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Tuesday, November 05, 2002
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In modern representative democracies, we find the majority rule mechanism used to select our representatives, to make decisions within committees and to make decisions within the legislative bodies. In the United States, we elect one president, 100 Senators and 435 Congressman. This is one President for ~276 million Americans. There are two Senators for each state. Senatorial representation would vary from one Senator for ~16 million Californians down to one Senator for ~350,000 Delawarians. The members of the first House of Representatives were elected on the basis of 1 representative for every 30,000 inhabitants, but at least 1 for each state. At present the size of the House is fixed at 435 members, elected on the basis of 1 representative for about 500,000 inhabitants. Our representatives do not even know us. If any Congressman met with 10 of his constituents every day for 365 days a year, it would take over 137 years for him just to meet all of them. And Congressmen are only elected for two year terms. If our Congressman don’t even know us how can they represent us? So if we carefully examine modern representative democracy scientifically, we discover it is an oliarchy. In other words, we are ruled by the few. When we go to the poles to elect a President, we are simply electing the leader of the few who rule. Majority rule democracy ends for we the people the moment we exit the voting booth. And, our elected leader will have no need of our opinion for four years. (11/05/02) | |
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Alvin Lowi, Jr. asks: If an informed and conscientious democratic electorate patronizes only 'good' candidates for office in a monopoly institution of governmental power, will the politicians they elect thereafter dedicate themselves to looking after the people's business in preference to their own? ... Can politicians, however elected, actually do the people's business for them through the institutions allegedly built for that purpose? ... What's to keep politicians from behaving opportunistically to make the most of what they find for themselves while in office? ... If the politician's government is found to be incapable of delivering its promised protections and benefits, how can the people peaceably recover their prerogatives from the coercive monopoly once they created it? ... If political institutions fail to fulfill their promises, how can the people go about their business anyway as they must in order to survive and prosper? ... If entrenched politicians are ignored, will they go away? ... If the polls are boycotted, will despots succeed to rule? ... These are frequently-asked and searching questions. They beg for answers. In the following exposition, these questions among others will be examined. Politics as it is known rather than it 'ought' to be will be explored in search of answers. ... The author presumes the reader is as familiar with politics as he. Accordingly, the reader is advised to consider carefully the observations presented and come to his own conclusions. (11/05/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: We humans are a form of life. This is a fact of reality paramount to understanding ourselves. And, yet this fact is so pervasive and constant that it rarely enters our consciousness. Our clear and distant superiority to all other forms of life have made it easy for us to neglect our biological basis. As we have seen ourselves different and superior to all other forms of life, we have missed the point . While we differ from plants and animals, we share their aliveness – we are still forms of life – we are still living organisms –we are still living systems . When we examine ourselves scientifically, we discover that humans are living systems, and it follows therefore that our powers and our problems will be those of life. If we are to create a safe and comfortable future for ourselves and our children, we must understand our connection to life. Our life connection is not only relevant, it is the crucial factor in determining a safe passage through the current human crisis. ... Plant survival does not require any relationship with other. The plants unique ability to utilize sunlight directly to synthesize organic tissue frees them from the need for others. This fact makes plants the independent class of life – independent of other. Animal survival depends entirely on finding others to eat. The herbivores depend on finding plants to eat. The carnivores depend on finding other animals to eat. The animal's inability to utilize sunlight to synthesize organic tissue means they must eat something. Animals survive by eating either plants or animals. Animals are completely dependent on other for survival. This fact makes animals the dependent class of life – dependent on other. We humans share the animal body, to survive we must also eat. We are omnivores. We meet our basic needs and survive by eating both plants and animals. Physiologically, we humans are also a dependent class of life. But humans need more than basic needs. Sometimes we need other and sometimes other needs us. Some scientists have used the term "the social animal" in reference to these social-psychological needs of humanity. And it is these social-psychological needs that makes humans more than dependent upon each other. This means sometimes I