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'A lot of ink has been spilled over the biotechnology debate. The basic arguments haven't changed much in 20 years: Recombinant DNA technology is unproved and risky, or it's saving lives and the environment. The controversy rages on, as passionate and polarized as ever. The more interesting and dynamic part of this discussion is its subtext: the interrelationship between science, nature and society.
"Nature's Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies" dives right into that issue and unabashedly declares that science today is stuck in the industrial paradigm. This compelling collection of essays eloquently lays out an array of imaginative and practical solutions for some of the most perplexing environmental challenges of our time. The book both captures the spirit of Rachel Carson's "Sense of Wonder" and calls for a new, engaged, ecological vision for technology. It suggests sustainable solutions for how we feed ourselves and for environmental restoration that are both grounded in solid science and deeply respectful of the natural world. As contributor John Todd put it, this work weds "human ingenuity with the wisdom of the wild."'
Some related Links:
John Todd and the Ocean Ark Institute, is also the originator of Living Machines, using living things and clever engineering to clean waste water, and supply alternative energy for a wide range of domestic and industrial uses.
According to this story on the Korean Times, a women who has not stood up for 19 years was able to walk because of stem-cell therapy.
A team of Korean researchers claimed Thursday they had performed a miracle by enabling a patient, who could not even stand up for the last 19 years, to walk with stem cell therapy.During a press conference, the scientists said they had last month transplanted multi-potent stem cells from umbilical cord blood to the 37-year-old female patient suffering from a spinal cord injury and she can now walk on her own.
The team was co-headed by Chosun University professor Song Chang-hun, Seoul National University professor Kang Kyung-sun and Han Hoon, Ph.D, from the Seoul Cord Blood Bank (SCB).
``The stem cell transplantation was performed on Oct. 12 this year and in just three weeks she started to walk with the help of a walker,¡¯¡¯ Song said.
The patient¡¯s lower limbs were paralyzed after an accident in 1985 damaged her lower back and hips. Afterward she spent her life in bed or in a wheelchair.
For the unprecedented clinical test, the scientists isolated stem cells from umbilical cord blood and then injected them into the damaged part of the spinal cord.
The sensory and motor nerves of the patient started to improve 15 days after the operation and she could move her hips. After 25 days, her feet responded to stimulation.
If only Christopher Reeve had lived a few more months he may have been cured too, and in turn lived a long longer without the delibating condition that permaturely ended his life.
And yet the Bush administration and his right-wing cohorts want to make this illegal worldwide.
As a perceptual organism embedded in 4 dimensions, I record existence. My recording range is only limited by the range of the senses. Whether memory is total or fragmentary I continuously receive and categorize data, tagging memories with associative relationships to smells, emotions, feelings, etc... and logging them into the holographic library of experience. Yet there is some evidence to suggest that the brain records everything that's perceived, filling huge volumes of memory with even the most minute details. Who knows what the storage capacity of the holographic brain might be but it surely dwarfs even the greatest giga-terabit computers. It may even be infinite.
The material world exists in 3 dimensions: XYZ. Each succesive dimension is coplanar with the prior dimension. They are coexistent in the same space. In other words, dimensions are additive and coincident - you can't experience one without all of those that precede it. Tipped on its side and rolled into motion, the 3-dimensional structure of matter is given a 4th dimension: Time. Again, all 4 dimensions exist simultaneously and isotropically. Time is meaningless without form.
The 5th dimension exists, no doubt. String theory suggests there are 11 dimensions - 7 more intepenetrating our own 4. Our senses are simply limited and don't perceive these other layers or modes of reality. As all higher dimensions are simply extensions of the previous levels, the 5th dimension would be additive to our currently perceived world. It might be the ability to move effortlessly through time. Or perhaps the capacity to manifest imagination directly into being. But it would not negate our current frame of reference. It would merely expand it.
And as the dutiful recording devices we are, as our senses expand to perceive higher dimensions, we'll record them, witnessing the evolution of creation and archiving the data into the universal mind. We, and all conscious beings, are literally the eyes of the world. We are the witnesses of creation. The astounding miracle of life unfolds before us as we give it context, meaning, and mythology.
The argument of reincarnation lends a certain persistence to the vast catalog of data comprising the collective experience of creation by conscious beings. Postulating reincarnation invokes a degree of immortality, or at least a sort of read-write access to the Akashic Record. Our recorded experiences would surely include our identities and selfhoods down to our deepest, darkest fears and desires. Although such demons might be shadowy and amorphous, nothing escapes the psyche. And yet it would seem foolish (or at least extraordinarily liberal for a thermodynamically conservative universe) to exterminate the data of history with the entropic decay of the corporeal body. Either the camera moves from one incarnation to another, or the records lie somewhere more fundamental and eternal than simply within our ephemeral minds. Perhaps in the deep recesses of our internal holographic memory banks lies the quantum plenum, singular and infinite like a universal film being slowly exposed over vast amounts of time. Perhaps witnessing the complete exposure from beginning to end is the experience of the 5h dimension.
As 2012 approaches (only 7 more years), the framerate of our cameras and the resolution of our lenses will continue asymptotically up the curve towards singularity, as finer and finer degrees of perception narrow our focus to the point of unity, simultaneous with the widening aperture relentlessly converging on the infinite. As above, so below, all things renewed by fire. Through it all resides the singular witness, I, watching and recording the great congress of Shiva and Kali manifest into spacetime.
