Religion trends on the horizon for 2008 :: The Courier News :: Lifestyles

Religion trends on the horizon for 2008 :: The Courier News :: Lifestyles: "First, 2008 is the year of the 29th Olympiad to be held in Beijing, China. In the spectator section of the official Beijing Games Web site (http://en.beijing2008.cn/spectators) is a listing of places of worship for those attending the Olympic Games Aug. 8-24, and the Paralympic Games there from Sept. 6-17. The list includes five Buddhist temples, one Protestant church, five Catholic churches and one Islamic mosque."

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008: "Most large IT corporations now make more than half of their revenues outside the U.S., and most other countries are showing GDP growth rates that will remain robust, even with a dip in the U.S. China now depends more on Europe than on the U.S. (and, interestingly, Europeans fear Chinese trade policies more than Americans do – 59% to 50%). India increasingly is doing work that may be outsourced, at the very high end (doctors reading medical imaging, engineers reviewing structural requirements), or may be destined for domestic or other non-U.S. clients."

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008: "The global economy has now essentially “outgrown” the U.S., particularly in IT markets.
If this were a question, most economists would answer with an unqualified “No.” But my bet is that, for the first time, IT spending will continue to grow so quickly outside the U.S. that a decline in U.S. markets will not pull down total spending."

Official Google Blog: A world in motion

Official Google Blog: A world in motion: "In this regard, we are excited to announce that we have acquired Gapminder's Trendalyzer software, and we welcome the Trendalyzer team to Google. Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in global health—as literally a world of opportunity. Like Google, Gapminder strives to make information more useful, and Trendalyzer will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized."

Gapminder - Home

Gapminder - Home: "This website, powered by Trendalyzer, enables you to explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries by the indicators you choose." ******

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, humans have altered approximately half of all the land on Earth for our own uses—around 22 percent for farming and forestry combined, 26 percent for pasture areas, and 2 to 3 percent for housing, industry, and roads. Population growth will necessitate further conversion of land, which in some regions can interfere with natural defenses against flooding, landslides, and erosion. Furthermore, experts believe that the abundance of agricultural topsoil on which our food supply depends is sharply diminishing due to overuse, urbanization, and other human-induced factors."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "Water covers roughly 70 percent of Earth's surface, but only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater, which humans need for irrigation, drinking water, and other everyday uses. According to the United Nations, the scarcity of freshwater due to overuse and contamination will be the second most pressing global concern in the 21st century, after population growth. On the map above, countries with less than 5,000 cubic meters of freshwater per capita are considered short of water. Experts believe that people may be able to replenish water tables with new water-saving irrigation methods, bioengineered crops that require less water, rainwater harvesting, and public information campaigns, but it will be centuries, if ever, before freshwater is plentiful again worldwide."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "Water covers roughly 70 percent of Earth's surface, but only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater, which humans need for irrigation, drinking water, and other everyday uses. According to the United Nations, the scarcity of freshwater due to overuse and contamination will be the second most pressing global concern in the 21st century, after population growth. On the map above, countries with less than 5,000 cubic meters of freshwater per capita are considered short of water. Experts believe that people may be able to replenish water tables with new water-saving irrigation methods, bioengineered crops that require less water, rainwater harvesting, and public information campaigns, but it will be centuries, if ever, before freshwater is plentiful again worldwide."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "World Population Growth, 1800-2050
At the turn of the 21st century, almost 75 million people were being added to the earth every year—about a quarter of the entire U.S. population. In the future, almost all population growth will be in the developing world."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "Over the next half century, our numbers will increase again, likely to a staggering nine billion people. Nearly all of this growth will take place in developing countries, where the demand for food and water already outstrips supplies."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "...at the dawn of the first millennium A.D. the world's population was around 300 million people."

http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/documents/ZB79_000.pdf
Th e Warsaw Pact participants explained how great the pressure from
the arms industry was. Th e greater part of the industrial capability was
directly and indirectly employed in making defence-related products. In
many cities and other areas, the population was dependent on the defence
industry. Th is was another reason why politicians and the military had to
maintain a very negative picture of the enemy. Th at way, the population
would continue to support defence policy. Th e military profi ted from
it; their jobs were not questioned. Armament had a dynamic of its own,
entirely divorced from the requirements of military strategy and logic.

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View: "The second annual 'IBM Next Five in Five' is a list of innovations with the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years:

1. It will be easy for you to be green and save money doing it.
2. The way you drive will be completely different.
3. You are what you eat, so you will know what you eat.
4. Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more.
5. Doctors will get enhanced 'super senses' to better diagnose and treat you.

Read Original Article>>"

Technology Review: Some US companies say China may be losing competitive edge as costs

Technology Review: Some US companies say China may be losing competitive edge as costs: "China may be losing its competitive advantage, mainly because of rising costs, according to a survey of companies compiled by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai."

The biggest library ever built | Ben Macintyre - Times Online

The biggest library ever built Ben Macintyre - Times Online: "The great Internet Library is more ambitious: it may one day contain the entire written culture, not just all the books, but countless millions of articles, half a million films, and billions of web pages. Kevin Kelly, “senior maverick” of Wired magazine, recently predicted in The New York Times that the online library would eventually contain “the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time”. Technology has made achievable what the librarians of Alexandria could only dream of: one vast, searchable, all-encompassing book, the complete history of the race. "

The biggest library ever built | Ben Macintyre - Times Online

The biggest library ever built Ben Macintyre - Times Online: "This digitising of human knowledge is the most profound cultural event since the invention of the printing press itself. In the third century BC the librarians of Alexandria sought to collect “books of all the peoples of the world”, and amassed perhaps half a million scrolls. But even the library at Alexandria was thought to contain perhaps as little as a third of all the books then written. "

Minyanville - NEWS & VIEWS-Article

Minyanville - NEWS & VIEWS-Article: "Another important driver of energy demand comes from the often overlooked global change in dietary trends. As global living standards increase, people want not just more food, but better food. While much of the energy required to harvest agriculture product comes from natural gas (in the production of fertilizer), oil also plays a significant role. Most farm equipment is run on oil-based products, as are the planes, trains and trucks used to transport agricultural product to consumers. The average distance the typical American meal travels from “farm to fork” is about 1,500 miles. It is estimated that about 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American. As per capita income continues to trend up in developing countries, food demand will continue to increase adding incremental energy demand. "

They are of potentially
global consequence with the biggest threat of all
coming from man's traditional enemy - humanity itself.
Whether the hobbyist gene-hacker, the mischiefmaking
virus-creator of software viruses, the apparently
socio-pathic suicide bomber, or the institutional
socio-pathology of the military, the unlocking of Pandora's
box of knowledge is making it easier than ever
to create self-propagating disruption some of which
have runaway and hence global catastrophic consequences.
Also the unintended side effects of an intended
`good use’ of the scientific and technological
knowledge might be disastrous. One such risk which
just recently has gained publicity and political attention
is a man-made greenhouse effect.

Moreover, our prospective
well-being depends on the future course of economic,
social and political systems - and not merely those in
the West. That these evolutions are hard to predict
was starkly illustrated in recent history by the collapse
of the eastern block.

