The actions of Israel are seen by some in Israel as a war crime The neighborhood bully strikes again

And as the following points out, the issues surrounding the Israel/Palestine conflict are complex.

JOHN BERGER ON GAZA

December 29, 2008, 2:49 am
Filed under: Gaza, Israel | Tags: John Berger
A message from the British writer and art critic, John Berger.

“We are now spectators of the latest - and perhaps penultimate - chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other.

Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed. The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians. One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives.

This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less - with marginal questioning - mindlessly repeat. And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist. That the Jewish people should accept this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit to it - is one of history’s ironic jokes. There’s no laughter anywhere. We can, however, refute it, more and more vocally.

Let’s do so.”

John Berger

27 December 2008

"Deserve" is such a strong word. It implies a quid pro quo for joining that wasn't previously agreed upon by both parties, and it suggests that somehow after donating one's power, one can start making demands.

There's nothing wrong with the suggestion on the surface, and I'm sure the project would love to be able to give everything that is asked from it, and they know very well that people donate their electricity to the cause and pay for it out of their own pockets - but don't get angry or upset when they simply can't comply for various unsaid reasons.

Personally, even though such a suggestion would be nice to have, if I had to choose, I'd rather the Admins be working on advancing the software and getting funding than to be giving us periodic updates.

Since nobody has ever witnessed another person achieving a higher plane of existence then we are going to have to qualify this as non-scientific. sorry but when you get into a religious tone by describing all the tenets of Buddhism then you are trying to play the same game as Conserative Christians in America. If you can't prove your theory or repeat a test then its not in the realm of the scientific. This is faith. I'd love to talk about faith but that would have to go to the Politics forum not the seti@home science forum.

Bolden gets a warmer reception from the Coalition for Space Exploration, a group of space industry businesses.

"Bolden is a strong and experienced leader who will balance the priorities of the agency," said Dean Acosta, a Boeing executive and spokesman for the coalition.

"America's space program is at a critical crossroad," Acosta said. "NASA needs a clearly defined plan and unwavering support from our president and Congress to achieve our nation's space exploration objectives."

It's much more likely that life began right here on earth from the organic chemicals that are the biproduct of coelescing, lightning and internal heat from earth itself.

• 1. Intelligence only needs a mind.
  
• 2. The mind can take any form.
  
• 3. It can be organic, inorganic or even having no physical body at all.
  
• 4. Once a mind gains consciousness, it will develop intelligence.
  
• 5. The human brain is only one example of an organic circuit that can do logic.
  
• 6. An example of an inorganic circuit would be a man made microprocessor and memory circuits that gains consciousness.
  
• 7. It is conceivable that such inorganic circuits could etch itself into existence in some other world that is conducive to such chemistry.
  
• 9. On the other hand, the concept of mind without matter is as old as religion itself.
  
• 10. In Buddhist scriptures there are descriptions of the Buddha communicating with sentient beings through celestial language.
  
• 11. Buddhist cosmology talks about 31 planes or realms of existence that are divided into three distinct worlds.
  
• 12. In the top world are four realms of existence starting with Infinite Space followed by Infinite Consciousness and then Nothingness. In the highest plane is the realm of Neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
  
• 13. In these realms, intelligence consist entirely of mind without any physical body.
  
• 14. It is described that in some time in the future all planes of existence will be destroyed or come to an end except for the highest planes. This can be taught of as the end of the cycle for the current universe.
  

Nothing is nonsensical.

If they announced a possible signal that would get the funds coming in. lol

I think what he's saying, and I'd have to agree, is that in order for something of that magnitude to be accomplished and more to the point, be adequately funded, it would need to be a cooperative project between several nations. I think it's politics and red tape holding that back from actually happening any time soon though.

We don't even have a permanent base up there (thanks to national instead of international space programms) and you are talking about an installation as large as a few football fields (material and mass are the problems cost factors) ... .

Since the early 1990s it's clear that no nation can afford to build things like that alone. But what do I see when watching TV or reading papers on this subject: US/NASA program for a trip to and base on moon, the same for europe/esa, russian, china, japan and india.
Mars - the same stupidity ...

In order to make sure there's really something there. In theory, a single transit could be "faked" by having some kind of object pass between Kepler and the target star. By observing three full transits, it can be determined whether or not they are the real thing or just false alarms. As a prevoius poster mentioned, if you compare the orbital timing, and find three transits that have a nearly identical period, then it's safe to assume it's not a false alarm.

