and as such voiding it.

The idea that we can create something better than us is an illusion, though we may be able to take the best of us and incorporate it into a machine intelligence there is no proof that summing what is known to be imperfect will result in the perfect. And this is the problem. Though we may be able to create something that seems perfect this way, the reality is that its flaw is likely of such a high level that we won't see it until it to late.

There is also a matter of war mentality where the proof is the insulting amount of money budgeted for military defense worldwide in speculation of needing protection vs. the amount of money needed to genuinely address real world issues which removes war and terrorism motives. See: What the World Wants noting that of the 6 plus billion people on this planet its a fraction of 1% that cause such "maybe needed" spending while ignoring the more certain direction of removing motive of warfare.

Waring mindsets get first crack at any advances in technology to see how it can be used for war and defense against.

To know the motives of 9/11 read Trillion dollar bet and understand the probability of those who will be inconsiderate of the needs of others in their goal of being better than others, financially.

Google is your friend, and Romney is a theocrat

But it's not their president I fear, it's the dense 60% of the population that can hardly write.

Less than 10% of the US is illiterate.

Considering that of the 6 billion plus population and the fact that its some fraction of 1% that are responsible for commanding warfare, be it legitimate or not (terrorism), the only possible use of such a weapon is to create the fear that motivates warfare legitimate or not (terrorism) which in turn creates the excuse for continuing the spending. Rather than spending it on more productive and terrorism excuse removing efforts which would promote peace and be far more effective against terrorism and so legitimate warfare.

On the war on terrorism, the US is going to win it because they are going to produce the most powerful terrorism inducing smell....
I believe its called "burning human flesh" smell.

but how many know of the genuine motivation of extreamist?

Trillion dollar stock market manipulation of the 90's striking and draining south east Asia including Indonesia (which is 88% Muslin according to CIA records)

And what would be the opposite direction or the removing of terrorist excuses at a far lower cost.

What the World Wants

Where does such access to emails come into play? The same as the telecoms assisting the government in spying on Americans. If you know what the public in general is thinking you will know what lies to tell them.

Um, Africa has literally hundreds of thousands of schools; check out some of these statistics if you want to base your opinions more closely on reality sometime; there is certainly enough economic activity and education expenditure in Africa to potentially purchase very many OLPC laptops.

And that's based on current OLPC prices; prices are likely to drop significantly in just a few years - you are slamming the idea in general, which means you're also slamming the idea at far cheaper prices - which starts to seem bizarre.

...were open source.

People do things for reasons.
bear with me, I'll make the point clear.

9/11 was a response to the Trillion Dollar bet
It was no coincidence our defense system was in such a state as to not really respond.
Nor was it coincidence that building 7 was intentionally taken down though it contained documents regarding matters of the
trillion dollar bet that were under investigation by the SEC. Enron, Worldcom were a couple of the losers in the bet.
The dot com boom was a result of some winners needing to put their money somewhere.
And there is a lot more to this that is and has been "open source" publicly available.
However, the Anthrax threat against the News Media by our own government and the set up of the "Clear Channel" news network resulted in hiding the truth.

Social Security ain't gonna be there for me, as I get annual reports as to what decreasing percentage of what is to be own me, will be paid me. Why is it decreasing? Because the US government keeps taking our money away from us to use it on so called wars to protect our freedom. I'm going to be real free when I don't have a place to live because the government stole from me.

I suspect the idea is that in time people will forget the wrongs done them, as they die off.

But check this out: What the World Wants
It exposes the lies of teh self supported dependencies of war mongers and warfare.

The point is:

Its not religion, thats just philosophy that is wrapped around the real, and the real is all about money and trade value.

We the world have such a massive amount of money, we have the manpower and the knowledge, far more than we need to fix real world problems. And doing so would also remove real and many imaginary reasons supported by the real for warfare/terrorism, that warfare/terrorism would be clearly shown for what it really is. A self destructive, value draining illusion that we the world can do better by leaps and bound far beyond the constraints if this war illusion that not anyone having to do with commanding war is going to look good when this is put into practice.