It seems a wonderful time to be alive - greater prosperity
than ever before, technology advancing ever
onwards and upwards to improved standards of living,
and unprecedented capabilities for many to change
their lives for the better. We live at a time when we
have begun to understand life itself and in many parts
of the world begun to apply this knowledge to reduce
disease, improve health, and live longer. Developments
in bio-science include unravelling the human
genome, learning how to modify genes, and applying
stem cells for a wide variety of beneficial purposes. In
material science, we can already witness exploitation
of the extraordinary properties of matter at the nanoscale.
This is just the beginning of a revolution offering
exciting and potent new physical and chemical capabilities
which can be likened to the change brought
by cars to the age of the horse.

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "Crunches, ranging from resource depletion or ecological destruction. Misguided world government or another source of social equilibrium that stops technological progress. So, again, in judging the possibility of something like that, don’t think of whether right now at this moment or during the last few years the world has been moving toward global governance or further away from it, but think from a much bigger time perspective whether something like this could happen. We started out by being hunter-gatherer tribes, and then cities and city states, nation states and now regional forms of governance in different parts of the world might not be such a far-fetched idea. And again, listing bad risk here does not mean that one should either be in favor or opposed to international forms of governance. A lot of the things that are listed here that have beneficial effects could help produce risks overall. Dysgenic pressures, this would be evolutionary selection that could kick into effect at various points in our future and lead in the wrong direction. It’s not true that evolution through some natural law must always lead to better, more valuable, higher complexity. It can also evolve things in the other direction."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "Now there is good news and bad news in this. On the one hand, since anthropogenic risks arise from human activity, they also in principle are within our power and ability to do something about. On the other hand, it is often extremely complex and difficult to change these risks that emerge from our human behavior. Here is another way you can divide different types of existential risks. Bangs: earth-originating intelligent life goes extinct in a relatively sudden disaster. So this is what comes most immediately to mind when one thinks of extinction scenarios. It is not the only type of existential risk. The point of using this terminology here is that it draws attention to the other, perhaps subtler ways in which we could suffer an existential disaster. Crunches: humanity’s potential to develop into post-humanity is permanently lost, although human life continues in some form. So here it is just useful to have a term for the potential state of flourishing that human civilization might one day be able to attain if everything goes well. I use the term post-humanity for this, just to have a label for it. Shrieks: a limited form of post-humanity is attained, but it is an extremely narrow band of what is possible and desirable. Whimpers: our post-human civilization is temporarily attained but then it evolves"

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "There are different ways you can carve up existential risks into different categories. One distinction one can make is anthropogenic risks that emerged in some way due to human activity. I believe that the real issue is the anthropogenic risks. Without going into details, our species has survived the non-anthropogenic risks for hundreds of thousands of years. They haven’t wiped out the human species yet, so this includes things like meteors, earthquakes and other things. So, if they haven’t managed to do this in the last 100,000 years, then it’s probably not going to happen in the next hundred years. The non-anthropogenic risks, on the other hand, resulting from human activity might very well pose a much greater threat over the next hundred years, because we are now doing a lot of things that we have never done before, and we will be doing a lot more of those things in the coming century, including particularly new technologies. So this is what I think should be the primary focus of efforts to reduce existential risk."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "An existential risk is one where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. We have a lot of experience with other kinds of risks: dangerous animal, hostile tribes and individuals, toxic berries and mushrooms, automobile accidents, Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, wars, epidemics of different diseases, influenza, smallpox, AIDS. Those kinds of disasters have occurred many, many times throughout human history. And our attitudes towards risks have been shaped by trial and error in dealing with those types of risks. But even the worst of these catastrophes, as tragic as they might have been for the people immediately affected, and millions have been affected by some of these examples, if you zoom out and look at these from the point-of-view of humanity as a whole, even the worst of these disasters would be mere ripples on the great sea of life. They have not significantly affected the total amount of happiness or suffering there will have been. They have not determined or significantly shaped the future of humanity."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "We can characterize risk in terms of three dimensions: Scope, which would be the number of people affected. Intensity, which would be how badly each affected person would be. And probability, the likelihood of its occuring given all the available information."

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration: "Some, such as Vernor Vinge, a mathematician at San Diego State University, see the singularity to be consequence of technological acceleration, with ultra-intelligent computers creating an exponential runaway effect. But I believe technological progress to be but a phase in the overall pattern of development. Millions of years ago it was biological evolution that was accelerating. Ten thousand years ago the development of agriculture was speeding the rate of progress. A century ago it was industrial breakthroughs. Today it is information technology that is pushing the rate of development ever faster. Tomorrow we may be in a new phase of progress. The exploration and development of human consciousness could take over from information technology as an even faster arena of quickening."

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration: "This chemical diversity became the foundation-stone for living systems, and as soon as life became established, the rate of development speeded up. Changes took place not over billions of years, but over millions - and later even faster. Such lengthy time-scales are so far from our everyday experience that it is hard to appreciate just how rapidly evolution has been gaining speed. To get a better feel for these changes, let us chart the evolution of life against a more familiar visual image - New York’s tallest building, the quarter-mile-high World Trade Center. If we make street level the formation of our planet 4.6 billion years ago, then the first living cells appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, on the twenty-fifth floor of the building’s 108 stories. Photosynthesis evolved around the fiftieth floor, and bacteria that breathed oxygen came another ten floors later - more than half way up. More complex cells, capable of sexual reproduction and with a central nucleus, appeared around the seventieth floor. Multicellular organisms came another ten floors above that - and crustaceans ruled the waves on the ninety-fourth floor. Fish appeared on the ninety-seventh floor, and crawled out of the sea on the ninety-ninth. Dinosaurs reigned on floors 104 to 107. And mammals arrived on the top floor. But Homo erectus first di"

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration: "Most cosmologists now believe that the Universe started somewhere between 8 and 15 billion years ago as an unimaginably hot and extremely compact region of pure energy. Intense internal pressures caused this Universe to expand very rapidly - creating the so-called “Big Bang.” As the Universe expanded it cooled and condensed into elementary particles - electrons, positrons, photons, and neutrinos. Cooling further, these particles began forming stable relationships with each other, giving birth to the very simplest of atoms: hydrogen and helium. Matter had been born. It took millions of years, however, for more complex atoms to form. This could only happen when simpler atoms chanced to collide and combine. Over many eons all the elements lighter than iron were created through this fusion process. But at iron the chain stops. The synthesis of heavier elements (e.g. cobalt, nickel, copper, gold, uranium) requires the input of additional energy. This could not happen for several billion years, until the lighter elements had formed stars, and these stars had themselves become “supernova” - the massive thermonuclear furnaces created when stars collapse in upon themselves. From the supernova that preceded our own Sun came most of the heavier elements we now find on planet Earth - and in every cell of our bodies. Matter had evolved, but it had take"

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration: "Looking back over history it is clear that acceleration is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon. Change occurs much faster today than it did a thousand years ago - medieval architecture and agriculture, for instance, varied very little over the period of a century. But even then change occurred much faster than it did in prehistoric times - Stone Age tools remained unchanged for thousands of years."

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration

Waking Up In Time - Acceleration: "The pace of life is speeding up. Hardly the most startling statement. As most of us are only too aware, change comes more and more rapidly. Technological breakthroughs spread through society in years rather than centuries. Calculations that would have taken decades are now made in minutes. Communication that used to take months happens in seconds. Development in every area is happening more and more rapidly. As a result more and more of us are living in the fast lane - many in overdrive. There is more information to absorb, more challenges to meet, more skills to learn, more tasks to accomplish. Yet the time to fit it all in seems to be getting less and less."

