tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67542383523349775102024-03-06T06:54:51.958+01:00Fluxology : the rate of contextual cohesion across a unit area"Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-43445361921950224292013-12-02T16:19:00.001+01:002013-12-02T16:43:55.667+01:00Next Generation Anger Management<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;">
<img alt="Next Generation Anger Management" border="1" class="left" margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; height="148" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivY_JPPsqcqh4GtUDphxGo6H_7CibRwhMKtsz1WYp3-0bcoJwJhIYtqu6C3JwD-_QQ2UfKVUm1nncMv1eyZ6YXwZCY1qjHptDCNX7jORKMxP6NIiL4ZuN-zJX6KR8b8FAuUWL-CyHxiN_o/s200/Ostrich_Butt.jpg" style="float: left;" title="Next Generation Anger Management" />"When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”- Churchill <br />
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Nearly twenty years ago something happened which to this very day still shocks me. At a lake in a park in the city i lived at the time a Moroccan girl had fallen in the water and was drowning. The lake wasn’t all that deep and whenever she submerged she still was able to jump up from the bottom and shout for help, but as having swimming lessons is not as normal in Morocco as it is in The Netherlands she did not know how to swim. During some ten minutes a group of some fifty people had gathered. Alarmed by her shouts they would shout back to her what to do, gesturing swimming motions and talked among each other that something must be done. Finally someone on a bicycle came along, saw the girl, saw the agitated crowd and realized she was drowning, stopped, took out his wallet, took off his watch, jumped in and saved the girl.<br />
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The shocking aspect was not so much the total discrepancy between herd behavior and individual, but how easy it is to become trapped in the social dynamics of such a herd. If this guy had not been on a bicycle instead of walking, acting in a 20 km/hour mode instead 4 km/hour, he would have been quickly absorbed into the collective decision making of the growing crowd and chances are nothing would have been done, and the girl had drowned. Becoming an accidental hero may not just be related to having an outsider mentality, unless there was something distinctively rebellious to the fact he was cycling in a park, but it was really related to the physical improbability of his partaking in the crowd formation. The normality of his heroism, and the seductive ease of adopting a role in an anonymous crowd, was both encouraging and disturbing.<br />
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Of course, in the media the collective trauma was dealt with in another way, calling for action, public education in the form of mandatory swimming lessons and advertisement campaigns concerning personal responsibility and how to use it, but the basic situational context of the circumstances offer some astounding insight. Just as the "banality of evil" is that it is simply the neglect of doing something good, doing something exceptionally good is a natural thing to do. And if you think you are part of no herd, you are actually part of the circa five percent of people who think they are not part of a herd, the non-conformist 'alternative lifestyle' lifestyle profile which has been used for demographic profiling for government policies, sociological forecasting studies for health insurance, pension funds and consumerist marketing since the 1950s. Maybe it is only the one percent sociopaths who are truly free in this sense, but as Jared Diamond figures in his well-researched “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” the people at Easter Island were no sociopaths or psychopaths. Still, when Europeans first arrived the island's population had dropped to some 15 to 20 percent of just a century earlier. There was no “chattering class” or “silent majority” on Easter Island but they simply ran out of wood. Originally the island was covered with a tropical rainforest, but after some four centuries of a thriving and peaceful coexistence of the several clans eventually someone cut down the last tree. With no more trees left, they could not build any more houses, they could not burn wood for heating and cooking, they could not build boats for fishing. Isolated in the South Pacific Ocean even the nearest neighboring island was already two thousand kilometers away. And so, after making just about every other animal species on the island extinct they turned on the only remaining source of nutrition, other humans. When finally the first Europeans landed the era of cannibalism had come and gone and the inhabitants survived on some rudimentary farming and chickens, a diet only sufficient to support and sustain a few thousand inhabitants.<br />
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Although the news often tries to prove otherwise, surely we can do better than any “creative destruction” and “Malthusian catastrophe”. Yet our collective arrangements use outdated views which are not only wrong but which are self-fulfilling too. Many government policies are based on game-theoretical approaches, large-scale rule-based decision support simulations which aim to balance possibly conflicting interests and predict a more or less certain outcome. However, biased assumptions have trickled down into the basis of game-theory and eventhough John Nash later corrected his original work these models still assume competitive drives involving “rational self-interest”. Occupying space is not “rational self-interest”. Spatial individuation is a way for an organism to optimize coordination overhead by compactification and metabolic burning rate while sustaining a certain degree of autonomy. If the resource usage of wireless communications would be less than that of a continuous connection we’d use that, as is the case with smell, sound and vision.<br />
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‘Autonomy’ can be interpreted as self-determination yet increased understanding of Darwinian evolution clearly shows that 'natural selection' moves towards increase in diversity, where self-determination is a form of negative selection and diversity of positive selection, just like Isaiah Berlin’s positive and negative liberty describe two sides of the same coin. If we then assume that individual sovereignty only has significant meaning within the context of a group, then game-theory’s predictive power comes from its ability in framing multiplicity, without any deeper assumptions besides the irreducible constructions during the game itself. These constructions, the patterns appearing during gameplay, are analogue computations which enact and embody certain general functions, such as queuing up at a car park is a way of serializing incoming traffic. Nassim Taleb's ideas on anti-fragility do indeed indicate that diversity is a much stronger trend than competition or the 'struggle for life'. But if that is so, then it may be much more worthwhile to extend consider that Darwinian evolution complies with certain features of redundancy, fault-tolerance, error correction, failover, all hard lessons learned in the design of computing systems commonly known as “Redundancy, Availability and Serviceability” (RAS). Irrespective of any motives of individual participants, the game they play is indeed is a form of “projective determinacy” as the evolving construction of the play itself is what the game is about. It does not make sense to make assumptions of deeper drives like “rational self-interest” from which mutual reciprocity emerges if it is more adequately explained as a way of self-dual error correction.<br />
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George Soros recently wrote about his conceptual framework for his investments where he aims to map out the dynamics between thinking and reality. Leaning on a “human uncertainty principle”, based on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity, he has managed to create a predictive system where the smallest irreducible human unit is not the individual but a small group. In what Soros calls “interference reflexivity” he maps out the interdependencies of people’s cognitive function and manipulative function and in doing so he is able to precede and embrace Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between reflective and reactive thinking functions as used in behavioral economics. As Soros writes “Economic theory has sought to imitate the natural sciences, particularly Newtonian physics. Consequently my conceptual framework is in direct conflict with mainstream economic theory […] Mainstream economics has pursued timelessly and universally valid laws whose validity can be tested by reference to the facts. I contend that the facts produced by social processes do not constitute a reliable criterion for judging the validity of theories... […] … social phenomena are easier to explain than to predict. The past is uniquely determined while the human uncertainty principle renders the future inherently indeterminate. That is not how Newtonian physics works. […] The process involves reflexive feedback loops between the objective and subjective aspects of reality. Fallibility insures that the two aspects are never identical”.<br />
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Using his framework Soros has developed a boom-bust approach to financial crises, which is more or less the opposite of the equilibrium focus in economic theory. This ongoing recalibration of two way communication is much closer to the overshoot and collapse dynamics that is observed in normal signal processing and that most electrical engineers know about from experience. And likewise, the prevailing trend and subjective (mis-)interpretation mutually reinforce each other until they grow apart where it becomes all too apparent, and this discrepancy finally grows beyond an inflection point where either the misconception reverts towards the trend again, or vice versa. Sounds logical, no? Well, yes, it is. You can even mold it in mathematical formulas and run computer simulations, and it has made Soros a very rich and influential man. But it is surprising to see how extraordinary unusual such an approach is. Whoever thought that common sense would be so uncommon that most people cannot distinguish between something complicated and something complex? Many people mistakenly confuse simplicity and simplistic, something easy and minimalist compared to something one-dimensional and unrefined. Or as Warren Buffett “Being a successful investor is not about having a high I.Q. but it does take a temperament that’s willing to step up and actually act. I always tell people, if they’re going in the investment business and you’ve got a 160 I.Q., sell 30 points to somebody else because you won’t need it.” This is good solid advice, but being both street-smart and highly intelligent doesn’t seem to have hurt either one of these investment giants.<br />
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So yes, when one verbally or physically drives someone in a corner, obviously spatial constraints become an aspect to be reckoned with, but it doesn’t explain the bystander effect or any auto-cannibalistic withdrawal that happens when society’s fabric unravels by virtue of hidden distress. If we know this, if we consider that people at the EU and national governments know this, then where is the quality effort that we expect from them? Can we consider inefficient governmental policies, like an overemphasis on austerity, a criminal offense? Of course, different interests may favor different approaches, but where does it say these have to be mutually exclusive? Austerity and nearly fixed currency exchange rates favors an economical model with a high degree of foreign trade, especially if the local added value is focused on assembling and finishing already nearly completed products. Austerity seems to have helped pulling the silk route a few seaports up North, yet while automotive manufacturers continue to squeeze down on domestic and neighboring suppliers, customers in large emergent markets like China do not seem to maintain their enthusiasm to pay double the prices compared to other markets. International trade may seem a two-way street, but in the modern globalized world indirect markets can chain up and bypass such preferred supplier arrangements, and when information can flow freely it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it is cheaper to buy a luxurious BMW in the USA and import it into China than buy it in China where it may even be produced by a nearby factory plant. Eventhough it may have a fleeting appeal as a status symbol, it is not an ultra-luxury investment as a top range Italian car.<br />
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Of course, it is more than understandable that Germany has little desire to pick up the tab for governmental malpractice of Berlusconi, Craxi and the likes, but it may be noteworthy that most struggling economies in the European Union have had to suffer with dictators or military regimes until about forty years ago. As Germany may very well know, reshuffling alone doesn’t make the deck of cards go away. Maybe a different game can be played, one that is not so much based on collateralization of real estate and value goods, but one that like Soros’ framework addresses a continuum spanning the social, financial, economic and political spectrum.<br />