Open Source, information made available, is what is exposing the fraud of war mongers and warfare.

And that is a SERIOUS Threat, a TERRORISM against the war mongers.

Why don't they just chain the children up? That is much simpler and far more effective. http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_06/uk/droits.htm http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/yearoftheslave.html http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/children_in_chains.pdf

It's at the Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyyah, which looks like this.

/. FTW!

What the Wolrd Wants

Now what sort of argument would terrorist come up with, so to promote a following and motivate some to self destruct in performing acts of terrorism, that would be effective against genuine efforts to improve the livings conditions the six billion + people of the world, including them?

Know anyone who wants to stop a good them for themselves?

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/longnow/

The truth of the matter is that man has this Power of Denial...

The Hindu Arabic Decimal system was denied for 300 years.
The observations of Galileo were denied for 350 years (by the catholic church until the early 1990s)
and I'm sure there are plenty more examples of human denial.

Ultimately Man will not, cannot invent a machine smarter than himself anymore than a theoretical one dimensional being can comprehend a two dimensional object or being ... nor can a theoretical two dimensional being comprehend a three dimensional object or being, etc...

Computers will never genuinely be anything more than an extension of man.

However, it is well within human deception to lead the masses to believing otherwise. Which would be very insulting and demeaning to those such a lie is imposed upon.

Hard reality.... http://threeseas.net/abstraction_physics.html

So called Artificial Intelligence is nothing more then the by-product illusion of automating enough to deceive those humans interacting to believe its not a machine or a machine better than man.

Genuine intelligence is built upon the progression of:
Gas, liquid, solid, single cell life, plant life, animal life, consciousness...intelligence

Just as there is a build up of things, structures, technology in society that are a prerequisite of what we have built upon our knowledge, so it is with what is required of genuine knowledge.

Besides, we have plenty enough artificially intelligent people fu&'in things up as it is, we don't need a machine built by faulty human intelligence to give us something worse then the calculation that resulted in the Trillion Dollar Bet and repercussions of dotcom boom and bust, worldcom, enron and 9/11....

And even if such a machine was built and gave us solid information, what makes anyone think we as a whole would believe it and act upon the information when we can't seem to even do what we know we can do To fix the genuine problems terrorist otherwise use to promote followers...????

Not Forgetting it wasn't until the early 1990's that the Catholic Church (Pope) exonerated Galileo....

There are bigger fish to fry than businesses mentioned..

As in:

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

On second thought, somebody just send the pope this post and let him slap himself awake with it.

"which were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995"

The UNESCO World Heritage Sites are a joke. Unesco itself made this very clear when they put out a press release denying involvement with the New 7 Wonders list. " Scientific criteria must be defined, the quality of candidates evaluated, and legislative and management frameworks set up. The relevant authorities must also demonstrate commitment to these frameworks as well as to permanently monitoring the state of conservation of sites. The task is one of technical conservation and political persuasion." Who wants to go visit sites that are determined by a bureaucratic process where political persuasion plays more of a role than wonder itself.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=38482&UR L_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

And have you even been to 20% of the sites? Here's a choice site that wasn't worth going to even before it was removed from the list. An Oryx sanctuary. Here's one I was at recently, Brimstone Hill National Park in St. Kitts and Nevis - it's simply not worth basing a trip around (wheras all of the New 7 Wonders are worth basing a trip around), and it's my opinion that Brimstone isn't worth visiting, even if you're in the area for a few days.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=38721&UR L_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_Hill

The problems with UNESCO's list are:
1. It is not ranked/organized, nor are there highlights. No one has enough resources to visit all of them. Or enough time to research all of them to determine if they're worth seeing. (There are currently 851 sites).
2. Political. Be reminded that UNESCO is an arm of the U.N. That means that there are many political influences that go into the nomination process. This means, among other things, that the site's owner must agree to UNESCO mandates. That means that many unique sites that choose not to accept UNESCO mandate aren't on the list. Some of the New 7 Wonders are not UNESCO World Heritage Sites: The Colosseum, and Christ the Redeemer. It should be noted that the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648) was not an UNESCO World Heritage site until 1983; until then I guess it wasn't very important.

