The number of foreign visitors to the United States has plummeted since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington because foreigners don’t feel welcome, tourism professionals said Thursday. ‘Since September 11, 2001, the United States has experienced a 17 percent decline in overseas travel, costing America 94 billion dollars in lost visitor spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and 16 billion dollars in lost tax revenue,’ the Discover America advocacy campaign said in a statement. Chairman Stevan Porter lamented the ‘extraordinary decline’ in the number of overseas visitors to the United States, while the advocacy group’s executive director, Geoff Freeman, blamed the slump on the shabby welcome many foreigners feel they get in the United States. ‘It’s clear what’s keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren’t welcome,’ Freeman told AFP. ‘Travelers around the world feel the US entry experience is among the world’s worst,’ Freeman said, calling on the US government to work with the private sector to make visa acquisition more efficient, the entry process traveler-friendly, and to improve communication. ‘We have put in place many reasonable security barriers but we have not […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Hackers have launched a rare and troubling attack on Apple Inc.’s computers. Apple on Thursday confirmed reports of pornography Web sites where hidden software, once downloaded, could take control of an Apple computer. Apple did not immediately respond to claims that it is the first instance of a Trojan horse attack on Apple’s Macintosh platform. ‘We’ve been made aware that a small number of Web sites attempt to trick Mac OS X users to install malicious software on their Macs,’ said Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox. ‘Apple has a great track record for keeping Mac OS X users secure, and as always, we encourage people to install software only from trusted sources.’ The timing of the Trojan horse suggests there are more to come, say some computer and Internet security professionals. As Apple’s popularity rises, ‘the bad guys are taking Macs seriously now,’ wrote Bojan Zdrnja, of the Internet Storm Center, which is led by the Escal Institute of Advanced Technologies. After confirming the claims reported by computer-security firm Intego, Symantec engineer Joji Hamada wrote on Symantec’s Web site of suspicions that a wave of attacks and viruses are due. ‘If we see a […]
FACEBOOK is an island. A most convivial island, with one’s classmates, friends, workmates and family members close at hand. An island that since May has been enlivened with entertaining fauna and flora in the form of minisoftware applications. But it’s still an island. Suppose, however, that you could leave the island compound of a social networking site and take your network of friends, and friends of friends, anywhere on the Web? This is what makes Google’s announcement last week of a new alliance of companies so enticing - the possibility that social networking will become ubiquitous. Google’s vision - ‘Social Will Be Everywhere’ - is more compelling than anything Facebook could possibly devise. Who wouldn’t prefer the unlimited freedom to take one’s own trusted circle anywhere on the Web, as opposed to the cramped confines of island life? And when has an island economy, even a well-provisioned one, ever matched the offerings of the entire Web? (Just ask AOL.) A long, long time ago - last Monday, that is - Facebook seemed a much larger land mass than it ever actually was. That was when it was celebrating its ability to command a generous $15 billion […]
It can run for hours at 20 metres per minute without getting tired. It lives longer, has more sex, and eats more without gaining weight. Could the science that created this supermouse be applied to humans? Scientists have been astounded by the creation of a genetically modified ‘supermouse’ with extraordinary physical abilities – comparable to the performance of the very best athletes – raising the prospect that the discovery may one day be used to transform people’s capacities. The mouse can run up to six kilometres (3.7 miles) at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping. Scientists said that this was equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break. Although it eats up to 60 per cent more food than an ordinary mouse, the modified mouse does not put on weight. It also lives longer and enjoys an active sex life well into old age – being capable of breeding at three times the normal maximum age. American scientists who created the mice – they now have a breeding colony of 500 – said that they were stunned by their abilities, especially given that […]
A number of years ago in a Cairo taxi, the legendary scientist and inventor Harold Edgerton of MIT, in answer to my question as to how he had been so successful, and had accomplished so much said, ‘Look for the leverage points; everything else is just friction.’ His words in the close hot space of that dusty summer afternoon changed my point of view. I saw in them a statement of social acupuncture, expressed with an engineer’s clarity. A guide to an economy of intention, like a martial arts movement, or a ballerina’s gesture. When we think about how poverty might really be ameliorated, independent of ideology, political affiliation, or bias, where are such leverage points to be found? There are so many options. Any day’s mail brings several. How does one select something that will make one’s intention a reality? One clearly successful leverage point is the micro-loan - the development of personal loan programs - such as the Grameen Bank - for sums which, in America, are often no more than a golf round, or a family’s weekly church donation. Larry Dossey, elsewhere in this issue, eloquently describes the Bank, whose founder, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
