Sunday, May 12, 2002

Good Morning, I am off to work today, but there is a lot of reading on SynEARTH network. Enjoy! Adam Curry: The Big Lie I posted a link to this earlier in the week, but it is so important I felt you should take another look: Monday's killing of historian and politician Pim Fortuyn brought an entire nation to its feet. After the initial shockwave that was felt throughout all communities in this tiny trading nation near the North Sea, the public showed its true colors. That of a peaceful, tolerant society. It was a feeling of disbelief. How could this happen, in the Netherlands of all places? This has never happened in modern Dutch politics. You hear it everywhere: "This isn't Holland", "Not the Dutch way". Many speak of "American drama on our shores". I'm pretty sure that statement is meant to reflect the shock, anger and sorrow of 9-11. Everyone agrees. Physical harm and violence are not to be tolerated. Like most modern cultures, opinion and speech are protected by the constitution. Ironically it is precisely this freedom of speech that killed Fortuyn. (05/12/02) Adam Curry Reports Just waking up here in Belgium after a long and tiring week. Got home late last night after the show. The Radio3 team was there (we have a bar next to the studio) they where having one last 'group hug'. Not a bad idea considering they witnessed the Fortuyn murder from a 3 foot distance. Any of them could have been injured themselves. ... More fuel for the fire: In the past weeks of campaigning, Fortuyn was quoted several times about his safety and clearly stated: "...when I am killed or wounded then you [prime minister Kok] are responsible because you give me no protection and you make the atmosphere in this country so poisonous that people want to hurt me...." I have seen and heard this with my own eyes and ears. The BBC also have a tape of this. Notice how he says 'when' instead of 'if'. ... The Sunday morning talk shows here are definitely leaning towards resuming campaigning in these final few days before the general elections, in which Pim Fortuyn is still a valid candidate and can legally be voted on.  (05/12/02) My Accumulated Wisdom John W. Gardner speaking to a class of graduating high school students: Humans are creatures that live not just in the world of physical stimuli but in the insubstantial world of visions, aspirations, illusions, self-deception, faith, skepticism and reverence. We have seen them create inexpressible beauty and we have seen them descend to unspeakable depths. Exposure to that astonishing story can help us to prepare for what are to me central themes of moral striving--to be true to the best that humans have said and done, to strive for the enhancement of individual dignity, the release of human potentialities, the liberation of the human spirit. Most of all, I hope you will come to understand that you are part of a long story, that you have deep spiritual links with those who have gone before and deep obligations to those who come after. ... You have to build meaning into your life and you build it through your commitments--whether to your religion, to your loved ones, to your life work, to your fellow humans, to your conception of an ethical order.  (05/12/02) Danger Zone--Government at Work New York Times: Pork, Atomic Waste and Guns-- The Senate Voted: 1) Farm Bill: Vote on a compromise farm bill that authorizes $180 billion in spending over 10 years and includes a $40 billion increase in subsidies for large grain and cotton farmers. The House Voted: 1) Atomic Waste: Vote to endorse the Bush administration's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, which is about 90 miles northwest of the outskirts of Las Vegas. The bill overruls Nevada's objection to the plan. Approved 306 to 117, May 8. 2) Defense Bill: Vote on a bill that authorizes $383 billion in spending for the Deparment of Defense for the 2003 fiscal year. The total in $48 billion or 13.8 percent more that last year's total. Approved 359 to 58, May 10. (05/12/02) The American Experiment John W. Gardner wrote: The unraveling of the social fabric that we see today is legitimate cause for worry. A society, with its thriving institutions and great ventures, its power structure, its enormous capacity to reward and punish, may seem like a huge, unshakable edifice. But it is built on intangibles--a web of mutual obligations; shared beliefs, religious and secular; laws and customs; agreed-upon processes of governing; caring, trust and responsibility. Weaken those beyond a certain point and the great edifice--to quote Prospero in The Tempest--"melts into air, into thin air." The intangible bonds of society hold within bounds the savagery of which humans are capable, ensure order, and make possible the accomplishment of shared purpose. When the web of community unravels, fearful things happen. Children gunning down children in the school yard. The daily news offers countless grim examples. Some observers, perceiving the element of moral disintegration in the unraveling, leap to the conclusion that the teaching of moral values is the only necessary ingredient for recovery. But moral values are not created by people who give lectures on moral