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But we know all this, or at least we should. Ever since Jimmy Carter’s groundbreaking interview with Playboy magazine in 1976 it has been clear to what extend the public media can influence voter’s behavior. It hardly had anything to do with the democratic ideals of rationality and by the time Thatcher and Reagan were elected most of their campaign was written out by advertising agencies. What was once called ‘propaganda’ in the period after the First and before the Second World War had become the norm, and nowadays popularity ratings seem to dictate national politics as if we’re dealing with a hit parade. Still, despite a Berlusconi’s abuse of his media empire to serve some unclear political purpose as Agnelli’s kingdom slowly but surely fades away, this totals to less than 1% of Italian people and austerity is not only suffocating countries which have a different economical mix but is also causing people to kill themselves. Who’s fooling who? We know economics is part physics and part psychology. We just don’t know which part. Even so, with such a lack of best effort shouldn’t there be a “Good Samaritan law” for politicians? Is the stupidity of negligence a crime?<br />
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While the USA shuts down large parts of the government to deal with ideological hijacking by a small group of hardcore fundamentalists caricaturing the anti-slavery activists who founded this “grand old party”, it may be a comforting thought the traditional standoff at high noon leaves little room for playing peekaboo. Well, anything better than having the whole parliament held hostage by a narcissistic media mogul with the fading charm of a rubber ball as slowly but surely his chemical virility turns toxic. Modernity serves us with a noblesse oblique if climbing the social ladder is based on nepotism and mutual secrecy, eventually oligarchic selectivity will filter on dirt and shit floats up. Alas the only noticeable trickle-down effect is reserved for the occasion someone in the penthouse suite flushes their toilet and leaky pipes cause the basement to overflow. Usually this situation doesn’t last for more than a few generations, at some stage as one generation replaces the other, all what makes some noblesse special is their artificially perpetuated exclusivity and in turn the very survival of their self-licking ice cream cone is focused on trying to retain that exclusivity at the expense of any oblige that made them entitled to be considered noblesse… However, some good news, it looks like the steady sale of political Voodoo dolls during the last couple of years is starting to work, first Sarkozy and now Berlusconi. Yes, "patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet”, although, whoever said “it's easy to find reasons why other folks should be patient” may have been diplomatic advisor for the construction mafia’s political offshoots like Lega Fnord.<br />
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Italy is not the only country dealing with incomprehensible government policies. As a matter of fact, pretty much the same sort of political dynamics are happening all over Europe, as if some prefabricated party-based framework has been copied many times over, only slightly adjusted to the locale taste. Every country has their party originating from the unionized labor movements, a party which pretends to be more business oriented, a party for Christian values, a party for more extreme post-Marxist socialist values and some outspoken mudslinger who tries to stir nationalist feelings by acting as a sort of miscellaneous wastebasket for all the people that do not agree with the current state of affairs but don’t know what to be in favor of and mistake opportunist pseudo-indignation with actual concern. Most parties don’t seem to exist for a reason, not anymore at least, but as a viable justification. It is a pattern repeated all over Europe. In many aspects similar policy changes pop up at one time or another, seemingly applicable for the country at hand but still with a large many shared commonalities. You’d nearly think that they talk with each other outside of the showy events in the newspapers… as if they have acquired the power of telephony or even email, or have “behind the scenes” gatherings in the city of Brussels. For reasons unexplained local politicians appear to have forgotten about the 1993 Maastricht treaty which officialized their participation in the formation of the European Union which happened in late 2009. In effect this means sunsetting the ‘nation state’ as introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte as administrative districts of the Greater French Empire in the early 1800s. Two centuries to improve on the legal reforms realized by the Napoleonic Code. It is not so much the variety of geographical regions but the borders dividing them.<br />
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Ever since the early 1700s, when the emergence of both daily newspapers and the parliamentary system in Great Britain coincided, these two have shared a functional overlap. The parliament is meant to act as an ongoing “discussion” concerning the rules of governing a country, a social programming language, but whereas the ICT industry has Moore’s law outpacing Wirth’s law claiming that “software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster” it seems that politics has been absorbed by public media, with Berlusconi’s game show on one end of the spectrum, and the Northern European talk show on the other. Maybe it is due to the long cold winters imposing a shared need to survive as a small cooperative community that encourages the Northern tribes’ rationalization bias, where they tend to persuade oneself that something reasonable is also of good value, a habit fueled by a metacognitive inability to recognize their own mistakes and a low tolerance for ambiguity. Instead of heading for the streets and causing a riot, eventhough governmental spending cuts have been at the top of the agenda since the 1979 energy crisis, whenever “the market” is mentioned an ingrained conformity to peer pressure takes over and the “law of supply and demand” is encircled by an authoritative halo. Maybe it has gone unnoticed but as far as public administration, public facilities and similar community endeavors go, the ‘powers that be’ pretty much constitute the entire ‘market’. Ministries, charity foundations and NGOs don’t really have any market dynamics to speak of and as such monopolize their own service offering by default eventhough government policies are trying to enforce a more business-like approach.<br />
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And so, if we look at the low lands, they are focused on cost cutting to such an extent that they are suffocating the country’s potential. Despite the BeNeLux region having a GDP of a trillion euro with only 28 million inhabitants making it as rich as Japan, Switzerland or the USA, the economic fabric seems to be losing elasticity. Highly-indebted households have slipped back down into the lower wealth class. The share of the population with low financial assets has quadrupled since the end of 2000, with the corresponding figure more than doubling in Norway and Sweden. Reminiscent of the sturdy grasp for “austerity”, the trend shows that excessive debt poses the biggest poverty risk. Which is of course obvious when primarily focusing on collateralization and not giving people and small businesses a fair chance to recuperate from the hit they’ve taken in the aftermath of the financial crisis. But to illustrate how incredibly wrong today’s nationalism is, it may be worth considering that trade relations between the Netherlands and Italy can be traced back to early Roman settlements nearly 2.000-2.500 years ago. In fact the European landscape shows a whole band following the great rivers. The “blue banana” is a highly dense urban zone from Liverpool, Manchester, along the canals network to Greater London, across the Channel and following the Rhine, across the Alps and onto the Po Valley to cover most of Northern Italy. Housing about 110 million people and covering more than 2000 industrial clusters it forms one of the main economic backbones of Europe.<br />
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But that is not all, recent long term studies performed in both Finland and Belgium show that the middle income group is being pushed out due to increase in productivity of both the higher and lower income groups. As the higher income group is growing in productivity faster than the lower income group, the middle income group is largely pushed downward, eventhough both groups are actually growing in size. And this is nobody’s fault. Like with game-theory we have here structure without underlying motives. Of course personal motivation matters, but as long as group size outnumbers individuality it can be molded in a certain direction. If we take these social dynamics and add technological improvements to the mix, where by now a 100 person workforce can do what took 5000 people back in 1950, we then see that as productivity increases we need less and less people to perpetuate the sort of society that has brought us to this stage. One of the surprising effects of the post-WWII babyboom generation is that although diversity expanded due to the sheer number of people, in a pyramidal organization where seniority translates in vertical repositioning at middle management ranks in the administrative control flow, the age group between 45 and 65 tends to occupy most available openings for such a long amount of time that replacement skips a generation. Supply-side economics is a black art, but there is only so much 'need' for certain people at certain positions that it pushes out the next age group, generation X, or "the lost generation", which does not have the same opportunities as the baby boomers because it are the very baby boomers themselves which are standing in the way of their next steps.<br />
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Today’s challenges are not the result of an ongoing spending spree or the lack thereof. It is essentially the recognition that top-down governance is failing to address society's needs and the bureaucratic spasms of the last few decades in using shock therapy based on 'public choice theory' to reform public administration have failed. "The market" is an excuse for failing to adequately address issues for which the previous collective arrangements did work quite nicely, or maybe they did but needed a little adjustment now and then. By increasingly detailed top-down bureaucratic regulation, countries like The Netherlands has been suffocating its' own people at the expense of opportunities for all. That is the core issue, the missing added value by the ongoing mechanization of behaviorisms. Not costs. But that’s ok, most people already noticed. We have left the 1930s behind three and a half generations ago, and according to the Flynn effect the average person now would be highly gifted by those past standards. Governmental structures are needed, because even in a bottom-up self-organizing scenario a centralized approach makes it so much easier to exchange information to everyone as fast as possible. Towns didn’t grow on hilltops for no reason but it makes ‘the news’ spread faster. We shouldn’t mistake something at the top of a vertical organization as being in control; it is a way to maximize the spread of innovation. We can blame politicians that all they do is talk, but that is their purpose. Mastery and leadership is something completely different.<br />
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Here, as politicians have gradually turned into accountants trying to straighten ‘the economy’, it may be worthwhile to dive a little deeper into some of its workings. In any sufficiently cohesive commerce environment variations in stock and flow of resources will translate to systemic trade opportunities. Obviously some resources are made or found at a different location then where it is processed or consumed, so at one place there is a buildup while at another there may be a shortage. Due to these stock and flow dynamics similar goods will spawn mutual race conditions, so that these goods interlock in a ‘game’ to maximize value. Iron ore from Sweden may be cheaper than that from China, simply because the transportation costs are lower. But it could also be that Swedish iron needs more preprocessing before it is useful as iron or steel, which could mean the Chinese iron could be considered equivalent if the sumtotal balances out. Such mutual races emerge from the evolutionary tendency for the utilitarian functions of any traded good to converge to universal applicability and interchangeability. This is simply due to economies of scale and economies of scope, where widespread reuse of a more versatile good is both economically more valuable for a supplier and a customer. Essentially it may simply be regional availability or temporal unavailability that makes a customer switch to a ‘competitor’ eventhough these two suppliers are not actively competing but may actually be more than satisfied with their part of the overall market. Either way, such stock and flow dynamics swarm together to form market segments, and these segments themselves will also tend towards universal applicability and interchangeability.<br />
