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I was reading excellent Dan Simmons’s “Summer of Night”. Even though this is a horror story set in 1960’s, he cites several different studies in the beginning of the book, about differences between kids today and back then. I am going to paraphrase some of the Dan’s text.
Among them was the study done by Sanford Gaster – “Urban Children’s Access to Their Neighborhood: Changes over three generations.” Study was published in Environment and Behavior on January 1991. Study talks about loss of “free roaming space” for American kids over three generations between 1915 and 1976. Study pretty much mirrors experiences in Europe and other parts of the world form the same era. It talks about how kids between eight and thirteen years of age in 21st century lost most of their freedoms that kids in the let’s say 40’s 50’s 60’s or even 70’s had. A freedom for kids to be active in their own physical universe, separate from their parents and other adults.

The change is dramatic as you suspect. Kids used to wave goodbye to their mothers after breakfast and were out of sight until dinner or even after dark. In the morning, the parents didn’t ask where the kids were headed and the kids did not tell. They would climb their bikes and explore pits, rocks, farms, free trails, swamps, mansions, construction debris, climb various towers and walls. It would all make a perfect play ground. They would climb the trees and go as high as they could go. No crime, traffic or environmental hazards could stop those kids from claiming their “free roaming rights”. And yet millions of kids today are deprived of that pleasure because their parents are nervous about exposing them to risk. By the time those kids got to be 10 years of age, they were already responsible young adults that could take care of their parents if needed.

Study shows that in early 20th century “roaming radius” of unsupervised play for kids was 6 miles!!! To explore, fish, ride bikes, go into heavily wooded areas etc… In the mid 20th century that got shrunk to couple of miles maybe. In 70’s kids of age 8 and up were allowed to go to the swimming pool by themselves. These days I’m afraid to say that radius is less than 300 yards if we are being generous. Some kids are not allowed to go unsupervised outside of their own yard until they’re twelve or so!!! Imagine a group of eleven-year olds today climbing their bikes and going out into the twilight. TV would flash amber alerts, helicopters called and parents would be interviewed on the evening news. A kid today climbing a bike, he did so in an armor like a medieval knight wearing everything from helmets, pads, specialised suits, anything but diapers. Kids in the mid and early 20th century never wore helmets or any other expensive equipment. Oddly enough there were no dead or paralyzed kids with brain injuries. Only scrapes and bruises. Everyone went over once in a while, but scrapes or broken bone is the worst outcome.

You might then ask what about kidnappers, pedophiles, crazy people and ax-murderers? Statistically, American kids today living in suburbs or rural areas, are about as safe as they were in 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and so on. It’s we, adults and parents who don’t believe that kids are safe outside of direct adult supervision. Because when we see few bad apples (out of 300 million people living in US now!!!) on TV once in a while, adults start to panic while their common sense is overridden. We then keep kids as prisoners in safety of our own homes tranquilized by drugs such as cell phones, iPads, computers, TV, video games and texting.

Kids in 60’s wore about $4.50 of clothing on them and took care of their own bikes and toys. Today, you’ll be lucky if your kid does not asks for designer jeans, shirts and fragrances. If their bike breaks, they will probably ask you for a brand new one.

Neil Postman wrote in 1999: “The point is that childhood, if it can be said to exists at all, is now an economic category. There is very little the culture wants to do for children except to make them into consumers.” So how come kids weren’t treated as consumers back then, you might ask? Well, moguls of marketing and advertising haven’t discovered them yet. They were still human beings.

I also could not help but notice that today’s kids are not allowed to even cross the street without crossing guard, squad car and stopping traffic in both directions.
Dan Simmon’s asks: “Why do kids of today’s age have so much to say (online chats, forums , social media), but have so little to do, like going out in the real world and play”? He claims that one possible answer is that we, adults, stole the real world from them.What happened to them? What happened to us?

Decided to translate legendary words of great Carl Sagan to Serbo-Croatian (or Bosnian if you like) language. Added some photos too. Too important not to be translated into as many languages as we can.

Here’s full text.