I think this new list it useful in the same way that any list is useful. It's a summary. In this case, it's a summary of the most iconic architectural wonders in the world.

And please, why does everyone mention the Eiffel tower? Have you people seen it? It's a radio tower. That might have been awe-inspiring in 1889, but today it's just a radio tower, you don't have these in your country? Where I'm from Radio towers (and for that matter gigantic power line towers) are hopefully far away from your home - because they're an eyesore. Just in case people still love the Eiffel tower, it will forever be a New 7 Wonders finalist.

"Any list of wonders that excludes Angkor Wat is a waste of time." I guess this statement means the New 7 Wonders list is not a waste of time, as Angkor was one of the 21 finalist. And "will remain Official New7Wonders Finalists".
Joseph Elwell.

"which were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995"

The UNESCO World Heritage Sites are a joke. Unesco itself made this very clear when they put out a press release denying involvement with the New 7 Wonders list. " Scientific criteria must be defined, the quality of candidates evaluated, and legislative and management frameworks set up. The relevant authorities must also demonstrate commitment to these frameworks as well as to permanently monitoring the state of conservation of sites. The task is one of technical conservation and political persuasion." Who wants to go visit sites that are determined by a bureaucratic process where political persuasion plays more of a role than wonder itself.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=38482&UR L_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

And have you even been to 20% of the sites? Here's a choice site that wasn't worth going to even before it was removed from the list. An Oryx sanctuary. Here's one I was at recently, Brimstone Hill National Park in St. Kitts and Nevis - it's simply not worth basing a trip around (wheras all of the New 7 Wonders are worth basing a trip around), and it's my opinion that Brimstone isn't worth visiting, even if you're in the area for a few days.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=38721&UR L_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_Hill

The problems with UNESCO's list are:
1. It is not ranked/organized, nor are there highlights. No one has enough resources to visit all of them. Or enough time to research all of them to determine if they're worth seeing. (There are currently 851 sites).
2. Political. Be reminded that UNESCO is an arm of the U.N. That means that there are many political influences that go into the nomination process. This means, among other things, that the site's owner must agree to UNESCO mandates. That means that many unique sites that choose not to accept UNESCO mandate aren't on the list. Some of the New 7 Wonders are not UNESCO World Heritage Sites: The Colosseum, and Christ the Redeemer. It should be noted that the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648) was not an UNESCO World Heritage site until 1983; until then I guess it wasn't very important.

I think this new list it useful in the same way that any list is useful. It's a summary. In this case, it's a summary of the most iconic architectural wonders in the world.

And please, why does everyone mention the Eiffel tower? Have you people seen it? It's a radio tower. That might have been awe-inspiring in 1889, but today it's just a radio tower, you don't have these in your country? Where I'm from Radio towers (and for that matter gigantic power line towers) are hopefully far away from your home - because they're an eyesore. Just in case people still love the Eiffel tower, it will forever be a New 7 Wonders finalist.

"Any list of wonders that excludes Angkor Wat is a waste of time." I guess this statement means the New 7 Wonders list is not a waste of time, as Angkor was one of the 21 finalist. And "will remain Official New7Wonders Finalists".
Joseph Elwell.

For a more neutral, exhaustive and more well-respected list of "Wonderful Places/Things":
UNESCO's list of World Heritages

I think this is a more sensible list

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list

since he is an attorney he is more qualified to pursue this matter from knowledge of law than the typical American. However, from law knowledge he also knows that his career will probably be greatly stifled should he pursue it.

From another POV, that of an American citizen, given all the insane mindset I have seen of the government since Bush got in office, I'm terrorized. Not by the fear of foreigners but buy The US government mindset. The disregard of science, factual evidence, applying double standards to crimes, the changing of laws and government structure that was originally put in place to prevent abuses by the government. But most of all, I'm terrorized by the fact that the waring mindset of the US government has stolen social security benefits (this going on for my whole life) and used them for war and yet with the largest military budget ever in mans history, hasn't put the money back, that they took from social security. And this is only the tip of the wrongs the US government has committed and is now committing against the very people that they are supposed to be representing. And that is terroristic.

