Fquist

Writing Therapy

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:54:48 GMT

I never finished this (so much for writing this to get myself to start writing again) or checked it or whatever, and I won't finish this in the future either. I might as well throw it on here right now so that I can stop thinking about it and delete it out of the default startup draft for w.bloggar. And my LJ would be updated, yay. Only reason this is worth putting up here is Chris Anderson's interesting thoughts. I barely managed to finish this. But Chris Anderson's argument should be more known

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, penned an entry about the economical benefits of illegally spread content, such as music and movies. He has a few arguments. The latter one: using a slightly complex (and criticised) argument, he tries to point out that not locking up all content with things such as DRM (Digital Rights Management) can provide economic benefits to content publishers:

The second reason the quest for zero-piracy is a mistake is an economic one: piracy can actually let you raise your prices.

[snip]

The usual price-setting method is to look at the entire potential market, from the many at the economic lower end to the few at the top, and set a price somewhere in between the top and bottom that will maximize total revenues. But if you cede the bottom to piracy, you can set a price between the top and the middle. The result: higher revenues per copy, and potentially higher revenues overall.

The argument slightly bothers me, for several reasons. It seems quite a simple description of what should be a pretty complex mechanism when all the factors are included, for one. Secondly, illegal acquisition of content, wether silently endorsed by publishers or not, is still illegal. Raising prices will cause people who are willing or able to spend less money on content to be forced to turn themselves to illegal acquisition of content. That may be in some ways economically efficient, but if it's efficient to have large groups of people driven to underground acquisition by force on the long term, I wouldn't be certain. It's too complex an argument to be taken for true at a glance - or that's how it should be.

His other argument is easier to accept:

The first is about the user experience: Any protection technology that is really difficult to crack is probably too cumbersome to be accepted by consumers.

We've seen all sorts of failures of this sort before, from dongles to laborious and confusing registration schemes. Each seems better at annoying consumers than at building markets. The lesson from these examples is that zero-percent piracy is not only unattainable, it's economically suboptimal. If your content is uncrackable, it means you've probably locked the market down so tight that even honest consumers are being inconvenienced.

Instead, efficient software and entertainment markets should exhibit just enough piracy to suggest that the industry has got the balance of control about right: not too loose and not too tight. That number is not zero percent (which requires protection methods so invasive they kill demand), and it's not 100% (which kills the business). It's somewhere in-between.

Anyone who has bought CDs or DVDs and has had trouble with getting them to work thanks to copy protection should sympathise with this argument, which is probably also a more common one. Making piracy totally impossible (in itself impossible), will also hurt your own sales. Zero-percent piracy, Chris Anderson states, is "not only unattainable, it's economically suboptimal".

Is that all that can be said in favour of piracy from an economical perspective from the eyes of publishers?

- Viral content (..people discover cool songs and share them, creating buzz for an artist and eventually sales)
- Diversity (...more stuff or something? lesser known artists might get more buzz and sales through piracy and diversity is in itself a good thing, mono cultures are not stable in the long term)
- Opening new markets (sometimes publishers don't consider something commercially viable until it becomes an underground hit..people sharing things can open the publisher's eyes on what is popular or a viable market which they might not have noticed before, also the industries' caching in on iTunes and related software that's basically based off napster shows that piracy has an innovation effect)

.....

edit:
Oh, and this (my CD collection) rather shows how piracy can stimulate sales. I'd guess about 90% of the CDs on there are from artists which I downloaded songs off and discovered that I liked them or for which I originally tried a copied version. 65 legal CDs so far, in not so many years. Oh, and about 10% of that list must be from artists Jeremy Brannon (jb! on JMMB/JCF) has at some suggested to me.

Trip to Turkey, day one

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:05:05 GMT

Don't expect great writing, it's just a recollection of the stuff I remembered which I post for myself, to remember it, and for others if they are interested.

17 August, around 2 am - twelve hours earlier than we had expected, as we were told only that day - we go to the airport, where we arrive a little bit later, around 7 am or so. We constantly look for if there are any others - this is after all a group tour - but we seem to be the only one. After barely any problems (except for having to get new tickets as ours were false, we also hear now that the rest of the group is from belgium and arrives 12 hours laterand some tax-free shopping. A small trip without food later, we arrive in Izmir, at the Turkey west coast, were a driver drives us to Manissa, a small town about a hour away from Istanbul.