World Clock

World Clock: ****"World Clock While the actual numbers cannot be precise the rates of change are what is most interesting. The data are taken from WHO, UN, Internet World Stats, and other official sources."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Kyoto University and University of Wisconsin scientists appear to have independently achieved one of regenerative medicine's holy grails: reprogramming human adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, without the use of an embryo or a human egg. The method could provide a way to make patient-specific stem cells, a feat not yet achieved in humans. Such cells could eventually be used for studying complex genetic diseases, or for cell or tissue transplants without fear of immune rejection. The new technique also removes the major ethical objections to embryonic stem-cell research: the creation and destruction of human embryos."

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion: "Today this faith-based belief moves our country to spend half of the world’s total military expenditures. Our country sacrifices precious blood and treasure for the promise that military power will answer our society’s ultimate concern for safety, security, and prosperity. That superior military power will answer our “prayers” is not a scientific or provable proposition; it is a faith-based belief. No matter how many times the promise has failed, no matter the cost in treasure or in lives, nothing shakes us from that belief. We were even prepared to literally blow up the planet during the so-called Cold War. This shared religious belief in the military as the source of safety, security, and prosperity informs the annual spending choices of Congress."

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion: "In those pre-historical and early days of history, villages killed a chosen few, and the gods were satisfied. Later, the gods became satisfied with just dumb animals, and most human beings were spared. As a rule, even in wars the fighting tended to be symbolic with the wounding of only a few, maybe a death or two. Exceptions to this rule did, of course, occur with much bloodshed, but, even then, the dead were all or mostly combatants who went to the battlefield. Today, 80-90% of the dead in wars and other violent conflicts are civilian non-combatants. Our militaries, which once ostensibly sought to protect civilians, now target them in the pursuit of “force protection.” Our gods of safety, security, and prosperity will not settle for the sacrifice of a selected few human beings. Offerings now are on a mass scale, thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands -- and sometimes in only a year’s time."

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Story of Religion: "We’re fascinated and repelled by stories of the bad old days when pagans sacrificed specially selected human beings (most often very young women) to make the gods happy, so that they’d leave the humans safe, secure, and wealthy. They even lay representations of their wealth – grains, garments, jewelry – on altars as gifts in exchange for the favor of their gods. We thank Progress for delivering us a civilization that has liberated us from such superstitious violence. Human sacrifice has been put well behind us. Then, smugly comfy in our advanced stage of civilization, we lay on our altar $42 of every $100 of our federal taxes to satisfy our gods of war. Why? We do it so that we can be safe, secure, and prosperous."

Foreign Policy In Focus | Dancing in the Earthquake

Foreign Policy In Focus | Dancing in the Earthquake: "There are five religious groups in American society that have, or could have, an impact on U.S. policy toward the Middle East. All five – institutional Jewish, mainstream Protestant, evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Moslem – have a strong sense of their ultimate roots in the Middle East, and some have what might be called 'ethnic' connections with various communities that live in the Middle East. The five are like extended families with branches that have different yet overlapping memories of the family history. They share some crucial sacred stories and symbols, but they differ in very important ways on the meaning of these stories, texts, symbols, metaphors, and events."

Foreign Policy: The Globalization Index 2007

Foreign Policy: The Globalization Index 2007: "So, why do small countries rank so high? Because, when you’re a flyweight, globalizing is a matter of necessity. Countries such as Singapore and the Netherlands lack natural resources. Countries like Denmark and Ireland can’t rely on their limited domestic markets the way the United States can. To be globally competitive, these countries have no choice but to open up and attract trade and foreign investment—even if they’re famously aloof Switzerland."

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com: "The burgeoning economies of China, which will within three years surpass the U.S. to become the world's leading energy user, and India have inalterably changed the global energy landscape, making them the focus of the 675-page report released today. Its projections are staggering. To cite a few: China's energy needs will grow 5.1 percent annually through 2015. Fuel needs will quadruple as its vehicle fleet approaches 270 million in 2030 - at which point China also will need an additional 1,300 gigawatts of electricity, an amount equal to what the United States currently produces. The projections for India are no less daunting. The IEA makes a point of saying the two nations' growth has improved the quality of life for two billion people and therefore 'must be accommodated and supported.' But it also says 'the consequences of unfettered growth in global energy demand are alarming for all countries.'"

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com: "The agency states in no uncertain terms in its annual World Energy Outlook that 'alarming' growth in worldwide energy needs will within a generation threaten energy security, accelerate global climate change and possibly bring worldwide shortages and conflicts. It's an unusually pessimistic view from an agency that has long said oil production, with trillions of dollars of investment, could meet rising energy needs. But the explosive growth of China and India has caused a seismic change in thinking at the IEA, which says we must move swiftly, boldly and decisively beyond fossil fuels if we are to avert a crisis."

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com

The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly. | Autopia from Wired.com: "If there are any lingering doubts as to whether the age of oil is nearing its end, the International Energy Agency has put them to rest and made it clear that only a massive and immediate investment in sustainable energy will prevent a global crisis."

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Second, over the long-term there has been a shifting, and not always stable, equilibrium
between the means of inflicting violence and threatening force and the institutions we
have created to control and regulate the use of force. Certainly in the early modern period
– the seventeenth century – the balance was in favour of the use of force rather than its
control. Yet as state power slowly expanded, a sort of domestic and international peace
was imposed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Arguably, this was upset with the
technological and social developments of the Industrial Revolution and the twentieth
century – when the ability to use organised violence triumphed over the ability of
institutions to control it.

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When we bring indirect conflict deaths into the picture, the full human cost of wars in the
DRC, or Southern Sudan, or Darfur, or Afghanistan or Iraq becomes more obvious, and
then some of the optimism of the ‘declining levels of violence’ proponents appears to be
misplaced. Certainly, we need to entertain seriously the possibility that we believe that
there is a decline in conflict deaths only because we are being more careful and
conservative about what we count as war deaths in recent years. If one uses a more
precise counting method, with conservative counting rules that include only verifiable
battle deaths, then of course one will arrive at lower figures than in the past. Conversely,
if earlier, pre-1990s figures, covering such things as the wars in Angola, Central America
Korea, Mozambique, Southeast Asia and elsewhere were not precise counts, but rough
estimates, based on impressionistic and journalistic accounts, that crucially included or
mixed direct (battle) deaths and ‘indirect deaths’, then perhaps things have not necessarily
changed for the better.

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Terrorism, as most analysts would agree, is a marginal phenomenon from this
perspective. It is difficult to put precise figures on the numbers of victims of terrorist
acts, since definitions matter a great deal here. But at the most, the annual number of
victims of terrorism – according to fairly comprehensive US estimates – is around 14,000
people killed. In 2005, there were 11,100 terrorist incidents, with 14,500 non-combatants
killed (only 86 of whom were Americans according to the US Department of State); 6,000
of whom were police or government officials. In addition, perhaps 25,000 people were
wounded and upwards of 35,000 kidnapped.
Although we do not have good enough data to make meaningful comparisons over time,
one observation we can make is that terrorism represents – depending on how you count
it – somewhere between 20–50 percent of ‘conflict deaths’, and only about five percent of
the total number of victims of armed violence in any given year. Yet in the current
geostrategic context, the threat from terrorism receives vastly disproportionate resources,
and it is no wonder, from the perspective ‘on the ground’, why many individuals think
this attention is skewed, since it does little or nothing to treat the everyday threats and
insecurities that most people face.