Terence McKenna occasionally imagined the singularity as a vast disco ball at the end of time, casting reflections of itself back through history like spinning lights on a dancefloor. If that's the case, then the apocalypse is really just a great big graduation party, fittingly drunk and emotional, nostalgic and fearful, idealistic and hopeful.
Shall we dance one more time?
Now we're talking:
The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn
"The revelation of the once-secret Hermetic symbols and philosophies that are the foundation of the Golden Dawn's system has long since occurred, yet we still see Lodges swearing their Aspirants to absolute secrecy with mighty oaths of death and destruction, if they dare to reveal to the uninitiated the "secret knowledge" which the uninitiated could buy cheaply at a used book store. We see no reason to follow this defunct and even harmful approach.Instead, following the demonstrably advantageous practice of the Open Source Software movement, we build our Order on the sources of knowledge that are accessible to anyone. Our sources are already open; we simply affirm this obvious fact. We have no "secrets" to conceal, in particular those that have already been revealed. And in any case, the era of artificial secrecy is at an end. Ours is the Information Age, and we embrace it fully. Therefore we ordain and establish our order as the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn."
Future Hi pal Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the seminal book Breaking Open the Head asked me to share this with you. This article appears in the latest issue of Arthur Magazine.
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A few months ago, I attended the Burning Man festival, in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, for the fifth time in a row. Burning Man has been called the world’s biggest party, but I don’t even know if I have "fun" at Burning Man in any ordinary sense – being there is incredibly intense, a kind of psychophysical endurance test. Despite the difficulties, I will continue to return as long as it is possible to do so. The gathering acts as an enormous shamanic transformer, constellating new insights and clearing away old junk.
I chose to go to Burning Man instead of staying in New York for the protests surrounding the Republican Convention. My increasing suspicion is that traditional forms of protest, at this point, are only playing into the hands of the security apparatus. The police and military get the opportunity to test out their latest tactics and shiniest gadgets, while the corporate media finds the most incendiary images to broadcast across the US, amping up the anxiety. The catharsis that protestors get from yelling slogans across barbed wire barriers and out of "free speech pens" might be energy that could be more creatively invested in other ways.
As the corporate and governmental superstructure continue a lockstep march towards their own self-destruction, their attempts to pulverize the collective psyche into submission becomes more transparent and overt. Electrical currents of spite and anxiety ripple across our public discourse and private lives. The individual’s refusal to fall into these traps or accept this negative conditioning can be a great liberation. At Burning Man, I kept thinking that the most meaningful political act, right now, is to continue cultivating fearlessness in pursuit of joy. To be fearless, calm, and joyful is to jam a wrench into the "Brave New 1984" technodystopic machinery that is seeking to impose itself on our world.
I consider the current sociopolitical abyss to be a kind of evolutionary tool. The control apparatus of modern society may be functioning as a training ground for a new level of consciousness. Many different thinkers of the Twentieth Century, as well as the prophecies of archaic and indigenous spiritual traditions, have proposed that a major change in human consciousness is imminent. This has been articulated in various ways. Before his death in 1961, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw that the "reality of the psyche," repressed by the modern mentality, would soon become unavoidable. Mankind was being forced to climb "to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness," to handle "the superhuman powers which the fallen angels" had dropped into our hands.
The Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy and Waldorf education) claimed that the mission of his life on Earth was to return the knowledge of reincarnation to the West. According to Steiner, individual human beings reincarnate again and again, and the Earth itself passes through successive incarnations. He considered this phase to be the fourth incarnation of the Earth. Steiner thought we are approaching a fifth incarnation, the "Jupiter state," where humanity would evolve new capacities and reach a new level of wisdom – actually, not just humans. According to Steiner, the plant and mineral kingdom would reach a higher level of consciousness during this next incarnation, while humanity would split into several different "human kingdoms," undergoing different forms of evolution.
The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo also felt that we were moving towards a new level or intensity of consciousness. In one of his last essays, The Mind of Light, he defined this as the "supramental" state. Just as life had self-organized out of matter, and mind had self-organized out of life, consciousness would evolve beyond the obscurations and ignorance of our current condition – to attain a level of truth-consciousness, and spiritual awareness, that could not be manipulated or fooled. Aurobindo speculated that our evolution would accelerate exponentially from that point. Once we had reached this supramental state, this truth-consciousness, we would be able to transform our physical reality and our bodies. "Man," Aurobindo wrote, "is a transitional being." The powers unleashed by technology might be reintegrated into the psyche, at a higher level of development.
As counterintuitive as it may seem at first, I propose that our current environment, saturated with noise and chaos and fear-mongering, is the necessary background for attaining this supramental condition, for accepting and mastering the reality of the psyche. The new mindset stems from a fearless curiosity and hunger for truth, and a rejection of the cynicism and negative programming foisted upon it by the corporate-controlled media and current power structure. The new intensity of consciousness accepts the reality of psychic and occult levels of reality, denied by modern materialism, but integrates this understanding with a scientific, pragmatic, and empirical approach to existence. As a speaker at Burning Man pointed out, it is not "New Age," but "New Edge."
My hypothesis is that at least a portion of humanity attains this level of "supramental" consciousness – including, as Aurobindo proposes, an accelerated evolution – as we approach the year 2012, prophesied by the Mayans as the end of the 5,125-year "Great Cycle" of human history. Despite current appearances, we are on the verge of a transition into a new intensity of human consciousness that will institute an harmonic and utopian situation on the Earth. This thesis is not mine alone – it is carefully elaborated by Carl Johann Calleman, among others, in his new book, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear & Co.). This book supports the basic ideas of the writers Jose Arguelles and John Major Jenkins – a new outsider paradigm is crystallizing.
