Timestamps, I'm pretty sure, are in number-of-milliseconds-since-start-of-epoch. I believe that's Jan 1, 1970.

So the current (as of the approximate time of this post) mark-read stamp for Politics is:

http://iwt.mikevital...amp=1226670317945

If you don't want to see that forum for quite some time, change the first 2 to a 3.

http://iwt.mikevital...amp=1326670317945

(Yes, that link is for the Politics forum. I'm not gonna mess around with ya by having the link mark the Open Forum Forum read or anything. Srsly.)