To our surprise we arrive in a hotel bearing four stars, something which continues during the weeklong trip. It's easier to get stars in Turkey but the hotels were all topclass. Since it's morning and we have been up all night we decide to sleep part of the day away. Afterwards we read, and father takes a walk - during which he notices how terribly poor and dry the village is. Something which is rather different from our hotel, with a lush green and quite big garden. The garden, turns out, gets sprayed with huge amounts of water. The hotel feels like fake - an island of wealth, purposedly shielding us from the real way of life here. We read some more, and go for a walk up the hill near Manissa. Besides the hotel we can see a big statue of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern turkey whose face you find everywhere. It feels weird. Islam is against worshipping other things than Islam. Icons that is. What do the imams think of this?

In the evening we come back to find that the tour group (consisting of ten people) has arrived, and are at dinner. We are late for dinner, setting a precedent, since the rest of the vacation I and my father will be constantly late for all group activities. We don't like being herded like sheep and want to do what we really want. If we want to look at this or that monument for another five minutes because something is really really interesting, why spoil that? But tours don't work like that. We love investigating things and posing questions. The rest of the group - consisting entirely of nice people - is always ready on time, something which makes us rather annoying probably.

We have a nice meal which sets the trend for the rest of the trip which also consists of very good meals.

Some random recent thoughts

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 14:02:43 GMT

Just some random thoughts I had lately:

The cause of humanity's problems - and with that one of the causes of it's low regard for itself - might be it's low regard for itself.

--

We have a craving for movies that contain heavy emotions because they allow us to feel the emotions we bear but which we don't normally manage to really feel. Many people have trouble with expressing emotions. Perhaps that's why they like feeling them in emotional (sentimental, or aggressive) movies.

If people had a more healthy emotional life, would they enjoy such movies less?

--

Take a god who believes two things:

1. People who do not believe in God/accept Jesus should be sent to hell after their death
2. In this hell, people would experience emotions that are quite negative, or at least quite a lot more negative than those who enter heaven, for a large timespan This may take on the form of torture like burning, etc.

If you have such a god, he is fundamentally injust according to almost every western standard. If he hadn't been a god, with lots of people believing in his existence, he would be seen as someone with a very warped mind.

Why?

Because of this:

If a god believes that every individual should be christian to not go to hell, it follows automatically that it is expected of every nonchristian individual to convert to Christianity. To do this however, a person needs to have two things:

1. knowledge of enough information about christianity to make a choice and know it's 'the true religion'
2.. the ability to learn it when you have heard it exists.

And here it becomes evident. A huge portion of this world's individuals don't have those abilities. In the globalised media world this is a decreasing thing, but it's still there. A lot of people in african or asian countries don't exactly watch the evening news or read magazines that mention christians. They are taught by their parents in other beliefs than Christianity. Thus, this hypothetical god is requiring the impossible of people. Things which they have no responsibility for.

It gets even more evident when you consider the world of let's say, 400 AD. How much of the world's populace knew of Jesus? A very minor part. Yet they are dependent on evangelical christians to spread the fate. If those fail, *the victims* of that are doomed and must burn in hell.

This is fundamentally unjust. In fact, it's of the same mindset as most terrorists have, who send innocent people into death for not believing in their belief. How can the christians with this believe believe terrorism to be fundamentally bad when the mindset behind it is the exact same as their God's?

(Even if everyone would know of Jesus, most non-christians of course will believe that it's unfair to ask people to be either of the christian religion or burn. Especially if you check on the rate of conversion to christianity of people with christian upbringing versus people with agnostic upbringing. But I think the above is a seperate and more powerful argument against the existence of such a God)

Thuisschool notities

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 12:52:57 GMT

Geen internetopdrachten voor Atlantis. De internetopdrachten voor vietnam zijn nog niet online, maar op navraag zullen die dat snel zijn.