Calleman, a biologist who has worked with the World Health Organization, considers the development of human consciousness to be an organic process akin to fetal development. Chemical signals are transmitted to the fetus in an incredibly complex and perfectly orchestrated sequence. The proposal made by Arguelles, Calleman, and others, is that the evolution of human consciousness on Earth follows a similar process on a planetary scale, and we are currently approaching the birth of the higher mind, or noosphere, of the Earth. After many years of research, Calleman as well as Arguelles understand the Mayan Calendar to be a synchronically-attuned device that indicates the year-by-year changes, in this final period, leading to the inevitable phase-transition of human consciousness.
The run-up to the 2012 transition appears, necessarily, as universal capitulation and collapse – just as birth is a messy process that would appear horrific to the uninformed observer. According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan Calendar, the global economy – and with it, the materialist paradigm currently holding the collective psyche at a certain level of development – will collapse around 2007 - 2008. Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, as well as our current political farce. During the transition, things seem to be getting simultaneously – paradoxically – much better and much worse. Time itself seems to be changing form, accelerating, as events follow each other at breakneck pace.
Obviously, it is a difficult leap for most people to accept the possibility that the Maya had a deeper understanding of time – as a synchronic order, rather than a simple linear extension – than we currently possess. However, it seems to me that any impartial study of the current world situation makes it obvious that the current social and political paradigm is unsustainable, even in the short term. We are depleting and burning out our global resources at an ever-accelerating rate. A cynical or nihilistic perspective on the imminent fate of our species is, of course, plausible, but unproductive. An alternate perspective sees the destruction of the biosphere – and the development of technology – as byproducts of the psychospiritual evolution of humanity, bringing us to a new form or phase-state of consciousness.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Burning Man is the wide-open expanse of the desert itself, which seems to represent the infinite potential available to the liberated human imagination. While I was bicycling across the playa one night, enjoying the laser lights and carnival displays of the festival from a distance, I thought that the shift to a new planetary culture, and a new form of nonhierarchical social organization matching our new level of mind, does not have to be a cataclysmic or destructive one. The transition could occur in a manner similar to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire – a sudden piffle, and a shocking surrender. However, for this to happen, the new paradigm must already be in place, at least as an undercurrent. Lacking a model or an imprint, the collapse of the current system will result in a world resembling that of the Road Warrior films, without the occasional flickers of irony.
If we can make the transition to a truly rational planetary culture based on compassion, generosity, and dharmic principles, this will inspire a change in our basic conception of science. Rather than seeking to resolve dualisms and institute some final "Theory of Everything," the science of post-history will embrace and explore paradox, going deeper into conundrums, relinquishing delusory attempts to achieve closure. Superstring physics describes a universe of nine, ten, or eleven dimensions. If reality is, as Buddhism proposes, actually maya, a projection of subtler levels of the psyche, then we may come to accept that the extradimensional object or hypercube described by physics is the psyche itself, in its full multidimensions.
I suggest that the planes or surfaces of this object can be incorporated into awareness as the various vectors or intervals or vibrational field-effects experienced in non-ordinary states – induced by psychoactive substances, meditations, dreams, shamanic trances, and so on. Different psychedelics open "lines of flight" or ingressions across the extra-dimensional object that is the psyche itself. When we have matured to the point that we can accept the "reality of the psyche," investigating these areas will be recognized as natural and even essential to expanding the parameters of human understanding. The science and art of post-history will be dedicated to exploring the numinous paradoxes of psychic reality. Instead of seeking closure, we will open new possibilities and explore infinite new realms.
Lecture by Peter Lamborn Wilson held during the "Next Five Minutes" Conference on Tactical Media Amsterdam, January 19, 1996
The term "Neurospace" I learned from the Kiev artist Vladimir Muzehesky, through Geert Lovink. What I immediately thought he meant by it was a comparison of that space which is posited as belonging to the computer with the neural space or the inner-body experience, that comes, for most of us, largely through psychedelic drugs—neurospace as the space of hallucinations, for example. I would like to compare and contrast, as they used to say in school, cyberspace and neurospace. There are similarities and differences.
I remember some years ago, when virtual reality suddenly appeared with a big whizbang on the scene, going to a conference in New York where Timothy Leary, God bless him, appeared with Jaron Lanier and couple of other cybernauts. Tim was wearing the goggles, he was on stage and he said, "Oooh, I have been here before." So right from the start there was this connection set up between virtual reality and the LSD experience—or as some us prefer to call it "the entheogenic experience," which is just a fancy way of not using the word psychedelic because it alerts the police. Actually, " entheogenic" means the birth of the "Divine Within. "I am able to use this term that is meaningful for me even though I am not a theist in the strict sense of the word. I don't think you have to believe in God to understand that there can be an experience of the Divine Becoming Within.
From Space News:
Anyone who wants to follow in the shoes of Burt Rutan and win the next big space prize will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.
While the first flight must demonstrate only the ability to carry five crew members, the winner will have to take at least five people up on the second flight.
And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.
The Rules:
1. The spacecraft must reach a minimum altitude of 400 kilometers (approximately 250 miles).2. The spacecraft must reach a minimum velocity sufficient to complete two (2) full orbits at altitude before returning to Earth.