With all this insane mindset of the US government, would it be of any surprise to find that they have been generating reasons to be attacked? I.E. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stock market.html -- follow the money to where the dot com boom and bust got its funding and lack of from, as well as the fall of the losers in the trillion dollar bet - Enron, Worldcom, etc.. and of course the excuse it all provided for the Islamic extremist to use to promote others to join them (fyi - Indonesia (80% Muslin according to the CIA) was hit the worse from the trillion dollar bet and the world bank (US run) offered to bail them out with interest..

World Trade center, Pentagon, and probable White House: Statement being "Wrongful world stock market manipulation back by politically controlled military"
I do not condone killing innocent or even war, but know if you don't give another reason to harm you you are a great deal safer.

So why is not a part of the military budget going for fixing real world problems in a manner of removing reason to cause problems?
We do Know how to do it! http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

Not doing it is supportive of Terrorism. A fraction of one percent of the 6 billion plus people of the world are in a position of starting a war. They are the terrorist and look how much the rest of us pay for their disease.

All this babel on this side or that side when the bottom line facts are about where the money is coming from and where it is going in regards to health care. From the individual in need to the doctor to the medical supply company to the pharmaceutical company's, and not to forget the insurance companies and any government funding that came not from direct knowledge of the tax payers like MEDICARE.

But perhaps what is really needed is a full disclosed accounting by the government of where they spend tax payer money.

Now due to the Governments wrongful putting their hands in the Social Security till, more than once, and not putting the money back, I and those of my age will not be collecting more than 75% of what is due me, upon retirement.

So where is the money going, considering the numbers in the math of consideration of those who die before collecting and have no one else to benefit from their family?

Try the US military Budget!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_th e_United_States

And for a real wake up call: (it may be a little dated but ....)

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

The money is there, its just not going to the benefit of the tax payers, but instead to the war mongers addiction to war technology. And this military is the place where the money went that was taken from social security....

It shoudl be noted that of the 6 billion plus people on this planet, it is a fraction of one percent that is in position to lead and inspire others to follow in their waring mentality...

knowledge begets knowledge and as such specific knowledge begets its own.

Its no suprise that a spy agency has trouble trusting itself.

At some point in mans advancement towards a peaceful world he has to realize that the resources he spends on untrusting is simply not affordable any more. That such resources can be better spent on improving the environment all of man lives in and as such remove reason to terrorise or warmonger.

It really is a fraction of a percent of the 6 billion plus human population that promotes deceptions supporting war and terrorism. And there are those who follow, but wouldn't if such promoters didn't.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

Free Open Source Software has the spirit or what is to come in human advancement.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

real motive behind 9/11

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stock market.html

what kind of games would such a coward as you play?

It's not that easy. Mass Transit manufacturing would leave a company reliant upon the government for its funding, same as a Space Program. Car Manufacturing sounds like a good idea, but it's very difficult to compete with foreign imports. Something that Maruti Udyog, Hindustan Motors, and Bajaj Tempo (now "Force Motors") can tell you.

So you're telling me a space industry would be easier?

Those industrial and technology bases can then be used used to close the gap between the local capabilties and the much greater industrial/tech bases of foreign countries.

Back in the 60s, that was true. Now its not nearly so much. It would be far simpler just to beg, buy, borrow or steal (cf China) other people's advances since then, if you can't just reverse engineer them with all of these engineers we keep hearing about, than to pour much needed capital into a prestige project, which is what the space program in India is. Hell, they already have the cheap skilled labour, theres no reason they can't follow in China's shoes, or do even better.

This idea of pouring the wealth directly onto the poor is a very heartwarming sentiment, but it tends to do much less to actually solve these people's problems than if the money is spent on programs that make use of profitable business ventures.

Believe me, I'm about as far from a fuzzy eco-hippy as you are likely to get. I do like to think of myself as pragmatic however, something this space program is not. Oh and as it turns out, pouring money directly on the poor (which I wasn't advocating in any case) actually has very positive effects.