Serbo-Croatian

—– Blijeda plava tacka —–

Za nekoga koji gleda sa ove daljine, Zemlja ne izgleda nimalo intersentna. Ali za  nas, je to je vec drugacije. Razmotrimo ponovo ovu tacku. To je ovdje, to je dom, to smo mi. Na njoj, svi koje volimo, svi koje znamo, svi za koje smo ikad culi.Svako ljudsko bice koje je ikad postojalo, zivili su tu. Sve nase radosti i patnje, hiljade samouvjerenih religija, ideologija, i ekonomskih doktrina, svaki lovac i tragac, svaki heroj i kukavica, svaki tvorac i unistivac civilizacija, svaki kralj i seljak, svaki zaljubljeni par, svaka majka i otac, djete sa nadom, pronalazac i istrazivac, svaki ucitelj morala, svaki korumpirani politicar, svaka “super zvijezda”, svaki vrhovni vodja, svaki svetac i grijesnik u istoriji naseg svijeta zivio je ovdje – na truncici prasine suspendovane na suncevoj zraci.

Zemlja je vrlo mala pozornica u prostranoj kozmickoj areni. Razmislite samo o krvi koju su generali i imperatori prolili samo da bi u slavi i triumfu, mogli da postanu privremeni gospodari samo malog djela ove tacke. Razmislite samo o beskrajnim okrutnostima koje su stanovinici sa jednog krajicka ove tacke pocinili nad stanovnicima drugog, jedva prepoznatljivog, djela, kako su cesti njihovi nesporazumi, kako su zeljni da ubijaju jedni druge, kake su zestoke njihove mrznje.

Nasa usamljenost, nasa umisljena samovaznost, obmana da mi imamo specijalnu privilegiju u Svemiru, je dovedena u pitanje ovim trackom blijede svjetlosti. Nasa planeta je usamljeno zrnce u velikom omotacu kosmicke tame. U nasoj zavucenosti, u svom ovom prostranstvu, nema nagovjestaja da ce pomoc doci od nekle drugdje da nas spase od samih nas. Zemlja je jedini svijet za koji znamo da podrzava zivot. Ne postoji nigdje drugdje,  bar ne u bliskoj buducnosti, gdje ljudska rasa moze da migrira. Posjetiti, da. Nastaniti se, ne jos. Voljeli ili ne, Zemlja je gdje mi moramo opstati.

Receno je da je astronomoja iskustvo koje pravi covjeka skromnijim i gradi karakter. Mozda i nema bolje demonstracije gluposti ljudskog samozadovoljstva od ove dalake slike naseg malog svijeta. Za mene, naglasava odgovornost da tretiramo ljubazno jedni druge, i da sacuvamo i njegujemo nasu blijedu malu tacku,

jedini dom koji imamo.

English

—-The Pale Blue Dot—-

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Warning: Words nothing and something are used a lot in this article so I suggest reading it slowly and really trying to imagine what the sentence is trying to imply. To make it easier to spot, every time you see nothing in italics it will imply the state, and not the the word, in linguistic sense. For example the word nothing in the sentence  “today I did nothing” simply implies that today I did not do anything. But the famous question “why there’s something rather than nothing?” implies the state of nothingness which will be in italics. Same goes for the word something.

Let us first define nothing. Nothing is when there’ no anything. I am not talking about linguistic tricks here for the word nothing. Like mathematical nothing (zero) or logical nothing (I have nothing drawn on this paper). I mean nothing in the most literal sense of the world. No matter, no time, no light, no dark,  no space, no dimensions, no thoughts, no observers, no abstract. Pretty much, no anything. Nothing is simply put “the absence of everything. Still hard to comprehend? Of course it is… but will get to that later.

Is nothing a default state before the existence of anything? Was there really a “before”. Before there was something, was there really nothing? Is nothing a default state from which everything start existing (or got created)? Many assume that the default state of our universe has to be nothing, and that the something came right after. Meaning; at the beginning there was nothing. Nothing existed, not even nothingness, and then our Universe got created (or appeared) out of that nothing. Now, why would this have to be true? Is nothingness more natural state than something? Is nothing a default state? There is no good or logical reason to think that. As a matter of fact, the opposite is what’s probably true. Or at least what is known so far.

First of all, It’s impossible for humans to imagine nothing. Even if you close your eyes and try really hard to imagine nothing, you will not be able to do it. Not only that you would have to imagine that there is no matter, atoms, light or the actual Universe, but you would also have to imagine that there is no space, time, thoughts or even an observer. Which in this case would be you, so nothing is contradiction in philosophical spectrum already. Moving on…