values. Moral values are inseparable from family and community, and the necessary ingredient for recovery is the re-building of community. Values are the fruit of the tree. If the apple trees are gone, don't expect apples. That is the prime reason for re-building community--not to re-create a cozy and nostalgic neighborliness but to provide the mutual obligations, social controls, trust and responsibility that are generated in family and community. We are beginning to see that in our glorification of the unrestrained self, we forgot that the achievement of our shared goals (establish justice, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty, etc.) depends on some measure of social cohesion. What we need is a reasonable balance between the claims of individuality and the claims of community. (05/11/02) A New Kind of Science Stephen Wolfram is finally publishing his work, and his claims surpass the most extravagant speculation. He has, he argues, discovered underlying principles that affect the development of everything from the human brain to the workings of the universe, requiring a revolutionary rethinking of physics, mathematics, biology and other sciences. He believes he has shown how the most complex processes in nature can arise out of elemental rules, how a wealth of diverse phenomena — the infinite variety of snowflakes and the patterns on sea shells — are generated from seemingly trivial origins. ... His theory developed out of a series of elementary computer experiments he conducted in the early 1980's. He was examining the way simple computer programs can generate shaded patterns on grids composed of square cells. A computer would be given a row of cells, some black, some white, along with a set of simple rules that determine how succeeding lines of shaded cells are to be generated. Such programs have been called "cellular automata." As one might expect, simple rules generally yield simple patterns. But Mr. Wolfram found one rule for generating a cellular automaton that yields no clear pattern at all. Its appearance is bizarre, unpredictable, seemingly chaotic. No one, Mr. Wolfram writes, could have expected this. Complexity was thought to arise only out of very complex rules; here it is generated out of simplicity. Such cellular automata are at the heart of this book, for Mr. Wolfram argues that many complex processes — the movements of a fluid, the shapes of leaves, the patterns on a mollusk shell — can, in fact, be modeled by simple programs like cellular automata. Such elementary programs, he suggests, can even be used to explain the nature of space and time or outline the vagaries of visual perception. Existing mathematics and physics, Mr. Wolfram argues, are inadequate to the task. (05/11/02) Argentina Half of Argentina's 36 million citizens now live in poverty ... In just two months, the ranks of the poor have swollen by four million due to inflation, higher unemployment and frozen salaries ... Of the lowest income families, food purchases account for 46 percent of spending. (05/11/02) Famine Sweeps Southern Africa The Washington Post--"Please forgive my ramblings," said the old man, stooped and still as he sat on a wooden stool in front of his mud hut. "The hunger makes my mind wander." In his lucid moments, Lucas Lufuzi recites the numbers, calibrating his catastrophe. Three days since he's eaten. Thirty-one tiny cobs of unripe, green corn. Two grandchildren to feed. One son: 29 years alive; 21 days dead. Two seasons of crops spoiled by erratic weather -- rain one year, drought the next. "I have never seen such starvation," said Lufuzi, who does not know his age but says he believes he is close to 60. "Our family relied on my son to work the farm and for the income he earned [working part time on commercial farms]. "When my grandchildren's feet began to swell from hunger, I had no choice but to harvest the crops before they were ready. This," he said, nodding to a basket of shriveled corn, "is all that keeps us from death." (05/11/02) Trust and Intervention What do you trust? Whom do you trust? Do you trust yourself and your partner in life? Do you have trust on your children’s ability to learn things? Do you trust your work partner not to botch jobs? Do you trust your body’s signals and it’s mechanisms? People who don’t have trust on themselves and their capabilities generally find it difficult to trust another person. Since they don’t have trust on a person, they keep intervening.  (05/11/02) STEPHEN HAWKING: The Birthday Lecture It has been a glorious time to be alive, and doing research in theoretical physics. Our picture of the universe has changed a great deal in the last 40 years, and I'm happy if I have made a small contribution. I want to share my excitement and enthusiasm. There's nothing like the Eureka moment, of discovering something that no one knew before. I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer. (05/11/02) There Is Only One Life John Stevenson writes: Human philosophies have always been based on a particular concept of the human. Each philosopher defines the human then forms a philosophy for the human that fits with that definition. That definition has always been formed by considering the basic unit of human life as being the whole human. Therein lies the error. The facts of the human are far more complex. It is a philosophy of all life, which is needed, not of the human alone. That philosophy of life would then contain the required philosophy for the human and inherently provide the proper relationship between the human and all other life. It is not that the human needs to take care of all other life as a moral obligation, though that is certainly true, it is that the human is a small part of life, but one which possesses a characteristic (intelligence) which is valuable to the survival and well being of all life. It was life which developed that intelligence, not the human, therefore its service is for all life, not merely the human. The human is, in that sense, a servant to life, a caretaker in the service of life, the good shepherd for all of life. (05/11/02) The Most Lethal Garbage in the World Stored in 51 giant tanks, the mix of radioactive sludge, liquid and salts is a legacy of the factories here that produced the United States' atomic arsenal. Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in the world. The Energy Department, which designs, builds and maintains nuclear weapons, has a powerful motive to simplify the cleanup. Any method that proves effective here will be duplicated at sites in Idaho and Washington. A $2.4 billion factory here is processing the sludge, which has most of the radioactivity, mixing it with molten glass and pouring the mixture into stainless steel canisters. The mixture cools into glass logs, and about 1,200 of them have been made since production began in 1996. The plan is to bury them deep underground, presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev., where they are supposed to be secure for thousands of years. Now there are problems ... (05/11/02) Warning! Do Not Enter! With Einstein's discovery that "matter" and "energy" were both parts of a larger whole called "matter-energy"— E=MC2, the promise of unlimited cheap power captured the hopes of humanity. We now know that nuclear power is not without its price. That price comes back to us in the form of very dangerous and very long lasting waste products that are very difficult to dispose of. The fact that the ability to dispose of these dangerous waste products has not yet been invented has not prevented us from using nuclear power. Lacking a safe disposal, the least we can do is warn those humans who will follow us—to warn our children and their children. (05/11/02) Ecological Ethics Elisabet Sahtouris writes: This, as we said, is the heart of ecological ethics -- the self-interest of every holon, whether a cell, a body, a society, a species, an ecosystem, or a whole living planet. All must be balanced in the mutual consistency of the whole and all its parts. Self-interest is bad only when not tempered by the self-interest of community. For us this means recognizing how much we affect the living planet of which we are part and on which our continued existence depends. To truly look out for our own interests requires that we know the interests of our whole environment, which means our whole living planet. Our free choices, in order to serve our own long-range interests, must serve those of other species as well, for natural ethical behavior is that which contributes to the health of the whole Gaian system. Our history has brought us to the shortsighted adolescent selfishness of warfare, hatred, distrust, and reckless destruction of our own environment. We have long-standing habits of believing that all nature is human property, and so we take land and resources from one another for reasons of profit. It is high time for us to realize that maximizing individual profits minimizes human social stability and welfare, while maximizing common profits destroys our natural life-support system. If we want to survive as a species we must learn to change our ideas and our lifestyles to live in a balanced recycling economy like the rest of nature. In fact, it is high time to realize that all our old habits and vested interests, even if they form our individual and national identity, must be fundamentally changed. The changes required are deeper and more far-reaching than any revolutionary leader has ever demanded or even dreamed of demanding. And yet we can make those changes peacefully, and everyone can win. (05/10/02) Building Meaning Into Our Lifes John W. Gardner writes: Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.  (05/10/02) Earth Simulator The Earth Simulator will create a "virtual planet earth" on the computer by its capability of processing vast volume of data sent from satellites, buoys and other worldwide observation point. The system will contribute to analyze and predict environmental changes on the earth through the simulation of various global scale environmental phenomena such as global warming, El Nino effect, atmospheric and marine pollution, torrential rainfall and other complicated environmental effects. It will also provide an outstanding research tool in explaining terrestrial phenomena such as tectonics and earthquakes. (05/09/02) 7:53:31 AM

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