3. The spacecraft must carry no less than a crew of five (5) people.
4. The spacecraft must dock or demonstrate its ability to dock with a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space habitat, and be capable of remaining on station at least six (6) months.
5. The spacecraft must perform two (2) consecutive, safe and successful orbital missions within a period of sixty (60) calendar days, subject to Government regulations;
6. No more than twenty percent (20 percent) of the spacecraft may be composed of expendable hardware;
7. The contestant must be domiciled in the United States of America.
8. The contestant must have its principal place of business in the United States of America.
9. The Competitor must not accept of utilize government development funding related to this contest of any kind, nor shall there be any government ownership of the competitor. Usin government test facilities shall be permitted.
10. The spacecraft must complete its two (2) missions safely and successfully, with all five (5) crew members aboard for the second qualifying flight, before the competition’s deadline of Jan. 10, 2010.The Rules:
The spacecraft must reach a minimum altitude of 400 kilometers (approximately 250 miles);
The spacecraft must reach a minimum velocity sufficient to complete two (2) full orbits at altitude before returning to Earth;
The spacecraft must carry no less than a crew of five (5) people;
The spacecraft must dock or demonstrate its ability to dock with a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space habitat, and be capable of remaining on station at least six (6) months;
The spacecraft must perform two (2) consecutive, safe and successful orbital missions within a period of sixty (60) calendar days, subject to Government regulations;
No more than twenty percent (20 percent) of the spacecraft may be composed of expendable hardware;The contestant must be domiciled in the United States of America.
The contestant must have its principal place of business in the United States of America.
The Competitor must not accept of utilize government development funding related to this contest of any kind, nor shall there be any government ownership of the competitor. Usin government test facilities shall be permitted.
The spacecraft must complete its two (2) missions safely and successfully, with all five (5) crew members aboard for the second qualifying flight, before the competition’s deadline of Jan. 10, 2010.
Since so many of us are in a funk, I thought I'd share some news over the past few weeks of positive things happening in the world, or just some fun and weird inspirational tidbits:
Putin Signs Kyoto - It's official. President Putin signed Russia into the Kyoto treaty today. It was the last country needed in order for the treaty to go into effect; ninety days after Russia submits the paperwork to the UN, the treaty goes into effect for the 126 nations that signed it. See the NY Times article for details. - What's so ironic about this now, is that the US in it's refusal to sign it, will now have devastating results on America's economy and its ability to do business with those countries who did sign it. Stupid.
Kiwi Power - New Zealand Wind Farm Delivers 90 Mega Watts - Meridian Energy's Te Apiti wind farm in the Tararua ranges is now capable of delivering its full 90 MW capacity to New Zealand's national grid, enough to power some 45,000 average homes. The project's 55th and last wind turbine has now been fully commissioned almost exactly a year after construction began on the country's -- and the Southern Hemisphere's -- largest wind farm.
Kiwi Zorbs - This looks like a blast. Here is a video from National Geographic.
Hermit Tunes In, Turns on and Drops Out on Los Alamos Land - Roy Michael Moore, a 56-year-old who grew up in Amarillo, said he came to Los Alamos about four years ago for a "very distinct reason": to get the attention of scientists working on the most complex cosmological problems of the universe and introduce them to his unifying theory. Mike, as he calls himself, has come to be known as either the "caveman" or the "hermit," depending on to whom you talk, since he was discovered on Oct. 13 living in a well-appointed cave in a deep, wooded canyon on Los Alamos National Laboratory property. "I think it is just heaven on earth," he said about his former home. What the intruders found was a bit startling. Moore had made himself a home in a south-facing cave— "the most beautiful views in town, no irritating neighbors"— complete with photovoltaic solar panels, batteries to store the solar energy, satellite radio, wood-burning stove, a bed and a glass door sealed across the cave's entrance. Here's Mike personal website which is very extensive and goes over all of his theories, philosophy, and autobiography.
Hydrogen Car Powered By Sunlight - A teacher called Cory Waxman and his students have built the only self-sustaining hydrogen vehicle that uses a conventional internal-combustion engine. The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.
Solar Energy UK: Solar Power for All New Homes - Here's a link to the Gaurdian Article.
Car That Runs on Compressed Air
Self Sufficient Desert Home - Last summer, eight students at the University of Utah's College of Architecture and Planning designed a three-bedroom desert home that generates its own electricity and water and is situated in Bluff, Utah, 22 miles from the nearest town. The house is built of an energy-efficient material known as rammed earth. Solar panels generate enough electricity to light the house and power small appliances, while the stove and fridge are fueled by propane. But the most striking element is the 2,500-square-foot "butterfly" roof floating over the house to collect rainwater. One inch of rainfall fills the house's cistern, which supplies water to the kitchen and bathroom. Construction of the house, done with volunteer student labor and recycled materials, took 16 weeks and cost $21,219.58.
High Tech Buildings Use Sunlight, Sea Water to Save Energy
Open-Source Currency - Future Hi pal Douglas Rushkoff has a new piece in The Feature. Handheld wireless technology stands ready to enable what's known as the "complementary currency" movement in ways so powerful that the dominance of national currencies such as the dollar and the euro may soon be called into question. This is not as preposterous a scenario as it sounds. After all, it's only been since the Renaissance that nation-states have been powerful enough to corner the money market. Before then, most municipalities developed their own currencies, often basing them on very different principles than the ones we use to justify our currencies today.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity - I especially found this one particularly relevant - A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. As one of the major themes of this site, I think human stupidity is the world's biggest problem over all other problems combined. If intelligence and the critical thinking skills that go along with could be increased across the board, all of other problems could be solved.