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The ‘attractor’ to which such evolutionary dynamics converge to is a universal utility of value, a generally accepted asset that can be used to express value and store it as well. This is when “money” is born. And this “money” can then be used to trade just about everything else. And likewise for the EU, any country or trade system, we reach a maximum of interchangeability with a region's financial system as "money" is its own adjacent possible. This “adjacent possible” is the potential, or even probable, next step of a system, like a pendulum swinging back when it reaches its maximum angle, an apple falling from a tree perpendicular to the ground or the initial move at a chess game being limited to a pawn or a knight, or ending with a stalemate. As “money” is a general means of exchange, even if the underlying trade system is basic and simplistic, or if it is sophisticated and complex, money will still behave like money. What is important here is that money emerges from a trade system and although it manifests as a separate thing and service it is wrong to see finance as something different from commerce. The two are intimately connected.<br />
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What can not only happen is that the behavior of a random system shows a self-excited attractor, but that this attractor itself is complex enough to be capable of universal computation, that in essence the attractor itself it versatile enough to simulate other systems, like a computer does or a video display to some extent. If the system from which such an attractor emerges is sufficiently simple, the attractor reflects back into its originating system and manifests itself through hierarchical organization of the systems' parts. This means that second-order cybernetic coordination can emerge from a self-organizing system and it manifests itself via the information flow about the system as expressed in the systems' own organization. In an even more complex scenario the self-excited attractor basin which itself is capable of universal computation, can have such complexity that it spawns a nested attractor which is also capable of universal computation. This is where a system becomes 'spontaneous'. Try to follow this hierarchical tree of nested coordination, it shows interdependence between parts and whole similar to a parallel rewriting system, such as Lindenmayer Systems or combinatorics of super pseudorandom permutations. It is expected a behavior similar to the logistic function occurs and bifurcation to happen and run wild after some three iterations. Deterministic but unpredictable, this is the edge of a combinatorial explosion in phase space which acts as a systemic horizon of possible configurations. In other words, self-excited nested attractors smear out and form a blur. In the case of an apple falling, this may involve unexpected interference such as sideways wind or someone catching it. In the case of chess, the number of possible games is estimated at 10^10^50, which, for all practical purposes, is so large that no chess master need to worry about unemployment any day soon. Writing down above number alone would fill the entire universe with numbers, twice.<br />
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For trade systems, money fulfills that role as a shared value horizon. But money also works in a reverse way as the exchange of money is an irreducible simple trade event. Money is both an embodiment and an enactment and that is where it becomes even more confusing. Money is the natural consequence of any trade system. It is not separate from it, but it is closely tied to the potential and probable scope of the trade system it originates from. If the system is too simplistic, its resultant money is fragile due to a lack of diversity, but if the system is complex enough, the money is resilient. In that sense the versatility of money can be compared with a black mirror. It reflects the economy, but it is very hard to see to what level of detail. A sufficiently versatile money also become portable, so it can be used to express value of new trades by way of analogy. In a sense derivative markets behave like this, except that they are trading the news and not goods, and the speed of derivative trade has grown out of sync with physical reality.<br />
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If any trade network has its own "money" to express and measure value, we're dealing with money as a pure transactional yardstick, but we also have money as a value store over place and time. That would be fine in the case such a trade network is self-consistent and sufficiently isolated, autonomous and independent so to say. But if we have a multitude of these autonomous regions and they trade with each other, their boundaries start to overflow and the networks mingle, especially when dealing with commodities which are an integral part of other products, like iron, oil or electricity. As long as regions are sufficiently mutually exclusive and isolated of each other's external dependencies, one can solve socio-economical fluctuations by means of exchange rate. Yet if the regions are tied together, directly as neighboring countries like the Rhineland which already spans The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and the German Ruhr district, but which in turn is an integral part of the European "blue banana", then such alterations in the exchange rate would feed back on themselves, either spiraling out of control or damping down depending on the overall climate. The only viable way forward is towards a single currency with local differences, advances or hurdles, expressed in price differences. Just like in a real “free market” economy…<br />
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However, with a single currency there needs to be shared financial systematics, as otherwise the many different ways that form an optimal local model are becoming dominated by the one that is dictating the pace for the currency. And with their large import-export oriented economical machine accounting for some 42% of GDP that is Germany, eventhough their total economy is only just 20% of the entire EU and about 80% of their exports are within the EU anyway. Because of the current confederal approach in the EU countries are assigned a political weight which leads to false equivalences and it deserves more attention to seek for forms of interest-based syndication, where different regions forms a cooperation so to cover each other’s weaknesses. Germany has a large export, an outflow of new relatively commoditized products, which has started dominating the EU at the expense of countries that are smaller or slower, or have their economy arranged in another way.<br />
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This would not be very problematic, but due to regional specialization this conflicts with the regional with the largest monetary flows, London. Local ties are somewhat less important for financial trade however as it became an information science some decades ago but still, financial signals are like a programming language for economic development and having these two in tune will surely benefit both ends of the spectrum and keep them in step with each other. Instead of the excessive focus on collateralization of what were once trade agreements in the form of loans, it would serve the EU to look at a dual layer monetary system. One transnational and one localized, limited and adjusted to the regional spectrum. This can be a system of dual currencies, such as a single trade Euro and local currencies, matching the socio-economical region which is most often the country. Although for an Italy this would imply three currencies, one for the North, one for the South, and one for the Mezzogiorno, but it would also make sense to differentiate a city currency and a rural currency. Instead of such elaborate currency systems, the other possibility is almost readily available and can bridge local stock markets, via Eurobonds. These Eurobonds can span different time periods and different regions, so that there can be short/medium/long-term bonds, with a full or partial trans-regional coverage to allow for shared accountability. This is a natural consequence of shared trade networks, which are the natural consequence of living on this planet.<br />
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We shouldn’t fool ourselves that monetary policies are some separate sort of economics. With the existing situation any problematic situation is magnified by ending up in a negative spiral which has no viable future perspective. In the past a befriended neighboring country could provide outside help, by providing loans in Eurodollars, UK Pounds, Swiss Francs, Deutsch Marks, French francs, and one could link parts of the economy to these regional economies, but this has become impossible as most of these countries have become part of the EU already and are as much tied down in their actions by the very rules that help them advance. All moneys are equal, but some moneys are more equal than others…<br />
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On a global scale we’re moving towards a level of technical advancement that humanity has never experienced before. Today we already digest more information per day than someone did during an entire lifetime several centuries ago. We have an incredible future ahead of us, which new economic models, new business models, new values, new risks, new opportunities. We have so many wrongs to right such as climate change, famine, slavery, desertification, water shortages and pollution. We are not only on the cusp of an era with staggering scientific and technological breakthroughs but we are also living through the fast mass extinction event in the world’s history. This is an ethical luxury of doing good and having purpose, just by correcting the mistakes of the past. Is it that difficult? It's just standing up and making a decision because nobody else will. And we put all this at risk by having a bunch of obsolete governments whose overall track record is worse than random chance, whose contribution to society is negative and when we listen to them we become more stupid than before? Austerity is killing the wrong people. Today's new normal was yesterday's insanity. Instead of actually doing something we’re soaking in verbal diarrhea. What are we to do? Shout swimming instructions at the drowning or jump in? </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-28075573078623648032012-05-14T14:41:00.002+02:002012-05-14T14:41:23.779+02:00Eternity is really long, especially near the end.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing </div>
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and rightdoing there is a field.</div>
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I'll meet you there.</div>
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When the soul lies down in that grass</div>
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the world is too full to talk about.”</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-40882387297295548502011-03-19T12:55:00.006+01:002012-07-09T15:22:14.393+02:00Scooter and the shell shock sham<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Combat stress reaction, in the past commonly known as shell shock or battle fatigue, is a military term used to categorize a range of behaviours resulting from the stress of battle which decrease the combatant's fighting efficiency. The most common symptoms are fatigue, slower reaction times, indecision, disconnection from one's surroundings, and inability to prioritize."</span><br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Subject: Thanks for a great 28 years<br />Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010<br />From: Scott McNealy<br />To: [all Sun employees]<br /><br />Gang,<br /><br />When I interviewed many of you for employment at Sun over the years, one commitment often made was that things will change above, below, and around you faster than any place you have ever been. Looks like this was one area we exceeded plan for 28 years. While it was never the primary vision to be acquired by Oracle, it was always an interesting option. And this huge event is upon us now. Let's all embrace it with all of the enthusiasm and class and talent that we have to offer.<br /><br />This combination has the potential to put Sun, its people, and its technology at the center of yet another industry and game-changing inflection point. The opportunity is well-documented and articulated by Larry and the Oracle folks. Not much I can add on this score. This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing.<br /><br />So what do I say to all of you, now this is happening?<br /><br />It turns out that one simple message to the large and diverse Sun community is actually quite hard to craft. Even for a big mouth who is always ready with a clever quip. The community includes our resellers and customers, our current and former employees, their friends and families who supported our employees on their mission to change the industry, our investors, our supply and service partners, students and educators, and even our competitors with whom we often collaborated.<br /><br />But let me try. Though nothing I could write comes close to matching the unbelievably strong and positive emotions I have for you all. See, I never was able to master dispassion. I truly loved starting, running, and living Sun. And the last four years have not been without serious withdrawal. And the EU approval rocked me more than it should have.<br /><br />So, to be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.