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Tuesday, November 19, 2002
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Chris Siebert writes: A preamble to a radical security program should eliminate the fascistic term "Homeland Security", to be replaced, perhaps, with "Domestic Security". The following proposals could be realistically implemented over the next few years. Most of them are already in place in some form, either at the local level in the United States or elsewhere. 1. Eliminate nuclear power, the single most scary terrorist target. 2. Build a world-class passenger rail system to provide redundency in our transportation networks. An attack on our aviation system would never again shut the country down. 3. Increase fuel economy standards for all vehicles, especially S.U.V.'s and passenger vans. Let's stop sending our money to the terrorists via our gasoline purchases. In addition, we should fund non-profit car-sharing schemes like City Car Share in San Francisco, which allows members to drastically reduce car usage, at least in urban areas. 4. Adopt a national energy policy that provides for alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuel production, both domestic and foreign. We should increase funding for clean, renewable sources of energy, including solar and wind power. ..... (11/19/02) | |
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Donivan Bessinger, MD writes: Living systems also exhibit emergence. An emergent is a characteristic which arises out of the function of the system at a particular level. Describing such a characteristic requires describing more than the operations of the system's components. An emergent is "something special" arising from the system, such as the phenomenon of life emerging at the level of the primal cell, as language emerging at the level of the human being, and as the capacity to build space ships emerging at the level of the large science-technology task group. The systems vision of the universe as a vibrant, pulsating, self-balancing harmonic whole is markedly different from the classic scientific view of the universe as a giant machine, well-greased to be sure, but operating in a fixed and entirely predictable, determined way. In the systems view, one sees the universe as process, rhythmically interacting at all levels. The systems view opens the way to examine these inter-relationships at many levels. It brings us again to the origins of philosophy and to the insights of Heraclitus, for in addition to seeing all as one, Heraclitus saw all as change. The world was in flux, exhibiting repeating cycles of energy. The systems view shows us that too. In spiraling again toward Heraclitus' position, we carry with us a much greater weight of learning, and as he warned us, we "cannot step into the same river twice." We cannot expect to entirely close the circle but we do bridge the gap and link across the levels of the spiral to grasp these strange loops which he extended for us: En panta. All is one. Panta rhei. Everything flows. (11/19/02) | |
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Kenneth Snelson writes: This portrait comes from a tradition. Artists have often shown us the invisible; gods, spirits, goblins and demons. They have made tableaux of epic stories or battle scenes whose witnesses have long disappeared. The details of the atom's structure are equally invisible and must be conjectured from scientific information. People have sought meaningful images of it since the Greek philosophers first conceived of atomism twenty-five hundred years ago. Because it is my work to imagine and build sculptures from physical forces, the electronic atom's form and workings have seemed a kind of sculptural riddle, and as I see it, one not yet solved convincingly by science. (11/19/02) |
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Daniel Dingel is an engineer, who used to work for NASA, and has developed a car that uses plain tap water and/or sea water for fuel. Mr. Dingel lives in the Phillipines and has a very interesting story. He has invented a mini-reactor that splits the water molecule into hydrogen & oxygen, using only a small current of electricity. The hydrogen is captured and then burned burned in any ordinary combustion engine.The emission released out of the exhaust is clean pure water vapor or water- absolutely no pollution, in fact, it cleans the air. He now has 6 cars running on water, the first car drove out in 1969, over 30 years ago. ... Sounds to good to be true? Watch a 15 minute video which includes an interview with Mr. Dingel, a test drive and engine demonstration of one of his water-fueled cars. (11/19/02) | |
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New York Times: Science -- New studies raise questions about whether atrazine, used primarily for killing weeds in cornfields, is acting as an endocrine disrupter in amphibians, interfering with normal hormonal functions, and causing males to become hermaphrodites, producing eggs in their testes. Some 60 million to 70 million pounds of atrazine are applied each year in the United States, and it has been found in rivers, ponds, snowmelt and rainwater. Scientists have taken a particular interest in the new studies because such a widespread endocrine disrupter could help explain worldwide declines of amphibians. The studies could also affect continued use of atrazine. The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing the herbicide's environmental risks as part of the periodic reregistration process required for continued sale of such chemicals. Much of the newest research was presented yesterday at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in Salt Lake City. The controversy began in April when Dr. Tyrone Hayes, an endocrinologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and colleagues published results in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicating that very low concentrations of atrazine, similar to those seen in the wild, could turn males of the African clawed frog into hermaphrodites in the laboratory. Then last month in Nature, Dr. Hayes and colleagues published studies showing that males of the leopard frog, a native species, could also be feminized by exposure to low levels of atrazine in the laboratory. More worrisome, the researchers found that in the seven field sites from Utah to Iowa where they could detect atrazine, they also found hermaphroditic frogs. At the one site without detectable atrazine, there were no hermaphrodites. (11/19/02) | |