Ik ben Annemiek aan het e-mailen. Thuisles is volgende week dinsdag, 13.00

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:15:46 GMT

mensen moeten leren de informatie echt met dat uit zichzelf te combineren
dingen moeten met henzelf gerelateerd worden

example is plato and the cup of poison he had to drink

Vacation schedule

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:43:28 GMT

Since I'm bored to death during this vacation, this is the schedule I'm making up for myself. When school, which my life revolves around quite a lot, is not there, I don't really know that to do besides doing useless stupid things all day like watching the telly, sitting in #jj2 and reading fiction books. So here's a schedual, mostly as a note to myself:

Per day:

1 (or more) hours of regular work - fixing up finances, homework
1 (or more) hours of site work - J2Ov2/weblog
1 (or more) hours spent on knowledge aggegration - researching things in the subject of economy and environment, partly for my paper next year.
1 (or more) hours on reading general books on subjects economy and environment.

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 15:01:39 GMT

Ignore the postings below. I..had a pretty weird opinion on politics back then, not considering the opposing side's viewpoints at all and not seeing the complexity of problems. They don't reflect my current opinion.

Protests

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 22:04:01 GMT

Say no to this war!

I'm going to protest tomorrow in the city of Amsterdam. The entire world is mobilizing.

A small list of places where there will be protests:

Europe
La Coruña, Aix-en-Provence, Albacete, Alicante, Amsterdam, Andorra, Antwerp, Athens, Barcelona, Belfast, Bergen, Berlin, Berne, Bilbao, Bodoe, Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, Cádiz, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Cluj-Napoca, Coimbra, Copenhagen, Cordoba, Cuenca, Dublin, Évora, Faro, Girona, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Granada, Guadalajara, Helsinki, Hereford, Huelva, Huesca, Isafjordur, Jaén, Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Kiev, Kristiansand, Kuopio, Lancaster, Lillehammer, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Lleida, London, Longyearbyen, Luxembourg, Madrid, Málaga, Malmö, Malta, Marseille, Moscow, Murcia, Nokia, Oslo, Oulu, Oviedo, Palma de Mallorca, Pamplona, Paris, Patras, Pontevedra, Porto, Poznan, Prague, Puertollano, Reykjavik, Rodos, Rome, Rovaniemi, Salamanca, San Sebastian, Santander, Savolinna, Seinäjoki, Sevilla, Shetland, Skopje, Sofia, Stavanger, Stockholm, Talavera de la Reina, Tallinn, Tarragona, Teruel, Thessaloniki, Toledo, Tromsoe, Trondheim, Turku, Valencia, Valetta, Vienna, Vigo, Vilnius, Volos, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zagreb, Zaragoza

Afrika
Cairo, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Kigali, Niamey, Rabat, Reunion Island

Asia
Baghdad, Bahawalpur, Bangkok, Beirut, Dili, Faisalabad, Gojranwala, Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Kansai, Karachi, Kharian, Kuala Lumpur, Kumamoto, Lahore, Larkana, Layya, Muharraq, Manama, Mandi Bahaudin, Manila, Matsumoto, Multan, Naha, Okara, Osaka, Otsu, Peshawar, Qasur, Ramallah, Sahiwal, Sargodha, Seoul, Sheikhupura, Tel Aviv, Tokyo

Latin-Amerika
Bahia, Buenos Aires, Havana, Kingston, Jamaica, Lima, Martinique, Mexicali, Mexico City, Montevideo, Quito, Rio de Janiero, Rio Grande do Sol, San Jose, CR, San Juan, Santiago, Santo Domingo, Sao Paulo