Can you image no space? Can you imagine spaceless …uhmm what…space? A state with no space? You can’t, because you still need an observer to deduct that kind of reasoning. Nothing, simply cannot be observed, because if it can be, then it would imply an observation from the outside. If we can observe nothing from the outside then you don’t have nothingness. If we can observe nothing from the inside, the same applies;from the inside of what?. What about with no observer? Of course not. It’s silly.
So why is it so hard to imagine it? It is hard because our conscious brain doesn’t know what nothing is. Our brain hasn’t evolved the need to know that. Nothing simply makes no sense whatsoever. In the whole history of human civilisation and the Universe, state of nothing does not exist. We have never encountered or dealt with nothing. Ever. Not even in the vacuum of space. We know that vacuum is not totally empty. But even if it was; even if you were somehow able to suck everything out of the vacuum, you will still have space and time left. Empty space doesn’t mean nothing. There’s still space left.There is no such a thing as nothing. So our brain doesn’t need to worry about it.
Now, many will say “but what if some intelligence created everything from nothing?”. But that implies that some kind of intelligence exited while there was nothing, it existed alongside with nothing,  immediately making the whole point silly. But lets say we did allow for existence of that kind if intelligence along side with nothing, then we would go into infinite regression. Who created the intelligence? Did that intelligence arose from nothing? Did  the intelligence always existed? How come that intelligence can exists? You might say “well it always existed”. (First Cause argument). Then I could say “ if the intelligence always existed, then we can use the same logic to say that the Universe (in one form of another) always existed. Why add unnecessary complexity? Why add the middle “man” where there is no evidence for it?

So why would we even start to think that there was nothing before something? Why would we even suppose such a question in the first place; when all of our senses, all of our data, all of our history shows that there was always (and still is) something. I bet you can’t name an event in our known history when there was nothing. Even the first law of thermodynamics confirms that. Law states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Let’s break that down:

matter cannot be created –  If nothing indeed existed, then matter would be absent and would clearly violate this law.
matter cannot be destroyed – matter can only change its form so regardless how hard we tried, there would always be something.

Then why in the hell would we ever assume that everything got created form nothing in the first place? when all our logic and data shows that something (in one form or another) always existed.
To me it looks like humans are never taking the simplest answer for granted. We have to invent problems and then find unnecessary solution for the same. Be that for religious or personal reason, I have no idea, but most of the times the simplest and the most elegant solution is the correct one. In our case, something always existed is the best and the most elegant solution. You also might have a hard time to wrap your head around “something always existed”, but when you really think about it long and hard, there is no other solution for now. Nothing simply does not make sense and I really don’t see a way around this.
So how else do we know that nothing never exited? Logic, deductive reasoning and data. That’s how. We know that the same way we know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, has never existed and probably never will. No evidence or data whatsoever. No sane logic supports it. We know that it is true the same way we know that Hitler did exists. Tons of evidence for his existence. So why would anyone assume that Hitler did not exists and Santa Claus did? Because essentially they are using the same logic; discarding the current data while using the data that doesn’t exist, by trying to prove that something came out of nothing. In my opinion the sole question “why there’s something rather than nothing?” is meaningless. If there was indeed nothing instead of something, then we wouldn’t have any observers (you can’t have “something” while nothing exists at the same time) and would not be able to ask this question anyway. As Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy so eloquently put it  when asked the question; Why is there something rather than nothing? Their answer was: “Well, why not? Why expect nothing rather than something? No experiment could support the hypothesis ‘There is nothing’ because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer.”

I was looking at the Worlds GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and it is now at around 56 trillion dollars. Now, when all super-rich take their cut, when all Governments pay out for their programs, when all movie, sport and music stars get their cut, when all fund managers and wall street get their billions, when all banks and financial institution get their multi-billion dollar bonuses, when all real estate giants get their pay, when all insurance providers get their way, there will simply not be enough money left to go around. But what do I mean by “go around”? Go around to do what? To save of course. Think about this little bit. Some hedge fund managers make over billion a year. Rockefeller’s wealth alone has been estimated to be well in trillions. One family’s wealth is in trillions! World GDP is at 56 trillion now. No wonder middle class cannot save. You have to really fight in order to save. It’s not enough just to be smart with the money as it was 50 years ago when middle class was really strong and didn’t have super-rich. You have to actually really struggle and be inventive to save these days.