<br /><br />And I sure "hope" America regains its love affair with capitalism. And except for the auto industry, financial industry, health care, and some other places (I digress), the invisible hand is doing its thing quite efficiently. So I am more than willing to accept this outcome.<br /><br />And my hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison. He will do well with the assets that Sun brings to Oracle.<br /><br />What we did right and wrong at Sun over the years might make for interesting reading. However, I am not a book writer. I am a husband, father of four, and a builder and leader of people who want to make a difference.<br /><br />But spare me a bit of nostalgia. Not of the mistakes we made, and lord knows I made a ton. But of the things we did right and well.<br /><br />First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit (see Eagles). And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live.<br /><br />Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer's mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun, which I guess makes me a good capitalist, if not a great capitalist.<br /><br />Sun did not cheat, lie, or break the rule of law or decency. While we enjoyed breaking the rules of conventional wisdom and archaic business practice, and for sure loved to win in the market, we did so with a solid reputation for integrity. Nearly three decades of competing without a notable incident of our folks going off course morally or legally. Not all executives and big companies are bad. Really. There are good companies out there. Special thanks to all of my employees for this. I never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children.<br /><br />Sun was a financial success. We paid billions in taxes, salaries, purchases, leases, training, and even lawyers and accountants for devastatingly cumbersome SOX and legal compliance (oops, more classic digression). Long-term and smart investors made billions in SUNW. And our customers generated revenue and savings using our equipment in countless ways. Many employees started families, bought homes, and put them through school while working at Sun. Our revenues over 28 years exceeded $200B. Few companies make it to the F200. We did. Nice.<br /><br />Sun employees had way more fun than any other company. By far. From our dress code ("You must!") to beer busts to our April Fools' pranks to SunRise to our quiet enjoyment at night of a long, hard, well-done day of work, no company enjoyed "work" more than Sun. Thanks to all of our employees past and present for making Sun such a blast.<br /><br />I could go on for a long time reminiscing about the good and great stuff we did at Sun, but just allow me one last one. We shared. Not the greatest attribute for a capitalist. But one I could not change and was not willing to change about Sun while I was in charge. We shared in the success of Sun with our resellers. With our employees through stock options, SunShare, beer busts, and the like (for as long as Congress would allow) and through our efforts to keep as many of them on board for as long as possible during the inevitable down cycles. With our partners through the Java Community Process, through our open-source collaborations, and licensing strategies. With our customers through our commitments to low barriers to exit. Sun was never just about us. It was about we. And that may be a bit of the reason we are where we are today.<br /><br />But I have few regrets (see Sinatra's "My Way") and will always look back at Sun and its gang with only pride. Enormous pride. You are the best this industry ever had, though few outside of Sun recognized it.<br /><br />And what we are about will live on in Sparc, Solaris, Java, our products, and our spirit. Well past everyone's recollections of what we did together. I will never forget, though.<br /><br />Oracle is getting a crown jewel of the technology industry. They will do great things with Sun. Do your best to support them, and keep the Sun spirit alive and well in the industry. Our children will be better for it.<br /><br />Thanks for the off-the-charts support to everyone who ever carried a Sun badge, used our products, or helped our company through the years.<br /><br />And thanks to my wonderful wife, Susan, who gave this desperado (see Eagles) a chance to choose the Queen of Hearts before it was too late.<br /><br />Someday, hopefully, you will all get to see or meet her and my other life's works named Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. If you do, perhaps you will understand why I stepped back from the CEO role four years ago. And why I feel like the luckiest guy in the whole world.<br /><br />My best to all of you, and remember:<br /><br />Kick butt and have fun!<br /><br />Scott</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-80785271379466531092011-03-09T14:03:00.006+01:002011-03-09T14:28:09.919+01:00Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxP-YIAPcFBgQRuuon4rfpWYjYnRvbtUES09D_N2tZpxUroYbWP5lPM91YHeU14Shfd6LO-JGG0Y1YRkYWTE2RojTuMWpygQMpE-kwCvnCvMqVKwJwHp2Vyrqn_U9P61v5r_0uXH5NNyaU/s1600/Europa_Italia.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxP-YIAPcFBgQRuuon4rfpWYjYnRvbtUES09D_N2tZpxUroYbWP5lPM91YHeU14Shfd6LO-JGG0Y1YRkYWTE2RojTuMWpygQMpE-kwCvnCvMqVKwJwHp2Vyrqn_U9P61v5r_0uXH5NNyaU/s400/Europa_Italia.jpg" border="0" alt="The past"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582067888872993250" /></a><br /><p/><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi90eoDSoP7VZX7eEWcqL3lFPNXHPn0sX0z2O_8jnqG2w8Xp3bnz9CHR3eh_JpMo22DDyraiBTluaxY_iVjHtHQkb6V3_EWbUdCWKHbfkuBgBNBGrHOCtH57afbOSNpEYbLX7z-bnJ-HJJJ/s1600/Europa_Berlusconi.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi90eoDSoP7VZX7eEWcqL3lFPNXHPn0sX0z2O_8jnqG2w8Xp3bnz9CHR3eh_JpMo22DDyraiBTluaxY_iVjHtHQkb6V3_EWbUdCWKHbfkuBgBNBGrHOCtH57afbOSNpEYbLX7z-bnJ-HJJJ/s400/Europa_Berlusconi.jpg" border="0" alt="The present"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582068881309403586" /></a><br /><p/><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7aMiJ_fTLXTQXZTuC5ueX7t2BsKIbguyCWIcSHrJB_ToVwi4B9aXSVsu9Na9eARjQBS1E3fW-QoKjgOVO7VJ8jBLo76PrfOBMf70NuUFCYK8wBFLVk66FB2DJUS5LVGijM2fctNIWkn9K/s1600/Europe_alpha.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7aMiJ_fTLXTQXZTuC5ueX7t2BsKIbguyCWIcSHrJB_ToVwi4B9aXSVsu9Na9eARjQBS1E3fW-QoKjgOVO7VJ8jBLo76PrfOBMf70NuUFCYK8wBFLVk66FB2DJUS5LVGijM2fctNIWkn9K/s400/Europe_alpha.jpg" border="0" alt="The future??"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582071274887451186" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-73119207906945303982011-02-19T15:57:00.000+01:002011-02-19T15:58:17.534+01:00time atom<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Conways_game_of_life_breeder_animation.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 379px; height: 192px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Conways_game_of_life_breeder_animation.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-29557411736020217622011-02-19T15:56:00.000+01:002011-02-19T15:57:05.618+01:00space atom<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/5-cell.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 256px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/5-cell.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-74767654180673961572011-01-23T14:50:00.000+01:002012-07-09T15:22:43.295+02:00lang gewacht, nooit verwacht, maar toch gekregen...<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This is called the Wu Zang (five organ) meditation for energetic protection </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The yellow emperor classic said that all doctors should do this before treating any patient of any kind and before entering the treatment room </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It surrounds you with a strong field of protective energy (wei qi) </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It focuses on the six directions </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Front, back, left, right, up, down </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Or south, north, east, west, heaven and earth.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Its purpose is to extend each of the 5 organs energy far into the horizon to gather chi </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Focus on the center of your body (about 3-4 cm below the navel) and then imagine opening up the top of your head </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Start pulling chi from the heavens in thru the top of your head </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Imagine it as bright shining divine light from the heavens filling your body and saturating it </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Feel the body radiating this divine white light energy </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Eventually when done more often the body will supersaturate and glow.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Now imagine this energy beginning to coalesce in the center core of your body that extends from the perineum to the top of the head. (if you sit straight this is a line/tube in front of your spine) </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Forms an energetic tube of heavenly energy. This center core will begin to vibrate and resonate with the divine white light energy </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Now imagine a golden yellow mist of chi arising out of the center of the earth and filling your body </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As it fills your body it connects with your spleen and makes the spleen glow with golden yellow energy </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Next feel this golden light earth energy swirl and envelop the center core of the white light divine energy. Merging together and synergizing </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This represents the energy of your Intention to root and stabilize your power.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Now begin to focus on your heart. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Feel two whirlpools, a golden one enveloping the earth and directed in front of the spine, and another silvery white one from heaven down.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">They form a kind of apple shape formed around a central tube just in front and along the spine.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Shape and widen the core so it is as wide as your hips, to amplify the amount you are running.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Now focusing on the heart and imagine a portal or gateway opening.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Then imagine the chi flowing of your heart like a red swirling wind in front of you. Full of power.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The red energy is the phoenix which represents your innate spirit, alive, graceful, yet powerful. The firebird protects you with your Spirit and fire </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Now focus your attention to your lower back, the kidney area </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Imagine a portal opening and the chi flowing out of your back like water. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Out of this water grows an enormous dark blue turtle whose shell protects you like a mighty shield .</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Its shell is like it is on your back, for positioning purposes though. It will be behind you but not directly on your back. The looking is like eyes in the back of your head</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This is the energy of your will power and the essence and will power of all your ancestors backing and supporting you </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Focus on the lungs and visualize a portal opening on the right side of your body under the right ribs. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Imagine the lung chi flowing out to the right side of your body like steam, forming a white tiger as strong as steel.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This is your body's animal nature. It guards and protects you. with an animal passion for survival.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Focus on the liver and visualize a portal opening on the left side of your body, under the left ribs. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Imagine your liver chi flowing out of the left side of your body like steam forming a green dragon. Resilient and as sinewy as bamboo </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This represents the body's divine nature. Guarding and protecting you with a spiritual passion for victory.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Each animal begins to rotate to the left. Protecting, stalking and defending the previous animals position.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Slowly begin to circle these energies counterclockwise and begin to increase their speed. Like a mighty wind around your body </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The wind circulates around you faster and faster. Blending the colors into a rainbow of an energy bubble or into one big tube with mother of pearl color </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">(You can have the sensation that the turtle rolls around and jumps, the dragon extends and shortens... phoenix flies like an arrow, and the tigress runs, jumps and walks, but tends to fly too)</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">After you have your protective bubble around your body. Draw all the energies in thru the top of your head pulling it in now. Then return the energy of each color back to its original organ.