Smart Drugs are Back - At least 40 potential cognitive enhancers are currently in clinical development, says Harry Tracy, publisher of NeuroInvestment, an industry newsletter based in Rye, New Hampshire. Some could reach the market within a few years. For millions, these breakthroughs could turn out to be lifesavers or, at the very least, postpone the development of a devastating disease. In America alone, there are currently about 4.5m people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and their ranks are expected to grow to 6m by 2020. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), defined as memory loss without any significant functional impairment, is estimated to afflict at least another 4.5m people. Because the majority of MCI patients will eventually develop Alzheimer's, many doctors believe that intervening in the early stages of the disease could significantly delay its onset.
(Link via Technoccult, via R.U. Sirius)
Electric Currents Boost Brain Power - New research has found that running a mild electric current through your brain can significantly boost your verbal skills, with no side-effects, as far as anyone knows so far. Very interesting. It appears to decrease the firing threshold of neurons in the path of the current. This research was applied mainly to the frontal lobe of the brain. I wonder what it might do to other brain regions? Fascinating discovery.
(Link via Nova Spivack)
One of the most recent and striking crop circles yet.
My theory is that these are human made and that when all the evidence is examined, the stalks are getting microwaved on only one side, which would cause them to create tension an therefore bend downward. This would allow them to continue growing because their stalks are not broken. The patterns are generated using a complex pre-designed template that tells the microwave been precisely where to paint the image. Who knows where this beam comes from. I suspect it comes from some kind of very high altitude dirigible. This would be an ideal platform since it is both stable and undetectable from the ground. There is some compelling evidence that such very large, very high altitude dirigibles exist. A few years ago some striking daytime footage (video link) from Northern Arizona showing what appears to be a very large cigar shaped object slowly moving across the ski at very high altitudes. Jim Dilettoso of Village Labs, who specializes in advance digital image analysis concluding the object is probably in excess of a mile long and flying at an altitude of at least 80-100,000 feet! Who knows what these guys with black budgets do with all their money. Did you know that the SR-71 project cost more than the Apollo Moon project and nobody knew of its existence for 25 years?
High Oil Prices Might Be A Blessing In Disguise - An increase in the price of oil will cause great short-term hardship to all the industrialized economies. It will also throw the emerging economies into recession or depression. However, the increase in prices also undoes the second half of Saudi planning. Alternative energy and technology become affordable at the higher price point. Instead of solar prices falling to the "magic number". Oil prices have risen to create a new "magic number". Doubling oil prices has almost the same same effect as halving solar prices. Increases in oil prices make solar power more competitive. The same applies to other alternative energy sources such as wind, hydrogen, hydro, geothermal, biomass, tidal, and biodiesel. Each increase in prices increases the viability of other energy sources. It may not be necessary for the other source to be cheaper, just cheap enough.
The Longevity Gene - Technology Review reports that MIT Professor Leonard Guarente may have found the genetic factor that allows mice undergoing 'caloric restriction' to live up to 30% longer. It's long been known that cutting down food intake by about 1/3 can extend the lifespan of mammals by up to 50%. Professor Guarente has found that manipulating a single gene -- the SIRT1 gene -- can produce longer mice lives without caloric restriction. What's more, all mammals -- including humans -- have a similar gene.
Drugs and the Nation - The election results show there is still substantial support for liberalizing the nation's drug laws – just not too far or too fast.
Sorry for the large number of political posts coming in the wake of this election, but I figure the mood is right to discuss it while we are so hungry for hope. I think all this stuff is VERY relevant to our future because it's going to effect everyone on the planet. Incubating positive and sustainable futures is going to require heroic work by all of us if we want to see it come to pass. It will be to our advantage to see where political forces are moving to best prepare us for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
You may have heard Bin Ladin's latest video communiqué, where he's stated his true intention of bankrupting the United States. Bruce Sterling posted an interesting piece, but the most enligntened analysis I've ever read of Al Qaeda is here.
What I find ironic is that before Bin laden, America already beat him to the punch! America is already bankrupt, but our economy is being artifically propped up by other nations, especially Japan. With Bush having taken turned the countries biggest surplus into the biggest deficit has been nothing but a final blow into the belly of the beast. Bush and Bin Laden can fight for credit for bankrupting the country if that's what they want to do. Who cares, the job is done already. It shoud also be noted that bankrupting the government has long been on the agenda of extreme right fiscal conservatives such as Grover Norquist, who is one of Bush's main economic advisors and has stated repeatedly that is precisely what he intends to do. And if you've been following the news, the Bush Administration recently asked for the debt ceiling to be raised a couple more trillion dollars! What a joke.
All of this of course is completely insane, yet people are getting all upset because supposedly our children and grandchildren will have to pay it off. Sorry, but that is just nonsense. You can't bleed blood from a turnip either. It's time for a serious reality check. America's debt is now so huge that it will never be paid off! And what do debtors do who can't pay off their debts? They declare bankruptcy. The only reason America hasn't done it yet, is that all sorts of foreign investors have kept it from happening, especially Japan. But bankruptcy is now inevitable and will likely occur on Bush's watch, now that he is president again for the next 4 years.