If every one of the lower and middle class had been saving 20% (proposed) of their salary, there wouldn’t be a super rich class. Simply because there wouldn’t be enough money for rich to accumulate from. The only way they would be able to accumulate would be to print more, but in that case one of their Yachts would cost 5 trillion dollars instead of measly 50 million. Instead, super-rich resorted to squeezing money out of the middle class via credit, 401k’s, investments, debt and other exotic crap they fill your brain with. They keep telling you how you should start investing at early age so you can be rich when you get old. Well, it will work for some, but it cannot work for all of us. It’s a simple math really. If all of us start saving early, we would NOT all get rich at the old age. Some of us would have to loose money along the way and gave it to others. It’s a zero sum game, regardless that they tell you that it’s not. Earth has finite resources and there’s limit how much money we can print before it becomes worthless. So there’s only so much resources to spread around. So it’s a zero-sum. Someone has to loose in order for others to gain. They might tell you that it is not zero-sum game because money is constantly being added by new investors. Yeah, but that extra money is not equally (not even close) distributed to those new or even old investors. River flow is always from low (poor) –> high(rich). And usual looser is low-middle class. Always.

Here are some stats:
Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2007
Stocks and mutual funds
Top 1 percent of our population own 38.9% of stocks and mutual funds
Next 9 percent own 42.9% of stocks and mutual funds
Bottom 90 percent own 20.6% of stocks and mutual funds

So top 10% of wealthy own 80% of all stocks and funds out there. So what is happening here is, money is getting shuffled between rich themselves. Like in a poker game. Once they run out of chips, they simply reach under their tables and dip into the middle-class accounts a.k.a 401k’s, stocks and real estate investments and they get on with their poker game. When they run out that money too, they will milk middle-class via taxes, or what is commonly called bail-outs. They simply bribe congress into giving them even more money from middle-class via bail-outs by giving them BS story about how middle class will recoup that money and then some.

Now, even sadder part is that this kind of machine has been in place for a while and it’s not easy to stop, and there’s simply not much you can do. This is not to say that there’s some big conspiracy or some kind of a new world order, but simply the super-rich are taking the advantage of the system that has been in place forever and keep tweaking it in their favor as they go along. So what to do? You can’t really change it from political point, because politicians have been bought and paid for well into the future. Now, this is not to say that rich don’t need or want middle-class. Oh they do. Who do you think makes all this stuff and produces everything? Lower and Middle-class. Labor class. That’s who. That’s how richest 1% get their wealth. Without middle-class spending, they would be just shuffling money between themselves until one of them accumulates everything and then poker game begins again, on and on. They need middle-class in order for their wealth to grow. Middle-class also spends a lot. They spend all money their earn in their daily jobs and then some. But it’s not just the money earned that they spend. It’s lot worse than that. It’s called “easy credit.”. Translated it means: “they got you by the balls.” What rich need from the middle class is an obedient worker. You. Do your job and don’t complain. Those words are considered good job ethic today. What a joke. Fuck that! Wake up middle-class!!!
My opinion is that super-rich are not like that because they want to be evil or because they’re conspiring in some evil scheme to cheat out the middle class. No; What I think it’s happening is that rich live in their own little bubble, up in the sky, detached from all that’s real. They are truly oblivious what is going on down on earth and what we mortals consider moral and ethical. To them: giving the same tax breaks to rich and low class is pretty moral; Raising retirement age to 69-70 is pretty moral; bailing out their wall street friends is moral; lowering minimal wage is moral; Squeezing every little ounce of blood from a common worker until he dies poor is pretty ethical while at the same time pushing bad asset into their hands. They don’t even think twice about it. It’s not that they’re doing in consciously on purpose. It’s all engraved into their subconsciousness since the early age, decade after decade, generation after generation.  But that is what makes it even more disturbing. That is why you cannot bargain or reason with people like that. They cannot be bought or convinced. It’s the same psych that Nazi had. They were convinced that what they’re were doing is good and moral.
I remember an interview with the Nazi officer who was visiting the Auschwitz death camp back in 1940’s. When he got there he spoke briefly with current commanding officer in charge and asked him how many prisoners can he currently dispose of in one day. Commanding officer replied that with the current system they’re were able to dispose about 1,000 prisoners a day. Visiting Nazi officer was shocked.  <I thought here, finally someone in that party with a glimmer of human digntiy>. Then he said that he was actually shocked how little they were able to process. He said that with his new system they could easily do 2,500 an hour!!! He was talking about inventing a more efficient way of disposing of Jews.That kind of disturbing mentality and detachment (call it lack of empathy if you will) is present in the wealthiest in our current world. Maybe not in that extreme but very similar.
So aside from dragging them out on the street and shooting them, here are the best thing you can do for yourself:

