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Thoughts for the New Year

May all of you have a wonderful new year, and may all your wishes for 2015 come true.

Here are some of my own wishes for the coming year, in no particular order.
  • May this year end more wars and begin new peace initiatives.
  • May everyone understand one another better and be less fearful of differences - whether in political views, forms of government, race, religion, ethnicity, color, and how one acts, walks, talks, or dresses.
  • May we have real-time video transmission from every airplane so we will always know what happened inside. (With a good codec like H.264, and a low frame rate (3-5 fps), we could likely send the video with about the same bandwidth as a satellite telephone call).
  • May the world have less police brutality. May the world have less unarmed and armed robberies of stores. May the world have less double standards both towards, and within, every community.
  • May we have video cameras on all police cars on all sides and inside as well. Then add body cams as well - this will help both the police and the suspects.
  • May all minorities, while complaining of racism, stop being racist themselves against each other.
  • May video surveillance of homes - with storage to the cloud - become commonplace. The technology is very cheap if adopted mass-market.
  • May everyone obtain, stand behind, and fight for freedom of speech and expression. May everyone never use that freedom to publically insult one's neighbor no matter how much you despise them.
  • May more of the world's population have mobile devices and internet (to help them learn about each other and thus draw them closer).
  • May there be a joint concerted effort from all parts of the world to reduce hacking.
  • May we be more tolerant of political boundaries becoming more fluid and flexible in order to accommodate the cultural differences of people inside (kudos to the people of U.K. for allowing a peaceful referendum on Scotland).
  • May the government leaders stop thinking primarily of themselves and their parties, and do what is in the best interests of the citizens.
  • May we stop seeing things in black and white and see more in shades of grey.
  • May more of the world's population rise up against corrupt or brutal government systems.
  • May all bodies that enact or modify the laws of a country, state, district, city, or commune comprise of a roughly equal proportion of women and men.
  • May we all pollute less so we are able to see the stars in the night sky.
  • May the media in every country become more free, but may the media also attempt to present more balanced views.
  • May the life of every child - whether African, American, European, Iraqi, Jewish, Palestinian or any other - be given equal value by the media.
  • May we find more ways to reduce all the nukes in this world. Then may we find ways to reduce all the other weaponry in this world.
  • May the world find the girl-abduction events in Nigeria as horrific as the women-abduction by groups in Syria/Iraq - and take action in Africa as well.
  • May airlines gain the wisdom to avoid war zones and may warring factions give notice to commercial air traffic before firing on planes.
  • May police give a little bit more benefit of the doubt to little children but may parents refuse to let them go outside carrying toy guns.
  • May all public areas of all college/school campuses be video monitored all the time to avoid rape and other assaults.
  • May the coming year not be yet another "warmest year since we started keeping records".
Venu P Gopal






Comments

  1. Mike GhouseJanuary 2, 2015 at 6:43 AM

    Venu, love this list, indeed, it is the desire, wish and prayer of all thinking people. Thanks for sharing this.
    Mike

    ReplyDelete

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