I'm curious what a cat thinks when finds himself at the top of a tree, having climbed there by chance when monkeying around (cats often do strange things when monkeying around), being completely stuck and afraid of getting down?

There are two major vectors in today's social and economical life:
1) the population is steadily growing,
2) most of the businesses invest in automation in order to reduce their operational costs.

These vectors are opposite to each other. The result of these tendencies is that with the years we have more potential workers but less positions that could help employ all of them. That's why the unemployment rate peaks we notice today are not the highest ones.

In further perspective, new unemployed's (apparently the ones with lower mental skills, who are generally dismissed by the automation process), will be forced to migrate to less developed regions of the planet to apply their skills there, making the gap between the developed and third-world countries larger. Finally, the things will become irreversible, so third-world states will lose any chance to outrun the developed ones. None of the possible consequences of that world setup makes me happy.

A solution that might prevent this kind of future is to invent an extremely labour-consuming activity that will help to give a job to those millions of workers. This can be Moon or Mars expansion, or world-wide greenery planting program for example. Space investigation is a preferred one, as exploration of neighbour planets will also assist to overcome the overpopulation problem.

9/11 has shown the defenselessness of the world in the face of terrorism. Though developed countries spend enormous funds on intelligence services (emerging countries also do, but as they are less attractive targets for terrorists, their intelligence services are less aware of terrorism), the attacks have illustrated how easy it is to break down the most powerful and well fixed intelligence service in the world. According to the 9/11 commission's report, the cost of the attacks to their authors was in range of $400000-600000, less than a million dollars! (total US intelligence budget for fiscal year 1998 was $26.7 billion).

The investigations show that the hijackers did not fit into the "general model" of suicide terrorists, being fully-formed well-educated adults. Probably that was one of the key reasons for the CIA to miss them on the attack preparation stage.

The official timeline of the day shows total lack of coordination between aircraft crews, dispatchers and air defense force. Neither party was ready to react to the threat adequately.

Has something changed since then? I am sure that yes. I am sure that it is absolutely impossible to replicate 9/11 attack today. If you do, you will be caught yet at the airport on the boarding stage. If not, the pilot will do his best to prevent you from directing the aircraft to the critical locations. If you come out to kill the pilot, the air force will shoot the aircraft down in minutes.

However, I am also sure that the terrorists will never resort to such kind of attacks again. They are not idiots, and they understand that intelligence services do learn from their mistakes. Instead, they will search for another hole in the defense system and try to exploit that one. And I am not sure that the CIA (or any other intelligence service) will be there to handle that newly discovered hole at once.

Photo: Recently built World Trade Center, 1976

We often think unfamiliar people to be better than they actually are... just because we only see the good side of them. There is also the bad side that is hidden from public and visible only to closer people.

In exactly the same way, we often consider unfamiliar people to be worse than they are just because their visible side is their bad side.

Evolution

When I was 15, I dreamed about standing with a guitar on stage in front of a hall full of excited girls. A cowboy hat, a black leather and a smoking cigarette were a must.

When I was 21, I dreamed about standing with a guitar or beside a keyboard in front of a hall full of concerned people who came to listen to music. A cowboy hat probably was a must, but all the other stuff wasn't anymore.

Now that I'm 28, I dream about having a concrete box to lock myself inside with a guitar/piano/flute/whatever and play for myself, catching every little piece of sound, enjoying every single note, every single offbeat, every string vibration. I'd also prefer a cozy bathrobe to the hat. And this one is the sweetest dream of all three for me.