depend on other and sometimes other depends on me. This fact makes us humans the interdependent class of life. (11/05/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Since the beginning of medicine, physicians have sought an understanding of the cause and definition of disease. They have not been very successful in finding either. This search led me to develop the Unified Stress Concept, a scientific model which seeks to explain the relationship of all disease, both physiological and psychological, to a single cause. If proven true, it will corroborate the mind-body unification and set a clear direction for future medicine. It could further lead to a new understanding of life, health, and wellness that would result in the eventual control and elimination most diseases and illnesses that currently afflict humankind. (01/18/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In 1984, I imagined a future where information and knowledge flowed from home computer-communication terminals like water from a tap, electicity from a plug or gas from a spigot. I am a synergic scientist. Synergy is that postive relationship between humans when both individuals–both self and other– are mutually benefited by their relationship. Both individuals are more happy, more effective, and more productive because of relationship than they would be without the relationship. A synergic scientist seeks to know how such relationships can be created and sustained. In 1984, I originated a prototype for today's web site. It utilized 'state of the art' software that allowed the user to create a RBBS–Regional Bulletin Board System–that ran on the original IBM Personal Computer and its clones. The software could serve information and files and and allow message exchange over a 'state of the art' 1200 baud modem to callers who using their own IBM PC 's could connect using 300 baud to 1200 baud modems. I called this prototype the Future Positive BBS. It was on that BBS, that individuals could download my 18 page proposal for what I called The Knowing Utility. (11/05/02) | |
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New York Times: Technology -- A start-up company plans to announce new antenna technology on Monday that it says can expand the limits of a popular wireless Internet format, providing access to hundreds or even thousands of portable computer users at distances of more than 2,000 feet within buildings and about four miles outdoors. The antenna uses the 802.11 technical standard, also known as Wi-Fi, which is currently limited to providing wireless Internet access to several dozen users within a few hundred feet of the transmitter. Wi-Fi is increasingly common in offices, airports, places like Starbucks shops and even in a growing number of households. Executives for the start-up company, Vivato, based here, said they expected their technology to be especially suited to office buildings because it would enable so many more people to use a single Wi-Fi Internet connection simultaneously. "We will change the way people think about the physics of Wi-Fi," said Ken Beba, the chairman and chief executive of Vivato, which is across from the Pac Bell Park baseball stadium. (11/05/02) | |
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New York Times: Science -- Using a form of ultrafast flash photography, scientists have for the first time tracked the motion of electrons deep within atoms. The experiment enables a deeper look at the fundamental building blocks of matter, resolving the swirling blur of electrons into a stop-action movie. Scientists hope that directly studying the electronic behavior of atoms could lead to compact and efficient X-ray lasers. In the current issue of the journal Nature, scientists at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria and the University of Bielefeld in Germany describe how they knock electrons out of krypton atoms with a short X-ray pulse and measure how long it takes other electrons to fill those holes. ... By bouncing the pulses off a two-part mirror, the researchers open up a slight gap between the X-ray pulse and the laser pulse. The X-ray pulse then hits krypton atoms, knocking out some of their electrons. The laser pulse, arriving a fraction of a moment later, allows the researchers to view other electrons tumbling into the spaces left by the knocked-out electrons. The researchers still cannot directly detect an electron's jumping into an empty space. But when that electron drops, it gives extra energy to a neighbor, kicking it out of the atom, too. The laser pulse illuminates this second ejected electron. The experiment does not violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which prohibits the exact measurement of both the position and velocity of a particle. The laser pulse does not reveal the position of the electron, just its velocity. The researchers repeated the experiment, varying the time between the X-ray and laser pulses, producing, in effect, a stop-action movie. "You can reconstruct the process from the series of snapshots," Dr. Krausz said. The experiments show that it takes about eight one-thousandths of trillionth of a second for an electron to fill the empty space. That agrees with what physicists had previously deduced indirectly. (11/05/02) | |
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5:59:08 AM 
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2002
Timothy Wilken.
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