Or we can just take 4% the richest 2% of americans net worth and solve this issue instantly and end world hunger at the same time.

I've only ever been to one Cirque du Soleil show (the Dralion (or some such)), and even though each act in itself was pretty sweet, it's the total package, the choreographed evening that truly makes it an otherworldly experience. A visit to one of their show could easy make a "things to do in life"-list (after curing cancer and ending world hunger, ofc

Why you people sip on your capaccinos and think how great it would be for these poor kids to get a laptop, oh what wonderful things we could accomplish in this world, I am thinking realistically. Maybe its just my corporate business sense kicking in. So chastise me for having an opinion that differs. Farhad seems to be on the right track.

I thought surely someone has more insight than myself into this so I did a quick google search and found this among other things:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2227850,00.asp

"This machine, which is the brainchild of onetime MIT media lab honcho Nick Negroponte, will save the world. His vision is to supply every child with what amounts to an advertising delivery mechanism. Hence the boys at Google are big investors.

Before you cheer for the good guys, ponder a few of these facts taken from a world hunger Web site. In the Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty." Every year, 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Since you've entered this site, at least 200 people have died of starvation. One in 12 people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. Nearly one in four people, or 1.3 billion—a majority of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. Let's include Negroponte and the Google billionaires.

So what to do? Let's give these kids these little green computers. That will do it! That will solve the poverty problem and everything else, for that matter. Does anyone but me see this as an insulting "let them eat cake" sort of message to the world's poor?

"Sir, our village has no water!" "Jenkins, get these people some glassware!"

But, wait. Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?

Of course, it might be a problem if there is no classroom and he can't read. The literacy rate in Niger is 13 percent, for example. Hey, give them a computer! And even if someone can read, how many Web sites and wikis are written in SiSwati or isiZulu? Feh. These are just details to ignore."

tofu: good point on the muslim thing, although I'd hesitate to call Ahmadinejad a fundamentalist, he's too religious for my tastes. I'm not defending the man as much as I am admonishing the sheeps reaction to him.

I retract the best allies statement, he actually said "one of it's [America's] best friends" - so there's the "large amount of credible evidence" such that it is. Our administration wants us to hate Iran no matter what they do, so extending the hand of friendship like adults is out of the question, especially now that the sheep have taken root against him. Hell, he could solve world hunger and find a cure for cancer and they would still protest if he came to town.

The ultimate thing he could do would be to step aside and let a fresh new face take over. Someone who could win the hearts and minds of sheeple. If he could do that, it would prove he's got nothing but his countries interest in mind and would be beyond reproach in the international scene.

But America won't settle for anyone less than a puppet a la Shah Pahlavi that can subject his nation to the will of corporate interests here. So he presses on like it's us or them.. which it probably is, because he has no way out other than subjugation. America has zero concern for what the Iranian people want because they wanted Ahmadinejad. America wants democracy as long as it benefits them period. They've bombed democracies they didn't like before.

As far as the bad translator thing, I just think I'm right based on what went on. They've tripped him up as much as they could every step of the way, why would they give him the benefit of a pro translator? They suddenly decided to make a kind gesture or something? Nawww

Mychro: They cheered him too, you'd know that if you watched the speech instead of the corporate media's sheep-ready news clips.

Haaaa... you are inconsistent grasshopper!

"I mean for a while scientists thought that a trip to the moon is a ridiculous idea."
That's absolutely true, and I think there was even some scientists who only 10 years before the moon landing still said it couldn't be done.

But then you fell in the same category as those erroneous scientists:
"And I honestly doubt a test for God can be developed(...)"
You're going down the same path as those scientists. I for one, know that science doesn't have all the answers... yet! I don't think it will have in my life time or even my great-great-great-great-grandsons time. But someday. It will happen (unless humanity colapses or is destroyed by a natural disaster).
I don't make the claim that science can't do X. I say that science can't do X at the present time. That's the difference
I leave room for improvement, research, better scientists or simply more intelligent.

And besides... I'm sure that you would agree with me that science has come a long long hardous way in the last... let's say... 3 centuries?
And you also know that science is unfortunately still underrated and underfunded, because we pathetic humans have governments who prefer to waste their money on totally useless things like weapons (specially the american case. did you know that 1 year's worth of budget for the american army could easily erradicate world hunger forever?), or other political interests.
Imagine, please, a world where science and education (together with health) were the most heavily funded sections of society. I think we would see a REALLY REALLY big improvement not only in the ammount of information and new discoveries being made, but also in overall life quality for everyone on this planet.

After reading the comments here, I just had to register to post my own opinion. I think this video is a perfect example of the simplistic thinking and cherry picking of information that will continue to haunt the forward thinking, even with the wealth of opinion and fact that the internet provides.

"Too much like right" is a very appropriate way to describe BB's demonstration. It's agressively simplistic in its framing: throw money at the problem and it's taken care of. It's just ludicrous to say that if you spend $10 billion more on energy research that it WILL cut our oil dependency in half. Likewise, if we throw $25 billion more at world hunger, then all the children will be fed. I wonder if BB remember Somalia and how well throwing money, food, and even enforcement worked over there. Aid can be effective, but it isn't as simple as stacking a couple of oreos.

With that said, our defense spending may be overboard if a true assesment of the threat to our national security could be had. I'd say the nature of government spending, especially defense spending, is to go too far and misappropriate and waste. However, the U.S. has not had any major terrorist events on home soil since 911. Perhaps our spending is a part of this accomplishment, who knows. Not I, nor Ben and Jerry.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

This is an awesome demonstration and shows how ridiculous our spending on contracts to Haliburton, TRW et al really is.

We need serious regime change in the US- get rid of the lobbyists, give us real campaign reform, and damn it after you do the world hunger one, please, please give NASA a few oreos. I want my Mars base.