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Paradoxically, However, the Instruments of Violence are More Widely Available than at Any
Time in the Past.
As research by the Small Arms Survey has pointed out, there are at least 640 million small
arms and light weapons in the world today, excluding illegal civilian weapons.
Two hundred and forty-one million (38 percent) are in the hands of national armed
forces, 378 million (59 percent) are in legal civilian possession, 18 million (3 percent) are
in the hands of police forces, and 1 million (less than 1 percent) are in the hands of
insurgent groups. If one excludes the special case of weapons of mass destruction, at least
in terms of ‘ordinary lethal force’ the state’s monopoly of violence is a legal, not a
practical, one in most parts of the world. And today, more lethal firepower is available to
more people than at any time. It is also worth noting that this is not a function of the rise
of criminal bands and armed groups – in fact, a very small proportion of the world’s
weapons are in the hands of non-state armed groups, although it is precisely these
weapons that are responsible for much of the death and destruction associated with
contemporary violent conflicts.

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The final piece of the puzzle is that of violence within societies, and here there also
appears to be strong and consistent evidence of a long-term decline in inter-personal
violence in Western and Northern societies. This has been called by Norbert Elias the
‘civilising process’. You may think that you live in violent times or places, but historical
speaking, residents of the global North are extraordinarily secure. The most severe form
of inter-personal violence – homicide – has systematically and dramatically declined in
Western Europe from the high levels of the Middle Ages. Homicide rates dropped
roughly by half from the medieval to the early modern period (late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries), and by the nineteenth century, had dropped five to ten times
further

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The first, most systemic, explanation is that the process of state-creation is nearly
complete – with a few potential exceptions for separatist or self-determination
movements such as in Aceh, Kosovo, Kurdistan, parts of Northern Somalia, Western
Sahara, etc. I am not saying that all these situations warrant the creation of independent
states, but rather that until their status is resolved, we have potential zones of violent
conflict. And over the past few centuries, post-colonial and imperial conflicts, internal
repression, population transfers, forced assimilation (and resistance to this) have been
part and parcel of the spread and universalisation of the Westphalian state system. We
can be thankful that this process is reaching some sort of conclusion, since state creation
has been a bloody and violent process.

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But what happens when you put this in a longer-term perspective? If the twentieth
century was potentially the most violent in human history, then perhaps recent declines
are simply a return to the norm. Some scholars, such as Meredith Sarkees and J.D. Singer,
have argued that recent declines from the high levels of the twentieth century do not in
fact represent a longer-term trend. When corrected for population growth, and compared
to figures over two centuries, there has been no discernable decline in war deaths since
1816. As they put it: “the correction between deaths per thousand and the passage of
time is insignificant”. Indeed, centuries other than the twentieth have been exceptionally
bloody as well; one merely needs to recall the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth
century, in which between one-quarter and one-third of the population of Central Europe
died from war-related causes – making it, in a sense, the first ‘total war’.

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Most analysts would also agree that, set against the figures for the twentieth century, the
numbers of victims of armed violence today seems rather low. Data from University of
Uppsala (which is used by the Human Security Report, among others) estimates that there
are around 30,000 mainly battle deaths in current wars; others have estimated that the
number of direct deaths is around 80,000–100,000. When one adds to this figure the
200,000–270,000 annual deaths from lethal non-conflict violence (homicide, suicide,
accident, etc.), this gives us a rough total of about 300,000 direct victims of violence per
year

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So any concern with violence – new and old forms – must start by painting a more
complete picture that includes war (both interstate and internal), other forms of violent
conflict short of war, state violence against its citizens, and criminal and individual
violence. From the perspective of the individual victim, all of these sources of insecurity
are equally important, even if not equally likely.

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)
These examples do not, of course, exhaust the picture, since violence can come in less
dramatic forms, both criminal and other, including homicide, suicide, minor massacres,
local and gang-related violence, and so on. The best estimates, based on research
conducted by the Small Arms Survey, are that there currently occur 200,000–270,000
deaths per year in non-conflict settings, although the figure may actually be somewhat
higher. Even if this figure is an underestimate, this suggests that interstate or traditional
war, at least in the last half of the twentieth century, was not necessarily the biggest risk of
lethal armed violence that people faced, depending on where and when they lived.

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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There are considerable uncertainties around historical figures for lethal violence, but let
me just take four examples for the twentieth century to illustrate my point. According to
the historian Eric Hobsbawm, about 187 million people “were killed or allowed to die”
between 1914–1991. Milton Leitenberg, a former associate at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), systematically trawled through the sources, and claims
that about 216 million people died in wars, conflict and “by human decision” in the
twentieth century. Rudolph Rummel, a scholar at the University of Hawaii, comes up
with a figure of about 169 million, and Matthew White (using similar sources) also with
about 170 million violent deaths. However you look at it, this average of about 1.7–2.0
million people killed or allowed to die each year makes the twentieth century the
bloodiest on historical record. This is probably also true in terms of populations as well.

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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terrorism is a particular, but not at all new, form of political violence that
represents only a small (although still significant) piece of the total puzzle of lethal
violence today; and
• an account of new forms of violence that is useful to policy-makers and analysts
must highlight the importance of the indirect victims of violence (which I will
explain later) since they are far more numerous that the direct victims – those
people actually killed by bullets, bombs or bayonets.

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historically, war has not been the main source of lethal violence or physical
insecurity; and it is not in the contemporary world either;
• lethal armed violence might be declining (but evidence is not completely
convincing over the long term) – but if so, this is only happening in particular
places and under certain circumstances, and we need to better understand how
and why;
• paradoxically, however, the instruments of violence are probably more widely
available than at any time in the past – with more lethality in the hands of more
people – and this raises a difficult question: are we delicately balanced on a
potentially violent time bomb, or is the problem of political violence going to
slowly solve itself over the long run, regardless of the availability of the
instruments of violence?

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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Much has been written about contemporary transformations of war and political violence,
including on civil wars, interstate conflict, communal conflicts, political violence and
terrorism. Most scholars agree that there has been a transformation in contemporary war,
and perhaps even a ‘revolution in military affairs’. Yet there are good reasons to look
more closely at so-called ‘new forms of violence’ to sort out what is and is not new in
contemporary conflicts

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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At the same time,
countries that avoid conflict and enjoy some economic growth and democratic progress
are tending (as they have always done in history) to see clear and continuing
improvements in terms of crime rates, tribal and social violence, as well as in reduced
infant mortality and longer life expectancy – although growth can also lead to greater
income differentials that stimulate robbery and other economic crime. We would
probably be more aware of these corrective trends in the overall audit-sheet of violence if
they were not so often obscured by human own-goals like the drug culture and the spread
of HIV/AIDS.

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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I would ask a mainly Western audience to remind
itself that even in Europe the idea of restricting responsibility for armed violence to
nation-states and to the formal clashes between them has only become entrenched within
the last three centuries or so.