• Pay off your debt and throw away your credit cards. Credit is your enemy. Don’t ever consider any kind of credit. Not talking just about credit cards. ANY type of credit.Period.
• You HAVE to build up a big savings. And I mean big. Hold it in money market account or Treasury bonds. No regular bonds, stocks or funds here. Just pure savings. It has to be substantial to hold you (and your family) unemployed for at least 2 years (I would go for three personally). I know, it sounds drastic, but you NEED to have that piece of mind to function properly in society. Otherwise you will always have an anxiety in the back of your head. Remember: what you are saving for is not an investment or the retirement, but a piece of mind (which is even more important).
• Strive to pay off your mortgage ASAP. 30 year mortgage is pure theft. If you cannot afford 15 or 10 year mortgage don’t buy the house until you can.
• If you really need to invest in anything, buy land. I am not talking about real estate like condos or homes. Those things are worthless in the long run. I mean real land, as your much wiser grand feather used to advise you all the time. If you can find coastal land, it would be best. And then hand it down to your kids, and so on. As more of us start owning more and more land, it will be lot harder for small group of rich fucks to control large populations and shift the wealth in their favor.
• Now, some are really poor and there’s really no way to save or do any of the above. I am not sure what you can do if you’re one of those. I really have no advice for you but I can tell you that America is really not the place for you then. There are no safety nets and system will treat you as garbage. It;s the grim truth, but I’ve seen it and experienced it first hand. What is also sad (even though it probably doesn’t matter anyway) is that the poor consistently keep voting against their own interests and keeps electing people who treat them as garbage. They vote for pro-life candidates even though that same candidate will cut their benefits, lower their wages and enrich their rich friends. If you;re one of those people, I have no sympathy for you. You got what you deserved. I just feel sorry for others who do vote for their interests and are getting screwed by you pricks who vote “family values” and not issues. I just wish I could find some piece of advice (beside move to Canada) for those who will never make it here. Maybe try to educate yourself little better or get a shot at some scholarship.
• Probably the most important thing you can do is to stay healthy. I am not going into details here but use your head and common sense when it comes to being and staying healthy. If you’re one of the unfortunate ones who won bad genetic lottery, then you’re pretty much screwed. But there are people in this country who save, save and save. They do everything right and are ready for a nice retirement. Illness comes along and wipes everything clean. Number one reason for bankruptcies in US are medical bills. Next thing you know they are greeters at Wal-Mart. Need I say more?

I cannot stress enough how important is not to have ANY type of credit and have hefty savings to properly function; mentally and physically. Forget political process and dreamy ideologies of changing the system from within. That utopia is for hippies who never worked a day in their life. First, get rid of the credit and save up. You have to be able to do your current job without stress and with the proper attitude. Meaning, “I don’t give a shit if I loose this job” attitude. Only then feel free to pursue whatever fantasy of yours makes you happy.

Internet. How information gets from one place to another? You fire up your browser and stuff appears pretty much right away. Lot of us take that for granted. Well, it’s not that simple really. It’s actually quite complex. So since the Internet, network engineering and security are part of my daily job, I decided to write up little story describing the whole process as simply as I could for a different perspective that you actually see in books . After I’ve finished this article, I’ve come to realize; Internet is even more fascinating than I originally though. Hopefully you’ll get something useful out of it, or at least kill some time.

Let’s say there’s guy named Michael who lives somewhere in Germany and who is an avid internet user. Michael gets up before the work, makes his coffee and sits on his computer to check the latest news. Michael wants to go to yahoo.com. He fires up his browser (IE, Firefox, Safari etc…) and lets say Google home page pops up. But since Micheal wants to go to yahoo.com, he types www.yahoo.com in his address bar and then he hits enter. What happens next? You might say: “well yahoo’s main page shows up.” True, but it’s not that simple really. Think about this; servers (computers with lots of storage and power) where yahoo pages physically reside, are located in Sunnyvale, CA and Michael is all the way in Germany. So Michael’s request will have to go from Germany all the way to USA. Once Michael’s request reaches Yahoo’s servers in California, Yahoo will have to send their front page to Michael. That main page will have to cross the western Europe, Atlantic and whole USA to reach it’s destination.

Here’s the whole journey step by step form Michael’s keyboard to yahoo’s home page and back.