So what then does this really mean for the American Empire and in turn the rest of the world?
Several months ago Future Hi Editor and good friend Flemming Funch posted this interesting analysis, which I've quoted below in it's entirety.
How, then, does a nation deal with debts that so greatly outrun its ability to pay? There are basically only five strategies. All are unappealing. Most are calamitous.The most difficult strategy is, not surprisingly, the honest one: raise taxes and pay your bills. This is what King George III did following the Seven Years War with France in 1763. England had quadrupled its national debt in fighting the War and needed money to pay it off. It turned to the richest people in the realm, the Colonists, and began taxing paper, glass, paint, lead, and, of course, tea. The result, as we know, was the American Revolution.
It was the same strategy-raising taxes on the rich-that Louis XVI attempted in 1789. The French national debt had grown 10 fold under the pharoic opulence of Louis's grandfather, Louis XIV. Louis called the nobility and the clergy together and told them they would have to ante up. They, after all, had been exempted from taxes by Louis XIV in order to buy their complicity in his autocratic reign. Indignant, they refused to pay, precipitating the French Revolution, the most explosive upheaval to established government in the last thousand years.
A second strategy to deal with excessive debts is simply to print money. This is what Weimar Germany did to address the crushing debt imposed by the vengeful Treaty of Versailles. Before it was over the government had inflated the money supply by over a trillion times, leading some to comment that it was a waste of ink to put it onto paper worth so much less than the ink itself. The German middle class, whose assets were held at fixed amounts in government pensions, was destroyed. The collapse gave direct rise to Adolph Hitler.
A third strategy for dealing with onerous national debt is to sell off national assets. This is one of the first strategies the IMF imposes on third world countries that have gotten behind in their payments to western banks. Government-run industries, from telecommunications to water systems, are "privatized" and the country's natural resources are sold off to the highest foreign bidder. This is what Great Britain was forced to do in the aftermath or World War II.
Two world wars in only 30 years had ravaged the British economy and the pound sterling. Facing collapse at home (and revolution abroad), the government surrendered almost all of its colonies, from India and Pakistan to Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These had been among the greatest wealth-producing properties of modern times, the ones that had made the British Empire what it was. Their loss left Britain a second-rate power with only misty memories of its once imperial greatness.
A fourth strategy for dealing with excessive debt is to repudiate it. This was used for centuries in the early days of the modern world and was revived two years ago by Argentina which brazenly refused to pay some $110 billion in debts it had accumulated over prior decades. More ominously, it was this strategy that was used by the Bolsheviks after they took power in the Russian Revolution.
The new communist government refused to be bound by the debts of the overthrown Romanovs. But the French had loaned heavily to the Russian government for decades before World War I and now were left in a lurch. A cascading series of defaults from one bank to another caused a liquidity crisis on the continent, ultimately setting off the Great Depression.
Finally, there is plunder. When a nation's debt load becomes so huge it cannot plausibly reassure creditors regarding repayment, it must seek some source of wealth, any source, to keep the borrowed money flowing. This, naked predation, is what kept the Roman Empire alive for the last two hundred years of its existence. It is the strategy adopted by the Spanish Empire-silver and gold from America-and which eventually destroyed the vitality of its own merchant and civil servant classes.
Which, then, of the five above strategies will the U.S. adopt to deal with its exploding debt problem?
The author concludes, quite reasonably, I think, that Bush's answer will be a combination of solutions 3, 4 and 5. Sell off big chunks of assets to private interests, negate the responsibility for covering future social security, and go and plunder resources in other countries. Not pretty, but one might possibly keep it going for a while before anybody notices.
I think the world is starting to notice. Question now is what is the world going to do about it?
My thinking is that if America goes bankrupt so will most of the world. Large companies like Halliburton, which have acted as parasites of taxpayers’ money will go down the tubes with it. I can see two possible futures emerging from this. The first is Bin Laden's dream of seeing the entire modern world come crashing down into a new dark ages. The other is seeing all the worlds’ people, empowered by sustainable technologies and global communications, w building a better society out of the ashes of the old. It reminds me of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. When it fell, it was the start of a 1000-year dark age. Can this time be any different? I think so. One very important thing separates us from those 1600 years ago. Today we have technology that is speeding up like crazy. Nanotechnology is right around the corner; perhaps just in time to pick up when everything else comes crashing down.
For half of my life I've heard many people say it's going to get worse before it gets better. Perhaps it will take a disaster of "apocalyptic" magnitude for humanity to self-correct. In my opinion the current system is broken beyond repair. Now with the fundamentalist on both sides declaring jihad, this broken system can't maintain itself much longer. Something is going to give, and when it does I expect the whole house of cards to come falling down with it. Lets just hope that there will be enough progressive and enlightened people in the aftermath to lead us out of the darkness into a new more enlightened golden dawn.
Some parting thoughts via DRT News:
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.
This post is back by popular demand, having received several emails requesting it's return. It was deleted because Future Hi strives to remain as apolitical as possible, but right now seems to be the exception.
~~
Are we in the midst of a theocratic coup with rigged electronic voting machines?
Decide for yourself:
The News Target Network has a rundown on Bush's "mysterious '5% advantage' " in states that use electronic voting here. The site Democratic Underground, which as of 4:20 p.m. PT Nov. 3 has closed its forums to non-registered users, argued that hanky panky could have happened in states that don't have paper receipts. "EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results." On the other hand, "In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error."