USA en Canada
Akron, Asheville, Atlanta, Austin, Bakersfield, Baltimore, Bellingham, Bisbee, Blacksburg, Bloomington, Boise, Brampton, Butler, Calexico, Calgary, Canmore, Cape Cod, Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Charleston, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Chicago, Chico, Coburg, Colorado Springs, Columbia, MO, Columbia, SC, Corpus Christi, Cortez, Cranbrook, BC, Dallas, Detroit, Durango, Edmonton, Encino, Eugene, Fayetteville, Fillmore, Flagstaff, Fort Wayne, Fresno, Galveston, Grand Junction, Grand Rapids, Halifax, Hamilton, Hilo, Honolulu, Houston, Huntington, Indianapolis, Jefferson City, Juneau, Kamloops, Kelowna, Kingston, Knoxville, Lancaster, Lansing, Las Cruces, Las Vegas, Lawrence, KS, Lethbridge, Lincoln, London, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Louisville, Macomb, Madison, Melbourne, Memphis, Minneapolis, Miami, Milwaukee, Montpelier, Montreal, Mount Vernon, OH, Nanaimo, Naples, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, DE, Norfolk, VA, North Newton, Olympia, Orange, Orangeville, Orlando, Ottawa, Palm Desert, Parry Sound, Pensacola, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsboro, Portland, ME, Portland, OR, Port Perry, Portsmouth, Prince Albert, Raleigh, Regina, Richland Center, Rolla, St. Augustine, St. Louis, Salem, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Santa Monica, Sarasota, Saskatoon, Savannah, Seattle, Sitka, Sonora, South Bend, South Haven, Spokane, Starkville, St. John's, Sudbury, Tacoma, Tallahassee, Tehachapi, Temple, Thornbury, Toronto, Tulsa, Vallejo, Vancouver, B.C., Victoria, Wausau, Waterloo, Wilkes-Barre, Williamsburg, Williamsport, Wilmington, Windsor, Winnipeg, Youngstown

Oceania
Adelaide, Aotearoa, Auckland, Brisbane, Bundaberg, Byron Bay, Canberra, Christchurch, Dunedin, Geelong, Gisborne, Greymouth, Hamilton, NZ, Hastings, Hobart, Kelowna, Launceton, Lismore, Melbourne, Nelson, Newcastle, Opotiki, Palmerston North, Perth, Rockhampton, Rotorua, Sydney, Takaka, Tauranga, Timaru, Wanganui, Wellington, Whakatane, Wollongong

Antarctica
McMurdo Station

A few reasons against the pre-emptive war

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 21:58:27 GMT

1. How can you start a war to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction? If you war the only thing that will happen is that you are sure they will be used, if they exist at all. If you want to disarm Iraq you will have to let the inspections go on. Apply pressure, though. If Saddam(who might just be dead according to a deserted 'Clone'(only in looks) of him. He has cancer according to this person) does not cooperate enough you might consider waging war.

2. The US wants to use nuclear weapons. This is against international law and the UN.

3. Around Iraq live a billion muslims. Installing a puppet government or at least the temporary US government that is being planned, you are going to make quite a lot of them quite mad. Terrorism will worsen extremely and the middle east will become even more unstable. Fundamentalism will rise. You might end up with a worse situation then before you had the war. What do you think that will happen to a US country in a anti-US region?

4. Pre-emptive strikes are against international law.

5. Projections: 200.000 to half a million deaths and a few million refugees. This will cause even more instability in the region.

6. If the US is allowed to pre-emptively attack countries possibly without UN permission, aren't all other countries allowed to?

7. It seems funny to me to wage war to avoid one. They say offense is the best kind of defense, but aren't you doing the same thing as you're accusing Iraq of?

8. If the attack happens outside of the UN, this will become a major letdown for the UN. Not that the UN hasn't already always been boycotted by the US who only use it for their own good and preferrably don't even pay the contribution..

9. In Iraq live hundreds of thousands of fled Kurds. They want their own country, Turkey would rather have them dead then allowing something like that near their own country. Turkey is a possible ally in the war against Iraq. This could become a major catastrophe.

10. Sharon could deport the Palestinians now all cameras are pointing in a different direction. Several Israeli experts have said he *is* planning such a thing.

11. The islamist world will only become more self-centered, and progress will cease.

12. The western world runs on oil. If we attack Iraq they might just set fire to these fields, starting a deep economic recession.

13. What happened to Afghanistan? First it gets bombed by the Americans, now Bush doesn't even think of sending them funding. The entire country is a wreckage and coincedentally the leader of the country, that was suggested by the US, is a former high oil-guy. The Afghan people have democracy still in their memory, the Iraqian people have suffered because of Saddam for ages. Democracy can't be established by the US government the US is planning to install for one year, with the intention of installing a 'democracy'. Oh, and remember the Islam anti-American people? Democracy won't stand like this just yet. It requires a long process.