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New York Times: Science -- Sooner or later, scientists who study Earth-crossing asteroids say, astronomers will find one that has a significant chance of striking the planet. Unlike several recently discovered asteroids that were first given very long odds for a collision, this time more precise orbital calculations won't eliminate the possibility. This one will be an asteroid "with our name on it," in the words of David Morrison, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center and one member of a small community of astronomers, physicists, engineers and other scientists who think a lot about such an unthinkable event. It is not clear what would happen then, though Dr. Morrison and others are trying to awaken governments and the public to the need to at least think about developing a way to respond. "Eventually we will discover something," Dr. Morrison said, though maybe not in this century or even this millennium. "Society should start planning for that unexpected but potentially tragic possibility." (11/19/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Human intelligence science has revealed that our enormous intelligence is the result of possessing dual minds. These dual minds create pictures of a dual world in which we live. Most of us don’t know we have dual minds and almost all of us don’t know we live in a dual world. We live in two worlds all of the time. Let us begin by examining the world created by the space-mind. Space-mind is in charge of survival. So it needs to know what the world is really like. Boy if you are in your space-mind, you better live in the real world. Right? Ever play dodge ball? When I was a kid, dodge ball was a big game. I don’t know whether they even play it any more. You go into the gym and line up against the wall and somebody throws a volleyball at you at high speed. Right? You dodge it Right? You better know where the ball really is or you are going to get hit. Ever play snow ball fights? Same thing right? You better know where those snowballs really are or you’re going to get hit. The space-mind has to know where things are in space. Where they really are. When I’m teaching this lesson to a group of students I’ll suddenly toss a pencil to someone sitting in the first row, and it’s amazing, they almost always catch it. One hand will fly up and catch the unexpected object. Their space-mind reflex puts their hand up. The space-mind has to know what’s real and what’s really going on or you don’t survive. If there is a tiger in this room I had better know it’s here. So the space mind makes a picture of reality from its sense images and feelings. That’s picture of reality is what I call the world of “is”. ... Now humans also have the time-mind which is into becoming, it's interested in cause and effect, it is always predicting the future based on its understanding of the past. So the time-mind forms an opinion of reality from words and thoughts. This opinion of reality is what I call the world of “ought to be”. (11/18/02) | |
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Jake Bergman and Julia Reynolds report: In the summer of 1998 Stephen Jorgensen began buying the first of what were eventually more than 800 MAK-90 semiautomatic rifles at a store called Gun Land in Kissimmee, Florida. He did not have a resale permit--known as a Federal Firearms License, or FFL--and he was not required to present one. But Jorgensen wasn't stockpiling the guns for his personal use; he was taking them to Opa-Locka airport near Miami and loading them aboard a light airplane headed for airstrips in Venezuela and Colombia, via Haiti. Jorgensen's South American clients originally wanted AK-47s, but in the United States, the fully automatic AK-47 can be purchased from a dealer only with a Class 3 permit, which is difficult to obtain. The AK was modified in 1990 to get around the California Assault Weapons Ban--hence MAK-90, or "Modified AK 1990." It is virtually identical to the AK-47 but costs only $200 to $300, compared with $1,000 to $3,000 for a Russian-made AK-47. It is exempt from the national Assault Weapons Ban, enacted after the California ban, because it has slight alterations that give it a hunting-rifle appearance. ... The Venezuelan customers needed 200,000 rounds of ammunition, so Ceruelos agreed that Jorgensen would buy the ammo at a local gun shop in 10,000-round increments, so as not to arouse suspicion. Jorgensen assured Ceruelos, "They don't monitor buying the ammunition; you don't sign, nobody knows you bought it. So that's a fairly low risk." ... Law enforcement officials describe the United States as a one-stop shop for the guns sought by terrorists, mercenaries and international criminals of all stripes. And September 11 has not changed that in any significant way. (11/18/02) | |
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Donivan Bessinger, MD writes: One's view of the world derives from one's view of oneself in relationship to the world of society and to the world of knowledge. Since antiquity, great teachers have stressed the importance of the understanding of one's self, whether for religious enlightenment or as the basis for knowledge. ... Self awareness and self knowledge have also been seen as critical in philosophy as well. Socrates had the distinction of being named by the oracle at Delphi as the wisest of the Greeks. Of course, Socrates was wise enough to know that he was wisest because he knew this: "One thing only do I know, and that is that I know nothing." For Socrates, the beginning of knowledge is to doubt. One must particularly doubt one's cherished beliefs, lest they interfere with the precision of one's questioning. (After all, if one is confident of one's beliefs, one will have no reason to fear examining them!) As Will Durant summarizes Socrates, "There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself." "Know thyself" was the cornerstone of Socrates' teaching. (11/18/02) | |
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6:22:13 AM 
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2002
Timothy Wilken.
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12/3/2002; 8:09:16 AM.
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