FileContent (Objet application/pdf)

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This a good time in history to take a new and broader look at the problem of human
violence. Since the time of the Cold War when (at least in the Northern hemisphere) the
agenda was all about massive military violence between states, Western security policy has
been rediscovering the importance of other threats to human life, liberty and happiness. I
say ‘rediscovering’ because this full range of violent behaviour has always existed on the
Earth, only it was concentrated in regions and societies that we had little to do with (or
possibly lost our intimate contact with through the process of decolonisation); or it took
shapes that we tended to compartmentalise and suppress from our security policy
discourse when it happened in our own homes or on our own doorsteps. In any case, the
first decade after the Cold War was coloured by the Western ‘rediscovery’ of non-state
sources and methods of armed conflict, while the second decade has so far been driven
by a new focus on threats posed by much smaller groups of individuals – the so-called
‘asymmetrical’ threats of terrorism potentially linked with the use of mass destruction
technologies.

Eldis - Conflict and security

Eldis - Conflict and security: "The authors argue that security, which had almost disappeared as a key issue from the international political agenda in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, is back on that agenda once again. However, the players in that game are today no longer necessarily the same as during the Cold War, nor are their priorities. The paper also warns that it is unclear which of the factors that appear today as important will prove ephemeral and which will hold."

BeliefWatch: Proof | Newsweek BeliefWatch: Lisa Miller | Newsweek.com

BeliefWatch: Proof | Newsweek BeliefWatch: Lisa Miller | Newsweek.com: "Relations between science and religion have grown so strained that it's hard to imagine they were ever otherwise. Until the Enlightenment, however, science and religion were better than friendly: they were the same thing. The 'scientists' at the great medieval universities were students of theology. Mining divine Scripture for insights into human morality and free will was the most rational thing a person could do, and the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) spent their lives engaged in such study. Now despite the efforts of a few believing scientists and intellectually rigorous believers, the divorce between the two could not be more acrimonious or complete."

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature: "The notion that emissions mitigation is a global commons problem, requiring consensus among more than 170 countries, lies at the heart of the Kyoto approach. Engaging all of the world's governments has the ring of idealistic symmetry (matching global threat with universal response), but the more parties there are to any negotiation, the lower the common denominator for agreement — as has been the case under Kyoto."

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature: "Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing."

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature: "Influenced by three major policy initiatives of the 1980s, the Kyoto strategy is elegant but misguided. Ozone depletion, acid rain and nuclear arms control are difficult problems, but compared to climate change they are relatively simple. Ozone depletion could be prevented by controlling a small suite of artificial gases, for which technical substitutes could be found. Acid rain was mainly caused by a single activity in a single industrial sector (power generation) and nuclear arms reductions were achieved by governments agreeing to a timetable for mutually verifiable reductions in warheads. None of this applies to global warming."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "India imports more than 70 percent of its oil consumption and half of its gas consumption. At the same time, India's energy dilemmas are shared by many states in East Asia. Asia accounts for a quarter of the world's energy consumption, meets 41 percent of its energy needs from burning coal, holds 3.5 percent of the world's proven oil reserves while having the world's second-, third-, fifth- and sixth-largest oil importers, namely Japan, China, South Korea and India."

Apocalypse Now? - Empire? - Global Policy Forum

Apocalypse Now? - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "One reason for Johnson's end-of-days gloom is that he can identify no power center capable of resisting the forces that currently drive American foreign policy. He claims that because of the costliness of re-election campaigns and the insidious influence of Congressional lobbyists, 'the legislative branch of our government is broken.' An elected body that owes its incumbency partly to military contractors (who, in turn, provide not only campaign funding but also jobs for voters in swing districts) cannot reasonably be expected to swivel around and eliminate the corruption that nourishes it. In Johnson's words, 'our political system may no longer be capable of saving the United States as we know it, since it is hard to imagine any president or Congress standing up to the powerful vested interests of the Pentagon, the secret intelligence agencies, and the military-industrial complex.'"

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews: "“The goal is to handle conflict areas in a manner that leads to stability and support so war is not necessary,” Rozenblit said. “That’s the philosophy behind much of the ATRAP effort.”"

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews: "“Deep Blue is a good analogy because it illustrates the complexity of the problems, but in chess you have a finite court and a well-defined set of operations,” Rozenblit added. “Therefore, a move constitutes a valid move. But what we’re dealing with now is a world with no rules, with infinite possibilities and moves that defy logic, such as total disregard for the basic instinct of self preservation.”|"

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews: "Deep Blue, the first computer program to beat a world chess champion, is an example of how ATRAP can respond to changing factors, Ten Eyck explained. “Every time its opponent made a move, Deep Blue recalculated all the possibilities and likely courses of action, eventually settling on the fittest move that would achieve its goal of winning the game.” However, chess is not an exact analogy because only two players are involved and the end goal is for one player to win. In unstable areas, winning often means establishing an environment in which the factions co-exist in a win-win situation or at least in an equilibrium in which there are no rewards, and some penalties, for disturbing the status quo, Rozenblit said."

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews: "Genetic algorithms analyze situations in an evolutionary context, where actions with the highest “fitness factor” (chance of achieving the greatest success) gravitate toward one another, produce offspring and eventually rise to the top. Co-evolutionary algorithms analyze how the actions of one group affect the other groups and how those other groups adapt, or co-evolve, in response to the changing situation. For instance, if one group becomes more influential in an area where ethnic factions are vying for supremacy, the other groups will respond in ways that will try to make that first faction less influential, Rozenblit said. The algorithms are designed to recognize links and patterns within the data and to find connections, much as an investigative reporter might do when examining financial records - but on a vastly more complex and detailed scale."

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews

$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable | UANews: "University of Arizona Professor Jerzy Rozenblit has received a $2.2 million grant to design computer software that will analyze volatile political and military situations. The software will predict the actions of paramilitary groups, ethnic factions, terrorists and criminal groups, while aiding commanders in devising strategies for stabilizing areas before, during and after conflicts. It also will have many civilian applications in finance, law enforcement, epidemiology and the aftermath of natural disasters, such as hurricane Katrina. The Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Project, known as ATRAP, is a massively complex set of computer algorithms (mathematical procedures) that sift through millions of pieces of data, considering many factors including social, political, cultural, military and media influences, said Rozenblit, who holds the Raymond J. Oglethorpe Endowed Chair in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the UA. The software can handle data loads that would overwhelm human analysts, while dispassionately exploring actions and behaviors based solely on the data, sidestepping human cultural biases that might prematurely rule out unorthodox or seemingly bizarre courses of action."

The Future of Electronic Paper - TFOT

The Future of Electronic Paper - TFOT: "Thirty-five years in the making, electronic paper is now closer than ever to changing the way we read, write, and study — a revolution so profound that some see it as second only to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Made of flexible material, requiring ultra-low power consumption, cheap to manufacture, and—most important—easy and convenient to read, e-papers of the future are just around the corner, with the promise to hold libraries on a chip and replace most printed newspapers before the end of the next decade."

The Future of Electronic Paper - TFOT

The Future of Electronic Paper - TFOT: "Thirty-five years in the making, electronic paper is now closer than ever to changing the way we read, write, and study — a revolution so profound that some see it as second only to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Made of flexible material, requiring ultra-low power consumption, cheap to manufacture, and—most important—easy and convenient to read, e-papers of the future are just around the corner, with the promise to hold libraries on a chip and replace most printed newspapers before the end of the next decade."