Fri, 13 Sep 2002 14:27:58 GMT

Well, let me say I mourn for the victims of 11 september. I really do. But I mourn for the people who die because of poverty too. What I'm going to write might seem a little bit hard, therefore I've waited with posting this until 12 september.

People are seeing 11 september as a sudden start of a war. My theory is, that the war was already started, by the western world.

Each day, 24,000 people die from poverty. 46% of the world's people lives on less then one dollar a day. The last few decades, the non-western part of the world only got more pover, in relative and absolute sence. Why is this? Greed. The western rich people want more money, and live off the poor. Farmaceutical industries are denying people dieing from AIDS medicine because their share holders want more profit. Institutions like the world bank force poor countries to open their markets to the western culture and destroy local tries to structure economy. In Afghanistan, you will see McDonalds now. At the other side of the street you will see many beggars that lost their jobs thanks to western action. The neoliberal arrogant behaviour of mainly the United States and the big international coorporations is causing thousands of innocent deaths, every day!. Bush abandoned the Kyoto protocol, and cut funding for sustainable development and poverty fighting.

At this rate it would take 110 years to have the people on this world that now make 1 dollar a day make one dollar more. Western countries are deliberately stopping development so they get more rich. They actively try to kill the economies of non-western countries by boycotting countries if they don't allow the western coorporations into their countries, who use slavery, polluting factories(like the smog covering a large part of asia, causing many deaths?) and low inhuman loans to make their money and pushing western open-market ideals into them, even though the US's and EU's markets are not open at all(you see, they make the poor countries open their markets but they protect theirs to get more money, they're destroying the other markets).

I don't think this is a very friendly way of treating people, right? Can you see why terrorists decided to target the Western world?(the US is not the only evil country, the EU is bad too)

It was simply their reaction to the western arrogance. Not that the action wasn't terrible, but at least it woke up American leaders and some of it's people(wow, there's a world outside the US and if we are mean to them they'll kill our people). Sadly these leaders asleep again. The only thing they can think up is the war on terror, which won't help anything since the western world hasn't stopped terrorizing yet. Yes, these killed people did not have anything to do with the stupidity of the US's leaders, but all the people dieing from poverty didn't do anything wrong either.

Also, you may thank the the American foreign policy for 911, as they let the CIA teach the terrorists how to be a terrorist. Thank you, CIA. Not to forget Saddam Hoessein only exists because of American economical politics too.

The western world did not only start this 'war', the US started the real war. Even before 911 they forced the Taliban with military treats to give them oil, how stupid is that!! That's an act of war.

Conclusion: it was a bad action and I'm sorry for the victims, it's no problem 911 is being remembered, just a problem how Bush and some people deal with it. Still, 911 was just part of a larger 'war' that has gone on for decades with millions of innocent victims. Americans are not bad, only those that stand with Bush are. The American government for the last few decades has been corrupt and inhuman. PLEASE VOTE FOR SOMEONE SMART!! The 911 action was a terrible one, but let's hope good comes of it. The only solution is to start working hard and fast on getting the other part of the world less pover. It's not that hard. It requires some intelligence. Too bad you won't find that in any present Western governments, meaning the Western people(=american and european) people have failed in choosing the right leaders.

Fri, 06 Sep 2002 22:20:54 GMT

World scientist's warning to humanity
Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

THE ENVIRONMENT IS SUFFERING CRITICAL STRESS

The Atmosphere

Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultra-violet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level, and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests and crops.

Water Resources

Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world's surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40% of the world's population. Pollution of rivers, lakes and ground water further limits the supply.

Oceans

Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world's food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and livestock waste—some of it toxic

Soil

Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive land abandonment, is a widespread byproduct of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11% of the earth's vegetated surface has been degraded—an area larger than India and China combined—and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing.

Forests

Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species.

Living Species

The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one third of all species now living, is especially serious. We are losing the potential they hold for providing medicinal and other benefits, and the contribution that genetic diversity of life forms gives to the robustness of the world's biological systems and to the astonishing beauty of the earth itself.

Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still uncertain—with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe—but the potential risks are very great.

Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life—coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change—could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand.

Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threat.

POPULATION

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today's 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition.