1. Michael types www.yahoo.com letters into his browser .
2. Keyboard sends characters (letters) in forms of electrical signals via wire trough USB (or PS/2) port to a keyboard controller, which resides on Michael’s motherboard in his desktop unit on the floor.
3. From the keyboard controller letters go to Operating System (OS) which could be Windows, OS X, Linux etc..Lets say Michael uis using Windows 7. Windows 7 takes those letters and passes it to application which in our case is Michael’s browser.
4. Michael’s browser sees this request and says to the Windows 7: “oh you want to go to www.yahoo.com. Ok here’s what Instructions I need from you to display this page. Browser then sends these instructions back to the Windows 7“
5. Windows 7 sees the request and goes: I recognize this type of request. I need to send this down to my hardware and out. But before I do that let me pack it up for the long trip”. We will refer to this packaged request from now on simply as packet.” Windows 7 sends this packet down to its hardware or a Network Card. Network card is the place where you plug in your telephone or Ethernet jack, usually found in the back of your PC. That’s the final exit from Michael’s PC.
6. Network card sees the packet coming and says: “This packet is too big and I have no ability to send this as a whole, so let me chop it up to pieces first. Also, I really have no idea where this is supposed to go. All I know is that I need to label it and send it out to the next device. So network card splits our packet into smaller packets, adds destination address (yahoo) to each individual packet and sends the whole thing in streams to the closest device. Which is Michaels’  cable modem. Packets don’t leave network card at the same time. They go one by one. For the time being we’re going to follow only one packet.
7. Cable modem that is connected to Michael’s PC receives our packet, looks at destination address and says: “I really don’t care what’s in this packet and I cannot read it anyway, but maybe my owner knows so let me send it to him. That’s Michael’s local ISP (Internet Service provider). So cable modem sends out little packet on their way to Michael’s local ISP.
   
8. Our packet goes out of the modem trough coaxial cable, trough the walls, out of the Michael’s house, underneath his lawn, up to the telephone pole on his street, trough his neighborhood. Then our packet roams trough his city streets bouncing from pole to pole, going underground, above ground, until it finally reaches his local ISP’s headend. Headend si the place with antennas and where his ISP keeps all gear.
9. At local ISP’s headend, a router receives and inspects the packet and thinks to itself: Judging by destination address I know that yahoo.com is not here in the city so let me send this packet to my neighbor (another router connected to it) maybe it knows. So, router unpacks original packet and then repacks the packet in its own little suitcase and sends it on its way.Router does this for each packet it receives. It’s important to spend little more time on describing what routers are. Routers are quite fascinating little (or big) fellas. Routers are hardware based devices that ISP’s use to direct (route) traffic in and out of their networks. They act as a traffic cops. They get millions and billions of packets like these every minute, so they’re work extremely hard and they’re always busy. No breaks. They also have their own language that we call protocols, which they use to communicate with each other. Once setup, they get mind on their own. They use complex algorithms to decide where and how to route traffic, they do their own maintenance, they communicate with neighboring routers all the time, they notice when path gets invalid so they automatically choose next best path to destination. They can also recover from failures on their own. Routers are pretty much backbone of the whole Internet. They’re spread out all over the world. Every company and ISP has them.
10. Neighboring router will do the same. It will inspect our packet and send it to its closest neighboring router until our packet reaches the edge of Michael’s Local ISP’s network. Edge is where his local ISP ends, and larger ISP begins. Just like Michael’s smaller ISP provides internet connection to him, larger ISP provides Internet connection to smaller ISP and so on.This larger ISP could be medium sized ISP like Roadrunner or huge like Comcast or AT&T in US, or T-Online in Europe. Moving on.
11. Large ISP receives Michael’s packet and inspects it. It thinks: Ohh destination is not in Germany, it needs to go to USA, so let me send it to one of USA large ISP’s. Large ISP’s have reciprocal agreements between themselves. Meaning: I will forward your traffic if you forward mine. European Large ISP will choose shortest and quickest path to one of the USA large ISP’s. Lets say that it picked AT&T. What happens next is quite a journey for our packet.
12. In order for our little packet to go from Europe’s largest ISP to USA’s largest ISP it will first need to bounce from router to router, from ISP to ISP, from country to country. Juts like you would if you were to go on foot. It will go across France’s ISP’s and their routers. It will bounce across France’s countryside, from smallest to largest ISP’s just like it did in Germany. It will go trough English Channel all the way to Great Britain. It will never rest or take any breaks. If it runs into a broken path or no path at all, it will go around it and try another path.
13. Our packet will reach British ISP’s and will bounce around trough their picturesque country side, busy streets of London and other English cities. Always looking for shortest and quickest way out. If one path is blocked, packet will be routed to an alternate path by routers. In the end, Brits will send our little friend across the Atlantic via trans Atlantic cables.
14. It will travel via Cross Atlantic cables laid down approximately 60 years ago. Cables have been upgraded to a higher speed many times, and are getting upgrades all the time to keep up with demand.
15. Journey trough the underwater cables will be undisturbed and lot less chaotic than when packet traveled trough the cities. After Atlantic journey our little packet will finally arrive at AT&T somewhere on the coast of US. AT&T’s big routers will inspect the packet and its destination and will say: I don’t know exactly where yahoo.com is located but looking at the destination address I do know that it needs to go to Sunnyvale, CA. So let me send it to Comcast because I sent all my previous packets destined to yahoo via Comcast. Comcast apparently knows where this yahoo is, so I’ll do same with this packet too. Packet will then get forwarded trough AT&T’s huge network bouncing from router to router, from city to city, until it reaches Comcast.
16. Comcast routers will receive the packet and say: I am actually not Yahoo’s ISP but I do know who is. It is ISP called Level 3. So let me send it to Level 3 so they can send it directly to yahoo.
    