Computerworld - BT Futurist: AI entities will win Nobel prizes by 2020

Computerworld - BT Futurist: AI entities will win Nobel prizes by 2020: "I do a lot of reading. I try to keep in touch with what's happening. I read some business and news magazines and technology journals and Web sites, to try to keep up with what's happening around the world. And then I spend a lot of time listening to other people and giving them insights on what they think will happen on their respective fields. Reading consumes a lot of my time as well as being in touch with another people, one way or another. Then I spend a long time daydreaming, thinking about how the thing interacts, and gradually I come up with a view of the future. When I talk with other people about it of course they argue with me sometimes. For example someone can say: 'That is a very stupid conclusion,' and I think again. This allows me to refine my ideas by sharing it with other colleagues, and find better conclusions."

India, China to be world's new R&D hub- Indicators-Economy-News-The Economic Times

India, China to be world's new R&D hub- Indicators-Economy-News-The Economic Times: "LONDON: The focus of global research and development is shifting from the US to Asia, specifically India and China, a new study shows. In 10 years, the global research and development activity will shake loose the near-domination that the US has held for the past 50 years, and be split into thirds between the US, EU, and China and India in terms of efforts , funds and activity. The shift, finds the study, is not just in terms of expenditures and investments, but a structural upheavals in the R&D enterprise and the complex interplay between funders and performers."

Sam Harris: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

Sam Harris: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com: "Now, it just so happens that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas. And it remains the only system of thought, where the process of maintaining bad ideas in perpetual immunity from criticism is considered a sacred act. This is the act of faith."

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - The Nature of the New World

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - The Nature of the New World: "The world is facing the emergence of a geopolitics of scarcity, which is already highly visible in the efforts by China, India, and other developing countries to ensure their access to oil supplies. In the future, the issue will be who gets access to not only Middle Eastern oil but also Brazilian ethanol and North American grain. Pressures on land and water resources, already excessive in most of the world, will intensify further as the demand for biofuels climbs. This geopolitics of scarcity is an early manifestation of civilization in an overshoot-and-collapse mode, much like the one that emerged among the Mayan cities competing for food in that civilization’s waning years."

Gmail - [World Beat] We Get Religion

Gmail - [World Beat] We Get Religion: "The 19th century was the age of nations; the 20th century the age of ideologies; the 21st century is shaping up to be the age of fundamentalism. Thanks to Bush, Christian fundamentalism has attained political power in the United States. Jewish fundamentalism resists a political solution in Arab-Israeli conflict. Hindu fundamentalism has reshaped Indian politics. And Muslim fundamentalism has somehow blotted out the diversity of Islam in both politics and media. Communism is largely gone; liberalism is under attack; globalization is rampant. Fundamentalism offers a comforting set of bedrock truths at a time of flux and uncertainty."

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam: Digital generation has less and less contact with traditional culture

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam: Digital generation has less and less contact with traditional culture

The generation of young people who were born into the digital era may
be more connected to each other, but less connected to their cultural
heritage, warns sociologist Jos de Haan of Erasmus University
Rotterdam. They are "chatting" more but reading less; playing more, but
researching and learning less than preceding generations.

Though adept at finding their way around the virtual world, digital-era
youth are not finding their way to institutions that connect them with
the cultural riches of their past, according to de Haan.

The Internet is perceived as a rival to traditional culture, but it
could become an ally: De Haan challenges museums, libraries, archives,
and other institutions to do more to connect with the digital
generation than merely digitize their collections.

39070305.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

39070305.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

The availability of statistical indicators of economic, social, and environmental outcomes and their dissemination to citizens can contribute to promoting good governance and the improvement of democratic processes. It can strengthen citizens’ capacity to influence the goals of the societies they live in through debate and consensus building, and increase the accountability of public policies..

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature - Steven Pinker - Books - Review - New York Times

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature - Steven Pinker - Books - Review - New York Times: "The dialectic of creativity and reality-testing has taken us far beyond other animals and can take us farther. The next step is to dump our most natural and mistaken metaphor — education as the filling of empty minds — and recognize that we learn by extrapolating, testing, modifying and recombining mental models of the world."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Although U.S. robot numbers are not yet measured in millions, the industrial automatons are nonetheless playing strategic roles in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, with more than 171,000 robots now at work in U.S. factories, placing the U.S. second only to Japan in overall robot use. Read Original Article>>"

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

Fading superpower? – (LA Times – September 9, 2007)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18347.htm
Whether it is imperial Rome, imperial Spain or imperial Britain, economic strength and political strength have always gone together. Because no one denies that the U.S. will decline in comparative terms economically (though it will almost certainly remain one center of the world economy), the only way one can believe that geopolitics will not also become multipolar is to believe that the U.S. is somehow exempt from what seems one of history's few ironclad laws. However, that is not analysis; that is faith.

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

The Future of the Workplace: No Office, Headquarters in Cyberspace – (August 27, 2007)
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3521725&page=1
Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all. 42% of IBM's 350,000 employees rarely comes in to an IBM office. IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn't need the offices. The work force at the Accenture management consulting firm is so mobile not even the CEO has an office with his name on the door. However, maintaining a community is essential at IBM, where isolation can be a "significant" issue. There's even a joke at the company that the name stands for "I'm by Myself."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "A Planet Under Stress: Rising to the Challenge — We need to restructure our economy with lower income taxes and increased taxes on environmentally destructive activities, such as use of fossil fuels, says one environmental advocate."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "The productivity boom in the U.S. economy during the twentieth century created a massive consumer culture--people made more money, so they bought more stuff. In the twenty-first century, however, workers will increasingly choose to trade higher salaries for more time with their families. Nearly a third of U.S. workers recently polled said they would prefer more time off rather than more hours of paid employment."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "For the first time, the United States will see a significant proportion of its population emigrate due to overseas opportunities. According to futurists Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner, Generation Y, the population segment born between 1978 and 1995, may be the first generation in U.S. history to have many of its members leave the U.S. to pursue large portions of their lives, if not their entire adult lives, overseas."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Life expectancy rates in the United States are at an all-time high, with people born in 2005 projected to live for nearly 78 years, up from 69.6 in 1955, a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics finds. Despite the upward trend, the United States still has a lower life expectancy than some 40 other countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The country with the longest life expectancy is Andorra at 83.5 years."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the '2007 State of the Future' report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon. The report called organized crime one of the most pressing global issues that needs to be addressed in the next 10 years, along with global warming, terrorism, corruption, unemployment, and income disparities. But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off."

OECD Observer: Foreign class

OECD Observer: Foreign class: "Some 82,900 foreign scholars were in teaching or research at US higher education institutions in the 2003-04 academic year. Most were engaged in research, although the share in teaching has increased. Two-thirds are engaged in scientific or engineering fields, with a fast-growing proportion in life and biological sciences."

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

AUGMENTED/ARTICIAL INTELLIGENCE Unmanned "Surge": 3000 More Robots for War – (Wired – August 13, 2007)
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/3000-more-bomb-.html
U.S. military robots ran 30,000 missions in 2006 -- hunting for, and getting rid of, improvised explosives. Now, the military has launched a crash project to radically increase its unmanned ground forces. 1000 machines are supposed to be enlisted by the end of the year, with two thousand more in five years. Word of the robot recruitment comes just weeks after the military revealed it had deployed armed robots to Iraq

About TAI | The Arlington Institute

About TAI | The Arlington Institute
China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People – (New York Times – August 12, 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12security.html?ex=1188532800&en=
09f8aa49c390745d&ei=5070
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by American-financed company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

Ian Ayres

Ian Ayres: "Here are some applets that give you a sense of the kinds of things that Super Crunching can help predict. Use them at your own risk (The lawyer in me feels compelled to emphasize that I make no representation as to their accuracy). ."

