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                       TVO - Big Ideas
                       Thomas Homer-Dixon
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                       General Information
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Type.................: lectures
More Information.....: (none)
Part Size............: 15,000,000 bytes
Number of Parts......: 25
Archive Format.......: RAR
Part Recovery Method.: PAR2
PAR2 Blocks Provided.: 96

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                       Technical Information
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Source...............: NTSC CABLE
AVI Size.............: 360,540,160 bytes
Duration.............: 00:58:15
FPS..................: 29.97

Video Codec..........: XviD
      Codec DCT......: H263
      QPel...........: No
      GMC............: No
Video Bitrate........: 2000 (ABR)
Video Resolution.....: 640x464
Video Aspect Ratio...: 1.379

Audio Format.........: 0x0055(MP3, ISO) MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Encoder........: LAME 3.92
Bitrate..............: 128kbits/sec (CBR)
Hz...................: 48000
Channels.............: Stereo
Captured by..........: festering leper

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                       Description
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The ancient African empire of Ghana reached its zenith and its limits.  Its 
overabundant gold mines were showing signs of exhaustion.  Its massive cities 
were bursting at the seams.  The Sahara begun to take over the grass lands.  
The empire faced new enemies ready to attack the state at the first sign of 
weakness.  Ghana decided to attack another city.  Some would say this is the 
way empires deal with decline.  They try to hide it behind aggression.  

Thomas Homer-Dixon made a career out of studying demise, destruction, call it 
what you will.  He's not precisely a doom-sayer but certainly he's a student 
of danger.  He is the director of the Trudeau Centre For Peace And Conflict 
Studies and professor in the department of political science at the University 
of Toronto and he's also the author of the recently published "The Upside Of 
Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, And The Renewal Of Civilization" In it, he 
outlines conditions which represent the most serious dangers to life as we 
know it.

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