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">red to the heart. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">dark blue to the kidneys </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">white to the lungs </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">green back to the liver </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As the color flows back to each organ imagine that steam (white light) flowing out of the pores and filling up the energy bubble created by the animal rotation </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">(here you can see all kinds of little phoenixes, tigers, turtles and dragons.. hundreds of them.. )</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This forms a solid connection between the body's internal organs and the body's external energy field. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Energy seems to keep on looping around, from the organ into the bubble, via the crown back into the organ and back again.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Imagine over your head a sprinkling of light, like stars...the Big Dipper and zoom in on the North Star. ( Can happen that you feel that the star becomes immensely large like a blanket spread over the horizon, shiny silvery white, which makes sense as it lies aligned with the earth's axis in the middle of the corona. )</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Using your imagination you've just connected with the North Star and the result of your meditation is 'stored'. So now you should be able to call on the organ protection energy any time you need it instantly.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-20203642409052557822010-12-02T18:33:00.004+01:002012-07-09T15:23:14.980+02:00true by accident<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOzWoe-xyxWDJB7UYop9Sp6ZABlznwBhmBox7XyEHiJd31dyeLsdpP367hrZK_ozKXv4Spf9peT8eWq30kY0DhT48EtGaFOJrStaJ4pJE3fIUfRwj7tjmRKWpUNQf8KWAPvBp3BttdMfFA/s1600/Fnord_logo.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5546139464501102930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOzWoe-xyxWDJB7UYop9Sp6ZABlznwBhmBox7XyEHiJd31dyeLsdpP367hrZK_ozKXv4Spf9peT8eWq30kY0DhT48EtGaFOJrStaJ4pJE3fIUfRwj7tjmRKWpUNQf8KWAPvBp3BttdMfFA/s400/Fnord_logo.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 186px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #330033;">``Very nice,'' I said. ``But why did you bring me up here?''</span> <br />
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``It's time for you to see the fnords,'' he replied.</div>
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Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the hell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out into the street. I had some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first. Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their busses and subways. That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched the <em>New York Times</em> from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.</div>
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Then I saw the fnords.</div>
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The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia and the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct ``Fnord!'' The second lead was about a debate in congress on getting the troops out of costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another ``Fnord!'' At the bottom of the page was a <em>Times</em> depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more ``Fnords.''</div>
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Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: ``Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. you will look at the fnord and see the it. You will not evade it or black it out. you will stay calm and face it.'' And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .</div>
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I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords. This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it's technically called) whenever encountering the word ``fnord.'' The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway. Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt a genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they're told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their son hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security . . .</div>
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<span style="color: #330033;">Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. it was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords. I kept thinking about it on my way to the office. If I pointed out a fnord to somebody who hadn't been deconditioned, as Hagbard deconditioned me, what would he or she say? They'd probably read the word before or after it. ``No this word,'' I'd say. And they would again read an adjacent word. But would their panic level rise as the threat came closer to consciousness? I preferred not to try the experiment; it might have ended with a psychotic fugue in the subject. The conditioning, after all, went back to grade school. No wonder we all hate those teachers so much: we have a dim, masked memory of what they've done to us in converting us into good and faithful servants for the Illuminati.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-20347574886195316042010-10-08T10:23:00.002+02:002012-07-09T15:24:05.011+02:00Free as in censorship<div class="MsoPlainText" style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
All,</div>
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I am very sorry things have come thusfar.. Having done some 60 projects with the SeeBeyond and Sun toolsets during the last 10 years, I would have preferred a brighter future.</div>
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It is clear that Oracle is merely hosting OpenESB and isn't in the business of investing valuable resources into maturing a promising toolset. On the other hand, Oracle hasn't shown any malice towards OpenESB and related initiatives despite many people feeling the need to alarm us on pending shutdowns of hosting facilities, which, when checked are up and running as usual. But it also doesn't seem to add much to realizing the potential of OpenESB, Mural, IEP and related technologies like OpenPTK, Keychain, OpenDI, Sailfin, OpenMQ.<br />Although there appear to be quite some developers and US based companies working along with Oracle on OpenESB. So, this is a rather fuzzy kind of situation which I would love to get more input on.<br />Something's got to give however..</div>
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Just forking or re-hosting this under the fire of argumentation using some very eloquent rethorical soundbytes of several previously unkown community members is not only ethically challengeable but also fatal to the community at it's current stage. I realize that, if such is ones purpose, one needs to move quickly now, because the merger of Sun (and its many high potential projects) into Oracle is finalizing day by day, surprising us with announcements we are not supposed to expect from an Oracle. But we're playing with impressions here, just like answering emails with non-sequiturs will gradually over time makes one think that the one answering has been giving valuable advices, while all they really did was stand close to a question often enough. Such are the intruiging workings on e.g. the "confirmation bias", one of human's many irrational mechanisms of reasoning.</div>
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Now, why do I think it is fatal, is related to Monty's struggles at the EU in trying to obtain the <span style="font-weight: bold;">name</span> MySQL again.. the goodwill, the reputation, all the traffic and associated support and maintenance income. Let's leave it in the middle if he 'deserves' this after having received part of a $1.000.000.000 payment (which wasn't paid in Sun stocks..), maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong, but he doesn't seem to be getting MariaDb off the ground in the similar way as with MySQL, nor is there a flight of disappointed customers moving his way. But we have seen this with other Open Source projects in the past, as well as the recent ones where finally the plug was being pulled after a major investment. If the owners of the intellectual property, the actual developers mindshare, have for the most part left the community move along and if the remainders choose to detach OpenESB from its originators.. how much of an investment is it going to take to revatilize it all. Enthusiasm is one thing, budget and scale are another.<br />And that leads me to think the proposed actions, despite its almost theatrical build-up during previous months, is simply hitting a law of nature.. which I would like to ask here. Are the benefits of Open Source Software dependent on the size of the community as well as the complexity of the software? </div>
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I can't escape the impression the benefits as listed on <a href="http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk/migration/benefit.html">http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk/migration/benefit.html</a> are not realizable if the community isn't large and/or active enough. In fact, I think it's at a certain size and level of activity, the benefits implode and instead of the self-filtering assumption of "Open Source" we encounter a level of inbreeding which also involves effective lock-in for the end-customer. No vendor lock-in, but lock-in by ones solution provider.. as geo-political boundaries, the level of complexity, methodologies like SCRUM lead, along with recession induced cheap projects, effectively lead to implementations where only the original provider has any proficiency in maintaining it. Is this the goal of Open Source ? I very much doubt it so.<br /><br />If I look at the number of people in the "OpenESB Users" on nabble.. there are actually some 1136 users. Of course some accounts are counted double. LinkedIn shows several groups, "JCAPS (Formerly SeeBeyond)" with 438 members, "Open ESB Community" with 573 and "Java CAPS" with 578.. So let's take the average and say there are some 681 users..<br />Now, only about 5% of these users were present in Brussels, and a percentage of these 5% are now positioning themselves "in the best interest of THE community" whereas the number of names indicates this only to be about 1% of the community.<br /><br />The OpenESB Governance model has been set up in quite a meritocratic way, ".. projects within the OpenESB community have a very flat, lightweight governance structure. Decisions are made in public discussion on public mailing lists. There are few formal roles -- an individual's word carries weight in accordance with their contribution to the project. Decisions are preferably made by consensus, rather than voting--most decisions are of interest only to members of the community who will be affected by it. The combination of public mailing lists and consensus ensures that any person who could be affected by a decision both finds out about it, and has a voice in the discussion." - <a href="https://open-esb.dev.java.net/Governance.html">https://open-esb.dev.java.net/Governance.html</a><br />Yet if we look at the names listed and try to match with the top 20 posters according to Nabble.. as if this is a measure of proficiency of contribution, but that's another matter, we are left with 2 persons, both providing support to other mailers to the extend of their experience and capabilities. One of which clearly doesn't agree with the course of events. So, we have 0.15 % of the contributive users present at the summit, and taking the lead in speaking in name of THE community..<br /><br />But if I read <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/rehost-and-carry-on/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/rehost-and-carry-on/index.htm</a> or <a href="http://www.forgerock.com/openesb-faq.html">http://www.forgerock.com/openesb-faq.html</a> then we seem to be talking about the same community? I mean, this OpenESB community, not even the larger SeeBeyond-l on IT Toolbox or STC-User on Yahoogroups.<br />And why this course of actions? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono">To whose benefit</a>? The source is available.. one can automate a download every night to ensure always having the latest bits and pieces for the event that some *actually* happens. And if one looks deeper into the agreements.. the arrangements are similar to MySQL, or more adequate MySQL AB.. which was about Open Source, in some way, but also a slick company with a lean and agile business model which kept most development inhouse. Just like Sun did, and why this whole community has so much trouble in switching roles from relative passive user to active contributor. Maybe that is going to happen, maybe not, but with tearing down a struggling community I don't think anyone is done a favour, not the companies that built Binding Components, not the original developers of the core features, not the original mindshare and lessons-learned from SeeBeyond which significantly helped in shaping these products.<br />May it is meant well, but "Hell is paved with good intentions", and are we, the remaining 99% of THE community that blind that we do not notice ?