What next, produce sterile crops and totally outlaw unlicensed seeds.

Most of the people in the US are very poorly educated.

Sorry, this is total bullshit. You can just make things up, or you can go down to http://www.uis.unesco.org/ or any of a thousand other places to see how our education stacks up. We produce one of the best-trained workforces in the world, and your wishful superiority complex (let me guess, you're the one guy who's so gifted that the horrible public education here didn't ruin you, right?) doesn't change that a bit.

• Why do people in the developing world need bicycles? Because they can be used not only for transportation put to pump water.
• Why do people in the developing world need radios? Because they are important educational tools.
• Why could they possibly want video cameras? Because they are tools for encouraging self-representation in broadcast media.
• Why could those poor starving people in Africa need cell phones? Because they are tools for monitoring water safety, obtaining credit and making payments, determining where fishing happens, or simply communicating across distances without drums and smoke signals let alone to demand accountability from those unstable democracies you seem to assume exist everywhere

Are you being sarcastic? Because in 33 of the 41 African countries either English or French (or both) is an official language, or even the only official language.

Perhaps it would be more productive to consider awards in math and science for people who do an excellent job of popularising or explaining existing material

Processing Power

The processing power of the system of neurons in the brain can be roughly evaluated by the number of events which may occur in this system per second. The number of neurons is about 10e+10 and their switching time is about 10e+2 sec, so the number of events per second is about 10e+12. This figure is comparable with the number of operations per second in massively parallel computer systems approaching the teraop barrier. Thus, the information processing power of the system of neurons does not drastically exceed that available through modern microelectronic technology. In the expanded construction suggested in [2] the number of binary events per second may reach 10e+23 to 10e+25. However, as in all massively parallel systems a problem arises whether a substantial portion of this estimated raw computational power can be effectually utilized.

Poster's note: Obviously, many of these connections are utilized for non-cognitive functions are are tied in to motor skills. I believe the original figure I quoted (10e+18) is meant to represent available capacity outside of pure maintenance functions (i.e., it does not include the neural equivalent of TCP overhead, etc. [depends on whether you're running WinDome or CerebRIX, actual mileage may vary depending upon the amount of OEM RAM you came with])

Come on... Laugh! You know it was funny ^.^

Memory Capacity

The capacity of the long term human memory is virtually unlimited. According to von Neumann [5], estimated by the amount of information which can be transferred to a human brain during its lifetime, the lower bound of this capacity is about 2.8× 1020 bits. To be stored in the brain of about 103 cm3 this requires density of informational storage about at least 3× 1017 bits/cm-3. The time of content-addressable retrieval is rather short and essentially independent from the amount of stored information. Once recorded, information in the brain is supposed to be retained permanently. Thus, images don't fade with time and can be easily recognized over decades.

This last is an oversimplifcation without solid root in neurobiology. Due to a browser crash, I lost what I'd just added here, but it is easily shown that the brain most certainly performs it's own regular disk-maintnance (delete old files, defrag, index and cross-correlate data, and delete cookies and other temporary files that have been determined to be irrelvant though indexing and defragging - such as excatly what you paid for breakfast at McD's last Tuesday or what color socks the bosses' secretary wore yesterday) and does not possess anywhere the necessary capacity to store in digital detail every event of every day.

From a PsychologyToday article:

"By the year 2020, your $1,000 personal computer will have the processing power of the human brain--20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. By 2050, $1,000 worth of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth."

This seems to be a generally expected figure, though t

Processing Power

The processing power of the system of neurons in the brain can be roughly evaluated by the number of events which may occur in this system per second. The number of neurons is about 10e+10 and their switching time is about 10e+2 sec, so the number of events per second is about 10e+12. This figure is comparable with the number of operations per second in massively parallel computer systems approaching the teraop barrier. Thus, the information processing power of the system of neurons does not drastically exceed that available through modern microelectronic technology. In the expanded construction suggested in [2] the number of binary events per second may reach 10e+23 to 10e+25. However, as in all massively parallel systems a problem arises whether a substantial portion of this estimated raw computational power can be effectually utilized.

