h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

All the UN needs is some teath - it should be given limited legastive powers.

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Your wroung.
Things like large scale ecological
change are natuarl and have been going
on since the world begain.
Mass extinction happens all the time
(in geological terms) not just the
dinosours there have been loads.
Why do people insist in thinking that
what we do as humans is unnatural?
I skyskraper is just as natural as a
ant hill.But that is not to say i think
we should build loads of sky scrapers
(humans and other animals can beworking against
natuaral good).
You wildly over estimate the danger of genetic
engenering (the old way to get new species of
plant that has been practised 4 years is to blast
them with radiation and pick the best random
mutation) and I think you undersell the benifits
to the third word eg creal croups that can be
grown in nitrate defisant soil.
I think that science is dangours but that is becuse
it is in the hands of capitalist companys out to
make a quike buck.If are govenments take controll
such things can be used for good.
Science will help us reach our utopia
JK the unwise

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1. smile

2. botanical direct action (turf the roads, replant britains' forest, guerilla gardening)

3. think, discuss

4. Gather information and statistics.

.........................................
STATISTICS WE NEED.

how many nation states in the world?

population of each state?

political structure (President, prime mister, monarch, good dictator/bad dictator, friends with US? national debt? WTO member?)

% housed %killed in conflict, %fed, %educated, life expectancy

GDP and wealth distribution (eg top 5% = 80% wealth)


smile count



...............

5. Consider these statistics. Aim to up the smile count.

6. er...

any more?

Please check the Utopia cafebar article again, and follow the link to the noticeboard page. I'm trying to get these bring these positive ramblings and helpful web links to some sort of order, and make more links to other pages in h2g2.

suggestions and help always much appreciated,

purplejenny.

"STATISTICS WE NEED."
87.23 % of all statistics are made up on the
spot.
the others are all open to varois interpertation
were can we find unbiased statistics?
JK the unwise

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Um do you want those stats requested above? I've got a book with them all in and more, but not here unfortunately, I think it's at my brother's house. It's a Christian book which outlines every country in the world, especially their social and political problems, with great stats and pretty little charts and stuff, so you know what to pray for each country, but it's a great reference book too for this sort of thing.

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Yeah, Peregrin, give us some stats! I don't mistrust stats at least until I see them! Anyways because I live here in South Africa I can give you a bit more accurate info about what's going on here than would be found in most overseas newspapers. Can we get people from Asia and South America over here? I'd love to get the straight dope from someone who lives there. Third world countries need a stronger voice, also here on h2g2!

more stats please - and suggestions to display them.

Thanks for the links everyone, if you haven't checked out happy dudes links yet, then do. I'd like to put the info together in a simple format - perhaps a clickable map, or at least a list of countries. Then just to summarise key bits of the data, and provide links to the source material. Where that source material is an organisation like the UN, perhaps the stats have some credence.

The (ovbious) idea is this:

RAISE THE SMILE COUNT
wouldn't it be nice if more people could be happy. (utopia?)

BUT HOW?
examine our needs. Pillow has posted a good suggestion, similar to maslow's heriachy of human needs, and there are many similar ideas around. I'm sure we can reach a vague conclusion, perhaps that a home, food, warmth, friendship, knowledge, self-worth, the oppurtunity for fulfilment, and love are likely to foster conditions ripe for smiling. Just perhaps cover the basics - home, food, health.

We could also assume conditions likely to discourage smiling - wars, death, famine, slavery, torture etc...

Then examine our conditions - perhaps state by state, or nation by nation? (we should really make the stats searchable in many ways though), and form a rough estimate of smile likelihood - perhaps called the Human Happiness Index.

stick with me here fellas...

Then, year by year, aim to raise the smile count in each country, and the world in general. nations should not compete on GDP, it should be on the state of thier HHI ~ happiness, creativity, and how well each human in that place is nurtured and free, and able to fulfil themselves.

Okay, so I haven't figured out all the details yet, and there is obvious debate needed on defining and calculating the index of human happiness.

And, of course, an aim like raising the smile count is idiotic... No one would be up for that.



pj

x

Remember, it takes twelve muscles to frown, but only four to smile. Oh, and only three to punch the person who keeps telling you that.



Regarding statistics and targets - a lot of what you list are abstract concepts; it's difficult to measure happiness or love. (the Germans tried, and believe me, they found it complicated, and ended up arguing about it and probably weren't very happy, thus kind of defeating the whole purpose...)
What would be nice though is (I've often thought about this) a resource, eg. a website, which lists the ways in which we can productively help each other, the environment, and ultimately ourselves, in fairly simply and easy to attain ways. The problem is that when we want to do something to help, for example, the third world in general, we probably don't have any practical ideas of how to, other than 1) making donations, or 2) going out there and working for charity. The problem with the second is that most people aren't prepared for it, and the problem with the first is that there's so many different ways of donating, and so many different charities vying for our attention.
Oh and not to mention what we *shouldn't* do; my parents would never have built a mahogany porch ten years ago if they had realised then what trouble mahogany trees and rainforests were in. It would be useful to have a single resource to check for this.

I haven't thought this through so what I've just written is full of holes and problems, so feel free to argue/ignore it for now while I find some chocolate and think it over.

A practical way to help the Third World? How about this: be interested in it! Seek out information about the Third World on the Internet. Buy books about the Third World. If possible, go on holiday there. Make friends with people who live there, over the internet if not IRL. Anyways, how will this help? We live in the information age. If people demand info about the Third World, the information networks to and from and inside those countries will be improved. That means more info can get in and out and spread around more easily and that means we will know what is going on. A big problem for people who live here is knowing what's going on, in other countries as well as their own. Improved communication and information networks will benefit everybody. We need improvements in knowledge, education and skills badly, and this will make a real, practical, tangible difference - it will raise the smile count for sure!

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Cool articles, cheers.

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Jeezz, Happy, you're a slavedriver! But I did read all of those previous pieces you recommended. I really liked that sustainability site. I'm going to see how far I get with these. If only I had a faster internet connection! I'm going to put all these pieces on my hard disk, I'll read them through the week and I hope to comment on them soon.