17. Level 3 will receive packet and say: Ohh I know exactly where this needs to go. It needs to go to one of our customers; yahoo. Yahoo is located at so and so street address, so let me send it to them directly.
    
18. Yahoo’s modem (or some other terminating device) will receive our packet and will think: Someone is requesting our front page. This needs to go to one of our servers that it’s connected directly to me. So modem will forward the packet to the server where yahoo web pages reside.
19. Yahoo’s server (which is essentially PC with lots of storage space and some fast processors) will receive the packet but will not do anything with it until receives all other packets. It will wait. Remember point 5 above: network card in Michael’s PC chopped original packet into lots of smaller packets before sending them out. Not all packets took the same trip. Some went trough different lines, different ISP, even different countries possibly, but all packets have to arrive in order for yahoo’s server to know what the message is. Once all packets arrive at Yahoo’s server, only then, network card will assemble it into one entity that will be understandable and readable. From there it will see that yahoo’s front page (www.yahoo.com) is requested  so it will dig into their database and find yahoo’s front page and will package the page into similar packets like ours and send it back to Level 3.
20. Packets will have to make the similar trip back. All the way from Sunnyvale, Ca trough out the USA, across Atlantic, over the hills and valleys, back to Germany and finally back to Michael. It might not take the same path back, but it will be very similar.
21. Once the packet reaches Micheal’s modem, network card will wait again for all packets to arrive, assemble it into one entity and it will travel up to Windows 7 and into his browser and yahoo’s front page will be displayed to Michael so he can finally read his news and finish his morning coffee. Think about how many entities and devices were needed for all this. All of those ISP’s, routers, lines, under-ocean cables, different countries were engaged just because Micheal decided to click on Yahoo’s front page. Lets think about that little more.

Now you see that this process is very similar to process of how Post Office delivers their mail. Instead of physical address with street, city, ZIP, country, computers and routers use IP addresses and MAC addresses to communicate. But principal is the same.

Here’s interesting part: The whole journey above is for when Michael wanted to view yahoo’s front page only. So what would happen if Michael start clicking trough other yahoo’s pages? The whole thing repeats for every link, every page he clicks on yahoo. If he would to click on yahoo autos, packet has to make the same trip. If Michael would to click on yahoo shopping, packet would have to make the same trip in both direction, and the whole journey repeats on and on almost without a glitch. Things get even more complex when Michael tries to download or upload an image, movie or piece of music. I don’t even want to go into HD streaming and describe what happens there. Too mind boggling. Think about that for little bit.

And that is not even the most fascinating part. The really spooky part is that process I described above is extremely simplified of course, and usually fills up volumes and volumes to describe and understand properly. There’s a 1500 page book that basically describes the whole process above. Think about that: It takes 1500 pages to fully describe the whole journey. Now, here’s fascinating part: the whole process of our packet going back and forth (both direction) takes less than one second. Everything I said above, everything that is written in that huge book happens in milliseconds. Michael doesn’t even think about what needs to happen in order for him to get to the yahoo’s page. For him it’s almost instant. Reason that is almost instant is that our little packet travels really fast. How fast? Close to the speed of light fast. That fast! To put that in perspective, our packet can circle the whole earth, 8 times, in one second.

Our example was dealing with Yahoo which is a big company with army of servers and employees. But each of us can host web pages on our own computers or servers so others can find it. That’s what the Internet really is. Bunch of computers and servers connected together in a huge network sharing information. Information gets from one place to another via routers. They’re ultimate traffic cops. There’s no Internet owner. It just is.

Think of this:

• Newton worked out how gravity works and therefore opened the door for mechanics and industrial revolution.
• Faraday worked out electromagnetic forces and therefore opened the door for electricity, TV, telecommunication, the Internet etc…
• Einstein worked out nuclear forces and opened the door for nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, and how stars work, how time works, GPS and satellite navigations,  and many other things.