Poster's note: Obviously, many of these connections are utilized for non-cognitive functions are are tied in to motor skills. I believe the original figure I quoted (10e+18) is meant to represent available capacity outside of pure maintenance functions (i.e., it does not include the neural equivalent of TCP overhead, etc. [depends on whether you're running WinDome or CerebRIX, actual mileage may vary depending upon the amount of OEM RAM you came with])

Come on... Laugh! You know it was funny ^.^

Memory Capacity

The capacity of the long term human memory is virtually unlimited. According to von Neumann [5], estimated by the amount of information which can be transferred to a human brain during its lifetime, the lower bound of this capacity is about 2.8× 1020 bits. To be stored in the brain of about 103 cm3 this requires density of informational storage about at least 3× 1017 bits/cm-3. The time of content-addressable retrieval is rather short and essentially independent from the amount of stored information. Once recorded, information in the brain is supposed to be retained permanently. Thus, images don't fade with time and can be easily recognized over decades.

This last is an oversimplifcation without solid root in neurobiology. Due to a browser crash, I lost what I'd just added here, but it is easily shown that the brain most certainly performs it's own regular disk-maintnance (delete old files, defrag, index and cross-correlate data, and delete cookies and other temporary files that have been determined to be irrelvant though indexing and defragging - such as excatly what you paid for breakfast at McD's last Tuesday or what color socks the bosses' secretary wore yesterday) and does not possess anywhere the necessary capacity to store in digital detail every event of every day.

From a PsychologyToday article:

"By the year 2020, your $1,000 personal computer will have the processing power of the human brain--20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. By 2050, $1,000 worth of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth."

This seems to be a generally expected figure, though t

Great work by UNESCO. Another example why the UN has become such a vital organisation after WWII.

Yes, MANkind has shown throughout history just how ready he is with the repeated misuse / abuse of technology thus far. It's necessary NOT to allow any additional technology to fall into the hands of the devolving primitives.

That is of course until self destruction becomes a favourable outcome as opposed to one which should be avoided!

It seems every so many years this sort of thing happens as a dumbing down of the general population.

many of the posts here point out the flaws in what this guy presents, but if he really did hack into some classified systems and he is that dumb to not know how to save a screen image....

what is he really saying?

that even a monkey can hack into national security?

Oh wait, didn't some research expose that a monkey was able to hack into the diebold voting machines???

There are alot of people on this planet that know that so called alien life exist, technology more advanced than what we have created exist and even sources of so called free energy, etc. SO WHAT?

The fact of the matter is that is NOT what we are doing with our time here.

here is something else we are not doing, though we have the knowledge, man power and natural resources to do it
and there is nothing hidden about it.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod02 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/

since we can't even help ourselves, or don't show a real intent or effort to, then what the fuck useful is it to even acknowledge the existance of such advanced stuff?

unless you just want to insult others.

If the US Government can do it, I don't see why the Chinese can't monitor emails, IM, mobile phone calls, etc. I don't think anyone in China can believe that there's a safe medium for communication that the government won't tap.

...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stock market.html

And 6 grand is what in comparison?

The fact of the matter is that when you screw other over badly enough you can expect relalition.
And thats whats going on, The Bush Administration is parionoid because they are becomming aware of how damn much they have screwed others over.

WTC came was attacked once before 9/11 and targets of WTC, Pentagon, White House say what?

Wrongful manipulation of world economy with political and military backing..

So now the world stock markets must be terrorist activity, considering how its manipulation resulted in dotcom boom (easy winnings had to be put somewhere) and buts (easy come easy go) and the losers, worldcom, enron, etc.. whom still haven't told the american public what they were really doing.

South east asia, indonesia is 88 percent muslin (CIA info).

All it took to help set off the war drums on iraq was one lone high ranking enough, military official, who would not be questioned about there entry into a US military base containing anthrax stores, knowledge how to handle it and newsmedia addresses....

who would be stupid enough to not know the bush administration would fall all over themselves abusing the anthrax events
to get the media to bang war drums for bush?