Technology Review: Higher Games

Technology Review: Higher Games: "Yes, but so what? Silicon machines can now play chess better than any protein machines can. Big deal. This calm and reasonable reaction, however, is hard for most people to sustain. They don't like the idea that their brains are protein machines. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, many commentators were tempted to insist that its brute-force search methods were entirely unlike the exploratory processes that Kasparov used when he conjured up his chess moves. But that is simply not so. Kasparov's brain is made of organic materials and has an architecture notably unlike that of Deep Blue, but it is still, so far as we know, a massively parallel search engine that has an outstanding array of heuristic pruning techniques that keep it from wasting time on unlikely branches."

Technology Review: Higher Games

Technology Review: Higher Games: "In an editorial written at the time of the Deep Blue match, 'Mind over Matter' (May 10, 1997), the New York Times opined: The real significance of this over-hyped chess match is that it is forcing us to ponder just what, if anything, is uniquely human. We prefer to believe that something sets us apart from the machines we devise. Perhaps it is found in such concepts as creativity, intuition, consciousness, esthetic or moral judgment, courage or even the ability to be intimidated by Deep Blue. The ability to be intimidated? Is that really one of our prized qualities? Yes, according to the Times: Nobody knows enough about such characteristics to know if they are truly beyond machines in the very long run, but it is nice to think that they are."

Tar Sands Fever | Worldwatch Institute

Tar Sands Fever | Worldwatch Institute: "It's well known that the United States consumes more oil per capita than any other country in the world, absorbing two-thirds of global oil production. This heavy dependence has often, and aptly, been described as an addiction; even U.S. President George W. Bush trotted out the metaphor in his 2006 State of the Union address ( America is addicted to oil )."

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
As the world moves toward ubiquitous computing
with collective intelligence for just-in-time knowledge,
decisions should improve. Decisionmaking
will increasingly be augmented by the integration
of ubiquitous sensors, a more intelligent Web,
and institutional and personal intelligence software
that helps us receive and respond to feedback for
improving decisions.
The world is expected to produce more data in
2007 than it can store. According to the IDC, the
world produced 161 exabytes (billion gigabytes)
in 2006 and had 185 exabytes of storage capacity.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
If much of the global complexity
cannot be managed efficiently by current systems,
then new decisionmaking systems may emerge.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
According to Freedom House, the number
of free countries grew from 46 to 90 over the
past 30 years, accounting for 46% of the world's
population, and for the past several years 64% of
countries have been electoral democracies. Since
democracies tend not to fight each other and
since humanitarian crises are far more likely under
authoritarian than democratic regimes, the trend
toward democracy should lead to a more peaceful
future among nation states. Unfortunately, massively
destructive powers will be more available
to individuals. Future desktop molecular and
pharmaceutical manufacturing and organized
crime's access to nuclear materials give single
individuals the ability to make and use weapons
of mass destruction—from biological weapons
to low-level nuclear (“dirty”) bombs. The IAEA
reported 149 confirmed incidents of illicit use
of radioactive materials in 2006. Only 10% of
the 220 million sea containers that transport 90%
of the world’s trade are inspected, giving organized
crime and terrorism easier supply lines.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
According to UNESCO, in 1970 about 37% of
all people over the age of 15 were illiterate. That
has fallen to less than 18% today. Between 1999
and 2004 the number of children without primary
education fell by around 21 million to 77 million.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

The global economy grew at 5.4% in 2006 to $66 trillion (PPP). The population grew 1.1%, increasing
the average world per capita income by 4.3%. At this rate world poverty will be cut by more than half
between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal for poverty reduction except
in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the majority of the world is improving economically, income disparities
are still enormous: 2% of the world’s richest people own more than 50% of the world’s wealth, while
the poorest 50% of people own 1%. And the income of the 225 richest people in the world is equal to
that of the poorest 2.7 billion, 40% of the world.

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

sof2007-exec-summ.pdf (Objet application/pdf)

People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, and
increasingly connected and they are living longer, but at the same time the world is more corrupt,
congested, warmer, and increasingly dangerous. Although the digital divide is beginning to close, income
gaps are still expanding around the world and unemployment continues to grow.

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy: "China's environmental problems are mounting. Water pollution and water scarcity are burdening the economy, rising levels of air pollution are endangering the health of millions of Chinese, and much of the country's land is rapidly turning into desert. China has become a world leader in air and water pollution and land degradation and a top contributor to some of the world's most vexing global environmental problems, such as the illegal timber trade, marine pollution, and climate change."

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy

Foreign Affairs - The Great Leap Backward? - Elizabeth C. Economy: "Summary: China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms."

Global trends-The world in 2030

Global trends-The world in 2030: "Clearly, we have known more discoveries from 1945 until today than since the beginning of mankind until 1945. This high flow of discoveries will boost the future growth."

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use: "The existing water-based waste disposal economy is not viable. There are too many households, factories, and feedlots to simply try and wash waste away on our crowded planet. To do so is ecologically mindless and outdated—an approach that belongs to an age when there were many fewer people and far less economic activity."

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use

Earth Policy Institute Book Byte - Farewell to "Flush and Forget" - Reducing Urban Water Use: "In urban settings, the one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is becoming an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water—both surface and underground—unsafe for drinking. And their toxic wastes are destroying marine ecosystems, including local fisheries. The time has come to manage waste without discharging it into the local environment, allowing water to be recycled indefinitely and reducing both urban and industrial demand dramatically."

Foreign Policy in Focus - A Think Tank Without Walls

Foreign Policy in Focus - A Think Tank Without Walls:

If there were only one factory producing U.S. military armaments located in Rhode Island, there would be a dramatic reduction of congressional support for a rising defense budget. The problem is: virtually all weapons systems have been broken down into a supply chain that turns the 50 states into an assembly line for the military-industrial complex. Almost every member of Congress therefore supports the whole hog in order to bring home some of the bacon to their home district.

State of the World 2007: Notable Trends | Worldwatch Institute

State of the World 2007: Notable Trends | Worldwatch Institute: "* In the last half-century, the world’s urban population has increased nearly fourfold, from 732 million in 1950 to more than 3.2 billion in 2006. (p. 7)

* Africa now has 350 million urban dwellers, more than the populations of Canada and the United States combined. Asia and Africa are expected to double their urban populations to roughly 3.4 billion by 2030. (p. 4)

* The vast majority of net additions to the human population—88 percent of the growth from 2000 to 2030—will be urban dwellers in low- and middle-income countries. (p. 7)"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Yet, contrary to what many in India might think, China is not a malevolent, sinister international entity out there to demolish India, but a state which is simply pursuing its own strategic interests in a hard-headed fashion on its way to great power status. It is time for India to realize that India's great power aspirations cannot be realized without a similar cold-blooded realistic assessment of its own strategic interests in an anarchic international system where there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "There is also nothing extraordinarily benign in China's attempts to improve its bilateral relations with India in recent times. After cutting India down to size in various ways, China does not want India to move closer to the United States in order to contain China. On this geopolitical chessboard, while both Washington and Beijing are using India toward their own strategic ends, India has ended up primarily reacting to the actions of other."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "This is not much different than the stated U.S. policy of preventing the rise of other powers that might threaten its position as a global power. Just as the United States is working toward achieving its strategic objective, China is pursuing its own strategic agenda."