No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

WARNING

We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it, is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

WHAT WE MUST DO

Five inextricably linked areas must be addressed simultaneously:

1. We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth's systems we depend on.

We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to third world needs—small scale and relatively easy to implement.

We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species.

2. We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.

We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling.

3. We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.

4. We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.

5. We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.

The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.

Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike.

Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.

Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war—amounting to over $1 trillion annually—will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.

A new ethic is required—a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convince reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.

The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere.

We need the help of many.

We require the help of the world community of scientists—natural, social, economic, political;

We require the help of the world's business and industrial leaders;

We require the help of the worlds religious leaders; and

We require the help of the world's peoples

Signed by 1500 scientists and several nobel prize winners

http://www.ucsusa.org/index.html

Iraq

Sat, 17 Aug 2002 12:04:51 GMT

Media's Willing Distortions Pave Way for War

I found this article interesting, about the wrong assumptions on iraq many people have

Taken from Indymedia Seattle:

Media's Willing Distortions Pave Way for War
An August 8 USA Today article that described how Saddam Hussein is "complicating U.S. plans to topple his regime" repeated a common myth about the history of U.S./Iraq relations. Reporter John Diamond wrote that "Iraq expelled U.N. weapons inspectors four years ago and accused them of being spies." Diamond gives no evidence for this claim, which simply repeats commonplace assumptions about the relevant history. But his statement simply isn't true, by a longshot--as noted in this action alert by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Firstly, Iraq didn't expel the weapons inspectors-the U.S. leader of the inspections team made a unilateral decision to withdraw. Secondly, Iraq's accusation against the weapons inspection teams--that they were spying for the US--later turned out to be true. Corporate media like USA Today are happy to consign these actual facts to the memory hole, in favor of misstatements which make a fine accompaniment to the Bush administration's war drums, but don't do much for the health of our democracy.

The Bush administration can be expected to soon launch a PR campaign to "sell" the idea of attacks on Iraq to the American public. You can bet that these facts will be omitted:

US corporations were Iraq's major source--perhaps only source--of biological weapons materials just prior to the Gulf War.

International weapons inspectors were instructed not to report the nation of origin of any such weapons they found stockpiled in Iraq.

Weapons inspectors in the late 1990s were satisfied that Iraq’s capabaility to sustain a biological weapons program had been effectively ended.

Iraqi weapons inspections were halted by the US government, not by Iraq.

The Bush administration does not want Iraqi weapons inspections to resume; in fact they arranged the ouster of Jose Bustani (former head of the treaty-established Organization for the Prevention Chemical Weapons) in the midst of his promising negotiations to reopen Iraq to inspections.

Iraq apparently poses no significant military threat to the US or to its regional neighbors.

The US government has produced no evidence linking Iraq or the Saddam Hussein regime to 9/11 terrorist attacks (and not for lack of trying).

A US military attack on Iraq, as an act of aggression, would be explicitly illegal under every relevant US and international law (See UN Charter sections VI and VII).

A government preparing for an unnecessary, immoral and illegal war can be expected to tell horrible lies to the public. We should require better from the nation's journalists.

Norman Solomon on the Threat of Peace
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Fri, 21 Jun 2002 17:16:19 GMT

http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=progressivenews&itemid=659

See how 'unbiased' the American television is.

Gaviotas: the future is there

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 19:14:43 GMT

Right now about 453 billion dollars are spent on advertising yearly in the entire world. The economy is getting stronger and stronger, people are getting richer. Still, studies prove that the amount of people who consider themselves happy has decreased a lot since the fifties.

What is wrong? It has become normal in the United States to have multiple cars for one family. People can buy more things, and still they are less happy.

There's a popular phrase: 'Money can't buy happiness'. That phrase is related to what's happening here. Humanity doesn't know anymore what the meaning of life is and how to get happy. 453 billion dollars are spent yearly to tell us to consume. Buy products, buy snacks, buy multiple cars, buy another television, buy Pepsi and so on. Parents of a child both take a job, people work 50 hours a week, just so they can consume and just so they can go on vacation extra long to an extra far away place so they can relax after they've almost gotten themselves burned-out. They have forgotten that you can't buy happiness.

