6 signs that aliens might exist

With so many stars in the universe, science suggests we may not be alone:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28148553/?GT1=43001&pg=1#Tech_6SignsofAlienLife

“Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.”

 

The comments on the original site are amazing!

And now for a world government

By Gideon Rachman

Published: December 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: December 8 2008 19:13

 I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall …

This is a follow-on from the idea about the Forces of Light and Darkness, and I have to give major credit to my friend Mace Rosen for this insight … thank you Mace for your random thoughts …

Basically, when you make a list of “constructive forces” in society and “destructive forces”, it is quite astonishing to see that maybe 90% or even more of the time, constructive forces tend to take a long, long time to do their work, while destructive forces often operate in a much shorter timeframe.  One sobering thought along these lines is that it takes 20 years of endless effort to raise a child to adulthood, and an unfortunate bullet fired in a fraction of a second to end those 20 years of work.  You can think of many more analogies, including our dear friend Humpty Dumpty cheerfully sitting on the wall above.

So this is perhaps another reason why, in relation to the question Sholeh posed, it can be hard to remain optimistic in times when a lot of forces are operating in both directions, because it seems you have the law of time working against you when you try to align with the forces of progress.  With Humpty falling off the wall so often, and all the kings horses and all the kings men so stressed out trying to put his poor IKEA made parts back together again, its hard to maintain that cheerful Humpty smile.   Unless Humpty was hard-boiled, maybe that is the secret.

 

Thinking about the ultimate direction of change

“The times never remain the same, for change is a necessary quality and an essential attribute of this world, and of time and place.”

In reflecting further on the question of how we choose what “change” to consciously devote our all-too limited time and energy toward, it seems an interesting thought exercise to conduct is to step way, way outside of our average daily thinking patterns (unless we are a professional historiographer or something) and to think about the grand sweep of human history. Where is all this “change” heading? Finding the answer to this question, it seems, can help us make more intelligent choices about where we will fit in with our tiny, but nevertheless very real, contribution to the unfoldment of human history.

So where is everything headed?

Well, lets look back. Over tens of thousands of years, we have moved toward progressively larger groups of social organization and cohesion, starting with familes, moving to tribes, to villages, to city-states, and then to nations, and over the last century, varying degress of cooperation among groups of nations. One factor that has run parallel with this progression has been the steady development of technology, which has facilitated these increasing levels of social development. Where are we going then? Following this train of thought, it becomes clear that we live in an age whose primary task is to move further toward the unity of the world. Just saying it is the easy part! Of course, it will take more decades and centuries to eventually achieve (assuming the human race doesn’t destroy itself along the way, which I am confident it wont). But knowing the ultimate goal then helps in making intelligent choices toward the outcome. Is the change I am spending my time and energy on contributing toward this ultimate goal, or detracting from it? If it is detracting from it, I should ask myself, why am I trying to fight the clear flow of history?

What would be an example of each? Fighting for a cause that promotes one race as being superior to others seems like one example of going against the flow of history. Racial groups knocking each other down is a clear example of going against traffic on the one-way road to the eventual unity of the human race. What about supporting multicultural day at a child’s school? That would seem to be in line with the flow of history … however insignificant it might seem, that one small event is planting the seeds in a lot of young minds of an idea whose time has come, and will in some way shape the rest of their lives.

This is just a framework to think about. Let us know your thoughts, is this framework useful? If not, what ideas do you have of other frameworks to consider? Look forward to your comments