Joseph Cannon, who runs the blog CANNONFIRE, makes a similar argument: The states that "offered the best, safest opportunity for manipulation of the final count" were Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico. "In other states, the exit polling matched the final results rather well. In Nevada, Illinois, and New Hampshire, computer votes do have paper trails-and in those instances, the exit polls tracked the final totals. To recap: In three states with no paper trails, we have exit poll/final tally disagreement. In three states with paper trails, we have exit poll/final tally congruence."
Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization that promises "consumer protection for elections," announced that they would undertake "the largest Freedom of Information action in history" to "obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships." On Monday, the group had sounded a warning that "hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow." The group claims that a Sept. 15 FOIA request filed in King County, Washington, revealed "modem 'trouble slips' consistent with hacker activity.
Here are some additional links:
Screenshots of CNN changing exit poll data.
About 10 minutes ago I finally snapped out of my shock.
I’m feeling more alive, more charged, and more determined than ever. Here's why.
We have the moral high ground.
We have merely lacked the capacity to express it. The other side cleverly duped enough people to think they have it when they really don't. And more than any other issue, that is why people vote. What the Republicans actually have is a strict-father version of Christian values rather than the nurturing-mother version of Christian values. The reason the conservative right has become so powerful is becuase they found a unifying message around their core value based on the strict-father model. We can do the same with the nurture-mother model.
Now for some good news. According to a statitician on NPR this afternoon, Christians with nurturing-mother values outnumber the "fire and brimstone" strict-father Christians 2 to 1! That fact alone should get you jazzed. That means if we starting taking back the morality word, values that are important to us like love, tolerance, humanitarian aid and community building will come back into the mainstream. Besides, since when do moral values go along with giving the idle rich all the money, a health care plan based on the idea of not caring for anyone's health, an energy plan co-authored by the House of Saud, and a strong presence as the world's most resented playground bully. And trust me corn-field America is about to get a taste of it's own elected medicine as Bush gets them poorer, more riddled in dept and sicker from environmental toxins and lack of basic health care, and starts sending their children to die iin questionable, immoral wars. Yes, the draft is coming, can’t you feel it?
As Joho just said here are some terms we need to take back, and we need to start right now, today:
Morality. Already I've heard a radio journalist talk about the "morality moms." You know what? We're as moral as the people who claim to have voted for Bush for moral reasons. What they really mean is that they voted for Bush for fundamentalist religious reasons. Let's call 'em "intolerant moms" instead. How do you like them apples?”Terrorist. A terrorist is someone who tries to achieve a political objective by engaging in heinous acts intended to terrify its victims. Osama is a terrorist. Most of the people fighting us in Iraq are not terrorists. If you don't like Iraqi insurgents — and who does? — then get yourself a different term because you're using "terrorist" simply to paper over the yawning lack of justification for launching this awful war.
Homeland. Can we please stop calling our country that? It's a term that only exists within the war context. And I'm sick of its unsubtle resonance with the Fatherland.Strength. When it comes to fighting terrorism, strength is overrated. You don't out-strong terrorists. You out-smart them. When Bush talks about a strong America, he often really means an America that doesn't listen to anyone else.
Sensitive. Cheney uses "sensitive" to mean "you're a pussy." In fact it means that you are occasionally influenced by reality. It can even mean that you recognize the inner lives of others. When you cease being sensitive, you are dead. Literally.
Resolute. Whenever Bush says "resolute," substitute the word "stupid." That's what he means: Not adapting to changes in a complex world. Real resolution — continuing to a goal despite the personal cost and sacrifice — is a word worth keeping.
Civility. I'm all in favor of civility. Real civility. I am not in favor of it when it means "Shut up and assume the position." When rights are being trampled (excuse me, I mean when we are trading off rights for increased security) and lives are being lost, keeping a civil tongue is treason against morality. (See first entry above.)
Democrat (adj.) Listen, schmucks, the adjectival form of "Democrat" is "Democratic," as in "the Democratic representative from Colorado." It is not "Democrat," even though the Republicans prefer that you use that term so, God forbid, you don't give anyone the impression that Democrats favor democracy. Either get this right or let's start talking about the "Republic representative from Louisiana."
And for fucking Pete's sake lets take the goddamn fucking flag back while were at it! I'm so tired of this phony patriotism bullshit! I've never been the flag waiving type, precisely because of qualities of the people who are. But lets change that. Lets re-define America and the flag in our terms! It's our fucking country too until you peel it out of our cold dead fingers. Under Bush the flag has been hijacked by a one-side obedience for that guy in the Whitehouse. Fuck that! I say we all go out right now and buy American flags and put them on our cars just as they do, EXCEPT for one thing:
On the flag it says, "56 million Americans said NO to Bush!"
Joho has these parting thoughts:
Find a line you care about.
Declare it.
Don't let them cross it.
Don't retreat from it.
Repeat for four years.
The clear blue skies that dominated the Bay Area since Saturday still shine somewhere up above, but are now out of site, hidden behind a dark foreboding storm front steadily marching across the valley. Fitting on this gloomy day of defeat and uncertainty. When the rain comes, I'll take solace under the roof of our house, calmed by the sound and fury of the weeping heavens.