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic: "So what drives up crime rates? Researchers can agree upon little beyond the general notion that crime soars in places where there is a combination of a high percentage of young males, ample drugs, and easy access to guns. Economic inequality and urbanization also accelerate crime rates (but experts disagree by how much). And, once criminal behavior takes root in a neighborhood or city, it takes a long time and an immense effort to reclaim the streets.

It is easy to dismiss growing crime rates as either a local problem or one that has been with us since time immemorial. But that would be a major mistake. Because, though we may have recently lost ground, the problem has the potential to be a far greater global nightmare. Consider China and India. They have growing populations of young males, growing levels of economic inequality, and rapid urbanization. And, though drugs and guns are still relatively hard to come by, they’re becoming easier to obtain every day. If these two nations become more like other poor countries in this regard, too, their crime rates could soar to unimagined levels. Suffice it to say, the crime pandemic would never be hidden from anyone again."

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic

Foreign Policy: The Hidden Pandemic: "The world is experiencing a crime pandemic. Crime rates are on the rise almost everywhere, and these statistics typically are distinct from the death and mayhem that comes with terrorism, civil war, or major conflict. The data reflect the booming number of civilians assaulted, robbed, or murdered by other civilians who live in the same city, often in the same neighborhood. Frequently, the victims are as poor as the criminals."

Europe of 2057: A big future is seen in poll - International Herald Tribune

Europe of 2057: A big future is seen in poll - International Herald Tribune: "PARIS: The Europe of 2057 is a larger place, its borders stretched eastward to encompass Turkey and, probably, Russia. It is a greener place, where wind and sun power have supplanted fossil fuels. It has been the battleground for at least one new war. And the dominant language is English.

This vision of Europe's future emerges from a new trans-Atlantic poll timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the European Union. The results are not uniform across the six countries polled — Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States — but, as through a hazy crystal ball, images of the world to come take shape."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #9: Companies will see the age range of their workers span four generations. Workers over the age of 55 are expected to grow from 14% of the labor force to 19% by 2012. In less than five years, 77 million baby boomers in the United States will begin reaching age 65, the traditional retirement age. As a result, the idea of 'retirement' will change significantly."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #1: Generation Y will migrate heavily overseas. For the first time, the United States will see a significant proportion of its population emigrate due to overseas opportunities. According to futurists Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner, Generation Y, the population segment born between 1978 and 1995, may be the first generation in U.S. history to have many of its members leave the U.S. to pursue large portions of their lives, if not their entire adult lives, overseas."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #3: Workers will increasingly choose more time over more money. The productivity boom in the U.S. economy during the twentieth century created a massive consumer culture--people made more money, so they bought more stuff. In the twenty-first century, however, workers will increasingly choose to trade higher salaries for more time with their families. Nearly a third of U.S. workers recently polled said they would prefer more time off rather than more hours of paid employment."

Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up | Worldwatch Institute

Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up | Worldwatch Institute: "The world’s auto manufacturers produced a record 67 million vehicles in 2006, putting more cars on the road than ever before, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. While global production grew 4 percent last year, China increased its production by nearly 30 percent, overtaking Germany to become the third largest producer.

'America’s car addiction is becoming a global phenomenon with no sign of reversing,” says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, who authored the update. “This trend begs immediate and innovative transportation solutions to address the consumption of fossil fuels that is harming our climate.”

China’s rise represents the most dramatic change in the world auto industry, with production there more than quintupling in the last decade. Sales within China surpassed the 3 million mark in 2005, with nearly 9 million passenger cars on the country’s roads. While this is still a comparatively small fleet, it is likely to grow rapidly in coming years, and China is expected to become a major exporter within the next four years."

Traffic congestion, road accidents, air pollution, climate change, and peak oil are all challenges the world faces from car-centered transportation, according to the Institute’s State of the World 2007 report. On average, urban car travel uses nearly twice as much energy as urban bus travel.

Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News

Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News: "Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity"

Saving Earth From the Ground Up - washingtonpost.com

Saving Earth From the Ground Up - washingtonpost.com: "Exactly 250 years after the Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus gave science the means to catalogue the living Earth, with his system of scientific sorting and naming, 'we may have discovered at a crude guess 10 percent of the life forms on Earth,' said Wilson. 'We are flying blind in many aspects of preserving the environment, and that's why we are so surprised when a species like the honeybee starts to crash, or an insect we don't want, the Asian tiger mosquito or the fire ant, appears in our midst.' In other words: Start thinking about the bugs."

Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotech - International Herald Tribune

Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotech - International Herald Tribune: "Last month, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of the way genes function. The exhaustive, four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a 'tidy collection of independent genes' after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, like a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.

Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists 'to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.'"

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - Odd Arne Westad

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times - Odd Arne Westad: "The Cold War began and ended in Europe, but some of its most severe effects were felt in the Third World. Despite the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union could claim impressive anticolonial credentials, they viewed the upheavals set in motion by decolonization as an extension of their confrontation. The consequent interventions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America tended to extend and accentuate local quarrels, with dismal consequences for all."

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman: "A look back over recent decades reveals that the United States is by no means always the most ready to resort to armed force. The recently published Human Security Report, a study of modern conflict financed in part by the Canadian government, contains a table ranking countries according to their participation in international wars since 1946. The United Kingdom tops the list with 21 instances, followed by France (19) and the United States (16). Many of the British and French entries refer to attempts to hold on to or stabilize their former colonies (while the British were staying out of Vietnam, they were heavily engaged in Malaysia). But colonialism is only part of the story. Since the end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom and France have been regularly involved in humanitarian interventions. The war in Iraq was the fifth military operation Blair has authorized, after air strikes against Iraq in 1998 and operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan. This is not to mention the small contingent the British sent to East Timor."

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman

Foreign Affairs - The Special Relationship, Then and Now - Lawrence D. Freedman: "The incident serves as a reminder that the policies of major powers reflect a calculation of interests and an analysis of the dynamics of conflict -- and that the policies adopted by the United States are a product of shifting power balances within a particular administration as much as a product of any built-in ideological disposition."

KurzweilAI.net

KurzweilAI.net: "Critics say questions about dangers that could arise with manmade organisms -- which can reproduce on their own -- remain unaddressed.

'The notion is that, as we engineer more complex systems, our ability to predict their behavior diminishes,' said Boston University microbiologist James Collins. 'How can we ensure that we don't create something dangerous? Now is the time to start thinking about it.'"

The Singularity Institute Blog : Blog Archive : The Power of Intelligence

The Singularity Institute Blog : Blog Archive : The Power of Intelligence: "Well, one trick cured smallpox and built airplanes and cultivated wheat and tamed fire. Our current science may not agree yet on how exactly the trick works, but it works anyway. If you are temporarily ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about your current state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon. A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory. If one does not quite understand that power which put footprints on the Moon, nonetheless, the footprints are still there - real footprints, on a real Moon, put there by a real power. If one were to understand deeply enough, one could create and shape that power. Intelligence is as real as electricity. It’s merely far more powerful, far more dangerous, has far deeper implications for the unfolding story of life in the universe - and it’s a tiny little bit harder to figure out how to build a generator."