So, these working parents send their kids to other institutions to care for and don't realize they are distancing themselves from their own child and that they are spoiling the child. They lose all contact with their kids and distance themselves.

As both parents need to drive to their work traffic problems are getting bigger and the ozone layer gets weaker, as they both need a car.

Still, these parents aren't happy. Humanity doesn't realize anymore what the value of life is. They stare themselves blind at their work.

Paolo Lugari did not forget the old saying and did not forget the value of our planet and keeping it alive. After a vision, he set out to start his own village in one of the poorest countries, Columbia. He convinced a group of scientists, doctors, engineers and agronomists to come with him.

Gaviotas was born. A village that doesn't need any cops, doesn't need a president, doesn't need prisons and doesn't need any polluting energy. A village that doesn't need door locks. A village that is self-supporting and where people are happy. A village where the people don't need to consume endlessy.

Paolo Lugari felt that, with the population in the world constantly increasing, a big part of the world's population would have to live at places that were considered unlivable. At places without any elevation, and without a good resource of water. Lugari bought 25,000 acres of land like that in Columbia. The only water there was undrinkable. He bought it to show it was possible to start a settlement there. Lugari and the other people first designed a water system. One of the things they built was a pump that could get water from depths today's pumps cannot get to. A machine running on solar energy cleans the water.

This all happened about three decades ago. Now there is Gaviotas. People are happy, even though they aren't rich. The salaries are low but a lot higher then the minimum wage, but people aren't being pushed to consume and have found out that you can live a happy life without too much money. The entire town uses revolutionary techniques and machines. There is no crime at all, because the people don't need money. At least some people have found a way out of our society of consumnation and to a happy life.

One, Gaviotas has proven that there is a way out, second, Gaviotas has proofen that even on the barrest places welfaring towns can exist, third, Gaviotas has proven that you can life a environmentally-friendly life.

I have certainly not told everything about this fantastic town. You'd be stunned by the solutions they provided to our everyday problems and all our environmental problems. Get this, the entire village barely pollutes anything, and yet it is very technically advanced. It totally runs on green energy, there are no sewers needed and a lot of things are recycled.

Spread the message and become one of the new world's pioneers. This is the future. This is our hope. This is the ideal civilization.

Mon, 29 Jan 2001 22:56:55 GMT

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Mon, 29 Jan 2001 22:55:51 GMT

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not much news stuff.. Have been working on jcsref for a while.. rsi is worsening..I really have to watch out

Thu, 25 Jan 2001 21:05:25 GMT

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Thu, 25 Jan 2001 21:04:01 GMT

/me bought radiohead - kid a today..

I have been working on the official possum site php core in all my work-time, and it's going pretty well. Finished a table class today, which means the site can be made very modular

Thu, 25 Jan 2001 20:42:50 GMT

I installed a rsi-watcher. It makes me take breaks and do exercises. It also warns when I work too intensively. And typing a message like this in normal rate is too intensive already, so I have got to get used to it..

Wed, 24 Jan 2001 20:30:24 GMT

I am *probably* developing rsi. My muscles hurt each time I type with my right arm or mouse with it. This means I won't be able to produce anything productive anytime soon.

Mon, 22 Jan 2001 21:53:15 GMT

Link of the day: www.cinemenium.com

Mon, 22 Jan 2001 21:10:00 GMT

Today, cobra got me into playing Graal.. I'm addicted already.

I have been feeling kind of depressed today. That feeling was triggered by the beautiful cd from project freudiana(from the alan parsons crew and hundreds of other musicians) and a post on cobra's lifejournal.. They made me feel the lack of life, pleasure and sleep again..

This cd from project freudiana(the alan parsons project) is really awesome.. you should check it out if you like mellow symphonic rock..search for freudiana by alan parsons.

Mon, 13 Nov 2000 19:25:27 GMT

Whoo. I have won a copy of AceHMTL pro at phpdeveloper.org.

Php updates:
Open Source Databases: As The Tables Turn - Phpbuilder

Sat, 11 Nov 2000 18:21:05 GMT

Worked on the articles system for a long time. should be done in a few days, I hope. :)

Sat, 11 Nov 2000 15:33:08 GMT

The move script works totally now. This means j2o won't die..ever.