When you really think about it; those three above pretty much created the world we live in right now. I don’t know about you but I cannot think of any other more important scientists in the worlds history.

Problem that lot of people have when doing a research on something is that they’re going into research with predisposed ideology, so they only look for data that will confirm their already established views. If they took just a little more time to critically examine their views from different angles, lots of their long time established beliefs would be demolished in an instant. Which is not a bad thing.

This is just going to be angry rant, so I don’t rally care if you agree with me or not.

It’s funny how the media and the financial advisers all over the country had been preaching (more like shouting), how Americans are not saving enough; how we’re spending more than we produce; how average American has more that $16,000 in debt (not counting the mortgage). They have been shouting to us how we need to save more and spend less. They have been indoctrinating this religiously into our heads for the past 15 years. That’s all you‘ve been hearing in the papers and news. I think it’s a sound strategy. They were really onto something. And I mean this without a shred of sarcasm.

Well, what do you know. As luck would have it public is finally starting to listen and is starting to save while cutting back on consumption. Result? Whole fricking system is collapsing. Bottom falls out. Retail is hanging on a thread. Auto industry is probably going to collapse or go bankrupt. Banking has already collapsed (if you didn’t get bailed out by the Government of course) .Even gas prices are plummeting. Because of all this, people are loosing their jobs and cannot afford to go out and spend money on useless crap. Lot of them cannot even afford necessary things. It looks like a total collapse.

Now, the same people in the media and financial advisers are asking, in fact begging, Americans to start spending again to prevent economy from total collapse. They even talking about giving you another stimulus and tax cuts, which is essentially your money you earned, which it turn you will spend and will get circulated back to the stores and businesses, so they can keep their poor run and already failed operations going.

These are the same people that few months ago were bitching about Americans spending too much and not saving enough. Are you fucking kidding me? Two words to them: fuck you!

The fact is (and there’s really no way of getting around this) that the whole system got accustomed to the standard of living that was unsustainable for more then two decades or so. Now, when everything is getting back to where it should’ve been long time ago (back to living within or below means), analysts and media are talking about the collapse and how we need to start shopping again for the things you’ll never need, so retail and corporations can start making profit again. Again, fuck them. The only way these motherfuckers can survive is if you start spending more while getting deeper into debt. Otherwise they cannot exist. If most people in The United States lived below or within their means, and were trying not to get into debt, half of these corporations wouldn’t even exists. There’s simply not enough purchasing power without using borrowed money; which are credit cards and loans.

This is not the collapse. It’s a severe correction with justice. I say fuck them. Keep your money, don’t buy unnecessary things, build up your savings and let whoever was leeching off of you go under. That goes for banks, auto industry, retail and other bloodsuckers. Don’t give them a dime. Yes, it will be severe and lots of people will loose their jobs, but it will happen anyway. I’d say we bite the bullet now and start letting everything unsustainable fails. We will be much better off later. Not sure who said this but was right on the money: “If corporation is too big to fail (AIG anyone), it is too big to exists.”

Just think about this: auto industry has been making crappy products for years, and now when people are starting to turn to foreign cars, auto industry and media have nerve to call you unpatriotic for not purchasing their crappy product. They’re using patriotism to lure you into buying their crap. Short of going to people homes and making them purchase their product under the gun point, that is as low as they can go.

And more importantly: don’t ever let any financial analyst, adviser or media tell you what to do and how to spend/save your money. Use your good judgment and logic. These bloodsuckers care only about their ratings and making profit off of you. Not only that but they’ve been wrong on not only things that they predicted but on the things they were happening in the present. How stupid or dumb you have to be to accomplish that?

Strive for anxiety free life. That means: no debt, no mortgage and hefty savings. Only then, loosing a job that you don’t like will seems like blessing instead of hardship.

Just look at the plans and tell me if McCains plan is not direct spit in the face to middle and low income families.  I thopught Bush’s plan was bad, but this guy is just biggest sleezball in politics today.

According to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama’s plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 – a difference of nearly $1 million.

Source of study is non-partisan tax policy center.( www.taxpolicycenter.org/)
Source of little article summary before image is Washington post.

Christopher Hitchens used to say that water boarding was just extreme interrogation. Does he still thinks that after he got water boarded? Find out below.

Read the full article from NYTimes first and then go to full video of Hitchens gets actually water boarded. Awesome!!!
Everyone needs to see this.

NYTimes Article

Video