Considering that we want to find planets in the habitable zone, the time between transits is about one year. To reliably detect a sequence one needs four transits. Hence, the mission duration needs to be at least three and one half years.

Well, but i do not trust the Chinese education.

It should also be remembered that, until more of the variables are nailed down with accurate numbers, the Drake equation is essentially meaningless. It is more theology than science or mathematics.

Used by both sides in the debate as proof that there is, or is not, intelligent life in our galaxy. People tend to decide what they want, then plug in values to make it so.

My (much more optimistic) running of the equations comes up with a number of about 5000 in our galaxy.

• 1. What are the variables of the Drake Equation? Does it include a psychology factor?
  
• 2. Assuming there is a technological civilization nearby that like us are also observing the skies. What sort of intelligent life would that be? Benign or hostile?
  
• 3. If I remember correctly, the late Carl Sagan mentioned in one of the episodes of his Cosmos series, a signal was sent into interstellar space in the hope that some intelligent life would receive it.
  
• 4. Was that a smart move? On what basis do we assume that extraterrestrial intelligence will be friendly?
  
• 5. If our own attitudes are any guide, we have a very peculiar age old policy of, "Shoot first, talk later".
  
• 6. Now, assuming that the nearest technologically advanced civilization is as intelligent as us, would not an attitude of, "Better to be safe than sorry" be a more prudent policy?
  
• 7. If that is so then, they would not be announcing themselves as we did. Stupid, stupid, stupid humans.
  
• 8. But like us, curiosity gets the best of them. So, what do they do?
  
• 9. They listen, like we do.
  
• 10. If we take this psychological factor into consideration, i.e. the majority of nearby technologically advanced civilization adopts a conservative stance. Would that not put the odds of finding extraterrestrial intelligence even more remote?
  
• 11. In truth, we are really shooting for a needle in a haystack.
  
• 12. If that isn't bad enough there is another issue working against us.
  
• 13. We are still very much a primitive civilization. We have not conquer want and we have not achieve mutual respect among our own species, least of all to other species that live with us. We do untold damage to the environment we live in, wherever the human populates. In short, we are a very virulent parasite. It is a sad picture that among all living things on Earth, we humans as the most destructive living organism rule the world to destruction.
  
• 14. Now, imagine this scenario. We have been transmitting live radio telecast since the last century. Though the signal is weak and would not travel far into interstellar distance but, what if some sufficiently sophisticated extraterrestrial intelligence, is able to pick up our radio signal and decipher it?
  
• 15. I am quite sure they will not like our politics. Establishing contact with us will be hazardous to their well being.
  
• 16. On the other hand, there may me extraterrestrial civilization who's attitude is worse than ours. Having destroyed much of their own world, they suddenly find our world still habitable. Would they not make effort to colonize us?
  
• 17. I am sure some of you have thought about this and wondered whether it is still a good idea to broadcast live radio.
  
• 18. In any case, SETI@home is still valid as we must know what is within our interstellar territory. Just as any territorial animal must constantly scan its territory for intruders and threats to its own safety.
  

Happy scanning and number crunching.

As I said, my laptop needed about 2 weeks running 24/7. If your PC at work only runs for 8 hours, you'd need 6 weeks, which is over the deadline. So, if you can't leave it running over night, you should consider aborting it after you have disabled AstroPulse.

Since you have only one computer attached to your ID, I thought the other one wasn't attached already. You could detach one machine from the one user ID (email) and reattach it to the other, so that both would show for one user. But be cautious! Detaching aborts all currently downloaded tasks and discards already done work. If you want to do it (it isn't necessary), first set your SETI project to "No New Tasks" (NNT) and wait until all work is uploaded and reported.

Ps. How do you attach your cool BOINC stats report to your signature and what is the Einstein project about?

Gruß,
Gundolf

PS: There are no silly questions

[edit] If you attach your home unit to SETI, do it as existing user, not as new user.[/edit]

One note on system hibernation. Hibernation tends to kill BOINC tasks, so there is a setting to stop processing after the host is idle for X minutes. You want to set this to be 2 or three minutes earlier than the system hibernation.

Welcome to the Seti project.

Feel free to make inquires in the Q&A section of the boards. There is usually someone around to answer your questions. Posting to the main Board forums is resticted to active members that have received credits for completed work.