<br /><br />I would like to take a closer look at something.. Open Source is about "Free as in Freedom", it is about Liberty and not about Gratis, however the latter seems to prevail. Freedom actually has two sides, which have been proposed in the 1960's by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, positive and negative liberty. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/</a><br />Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes.<br /><br />I think it is pretty clear, that what we have been experiencing is a display of 'negative liberty'. And I think Open Source Software is about 'postive liberty'.<br />As it happens, for gathering some seed capital today I was giving a presentation on the workings of propagation of emotional credentials within social networks, how this works, grows, and proven. This involves goodwill, reputation, adherence to promises, resolution of ambiguity and most importanly trust. Trust is very eery, and important.. and as a last note I like to share the definition used; "The attitude of expecting good performance from another party, whether in terms of loyalty, goodwill, truth, or promises. The importance of trust as a kind of invisible glue that binds society together is most visible when it is lost. Trust involves an element of risk, and epistemologists can have trouble categorizing it as rational, since it works best in advance, for example to motivate performance on occasions when defection may be to the advantage of the person trusted. Economically trust is precious, enabling parties to bypass the costly precautions and safeguards needed in transactions with parties whom one does not trust. Trustworthiness is a virtue, subsuming varieties such as truthfulness and fidelity."<br /><br />Although Oracle representatives haven't been as involved as I would like them to be, they have only been disappointing. But I kind of got used to that after 2005 already.. But what I am seeing with the summit.. this has me loose trust in this community, if it can be hijacked that easily.<br />If anything, as I responded already I would like to see Oracle explore a co-sourcing and gradual merger of OpenESB with OW2 Petals, which is likely the only road ahead for a revival. OW2 appears to be morphing in quite a haven for Open Source initiatives seeking less politics but global opportunities. Any other course of events is just about postponing the start date on maintenance contracts for unsupported and dying software solutions. I have no vested interest in any direction whatsoever. This is just my personal opion, and when decisions influence other people's life I prefer dealing with facts, not just impressions, so I invite anyone as a souvereign individual to speak up.</div>
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<br />As the American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes accurately observed;<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">T</span><span id="yui-gen2" style="font-style: italic;">he hydrostatic paradox of controversy. </span><span id="yui-gen2" style="font-style: italic;">Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you.<br />You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other.<br />Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. <br />And the fools know it. </span></div>
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<br />Take care,<br />Paul Peters<br />Fluxology SA</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-49379362617003648542010-09-06T14:15:00.002+02:002010-09-06T14:54:40.822+02:00My Yiddishe Mama<p><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831201424.htm">Mothers matter! High social status and maternal support play an important role in mating success of male bonobos</a></strong><br /><br />ScienceDaily (2010-09-05) -- The higher up a male bonobo is placed in the social hierarchy, the greater his mating success is with female bonobos, researchers have found. But even males who are not so highly placed still have a chance of impressing females. A new study finds evidence of direct support from mothers to their sons in agonistic conflicts over access to estrous females. ... <em>> <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831201424.htm">read full article</a></em></p><br /><p></p><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DUxkHgvyr30?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DUxkHgvyr30?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br />The diamonds are fake, but the chasms are real..Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-5052342712140187122010-08-14T14:27:00.002+02:002010-08-14T14:40:04.052+02:00It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyODE3ODkzNzkyMzQmcHQ9MTI4MTc4OTM4NTQ1MyZwPTEwMTkxJmQ9V*ZfZW1iZWRfZG9jdW1lbnQmZz*yJm89MDE2/YjE5NmRiOGYyNGU3YmJmNzUxN2I5ZjE*NDc4ZjYmb2Y9MA==.gif" /><div style="width:477px" id="__ss_4969021"><strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Fluxology/goedels-us-citizenship" title="Goedel's US citizenship">Goedel's US citizenship and the loophole in the Constitution</a></strong><object id="__sse4969021" width="477" height="510"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/doc_player.swf?doc=morgensternongoedelcitizenship-100814073445-phpapp02&stripped_title=goedels-us-citizenship" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed name="__sse4969021" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/doc_player.swf?doc=morgensternongoedelcitizenship-100814073445-phpapp02&stripped_title=goedels-us-citizenship" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="477" height="510" FlashVars="gig_lt=1281789379234&gig_pt=1281789385453&gig_g=2"></embed> <param name="FlashVars" value="gig_lt=1281789379234&gig_pt=1281789385453&gig_g=2" /></object></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-39764289193967916212010-08-12T15:03:00.006+02:002010-08-12T15:23:19.589+02:00Mussolini's revenge - l'Africa comincia a Südtirol<object height="320" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/swf/video/xe3kv9_videocracy_shortfilms?additionalInfos=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/swf/video/xe3kv9_videocracy_shortfilms?additionalInfos=0" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="320" width="480"></embed></object><br /><p><br /></p><p></p><br /><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7507586179468920585&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed> <br /><p><br /></p><p></p><br /><br /><embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=6978189858886931546&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=264709845600167246&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed><br /><p><br /></p><p></p><br /><embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8697248641166616573&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed><br /><p><br /></p><p></p><br /><embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=3409375633223151728&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-34549769629080899432010-05-09T14:15:00.003+02:002012-07-09T15:24:51.156+02:00Artificial Art<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUGkSDkrP3mJAKDwHcWbvBP24WjRXSM9F619MS16WSlVKvffPL3Nu794BeW33Exa2xPP6bLOSLx8EilgfCMiqtW6_lkJ8mPEafX4fexGwxyBqFcdalJ8CQCXjKCs9OEMIW3Kk_zczNHyi/s1600/0229.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469243731836888514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUGkSDkrP3mJAKDwHcWbvBP24WjRXSM9F619MS16WSlVKvffPL3Nu794BeW33Exa2xPP6bLOSLx8EilgfCMiqtW6_lkJ8mPEafX4fexGwxyBqFcdalJ8CQCXjKCs9OEMIW3Kk_zczNHyi/s400/0229.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Made by my phone, itself... facing upwards on the kitchen table. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Suddenly heard the sound of the camera shutter.. and behold.<br />But is it art?</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-25764262305147996192010-03-21T11:27:00.006+01:002012-07-09T15:25:14.507+02:00Dr Merkwürdigeliebe's newest in impression management: neuromarketing<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Duke University. "Brain Scans Could Be Marketing Tool of the Future." </span><u style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304112233.htm">ScienceDaily</a></u><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> 21 March 2010. 21 March 2010 <http: 03="" 2010="" com="" releases="">.</http:></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Applications">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Applications</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_mind-computer_interface">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_mind-computer_interface</a></span><br /><br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gDW_Hj2K0wo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gDW_Hj2K0wo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">All evil starts with 15 volts..</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/neuromarketing.htm">NeuroMarketing - Top 7 Insights To Unlocking Your Customer's Brain For Instant Sales</a> </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">by Denise Corcoran</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-89911974027868553562010-02-28T15:31:00.005+01:002010-08-29T16:09:14.584+02:00Rise of the Pink Flamingos<object classId="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="480" height="418" id="VideoPlayerLg44277"><param name="movie" value="http://g4tv.com/lv3/44277" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://g4tv.com/lv3/44277" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="VideoPlayer" width="480" height="382" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true"></embed></object><br /><p/><br /><p/><br /><a href="http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation/">DICE 2010 Design Outside the Box</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-70528613724238111982010-02-24T18:38:00.001+01:002012-07-09T15:25:36.797+02:00and why not..<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Hi everybody, </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> i'm working on an idea to establish a labelling system which can easily demonstrate a seller's environmental footprint. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> To make such a label obvious for the critical person to use, along with chain-accountability upto the 3rd degree in the supply chain, it will have to display an indication of improvement measures. Likewise with a farmer switching to bio-agricultural, it will take a number of different steps to get there. Such steps ought be rewarded, a system based on punishing "bad" deeds is not effective here, not something i want to advocate. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I do think the results from Copenhagen are not farfetching enough, i don't think our political systems are adequate to carry such initiatives and i don't expect politicians or political organisations to change. I don't think it is good enough. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> The last 90 years have seen an increased effort in shaping us humans as consumers. Well, there are a lot of things i would rather not buy, use, eat or get treated with if i were to know where it came from. The recession of the last two years shows a large many people are ethicaly bankrupt or just overwhelmed by the magnitude of the issues we're facing. Our value systems seem unfit for the challenges ahead and the means we have at our disposal. But maybe we start off small, and use our collective power as consumers to turn the issue inside out. I am hoping to get a consumer and academic movement going. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> The last two years I’ve seen the international academic world having a surprising impact on local level without any intervention of national politics, and this has been in a very realistic pragmatic way such as avoiding overfishing of certain species. Likewise, this label can have a simple start mapping interdependencies, possible alternatives, consolidate different rating systems and get something as simple as Fair Trade. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> I'll give it a shot this year to get this moving, and hope enough people will join in to make this worthwhile. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Take care </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Paul</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2796240&trk=anet_ug_grppro" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2796240&trk=anet_ug_grppr</a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-60745484486835368352010-02-16T15:28:00.004+01:002012-07-09T15:25:54.775+02:00add water and stir<span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">Situations have the power to do 3 things:</span><br />
<ul style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
<li>inflame hostile imagination to perpetrate evil</li>
<li>inspire heroic action</li>
<li>render most people ‘<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">passive bystanders</span>’ and guilty of ‘<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">the Evil of Inaction</span>’</li>
</ul>
<span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">7 Social Processes that grease the slippery slope of Evil</span><br />
<ul style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
<li>Mindless taking of the first step (carelessness)</li>
<li>Dehumanisation of others ("them")</li>
<li>De-individuation of self (anonymity)</li>
<li>Diffusion of personal responsibility (someone else's problem)</li>
