Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics
Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics By ALESSANDRA RIZZO Associated Press Writer VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday. For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us, Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook. He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population - a stable percentage - while Muslims were at 19.2 percent. It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer, the monsignor said. Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data. When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said. Spokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday. If so many people believe it it must be true Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Singularities, Nightmares, and Japanese Sci-Fi
Hi, KZK, everyone, Just because animation is so labour intensive now, doesn't mean that it will be in 5 or 10 or 15 years time. In fact it almost certainly won't be. To say that a dedicated professional studio will always be necessary to produce a quality animated features fails to take into account the current rate of technological progess. Eventually expert systems will enable a single person to do the work of a team, and not long after that AI's will be capable of reading a script and then generating a feature film without any human input. If on the first draft the Soro look a bit too skiny or Gubru plumage not quite what the doctor ordered, it will be a matter of saying so, and it will pop up a few possible variations on the screen and regenerate the whole film over night or in a few minutes depending how far into the future we are talking. We may never travel faster than light, or time travel, but we will be able to see whatever we want to on the big screen. Regards, Wayne Eddy. Hate to burst your bubble Dr. Brin, but, no that is not going to happen. It takes enormous amounts of work (man hours) / CPU time and Money even to do small scale stuff. You should watch the making of documentary for the sci-fi movie movie _Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow_, about how much effort that 100% CGI (sans actors) movie took to make. The guy who created the film was original working alone and thought that it would take him 10-15+ years to finish the product. Their are just way too many things for 1 person, or even a small team to handle. That is why dedicated professional studio's will always be necessary for that kind of project. Also, how many serious animated drama's have come out of hollywood over the last ten years? I can count on one hand with fingers left over. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Troubled Homecoming Of The Marlboro Marine
On Mar 30, 2008, at 7:04 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On this point, you and I are in complete agreement. To be honest, I don't even know that I can walk a mile in my own shoes from a different time in my life: I try to think about what it was to be a scrawny teenager in Pittsburgh, or a father of a dying child... I'm not even sure I can honestly get hold of what _those_ people, who were me, were feeling. IIRC, it was hard at the time, too, at the times when I was around... which is not unusual. One of the annoying, but somewhat life- preserving, things about trauma is that we don't really experience it all at once. Gets us through the moments, but as the head of our CISM team says, it is also sort of timeless, always present from that time forward. I don't suppose it helps that, like Blake Miller, I was self-medicating through some parts of it... Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Singularities, Nightmares, and Japanese Sci-Fi
On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Wayne Eddy wrote: Hi, KZK, everyone, Just because animation is so labour intensive now, doesn't mean that it will be in 5 or 10 or 15 years time. In fact it almost certainly won't be. To say that a dedicated professional studio will always be necessary to produce a quality animated features fails to take into account the current rate of technological progess. Eventually expert systems will enable a single person to do the work of a team, and not long after that AI's will be capable of reading a script and then generating a feature film without any human input. Just seeing what the time decrease has been in 3 years for static digital art, I believe you. Your timeline may not be quite right, but Moore's Law plus software improvements plus more software specially written for the purpose will lead there. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Singularities, Nightmares, and Japanese Sci-Fi
Julia Thompson wrote: Eventually expert systems will enable a single person to do the work of a team, and not long after that AI's will be capable of reading a script and then generating a feature film without any human input. Just seeing what the time decrease has been in 3 years for static digital art, I believe you. Your timeline may not be quite right, but Moore's Law plus software improvements plus more software specially written for the purpose will lead there. The Sims 2 (the only reason I still use Windows at home) includes a very large range of movements, and they are triggered by only a few commands. Maybe that's the near-future of animations: a Sims2-like interface, and reprogram an action into more detail whenever necessary. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics
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Re: Mail help needed . . .
On Mar 30, 2008, at 4:04 AM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Since after 10+ years of my using them both Netscape and Eudora are going away, I am at the point where I have to change both browser and mail programs. I spent past several hours yesterday installing Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird and trying to import stuff from the old programs. Firefox may be a satisfactory browser but I am quite disappointed in the lack of functionality of Thunderbird as a mail client compared with Eudora, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has any (obviously, non-M$) recommendations? Thunderbird didn't turn me on much either. Have you looked at gmail? (Before you hate it, consider that the portability of your inbox is a definite bonus, even if the idea of their advertising bots' peering at your mail is a bit spooky.) FWIW gmail will also work with POP clients. OSX's Mail is a tolerable client but doesn't have the refinements of Eudora, at least not out of the box; I don't know if there are third party apps that approach it. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics
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Re: Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics
At 06:58 PM Monday 3/31/2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l I think that's one of the best responses anyone has ever made to one of WTG's posts on religion. Well worth repeating, also . . . . . . ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