Voter disenfranchisement and insecure Diebold machines aside, a slight majority of America has affirmed it's distrust of intellectualism, it's fear of diversity, and it's abiding faith in the dictates and dogmas of religion. On the surface it seems ironic that the principles of Christianity include big business, warfare, and destruction of the environment. Yet digging deeper there is no paradox here: LIfe is regarded as a cage of sin and temptation, a relentless moral battle against Evil, whose victory promises release from the bonds of matter and ascendence into the glory of death. Indeed, a cursory appraisal of pop culture in America reveals a deep, morbid fascination with death and destruction. The majority apparently feels it's best to just take all you can get while the getting's good, cause it's all just gonna go up in flames when Armageddon hits.
The America that elected Bush lives in the South and the Midwest - that part of the country that seems perpetually shrouded in the fog of ignorance, happily trapped in the bliss of their own making. These are the people that fear anything different from their own ways. They're ever suspect of intellectualism and the scientific method that so rigorously continues to disprove so much of their cosmology. Those among them who question the narrow world view fed to them invariably try to leave for the big cities along the liberal coasts. The coasts swell with thinkers who find facts to be of greater import than faith, leaving the heart of America to stagnate, lost in stereotypes and archaic logic structures. At the core of their own backwards slide is the opiate of religion feeding fear and hatred and ignorance.
The momentary extension of the Bush Dynasty highlights both the inability of middle America to evolve and the confusion confronting the intellectual caste as they embrace the onrush of technology and information. Arguably, America is far more informed than ever. We just don't know how to sort and manage all of the information - how to apply it our lives. The pace of discovery is too fast for us to properly integrate the truths being revealed. While the backwaters stagnate, the seas are churning, rising up towards a great crest. When the wave breaks no one will be left dry.
The powers of control are scrambling to keep up with the ever-quickening pace of change. But conquerors rise and empires fade. In the heart of order the seed of chaos finds sustenance. Control is predicated on stasis and the oppression of dissent. In a dynamic nonlinear world, control will always be cast off by the forces of evolution. Power-mad apes battling over dwindling resources, driven by competition and the illusory fear of otherness, are simply caught in the spasms of a vestigial tail held on the chopping block.
It's fair to be worried and it's critical to remain vigilant. A lot can happen in 4 years. But history has shown that the human spirit has only ever continued to grow in power, always moving forward against seemingly huge odds. If we're just floating and bobbing along in the currents of life, the political game is like a small boat on the surface trying to make us all believe we need to get onboard in order to survive. Everything we need is right here right now. Blaming politics or foreigners or drugs or any other scapegoat is a cop-out for weak minds unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions.
Evolve yourself and politics will eventually catch up.
Like many people I've spoken with today, we share a deep sadness and terrible fear over what lies in front of us. I think it is now safe to say that humanity is on course to face the darkest hour in its history. There is going to be more bloodshed, a LOT more bloodshed, both in the endless war Bush has unleashed on the world and inside America. The bloodshed will not come from Islamic terrorists, but from Americans killing Americans. For those who won they now think they have mandate because in their eyes they have a clear popular vote (with more than 50%), a definite majority in the senate and house, with most of those being far-right extremists, new supreme court nominees... 11 new states outlawing gay marriages or unions... an erosion of civil liberties across the board, new and much worse patriot acts.. (shudder).. well you get the picture. The first four years of Bush was a mere prelude, a dress rehearsal you might say for what's coming next.
As a friend just told me:
"Four years today is longer than it was even four years ago, change wise, because time is speeding up. Densifying. That is to say that more change will occur in the next four years than in the past four years. Perhaps this was the last moment in which worldwide disaster could have been averted. I want to see the alternate future, as always. Maybe it would have been way gnarlier and I just can't see that right now. When I'm feeling better I think the Universe never makes mistakes... even the world disaster would be part of it. the bread of civilization has to be kneaded. at this point we might have to lose a continent of two to teach a big enough lesson to save the rest of the world. The human spirit will live on hundreds of worlds for millions of years."
She went on to say,
"This isn't worse than the black plague or the inquisition or the ice age."
I hope she is right. Right now I'm still in shock. Leaving the country seems like the best option, and the hardest one, both in pragmatic as well as psychological terms.
I was talking to Bruce Eisner today, and he pointed me to this:
A Call for a Psychedelic Sanctuary
I'm going to spend the next few days in silent prayer and meditation, processing my feelings, getting present... then perhaps I will know better what needs to be done next.
An artist companion and I will be in San Francisco this Saturday to participate in a psychedelic art workshop and exhibition called Syngergenesis. Several very cool people will be there including Alex Grey. If you want to attend, the website has all the information. You can show up and pay at the door. I would be delighted to meet you there if you want to contact me and we can exchange personal contact info.
ABOUTE THE EVENT:
Visionary art is evidence of a world that does not yet fully exist; a world that we are calling into being through the very act of creating and participating in the Work. This is not an art that will support the present system of environmental exploitation, social alienation and spiritual commodification. This art is not just painting--though it is that--not just poetry, nor just music, nor just something for a target audience to consume. This art is an integration of creative manifestation and daily life; of technical craft, spiritual practice and cultural experimentation. Visionary art is dissolving the boundaries between audience and performer, between work and play, between activism and prayer. In this way we are returning to the tribal, shamanic roots of art, tapping into an endless potential for healing, community and transformation.
Synergenesis is serving as a powerful catalyst for the (r)evolutionary creators of our time to converge and collaborate on manifesting the reality our art invokes, creating a portal through which our collective vision is crystallized and potentiated.