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"The World Heritage List includes 830 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value." Link

Confused about the Middle East?

Here is an interactive chart from Slate indicating each group's relationship with each other. Are Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah friends or enemies? What about Israel and Egypt?

iTunes....iMovie Rental?

"Because the movies will be rented and not sold, people familiar with the situation report downloads will be coded with a date stamp that will restrict playback. It is not known exactly how the coding system will work, but industry experts tell Think Secret the software would likely either limit the number of playbacks or provided unlimited viewing for a period of time, after which the movie will be "turned off" and no longer available." Link

The release of these iMovie rentals will be certainly be the start of a hackers versus Apple battle to keep the movies rentals not purchases.

The Fight Against Terrorism

We have commercials that warn us of the dangers of drugs and alcohol and tobacco. This site has produced a spot that captures the brutal violence and death of innocent civilians within the blast range of a suicide bomber. Is this approach enough to motivate moderate Muslims to revolt against extremists and terrorist tactics? When it comes to foreign policy should we ever make any concessions to groups that employee such recklessly bloody means if they do not get their way? NoTerror.info

And a link for propaganda from the other side: memritv.org

From Hans.

One Red Paper Clip = House

The guy did it. He traded a red paper clip for a house. Link

Military Comic from 1942

This is amusing and could help you identify me. It includes a special cartoonist some might know.

Link

Internet Whiteboard

Pretty neat website that allows to work with others on a virtual whiteboard.

From digg.com

Campaigns Wikia

Campaigns Wikia is a new website started by the Wikipedia guy that is trying to make politics more participatory .

This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

Together, we will start to work on educating and engaging the political campaigns about how to stop being broadcast politicians, and how to start being community and participatory politicians.

Looks interesting to me....

Global Warming: A Moral Dilemma or An Engineering Dilemma?

We all agree that global warming is occurring. So let's all go crunchy and do our part to save the world right? Get out the bikes and go hybrid!

An Op-Ed in the Washington Post today lays out the practical implications of global warming.

From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent.

No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding.

Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

Doonesbury

This Doonesbury cartoon is great.