<li>Blind obedience to authority (true believer)</li>
<li>Uncritical conformity to group norms (groupthink)</li>
<li>Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference (apathy)</li>
</ul>
<span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-style: italic;">The Lucifer Effect: understanding how good people turn evil<br />Philip Zimbardo</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-71949885168238001992010-02-14T18:10:00.006+01:002012-07-09T15:26:22.771+02:00Manufacturing Consent. The Banality of Evil<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LVsiP0s33A" style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">Manufacturing Consent</a><br />
<ul style="color: #330033;">
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730">Documentary</a></li>
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor">Origins of Management Science</a></li>
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect">Origins of Human Resource Management</a></li>
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Wikileaks</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="color: #330033;">
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ">The Secret History of Silicon Valley</a></li>
<li style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMoZ3ThW6x0">The Lucifer Effect</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_0g1RUQMVQ" style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">The Century of the Self</a><br />
<ol style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126">Happiness Machines</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-678466363224520614">The Engineering of Consent</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3261213779606642969">There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036">Eight People Sipping Win in Kettering</a></li>
</ol>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaLPFayD8FA" style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">The Power of Nightmares</a><br />
<ol style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727">Baby It's Cold Outside</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6277881193659506084">The Phantom Victory</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1433149975726132762">The Shadows in the Cave</a></li>
</ol>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic" style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">The Trap — What Happened to our Dream of Freedom</a><br />
<ol style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404227395387111085">Fuck You Buddy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7484462974129442912">The Lonely Robot</a></li>
<li><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2835280085049372541">We Will Force You To Be Free</a></li>
</ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-76281041618034772732010-02-12T13:07:00.002+01:002012-07-09T15:26:36.513+02:00So ist der Lauf der Welt<span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes. He changed clothes almost every hour and loved to show them off to his people.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The chief of the guards heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a loom, silk, gold thread and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a new extraordinary suit, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Emperor told him, "and come back to let me know."</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The prime minister was welcomed by the two scoundrels.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!" The old man bent over the loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"What a marvelous fabric, he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More thread was requested to finish the work.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two tailors had come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new suit.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding large roll of fabric.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful fabric in the world is ready for you. Look at the colors and feel how fine it is." Of course the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily the throne was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the fabric, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began cutting the air with scissors while sewing with their needles an invisible cloth.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Your Highness, you'll have to take off your clothes to try on your new ones." The two scoundrels draped the new clothes on him and then held up a mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Yes, this is a beautiful suit and it looks very good on me," the Emperor said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Your Majesty," the prime minister said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary fabric and they are anxious to see you in your new suit." The Emperor was doubtful showing himself naked to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clothes. They're beautiful!"</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"What a marvellous train!"</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!" They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"The Emperor is naked," he said.</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"</span><br /><span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-44264377466977280792010-02-11T15:37:00.005+01:002010-02-11T15:47:31.801+01:00The Betrayal of Tradition<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 0, 51);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity</span></span><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 0, 51);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-IBXdTZkpL7P96XgeNauX_ZSEPpW_yjjZvqZ-tNbMG8-Dw6i8I4I5yfvSahy7B7UTQO0hU9JzgZ8WXqCHY3Hf8LHrX6ahcqzfo20eYGlM7bz4p83A1Bej8CVvLNwUZvyadyccOje19vU/s1600-h/lego-mona.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-IBXdTZkpL7P96XgeNauX_ZSEPpW_yjjZvqZ-tNbMG8-Dw6i8I4I5yfvSahy7B7UTQO0hU9JzgZ8WXqCHY3Hf8LHrX6ahcqzfo20eYGlM7bz4p83A1Bej8CVvLNwUZvyadyccOje19vU/s400/lego-mona.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436995158576830706" border="0" /></a><br /><p></p><p></p><br /><br /><iframe style="border: 0px none ;" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=wKbzG1pTVR4C&lpg=PP1&ots=_SELWvwkF1&dq=betrayal%20of%20tradition&pg=PP1&output=embed" frameborder="0" height="469" scrolling="no" width="360"></iframe><br /></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-21016040605965791592010-02-07T15:10:00.004+01:002012-07-09T15:29:40.445+02:00homo homini loopy<span style="color: #330033;">Most people are other people.<br />Their thoughts are someone elses opinions,<br />their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.<br />~ Oscar Wilde<br /><br />They copied all they could follow<br />but they couldn't copy my mind<br />so I left them sweating and stealing<br />a year and a half behind.<br />~ Rudyard Kipling<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E4C8ZosD9MM&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param>
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Information, Occasions, Spacetime</span><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another interesting facet of the UFO phenomenon concerns information theory. According to modern physics, and in particular to Brillouin, Bagor, and Roghstein, information and entropy are closely related. The relationship has been expressed clearly by Brillouin:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;"> Entropy </span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana;">is generally regarded as expressing the state of disorder of a physical system. More precisely, one can say that entropy measures the lack of information about the true structure of the system.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">No information can be obtained in the course of a physical measurement, then, without changing the amount of entropy in the universe, the state of disorder of the cosmos.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Now the physicist is faced with a new challenge: how to define disorder. And the task, as R. Schafroth has pointed out, is not easy:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"> <span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana;"> </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana;"> Some scientists pile up papers and books on their shelves in apparent disorder, yet they know perfectly how to find the document they want. If someone restores the appearance of order, the unfortunate owner of these documents may be unable to locate anything. In this case it is obvious that the apparent disorder was in fact order, and vice versa.</span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Speculating on the relationship between these physical quantities, French physicist Costa de Beauregard wrote, "It must be in the nature of probability to serve as the </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">operational </span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">link between objective and subjective, between matter and psychism." He points out that, in precybernetics physics, </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">observation </span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">was regarded as a process without mystery, requiring no explanation, whereas </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">free action</span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">, on the contrary, was "regarded as a physical impossibility and a psychological illusion." In modern physics these ideas have been revolutionized.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Most theories advanced to explain paranormal phenomena borrow the standard concepts of space and time dimensions from physics. These concepts seem obsolete to me. They are not appropriate for understanding telepathy, or the moving of objects at a distance, or ghosts, or UFO abductions. I have always been struck also by the fact that energy and information are one and the same thing under two different aspects. Our physics professors teach us this, yet they never draw the consequences of that teaching.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Perhaps it is proper to shake from our theoretical ankles the chains of spacetime. Space and time coordinates derive their convenience from graphic considerations. The theory of space and time is a cultural artifact. If we had invented the digital computer before inventing graph paper, we might have a very different theory of the universe today.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The remarkable story of Cardan's dialogue with the two sylphs who disagreed about the nature of the universe summarizes the problem well. One of the sylphs believed the world had been created of all eternity. The other sylph expressed a theory closer to Islamic occasionalism: </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">the universe is a world of events</span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">. This book you are reading is only an occasion of the book I wrote. Can you be certain that it is identical to all the other copies? The pen I am using to write these words is not necessarily the same pen I was using a minute ago; it may be a new instance, a new occasion of the same pen.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Time and space may be convenient notions for plotting the progress of a locomotive, but they are completely useless for locating information. The apparent exception is the library, but anyone who has tried to find something in a modern library with its flat shelves along vertical walls will recognize the predicament in telling order from disorder in cartesian coordinates.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Modern computer scientists have long recognized that ordering by time and space is the worst possible way to store a lot of data at high speed. In a large computer-based information system, no attempt is made to place related records in sequential physical locations. It is much more convenient to sprinkle the records throughout storage as they arrive, and to construct an algorithm for retrieval based on some type of key word or on "hashing," a procedure where the record index is randomized. Probability serves as the link between something objective, the record location, and something subjective, the request for retrieval.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The synchronicity and coincidences that abound in our lives suggest that the world may be organized like a randomized data base (the multiverse) rather than a sequential library (the fourdimensional universe of conventional physics).</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #330033;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; text-align: center;">