Who are the real terrorost?

The most terrorism I have seen is not the WTC comming down but the very long running war drum banging of the bush administration against a country that most certainly did not have anything to do with WTC...

Prove that god doesn't exist? You can't as that is a scientific impossibility. So was proving Iraq didn'[t have any weapons of mass destruction. And teh US hasn't been able to find any.

Remember the smallpox threat that was use in all this?

The truth is. :

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod02 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/

The question is:

Why are we not doing what we know how to, have the resources and man power to genuinely remove what terrorist use to gain support and followers?

The real terrorist are the ones parionoid of retailation, because they have been so damn fucking bad on others.

Actually, several native species are beginning to target the Cane Toad.

Ric Nattrass, in his Wildlife Talkback radio segment (search on abc.net.au for more), often recieves reports about various birds and other animals beginning to eat toads.

Personally, we have native White-Tailed Rats that catch toads in our pond, and eat their insides, leaving a neatly-cleaned skin and skeletal parts behind.

So, although all is not lost, it takes some time, and many species are wiped out before they work out either how to eat them or to leave them alone. When they reach Kakadoo, it is going to be a disaster, but no one has any way to prevent it.

This post may seem a little off-topic, but so does its parent, and I feel the insert a few hard facts.

I have worked as an archaeologist in the Desert Southwest and southern Mexico for eight years and I am aware of no firm evidence whatsoever for Aztecs encroaching directly into the traditional lands of the Navajo. There is some evidence that people living at the site of Paquime traded copper and exotic birds with groups from Mesoamerica, but these folks probably lived on or near the Pacific Coast, in what are now the states of Sinaloa and Nayarit. A chronology of Navajo settlement in the Southwest mentions the Aztec, but under a separate timeline. Finally, a curriculum guide from a comparative civilizations class designed to be taught in Navajo schools makes no mention of these alleged Aztec slavers.

From all I have read (and I apologize for not having time to re-create the bibliography here), there were forms of slavery among many Native American groups in North America, including the Aztecs. However, slavery, as conceived by Native Americans, was very different from that imposed by Europeans. Most of the time, war captives were involved. In some cases, as was observed among the 18th century Creek of present-day Georgia, slaves ended up being treated more as outcasts than outright slaves. Some were even adopted into the families of the men who captured them. A similar observation was made regarding indigenous Afreican slavery.

As for celestial observation towers, etc., yes, they were everywhere, among many cultures. But again turning to archaeological evidence, it seems that most were developed indepently by different groups for different purposes.

While there is nothing wrong with being impressed by the accomplishments of Native Americans prior to European colonization for their own sake, don't make the mistake of superimposing models of European civilizational development on these societies. Prehistoric native groups in North America followed very different paths and we owe it to their descendents to appreciate their history on its own terms. We sell everyone short if we have to impose false parallels with European history in order to be impressed.

The 'net makes it easier for developments to procreate throughout the globe in many areas, for example business pratices, innovation culture, etc; which don't attribute them to a geographic reigion.

I agree. That's one of the reasons why I'm not willing to say others can't catch up, just that they will have a great deal harder time than is normally suggested. Indeed, even with the globalization effect of the Internet, I'm not sure anyone could catch up at this point.

Set aside all the media hype about fundamentalists running the country and just look at the numbers: The heaps of money we in the U.S. spend on research. The amount is truly staggering. According to UNESCO's 2005 Report on Science and Technology Statistics, China spends about 1.23% of it's GDP on R&D. In the US, we spend 2.67% of ours on R&D and we have a a much higher GDP. Put in apples-to-apples comparison: China spends $72,014,408 in adjusted (ie standardized) currency on R&D. A lot? To be sure, but in the U.S. we spend $275,095,956. If we rounded down to the nearest 100 million dollars the rounded amount we drop would be more than China spends in total. That's not including U.S. and Chinese Defense budget spending, granted, but the amount of money the U.S. throws at military R&D is legendary and those numbers would only server to widen the gap. And it's a sort of snowball effect, too. We make these advances in-house (so to speak) and those advances bring us both profit and more advances more quickly. It's very hard to compete with that. China (a country I have a great affection for!) can't just throw bodies at that problem to see it solved. They simply cannot muster the technological resources to stand toe-to-toe with us in that way, and by the time they get to where we are now, we will have advanced significantly.

Please don't take this as some sort of Pro-USA chest pounding. I am one fo the few people in my field here who sees outsourcing as a good thing (for the world if not for me) and, again, China has a special place in my heart, but unless and until the nature of our situation as a species changes drastically it's unlikley that countries like China or India will ever catch up.

Don't be fooled by the prints you see of early pictures. The original negatives used for movies in the 1930s were high-resolution monochrome film. The prints you see of them today are marred by age, repeated copying and sometimes a mismatched frame-rate.

The restored print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis is exquisite. The resolution is far beyond anything a playstation will generate, and that's after reconstruction. The original 1927 negative would have been even better.

Metropolis frame

This is a low-resolution capture, but you can see how detailed and high-contrast the frames were. The vignetting around the edges is the major picture issue.

Of course, the effects in those early movies weren't often brilliant, but on a console effects are easy. It's the subtle shading and curves that challenge a playstation.

...Mostly examples of bull shit, and thus the real problem is created.... not knowledge overload but the problem of separating the bull shit from valid knowledge and even further the separation of core knowledge from scope of valid knowledge.

For example: the application/result of a mathmatical algorythim is valid only if it applies to a non-bull shit objective of the point of doing the calculation.

You can memorize all the calculations results but if you know/understand the core knowledge of mathmatics and the mathmatical elements relative to the subject of the calculation, you can calculate it if and when you need to know it. That's alot less knowledge to need to know.

Another example: Autocad (and this applies to other programs as well) provides many many user functions, but for a beginner to start being productive with it, there is the core set of functions (might be called short cuts or tips and tricks) the user can apply and get productive rather quickly.

Example can be given for many other areas of knowledge, including politics, religion, (things though verifiably mostly bull shit), etc..

Core knowledge, what it is, is the knowldge that allows calculating out valid information when you need to consider it. And it is always relative to life, specifically your life and the environment you live in.

Core knowledge is much tighter, integrated and to some degree self verifiable. Not to be confused with fabricated knowledge requiring self supported dependancies --- the logic of an addict for example.

The Bush administration lacks core knowledge and in all of its fabrication of justifying its faulty actions the complexity of knowledge has grown to be more than it or the NSA can keep straight.
So if the NSA can process such massive amounts of information, for terrorist threats, from internet communications to phone taps, etc...Then the article is not real, but bull shit itself, but if the NSA is looking for "how to do it" then the article is an "RFC"

And according to an ACLU mailout there is the "Faith in god" bush direction to try and get people to ignore the mess.

So what light does all this put the article this thread is about, in?

There is not a knowledge overload, there is a bullshit overload.

When was the last time you did a search on something thru the internet and found mostly links to unrelated stuff?

Core knowledge vs. bullshit overload.

WHAT IF: all that you may believe about the war on terrorism, Bush, Bin Laden (who has forgoten about him?), dot com boom and bust, Enron, Worldcom, world economic problems,etc..... What if this knowledge overload has a much simpler core knowledge.

A core knowledge that would have allowed you to accurately predict (no majic involved, just logic and simple mathmatics) all of it? Or even now enlighten you, reduce your knowledge overload on all of this?

Well there is!

Do a search on "Trillion Dollar bet" and read the transcript. Follow the money.

When you understand why Ted Turner said the attack on the WTC, Pentagon, White House was an act of despration, then you will know there really is not a war on terrorism, least not how you probably think. But rather a resistant against those who do others wrong.

When you understand this, then you too will see the solution and who is really guilty of terrorism (a fraction of a percent of the 6 billion population on this planet)...

To remove terrorism, stop doing others wrong and start doing others right...

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod02 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml

CORE KNOWLEDGE --- its alot simpler and far from overload.