Creatures of the Multiverse<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If there is no time dimension as we usually assume there is, the human brain may be traversing events by </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">association</span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">. Modern computers retrieve information associatively. The user "evokes" the desired records by using key words,</span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;"> words of power</span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">. For example, if he requests the intersection of "microwave" and "headache," he may find twenty articles whose existence in the literature he never suspected. If we live in the associative universe of the software scientist rather than the sequential universe of the spacetime physicist, then miracles are no longer irrational events. The philosophy we could derive from this line of speculation would be closer to Islamic occasionalism than to the Cartesian or Newtonian universe. And a new theory of information would have to be built. Such a theory might have interesting things to say about communication with the denizens of other physical realities, creatures of the multiverse. It might throw new light on the experience of the UFO abductees.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Should we believe the witnesses who describe their experiences aboard UFOs? As I have pointed out throughout this book, there is no reason to doubt their personal integrity, their sincerity, and their honesty. The words of Dr. Simon about Betty and Barney Hill are still clear after twenty years: "The experience, undoubtedly, was real to </span></span><span style="color: #330033; font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">them</span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Does this mean we should take their recollections literally? I do not think so. These events took place in a reality we simply do not understand yet; they had an impact on a part of the human mind we have not discovered. I believe that the UFO phenomenon is one of the ways through which an alien form of intelligence of incredible complexity is communicating with us symbolically. There is no indication that it is extraterrestrial. Instead, there is mounting evidence that it has access to psychic processes we have not yet mastered or even researched. In the face of such interaction at the symbolic or mythical level, all the hypnosis sessions and the searches for implants may well be as</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> futile as the questions of the inquisitors to the witches returning from the sabbat and the frantic search for the devil's mark on their bodies.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Until we have much more evidence about the physical nature of the UFO phenomenon, I find myself repelled by the indiscriminate probing of the witnesses' minds by amateur hypnotists who believe strongly their particular theory of extraterrestrial visitation and are eager to obtain confirmation of it at any cost.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">These witnesses have had a real, traumatic experience. They are weakened by it and ready to believe any explanation provided to them by someone in authority. Under the highly suggestible state created by hypnosis we can easily convince them of any half-baked interpretation of the phenomenon. This process is unethical and certainly unscientific.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a few cases (like the Hill episode) when hypnosis was used carefully, under medical supervision, and without leading questions, what was the outcome? We learned nothing useful about extraterrestrial life. But we learned that our current concepts of space and time were wrong; that a larger reality, other dimensions, existed; and that the time had come to challenge our current views about the universe.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Let us speculate even more boldly. The subject invites many troubling, fundamental questions. If energy and information are related, why do we only have one physics, the physics of energy? Where is the physics of information? Is the old theory of magic relevant here? Are the writings of Paracelsus, with his concept of "signatures," a neglected source of inspiration? Until these questions are explored, it may be impossible to address what French physicist Costa de Beauregard calls "the truly fundamental problem," that of the relationship between psyche and matter. Even if we consider only the operational aspects of a piece of information, if someone learns something from</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> it, physical theory dictates that the entropy of the universe must have changed.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">These are highly speculative questions. But at a time when we are beginning to suspect that ancient challenges are brought to light by high technology, creative speculation is necessary. Can a path be found toward realities that are not situated on faraway planets, but are right around us, outside our normal consciousness? Is this what happened to abductees like Helen and Kathy, or Travis Walton? Rather than a physical occurrence inside a spacecraft, did they experience a temporary translation of their consciousness into an altered reality followed by visions of archetypal creatures? Is it possible to promote coincidences and peculiar effects of apparently paranormal nature by creating physical structures shielded from everyday noise and serving as informational singularities?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If the world around us is a world of informational events, the symbolic manifestations that surround UFO reports should be viewed as an important factor. If we regard the physical world as an associative universe of informational events, consciousness is no longer simply a local function in the human brain. Instead, I propose to define consciousness as the process by which informational associations are retrieved and traversed. The illusion of time and space would be merely a side effect of consciousness as it traverses associations. In such a theory, apparently paranormal phenomena like remote viewing and precognition would be expected, even common, and UFOs would lose much of their bizarre quality. These phenomena would be natural aspects of the reality of human consciousness. I submit that reports of alien "contact" must be studied at this level, even if we are a long, long way from being able to channel our speculations into the formal equations of a new physics.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For many years, UFO phenomena have served as a support for human imagination, a framework for human tragedy, a fabric of human dreams. We react to them in our movies, our poetry, our music, our science fiction. And they react to us. They are not trying to communicate with a few individuals, with any group, with any government. Why should they? The phenomena function like an operational system of symbolic communication at a global level. There is something about the human race with which they interact, and we do not yet know what it is. They are part of the</span></span><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> environment, part of the control system for human evolution. But their effects, instead of being just physical, are also felt in our beliefs. They influence what we call our spiritual life. They affect our politics, our history, our culture. They are a feature of our past. Undoubtedly, they are part of our future.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-10947880069945454742009-07-12T12:51:00.003+02:002009-07-12T12:58:45.544+02:00earthgazer<div style="text-align: center; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); font-family: verdana;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Arlen Riley Wilson – Our Lady of Outer Space<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reach down for the sun, reach down</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">for the stars, reach deeper for the secret</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">places of the body of her the stars adorn.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">You are lost and found in her embrace.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">There is nowhere else for you to fall and</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">no escaping from her love for she is</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">black and pulsating source,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">her million twinkling nipples</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">nurse all life,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">her jewelled ardent body</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">twines around you always</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">and there is no place</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">to go but</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">home</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">to</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">her</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-66468176834771287022009-04-22T22:45:00.004+02:002011-09-02T11:00:01.582+02:00Fluxology Alliance - appendix<div style="WIDTH: 477px" id="__ss_9106428"><strong style="MARGIN: 12px 0px 4px; DISPLAY: block"><a title="Fluxology Alliance" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Fluxology/fluxology-alliance-9106428"><span style="font-size:78%;">Fluxology Alliance</span></a></strong><span style="font-size:78%;">
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<br /><div style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 12px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 5px"><span style="font-size:78%;">View more </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/"><span style="font-size:78%;">documents</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> from </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Fluxology"><span style="font-size:78%;">Paul Peters</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">.</span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6754238352334977510.post-81545029065075993892009-03-30T01:21:00.004+02:002012-07-09T15:30:30.118+02:00Fluxology Alliance<span style="color: #330033; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Sun founder Bill Joy is attributed to have said "most of the smart people work at some other company." When Sun Microsystems was founded, it was thoroughly understood Sun would live or die with it's partner network and as such set on to become a very partner-centric company.<br />By any standard, and even more so the American as we know it from afar, such a non-hierarchical, open and collaborative approach is unique. Sun Microsystems was open before Open Source became a popular concept.<br />Come and go the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble">dot-com bubble</a> , Sun is still very much about openness, however painful that may be with everyone else being an expert on economics and technology after reading some blogs and buying some stock options..<br /><br />Given a choice, if you're a bit of a geek, a freak or just a workaholic, how would you make your work more interesting? You try to work on something challenging with really smart people..<a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html"> Such people</a> aren't only rare, but they are usually caught up in something else, they are individuals with their own plans, and often a high sense of freedom and drive to accomplish something. Now.. how to work together. Well, one way is to have a company such as <a href="http://www.appliedminds.com/jobs.html">Applied Minds</a>, but still then you're trying to hire people who are hardcore individualists. Might work in the US due it's different labour ethos, but unmanageable in Europe..<br />A consortium of some sorts should do, a way to facilitate working with smart folk while acknowledging their individuality and personal agenda. A global non-equity strategic alliance, an open joint venture, proved the appropriate format.<br /><br />So, that's that. During nearly two years of contacted people and companies with certain characteristics, experience, expertise, hard and soft skills, we now have launched a partner network around Sun's software stack.<br />Starting around the SOA/BI offerings, and extending into Identity Management and beyond, we're also getting involved with the Cloud offerings as far as Sun's offerings goes. Adding even more value we have streamlined and prepared certain specific technology <a href="http://www.fluxology.net/">partnerships</a>, so to stretch current technological means beyond the average and pave a pathway into the future towards "<a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman03/kauffman_index.html">the adjacent possible</a>" in both business relations and information technology<br /><br />Currently referred to under the nomer of "Fluxology Alliance" for the sake of simplicity, once reaching the critical mass of required momentum, proven cohesion, and adequate harvest of the intrinsic quality levels, every participant is free to represent the network and spread the cooperation further in the areas of joint delivery, sales, training and solution development.<br /><br />Along with the partner networks, "unit 42" and "n-simplex alliance", Fluxology offers open-ended and packaged services, training, solutions, frameworks and technologies to take OpenESB to the next level. Our global partner network of senior experts currently involves some 135 senior experts ranging from 1 to 16 years of experience with the Sun/SeeBeyond toolsets, projects, architectural styles and management approach.<br />Our extended network, as well as a recently started "partner-of-a-partner" modality can leverage unequaled value in any direction.<br /><br />We're very happy to announce the launch of this partner network.<br />These go to eleven...</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0